Horse Thief (10 page)

“Uh, yeah,” she answered, smiling brightly. “He’s acting really goopy today. I think something’s gotten into him, and I have to say I like it!” Carole and Lisa laughed.

To divert their attention, Stevie returned to the subject of Mo. She looked around to make sure no one was listening, then said, “Can you believe what Mo told us at lunchtime? What a bunch of losers at Mendenhall! I’m sure one of them is our thief.”

Lisa agreed. “It certainly reinforces the stuff we already know about Celeste, Howard, and Kurt,” she said.

“And it shows that Denise is probably not the thief,” Carole said hopefully.

“Listen,” Stevie said, “I’ve been thinking. Even if Celeste and Howard didn’t steal the money, we should still try to do something about their awful behavior.”

“But how?” Carole asked. “Mendenhall’s pretty far away—what could we do? Besides, it’s not really any of our business, and, moreover, Mo doesn’t seem to want to tell anyone in authority—not Max, not the owner of Mendenhall. I don’t know why. He seems like a nice guy. We’ve all seen him wishing the Mendenhall riders luck before they compete, and he really seems to mean it.”

“Remember what Mo told us about Celeste being his favorite? If that’s true, I can see how he wouldn’t listen to Mo,” said Lisa.

Stevie shook her head impatiently. “Well, if Mo won’t speak up, why can’t we? I’m not shy. Maybe it will mean
more coming from outsiders, since we have nothing to gain by telling the truth about Celeste and Howard. More importantly, we have to stop Celeste and Howard from harming any more riders. If there’s danger to a horse or rider involved, we should be involved, too, don’t you think?”

Even Carole was forced to see the logic in that. She loved horses and riding so much, she would do anything to keep them from being harmed.

“Well, we can’t solve all the problems in one day,” said Lisa sensibly. “Let’s just concentrate on the theft, and then later we’ll figure out what to do about Celeste and Howard.”

“Always the voice of reason,” Stevie said, grinning at her.

“Speaking of reason,” said Carole, glancing at her watch, “we’ve lost track of time. We’re on in a few minutes, Lisa!”

“Oops,” said Lisa, turning to go get Prancer. She and Carole rushed to mount up and get to the show ring.

Stevie was late on the list for the third round, so she had almost an hour to wait. Normally she would feel frustrated at having to wait so long to compete in dressage, but today was different. She had work to do!

A
FEW MINUTES
later, Stevie poked her head into the locker room. Almost everyone else was either competing
or waiting to compete. The place was strangely silent. She had seen a rider emerge about a minute before, and then no one else came out.

“Yoo-hoo,” she called tentatively. “Anyone in here?” She stepped into the room. Quickly she found Veronica’s cubby and reached down and opened it. She started feeling around inside.

Stevie knew that if Max caught her snooping in Veronica’s cubby, she would be in big trouble no matter what reason she came up with. But she couldn’t help herself. She wanted so badly to prove that Veronica was the thief. She kept looking quickly over her shoulder, ears tuned for anyone behind her. Every noise—the creaking of the stable floor as she bent down, the far-off rustling of the few horses and ponies left in the stable—seemed especially magnified to her.

Her search, however, turned up nothing. Veronica’s cubby contained exactly what Stevie should have expected: a couple of lipsticks, a hairbrush, a nail file, and an extra pair of riding gloves. Everything looked ordinary—or, rather, ordinary in Veronica terms, since her gloves looked incredibly expensive and everything else was beauty-related. But there was no money anywhere.

Then Stevie slipped out to examine Danny’s stall. The gray horse wasn’t there, since Veronica was in the show ring. Once again, Stevie found nothing unexpected.

Where could she be hiding the money
? Stevie thought. She knew that Veronica couldn’t possibly carry the money around with her. Her riding jacket and breeches were too form-fitting to hide a bulging envelope of bills. And the money from the CARL jar would weigh at least ten pounds, Stevie thought.

Taking a deep breath, Stevie decided to return to the scene of the crime—Max’s office. She walked softly through the tack room, then opened the door to the office as quietly as she could and peeked in. No one was around.

She stepped in and began searching for clues. Her heart was pounding. She could feel it beating against her throat. “That’s silly, you know your heart is farther down,” she told herself, willing herself to calm down. She knew that if Max caught her snooping around in his office, she’d be history.

She carefully reached up and felt along the shelf where the money had been kept. Nothing. Then she examined the table under which she had found the money. Just the same old catalogs on top, and nothing on the floor but the usual dust.

Stevie sighed in frustration. Wanting to take one last look at the shelf, she stretched up on her tiptoes. Then she noticed something. A tiny scrap of something was caught on a corner of a book, near the spot where the
money had been. What was it? It looked like dark fabric …

Stevie heard someone coming. She grabbed the scrap quickly and started to scurry out. But she was too late. Denise burst into the office and stopped short when she saw Stevie.

“Oh, hi, Stevie,” she said, glancing around. She still looked pale and nervous, and her eyes darted in a jittery way.

Stevie was feeling jittery herself from her clandestine snooping. “Hi, Denise,” she answered nervously.

Denise looked around the office again. She looked as if she wanted to say something but was too uncomfortable to do it.

Uh-oh
, Stevie thought in despair.
She’s about to ask me what I was doing in here.… She’s going to find out I was spying
.… She could already see the potential scenario: Max finding out that she was a snoop and then banishing her and Belle from Pine Hollow forever.

“Uh, Stevie, can I have some privacy?” Denise asked hesitantly. “I really need to make a phone …”

Before Denise could finish her sentence, Stevie waved good-bye and shot out the door.

I
T TOOK A
good three minutes for Stevie’s heart to stop thumping. While she waited it occurred to her that perhaps
she wasn’t cut out for a life of sneaking and snooping. Her pounding heart would set off any decent burglar alarm! Finally, feeling calmer, she took a deep breath and wandered through the indoor ring, patting some of the horses as she passed them. That was when she spotted Celeste walking ahead of her. There was something about the way she was walking and casting furtive glances around her that made Stevie highly suspicious. Celeste looked guiltier than Stevie had felt in Max’s office!

Ducking behind one of the horses, Stevie waited until Celeste was gone and then checked out the indoor ring. Except for a few riders and horses, it was empty. Gold Rush and Ghost were standing tethered in a corner.

Acting on a hunch, Stevie quickly checked over Ghost. Her suspicions were soon confirmed: His right stirrup iron was dangling loosely. Someone had cut partway through the strap. It was the sort of thing no one would notice until Howard got on the horse and started to ride. The stress of riding would probably make the stirrup fall off, right in the middle of a dressage maneuver.

Stevie was furious. What a sneak Celeste was! She would even stoop to sabotage the tack of her devoted admirer!

“Celeste has got to be the thief,” Stevie told herself. “And I’m going to prove it!” She realized, reluctantly, that she was coming to the conclusion that Veronica had
nothing to do with the theft. None of the evidence pointed her way, in spite of her threats to Phil for teasing her and her blatantly ridiculous accusation.

Stevie went back to the locker room. She knew that while Veronica kept beauty supplies in her cubby, Lisa, who was a straight-A student, often kept school supplies in hers. Stevie searched through Lisa’s cubby—she knew that Lisa wouldn’t mind in this instance—and found a piece of paper, a pencil, and some tape. She wrote an anonymous note to Howard telling him to check his right stirrup iron before he rode Ghost again. Then she taped it to his saddle where he would be sure to see it.

Stevie hurried off to find Carole and Lisa and tell them what she had seen. On her way out of the indoor ring, she encountered Mo coming in.

“Hey!” said Mo, startled. “What’s the hurry? I’ve been looking for you and your friends—I’ve got to tell you something.”

“Sorry,” Stevie said breathlessly. “I’ve got to find Carole and Lisa. I forgot to … uh … lend Carole my dressage riding whip.”

“Wait, before you go,” pleaded Mo, “I saw something you should know about. I’m probably all wrong—it doesn’t make any sense because she’s so nice and all—but that girl, Denise … she was in an empty stall a few minutes ago. Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but … well, she was counting out a fistful of money!”

S
TEVIE STARED AT
Mo in horror. Was it possible? Could Denise be the thief? Maybe there was some other explanation for what Mo had seen.

“Oh,” Stevie said, too stunned to respond.
Denise
? “See you later.” Then she abruptly left. Now she really couldn’t wait to find Carole and Lisa.

She caught up with them near the show ring, standing by Prancer and Starlight. They had just finished competing in the third round of the rally, which had required a serpentine at canter, flying changes, and half-passes at trots.

“I think I was too slow on the flying change,” Lisa was saying.

“No, you did great,” Carole said. “I really think you’ll
get a ribbon in this round.” Then she saw Stevie coming up to them, and from the look on Stevie’s face, she knew that the recap of the rally was temporarily stalled.

“Boy, have I got news,” Stevie announced. She led them into the stable and they huddled in an empty stall, first checking to see that no one was around. Stevie quickly described what she was sure Celeste had done in the indoor ring to Howard’s horse, and then, more reluctantly, she told them what Mo had said about Denise. Carole and Lisa were equally horrified.

“Mo must be mistaken,” Lisa declared.

Just then Veronica walked by and caught sight of the three girls in the stall. “What is this, a meeting of the Three Stooges?”

“Not now, Veronica,” Stevie said warningly. She was too upset about the recent events to get dragged into Veronica’s web.

“And where’s your silly boyfriend, Phil Marsten?” continued Veronica, sneering at Stevie. “I hope he decided to do the smart thing and drop out of the rally!” She walked off.

The three girls looked at each other. Veronica’s tone had been unmistakably threatening. They were all thinking the same thing: Maybe they shouldn’t eliminate Veronica as a suspect quite so fast. “She’s really angry at Phil,” said Stevie, fretting. “Maybe she’s still trying to frame him!”

“I don’t know,” said Lisa. “I’m starting to think, from what you told us, Stevie, that Celeste is the most likely suspect. She won’t stop at anything to win this rally. Why would a little thing like stealing bother her if it could destroy the competition?”

“There are just too many suspects,” Stevie groaned. “Everyone’s starting to look guilty!” Then she stopped for a second, remembering Phil’s expensive gift to her. “Well, everyone except us and Phil,” she finished. Even though she had misgivings about Phil, she didn’t want Carole and Lisa to know about them yet. It was unlike Stevie to hide anything from her two best friends, but she just couldn’t tell them about Phil and his sudden wealth. Somehow she felt that telling them about her suspicions might make them more … true.

“Let’s try to figure out what Mo saw first,” suggested Carole. “Maybe we can just talk to Denise and tell her what’s going on.”

Lisa looked thoughtful. “Denise is an incredibly honest person,” she said slowly. “If we confront her about what Mo saw, and we’re not mean about it, maybe we can convince her to confess and give the money back.”

“And Max really likes Denise, so maybe he’ll forgive her,” added Stevie.

The three girls searched the stable. Then Stevie remembered that she had last seen Denise in Max’s office.
They went there immediately. The door to the office was still closed, and they could hear Denise talking on the phone. By pressing their ears to the door, the girls could just make out what she was saying. Even though they felt guilty about eavesdropping, they were too curious to leave. Besides, maybe Denise would provide the answer herself and save them from accusing her.

“Really?” Denise was saying excitedly. “That’s wonderful!”

Carole raised her eyebrows questioningly at Lisa and Stevie. They shrugged in response, equally puzzled.

“Expenses plus tuition! That’s fabulous! Thank you so much! Yes, I’ll fill out the paperwork as soon as I get it! Thank you, thank you!”

A second later, Denise flung open the door and Stevie almost fell into the office, she had been listening so hard. But Denise didn’t seem the least bit surprised to see the three girls hanging on the door frame. She broke into an enormous grin. “Carole, Lisa, Stevie!” she exclaimed. “I’ve got wonderful news!”