Phantom Horse (9 page)

S
TEVIE
SPENT
THE
evening thinking just as hard as Carole, but on a completely different subject: her plan to catch the Pine Hollow Pilferer. After the disappearance of Adam’s pen, she was once more convinced that Shannon was the thief, and now she knew how she was going to prove it. Finding some of the equipment would be a bit of a challenge. Fortunately she already knew exactly where to get the main prop she would need. She was quiet during dinner, going over the details of her plan in her head to make sure everything would work.

After a while her brother Chad noticed Stevie’s uncharacteristic silence.

“What’s the matter, Stevie?” he asked. “Horse got your tongue?” He let out a poor but loud imitation of a neigh, bringing annoyed frowns from both his parents.

Stevie rolled her eyes. “That’s so funny I forgot to laugh.”

“I know what her problem is,” volunteered Stevie’s twin brother, Alex. “Phil’s bar mitzvah is only a few days away. Stevie’s probably wondering how many baths she’ll have to
take between now and then to get the smell of manure out of her hair.”

Chad, Alex, and their youngest brother, Michael, burst into laughter.

“Boys—” Mrs. Lake began.

Stevie waved her hand. “Never mind, Mom,” she interrupted. “Let them have their little jokes if they want. It doesn’t bother me.”

Mr. and Mrs. Lake exchanged surprised glances.

“That’s very mature of you, Stevie,” Mr. Lake commented.

Stevie just shrugged and lapsed into silence again. She had more important things to think about than her stupid brothers if she wanted to get Phil’s yarmulke back for him.

It was Stevie’s turn to clear the table, and after quickly stacking the dishes in a precarious pile, carrying them into the kitchen, and dumping them, unrinsed, into the dishwasher, she hurried upstairs to make a phone call.

“Phil?” she said when his familiar voice answered. “Listen. I wanted to tell you my latest brilliant plan.”

“Hello to you, too, Stevie,” Phil teased.

“Never mind all that,” Stevie said impatiently. “This is important. I think I can get your yarmulke back in time for the bar mitzvah. I have a foolproof plan.”

“Great,” Phil said. “Speaking of the bar mitzvah, I’ve been meaning to ask you if your parents need directions to get to the synagogue.”

“No, I’m sure they know where it is,” Stevie said. “But listen, about this plan—”

“You know, I can’t believe Saturday is almost here,” Phil said dreamily. Stevie had the funniest feeling he wasn’t listening to a word she was saying. “It seems like just yesterday I started planning for it.”

Stevie rolled her eyes. What was Phil talking about? Saturday was still days away, and it seemed like even longer to her. She couldn’t wait to put her plan into action. She just wished Phil seemed more interested in hearing about it. After all, it was mostly for his benefit. “Okay,” she said. “But don’t you want to hear about how I’m going to get your yarmulke back for you?”

“How about later, okay?” Phil said. “Actually, I’ve got to get off the phone. My aunt and uncle are flying in from Israel late tonight and I’m supposed to help get the guest room ready for them. But that reminds me. I was going to call you and see if you can come for dinner on Thursday and meet them.”

Stevie brightened immediately. “Sounds great,” she said. “I’m sure my parents will let me. I’ll check with them and call you back tomorrow, okay?”

“Good,” Phil said. “I think it will be fun. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Stevie said good-bye and hung up the phone, feeling happier. She was certain Phil would be more eager to discuss her plan in person on Thursday. Maybe he wanted his whole
family to hear how much she was helping him, and that was why he hadn’t wanted to talk about it now. She stood up and headed downstairs to find her parents.

Her mother heard her and came to the kitchen doorway, hands on her hips. “Come here a minute, Stevie,” she said. “I need to explain something to you.” She led Stevie to the dishwasher, which was standing open just as Stevie had left it. Mrs. Lake pointed inside. “The concept of the dishwasher is not to wash the leftover food. It’s to wash the dishes. Got it?”

“Got it,” Stevie replied humbly. Without waiting for her mother’s command, she began unloading the caked and coated dishes and taking them to the sink to rinse. As much as she hated this chore, she wasn’t going to complain about it tonight. Between the dinner at Phil’s on Thursday night and the stable sleepover on Friday, the last thing she wanted to risk right now was a grounding.

B
Y
T
HURSDAY
AFTERNOON
Carole was so exhausted from lack of sleep that she felt as though she were sleepwalking through the day. Her father was still going into his office early every morning and returning late every evening, looking almost as tired as Carole felt. He hadn’t noticed that anything was wrong, and she didn’t want to bother him, even though she’d had the phantom horse dream every night. She felt like bursting into tears every time she so much as thought about Starlight, although she hadn’t seen him at all on Wednesday because of an after-school meeting. That meant she hadn’t seen her friends at all, either, so she still hadn’t told them about her problem. But she had decided to talk to somebody about it. Stevie and Lisa hadn’t
paid much attention the last time she’d told them about her dreams, but this time she would make them understand how frightened and confused she was. Then they would be sure to come up with a way to help her. The Saddle Club had never let her down before.

When she arrived at Pine Hollow after school, Carole almost collided with Stevie, who was racing out of the locker room as Carole was walking in.

“Whoa!” Stevie exclaimed, pulling up short just in time. “Sorry about that. Good thing it was you coming in and not Max.” All the riders knew that one of Max’s strictest rules was no running in the stable.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Carole said. “Where’s Lisa?”

“She’s at a ballet lesson, I think,” Stevie said. “Or is it a flute lesson? I can’t remember.” Lisa’s mother wanted her daughter to be well-rounded, which meant she made her take all sorts of lessons and classes after school. Stevie glanced at her watch. “Uh-oh, I’d better get going if I don’t want to be late. See you later.”

“What? Wait,” Carole said. “Where are you going? I was hoping I could talk to you about something …”

“Can it wait until tomorrow’s sleepover?” Stevie asked, glancing at her watch again. “Tonight’s my dinner, remember?”

“Dinner?” Carole repeated blankly.

Stevie looked slightly annoyed. “At Phil’s house,” she said. “I told you all about it on the phone Tuesday night.”

“Oh, right,” Carole said. She vaguely remembered the conversation. Stevie had made a three-way call to her and Lisa to tell them about the dinner invitation, but Carole had been too tired to pay much attention.

“Anyway, I really have to run now,” Stevie said. “I still have to change before my mom drives me over, and I don’t want to be late. I mean, how would it look if the guests who came all the way from Israel are there on time and the one who’s just coming from ten miles down the road keeps everyone waiting?” Without waiting for a reply, she gave Carole a little wave and dashed away.

Carole sighed and walked to her cubby to get her riding boots. As she pulled them out, they dislodged a pair of sunglasses, which clattered to the floor. As Carole bent to pick them up, she recognized them as her father’s favorite pair. She had borrowed them from him a couple of weeks before and must have forgotten to return them. Setting the sunglasses on the bench so that she’d remember to take them home, she began pulling on her boots, already dreading the afternoon ahead.

F
EELING
COWARDLY
, C
AROLE
decided she would work Starlight on the longe line that day instead of riding him. She told herself he was overdue for a review session of longeing over cavalletti. Horses needed a lot of repetition of every lesson if they were to learn it well, and Starlight was still relatively
young. But in her heart she knew that was only an excuse because she didn’t want to ride him.

Still, she felt a little better about her decision when she realized it wouldn’t do Starlight one bit of good to ride him when she was this upset. There was no sense communicating any more of her tension to her horse than was absolutely necessary.

But the plan didn’t work out as well as Carole had hoped. Even though she wasn’t on his back, Starlight obviously sensed that something was wrong, and it affected his performance. He seemed confused about the simplest commands, acted restless and skittish, and generally didn’t perform at his usual calm, competent level. Carole knew it was her fault for working with him when she was so tired and upset, but Starlight’s erratic behavior certainly wasn’t helping her mood. She finally gave up and led him inside, glad that nobody had been around to see their embarrassing performance, except for Troy’s old dog. Princess had been lounging near the stable entrance for the past half hour.

After Carole had untacked and groomed Starlight and left him resting comfortably in his stall, she wandered to the locker room to collect her things. She pulled her schoolbag out of her cubby and looked around for the sunglasses. But they weren’t where she’d left them.

Frowning, she bent down to look under the bench. The sunglasses weren’t there, either.

“It figures,” she muttered to herself. “The way this week is going, I’m not surprised I can’t even keep track of a pair of sunglasses.” Still, she
knew
she’d left them on the bench. Was it possible that the Pine Hollow Pilferer had struck again? If so, it seemed Stevie’s theory was wrong. Shannon Brice hadn’t been anywhere near Pine Hollow that day. Carole made a mental note to mention the disappearing sunglasses to her friends the next time she spoke to them. She packed up the rest of her things and got ready to go.

As she walked past Mrs. Reg’s open office door, Carole glanced inside and gave the woman a listless wave. Mrs. Reg looked up, frowned, then called her inside.

“Carole, you don’t look well,” she said without preamble. “What’s the matter?”

Suddenly the long days and longer nights of the past week were too much for Carole. She couldn’t hold back any longer. She collapsed into the creaky old guest chair in front of Mrs. Reg’s desk and poured out the whole story.

Mrs. Reg listened silently. When Carole had finished, the older woman nodded slowly.

“That reminds me of a story,” she said.

Carole got ready to listen. She knew that Mrs. Reg’s stories often contained helpful advice, although it could sometimes be difficult to figure out exactly what it was. But she was desperate, and willing to take help wherever she could find it.

“It has to do with a young fellow who used to ride here
many years ago,” Mrs. Reg began, folding her hands on the desk in front of her. “He was a fine rider, but very, very superstitious.”

Carole smiled a little at that. She knew that most horse people tended to seem a little superstitious to non-horse people. The lucky horseshoe was just one example of the many old stable superstitions at Pine Hollow.

Mrs. Reg noticed the smile and chuckled. “There are superstitions and there are superstitions,” she said. “Some are harmless, funny, helpful, or lovely. But others can be stupid, troublesome, or even dangerous. This young man definitely had one of the latter kind.”

“You mean dangerous?” Carole asked.

“No,” Mrs. Reg replied. “I mean stupid. You see, he refused—absolutely refused—to ride any horse that had even a speck of black on it.”

Carole laughed. “But that’s so silly!” she exclaimed.

Mrs. Reg ignored the comment. Carole remembered that Mrs. Reg disliked interruptions and did her best to keep quiet.

“As you can imagine,” Mrs. Reg went on, “the young man’s choices were pretty limited when it came to which horses he could ride. Obviously he couldn’t ride black horses or bays, since their points, manes, and tails are black. And most of the chestnuts we had at the time had at least a few black hairs on their muzzles or somewhere else on them. So all this fellow was left with were a chestnut roan gelding
that was almost twenty years old and a brown-and-white Appaloosa mare that was so passive and gentle, we normally used her only for the very youngest and least experienced riders.

“Obviously Max did his best to talk some sense into this young man,” Mrs. Reg said. “That’s my Max, not your Max.” Carole knew that Mrs. Reg was referring to her late husband, the current Max’s father. “He tried everything he knew to convince him that the problem was in his mind rather than with the horses, but the young man refused to hear reason. As far as he was concerned, what he thought was what he thought, and that was that. He had no interest in facing up to it. All he was willing to do was work around it.”

Mrs. Reg stopped talking, and Carole leaned forward in her chair. “What happened? Did the rider ever come around?”

Mrs. Reg shook her head and stood up. “Nope,” she said. “And eventually the gelding died and we sold the mare, so the young fellow stopped riding at all. As far as I know, he never did get over that odd superstition of his.” Mrs. Reg sat back and sighed, and Carole knew the story was over. Feeling more confused than ever, she got up and said good-bye to Mrs. Reg, then left the office.