by Suzanne Weyn
Taylor often wondered why Mrs. LeFleur disliked Devon Ross so much. She’d even searched for the answer online and come up with a shocking revelation — Mrs. LeFleur had been the matron of honor at Mrs. Ross’s wedding to the son of a multimillionaire. Someday, Taylor would work up the nerve to ask Mrs. LeFleur about it, but until then, the relationship between the two women would remain a mystery.
Taylor watched as the Arabian mare picked up a stick that had fallen into the corral from the towering maple that stood on the other side of the fence. The stick blazed with the red leaves still on its branches, and it reminded Taylor of a cheerleader’s bright pom-poms. Shafir bobbed her head up and down, trying to entice Pixie, the Shetland pony who was also in the corral, to chase her for the bright prize.
But Pixie would not be engaged in such a frivolous pastime. Unwilling to be distracted, Pixie turned her large head with its frizzy blond mane toward the ranch entrance. Taylor knew the pony was searching for her best friend, Prince Albert.
Before taking Prince Albert for their walk, Taylor had promised the devoted Pixie that they would be right back. To keep Pixie from following Prince Albert — as the pony always did, whenever Prince Albert went anywhere — Taylor had put both of them in the corral, and then led Prince Albert out, shutting the corral gate before Pixie had a chance to follow.
Taylor had felt badly about this trick but convinced herself it was for Pixie’s own good. If they were both to be used for lessons and trail rides, they would have to be separated at times. Taylor told herself it was good training — a much-needed dose of tough love. Now, though, watching Pixie keep such a devoted vigil, waiting so steadfastly for her friend, just increased Taylor’s awful feelings of guilt.
“Have the deputies found Prince Albert yet?” Taylor asked Deputy Casey.
Deputy Casey held up a finger, indicating that Taylor should wait a moment, and clicked on his two-way radio. “Any sign of the runaway horse?” he asked someone on the other end.
“Negative. Still searching,” came the reply.
When Taylor was finally given permission to search for Prince Albert, she had raced up to Wildwood’s open grazing pasture that sat at the top of a hill at the back of the ranch. She sometimes rode Prince Albert on a trail behind the pasture, and she was hoping he might be there.
Now she was weary from searching in the woods for more than two hours, and she settled down to rest on a low, flat boulder by a gurgling creek. She pulled out her cell phone and found the number she needed. “Hey, Daphne. Were you able to get through to Mercedes?” she asked when her friend picked up her cell.
“Yeah,” Daphne confirmed. “She’s okay. Her mother has a broken leg, though.”
“Oh, man … I feel terrible.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“In a way it was,” Taylor disagreed. “I should have kept a better hold on Prince Albert, stopped him from rearing like that.”
“Plum’s mother shouldn’t have been zooming down Wildwood right at you,” Daphne countered.
Taylor pictured Daphne with her long, glossy black hair and slim, graceful elegance. A first-rate rider, Daphne would never have let something like this happen. Yet she was making sure Taylor knew she didn’t think any less of her for this awful accident, and Taylor was grateful.
“How’s Pixie?” Taylor asked.
“I’m using her for a lesson with Maddy. They’re walking around the corral. The lesson seems to be distracting Pixie for now,” Daphne reported. “Where are you?”
“I came down to the creek off the path in the woods behind our pasture,” Taylor replied. “I was here with Prince Albert and Pixie a few times, and I know he likes to drink from the running water, but I don’t see him.” Taylor had been so sure that if she just called to him, Prince Albert would hear her and follow the sound of her voice. Why wasn’t he responding to her calls?
“Where could he be, Daphne? What if he wanders out on the road again and gets hit?” Taylor’s voice cracked with fear as she spoke. “Maybe Mrs. Gonzalez hit him when she swerved and didn’t realize it. What if he’s injured? I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to him.”
“You’ll find him. Don’t worry. As soon as the lesson is done I’ll saddle Mandy and come to help you search,” Daphne said, referring to her gray, speckled barb quarter horse mare.
“Thanks. Call me when you’re in the woods, okay?”
“Okay. Good luck.”
Taylor stuck her phone into her back pocket and stood. Cupping her hands to her mouth, she called out, forcing her voice to its loudest: “Prince Albert! Come to me, boy! Prince Allllllberrrrrrrt!”
A rustling in the bushes across the creek made Taylor whirl toward it.
“Don’t get your hopes up. It’s only me.” The stocky, broad-faced boy emerging from the thick tangle of boxwood bushes was Travis Ryan, Taylor’s best friend. Travis ran a hand along the top of his bristle of straight blond hair, knocking out stuck leaves and twigs. “I heard you calling, so I guess you haven’t found him yet?”
Travis didn’t ride but did repairs at the ranch, mostly because Taylor had persuaded him to help. Though he grumbled about it, Taylor suspected he secretly liked being there. Wildwood was an exciting new adventure and — usually — a fun place to be. Travis had showed up to fix a rung of the spilt-rail fence just as the deputies were leaving. When he heard what had happened, he’d instantly put down his toolbox and called Taylor in the woods, offering to help search.
Taylor replied with a dismal shake of her head, then threw her arms out in frustration. “Where could he be?”
“Did you check back at Wildwood?”
Taylor nodded. “Not there.”
“He might wander home eventually.”
“If he’s not hurt and can find his way.”
“Someone should check the pasture,” Travis suggested.
“That would be great if he was there.”
A tall, dark-haired boy of about fourteen appeared at the top of the slope. He had broad shoulders and wore a red-and-black-plaid shirt above jeans and cowboy boots.
“What’s he doing here?” Travis grumbled.
“I guess he came to help,” Taylor replied as she waved to Eric Mason, Plum’s cousin.
“We don’t need him,” Travis remarked sourly. He eyed Eric with grim disapproval as the boy hurried down the wooded slope toward them.
“We need all the help we can get.” Taylor worked to keep her voice neutral, not wanting to betray the excitement she felt every time she saw Eric. He was so good-looking and nice. Taylor didn’t want to think of herself as having a crush — but her heart rate quickened whenever he showed up, and Taylor suspected she was babbling every time she spoke with him.
Eric had helped Taylor and the other girls learn horse games when Wildwood Stables ran a games event two weeks before. But he worked at Westheimer’s Western Ranch on the other side of Pheasant Valley and went to a private school in Dobbs Ferry, which meant that Taylor didn’t know when she’d see him again — if ever.
But here Eric was, and despite her worries over Prince Albert, Taylor was happy to see him.
It was weird, though, the way Travis always made her feel disloyal for liking Eric so much. It wasn’t as if Taylor and Travis had ever acted like boyfriend and girlfriend. They’d been each other’s best friends since elementary school, but it was never anything romantic. Not even close!
“Tell him to go away,” Travis mumbled as Eric approached.
“Shh!” Taylor hissed sharply. “He’ll hear you.”
“So? I want him to.”
“Shh.”
Eric was nearly to them and waved. “I’m glad I found you. I thought that might be your voice calling. I guess you haven’t found him, though.”
“No, we found him. He’s scuba diving in the creek,” Travis said without a hint of smile.
Taylor jabbed Travis in the arm with her elbow. “No, we haven’t found Prince Albert,” she told Eric. “I suppose you h
eard about what happened from Plum and her mother.”
Eric shook his head. “No, I was taking out a trail ride over at Westheimer’s, and I got a call from Carl to be on the lookout for Prince Albert. The sheriff called him. I came right over as soon as I could because I don’t think he could have gotten all the way over to Westheimer’s that fast.”
“He is a horse,” Travis pointed out snidely. “They’re known for traveling rapidly over long distances.”
Judging from Eric’s narrowed eyes, Taylor knew he’d caught the sarcasm in Travis’s tone, but then he obviously chose to ignore it. “I think it’s more likely that he’d stay somewhere he was already familiar with, so I came to Wildwood. Daphne told me you were in the woods searching.”
“Thanks for helping,” Taylor said. “I figured the same thing. Prince Albert has been in these woods before, on trail rides with me. I even rode him and Pixie through here the first time I brought them from Claire’s to the ranch.”
“Who’s Claire?” Eric asked.
But Taylor and Travis had turned to face each other, eyes wide. “Claire’s!” they said, both at the same time. “What if he went back to Claire’s house?”
Travis shook his head. “Wouldn’t she have called, though?”
“Not if she’s out and hasn’t come home yet,” Taylor disagreed. She began hurrying up the slope, waving for Travis and Eric to follow. “Come on. There’s a path right near here that leads to her house.”
“Who’s Claire?” Taylor heard Eric ask again.
Taylor, Eric, and Travis came out of the woods into a field of tall grass. Across from the field was a circle of bungalow-style former summer homes that residents had winterized by adding insulation and heat. These dated back to the 1920s, when Pheasant Valley had been a vacation spot. There were several communities like this one peppered throughout the town, interspersed among the larger, newer houses.
“That’s Claire’s house on the end,” Taylor said, pointing for Eric’s benefit. Travis had been there many times before. Claire Black was Taylor’s mother’s best friend since forever; Taylor thought of her as an aunt. She was a county-registered wildlife rehabilitator, which meant that if a wild animal was injured or abandoned, the person who found the animal would give Claire a call. Sometimes the local sheriff would be the one to call Claire to go out on a rescue.
As they crossed the field, Taylor hoped Prince Albert would be waiting for her in Claire’s driveway. She recalled the improbable way in which she had come to own Prince Albert and Pixie. It was hard to believe it had all happened just two months earlier, when Claire asked her to accompany her on a wildlife rescue.
Ever since Taylor was in elementary school, Claire had taken her along on wildlife rescues because she knew how much Taylor loved all animals. They’d once lured a capuchin monkey from a tree and, another time, trapped a baby alligator that had gotten into someone’s basement. Mostly, though, they rescued deer that had been hit and badly injured by cars, or abandoned cats and dogs, sometimes domestic bunnies. Occasionally, a Canada goose on nearby Mohegan Lake would break a wing.
It was while out on a rescue call with Claire that Taylor had found Prince Albert and Pixie abandoned in a small barn. They’d been filthy and nearly starved. With no place else to take the neglected equines, they’d trailered them back to Claire’s quarter of an acre, fenced-in front yard.
According to the animal laws in Pheasant Valley, you needed five acres of land to keep a horse or pony on private property. After a neighbor had called to complain, Deputy Casey had given Claire three days to find Prince Albert and Pixie a more suitable home before he took them to be sold at auction. Taylor immediately searched horse auctions online and learned — to her horror — that although selling horse meat was no longer legal in the United States, it was allowed in other countries. Agents from these countries often bought horses for this purpose at auctions.
Fortunately, Taylor heard about Wildwood Stables and had the great good fortune of convincing Mrs. LeFleur to take Pixie and Prince Albert in as working school horses. From that day up to now, Taylor had thought her biggest problem was that Prince Albert wasn’t agreeable to letting just any rider on his back. He only wanted Taylor, and then, slowly, fragile, autistic little Dana. But no one else.
Taylor smiled unhappily as she thought of all this. That problem seemed so small and manageable compared to losing Prince Albert altogether.
An elderly woman in a long winter coat, her hair covered with a knit cap, strode down the driveway of one of the houses behind a small white dog on a leash. She crossed the road and entered the field. It was Mrs. Kirchner, who had once been Taylor’s teacher at Pheasant Valley Elementary. She was one of the crankiest teachers Taylor had ever had, and she was the neighbor who’d called the sheriff’s office about Prince Albert and Pixie.
“Taylor Henry! Travis Ryan! Why aren’t you two in school?” Mrs. Kirchner scolded when she noticed Taylor, Travis, and Eric.
“It’s Saturday,” Taylor reminded her.
“Oh, yes. Of course it is,” Mrs. Kirchner mumbled.
Taylor figured that if the woman had seen Prince Albert around, she’d certainly mention it, so there was no reason to ask.
“Do you still have that pesky horse and pony down at Wildwood Stables?” Mrs. Kirchner inquired.
Taylor looked at Eric and Travis with surprised eyes before turning back to Mrs. Kirchner. “You know about Wildwood Stables?”
“Of course I do!” Mrs. Kirchner snapped. “I’ve lived in Pheasant Valley for over sixty years! Wildwood Stables was practically the center of the town back when I was a girl. The place was run by the Moore family for generations.”
Moore? Taylor had recently come across someone with that name. But where? She couldn’t remember.
“Did you ever go there?” Travis asked.
“No, but my youngest sister was friendly with Bernice Moore.”
“You mean LeFleur,” Eric corrected her.
Mrs. Kirchner shot him a withering glare. “I know what I mean, young man. Bernice Moore grew up on the ranch with her aunt and uncle and her cousin, Devon Moore.”
Taylor suddenly recalled where she’d heard the name. Of course! She had seen it online when was researching the connection between Mrs. Ross and Mrs. LeFleur.
Before she’d married Harrison Ross, Mrs. Ross’s name had been Moore, Devon Moore.
Taylor had never known Mrs. LeFleur’s unmarried name, but according to Mrs. Kirchner, it was also Moore!
Mrs. LeFleur and Mrs. Ross were related!
But Mrs. LeFleur seemed to hate Mrs. Ross so much!
“Bernice Moore’s father and mother died together in a plane crash,” Mrs. Kirchner continued. “The Moore brothers had run the ranch together until that tragedy. Then Bernice went to live with her aunt and uncle. She and Devon were like sisters.”
What could have happened?
“Did they fight?” she asked Mrs. Kirchner.
“How would I know?” Mrs. Kirchner snapped. “I don’t have time to stand here gossiping with you. Get to school this instant!”
The bright, dancing amusement in Travis’s blue eyes almost made Taylor burst out laughing, but she controlled herself. “All right, Mrs. Kirchner. Thanks,” Taylor said as she moved on, with Eric and Travis following.
“What an old crank,” Eric commented when they were out of earshot.
“Tell me about it!” Taylor agreed. “Try having her for a teacher like Travis and I did! It was horrible. But I can’t believe she knew about Wildwood.”
“Yeah, Mrs. LeFleur and Mrs. Ross are cousins!” Travis remarked. “Who would have guessed that?”
“Not me,” Taylor said.
“They don’t like each other?” Eric asked.
“Mrs. LeFleur doesn’t like Mrs. Ross, that’s for sure. I’ll tell you about it another time,” Taylor promised. “Right now I want to find out if Prince Albert is here.”
Taylor led them up Claire’s dirt driveway. To the
left was a yard circumscribed by a split-rail fence wrapped in chicken-wire fencing. Six dogs of different breeds and sizes that Claire was boarding after rescuing them barked playfully. “Pipe down,” Taylor told them pleasantly but firmly. At the sound of her command, the dogs all quieted. It was what Claire always said in her effort to keep the barking to a minimum for the neighbors.
Taylor was instantly disappointed that she didn’t see Prince Albert there. If he had been, she’d have spotted him right away.
“Hey, Taylor,” a woman’s voice greeted her.
Turning toward the sound, Taylor saw Claire crouching over a large cardboard box. She was a petite woman in her forties with chestnut hair cut to her chin.
“Hi, Claire,” Taylor returned the greeting as she walked over and peeked into the box. Inside, a mother cat lay on her side contentedly while four kittens suckled. “Ahh,” Taylor crooned fondly, bending forward for a closer look. Then she jumped back in surprise. “Those aren’t kittens!” she cried.
Claire laughed. “No, they’re raccoon kits. The cat’s kittens died from the cold last night, and the raccoon babies lost their mother when she got hit by a car. Someone heard the raccoon babies crying in the stump of a tree and called me. It worked out perfectly, since I had just picked up Mama Cat, who was still producing milk.”
“She doesn’t seem to mind feeding them,” Travis observed as he and Eric came up alongside Taylor.
“No, she’s happy to do it,” Claire agreed. “Not all species can feed each other’s babies, but cats and raccoons can.”
Taylor introduced Eric to Claire and then explained what had happened.
“Oh, dear. That’s awful,” Claire sympathized, standing. “Try calling the ranch again. Maybe Prince Albert is back by now.”
“That’s right,” Eric said. “I forgot until now, but I’ve heard that most of the time a horse on the loose will run home.”
Taylor reached into her back pocket for her phone, but its tone sounded before she even reached it. “It’s Mercedes,” Taylor told the others once she’d checked the number readout. She clicked onto the call. “Hi, Mercedes. Where are you?”