Night Mares in the Hamptons (19 page)

She was about twelve, I guessed, with long brown hair and thick eyebrows and brown eyes. She looked just like the girl in my book, the girl in my dream. “Hetty?”

She giggled. “Letty. Only my old nanny ever called me that. My mother insists on Letitia.” She scooted the electric wheelchair back so we could enter. “I am not supposed to let strangers come in the house while the housekeeper is out, but I've heard of you. You're teaching a course at the arts center.”

“Yes, and this is Connor Redstone.”

She dropped her eyes, suddenly shy. “Pleased to meet you.”

Connor nodded, which she couldn't see with her head down.

“Are you coming to my creative writing course? I think it'll be fun.”

She looked up, but without the smile. “My mother won't let me.”

I was sorry. She looked like a bright kid. “Maybe your mom will change her mind. You can tell her I don't bite. My dog does, but I don't.”

She smiled at that, as I intended. “I wish I could. I'm writing a story right now about a magic horse.”

“Wow, so am I! Can yours fly?”

“Oh, yes, and he has a magic healing touch.”

“Mine doesn't, but that sounds like a great idea.”

She turned shy again, hiding her face behind her hair. “Oh, I'm sorry. I should offer you something to drink. Would you like an iced tea or a soda?”

“That would be lovely. But would you mind if Connor takes a look at your old stable, just in case someone hid the missing colt there?”

“Why would they do that?”

“Because if it's as far from the house as it looks on the map, and no one uses it, it might be a good place to hide something you don't want found.”

She did a wheelie in her electric chair and led us to French doors that opened onto a terrace and the pool, and farther, to a gravel path that led out of sight. “There's a corral first, then the stable. I'd show you, but the gravel's tough to ride on. Besides, I'm not allowed outside by myself, or to go swimming. They're afraid I'll get stung by a bee—I'm allergic, you know—or drown or something. They won't let me go to the center because there'll be too many germs from the other kids there. I got pneumonia after the accident. I'm not as bad off as that Superman guy, though. I can breathe on my own and use my arms. My mother is just overprotective. And she likes me to keep to my schedule. Physical therapy in the morning, tutors in the afternoon, swim session before dinner.”

I'd almost offered to accompany her and Connor to the stable until I realized there was no ramp from the French doors, and none at the front steps. The poor kid couldn't get down if she wanted.

She must have seen me staring because she said there was a ramp on the side door, with a paved path.

She wasn't in a cell or a closet, but Letitia was a prisoner nevertheless. She watched Connor stride away, and I watched her eyes fill with tears.

“I almost got stung by a bee. It wasn't Arabella's fault. We were practicing for the pony class of the Hampton's Classic Horse Show. We could have won. We already had a blue ribbon for the jumping event. I batted at the bee and frightened poor Arabella. She stumbled, and I went over her head.”

“Your parents blamed her?”

“My mother said she never wanted to see her again. Never wanted another child to be paralyzed like me.”

“But they didn't take down the stable.”

“I made them promise I could get another horse when I walked again. We were hoping for stem cell research, but they say it's too late. My stepfather's company does medical research, and he says they're trying. So I write stories about flying horses.”

I sighed. “Me, too.”

“Really? I ordered your books on Amazon, but they haven't come yet. I didn't know they were about horses.”

“They haven't been until now. I'll bring the first chapters for you to look at.”

“You will?”

“Sure, and I'll ask your parents if you can come to my class. I'll be real careful no one has a cold or anything.”

She almost dropped the frosted carrot cake she was cutting—refusing my help—in her excitement. I drank some lemonade while Connor walked back, shaking his head.

“I would have known if there was a pony out there,” Letitia—damn, I'd call her Letty if she let me—said.

I thought I would have, too. “Have you ever been tested by the Royce Institute?”

“No, what's that?”

“Oh, just a research group that tests kids to see what they might be good at.”

“Yeah, like a paraplegic has a lot of choices.”

“Some.”

She changed the subject. “He's awfully good-looking, isn't he?”

“The colt we're searching for?” I'd given her a flyer with my phone number on it.

She blushed. “Your friend.”

I agreed he was very good-looking, then told her his website, so she could see him ride.

“He's a rider?”

She gave him a bigger slice of cake.

I
ALWAYS GOT THE SMALL PIECE OF CAKE. I always resented it. Like now, I'd had two minutes of being a kid's idol before being replaced by a guy with more baggage than the boarding line at JFK. Connor'd said exactly two words to Letty: “Thank you,” while I was adding her name to my list of things to rescue.

He hadn't said one word after putting his cake fork down either, not when I promised to email Letty about our search, nor when I drove the car around the circular driveway and back out the gate. I tried to remember if he'd talked since leaving the polo field. Ten minutes later, he still hadn't spoken a syllable.

I figured, after the surfers, the polo players, and now the Froelers' mansion, he was tabulating all the ridiculously conspicuous consumption of the Hamptons, and how different it was from how his family lived.

Mine, too.

“You know, Connor, no amount of money is ever going to get that girl what she wants most. She'll never ride a horse again.”

Connor grunted.

Maybe I made my point. Maybe not. I kept driving. I thought we'd check out a couple more of the big estates while we were in the high-rent district. After the third long driveway, the fourth locked gate, and one sign saying Beware of the Dogs, with a silhouette of Doberman pinschers, Connor grunted again.

I looked over to the passenger seat. “You have something to say?”

“Yeah. Why don't you want to go to that abandoned ranch? You've been avoiding it all day.”

Now he wanted to talk? “I thought we'd finish up here, then go back to see if Ty is awake and wants to come along.”

“And?”

And I hated the idea of going to Bayview Ranch. I didn't think Connor needed to know all my reasons, but I gave him a good one. “Snakes.”

He took off his sunglasses to see if I was serious. I was.

“But you don't have poisonous snakes here. I checked. Nothing that could hurt a horse. Or you.”

“A person can die of fright, can't she?”

“I can't believe you're afraid of a couple of what? Garter snakes? Maybe a rat snake?”

I didn't know why he couldn't believe it. Everyone in Paumanok Harbor knew I was terrified of snakes. They'd heard me screaming from all the way up at the hill ranch, and never let me forget it, even seventeen years later.

Kids used to sneak up to the ranch on summer nights, even when it was in operation. The stable guys knew and didn't care as long as we didn't spook the horses or start fires. There was a lake and grass and no one in sight. I lost my virginity up there that summer to a boy named Tripp, John James Hennessy the Third. Or maybe it was James John. No matter, he was suntanned and cute and worked on some rich guy's boat.

The experience itself was not worth remembering. It was short, painful, messy, and entirely unrewarding. Then a snake slithered over my foot.

My screams spooked the horses, the grooms, the Scowcrofts and a whole cocktail party they were throwing for half the town, and Tripp's boss. Did I mention I was naked when I ran by the house?

I made my father take me back to our apartment in the city the next day. That deprived Grandma of an unpaid helper at the farm stand, which she never forgave me for either.

They closed the ranch soon after that. Not because I'd caused such a riot, and not because snakes always seemed to breed up there, big black rat snakes that ate the rodents inevitable around horse feed. They shut the ranch down because it finally lost more money than even Mr. Scowcroft was willing to waste on his pet hobby.

Thoroughbred racehorses were not pets, and throwing money down the toilet was a crazy hobby. The winters were too cold; the grass not rich enough; good trainers didn't want to be so far from the southern tracks; Mr. Scowcroft couldn't breed a winner if it already had a blanket of roses on its back. Then lightning struck the big house. No one was home at the time, but that was enough for the owner. Rather than rebuilding, he sold the horses, razed the ruins, and moved to Hawaii. His corporation put the ranch up for subdivision about the time land was multiplying in value and the rest of the Hamptons were getting filled.

The town was protesting. They'd given Scowcroft special variances to build a stable on the hill here in order to keep the land agricultural, like Grandma's farm. Bayview was supposed to stay that way, not be divided up into ten luxury lots, ten huge mansions with a view, ten behemoths filling the open vista.

While the court case was going on, for years now, Paumanok Harbor was dickering with the town and the county and the state and the Nature Conservancy to see about making the ranch public parkland, but the corporation wanted top dollar, and preservation funds were drying up.

Meanwhile, the old place deteriorated more. The fire department came and burned down the main stable after its roof collapsed. Everyone came to watch, including me. In high boots. Now almost all that was left was the old breeding barn, overgrown fields, and the bunkhouse where the staff used to sleep. And snakes, lots of snakes. And Snake.

Fred Sinese was the only one there, the only one who didn't mind the snakes, so everyone naturally called him Sinese the Snake. I didn't call him anything because I never spoke to him.

On my night of infamy, he'd been right there, near the lake. Maybe having a date of his own. Maybe watching summer kids doing the dirty. Maybe letting a snake out of a sack, for fun.

Without going into personal details, I told Connor about the ranch and its sneaky, slimy caretaker. “And he drinks, besides.”

“Does he have a talent?”

“Other than frightening children? People used to whisper that he talked to the snakes. Like my mother and her dogs and Ty and the horses. Even Emil and the gemstones.”

“Snakes are deaf.”

“Harry Potter did it. What did they call him, a parselmouth?”

“That was a movie.”

“And a book. But there are snakes up there. And Fred Sinese.”

“And a lot of places to hide a horse. Especially if no one goes near the ranch.”

Reluctantly, I turned the car and headed in the direction of Bayview. “I bet he won't let us search.”

“Unless we say Ty is interested in buying it for his rescued horses. He's been talking about expanding to the east.”

I had to admit that might work. Snake might let us look around. “Or he might lie and say we need to talk to the owners first.”

I hit the brakes so hard Connor's head snapped back on the neck rest and his sunglasses went flying. When I made a quick u-turn on a narrow street, he said, “Never ask to ride my horse.”

I sped through the village and skidded into Kelvin's Auto Body Repair.

“What the hell . . . ?”

“A lie detector.”

Like a couple of other Paumanok Harbor residents who could trace their lines back to the Royce-Harmon-Stamfield English lines, Kelvin could distinguish truth from lies. Our local judge could do it, but they'd moved him to state court, he was so good at administering justice. The police chief could sometimes, besides finding lost objects, but he was too busy. Grant could, but he was several continents away.

That left Kelvin, who had the added advantage of being big and strong. You could never have enough muscle when facing down snakes.

Unfortunately, Kelvin couldn't come with us. He'd promised to have a Mercedes done by four. He volunteered his son, Kelvin Junior, instead.

I looked at Junior and was not encouraged. The kid was about nine or ten, but almost my height and overweight. I guess that's why they call him K2. He had chocolate smeared on his face and strawberry ice cream smeared on his NY Giants T-shirt.