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from being greedy.
    Jade had lurked in the shadows of scandal back then, when he had been an assistant trainer at one of the barns that had lost horses to mysterious causes. He had never been charged with any crime or directly connected to a death. After the scandal broke, Jade had left that employer and spent a few years in France, training and competing on the European show circuit.
    Eventually the furor over the horse killings died down, and Don Jade came back to the States and found a couple of wealthy clients to serve as cornerstones for his own business.
    It might seem inconceivable that a man with Jade’s reputation could continue on in the profession, but there are always new owners who don’t know about a trainer’s history, and there are always people who won’t believe what they don’t want to believe. And there are always people who just plain don’t care. There are always people willing to look the other way if they think they stand to gain money or fame. Consequently, Don Jade’s stable attracted clients, many of whom paid him handsomely to campaign their horses in Florida at the Winter Equestrian Festival.
    In the late nineties, one of those horses was a jumper called Titan.
    Titan was a talented horse with an unfortunately mercurial temperament. A horse that cost his owner a lot of money and always seemed to sabotage his own efforts to earn his keep. He earned a reputation as a rogue and a head case. Despite his abilities, his market value plummeted. Meanwhile, Titan’s owner, Warren Calvin, a Wall Street trader, had lost a fortune in the stock market. And suddenly one day Titan was dead, and Calvin filed a $250,000 claim with his insurance company.
    The official story pieced together by Jade and his head groom was that sometime during the night Titan had become spooked, had gone wild in his stall, breaking a foreleg, and had died of shock and blood loss. However, a former Jade employee had told a different tale, claiming Titan’s death had not been an accident, that Jade had had the animal suffocated, and that the horse had broken his leg in a panic as he was being asphyxiated.
    It was an ugly story. The insurance company had immediately ordered a necropsy, and Warren Calvin had come under the scrutiny of a New York State prosecutor. Calvin withdrew the claim and the investigation was dropped. No fraud, no crime. The necropsy was never performed. Warren Calvin got out of the horse business.
    Don Jade weathered the rumors and speculation and went on about his business. He’d had a convenient alibi for the night in question: a girl named Allison, who worked for him and claimed to have been in bed with him at the time of Titan’s death. Jade admitted to the affair, lost his marriage, but kept on training horses. Old clients either believed him or left him, and new pigeons came to roost, unaware.
    I had learned pieces of this story from my research on the Internet, and from Irina’s gossip. I knew Irina’s opinion of Jade had been based on the stories she’d heard from other grooms, information that was likely grounded in fact and heavily flavored with spite. The horse business is an incestuous business. Within the individual disciplines (jumping, dressage, et cetera) everyone knows everyone, and half of them have screwed the others, either literally or figuratively. Grudges and jealousies abound. The gossip can be vicious.
    But I knew if the story came out of Dean Soren’s mouth, it was true.
    “It’s sad a guy like that stays in business,” I said.
    Dr. Dean tipped his head and shrugged. “People believe what they want. Don is a charming fellow, and he can ride the hell out of a jump course. You can argue with success all you want, Elena, but you’ll never win. Especially not in this business.”
    “Sean’s groom told me Jade lost a horse last weekend,” I said.
    “Stellar,” Dr. Dean said, nodding. His ulcer patient had come to our corner of the paddock and reached her nose out coyly