"If it's Erin, I want ten minutes alone with Bruce Seabright and a large serrated knife."
"I'll hold him down, you cut his heart out."
"Deal."
Making a face at the smell of manure and urine, he leaned over the body and lifted the edge of the horse blanket.
I steeled myself for the worst. The body was white and stiff. Smudged mascara, blue eye shadow, and berry-red lipstick gave the face the impression of a macabre work of art. There was a thumb-sized bruise on the cheek. Her mouth was partially open, crumbled chunks of old manure spilling out.
I let go of my held breath, relieved and sickened at once. "It's Jill Morone."
"You know her?"
"Yes. And guess who she worked for."
Landry frowned. "Don Jade. She told me yesterday she was sleeping with him."
"Yesterday? What were you doing out here?" I asked, forgetting the audience, forgetting the role I was supposed to be playing.
He looked perturbed and wouldn't meet my eyes. "Following up on your assault."
"Gee. And I thought you didn't care."
"I care that you caused me paperwork," he complained. "Get out of here, Estes. Go play dilettante. Make yourself useful."
I put on a tragic face for the onlookers and hurried away to my car, where I called Molly Seabright to tell her her sister wasn't dead… as far as I knew. Then I set off to Don Jade's barn in search of a killer.
22
When I arrived at the Jade stalls there was a major cleanup under way. Paris was supervising as the Guatemalan man carried articles of clothing out of a stall and dumped them into a muck cart. She alternated snapping at the man with snapping at someone on the other end of her cell phone.
"What do you mean clothing isn't covered? Do you know what this stuff is worth?"
I looked at the pile in the muck cart. White and buff show breeches; an olive green three-season wool jacket, probably custom-made; custom tailored shirts. All of it worth a lot of money. All of it stained with manure.
"What happened?" I asked.
Paris clicked her phone shut, furious, dark eyes burning with anger. "That rotten, ugly, stupid, fat girl."
"Your groom?"
"Not only has she not shown up, not gotten the horses groomed, did not clean the stalls yesterday when Javier was gone; she did this." She thrust a finger at the pile of ruined clothing. "Spiteful, hateful, little-"
"She's dead," I said.
Paris pulled up mid-tirade and looked at me like I'd sprung a second head. "What? What are you talking about?"
"Haven't you heard? They found a body in the manure pile at barn forty. It's Jill."
She looked at me, then looked around as if there might be a hidden camera somewhere. "You're kidding, right?"
"No. I drove in the back way. The cops are there now. I'm sure they'll be here soon enough. They know she worked for Don."
"Oh, great," she said, thinking about the inconvenience, not the girl. I saw her catch herself mentally and put on an appropriate expression of concern. "Dead. That's terrible. I can't believe it. What happened to her? Did she have an accident?"
"I don't suppose she accidentally buried herself in horseshit," I said. "She must have been murdered. I wouldn't move anything around here if I were you. God knows what the detectives will think."
"Well, they can't think any of us would kill her," she said huffily. "She's the only groom we had left."
As if that was the only reason not to kill her.
"Why do you think she made this mess?" I asked, pointing at the clothes.
"Spite, I'm sure. Don said he saw her at The Players last night and he reprimanded her for something. Oh, my God," she said, eyes widening. "You don't think she was killed here, do you?"
I shrugged. "Where else would she have been?"
"I don't know. She might have been meeting a guy in one of the other barns or something."
"She had a boyfriend?"
Paris made a face. "She talked about guys like she was the village slut. I never believed she had one."
"Looks like she had one last night," I said. "You jumper people have all the excitement. Murder, mayhem, intrigue…"
Javier asked her in Spanish if he should keep cleaning the stall. Paris looked in through the bars. I looked too. The stall was a mess of churned-up muck and pine shavings and leather oil.
"Is that blood?" I asked, pointing. There were some drops that might have been blood splashed on curls of white pine bedding. It might have belonged to the dead girl. It might have belonged to her killer. It might have belonged to the horse that normally occupied the stall. Only a lab would tell us for sure. Who knew what else had already been dug out of the stall and hauled away.
Paris stared. "I don't know. Maybe. Oh, this is just too creepy for words."
"Where's Don?"
"Off buying clothes. He has to show today."
"I wouldn't count on that. He saw Jill last night. She came here and did this, and now she's dead. I think the cops are going to want to talk to him."
Paris found her way to a director's chair with JADE embroidered on the seat back. "Elle, this is just horrible," she said, sitting down, as if she suddenly didn't have the strength to stand. "You don't think Don could have…?"
"It doesn't matter what I think. I barely know the man. What do you think? Is he capable of something like that?"
She stared off into the middle distance. "I want to say no. I've never seen him violent. He's always so in control…"
"I heard he'd been in trouble for killing horses for the insurance money."
"Nothing was ever proven."
"What about Stellar?"
"That was an accident."
"Are you sure? What did the claims adjuster say?"
She put her head in her hands for a moment, then smoothed them back over her golden hair. On her right hand she wore an antique emerald and diamond ring that looked to be worth a fortune.
"The company will look for any reason not to pay," she said with disgust. "Because Don's involved. It's fine for owners to pay thousands in premiums, but God forbid they actually file a claim."
"But if it was an accident…"
"The adjuster called this morning and claimed the postmortem on Stellar turned up a sedative in the horse's bloodstream. It's ridiculous, but if they can deny the claim, I know they will. Trey is going to be furious when he hears."
And there goes the million-dollar stable, I thought. Even if Hughes had wanted the horse dead, he didn't want to be caught involved with insurance fraud. He would blame Jade and fire him.
"Was there any reason the horse would have had anything in his system?" I asked.
Paris shook her head. "No. We have the stuff around, of course. Rompun, acepromazine, Banamine-every stable has that stuff on hand. A horse colics, we give him Banamine. A horse is difficult having his feet worked on by the farrier, we give him a little ace. It's no big deal. But there wasn't any reason for Stellar to have anything in his system."
"Do you think Jill might have known something about it?" I asked.
"I can't imagine what. She barely did her job. She certainly wouldn't have been here in the middle of the night when Stellar died."
"She was last night," I pointed out.
Paris looked to the end of the aisle as Jade came into the tent. "Well. I guess we never really know the people we work with, do we?"
Jade held shopping bags in both fists. Paris jumped out of the chair and went into the tack room with him to break the news about Jill. I strained to hear, but couldn't make out more than the urgent tone and the odd word, and Jade telling her to calm down.
I looked at Javier, who was still standing at the door of the stall waiting for instructions, and asked him in Spanish if this was a crazy business or what. More than you know, señora, he told me, then he took his pitchfork to a stall farther down the row.
Landry's car pulled up at the end of the tent. He had had to wait for the crime scene unit and the medical examiner's people to arrive at the dump site, and he had probably called in extra deputies to canvass the grounds, looking for anyone who might have seen Jill Morone the night before. He came in with another plainclothes cop at the same time Michael Berne stormed into the tent from the side, red-faced.