“On a Saturday?”
“If I have to. The president of my bank is a personal friend. I do an enormous amount of business with him.”
“Good,” Landry said. “Call him. Tell him you may need to ask him a favor later today. You need three hundred thousand dollars in marked bills. He’ll need some lead time to get that together. Tell him someone from the Sheriff’s Office will meet him at the bank to assist him.”
Seabright looked shocked. “B-but we’re not actually going to give them the money, are we?”
“You are if you ever want to see your stepdaughter alive again,” Landry said. “You do want that, don’t you, Mr. Seabright?”
Seabright closed his eyes and huffed a sigh. “Yes. Of course.”
“Good. I’ll have people out here within the hour to put a tap on your phone. When the next call comes in we’ll be able to trace its origin. You’ll set up the drop. You’ll tell them you’ll show with the money, but Erin has to be there where you can see her or it’s a no-go. They already know you’re not a pushover. If they haven’t already killed her, they’ll bring her. They want the money, not the girl.”
“I can’t believe any of this is happening,” Seabright muttered. “You’ll be there? At the drop?”
“Yes. I’ve already spoken with my lieutenant about your situation. He’ll be calling shortly to speak with you himself.”
“What about the FBI?” Seabright asked. “Don’t they always get involved with kidnappings?”
“It’s not automatic. They can be called in if you like.”
“I don’t. This is way out of hand already. They said not to call the police, now my home is going to be crawling with them.”
“We’ll be very discreet, Mr. Seabright,” Landry said. “I’ll want to speak to everyone living in the house.”
“My wife is sedated. Other than Krystal, it’s just myself, my son Chad, and Krystal’s younger daughter, Molly.”
“Detective Landry is aware of the sexual relationship between Erin and Chad,” I told him. Color spread up Seabright’s neck like the red in a thermometer. “He’ll definitely want to speak with Chad.”
“My son has absolutely nothing to do with this.”
“Because you say so?” I challenged. “Your son had plenty to do with Erin. He was seen at her apartment two nights before she disappeared, arguing with her.”
“That was all her doing,” Seabright said bitterly. “Erin goaded him into a relationship just to spite me.”
“You don’t think Chad would want to spite you for his own sake?”
Seabright came over and stuck a finger in front of my face. “I’ve had it with you and your accusations. I don’t care who you’re working for, I don’t want you here. The Sheriff’s Office is involved now. I’m sure they don’t have any use for a private investigator either. Do you, Detective?”
Seabright looked to Landry. Landry looked at me, his face as unreadable as mine.
“Actually,” Landry said. “Ms. Estes’ cooperation in this is very important, Mr. Seabright. I wouldn’t be here if not for her.”
Good cop, bad cop. I almost smiled.
“Perhaps you’d like to explain
that
to Detective Landry’s lieutenant,” I said to Seabright.
He wanted to put his hands around my throat and choke me. I could see it in his eyes.
“I’m sure he’ll be very interested to hear all about how you didn’t want to be bothered with your stepdaughter’s kidnapping,” I went on, walking away from him. “You know, Detective Landry, maybe you
should
call in the FBI. I’ve got a friend in the regional office I could reach out to. After all, this could have international implications if one of the foreign nationals at the equestrian center is involved. Or it could involve some out-of-state client of Mr. Seabright’s. If Erin has been taken across a state line, it automatically becomes a federal case.”
All I had to do was mention his business dealings and Seabright’s sphincter curled into a French knot.
“I don’t like being threatened,” he pouted.
I walked past him again, leaning toward his ear as I murmured, “That would be the point.”
“Your focus needs to be on your stepdaughter, Mr. Seabright,” Landry said. “Complaining about the people who seem to care more about this girl than you do isn’t going to stand you in very good stead. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“You’re making me feel like I should call my attorney,” Seabright said.
“Feel free to do that if you have concerns about talking to me.”
That shut him up. He rubbed his hands over his face and looked up at the ceiling.
“Do you consider
me
a suspect?” he asked.
“Investigations of this type of crime are always of a two-pronged nature, Mr. Seabright. We have to consider possibilities both outside the family and within it,” Landry said. “I’d like to speak with your son now. Is he home?”
Seabright went to an intercom panel on the wall and pressed a button. “Chad, would you come to my office, please?”
I imagined being elsewhere in the Seabright home, Bruce Seabright’s voice ringing out of the walls. All he needed was a remote-control burning bush and his image would be complete.
“Has Chad been in any kind of trouble with the law, Mr. Seabright?” Landry asked.
Seabright looked offended. “My son is an honor student.”
A polite knock sounded against the door and Chad Seabright stuck his head in the room, then slipped inside with the expression of a shy, hopeful puppy. He was dressed neatly in khakis and a navy Tommy Hilfiger polo. He looked ready to hit the links with the Young Republicans.
“Chad, this is Detective Landry and Ms. Estes,” Bruce Seabright said. “They want to ask you some questions about Erin.”
Chad put on big eyes. “Wow. Sure. I’ve already spoken with Ms. Estes. She knows I haven’t seen Erin. I wish I could be more helpful.”
“You and Erin had a relationship,” Landry said.
Chad looked embarrassed. “That was over. I admit that was wrong. It just sort of happened. Erin is very persuasive.”
“You had an argument with her last week. What was that about?”
“We broke up.”
“Chad!” Bruce Seabright snapped. “You told me it was over months ago! When Erin moved out.”
Chad looked at the floor. “It was . . . mostly. I’m sorry, Dad.”
“Chad, where were you last Sunday between four and six
P
.
M
.?” Landry asked.
Chad looked around as if the answer might be pasted on the walls. “Sunday? Um . . . I was probably—”
“We were at the movies,” Bruce Seabright said. “Remember, Chad? Wasn’t it Sunday we went to that new Bruce Willis movie?”
“Was that Sunday? Oh, yeah.” Chad nodded and looked at Landry. “At the movies.”
“Which movie?”
“
Hostage.
It was great. Have you seen it?”
“I don’t go to movies,” Landry said.
“You don’t happen to have a ticket stub, do you?” I asked.
Chad flashed a goofy smile with a little laugh. “Who keeps those things? Anal-retentives?”
“Then I’ll ask you, Mr. Seabright. You strike me as a man who would keep his stub and have it laminated.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re just the kind of man who would encourage his child to lie to a sheriff’s detective,” I said.
“Did you go with friends?” Landry asked. “Anybody who could say they saw you there?”
“No,” Bruce said. “It was a father-son outing.”
“Which theater?”
“The big one on State Road Seven.”
“What time did the movie start?” I asked.
Seabright was on the verge of losing his temper again. “The late matinee.” He glared at Landry. “Why are you standing here grilling us? If someone has taken Erin, they probably knew her from the equestrian center. Aren’t there all kinds of lowlifes involved in the horse business? Shouldn’t you be speaking with them?”
“Have you?” I asked. He looked at me blankly. “You set her up for that job through Trey Hughes. Have you spoken with him? Asked him if he’s seen Erin, if he knows anything, if he’s heard anything?”
Seabright’s mouth moved, but nothing came out.
“After you saw the tape and knew Erin had been taken from the show grounds, you didn’t call the one person you knew who had a connection to her?”
“I—well—Trey wouldn’t know anything about it,” he stammered. “Erin was just a groom.”
“To Hughes. She’s your stepdaughter.”
Landry’s cell phone rang and he excused himself from the office, leaving me and the Seabright males looking at each other. I thought they both should have been strung up by their scrotums and beaten with canes, but that isn’t proper procedure even in south Florida.
“I’ve dealt with a lot of cold, rotten people in my time,” I said to Bruce. “But you, Mr. Seabright, really must be crowned king turd on the shit pile. I’m going to step out for a moment now. I’m having anger management issues.”
Landry was standing near the front door, brows drawn together as he spoke quietly into the phone. I looked upstairs and saw Molly, still sitting against the railing. She looked small and forlorn. She had to feel absolutely alone in this house. Krystal was of no help to her, and Bruce and his spawn were the enemy.
I wanted to go up the stairs and sit with her, and put my arm around her shoulders, and tell her I knew how she felt. But Landry had finished his call.
The look on his face made my stomach clutch.
“What is it?” I asked quietly, braced for the worst. And that was just what I heard.
“A girl’s body has been found at the equestrian center.”
21
There is nothing so humbling
to a self-proclaimed cynic than to be so deeply affected by something as to be knocked breathless by it.
I literally felt the blood drain from my head when Landry told me about the body. He left me standing in the hall and went to tell Bruce Seabright.
Was it Erin? How had she died? Had she died because I’d failed her? What a selfish thought. If Erin was dead, the blame went first to the perpetrator, second to Bruce Seabright. In terms of culpability, I ranked way down the list. I thought perhaps it wasn’t Erin, and in the next microsecond thought it couldn’t be anyone else.
“What’s happened?”
Molly suddenly appeared at my side. My tongue, which was usually quicker than my brain, was stuck in my mouth.
“Is it about Erin?” she asked, frightened. “Did somebody find her?”
“We don’t know.” It was the truth, but it tasted like a lie, and it must have sounded like one too. Molly took a step back from me.
“Tell me. I deserve to know. I’m not some—some stupid child everyone has to talk around and hide things from,” she said angrily.
“No, you’re not, Molly,” I said. “But I don’t want to scare you without knowing all the facts.”
“You already have.”
“I’m sorry.” I took a breath to buy a moment so I could think through my delivery of the news. “Detective Landry just had a call from his captain. A body has been found at the equestrian center.”
Her eyes went huge. “Is it Erin? Is she dead? It’s because of the police. On the tape they said no police!”
“We don’t know who it is, Molly,” I said, taking hold of her by the shoulders. “But I can tell you, no one has killed Erin because Landry is here. The kidnappers have no way of knowing who he is or that he’s from the Sheriff’s Office.”
“How do you know?” she demanded. “Maybe they’re watching the house. Maybe the house is bugged!”
“That’s not what’s happened. The house is not bugged. That only happens in the movies. In real life, criminals are lazy and stupid. And whoever this dead body is, she’s been dead longer than Landry has been in this house,” I said. “I’m going to the show grounds now. I’ll let you know as soon as I find out what’s what.”
“I’m coming with you,” she said stubbornly.
“Absolutely not.”
“But she’s my sister!”
“And I’m doing my job. I can’t have you there, Molly, for a whole list of reasons. And I don’t want you there for a whole list of reasons.”
“But I hate just sitting here,” she argued. “Erin’s in trouble. I want to help.”
“If you want to help, keep your eyes open for any kind of a delivery. If the kidnappers send another video, we need to know about it the second it lands. That’s your assignment. All right?”
I understood her frustration. She was the one person who had taken action to find Erin, and now she was being made to feel helpless.
“All right,” she said on a sigh. I started to turn away. “Elena?”
“What?”
She looked up at me with wide eyes. “I’m really scared.”
I touched her head as if I were giving some kind of benediction, wishing I had that kind of power, and knowing too well that I didn’t. “I know. Hang in there. We’re doing everything we can.”
Landry came out of the office. Bruce Seabright did not emerge. I wondered if he was giving Krystal the news over the intercom.
“I’ll call as soon as I know anything,” I said to Molly, and went out the door, Landry right behind me.
“Do you know where barn forty is?” he asked.
“Yes. It’s at the rear of the property. Follow me. I’ll take you in the back way. It’ll be much faster. Do you have any details?”
He shook his head. “Not that made any sense to me. The lieutenant said somebody dug her up. I don’t know what that means—if it’s a fresh body or a skeleton or what.”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” I said, going around the front of my car. That sounded like a lie too. Every minute I didn’t know felt like an hour. Because of Molly. I didn’t want to have to tell her her sister was dead.
I took a route from Binks Forest through Aero Club—a housing development for people with their own planes—on to Palm Beach Point, to the dirt road that led to the back gate of the equestrian center. The gate where Erin Seabright had been snatched nearly a week before. Barn forty was in The Meadows, just beyond that gate.
As it was every weekend during the season, the area was bustling with riders and grooms and dogs and kids; cars and trucks and golf carts and motor bikes. The biggest crowd, however, was gathered around a rusty yellow front-end loader and a dump truck parked near one of the three-sided muck pits out in front of the tents. I could see a number of blue shirts. Security. A white and green county cruiser had parked in the mud at the edge of the road.
I pulled into a parking spot opposite the excitement, grabbed a hat out of my backseat, and got out of the car. Landry stopped in the road and opened his window. I leaned down and said, “You don’t know me.”
He rolled his eyes. “My fondest wish.”
He drove ahead and pulled up alongside the radio car.
My heart was thumping as I neared the scene. I asked a girl with a ponytail sticking out the back of a baseball cap if she knew what had happened.
She looked excited. “They found a dead body.”
“God. Does anybody know who it is?”
“Someone said a groom. I don’t know.”
I moved past her and threaded my way around the crowd. The security guards were telling people to go back to what they had been doing. The driver of the dump truck was sitting on his running board, blank-faced, hands hanging down between his knees. The driver of the front-end loader was standing beside his machine, gesturing as he spoke with a security guard, the deputy, and Landry.
I had reached the front of the mob. Beyond the loader, the muck pit was half dug out. Sticking out of the pile was a human arm. Female, purple fingernails, a cuff of bracelets sparkling in the blazing sun. A horse blanket had been thrown over whatever other body parts had been exposed.
“Miss?” Landry said, coming over to me. “The guard said you might be able to help us. If you could . . .”
“Oh— I don’t know. I’m sure I couldn’t,” I said for the benefit of the spectators who were looking at me and wondering who the hell I was.
Landry took me by the arm and led me, protesting, toward the muck pit. When we were out of earshot of the crowd, he said, “The guy was cleaning out this pit and dug her up. Buried in shit. There’s respect for the dead. He says this pit hasn’t been cleaned out since Thursday, but it was emptied to the ground then.”
“If it’s Erin, I want ten minutes alone with Bruce Seabright and a large serrated knife.”
“I’ll hold him down, you cut his heart out.”
“Deal.”
Making a face at the smell of manure and urine, he leaned over the body and lifted the edge of the horse blanket.
I steeled myself for the worst. The body was white and stiff. Smudged mascara, blue eye shadow, and berry-red lipstick gave the face the impression of a macabre work of art. There was a thumb-sized bruise on the cheek. Her mouth was partially open, crumbled chunks of old manure spilling out.
I let go of my held breath, relieved and sickened at once. “It’s Jill Morone.”
“You know her?”
“Yes. And guess who she worked for.”
Landry frowned. “Don Jade. She told me yesterday she was sleeping with him.”
“Yesterday? What were you doing out here?” I asked, forgetting the audience, forgetting the role I was supposed to be playing.
He looked perturbed and wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Following up on your assault.”
“Gee. And I thought you didn’t care.”
“I care that you caused me paperwork,” he complained. “Get out of here, Estes. Go play dilettante. Make yourself useful.”
I put on a tragic face for the onlookers and hurried away to my car, where I called Molly Seabright to tell her her sister wasn’t dead . . . as far as I knew. Then I set off to Don Jade’s barn in search of a killer.