I fed the horses and wondered if I should call Landry or wait to see if he would come to me. I wanted to know how Van Zandt's interview had gone, and whether or not the autopsy had been performed on Jill Morone. What made me think he would tell me any of that after what he had done the night before, I didn't know.
I stood in front of Feliki's stall as she finished her breakfast. The mare was small in stature and had a rather large, unfeminine head, but she had a heart and an ego as big as an elephant's, and attitude to spare. She regularly trounced fancier horses in the showring, and if she had been able to, I had no doubt she would have given her rivals the finger as she came out of the ring.
She pinned her ears and glared at me and shook her head as if to say, what are you looking at?
A chuckle bubbled out of me, a pleasant surprise in the midst of too much unpleasantness. I dug a peppermint out of my pocket. Her ears went up at the crackling of the wrapper and she put her head over the door, wearing her prettiest expression.
"Some tough cookie, you are," I said. She picked the treat delicately from my palm and crunched on it. I scratched her under her jaw and she melted.
"Yeah," I murmured, as she nuzzled, looking for another treat. "You remind me of me. Only I don't have anybody giving me anything but grief."
The sound of tires on the driveway drew my attention out the door. A silver Grand Am pulled in at the end of the barn.
"Case in point," I said to the mare. She looked at Landry's car, ears pricked. Like all alpha mares, Feliki was ever on the alert for intruders and danger. She spun around in her stall, squealed and kicked the wall.
I didn't go out to meet Landry. He could damn well come to me. Instead, I went to D'Artagnon, took him out of his stall, and led him to a grooming bay. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Landry approach. He was dressed for work. The morning breeze flipped his red tie over his shoulder.
"You're up bright and early for someone who was out prowling last night," he said.
"I don't know what you're talking about." I chose a brush from the cabinet and started a cursory grooming job that would have made Irina scowl at me and mutter in Russian if it had not been her day off.
Landry leaned sideways against a pillar, his hands in his pockets. "You don't know anything about a B amp;E at the town house of Lorinda Carlton-the town house where Tomas Van Zandt is living?"
"Nope. What about it?"
"We got a nine-one-one call last night claiming there was a piece of evidence there that would lock Van Zandt into the murder of Jill Morone."
"Terrific. Did you find it?"
"No."
My heart sank. There was only one piece of news that would have been worse, and that would have been that they had found Erin's body. I hoped to God that wasn't the next thing coming.
"You weren't there," Landry said.
"I told you I was going to bed with a book."
"You told me you were getting in the tub with a book," he corrected me. "That's not an answer."
"You didn't ask a question. You made a statement."
"Were you at that town house last night?"
"Do you have reason to believe I was? Do you have my fingerprints? Something that fell out of my pocket? Video surveillance tapes? A witness?" I held my breath, not sure which answer I feared most.
"Breaking and entering is against the law."
"You know, I kind of remember that from when I was on the job. And there was evidence of forcible entry at this town house?"
He didn't look amused by the clever repartee. "Van Zandt made it back to his place before I could get the warrant. If that shirt was there, he got rid of it."
"What shirt is that?"
"Goddammit, Estes."
He grabbed my shoulder and pulled me around, startling D'Artagnon. The big gelding scrambled and pulled back against the cross-ties, jumped ahead, then sat back and reared.
I hit Landry hard in the chest with the heel of my hand. It was like punching a cinder block. "Watch what you're doing, for Christ's sake!" I hissed at him.
He let me go and backed away, more leery of the horse than of me. I went to the horse to calm him. D'Artagnon looked at Landry, uncertain that calming down was the wisest choice. He would have sooner run away.
"I've had zero sleep," Landry said in lieu of an apology. "I'm not in the mood for word games. You haven't been properly Mirandized. Nothing you say can be used against you. Neither Van Zandt or that goofy woman wants to pursue the matter anyway, because, as I'm sure you know, nothing was stolen. I want to know what you saw."
"If he got rid of it, it doesn't matter. Anyway, I have to think you had an accurate description of whatever it was or you wouldn't have gotten the warrant. Or did he give you grounds during your interview? In which case you should have been smart enough to hold him while you got the warrant and executed the search."
"There was no interview. He called a lawyer."
"Who?"
"Bert Shapiro."
Amazing. Bert Shapiro was on a par with my father in terms of high-profile clients. I wondered which of Van Zandt's grateful pigeons was footing that bill.
"That's unfortunate," I said. And doubly so for me. Shapiro had known me all my life. If Van Zandt showed him that prescription slip, I was cooked. "Too bad you didn't wait until the autopsy was done to pull him in. You might have had something to rattle his cage with before he used the L word."
I struck a nerve with that. I could see it in the way his jaw muscles flexed.
"Was there anything in the autopsy?" I asked.
"If there was, I wouldn't be standing here. I'd be in the box busting that asshole's chops, lawyer or no lawyer."
"It's hard to imagine he's clever enough to get away with murder."
"Unless he's had practice."
"He hasn't been caught at it," I said.
I chose a white saddle pad with the Avadonis logo embroidered on the corner and tossed it on D'Artagnon's back, lifted his saddle off the rack, and settled it in place. I thought I could feel Landry's inner tension as he watched me. Or maybe the tension was my own.
I moved around the horse, adjusting the girth-a job that had to be done gradually and in ridiculously small increments with D'Ar because he was, as Irina called him, a delicate flower. I tightened the girth one hole, then knelt to strap on his protective leg boots. I watched Landry shuffle his feet as he shifted positions restlessly.
"The Seabrights had another call," he said at last. "The kidnapper said the girl would be punished because Seabright broke the rules."
"Oh, God." I sat back on my heels, feeling weak at the news. "When did the call come?"
"Middle of the night."
After my screw-up at Van Zandt's. After Landry had executed the search warrant.
"Do you have someone sitting surveillance on Van Zandt?"
Landry shook his head. "The LT wouldn't approve it. Shapiro was already screaming harassment because of the search. We don't have a goddam thing on him. How do we justify surveillance?"
I rubbed at the tension in my forehead. "Great. That's great."
Van Zandt was free to do as he pleased. But even if he wasn't, we knew he wasn't in the kidnapping alone. One person had run the camera, one had grabbed the girl. There was nothing stopping the partner from hurting Erin even if Van Zandt was under twenty-four-hour guard.
"They're going to hurt her because I brought you into it," I said.
"First of all, you know as well as I do, the girl could already be dead. Second, you know you did the right thing. Bruce Seabright wouldn't have done anything at all."
"That's not a lot of comfort at the moment."
I pushed myself to my feet and leaned back against the cabinet, crossing my arms tightly against my body. Another tremor rattled through me, from my core outward, as I thought of the consequences Erin Seabright was going to suffer for my actions. If she wasn't dead already.