Dark Horse Read Free Page B

magazine back to me. “What else have you got to do with your time?”
    Irina emerged from the barn, leading Oliver—tall, elegant, and beautiful, the equine version of Sean. Sean dismissed me and went to his teak mounting block.
    Molly Seabright was sitting on the park bench with her hands folded in her lap. I turned and walked to the barn, hoping she would just go away. D’Artagnon’s bridle hung from the ceiling on a four-pronged hook near an antique mahogany cabinet full of leather-cleaning supplies. I chose a small damp sponge from the work table, rubbed it over a bar of glycerine soap, and began to clean the bridle, trying to narrow the focus of my mind on the small motor skills involved in the task.
    “You’re very rude.”
    I could see her from the corner of my eye: standing as tall as she could—five-feet-nothing—her mouth a tight little knot.
    “Yes, I am. That’s part of the joy of being me: I don’t care.”
    “You’re not going to help me.”
    “I can’t. I’m not what you need. If your sister is missing, your parents should go to the cops.”
    “I went to the Sheriff’s Office. They wouldn’t help me either.”
    “
You
went? What about your parents? They don’t care your sister is missing?”
    For the first time Molly Seabright seemed to hesitate. “It’s complicated.”
    “What’s complicated about it? She’s either missing or she’s not.”
    “Erin doesn’t live with us.”
    “How old is she?”
    “Eighteen. She doesn’t get along with our parents.”
    “There’s something new.”
    “It’s not like she’s bad or anything,” Molly said defensively. “She doesn’t do drugs or anything like that. It’s just that she has her own opinions, that’s all. And her opinions aren’t Bruce’s opinions . . .”
    “Who’s Bruce?”
    “Our stepfather. Mom always sides with him, no matter how asinine he is. It makes Erin angry, so she moved out.”
    “So Erin is technically an adult, living on her own, free to do whatever she wants,” I said. “Does she have a boyfriend?”
    Molly shook her head, but avoided my eyes. She wasn’t so sure of that answer, or she thought a lie might better serve her cause.
    “What makes you think she’s missing?”
    “She was supposed to pick me up Monday morning. That’s her day off. She’s a groom at the show grounds for Don Jade. He trains jumpers. I didn’t have school. We were going to go to the beach, but she never came or called me. I called her and left a message on her cell phone, and she never called me back.”
    “She’s probably busy,” I said, stroking the sponge down a length of rein. “Grooms work hard.”
    Even as I said it I could see Irina sitting on the mounting block, face turned to the sun as she blew a lazy stream of cigarette smoke at the sky. Most grooms.
    “She would have called me,” Molly insisted. “I went to the show grounds myself the next day—yesterday. A man at Don Jade’s barn told me Erin doesn’t work there anymore.”
    Grooms quit. Grooms get fired. Grooms decide one day to become florists and decide the next day they’d rather be brain surgeons. On the flip side, there are trainers with reputations as slave masters, temperamental prima donnas who go through grooms like disposable razors. I’ve known trainers who demanded a groom sleep every night in a stall with a psychotic stallion, valuing the horse far more than the person. I’ve known trainers who fired five grooms in a week.
    Erin Seabright was, by the sound of it, headstrong and argumentative, maybe with an eye for the guys. She was eighteen and tasting independence for the first time. . . . And why I was even thinking this through was beyond me. Habit, maybe. Once a cop . . . But I hadn’t been a cop for two years, and I would never be a cop again.
    “Sounds to me like Erin has a life of her own. Maybe she just doesn’t have time for a kid sister right now.”
    Molly Seabright’s expression darkened. “I told you Erin’s not