five or ten percent of a syndicate for a great horse-”
Maurice held up his hands, palms out as if backing away. “You’re kidding, aren’t you, Vern? You know I don’t have any money.”
Vernon gave him a disbelieving look. “Money? Who said money? You buy short and wait-”
He was interrupted by Bobby, who came in, said hello to Maurice, dropped a paper onto Vernon’s desk, said good-bye and walked out.
Vernon said, “Bobby’s only twenty-two, he’s been here since he was eighteen and he’s already made himself a small fortune. If you ever need a break from the horses…”
“Can you imagine me doing this?” Then he was worried he might be insulting Vernon and his offer. “What I mean is-”
“Can you imagine him”-Vernon nodded toward the door through which Bobby had lately gone-“who ran into me when he was on a skateboard? He started talking about hedge funds and mergers. He talked about stock in a new company I hadn’t even got reports on. I hired him.”
Maurice was surprised at his own reaction to this talk about Bobby. He was jealous. He must see Vernon as an older brother, which he was-a stepbrother. But that didn’t count as much as Vernon hadn’t come on the scene until he was thirty-two or -three. Maybe Vernon had always thought of Maurice as a younger brother. Still, it was odd that Vernon, a relative stranger, coming in from the outside, and in so few years, could lay claim to family feeling. Maurice realized now how rich his life had been before his father’s death, before Nell’s disappearance.
“Why is it I get the impression you’re not thinking about syndicating your horses?”
“Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about Dad. And-” Maurice looked at his shoes; they seemed to be falling apart.
“Nell,” said Vernon.
Maurice looked up quickly. “How’d you know?”
“What else is there to think about?”
If Maurice hadn’t known about Leon Stone, he would have been surprised by this statement and by Vernon’s intensity. “You’re really serious about finding her. Granddad told me about the private detective you had looking for her.”
Vernon nodded. He seemed to have lost his earlier buoyancy; he looked older by several years.
“You really care about Nell.”
Again, Vernon nodded. “I do.” He smiled. “Come on, let’s have dinner. You can stay the night at my place. I’ll tell the girls to go.”
“Not all of them, I hope.” Maurice was back to feeling comfortable now. And he wondered why Vernon had never married.
Did he always tell the girls to go?
“She’s not dead,” said Vernon, after a considering silence, in answer to Maurice’s question.
“Why are you so sure?”
Over a plate of his favorite duck in Aubergine, Vernon studied him, or seemed to; he could as well be studying the banquette behind Maurice or the air around him. “Because it doesn’t feel like it. Does it to you?”
Maurice did not know how to answer this. He seemed at the moment to be out of touch with his feelings, as if they had retreated at Vernon’s question. “Well… I can’t believe it. I can’t believe she’s gone forever, if that’s what you mean.”
“Not exactly.” Vernon speared a bite of roast potato.
“Hard to explain.”
Maurice smiled. “It just sounds kind of mystical, I mean, coming from you.”
“Me, the chaser of the almighty pound, dollar, yen and deutsche mark?”
Maurice colored slightly. “No, no. Well… only in a way. You seem so grounded, so, ah, practical.”
“Money’s a by-product, Maury. Not that I’m indifferent to it, God, no. Without money I couldn’t eat here every week. But it’s not what keeps me going back to the table. What attracts me to the market is its craziness, its unpredictability. The whole thing’s a game where you can win big or lose your shirt. All of these market analysts-if they were sure of their own predictions, why in hell would they be telling people? They’d be out there, buying and selling themselves. No, if I wasn’t in this business, I’d be a compulsive gambler.”
“As in poker? Remember those games we played? Nell always won.”
“She’s got a winning mind.”
The waiter came to pour more wine. The service here was so perfect that the diner was only partly aware of the waiters’ presence, as if they drifted in and out like dream images.
“This Leon Stone, Vernon, what does he think happened? I mean, didn’t he come up with some kind of answer to how whoever did it knew Nell would be in the stable?”
“Not really.” Vernon shrugged. “He did wonder if there’d be reason for someone in the family to stage this abduction. But what could possibly be the motive? Even assuming someone could be that cold-blooded, the motive wasn’t money, obviously. No. Stone thinks that whoever came didn’t know Nell would be there. Stone thinks he-for he’s pretty certain there was only one person-came to take one or more of the horses: Samarkand, Beautiful Dreamer or Aqueduct. Nell woke up and heard him, then saw him. She was a danger to him, so he took her with him.”
“He thinks the person came for the
Vernon nodded. He shoved back his empty plate and crossed his arms on the table. “Listen, Maury: in what I do, you have to be able to imagine very strange things. Take what I mentioned earlier: you think the stock of some given company is going down, down, down. You sell short, meaning you borrow shares from another account, believing you’ll make money when the stock plummets and you’ll be able to replace the borrowed shares with the ones you bought at a lower price. That’s strange, isn’t it? Hard to imagine? You’re not even using your own money. It’s all on paper.”
“So what you’re saying is you have to think of weird possibilities.”
“I can suggest one: she wants to stay at this place.”
Maurice’s mouth dropped open. “Wants to stay? Wants to? How could she possibly-”
“Think something was more important than you?” Maurice colored deeply. “I don’t mean-”
“Why not? You’re her best friend, after all. Anything that would keep Nellie away from the stud farm would have to be powerful.”
Maurice poked his steak around, still smarting from Vernon’s idea. “Next you’re going to say she fell in love with her captors.”
Vernon spread his arms. “The Stockholm syndrome. You’re catching on.”
Irritated, Maurice stabbed at his steak. “You mean kidnap victims have actually done that?”
Vernon nodded. “It’s happened.”
“Come on, Vernon. Why not go with the most logical, reasonable
