'I take it you two have met,' I said dryly.
'I've never seen her before in my life! Crazy Russian cunt!'
Irina lunged against Sean's hold on her, the look on her face venomous with hate. 'Next time I tear out your throat and shit in your lungs, cur! For Sasha!'
Van Zandt backed away looking stricken, his perfect hair standing up in all directions.
'Irina!' Sean shouted, appalled.
'Why don't we ladies retire for a moment?' I suggested, taking Irina by the arm and steering her toward the lounge.
Irina snarled and made a rude gesture in the direction of Van Zandt, but came with me.
We went into the lounge, a room paneled in mahogany and fitted with a bar and leather-upholstered chairs. Irina paced, muttering expletives. I went behind the bar, took a bottle of Stoli from the freezer, and poured three fingers in a heavy crystal tumbler.
'Here's to you, girlfriend.' I raised the glass in a toast, then handed it to her. She drank it like water. 'I'm sure he had it coming, but would you care to fill me in?'
She fumed and called Van Zandt more names, then heaved a sigh and calmed herself. Just like that: instant composure. 'That is not a nice man,' she said.
'The guy who delivers feed is not a nice man, but you've never gone to such an effort for him. Who is Sasha?'
She took a cigarette from a box on the bar, lit it, and took a long, deep drag. She exhaled slowly, her face tilted at an elegant angle. She might have been Greta Garbo in a past life.
'Sasha Kulak. A friend from Russia. She went to work for that pig in Belgium because he made all kinds of big promises. He would pay her and let her ride good horses and they would be like partners and he would make her a star in the horse shows. Stinking liar. All he wanted was to have her. He got her to Belgium and thought he owned her. He thought she should fuck him and be grateful. She said no. She was a beautiful girl. Why would she fuck an old man like him?'
'Why would anyone?'
'He was a monster to her. He kept her in a gypsy camper with no heat. She had to use the toilet in his stables and he spied on her through holes in the walls.'
'Why didn't she leave?'
'She was eighteen and she was afraid. She was in a foreign country where she knew no one and could not speak their stupid language. She didn't know what to do.'
'She couldn't go to the police?'
Irina looked at me like I was stupid.
'Finally, she went to bed with him,' she said, shrugging in that way Americans can never mimic. 'Still he was terrible to her. He gave her herpes. After a while she stole some money and ran away when they were looking for horses in Poland.
'He called her family and made threats because of the money. He told them lies about Sasha. When she came home, her father threw her out into the street.'
'He believed Van Zandt over his daughter?'
She made a face. 'They are two alike, those men.'
'And what became of Sasha?'
'She killed herself.'
'Oh, God, Irina. I'm sorry.'
'Sasha was fragile, like a glass doll.' She smoked a little more, contemplating. 'If a man did this thing to me, I would not kill myself. I would cut off his penis and feed it to the pigs.'
'Very effective.'
'Then I would kill him.'
'A little luckier in your aim with that horseshoe and you might have,' I said.
Irina poured another three fingers of the Stoli and sipped at it. I thought about Van Zandt abusing his authority over a young girl that way. Most adults would have had a difficult time dealing with his mercurial temperament. An eighteen-year-old girl would have been in way over her head. He deserved exactly what Irina had imagined for him.
'I'd like to say I'll hold him down while you kick him,' I said. 'But Sean will expect you to apologize, Irina.'
'He can kiss my Russian ass.'
'You needn't be sincere.'
She thought about that. If it had been me, I would still have told Sean to kiss my ass. But I couldn't afford to alienate Van Zandt, especially not in the light of what Irina had told me. Her friend Sasha was dead. Maybe Erin Seabright was still alive.
'Come on,' I said before she could have a chance to set her mind against it. 'Get it over with. You can kill him on your day off.'
I led the way out. Sean and Van Zandt were standing on the grass near the mounting block. Van Zandt was still red in the face, rubbing his arm where the horseshoe had struck him.
Irina unhooked Tino from the grooming stall and led the gelding out.
'Sean, I apologize for my outburst,' Irina said, handing him the reins. 'I am sorry to have embarrassed you.' She looked at Van Zandt with cold disdain. 'I apologize for attacking you on Mr. Avadon's property.'
Van Zandt said nothing, just stood there scowling at her. The girl looked at me as if to say, See what a swine he is? She walked away, climbed the stairs to the gazebo at the end of the arena, and draped herself on a chair.
'The czarina,' I said.
Van Zandt sulked. 'I should call the police.'
'But I don't think you will.'
'She should be locked up.'
'Like you locked up her friend?' I asked innocently, wishing I could stick a knife between his ribs.
His mouth was trembling as if he might cry. 'You would believe her lies about me? I have done nothing wrong. I gave that girl a job, a place to live-'
Herpes…
'She stole from me,' he went on. 'I treated her like a daughter, and she stole from me and fucked me in the ass, telling lies about me!'
The victim yet again. Everyone was against him. His motives were always pure. I didn't point out to him that in America if a man treated his daughter the way he had treated Sasha, he would go to prison and come out a registered sex offender.
'How ungrateful,' I said.
'You believe her,' he accused.
'I believe in minding my own business, and your sex life is not and never will be my business.'
He crossed his arms and pouted, staring down at his tasseled loafers. Sean had mounted and was in the arena warming up.
'Forget about Irina,' I said. 'She's only hired help. Who cares what grooms have to say? They should be like good children: seen and not heard.'
'These girls should know their place,' he muttered darkly as he unzipped his camera case and took out a video camera. 'Or be put in it.'
A shiver ran down my spine like a cold, bony finger.
As we stood and watched Sean work the horse, I knew neither of us had our mind on the quality of the animal. Van Zandt's mood had gone to a very dark place. He had to be thinking about damage control to his reputation, probably believing Irina-and maybe I-would spread the Sasha story around Wellington and he would lose clients. Or maybe he was simply fantasizing about strangling Irina with his bare hands, the bones in her throat cracking like small dry twigs. Irina sat in the gazebo smoking, one long leg swinging over the arm of the big wicker chair, never taking her glare off Van Zandt.
My thoughts were running in another direction. I wondered if Tomas Van Zandt had thought Erin Seabright should be glad to accept his advances, or if he had 'put her in her place.' I thought about my feeling that Erin had
