Midnight Mystery: 4 (Winnie the Horse Gentler) (11 page)

“You be careful now!” Pat warned as she dropped us off at the circus entrance. “I’ll be back soon as I can!”

Keeping an eye out for anything suspicious, I strolled the midway with Nickers and Hawk. We passed the lion cages and saw Dinglehopper hanging out with Leopold.

“The short guy is the lion tamer,” I whispered to Hawk. “He can’t talk. The tall, red-haired one is Dinglehopper, the clown who hates Barker.”

“I will help you watch them, Winnie,” Hawk promised.

We found Ramon and Midnight outside the menagerie tent. Ramon talked with Hawk while I examined Midnight hoof to muzzle. “He seems calmer, don’t you think, Ramon?” I stroked Midnight’s neck and blew into his nostrils. His big, brown eyes shut as he rested his chin on my shoulder. I
had
to find out who was trying to hurt this beautiful stallion.

Ramon stabled Midnight and came back to help me work with Nickers. He tried his hand at getting Nickers to bow until I could tell my horse had had enough.

I’d just called it quits when Catman appeared with an armful of hot dogs. He passed them out to us, then started on his own—bun first, dog last.

Before I could take a bite of my hot dog, Nickers nuzzled it. I wasn’t hungry anyway. “Be my guest.”

Nickers took a whiff of the mustard. Her lips curled instantly into what looked like a big horse laugh.

“It seems as if Nickers has learned a new trick,” Hawk observed.

While the rest of them ate, I taught Nickers to “laugh” every time I raised my mustard-dipped pinkie. She’s so smart that she mastered it in 15 minutes.

Two jugglers and the whole trapeze act stopped by to see how Ramon was doing. A few yards away Gabrielle was working with her Lipizzaner, but I could tell she was watching us.

Finally, she stormed past us, left her horse in the tent, and stomped out again.

“Gabrielle!” Ramon called. “Come meet Hawk—”

Gabrielle kept going as if she hadn’t heard Ramon.

“Hawk, I’ll catch you later in the Big Top!” I ran after Gabrielle, ducking behind tents, staying out of sight as I trailed her all the way to the Colonel’s trailer.

She banged on the door. When it opened, she barged in.

I sneaked up, quiet as Catman, and listened at the door.

“It’s not fair!” Gabrielle yelled.

“We’ve been over this a thousand times!” barked the Colonel. “Ramon and Midnight Mystery are my top act!”

“Haven’t you been watching your own circus lately?” she demanded. “They’re not cutting it! They’ll give the circus a bad name. You
know
 my dancing-horse act is exactly what you need! And I can handle the trick act, too!”

Colonel Coolidge sighed. “You really want Ramon’s job, don’t you?”

“What I want is a chance to prove this circus will be better off if you give me the lead horse acts!”

“Well . . .” The Colonel sounded tired, on the verge of giving up. “You just may get your chance if Ramon can’t get his horse under control.”

“Good! I’ll hold you to that!” Gabrielle stormed out the door, shoving it so hard it banged my head.

I watched her goose-step away, and a shiver of fear shot through me. Gabrielle LeBlond wanted Ramon’s job, and she’d do whatever it took to get it!

I kept an eye on Gabrielle until I had to get ready for the show. In the Big Top, Nickers was a bigger hit than ever with her mustard laugh. I’d have given anything to have Dad in the bleachers to see it.

To give Ramon more time between his acts, Colonel Coolidge had bumped the trick-horse act to second slot, behind the lions. I stood guard ringside and could still hear Catman cheering from the stands during the lion act.

The second Leopold finished, three men ran out and rolled the cages out of the ring while the Colonel announced, “Ramon and the Magnificent Midnight Mystery!”

The black stallion galloped twice around the ring before heading to the center. Gabrielle wasn’t in the Big Top, and I’d started to relax when Midnight squealed and skidded to a stop. Ramon tried to get him to go, but the stallion reared. Somehow Ramon got him down and pulled him in a circle before aiming for the center again. Midnight balked, legs stiff.

I wanted to run out and help, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Midnight’s eyes shone with fear, too much fear for me to talk him out of it.

The Colonel waved his top hat, signaling the band to play. Into the mike, he announced, “While Midnight Mystery makes up his mind, will you cast your gaze on the far ring, where the Amazing Ming Family will juggle like you’ve never seen before!”

The Mings scrambled for props and raced out to do their act.

I ran to the center ring as Ramon slid off Midnight. “Winnie, what’s the matter with this horse? He’s never balked, never refused to do a show!”

Catman appeared. “Funky.” He frowned, then walked to the center of the ring.

I followed him as he went straight to a clump of brown in the sawdust. “Cats,” he muttered.

I knelt down and inspected the dry, brown lump. “Catman, is it—?”

“Old lion dung,” he answered.

Jimmy Dinglehopper and another clown trotted in and began sweeping the ring.

I wheeled around to Ramon. “No wonder Midnight wouldn’t go near here! Horses fear lions more than anything in the world! No horse would go near lion dung!” I turned to Catman. “I smell Gabrielle LeBlond! She knows enough about horses to know this lion dung would wreck Ramon’s act for sure!”

My head buzzed with anger. “That does it! This all stops right now!” I stormed past Ramon and Midnight and out of the Big Top. Gabrielle couldn’t be far away.

I found her behind the tent, sitting on her Lipizzaner and doing the exact same bow Ramon did to finish his act.

“Gabrielle!” I shouted, charging at her. “I know it was you! You’d do anything to hurt Ramon and Midnight!”

She jumped off her horse and looked ready to attack.

Catman strolled between us. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t need to mess up Ramon’s act! He’s doing that on his own!” Gabrielle snapped. “I have my own act! And a champion horse that’s wasted here!
And
I
can ride bareback, without half the trappings Ramon needs! Do you see any fancy saddles on my horse? Russian and American trick riders need saddles. Not me! No props. Nothing but this!” She pointed to a white strap that circled her horse’s belly like a wide belt. “All I use is this surcingle!” She unbuckled it and threw it at us. Catman caught it. It looked like a leather cinch with handles.

“Sooner or later the Colonel will come to his senses and make me the star of this show! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a performance!” Gabrielle grabbed the surcingle out of Catman’s hands and stormed off.

Hawk, Catman, and I sat on the front row for the LeBlonds’ act.

“Gabrielle’s stallion is beautiful and well trained,” Hawk said, as the Lipizzaner pranced in step with the elephant and camel. “Are you sure she is behind all the circus problems?”

“Yes!” I snapped. Hawk was as bad as Catman and Ramon.

Near the end of the act Mrs. LeBlond exited first, leaving Gabrielle on her horse and Mr. LeBlond on the elephant. As usual, the Lipizzaner reared, and Gabrielle waved good-bye so the elephant could gather final applause.

The Lipizzaner pawed the air. I heard a snap. And Gabrielle fell sideways off her horse.

The crowd gasped. Her mother screamed.

Catman and I started out to the ring, where Gabrielle lay in the dust. I saw the surcingle lying on the ground beside her.

Before we reached her, Gabrielle did a somersault, bounded to her feet, and leaped onto her horse bareback. She moved so swiftly, it almost looked like part of her act. I wondered if I could have pulled it off. I found myself clapping as loud as everybody else in the audience.

While Gabrielle circled the Big Top on her horse, Catman strode over and picked up the surcingle. He stared at it as he walked back and showed it to me. The strap was still buckled, but the belt had broken in two.

“Freaky.” Catman pointed to the ends of the broken leather. It was a straight, smooth cut. Even though the whole belt looked cracked and worn, the break was clean and sharp.

“Somebody cut it, Catman!” I cried. “It wasn’t an accident!” I thought about all the rotten things I’d said to Gabrielle. How could I have been so wrong? Somebody was trying to hurt her too.

Catman didn’t say anything. I stared at him, amazed that his expression hadn’t changed one bit. Didn’t he get it? “Catman, don’t you see what this means? Somebody cut Gabrielle’s surcingle on purpose! There’s a madman loose around here! And nobody’s going to be safe until we find out who it is!”

Hawk and Catman convinced me to sit back down in the bleachers until the show was over. I wanted to do something, to investigate. As I stared blankly at the trapeze act, I tried to get my brain to pull up photos of things I’d observed around the circus over the past few days.

But it didn’t work. It never does when I want it to. What good is a photographic memory if you can’t choose the memories?

When Ramon rode out for the cossack act, I felt like a horse with colic. I thought I’d hurl. The act went okay, but it lacked energy. It wasn’t Midnight’s fault. This time it was Ramon’s. He kept looking over his shoulder, as if waiting for something awful to happen.

Who could blame him?

I kept going over every circus accident, trying to come up with clues that shouldn’t have led me to Gabrielle. The burr under Midnight’s saddle. The flash of light on his face. The wrong feed in his bin. The lion dung. Now Gabrielle’s broken surcingle.

It wasn’t until Barker waved up at us that I felt my brain kick in.
Barker. Clown. Dinglehopper!
 I’d seen something that wasn’t right. What was it? I tried to remember. I pictured Hawk and me strolling the midway with Nickers. We saw Gabrielle as the Snake Lady, Ramon and Midnight. And . . .

Then I remembered. The lion cages! We’d seen Dinglehopper and Leopold doing something at the cages! But what? Not talking! That was for sure! Catman himself had told me Leopold didn’t talk.

“I know who’s behind everything!” I whispered, already on the move out of the bleachers.

Hawk followed me. “Winnie, who? Not Gabrielle.”

I turned and frowned. She had to rub it in. “Of course not.”

“Is it the clown then? Your other suspect?” she asked.

I didn’t answer. I hadn’t actually decided if Dinglehopper or Leopold was the real criminal. Maybe both of them! Ramon had followed the lion act. Leopold could easily have managed to leave the lion dung for Midnight to find. And Dinglehopper had come along afterward to sweep up the evidence.

We found the lion tamer back by the cages. “Hey, Leopold.” I forced myself to swallow my famous temper. “I was wondering, what do you think would happen if, say, some lion dung was left in the arena? Like maybe just before a horse act?” If I could come at him sideways, he might give something away.

“Winnie?” Hawk whispered. She stood at my elbow, towering over both Leopold and me. “You said he cannot talk.”

I frowned at Leopold. I knew he understood. Catman hadn’t said anything about the lion tamer’s hearing. But he looked bored with the whole thing, especially with me.