Dark Horse by Tami Hoag Read Free Book Online Page A

prospect.
    I got out of the car without waiting for him to come around and open the door, and dug my keys out of my hip pocket. The back of my hand brushed over the butt of the gun tucked in my waistband.
    “Thanks for the ride,” I said.
    “Thank you, Elle Stevens. You brightened an otherwise boring evening.”
    “Don’t let Ms. Montgomery hear you say that.”
    “She’s all gloom, talking about the dead gelding.”
    “Losing a horse worth that kind of money would bring me down too.”
    “It wasn’t her money.”
    “Maybe she liked the horse.”
    He shrugged. “There’s always another.”
    “Which I’m sure you’ll be happy to supply to the grieving owner for a price.”
    “Of course. Why not? That’s business—for me and for her.”
    “You sentimental fool, you.”
    In the harsh glow of the security light from above I saw the muscles of Van Zandt’s jaw flex. “I am in this business thirty years, Elle Stevens,” he said, a thread of impatience in his voice. “I am not a heartless man, but for professionals horses come and horses go. It’s a shame the gelding died, but with professionals a sentimental fool is just that: a fool. People have to move on with their lives. Owners too. The insurance will pay for the dead horse, and his owner will buy another.”
    “Which you will be happy to find.”
    “Of course. I know already a horse in Belgium: clean X rays and twice as good as that one over the fences.”
    “And for a mere one-point-eight million he can belong to some lucky American and Don Jade can ride him.”
    “The good ones cost, the good ones win.”
    “And the rest can bite through electrical cords in the dead of night and fry themselves?” I asked. “Careful who you say that to, Van Zandt. Some insurance investigator might hear you and think the wrong thing.”
    He didn’t shrug that off. I sensed him tense.
    “I never said anyone killed the horse,” he said, his voice tight and low. He was angry with me. I wasn’t supposed to have a brain. I was supposed to be the next American with too much money and too little sense, waiting for him to charm me and sweep me off to Europe on a buying trip.
    “No, but Jade has that reputation, doesn’t he?”
    Van Zandt stepped closer. My back pressed against the frame of my car’s roof. I had to look up at him. There wasn’t a soul around. There was nothing but a lot of open country beyond the back gates. I slipped one hand into the back of my waistband and touched my gun.
    “Are you that insurance person, Elle Stevens?” he asked.
    “Me?” I laughed. “God, no. I don’t work.” I said the word with the kind of disdain my mother would have used. “It’s just a good story, that’s all. Don Jade: Dangerous Man of Mystery. You know us Palm Beachers. Can’t resist a juicy scandal. My biggest concern in life at the moment is where my next good horse is coming from. What goes on with this show-jumping crowd is nothing but good gossip to me.”
    He relaxed then, having decided I was sufficiently self-absorbed. He handed me his card and dredged up the charm again. Nothing like greed to rally a man. “Give me a call, Elle Stevens. I’ll find you your horse.”
    I tried to smile, knowing only one side of my mouth moved upward at all. “I may take you up on that, Mr. Van Zandt.”
    “Call me V.,” he suggested, his tone strangely intimate. “V. for Very Good Horses. V. for Victory in the showring.”
    V. for vomit.
    “We are friends now,” he announced. He leaned down and kissed my right cheek, then the left, then the right again. His lips were cold and dry.
    “Three times,” he said, Mr. Suave again. “Like the Dutch.”
    “I’ll remember that. Thanks again for the ride.”
    I got into my car and backed out of the line. The back gate was locked. I turned and went back down the road past tent nineteen. Van Zandt followed me to the truck entrance. The lights blazed in the four big permanent barns to the right. A guard stood in the