"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 little booth between traffic lanes before the main gates, reggae music blasting from a radio on the counter. I waved at him. He waved me past without a question, his attention on the eighteen-wheel commercial horse van pulling in. I could have had a trunk full of stolen saddles. I could have had a body back there. I might have been anyone, may have done anything. An unsettling thought for the ride home.

I turned right on Pierson. Van Zandt turned right on Pierson. I watched him in the mirror, wondering if he hadn't believed me when I'd said I wasn't an insurance investigator. I wondered what his reaction would be if he saw the photo in Sidelines and put two and one together.

But people are funny that way, more easily fooled than the average person might like to believe. I didn't look like the woman in the photo. My hair was short. I hadn't given the name of the woman in the photo. The only real connection was Sean. Still, the words private investigator would set off alarms. I had to hope Sean was right: that only dressage people read the dressage section.

I turned right on South Shore. Van Zandt turned left.

I cut my lights, pulled a U-turn, and followed at a distance, past the polo stadium. He turned in at The Players club. Wining and dining. Part of a horse dealer's job. A new best friend at the bar in a place like that could turn out to have deep pockets and no self-restraint.

Van Zandt stood to make a tidy profit selling the Belgian jumper to Stellar's owner, who stood to collect a fat insurance payoff on a horse with no real future. And Don Jade-who had trained and shown Stellar, and would train and show the next one-stood in the middle of them, taking money at both ends of the deal. They might have all been in Players together right then, drinking to Stellar's timely demise.

Erin Seabright hadn't been heard from since the night Stellar died.

I dismissed the idea of going into the club. I wasn't prepared. I gunned my car's engine, turned it around, and headed home.

I was about to become a private investigator.

I wonder why I'm still alive.

Billy Golam had pointed that gun right in my face. In countless nightmares I have looked down the barrel of that.357 and sucked in what should have been my final breath. But Golam had turned and fired in another direction.

Was living my punishment, my purgatory? Or was I supposed to have chosen to end it myself to pay for my recklessness? Or was I just damn lucky and unwilling to believe it?

Four-thirty A.M.

I was lying in bed, staring at the blades of the ceiling fan go around. The guest house had been decorated by a Palm Beach interior designer who had gone amok with delusions of Caribbean plantations. It seemed a cliché to me, but no one had ever paid me to pick out paint chips and pillow shams.

At four I went out and fed the horses. By five I had showered. It had been so long since I'd had to introduce myself to people and care about what they thought of me that I couldn't remember how to go about it. I couldn't shake the idea that I would be rejected on sight, or if not on sight, on reputation.

What a strange conceit to believe everyone in the world knew all about me, all about what I'd done and what had happened to end my career. I had been a story on the evening news for a couple of days. A sound bite. Something to fill the airtime before the weather came on. The truth was probably that no one not directly involved with what had happened, no one not living in that world of cops, had given the story more than the most cursory attention. The truth is that people seldom really care about the catastrophic events of someone else's life beyond thinking, "Better her than me."

I stood in my underwear, staring at myself in the mirror. I put some gel in my hair and tried to make it look as if it had an intentional style. I wondered if I should attempt makeup. I hadn't worn any since the surgery to put my face back together. My plastic surgeon had given me the card of a woman who specialized in postsurgical makeup. The Post-Traumatic Avon Lady. I had thrown the card away.

I dressed, discarding a dozen different choices and finally settling on a sleeveless silk blouse the color of fresh-poured concrete and a pair of brown trousers that were so big around the waist, I had to pin them shut to keep them from sliding down my hips.

I used to care about fashion.

I killed some time on the Internet, chewed my nails, and made some notes.

I found nothing of interest on Tomas Van Zandt. His name did not appear even on his own Web site: worldhorsesales.com. The site listed on his business card showed photos of horses that had been brokered through Van Zandt's business. Phone numbers were listed for a business office in Brussels, a number for European sales, and for two U.S. subagents, one of whom was Don Jade.

I found several articles about Paris Montgomery in the Chronicle of the Horse and Horses Daily describing recent wins in the showring, talking about her humble beginnings riding ponies bareback in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. According to the propaganda, she had worked her way up the ranks from groom to working student to assistant trainer; succeeding on hard work and raw talent. And charm. And the fact that she could have been a model.

She had been Don Jade's assistant trainer for three years and was so grateful for the opportunity, blah, blah, blah. So few people realized what a great guy he really was. He'd been unfortunate to do business with some people of questionable ethics, but shouldn't be condemned by association, et cetera, et cetera. Jade was quoted as saying Paris Montgomery had a bright future and the ambition and talent to attain whatever she set her sights on.

Photographs with the articles showed Montgomery going over a fence on a horse called Park Lane, and close-ups of her flashing the big smile.

The smile irritated me. It was too bright and came too easily. The charm seemed insincere. Then again, I'd only just met her for ten minutes. Maybe I didn't like her because I couldn't smile and wasn't charming.

I flipped the screen shut on my laptop and went outside. Dawn was a pale notion on the edge of the eastern sky as I let myself into Sean's house through the French doors into the dining room. He was alone in bed, snoring. I sat down beside him and patted his cheek. His eyelids pulled slowly upward, revealing a lot of red veins. He rubbed a hand over his face.

"I was hoping for Tom Cruise," he said in a voice full of gravel.

"Sorry to disappoint. If a horse dealer named Van Zandt comes around, my name is Elle Stevens and you're looking for a groom."

"What?" He pushed himself upright and shook his head to clear the cobwebs. "Van Zandt? Tomas Van Zandt?"

"You know him?"

"I know of him. He's the second-biggest crook in Europe. Why would he come here?"

"Because he thinks you might buy horses from him."

"Why would he think that?"

"Because I pretty much led him to believe it."

"Uh!!"

"Don't look offended," I said. "That expression emphasizes the lines around your mouth."

"Bitch."

He pouted for a moment, then caught himself and rubbed his hands over his face-outward and upward from his mouth. The ten-second face-lift. "You know I already have a European connection. You know I only work with Toine."

"Yes, I know. The last honest horse dealer."

"The only one in the history of the world, as far as I know."