The Black Sheep and the Hidden Beauty Read online

  “Did they find any?”

  She shook her head. “But the damage had been done, to a degree. In time, it would all be water under the bridge, but my time there was already sort of over. I’d worked my ass off to try and climb the ladder to head trainer, did all I could to get promoted, and was passed over time and again. I knew it was because of my gender—Gene is very old-school when it comes to women—”

  “Then why hire you in the first place?”

  “I was well qualified, had impeccable references, and they had no clear reason not to. But that didn’t mean they had to promote me. I guess I just thought they’d see my skill and dedication and sort of get over the female part. Of course, I couldn’t prove anything. The guys promoted over me were also qualified, so what was I to do?”

  “Must be incredibly frustrating.”

  He saw her shift and look directly at him. “If you’re even remotely thinking of going the bitter, disgruntled employee route, don’t. I would never—ever—intentionally do harm to any animal. Or person, for that matter.”

  He knew that, but it was good to hear her flatly state it as well. “When did you find out, anyway, that Springer was pregnant? In relation to Geronimo dying, I mean. Had you already bred her when it happened?”

  Elena shifted her attention back out the front window, but when she spoke, her voice was still calm, straightforward. “She’d been bred, yes, but I wasn’t sure if she was pregnant at that point.” She fidgeted in her seat a little then, looking out the side window. And as far away from him as she could get. “You were asking about Gene and Kami and what inside information I had. I don’t know what their marriage could have to do with Geronimo, but there was trouble. In private, anyway.”

  Rafe hadn’t missed the less-than-subtle way she’d refocused the conversation. “Was that the basis for the media speculation?”

  “I don’t think it was public knowledge at that point.”

  “But it is now?”

  She glanced at him. “It was after I left, but there were news stories about papers being filed. I think there was speculation that all the stress of the horse’s death and endless investigations had taken a toll, but by then the media had mostly moved on.”

  “But you’re saying there was trouble in paradise before all that?”

  Again, she lifted a shoulder.

  “I’m surprised no one blabbed that to the media.”

  “As I said, we were all worried about our jobs. If word got out who the ‘anonymous source’ was, and it always does, no other owner would hire us. Loyalty is everything in this business.”

  “I can understand the more highly placed employees not risking it, but more than a few lower-ranked employees left. I’m surprised none of them were paid to talk.”

  “There wasn’t much to talk about. Just the sort of general knowledge that there was greater tension than usual between the two. Maybe that’s why the media was digging in that direction to begin with, I don’t know, but as I said, Gene was scrupulous about maintaining a tight public image, and they always appeared together in public, seeming supportive of one another about the tragedy and all the investigation speculation. Since the papers weren’t filed until much later…” She shrugged. “I don’t see where any of it really matters, in terms of Geronimo, anyway. I didn’t then, and I don’t now.”

  “You mentioned loyalty…did your leaving hurt you? In terms of being hired again?”

  “The longer the speculation wore on, the more we worried that staying was worse than going. No one at Charlotte Oaks held it against those of us who opted out. In my case, I had extenuating circumstances with Springer, so no one was surprised. I had good recommendations, as Kate knows, and, I guess, you. I don’t think it hurt me to leave. In fact, it was probably better to leave when I did, with everything else going on, than to just leave on my own terms.”

  “So, when the baby is born and everything is okay, the plan is to return to the sport and go back to building your career as a trainer.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “You said you were using this time to figure out your next step. Do you have prospects lined up?”

  She surprised him a little by smiling. “You gonna call and harass them, too, and cost me the job before I even get it?”

  He took the pointed jab. He’d earned it. But he grinned and teased her back. “Well, if it would keep you around Dalton Downs longer, who knows? Maybe I have my own ulterior motives now.”

  They glanced at each other, connecting gazes for a long moment. It was nice to know that, even in a situation like this, where a lot was at stake, they had already built up enough trust to be able to tease like this and know it was just that, teasing.

  “I’m not asking for specifics,” he said, though the idea that she was planning to leave in the fairly near future started to sink in a bit more realistically than it had before. “I’m just asking, now that the time is drawing near for Springer, if you’ve lined anything up.”

  “I wouldn’t leave Kate in the lurch, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “But you’ve talked about it.”

  “I was up front about all of it when she hired me, but we haven’t discussed it recently. It’s not like I’m going to bolt the minute the foal’s feet hit solid ground.”

  “She’s going to try to get you to stay.”

  Elena smiled again. “She was up front about that when she hired me, too.”

  “So, you still haven’t answered my question.”

  “Which one?”

  “Do you have a job lined up?”

  “I’ve had feelers out all along.”

  “Nothing concrete?”

  She huffed a sigh. “You’re such a pit bull.”

  “Which, knowing that, you’d think you’d just save yourself the time and aggravation and answer me.”

  She sighed, but there was no animosity in it. “No, nothing concrete.”

  “And the other?”

  “What other?”

  “The insider info. Nothing more to the Gene and Kami story? No juicy speculation on what was really going on in paradise?”

  She looked over at him. “You know, I wouldn’t have pegged you as the National Enquirer type.”

  “I’m not. Far from it.”

  “Then why all the interest in them? What difference does it make if they’re happily married or getting divorced? Do you know something I don’t?”

  He lifted a shoulder and kept his eyes on the road. “I did know about the papers being filed, but I hadn’t had time to do any digging where they were concerned.”

  “What could it possibly have to do with Geronimo?”

  “Well, high-profile divorces between people with a lot of money can get quite nasty. Especially when it comes to splitting assets.”

  Elena gasped, and Rafe had to smile. For all her straightforward, no-bullshit style, she was still remarkably and quite sweetly naïve about some things. Despite spending most of her adult years in a male-dominated world where women were definitely second-class citizens, being raised in a loving home had apparently managed to shield her from the reality of just how nasty the war between the genders could get.

  “You honestly think either one of them would have done anything intentionally to Geronimo, just because of some kind of divorce settlement?”

  Rafe shrugged. “People in love have done worse for less. So, what was the lowdown about those two? How ugly was it behind closed doors?”

  Elena huffed and sat face-forward again, folding her arms across her waist. “This is incredibly distasteful.”

  “Divorce usually is.”

  “But they weren’t divorcing until later—”

  “The papers came later. But marriages don’t end overnight. Or they usually don’t, anyway. If papers were filed a few months later, then chances are things went to shit long before that. And you’ve already said there was gossip amongst the employees. What was the rumor du jour?”

  She stared out the w
indow for a long moment, then settled back a bit more. Clearly, gossiping was not something she did on a regular basis and it didn’t sit well with her. Another thing he liked about her. “The story goes that the head trainer had gone up to the main house one afternoon to have a meeting with Gene and overheard the two of them arguing. Doesn’t sound like much, I know, but if you knew those two, and the over-the-top lengths they went to, trying to look like the perfect golden couple, you’d realize how out of character it was for them to be seen anywhere while disagreeing, even in their own home.”

  “Married couples fight, even golden ones.”

  “True. But these two cultivated their images like politicians running for president. No way would they—Gene especially—have been so careless as to have an argument that could be so readily overheard.”

  “You’re saying they staged it?”

  “No, I’m saying it blew up in such a way that it got out of hand before either of them could get a grip. At least that’s how JuanCarlo related it.”

  “He’s the head trainer?”

  She nodded.

  “And he told this to you?”

  “I knew him, we got along well. In fact, it was because we did and he respected my work that I was so frustrated when I’d get passed over. But no, I wouldn’t have been privy to that kind of personal conversation. Word was he told the assistant head trainer.”

  “Just how far down the chain were you in this incident?”

  “Third. Along with several other trainers who happened to be in the tack shed when we overheard Juan’s assistant talking about it with his lead trainer.”

  “So, a bit more than rumor.”

  “Well, who knows how embellished or distorted it was, or how many times he’d told the story himself, after hearing it from Juan. But it was enough that I believed some kind of altercation had occurred.”

  “And no one blabbed this?”

  “I can only speak for myself, but I never heard it directly related in the media reports, beyond the typical speculation, anyway.”

  “What were they fighting about?”

  “Trust.”

  “As in one of them was cheating on the other? Or thought to be?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Juan didn’t hear what they were saying exactly, except it was pretty accusatory, and what the trust issue was about, wasn’t revealed. It ended right when he got there. It was news because they’d fought at all. The topic was speculated over, of course, endlessly, but that’s all we knew. It was a one-time event. And that was all eclipsed by the fire. I think it was pretty much forgotten after that.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay? That’s it? Okay?”

  “Well, I have to do some digging, of course, but—” He caught her look. “What? It deserves looking into.”

  “Why?”

  “Because whatever was going on between them might have something to do with the fire.”

  “Who cares? I mean, what does that have to do with me?”

  Now he looked over at her. “Good question. What does all this have to do with you?”

  “I had nothing to do with Geronimo’s death.”

  “But it’s related. To why you ran. To why you’re hiding. To why that investigator wants to talk to you.”

  “Who said I ran?”

  He slowed the truck and looked over at her. “Are we really going to play this game again? You said you were going to let me help. Then you have to tell me the whole story.”

  “Well, the story has nothing to do with Gene and Kami Vondervan.”

  “I can’t know that until I know what the story is about.”

  She sighed, folded her arms, then fidgeted in her seat, then sighed again, before swearing under her breath. “I don’t really know who it’s about. I didn’t think it could be them because they owned him, I mean, they’d just bought him, so—”

  Rafe began to realize where this was headed, and just how in the dark she truly might be. “Answer me this. Do you think his death was an accident?”

  She wrapped her arms around her waist, then finally shook her head. “I know it wasn’t an accident.”

  Holy shit. Now they were getting somewhere. And it was a somewhere he really didn’t want her to be. “And how would you know that? Do you know who did it?”

  She shook her head again. “No. No, I don’t.” She looked at him. “I truly didn’t have anything to do with it, not even unintentionally.”

  “I know it wasn’t you, Elena.” And he did. She was worldly in some ways, and so very not in others. “It’s not in you to even see the evil that exists in man, so I know it doesn’t exist in you. No matter the provocation.”

  Relief slumped her shoulders.

  Rafe slowed the truck further, but his grip on the wheel could have bent steel. He looked over at her, and for the first time, she looked vulnerable to him. “How do you know it wasn’t an accident?”

  She turned those huge brown eyes to him, and finally let go of the secret she’d been harboring for so long. “I was the last one to see Geronimo alive. Or…the next to the last one. The last one was the killer.”

  Chapter 16

  She’d gone and done it. She should be freaking out that she’d told someone, anyone. And to what amounted to a virtual stranger, by anyone else’s measure. But when she looked over at Rafe and found his steady gaze aimed back at her, all she felt was relief.

  He slowly pulled the truck and trailer off the side of the road, then shifted in his seat to face her. “You were with Geronimo? Out in his private stable?”

  She nodded. “I—I wanted to see him. He’s a great champion and I wanted to meet him, look at him up close, talk to him, just—you wouldn’t understand. It’s my dream to train a horse like him one day, and there he was, greatness, just a few hundred yards away. I was never going to be the one working with him, never going to get the chance.”

  “So, how did you? Who got you in? JuanCarlo?”

  “No one got me in. I let myself in.”

  “The reports said the security system wasn’t fully in place yet.”

  “No, it wasn’t. Gene was still arguing with JuanCarlo over how much was needed and what type of system was best. Then Geronimo was able to be delivered to them ahead of schedule and, well, no, the system wasn’t complete.”

  “And this was common knowledge?”

  “Common enough.”

  “JuanCarlo had that much say in the security of Charlotte Oaks?”

  “As head trainer, he had say in what would best protect the horses. Gene owned a number of high-profile racing horses, but none that had ever been a Crown winner, much less one as beloved as Geronimo.”

  “Even though he wasn’t racing any longer, he still warranted the star treatment?”

  “And then some. Partially due to his history, and partially because of what everyone hoped would come next. He was being put to stud, and there were high hopes.”

  “And big dollars, I would presume, for anyone who wanted one of his offspring.”

  “Yep,” she said, but bit her lip against saying anything more.

  He looked at her, but thankfully didn’t press further. He seemed more interested in what exactly had happened that fateful night, and how her presence related to it. “Walk me through it.”

  “I was leaving my stables—it was late. Middle-of-the-night late. There was an injured horse—”

  “Right, the reports said JuanCarlo was called to the main barns in the middle of the night when one of the stallions hurt himself kicking at his stall.”

  “Yes. But I didn’t know he’d been called down. It wasn’t my horse, but I had gone over to look in on the situation, as had a few others. But it seemed they had it under control, so I left, intending to go back to my trailer and to bed. And that’s when I saw the lights still on out at the private stable and JuanCarlo’s truck parked out front. I decided to go out, see if maybe he’d sneak me in just to see Geronimo.”

  “What kind of relationship did yo
u have with JuanCarlo?” He lifted his hand. “I’m not suggesting anything, I’m just asking.”

  “Friends,” she said. “Professional friends. He’d worked his way up through the ranks and so he appreciated hard work and dedication more than politics. He saw skill first, and gender second. So I made it my business to try and work as near his team as I could. Strictly business, but we did get along. As I said, that made it doubly disheartening when I didn’t get moved up.”

  “Did you ever think he expected that you’d do something…more to earn the promotion?”

  She tried not to lose her temper. They were fair questions, ones she’d have likely asked herself, but that didn’t mean she had to like them, or their implication. “Like I said, he was a professional first and last. As was I.”

  “But you thought you could sweet talk him into letting you get a peek at the newest acquisition.”

  “No, I thought I could appeal to the same drive that had led him to campaign heavily to be the one to oversee Geronimo, that I also have to eventually work with thoroughbreds of that caliber.” She folded her arms. “There’s nothing salacious to this story, so I’d appreciate it if you could—”

  “I meant no disrespect,” he interrupted. “I didn’t,” he reiterated when she gave him a disbelieving look. “It’s just, in my line of work, well, it’s not unusual for there to be a salacious angle. And it doesn’t reflect poorly on you if he was a womanizing jerk who wanted something more than you were willing to give.”

  “Well, he wasn’t. Not with me, anyway. As it turned out, it didn’t matter because he wasn’t there. He’d already been called down to the other barns to see the injured stallion—I’d just missed him. I went out one way while he was coming in another.”

  “So who let you in?”

  “No one. No one was there.”