I went online and tried to learn what I could about Jade from articles on horsesdaily.com and a couple of other equestrian sites. But I wanted the story in full, uncensored, and I knew exactly who to call.

If Don Jade defined my second category of horse people, Dr. Dean Soren defined the first. I had known Dr. Dean for a lifetime. Nothing went on in the horse world Dean Soren didn't know about. He had begun his veterinary career in the year aught on the racetrack, eventually moving on to show horses. Everyone in the business knew and respected Dr. Dean.

He had retired from his veterinary practice several years before, and spent his days holding court in the café that was social central of the large stable he owned off Pierson. The woman who ran the café answered the phone. I told her who I was and asked for Dr. Dean, then listened as she shouted across the room at him.

Dr. Dean shouted back: "What the hell does she want?"

"Tell him I need to ask him a couple of questions."

The woman shouted that.

"Then she can damn well come here and ask me in person," he shouted back. "Or is she too goddammed important to visit an old man?"

That was Dr. Dean. The words charming and kindly were not in his vocabulary, but he was one of the best people I had ever known. Whatever softer elements he lacked, he more than made up for in integrity and honesty.

I didn't want to go to him. Don Jade interested me only because of what Irina had said about him. I was curious, but that was all. Curiosity wasn't enough to make me want to interact with people. I had no desire to leave my sanctuary, especially in light of the photo in Sidelines.

I paced the house, chewing at what was left of my fingernails.

Dean Soren had known me off and on most of my life. The winter season I was twelve, he let me ride along with him on his rounds one day a week and act as his assistant. My mother and I had moved to a house in the Polo Club for the season, and I had a tutor so that I could ride every day with my trainer, and not have a school schedule interrupt my horse show schedule. Every Monday-rider's day off-I would bribe the tutor and slip off with Dr. Dean to hold his instrument tray and clean up used bandages. My own father had never spent that kind of time with me. I had never felt so important.

The memories of that winter touched me now in an especially vulnerable place. I couldn't remember the last time I had felt important. I could hardly remember the last time I had wanted to. But I could remember very clearly riding beside Dr. Dean in the enormous Lincoln Town Car he had tricked out as a rolling vet clinic.

Perhaps it was that memory that made me pick up my car keys and go.

The prime property Dr. Dean owned was populated by hunter/jumper people in one large barn and by dressage people in the other. The offices, Dr. Dean's personal stable, and the café were all located in a building between the two large barns.

The café was a simple open-air affair with a tiki bar. Dr. Dean sat at the centermost table in a carved wooden chair, an old king on his throne, drinking something with a paper umbrella in it.

I felt light-headed as I walked toward him, partly afraid to see him-or rather, for him to see me-and partly afraid people would come out of the woodwork to stare at me and ask me if I was really a private investigator. But the café was empty other than Dean Soren and the woman behind the counter. No one ran over from the barns to gawk.

Dr. Dean rose from his chair, his piercing eyes on me like a pair of lasers. He was a tall, straight man with a full head of white hair and a long face carved with lines. He had to be eighty, but he still looked fierce and strong.

"What the hell's wrong with you?" he said by way of a greeting. "Are you in chemotherapy? Is that what happened to your hair?"

"Good to see you, too, Dr. Dean," I said, shaking his hand.

He looked over at the woman behind the counter. "Marion! Make this girl a cheeseburger! She looks like hell!"

Marion, unfazed, went to work.

"What are you riding these days?" Dr. Dean asked.

I took a seat-a cheap folding chair that seemed too low and made me feel like a child. Or maybe that was just Dean Soren's effect on me. "I'm riding a couple of Sean's."

"You don't look strong enough to ride a pony."

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not," he pronounced. "Who is Sean using for a vet now?"

"Paul Geller."

"He's an idiot."

"He's not you, Dr. Dean," I said diplomatically.

"He told Margo Whitaker her mare needs 'sound therapy.' She's got headphones on the poor horse two hours a day, playing the sounds of nature."

"Gives Margo something to do."

"The horse needs not to have Margo hovering around. That's what the horse needs," he growled. He sipped his umbrella drink and stared at me.

"I haven't seen you in a long time, Elena," he said. "It's good you're back. You need to be with the horses. They ground you. A person always knows exactly where they stand with horses. Life makes more sense."

"Yes," I said, nervous under his scrutiny, afraid he would want to talk about my career and what had happened. But he let it go. Instead, he quizzed me about Sean's horses, and we reminisced about horses Sean and I had ridden in years past. Marion brought my cheeseburger and I dutifully ate.

When I had finished, he said, "You said on the phone you had a question."

"Do you know anything about Don Jade?" I asked bluntly.

His eyes narrowed. "Why would you want to know about him?"

"A friend of a friend has gotten mixed up with him. It sounded a little sketchy to me."

His thick white brows bobbed. He looked over toward the jumper barn. There were a couple of riders out on the jump field taking their mounts over colorful fences. From a distance they looked as graceful and light as deer bounding through a meadow. The athleticism of an animal is a pure and simple thing. Complicated by human emotions, needs, greed, there is little pure or simple about the sport we bring the horses into.

"Well," he said. "Don has always made a pretty picture with some ragged edges."

"What does that mean?"

"Let's take a walk," he suggested.

I suspected he didn't want anyone showing up to eavesdrop. I followed him out the back of the café to a row of small paddocks, three of them occupied by horses.

"My projects," Dr. Dean explained. "Two mystery lamenesses and one with a bad case of stomach ulcers."

He leaned against the fence and looked at them, horses he had probably saved from the knackers. He probably had half a dozen more stashed around the place.

"They give us all they can," he said. "They do their best to make sense out of what we ask them to do-demand they do. All they want in return is to be cared for properly and kindly. Imagine if people were like that."

"Imagine," I echoed, but I couldn't imagine. I had been a cop a dozen years. The nature of the job and the people and things it had exposed me to had burned away any idealism I might ever have had. The story Dean Soren told me about Don Jade only confirmed my low opinion of the human race.

Over the last two decades, Jade's name had twice been connected to schemes to defraud insurance companies. The scam was to kill an expensive show horse that hadn't lived up to potential, then have the owner file a claim saying the animal had died of natural causes and collect a six-figure payout.

It was an old hustle that had come into the spotlight of the national media in the eighties, when a number of prominent people in the show-jumping world had been caught at it. Several had ended up in prison for a number of years, among them an internationally well-known trainer, and an owner who was heir to an enormous cellular phone fortune. Being rich has never stopped anyone from being greedy.