'You have bruised ribs. I'll give you a prescription for painkillers. Go home and rest. No significant physical activity for forty-eight hours.'
'Yeah, right.'
He gave me a scrip for Vicodin. I laughed when I looked at it. I stuffed it in the pocket of my windbreaker as I left the building. My arms worked, my legs worked, no bones were protruding, I wasn't bleeding. I was ambulatory, I was fine. As long as I knew I wouldn't die of it, I had places to go, people to see.
My first call was to Michael Berne, or rather, to Michael Berne's assistant-the phone number on the stall doors. Michael was a busy man.
'Ask him if he's too busy to speak to a potential client,' I said. 'I can always take my business to Don Jade, if that's the case.'
Miraculously, Michael's time suddenly freed up and the assistant handed off the phone.
'This is Michael. How can I help you?'
'By dishing some dirt on your friend, Mr. Jade,' I said quietly. 'I'm a private investigator.'
11
I dressed in black from head to toe, slicked my hair back with a handful of gel, put on a pair of narrow black wraparound sunglasses, and stole Sean's black Mercedes SL. I looked like a character from The Matrix. Serious, mysterious, edgy. Not a disguise, but a uniform. Image is everything.
I had asked Berne to meet me in the parking lot at Denny's in Royal Palm Beach, a fifteen-minute drive from the show grounds. He had groused about the drive, but I couldn't take the risk of being seen with him near the equestrian center.
Berne arrived in a Honda Civic that had seen better days. He got out of the car looking nervous, glancing around. A private eye, a clandestine meeting. Heady stuff. He was dressed to ride in gray breeches with a couple of stains and a red polo shirt that clashed with his hair.
I buzzed down the Mercedes' side window. 'Mr. Berne. You're here to meet me.'
He squinted at me, doubtful, uncertain, unable to get any kind of a read on me. An agent for a shadow organization. Maybe he'd been expecting Nancy Drew.
'We'll talk out here,' I said. 'Please get in the car.'
He hesitated like a child being offered a ride by a stranger. He looked around the parking lot again as if he expected something bad to happen. Masked operatives creeping out of the shrubbery to ambush him.
'If you have something to tell me, get in the car,' I said impatiently.
He was so tall, he had to fold himself in to fit into the Mercedes, as if he were getting into a clown car. What a contrast he was to Jade's handsome, elegant image. Howdy Doody on growth hormones. Red hair and freckles, skinny as a rail. I'd read enough about Michael Berne to know he'd been a minor contender in the international show-jumping world in the early nineties, when he had ridden a horse called Iroquois. But the biggest thing he'd done was a tour of Europe with the second string of the U.S. Olympic team. Then Iroquois' owners had sold the stallion out from under him, and he hadn't had a big winner since.
When Trey Hughes had come into his barn, Berne had been quoted in an interview saying that Stellar was his ride back into the international spotlight. Then Stellar went to Don Jade's barn, and Michael Berne's star dimmed again.
'Who do you work for again, Ms. Estes?' he asked, taking in the pricey car.
'I didn't say.'
'Are you with the insurance company? Are you with the police?'
'How many cops do you know drive a Mercedes, Mr. Berne?' I asked, allowing the barest hint of amusement to show. I lit one of Sean's French cigarettes and blew the smoke at the windshield. 'I'm a private investigator-private being the operative word. There's nothing for you to be concerned about, Mr. Berne. Unless, of course, you've done something wrong.'
'I haven't done anything wrong,' he said defensively. 'I run an honest business. There aren't any stories going around about me killing horses for the insurance money. That's Don Jade's territory.'
'You think he had Stellar killed?'
'I know he did.'
I watched him from the corner of my eye, and when I spoke I used a flat, monotone, business voice. 'You have something to back that up? Like evidence?'
His mouth turned down in a sour pout. 'Jade's too smart for that. He always covers his tracks. Last night, for example. No one will ever connect Don Jade to it, but he had my horses turned loose.'
'Why would he do that?'
'Because I confronted him. I know what he is. It's people like Jade that give the horse business a bad name. Crooked deals, stealing clients, killing horses. People turn a blind eye as long as they aren't the victims. Someone has to do something.'
'Did Trey Hughes ever approach you about doing something to Stellar?'
'No. I had Stellar on track. He was making progress. I thought we had a shot at the World Cup. I would never have anything to do with a scheme like that anyway.'
'Why did Hughes take the horse away from you?'
'Jade poached him. He steals clients all the time.'
'It didn't have anything to do with the fact that you weren't winning?'
Berne glared at me. 'We were getting there. It was only a matter of time.'
'But Hughes wasn't willing to wait.'
'Jade probably told him he could do it faster.'
'Yeah, well, now Stellar is going nowhere.'
'What about the autopsy?'
'Necropsy.'
'What?'
'It's called a necropsy when it's a horse.'
He didn't like being corrected. 'So what did it show?'
'I'm not at liberty to divulge those details, Mr. Berne. Were there any rumors going around before the horse died? I heard he wasn't sound.'
'He was getting older. Older horses need maintenance-joint injections, supplements, things like that. But he was tough. He had a big heart and he always did his job.'
'No one was hinting anything hinky was going on in Jade's barn?' I asked.
'There are always rumors about Jade. He's done this before, you know.'
'I'm familiar with Mr. Jade's background. What kind of rumors lately?'
'The usual. What drugs his horses are on. Whose clients he's after. How he's got Trey Hughes by the balls- pardon my language.'
'Why would anyone say that?'
'Come on,' he said, defensive again. 'He must have something. How else is he getting that barn Hughes is building?'
'Through merit? Good deeds? Friendship?'
None of my suggestions appealed.
'You worked for Trey Hughes,' I said. 'What could Jade have on him?'
'Take your pick: his drug du jour, whose wife he's been sleeping with-'
'How he came to inherit so suddenly?' I suggested.
Berne tried to sit back and study me for a moment, his expression not unlike Jill Morone's when she'd been trying to decide how to play me. 'You think he killed his mother?'
'I don't think anything. I'm just asking questions.'
He considered something and laughed. 'Trey would never have the nerve. He stuttered whenever he talked about Sallie. She scared the crap out of him.'
