The Grave Maurice (5 page)

While the news in the manila envelope grew whiskers, Bobby talked. He asked Vernon what he thought about SayAgain, a purportedly hot new firm in the cellular war that was marketing phones for the almost-deaf. It was supposed to merge with CallBack—“You know about that, don't you? Even hush-hush as it is?” Not only did Vernon not know about it, he wished to hell he'd thought of it. Damn. Bobby said he was going to short the stock if the merger took place because a little down the road Call-Back's image manipulators were going to have trouble with ads picturing old geezers plying these phones. “Remember,” said Bobby, “Planet Hollywood?” And he set his hand on a downward spiral.

“Bummer,” said Vernon.

Bobby, clutching his skateboard and envelope, just went on and on. He was every bit as bad as Vernon on the day Vernon had met Daphne. So Vernon offered him a job on the spot. Unlike Daphne, Bobby accepted on the spot.

Vernon could easily have supplied each of them with an office, but they insisted on staying together. He called her Daffy; she called him Booby. They argued about everything—penny stocks, IPOs, short selling. Actually, they brawled a lot of the time. So what? Vernon said to Samantha. Let them brawl; they're brilliant.

And they, in turn, thought Vernon walked on water. He had saved them from running people down on skateboards and standing indefinitely on street corners.

 

Vernon lived alone in a penthouse condo overlooking the Thames with white walls and three fireplaces, filled with angular, streamlined furniture by Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and other seriously Swedish or German designers. He had never married. He was thirty-six years old. He did enjoy the company of women, two of them, one named Janet, a good-looking brunette who thought marriage for them was in the cards or the stars. Why she thought this he couldn't imagine as he had never suggested it and never would. The other woman was a high-class whore named Taffy, whom he actually preferred to Janet, certainly on the sexual front—as well he should, when he was paying five hundred quid for two hours of her time. Taffy looked like her name—smooth and golden—tasted like it, stretched like it. She was inventive (but then, again, for that price, she ought to be).

Vernon loved his life. He loved coming home to the white walls and slick furniture, the polished floors, the aquarium he had paid thirty thousand pounds to have installed in one wall, flanked by paintings by Pollock and Hockney. His cat oversaw this arrangement. He knew Barney's seemingly relaxed position—tail encircling torso, paws curled into chest—masked a busy mind trying to work out how he could get in there. He had found Barney wandering along by the river near the Town of Ramsgate pub. Probably the cat remembered better times, when alleys were full of dumps and jellied eels was the plate
du jour.
He admired cats' self-sufficiency; they weren't always barking at him to be let out. Barney's “out” was the patio, where he could look at the Thames and the night. The patio was utterly glamorous and exotic. There were palm trees and hibiscus and fruit trees. He was not a gardener but he did take very good care of everything and the plants and trees flourished. He bet it was the London rain, which more often was thick mist or drizzle, so that his plants were fanned with water, not beaten with it.

Janet didn't like cats; she felt they were sneaky. “On the contrary,” Vernon said, “they're perfectly open about flouting rules or stealing shrimp from your plate.”

“You know what I mean.”

Actually, he didn't. It irritated him to death that she really thought “you-know-what-I-mean” was an answer.

At this point in his evening return he always made a pitcher of Manhattans if he was feeling really Art Deco, or martinis, if he was feeling like a drink. Now he was finishing stirring their ten-to-oneness. He tapped the stirrer against the pitcher and poured the drink into a stemmed glass to which a paper-thin peel of lemon had been added. He sipped. It was cold and quick, knife-edged.

In the last couple of weeks, when he drank this home-coming martini he had thought up his new dotcom start-up. He had been to a number of AA meetings, not for his own sake, but to see what they were selling, and for God's sake, were they ever selling! No wonder this organization was so successful. What they had on offer was: one, salvation; two, friends for you everywhere—in every city, every country on the globe; and three, childhood's return. At the very least these three things and a whole lot of others. Members probably stopped drinking because they couldn't fit it in.

Now, would he give up his two-martini predinner evening to have someone make his decisions? No, he wouldn't, but a lot of people would. AA offered that, in addition to endless evenings of acceptance, no one trying to punch your clock or do you one better or go for you. And you had Dad back again in the form of a sponsor, an absolutely blood-chilling prospect to Vernon, not because he didn't want his dad back, but because he didn't want a sponsor.

He found it interesting that any alcoholic, if asked What do you want most in the world? would gaily cry, “A drink!” But this was self-delusion, for they wanted something else even more: salvation, Dad, acceptance no matter what—one or all of these things, and Vernon supposed they blended together like Stoly and dry vermouth.

He was calling his start-up SayWhen.

Money gave Vernon the same rush he knew Arthur Ryder got out of watching Aqueduct win the Gold Cup at Cheltenham, not once, but twice, the second time carrying twenty-three pounds. Yet he could not get Art to see how the stud fees would quadruple if he incorporated Ryder Stud and made an initial public offering by selling seasons for, say, Beautiful Dreamer and Samarkand. “It would bring in millions, Art.”

“Vernon, I don't want millions.”

Vernon was much too kind to point out that his stepfather had certainly wanted at least one near million two months before.

“But listen, Art. Look what they did in the U.S. with horses like Seattle Slew. Just for one breeding season they pulled in three quarters of a million. Multiply that by the number of stallion slots for one horse like Aqueduct. Then multiply again by the stallions you have at stud.”

Arthur continued his round of evening stables, Vernon walking with him. He shook his head and said, “Vernon, this is what you do for a living? Why not just play poker?”

“Because this is more fun. And I'm trying to help you out, you know. How about foal sharing? That's getting popular.”

“
Foal
sharing? Jesus.” Arthur just shook his head.

It was true that Vernon wanted to help; he very much wanted to lessen his stepfather's money concerns. But in addition, of course, it would be fun to trade some of the Ryder Stud horses on the exchange. In the last twenty months, there had been a more compelling motive: Vernon wanted to get Arthur's mind off Nell, if only for a few moments at a time.

For he had never seen Arthur Ryder stopped dead in his tracks before. Not even the death of his son Danny had done this—turned him to stone, unable to act. Roger, too, despite the fact he dealt with death every day, and often in the most shocking way, could not work Nell's disappearance into the equation. The two of them, Arthur and Roger, had stared too long into the same space. Perhaps, Vernon thought, sharing the same space might be some comfort to them.

Vernon had tried to handle things. “Things” included the bulk of police questioning, at the outset, Arthur and Roger having been unable to answer anything beyond yes, no and possibly. He also hired the best private investigator in London, a man named Leon Stone, known for his chameleonlike ability to melt into the background. Nineteen months before, they were sitting in Vernon's flat, as Vernon related the story. He told Stone, “It must not be money they want. It's been nearly a month now.”

“Not necessarily,” Leon Stone had said. “Ransom might have been the reason originally, and then something happened to change their minds.”

Vernon leaned forward, toward Stone, who was occupying the deep leather chair on the other side of the glass-and-mahogany coffee table. He said, “So we have to factor into this search all of the circumstances that might have surrounded their change of plans. Bloody hell. That's impossible.”

Stone held up his hand. “I should have added that it's unlikely they changed their minds. If they haven't asked for money, they probably don't want money, as you said.” He asked Vernon if there was any reason to believe the little girl's father or grandfather might be responsible for this.

Vernon was appalled, possibly because he had thought about it. “You mean could they have staged it? Of course not!”

“It does happen.” Stone shrugged.

Over the last year and a half, Leon Stone had been thorough, no question of that. He'd earned his hefty fee. He'd visited every stud farm in Cambridgeshire and others elsewhere. Cambridgeshire, though, was the heart and soul of racing and breeding.

“Why do you think this villain might have a stud farm?”

“Proximity, for one reason. Knowledge of Arthur Ryder's household for another. And for another, it's possible there might be some bad feeling between Ryder and other owners. Mr. Rice, let's look at the picture: one or more villains go to Ryder Stud in the night—no, let me change that—they might have been there during the day or sometime in the recent past to take in the situation before acting. Or the person might already have been there in the capacity of an employee—stable lads, exercise boys, trainers. There's the vet, too. I have a list of those people.

“Next: let's go back to the incident. Someone comes to the stables, for what reason we don't actually know—”

“You mean the object might not have been Nellie?”

“It's possible. The thing is, if the target
was
the girl, the person must have known Nell's habit of sleeping in stables if a horse was sick. That would certainly limit the suspects to family, friends and employees, wouldn't it?

“That's one possibility,” Stone continued. “The other is that the villains were there for another reason altogether and Nell got in their way. Because she saw something, and they had to take her with them because she presented a threat.”

“You think they came for the horse?”

Leon Stone shrugged again. “That's also possible. And not necessarily to take the horse, but to do something to the horse or horses. There are extremely valuable stallions there.”

“Besides Samarkand there's Beautiful Dreamer, Criminal Type, Aqueduct and Fool's Money.” (The last having been named in honor of Vernon, according to Arthur.) “No car or trailer seen, but I guess they had transport.”

“I'm thinking one person, and he didn't need a car or van.”

“He had to have something.”

“He had Aqueduct.” Stone smiled thinly. “Obviously.”

H
e was given to anxiety attacks that overtook him when he was outside, standing on ground no longer firm or familiar. When this happened, Maurice would take out a horse, any horse that seemed eager for a gallop or just a walk up and down the cinder paths that wound around for miles through the farm.

After Samarkand, Maurice's choice was Beautiful Dreamer, an elegant stallion who would shake out his mane and raise his head as if divesting himself of Maurice or anyone except Nell. The horses loved Nell.