Hard Hat (5 page)

Stevie shrugged, too. Whatever was in there was none of her business.

“Frank! Look at this!”

The sound was almost right over their heads. The men were in the dining room on the ground floor. Stevie held her breath.

“Well, I’ll be …” Frank said. “Kids,” he repeated. “Get the hammer and nails. They won’t get in here again!”

The kids all exchanged looks. At that very moment, getting
in
was the last thing on their minds! To their horror they heard the sounds of very big nails being pounded into the door from the greenhouse to the dining room.

Nobody spoke. They just looked at one another, and Peter kept holding Gordon around his shoulders.

The only good news was that the men made no attempt to see if any kids were still in the house. As soon as they pounded the nails into the back door, they left by the front one, locking it behind them, and then, as the kids listened, fastening a padlock onto it as well.

They were locked in tight.

As soon as the footsteps receded down the stairs and the trespassers heard slamming car doors and the sound of a car engine turning over, Gordon burst into tears.

Liza gave him a dirty look.

“Don’t worry, Gordon,” Peter said. “We’ll find a way out, and with any luck it’ll be a new way for us to get in.”

“Are you crazy?” Gordon asked.

“Just a little bit,” said Peter. That made Gordon laugh, and his laughter made everybody feel a little bit better.

“Right, and when we come back, we can figure out what’s in that closet,” Regina said, pointing to the padlocked plywood box in the corner.

“Are
you
crazy?” Liza asked.

“Well, we certainly can’t do it now,” Regina said. “It’s broad daylight and there are too many people up on the street who might hear the noise if we tried to break the padlocks.”

“And some other time will be different?” Liza asked, apparently still trying to absorb the idea that Regina was proposing they break into somebody else’s locked storage area.

“Well, sure,” said Regina. “See, the padlocks are all combination locks.”

“Yes?”

“And when we come back tonight to tell ghost stories—we
are
coming back tonight to tell ghost stories, aren’t we?” She looked around.

“If we ever get out of here in order to be able to come back,” Peter said.

“Of course we will,” Regina said, dismissing his concern with a wave of her hand. “So, when we come back, you guys can bring one of your father’s stethoscopes. That’s how you can hear when the tumblers click in a combination lock. I mean, we all know it works for safes, so of course it’s got to work for these piddly padlocks, right?”

Nobody was disagreeing with her. Stevie had already noticed that nobody ever disagreed with Regina. The girl was always so certain about things that it was impossible to argue with her.

“Okay, so then it’s settled. But first we have to find a new way to get in.”

Almost anybody else in the world would have described it as a new way to get out. Stevie could hardly help laughing, at least to herself.

The kids all stood up and began looking around. It turned out not to be difficult at all. It was practically in front of their noses. There was a small
window just below the ceiling in the basement. It had some boards over it, but the foundation of the house was concrete, so the contractor had simply propped the boards up against it. Peter stacked enough abandoned boxes so that he could climb up to the window, open it, and shove at the boards. The boards fell aside.

They had to stack all the old boxes up against the wall so that even Gordon, the shortest of them, could reach the window, but within a few minutes they were outside, propping the boards back up.

“Okay then, how about eight o’clock tonight?” Regina proposed. “And bring flashlights!”

“Right,” came an unenthusiastic response from Ann. Being locked in the basement and terrified of being discovered had not seemed to have whetted anybody’s appetite for a return visit, even to a cool place like the old house.

“Come on, guys!” Regina said. “You’re not afraid of a few construction guys, are you?”

“I am,” said Gordon. “What if they’d found us?”

“Ah, but they didn’t!” Regina said triumphantly. “And besides, Stevie knows these wonderful ghost stories that she’s dying to tell us!”

There was still hesitation.

“And I’ll bring marshmallows.”

That seemed to do it.

“Eight o’clock it is!” they said.

Stevie looked at her watch. Eight o’clock didn’t seem anywhere near long enough away.

“M
AXI
! C
OME HERE
, Maxi! Come to Lisa!”

It wasn’t working at all. Maxi clearly didn’t have the slightest interest in doing anything Lisa suggested. Instead she tried to run after the ponies and horses. The only good news about that was that there weren’t any around at the moment, for she surely would have ended up under the hooves of one of them.

“I’m beginning to think that looking after Maxi is a big job,” Lisa admitted to Carole, who was trying to head the toddler off before she climbed over a jump that was set up for the afternoon adult jump class.

“I always thought it was,” Carole said. “And I will always remember that this was your bright idea.”

“Guilty,” Lisa admitted. “But as long as we’re looking after her, Max can get some work done.”

“Even though it’s our vacation,
we
don’t seem to be getting much riding done,” Carole reminded her.

“But we’re pitching in to help someone out,” Lisa said. “And that’s one of The Saddle Club rules.”

“Sure,” Carole agreed. “But the people we’re supposed to help out first is The Saddle Club!”

“And what about all the money we’re earning? You don’t think that’s helping out?”

Carole didn’t answer. She was too busy shifting to the left as fast as she could to block Maxi’s access to the jump. She picked up the toddler and gave her a hug.

Maxi didn’t hug back. In fact, she kicked and howled. Carole knew if she put her down, the little girl would just take off, heading into something even more dangerous than the jump she’d wanted to climb.

“Maybe we should take her inside,” Carole suggested.

“Oh, sure,” Lisa said. “Remember how much she wanted to climb the manure pile a half hour ago? That’s why we’re out here.”

Carole did remember. She put Maxi down and took her hand. Lisa took the other one. Together the girls
could pick Maxi up and swing her. Maxi liked that. She liked it so much that both Lisa and Carole soon found themselves with sore backs from leaning over.

“How about a nap?” Carole said to Maxi as cheerfully as she could, hoping to make it sound like as much fun for Maxi as it would be for the two of them to have a little rest from baby chasing.

“No nap!” Maxi declared. The little girl didn’t talk much, but she obviously knew that word when she heard it.

Lisa couldn’t help herself: She laughed. Carole sighed.

“Hi, girls, how’s it going?” Mrs. Reg asked, emerging from the barn.

“We’re exhausted and it’s only been a little over an hour so far today,” Carole said.

“She reminds me of her father when he was a little boy,” said Mrs. Reg.

Carole and Lisa exchanged looks. It was hard to imagine Max as a little boy, especially as a toddler.

“He was this energetic?” Lisa asked.

“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Reg. “I thought my back would break from chasing after him and picking him up. He was always fascinated by the manure pile. It was all I could do to keep him out of it.”

“We know what that’s like,” Lisa said.

“I guess it’s in the genes,” Mrs. Reg said. “And now my son has the child he deserves, except you’re paying the price today!”

They all laughed at that.

Mrs. Reg picked up her granddaughter and gave her a little hug before sitting down on the mounting block. “Being a handful, are we?” she asked. Maxi blinked her eyes and smiled at Mrs. Reg. The look was so utterly angelic that it was almost hard to remember that this very same little girl had been aiming to yank Patch’s tail a mere half hour earlier. Maxi settled into her grandmother’s lap.

“We used to have a stallion here, you know,” said Mrs. Reg. Her eyes got a familiar faraway look that told Carole and Lisa she was about to tell them one of her tales. Mrs. Reg’s stories were often confusing to the girls, and Mrs. Reg would never explain exactly why she’d decided to tell the story. Carole and Lisa leaned against the fence and did the only thing they could do, which was listen.

“I forget the stallion’s name, but he was a handful and Max—
my
Max …” She emphasized the
my
. That meant she was referring to Max’s father, who had died
some time ago. The girls usually referred to him as Max the Second, because he was the second Maximilian Regnery to own Pine Hollow. The current Max was Max the Third. “Well, my Max didn’t know what to do with him. He started him out in that paddock.” She pointed to the paddock nearest the schooling ring. It was small but pleasant, with some grass and a nice enough view of the stable and riding rings to satisfy the curiosity of most horses.

“What happened?” Lisa asked. Mrs. Reg scowled. It was a mistake to interrupt her, even with a question, when she was telling one of her stories. “Sorry,” Lisa said quickly.

“He jumped the fence. Went right into the field beyond.”

Carole and Lisa looked where Mrs. Reg was pointing. The fence around that paddock was higher than any of the other fences at Pine Hollow. They didn’t mention that, though. They waited for Mrs. Reg to continue.

“So Max built the fence up higher. I bet you’ve always wondered why that fence was higher than the others, haven’t you?”

“Sure,” said Lisa.

“Absolutely,” said Carole. In fact, the thought had never crossed either of their minds until that minute.

“Well, that’s why,” said Mrs. Reg. “And that old stallion would just run around that paddock, itchy, annoyed, and very unhappy—always trying to get out. He’d get up against the part of the fence next to the field and rear up on his hind legs, whinnying and bucking, behaving just like the naughtiest little child you ever saw. That stallion had a tantrum every time he went into the paddock.”

There was a long pause. Mrs. Reg tickled Maxi, who giggled and then put her head on her grandmother’s shoulder. Lisa wished she could get Maxi to be that tame with her. Grandmothers were different from baby-sitters, though, and even Lisa knew that. She and Carole waited.

“Then one day that no-good stable hand we had back then—I’ve forgotten his name, too, and that’s all for the best—he did what he often did. He forgot to close the gate.”

That was hard to imagine since one of the first rules anybody learned about being around any kind of livestock, and especially horses, was to latch every gate behind you. No wonder Mrs. Reg had forgotten his name.

Mrs. Reg stood up and handed Maxi back to Lisa. Maxi immediately wiggled out of Lisa’s grasp and started heading for the stable. Images of Maxi and the manure pile inclined Lisa to follow her. Curiosity held her back for a moment.

“What happened to the stallion?” Lisa asked.

Mrs. Reg shook her head as if the answer were utterly obvious. “Happy as a clam of course,” she said. “We never had a minute’s trouble with him after that, and he spent the rest of his days with us out in the field.”

Mrs. Reg strode toward the barn, then called back over her shoulder, “You girls better get in here! I think Maxi wants to get into Nickel’s stall!”

Carole and Lisa dashed after the little girl and stopped her right before she unlatched the pony’s stall door. Nickel had a sweet nature, but he was still a lot bigger than Maxi.

Lisa tucked the wiggling little girl under one arm and turned to Carole, who seemed in a hurry to get to the tack room.

“What was that all about?” she asked, referring to Mrs. Reg’s story.

“Maxi, of course,” said Carole.

“You think she wants to jump a fence and go into the field?” Lisa asked.

“Of course not,” said Carole. “She wants to ride!”

“And you think it’s a good idea?” Lisa asked.

“It’s not my idea,” said Carole. “It’s Mrs. Reg’s. Don’t you see?”

And then Lisa did see. Maxi was just like the stallion. She’d be much happier if they let her do what she really wanted, which was to ride. And as long as they saw to it that she rode safely, she’d be much safer than when she was running around in schooling rings or trying to open stall doors.

“Right!” said Lisa. “Sure she wants to ride. It’s in her blood. Anybody named Regnery would be happier on a horse than anyplace else, right?”

“Right,” Carole agreed.

It took the two of them just a few minutes to tack up Penny, the stable’s smallest pony. Maxi, seeming to sense that this was about her, sat patiently on a bale of hay and watched the girls work. Carole got a lead rope, then Lisa lifted the little girl and put her in the saddle, securing her riding helmet before settling her in. She adjusted the stirrups to their shortest length, which was exactly right for Maxi’s short legs. The look on Maxi’s face was pure joy when the pony began to move forward.