Horse Trouble (3 page)

“No,” Lisa said finally. “She really believed the thing was a fake, and she would never be interested in something that wasn’t real. Veronica is not the culprit. Trouble is, I don’t know who is. I guess that means it’s me.” Without another word, she split off from Carole and Stevie and headed for her house.

“See you tomorrow,” Stevie called after her, trying to sound cheerful. Lisa just grunted in response.

“Poor Lisa,” Stevie said. “She just feels awful. I guess I do, too.”

“I’m getting a feeling,” Stevie said.

“What kind of feeling?” Carole asked.

“I’m getting a feeling that our friend needs our help,” Stevie said.

“Yes, it’s definitely a Saddle Club project,” Carole agreed. “All we have to do is figure out what happened to the pin, find it, and get it back to Mrs. Reg before she notices that it’s gone.”

“I have a new motto for The Saddle Club,” Stevie
said. “ ‘The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer.’ ”

One of the few things Stevie’s friends loved most about her was her ability to find something to laugh about in the darkest moments.

“But how
much
longer?” Carole asked. This time she couldn’t laugh.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Lisa was feeling no better about the awful situation than she had the night before.

“Why hasn’t Mrs. Reg called?” Lisa asked herself. She stood in front of the mirror in her bathroom, combing her hair and getting ready for the disaster that this day was sure to be. She’d been in front of the mirror, practicing explanations for more than half an hour. None of them seemed adequate, even when paired with her most sincere apologies. And every time she closed her eyes, she saw an image of the pin, gold glinting in the sun, diamond eye sparkling brightly. Now it was gone.

Then she answered her own question. The reason Mrs. Reg hadn’t called was that she trusted Lisa. She knew Lisa would never do anything careless with her valuable pin, and she knew that whatever reason Lisa had for not putting it in her drawer last night, as she’d
promised, was a good one, and Lisa would be there with the pin in the morning.

Only she wouldn’t be. Mrs. Reg was wrong this time. Lisa was not trustworthy. She’d gotten so interested in playing a joke on Veronica and then on chasing a cat and a mouse that she’d forgotten all about a golden horse. She didn’t deserve Mrs. Reg’s trust, and she knew she would never have it again.

She met Stevie and Carole outside Pine Hollow. Without a word, the three girls entered together and walked straight to Mrs. Reg’s office. If they had to face the music, they wanted to get it over with and they wanted to do it together.

Mrs. Reg’s office was still dark. The desk was still as neat as a pin. There was nobody there.

“What are you looking for?” Max asked. There was a slight edge to his voice.

“Where’s Mrs. Reg?” Lisa asked.

“She’s gone for the week,” he said. “She had to go visit a sick friend who called her yesterday afternoon. She won’t be back until Friday, and there are a zillion and one things she left me to do. This is a very busy week—I’m training a new horse for one of my show riders who expects a perfect mount by Friday—and now I have to manage the stable as well. Never mind
that there’s a new class beginning and I don’t know what else. Mother said something about a list of things that have to get done. I don’t know how I’ll ever—”

The phone rang. Max picked it up. He barely said a word, but as soon as he hung up, he dashed back out the door.

“This is our chance, girls,” Stevie said.

“Chance?” Lisa echoed. “What do you mean? You think this gives us a four-day head start on running out of the country?”

“No,” Stevie said. “It gives us a four-day head start on finishing what we started last night. We’re going to run Pine Hollow for Max this week while Mrs. Reg is gone. Don’t you see? It’s going to be the perfect opportunity for the three of us to be everywhere, look everywhere, do everything. If that pin is here, anywhere, we’re going to find it.”

“And if we don’t?” Carole asked.

Stevie shrugged. “Well, then, we will have spent the week earning dozens and dozens of brownie points. How could Max and Mrs. Reg want to kill us when we’re indispensable?”

Lisa and Carole considered the situation. Stevie’s suggestion had some merit. It was also a whole lot better than the explanations and apologies that Lisa had
been practicing, and it had the benefit of possibly accomplishing what appeared to be the impossible—finding the pin.

“It’s worth trying,” Lisa said.

Carole thought so, too. She thought about how hard the week would be as they tried to keep up a full schedule of classes and chores, plus manage the stable
and
find the pin. They would certainly be exhausted by the time Friday rolled around. She had an idea.

“Then, after it’s all over” (and we’ve been banished from Pine Hollow for life, she thought, but did not say), “why don’t you plan to come to my house on Friday for a dinner and a sleepover? I promised Dad I’d cook for him, and I want to try a new recipe I saw for vegetable lasagna—”

“I’ll make Rice Krispie treats,” Stevie suggested. It was one thing she was really good at cooking.

“I think we should plan for crow on the menu,” Lisa said glumly.

“No way,” Stevie said. “I think Carole’s right. We should be looking on the bright side of things. We’re going to do a wonderful job of managing the stable
and
we’re going to find the pin.”

“First thing is convincing Max to let us do Mrs. Reg’s job,” Lisa said.

Lisa and Carole both looked at Stevie. She had a lot of experience trying to convince Max of things. In this case they all thought it would be easy.

“Oh, Ma-ax!” she called out as he dashed by. “I’ve got some good news for you!”

O
NCE CLASSES WERE
over and their horses were groomed and fed, The Saddle Club was ready to begin the real work of the day—filling in for Mrs. Reg.

Stevie was the first one to change into street clothes, and so she was the first to arrive at Mrs. Reg’s office. By the time Carole and Lisa got there, just a few seconds later, their friend had already ensconced herself in Mrs. Reg’s chair and had it tilted back. Her feet were propped up on the desk.

“It’s a good thing she doesn’t have a cigar,” Lisa teased. “She’d be trying to pretend she was some sort of mogul!”

“Ah, but I have a riding crop!” Stevie reminded her,
slapping it sharply against her thigh. “That’s almost as good—maybe even better.”

“Let’s forget the status symbols and get to work,” Carole said. “I think there’s a lot to do.”

Stevie removed her feet from Mrs. Reg’s desk and set the chair back upright. She leaned forward and pulled the single piece of paper on the desk toward her.

“A list,” she announced. “Just like Max said.”

“And what does it say?” Carole asked.

“What have we gotten ourselves in for?” Lisa added.

Stevie crinkled her forehead thoughtfully.

“ ‘Painting, front of stable,’ ” she read.

The girls were quiet.

“That’s a big job,” Carole said.

“But it’s just the
front
,” Stevie said. “That’s the side by the driveway. That’s not big.”

An image of the horse pin went through Lisa’s mind. It made her realize that they just
had
to do Mrs. Reg’s job, no matter how tough it might be. “You’re right,” she said to Stevie. “It’s not big. No problem. We can get some ladders—”

Carole was swept up by their enthusiasm. “I remember when they painted the whole thing a couple of years ago. The leftover paint is stored in the utility
shed by the grain shed. I’m sure there’s enough left there to just do the front.”

“Tomorrow,” Stevie said. “We can do it after class.”

“Tomorrow,” they agreed. It didn’t seem so hard after all.

“What’s next on the list?” Lisa asked. “Redo the roof?”

“No, the next thing is much easier. It says there’s going to be a new class of four beginners on Wednesday at eight o’clock. It says something here about a team and Red’s going to do the class. They’re also scheduled for an afternoon trail ride. Busy little kids, huh?” Stevie remarked.

“It’s always a good idea to have a class start out thinking of themselves as a team,” Carole said. “They work together, they learn together. I’ll take care of getting the ponies ready for them tomorrow morning,” she volunteered. “Dad already said he was going to have to drop me off early, so I’ll be here by seven-thirty at the latest. I can saddle up four ponies first thing tomorrow.”

“Check!” Stevie said. “See, this really is easy. Next says ‘Buy food for Friday.’ ”

“I noticed that we were running low on grain when we checked the bales of hay yesterday,” Lisa said.
“Well, not really low, but I suppose Mrs. Reg is just being careful.”

Stevie scratched her head. The easiest way to solve this problem would be to ask Max what to order and where to order it from. However, their whole point in taking on these jobs was to keep Max from having to think about these things.
They
were being the stable managers, not he. She scratched again, harder.

“I’ve got it,” she said. “Whenever anybody delivers anything, there are papers. Somewhere around here Mrs. Reg must have an invoice or something from the last delivery. I’ll just call the same place and make the same order. If the stuff was okay the last time, it’s going to be fine this time, too. The hardest part may be getting it here by Friday.”

Carole looked proudly at her friend Stevie. It was nice that she could figure out how to cope with something that seemed so tricky. “Nice thinking,” she said, and she meant it.

“So what’s next on the list?” Lisa asked. She was beginning to get the feeling it was her turn to volunteer to solve a tricky problem.

“Wow,” Stevie said, looking up from the list. “It looks like we’ve got a VIP coming to Pine Hollow.”

“Who’s that?” Lisa asked. This could be interesting.

“The French ambassador
himself
! It says here, ‘Thursday, 11, Am. French. One-hour trail ride.’ ”

“That seems odd,” Carole said. “I didn’t know we had an ambassador in town.”

“What’s so odd about it?” Lisa challenged. “Remember when the Brazilian ambassador was here?”

Lisa had a point. Pine Hollow was located in Willow Creek, Virginia, just twenty miles from Washington, D.C. There were a lot of people who lived in town and worked in Washington. Although most of the people involved in government work were Americans, many of them did come from other countries and work in embassies and other offices like international cultural organizations. The Brazilian ambassador and his family had lived right in Willow Creek. The girls also remembered a French diplomat’s daughter who had ridden at Pine Hollow for a brief time. Her name was Estelle. Lisa had befriended her and invited her to join The Saddle Club before she’d realized that Estelle was a liar. Lisa had always felt bad about what had happened. This seemed to her to be an opportunity to make it up to her friends.

“I’ll take care of that,” she said. “I’m getting an A in French—”

“So what else is new?” Stevie teased.

Lisa blushed and then defended herself. “Well, this time it looks like it may do me some good. Anyway, I need some practice with my French. I’ll go for a trail ride with the French ambassador.”

“Merci beaucoup,”
Stevie said graciously. Then she turned to Carole. “And since Lisa is solving that problem, you get to cope with the fact that somebody named Jarvis is coming Thursday at one
P
.
M
. and wants his ‘favorite horse.’ That’s what Mrs. Reg wrote.”

“The problem with that is, Mrs. Reg always remembers who wants what horse. She assigns horses to the riders for every class,” Carole said. “Max did that today, but I think we should do it starting tomorrow. I don’t mind taking on that job. But I have to remember to ask Max who Mr. Jarvis’s favorite horse is.”

“Okay, and it makes sense for you to take on the horse assignments,” Stevie said, nodding agreement. “You know the horses and the riders the best. It’s a deal, and that’s the last of the list.”

“Piece of cake—uh,
gâteau
,” Lisa said, quickly translating “cake” into French.

Once the jobs had been assigned, it seemed to be time to begin the other part of their job as stable managers—finding Mrs. Reg’s pin.

“The only place we searched yesterday was the
locker area,” Carole said. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I think it’s possible one of the cats found the pin where Veronica threw it and may have begun playing with it. You know how they are, right?”

The girls did know. They’d often seen the cats at the stable begin playing with something that wasn’t a mouse. A cat could take almost anything—a pencil, marble, piece of straw—and bat it all over the place.

“The tack room!” Lisa said.

“That place is a mess!” Stevie said.

“Exactly,” Carole said.

In the utility closet they found two brooms and a mop, just what they would need to probe around on the dark and shadowy floor of the tack room, where they hoped they’d find Mrs. Reg’s pin. Lisa organized them. She got Carole and Stevie to begin in opposite corners, on their hands and knees, examining and sweeping every single inch of the floor as they moved toward one another. It wasn’t an easy job. The tack room not only had tack hanging from every inch of wall all the way around it, it also had racks and hooks lined up in the center of the room to house saddles and bridles. There were also the upper shelves, where the specialized saddles were kept, along with the tack for the wagons and the sleigh. Lisa had decided they could omit the shelves and the loft because it was unlikely
that a cat would carry the pin that high. After all, real gold was heavy, certainly heavier than a mouse. It might be fun to bat around the floor, but it would be downright dangerous for a cat to carry it up a ladder in his mouth.