Dark Horse

29

So she was the dead person they found at the show grounds?"

Landry looked sideways at the old lady. She was wearing pink tights, an off-the-shoulder sweater, and furry bedroom slippers. She held a hugely fat orange cat in her arms. The cat looked like it would bite.

"I really can't say, ma'am," Landry said, looking around the tiny apartment. The place was a dump. And filthy. And it looked like it had been tossed. "Has anyone been in here since Friday evening?"

"No. No one. I've been here the whole time. And my friend Sid has been staying," she confided with a coy blush. "Since I found out the other one disappeared, I figure a girl can't be too careful."

Landry motioned to the room at large. "Why does it look this way?"

"Because she's a little pig, that's why! Not that I would speak ill of the dead, but…" Eva Rosen looked at the nicotine-stained ceiling to see if God was watching her. "She was mean too. I know she tried to kick my Cecil."

"Your what?"

"Cecil!" She hefted the cat. It growled.

Landry moved to pick through a pile of clothes left on the unmade bed. Many items that looked too small for Jill Morone. Many items with price tags still attached.

"I think she stole," Eva said. "So how did she die?"

"I'm not at liberty to comment on that."

"But someone murdered her, right? They said on the news."

"Did they?"

"Was it a sex crime?" Clearly, she was hoping it was. People were amazing.

"Do you know if she had a boyfriend?" Landry asked.

"This one?" She made a face. "No. The other one."

"Erin Seabright."

"Like I told your little friend in the other room. Thad Something."

"Chad?" Landry said, moving on to a coffee table littered with candy wrappers and an overflowing ashtray. "Chad Seabright?"

Eva was horror-stricken. "They had the same last name? They were married?"

"No, ma'am." He picked through a stack of magazines. People, Playgirl, Hustler. Jesus.

"Oy vey. Under my own roof!"

"Did you ever see anyone coming in and out?" Landry asked. "Friends? Their boss?"

"The boss."

"Don Jade?"

"I don't know him. Paris," she said. "Blond, pretty, a very nice girl. She always takes time to chat. Always asks after my babies."

"Babies?"

"Cecil and Beanie. She was the one who paid the rent-Paris. Such a nice girl."

"When was she last here?"

"Not lately. She's very busy, you know. She rides those horses. Zoom! Over the fences." She swung the fat cat in her arms as if she meant to toss him. The cat flattened its ears and made a sound in its throat like a siren.

Landry went to the nightstand beside the bed and opened the drawer.

Bingo.

He took a pen from his pocket and gingerly moved aside a hot-pink vibrator, then lifted out his prize. Photographs. Photographs of Don Jade sitting astride a black horse with a winner's ribbon around its neck. Pictures of him jumping another horse over a huge fence. A photo of him standing beside a girl whose face had been scratched out of the picture.

Landry turned the photograph over and looked at the back. The first half of the inscription had been scratched over with a pen that had been pressed so hard it had carved a groove into the paper, but so carelessly it could still be read.

To Erin.

Love, Don.