'It was an accident.'
I shrugged. 'Did you see it happen?'
'No. I found him, though,' she admitted with a strange spark of pride in her beady little eyes. The chance celebrity. She could be on the fringe of a dark spotlight for a week and a half. 'He was just laying there with his legs straight out,' she said. 'And his eyes were open. I thought he was just being lazy, so I slapped him on the butt to make him get up. Turned out he was dead.'
'God. Awful.' I looked down the row of Jade's stalls-a dozen or more-each of them hung with a box fan outside the bars of the stall fronts. 'I'm surprised you still have the fans up, considering.'
She shrugged again and swiped the brush over the gray a couple more strokes. 'It's hot. What else should we do?'
The horse waited for her to drift back a step, then whipped her with his tail. She hit him in the ribs with the brush.
'I wouldn't want to be the person who was careless enough to let that electrical cord hang into Stellar's stall,' I said. 'That groom would never work in this business again. I'd see to that if I had anything to do with it.'
The little eyes went mean again in the doughy face. 'I didn't take care of him. Erin did. See what kind of groom she was? If I was Mr. Jade, I would have killed her.'
Maybe he had, I thought as I walked away from the tent.
I spotted Paris Montgomery some distance away in a schooling ring, golden ponytail bobbing, sunglasses shading her eyes as she guided her mount over a set of jumps. Poetry in motion. Don Jade stood on the sidelines, filming her with a camcorder, as a tall, skinny, red-haired, red-faced man spoke at him, gesturing angrily. He looked like a giant, irate Howdy Doody. I approached the ring a short way down the fence from the two men, my attention seemingly directed at the horses going around.
'If there's so much as a hint of something rotten in those test results, Jade, you'll face charges,' the red-faced man said loudly, either not caring or else craving the attention of everyone in the vicinity. 'This won't just be about whether or not General Fidelity pays out. You've gotten away with this crap for too long as it is. It's time someone put a stop to it.'
Jade said absolutely nothing, nothing in anger, nothing in his own defense. He didn't even pause in his filmmaking. He was a compact man with the rope-muscled forearms of a professional rider. His profile looked like something that should have been embossed on a Roman coin. He might have been thirty-five or he might have been fifty, and people would probably still be saying that about him when he was seventy.
He watched his assistant go over a combination of fences with Park Lane, and frowned as the horse rapped his front ankles and took a rail down. As Paris cantered past, he looked up at her and called out a couple of corrections for her to make to get the horse to bring its hindquarters more fully under itself in preparation for takeoff.
The other man seemed incredulous that his threats had not elicited a response. 'You're a real piece of work, Don. Aren't you even going to bother to deny it?'
Jade still didn't look at him. 'Why should I bother, Michael? I don't want to be blamed for your heart attack on top of everything else.'
'You smug bastard. You still think you can get people to kiss your ass and convince them it smells like a rose.'
'Maybe it does, Michael,' Jade said calmly, still watching his horse. 'You'll never know the truth because you don't want to. You don't want me to be innocent. You enjoy hating me too much.'
'I'm hardly the only one.'
'I know. I'm a national pastime again. That doesn't change the fact that I'm innocent.'
He rubbed the back of his sunburned neck, checked his watch, and sighed. 'That's enough for her, Paris,' he called, clicking the camera off.
'I'll be on the phone with Dr. Ames today,' the other man said. 'If I find out you've got connections at that lab-'
'If Ames tells you anything about Stellar, I'll have his license,' Jade said calmly. 'Not that there's anything to tell.'
'Oh, I'm sure there's a story. There always is with you. Who were you in bed with this time?'
'If I have an answer to that, it's none of your business, Michael.'
'I'm making it my business.'
'You're obsessed,' Jade said, turning toward the stables as Paris approached on Park Lane. 'If you put as much energy into your work as you do into hating me, maybe you could actually make something of yourself. Now, if you'll excuse me, Michael, I have a business to run.'
Michael's face was a twisted, freckled mask of bitter emotion. 'Not for long if I can help it.'
Jade walked off toward the barn, seemingly unaffected by the exchange. His adversary stood for a moment, breathing hard, looking disappointed. Then he turned and stalked off.
'Well, that was ugly,' I said. Tomas Van Zandt stood less than ten feet from me. He'd watched the exchange between Jade and the other man surreptitiously, same as I had, pretending to watch the horses in the ring. He glanced at me in a dismissive way and started to walk off.
'I thought men from Belgium were supposed to be charming.'
He pulled up short and looked at me again, recognition dawning slowly. 'Elle! Look at you!'
'I clean up good, as they say down at the trailer park.'
'You've never been to a trailer park,' he scoffed, taking in the hat, the outfit.
'Of course I have. I once drove a maid home,' I said, then nodded after the man Jade had argued with. 'Who was that?'
'Michael Berne. A big crybaby.'
'Is he an owner or something?'
'A rival.'
'Ah… These jumper people are so dramatic,' I said. 'Nothing this exciting goes on in my neck of the equestrian woods.'
'Maybe I should then sell you a jumper,' Van Zandt suggested, eyeing my shopping bags, pondering my credit card limit.
'I don't know if I'm ready for that. Looks like a tough crowd. Besides, I don't know any of the trainers.'
He took my arm. The courtly gentleman. 'Come. I'll introduce you to Jade.'
'Swell,' I said, looking up at him out the corner of my eye. 'I can buy a horse and collect the insurance. One- stop shopping.'
Like flipping a switch, Van Zandt's face went from courtly to stormy; the gray eyes as cold as the North Sea, and frighteningly hard. 'Don't say such stupid things,' he snapped.
I stepped away from him. 'It was a joke.'
'Everything with you is a joke,' he said in disgust.
'And if you can't take one, Van Zandt,' I said, 'fuck you.'
I watched him struggle to put Mr. Hyde back in his box. The mood swing had come so quickly, I couldn't believe it hadn't given him whiplash.
He rubbed a hand across his mouth and made an impatient gesture.
'Fine. It's a joke. Ha ha,' he said, still clearly angry. He started toward the tent. 'Forget it. Come.'
I didn't move. 'No. Apologize.'
'What?' He looked at me with disbelief. 'Don't be silly.'
'Keep digging that hole, Van Zandt. I'm stupid and silly, and what else?'
The muscles in his face quivered. He wanted to call me a bitch or worse. I could see it in his eyes.
'Apologize.'
'You shouldn't have made the joke,' he said. 'Come.'
'And you should apologize,' I countered, fascinated. He seemed incapable of performing the act, and amazed that I was insisting.
'You are being stubborn.'
I laughed out loud. 'I'm being stubborn?'
'Yes. Come.'
