Sean waved me to the barn as I drove into the yard. The afternoon was slipping away in the west. The sky was orange with a drift of black smoke billowing along the horizon. Farmers burning off the stubble of their sugarcane fields. Irina was feeding the horses their dinner. I breathed in the scent of animals and molasses and grass hay. Better than a Valium to me. D'Artagnon stuck his head out over the door of his stall and nickered to me. I went to him and stroked his face and rested my cheek against his and told him that I missed him.
"Just in time for cocktails, darling. Come along," Sean said, leading the way to the lounge. He was still in breeches and boots.
"Sorry I haven't been any help the last few days," I said. "Are you going to fire me and throw me out into the street?"
"Don't be silly. You've embroiled me in international intrigue. I'll dine out on this for years to come." He went to the bar and poured himself a glass of merlot. "Want some? Blood red. That should appeal to you."
"No, thanks. I'll be giddy."
"That will be the day."
"Tonic and lime sounds nice."
He fixed the drink and I crawled onto a bar stool, tired and body sore.
"I spoke today with friends in Holland," he said. "They had already heard Van Zandt had been in my barn."
"That's some grapevine."
"Apparently, Van Zandt didn't waste any time putting the word out that I might be buying and selling horses with him."
"I'm sure he didn't. You're a plum catch, my peach. Great taste and lots of money. I'm sure he wanted that news to get to your longtime agent as soon as possible."
"Yes. Thank Christ I had called Toine ahead of time and warned him I was sacrificing myself for a noble cause. He would have been on the first plane over from Amsterdam to rescue me from Van Zandt's evil clutches."
"And what did your other friends have to say about the evil Z.?"
"That he's a pariah. He's been banished from the best farms in Holland. They simply won't do business with him."
"But plenty of other people will."
He shrugged. "Dealers always manage to find clients, and people with horses to sell need clients to sell them to. If no one did business with shady characters like Van Zandt, not much business would get done."
"I'll tell him you said so over dinner tonight."
He made a face. "You're having dinner with him? You'll want to buy a case of liquid Lysol."
"To drink?"
"To bathe in afterward. Seriously, Elle," he said, frowning at me, "be careful with that creep. Irina told me what he did to her friend. And now there's been a murder at the show grounds. Is he involved in that? That's where you were all day, isn't it?"
"I don't know if he was involved. Other people may have had reason to want the girl dead."
"Jesus, Elle."
"I know what I'm doing. And the cops are involved now."
"Is that who was here this morning?" he asked, a sly look coming into his eyes. "Mr. Very Good Looking in the silver car?"
"Detective," I corrected. "Is he good-looking? I hadn't noticed."
"Honey, you need an optometrist if you haven't noticed that."
"His personality leaves something to be desired."
"So does yours," he said, trying not to grin. "Could be a perfect fit."
"Could be you need your head examined," I complained. "This mess I'm involved in-thanks to you, by the way-involves a lot of ugly stuff. Romance is not on the agenda even if I was interested-which I'm not."
He hummed a note to himself, thinking something I was certain I didn't want to know. I was uncomfortable with the idea of anyone thinking of me as a sexual being, because I had ceased to think of myself in that way two years before.
Deeper than the scars on my body, my sense of self had been stripped down to nothing that day in rural Loxahatchee when Hector Ramirez had been killed and I had gone under the wheels of Billy Golam's truck.
Despite the fact that surgeons had spent the last two years repairing the physical damage to my body-mending broken bones, patching skin burned away by the road, rebuilding the shattered side of my face-I didn't know that I would ever feel whole again. Essential parts of me were missing-parts of my soul, of my psychological self. Maybe the layers would fill in eventually. Maybe that process had begun. But I had a very long way to go, and most days I doubted I had the strength or the will for the journey. I did know I didn't want anyone close enough to watch the process. Certainly not James Landry.
"Never say never, darling." Sean finished his wine and went off to ready himself for a night on the town in Palm Beach. I went to the guest house and checked my e-mail.
Special Agent Armedgian, my contact with the FBI field office in West Palm, had come through with the Interpol info.
According to Armedgian, Van Zandt had no arrest record, but Interpol had a file on him, which said something. He had dabbled in a lot of business pies, always skirting the line of what was legal and what was not, but never quite crossing over it-or not getting caught, at any rate.
There was no mention of him coming under scrutiny for anything of a sexual nature. I was disappointed, but not surprised. If there were other victims of his dubious charms, they were probably like Irina's friend: young, inexperienced, alone in a foreign country, afraid to tell anyone.
Needing to clear my head before the evening's mind games, I changed into a swimsuit and went to the pool to let the warm, silky water soothe my body and clean the layers of grit from my brain.
The sun was gone, but the pool shimmered midnight blue, lit from within its walls. I thought of nothing at all as I swam lazy laps with slow-motion underwater turns at the end of each. The tension washed away, and for a short time I was simply a sleek, aquatic animal, bone and muscle and instinct. It felt good to be something that fundamental and uncontrived.
When I'd had enough, I rolled over onto my back and floated, looking up at the pinpoint stars in the black velvet sky. Then Landry came into view, standing at the water's edge.
I dove under and came back up, shaking the water from my head.
"Detective. You got the drop on me," I said, treading water.
"I'm sure that doesn't happen very often."
He was still in his work clothes, though he had jerked the tie loose and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt.
"My fault for giving you the gate code," I said. "Hard day turning the thumbscrews?"
"Long."
"Sorry I missed it. No one makes a better bad cop than me."
"I have no doubt about that," he said with half a smile. "Aren't you going to invite me in? Say the water's fine?"
"That would be a cliché. I abhor predictability."
I swam to the ladder and climbed out, forcing myself not to rush to cover my body with my towel. I didn't want him to know how vulnerable I felt. Somehow I thought that even in the dim light around the pool he would see every scar, every imperfection. It made me angry that I cared.
I toweled myself off, rubbed my hair dry, then wrapped the towel around my waist like a sarong to hide the pitted, scarred flesh of my legs. Landry watched, his expression unreadable.
"Nothing about you is predictable, Estes."
"I'll take that as a compliment, though I don't think you consider unpredictability a virtue. Do you have any good news?" I asked, leading the way to the guest house.
"The deputies found Erin Seabright's car," he said. "Parked under about six inches of dust in a corner of that first lot at the truck entrance of the equestrian center."
I stood with my hand on the doorknob, holding my breath, waiting for him to tell me Erin had been found dead in the trunk.
"The CSU is going over it for prints, et cetera."
I let go a sigh at the initial sense of relief. "Where was it?"
"In the first parking lot as you come in the truck entrance, over by the laundry place."
"Why would it be there?" I asked, not expecting an answer. "She would have parked near Jade's barn, not half a mile away. Why would it be there?"