A FEW MINUTES later Carole, Stevie, and Lisa met up near the outdoor ring. Stevie was riding Belle, and Lisa was mounted on Prancer. Carole was aboard Barq, a lively Arabian with a white blaze down his nose, a favorite of many of the young riders at Pine Hollow. He was also the horse Carole had ridden regularly before she owned Starlight.
“Where should we go today?” Stevie asked as the threesome rode out of the stable yard and into the field beyond. The land around Pine Hollow was threaded with dozens of riding trails, and at one time or another The Saddle Club had explored nearly every one.
“Do you think it’s too cold for our favorite spot?” Lisa asked. The other two knew immediately where she meant—a shady clearing in the woods overlooking the lazy little stream that had given the town of Willow Creek its name. On warm spring and summer days, the girls loved to sit on the banks of the creek and cool their feet in the clear water. It was one of their favorite places to hold Saddle Club meetings.
“It’s never too cold,” Stevie declared. “Even if we can’t wade, that doesn’t mean we can’t just sit and watch the water go by.”
“Good point,” Lisa agreed. “Let’s go.”
Once they were under way, Carole decided it was time to bring up the topic that was foremost in her mind. She cleared her throat. “I wanted to talk to you guys about something,” she began. “I had this really weird dream last night.”
“What kind of a dream?” Lisa asked.
“You didn’t dream who the Pine Hollow Pilferer is, did you?” Stevie asked. “That’s what I’ve decided to call our thief. What do you think?”
Lisa laughed. “I have to admit, that’s pretty good,” she said. “It sounds like the title of one of Ernestine Collier’s novels: The Mystery of the Pine Hollow Pilferer.”
“As I was saying,” Carole said meaningfully, then paused.
“Oh, sorry, Carole. Go ahead,” Lisa said contritely. “What was your dream about?”
“Well, I dreamed I was here at Pine Hollow,” Carole began. As the threesome rode slowly across the fields, she described the entire nightmare, trying not to leave out any important details. “… and then I woke up,” she finished.
“Wow. That’s pretty spooky,” Lisa said. “It reminds me of that story Troy told the other night at the party.”
“Me too,” Carole admitted. “Pretty silly, huh?”
“What’s silly is to think you’d ever jump a course without walking it first,” Stevie said. “As if an obstacle would ever catch you by surprise!”
Lisa laughed. “That’s a good point,” she said. “And how about this: Since when would Pine Hollow ever be deserted in the middle of the afternoon? It had to be a dream, Carole. If it was real Max would have turned up, reminding you to clean your tack after you were finished.”
“Or reminding you to keep your heels down and your elbows in,” Stevie offered, sitting up a little straighter in her saddle to demonstrate.
“Or asking you to muck out some stalls when you had a free second,” Lisa said. “Now that’s what I call a nightmare!”
“Really?” Stevie asked. “Are you sure it’s not a nightstallion?”
“Actually, since Starlight was the star of the dream, I think technically it would have to be called a nightgelding,” Lisa pointed out.
Carole sighed as she listened to her friends’ joking. It was clear they hadn’t understood how disturbed she had been by her dream. Otherwise they wouldn’t be making silly jokes about it. On the other hand, it was pretty silly of her to be so upset by something that wasn’t even real. The incident with Starlight the day before had been real enough, of course, but there was also a very real reason for his behavior. Troy’s story and her dream hadn’t been real at all. So why couldn’t she just forget about them?
“Here’s something to take your mind off nightmares, nightfoals, and nightponies,” Stevie told Carole as the girls entered the woods and headed toward the creek. “The Pine Hollow Pilferer.”
“I talked to Max about it today,” Lisa said. “He’s really mad that no one has turned in the missing stuff yet. But I got the impression he has no idea what to do about it.”
“That’s where we come in,” Stevie said. “We’ll have to track down the thief and retrieve the stolen goods. Especially Phil’s yarmulke.”
“What about my book?” Lisa asked, pretending to be hurt. “Don’t you even care that I may die of suspense if I don’t get it back soon?”
“Well, maybe a little,” Stevie said with a grin. The path they were following through the woods had been wide enough for the girls to ride three abreast, but now it began to grow narrower. Carole pulled Barq up to let her friends ride ahead.
Lisa stuck out her tongue at Stevie, who was still beside her. “Very funny. So what’s your plan to catch the thief? Sorry, I mean the pilferer.”
“I’m not quite sure yet,” Stevie admitted. “But I do know two things. One is that we have to do it before Phil’s bar mitzvah on Saturday.”
“That would be great,” Lisa said. “It will be awful if Phil has to do without his special yarmulke on his big day, particularly since his relatives sent it all the way from Israel.” She paused. “But if we’re going to solve the mystery, we’ll have to come up with some decent suspects. I mean, the detective in my book always says you should start with the most unlikely-seeming suspect and follow that lead first. But I can’t think of any likely unlikely-seeming suspects, if you know what I mean.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Stevie said mysteriously, leaning forward to brush off a dead leaf that had fallen on Belle’s neck. She twisted around in the saddle to make sure Carole could hear her. Carole just shrugged in response, and Stevie wondered if she was even paying attention to the conversation.
Lisa shrugged, too. “If you ask me, all the kids from our riding class are pretty unlikely.” She pulled up Prancer a little as the frisky ex-racehorse tried to move ahead of Belle on the trail. “And we’ve known and trusted all the adults there for ages, except for Troy. That reminds me—”
“Aren’t you going to ask me what the second thing is?” Stevie interrupted, looking impatient.
“Huh?” Lisa said. “What second thing?”
“I said I knew two things, and one was that we had to get the stuff back before Phil’s bar mitzvah,” Stevie reminded her.
“So what’s the second thing?” Lisa asked.
Stevie paused, glancing back at Carole again to make sure she was close enough to hear. “The second thing is, I already know who the thief is. All we have to do is catch her.”
“Her?” Lisa repeated. “You’re not accusing Veronica again, are you? I know she’s always a possible suspect for just about anything bad or sneaky, but in this case—”
“It’s not Veronica,” Stevie interrupted. “It’s another suspect, one even more unlikely than Veronica. Only this one has already given away her guilt.” She paused, looking like a cat that had just swallowed a particularly large and tasty canary.
“Who is it?” Lisa asked impatiently. “Are you going to tell us or make us guess?”
“I won’t make you guess, because you’ll never be able to,” Stevie said. “The Pine Hollow Pilferer is … Shannon Brice.”
“SHANNON BRICE? YOU mean Joe’s girlfriend?” Lisa said in disbelief. “What on earth would make you think she’s the thief?”
“I told you,” Stevie said smugly. “She gave herself away. It happened today at school.” The girls had reached the clearing by the creek, and there was a pause in the conversation while they dismounted, made sure their horses were comfortably settled, and walked down to the creek.
Lisa perched on a big rock and looked at Stevie. “All right. Let’s hear it.”
“Okay,” Stevie said, stretching out on her side on the bank and resting her head on one hand. Carole sat down next to her and stared at the water tumbling by in the wide, shallow creek. “As you know, Shannon goes to my school,” Stevie began. “In fact, she’s in my math
class. So today during math I was staring into sp—um, I mean, I was looking at the teacher, and I happened to notice something very strange about Shannon. Namely, that she was wearing Betsy’s missing bracelet!”
Lisa gasped. “Are you sure?” she demanded.
“Well …” Stevie paused. “Ninety percent sure, anyway. It was a gold bangle bracelet, just like the one Betsy lost. And I’d never seen Shannon wear it before. I’m positive about that, because she usually wears this silver bracelet with little bells on it that jingle whenever she raises her hand or something.”
Lisa tapped her fingers on the rock restlessly. She was thinking hard. “But you’re really not sure it was Betsy’s bracelet,” she said slowly. “Even if Shannon never wore a gold bangle before, it’s still not really evidence. Lots of people have bracelets like that. I have one myself, and so does Lorraine Olsen, and I’ve seen Veronica walking around with three of them on one arm. You have one, too, don’t you, Carole?”
Carole nodded absently. “My dad gave it to me for my birthday.”
“But that’s not all,” Stevie said, sitting up and brushing the leaves off her elbow. “I talked to Shannon about the bracelet after class, and she acted very suspicious.”
“What do you mean?” Lisa asked. “What did you say to her? You didn’t come right out and accuse her of stealing it, did you?” Even for Stevie, that would have been awfully impulsive, not to mention rude.
“Of course not,” Stevie said, sounding slightly insulted. “I was very subtle about it. I just told her I liked the bracelet and asked her where she got it.”
Lisa rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah,” she said. “Real subtle. What did she say?”
“She didn’t really answer,” Stevie said. “In fact, she looked as though she didn’t even want to talk about the bracelet at all. She just thanked me very politely for the compliment, then stuck her arm behind her back and said she had to go or she’d be late for her next class.”
“Hmmm,” Lisa said. “What do you think, Carole?”
“I don’t know,” Carole said, still staring at the water. “I guess that sounds sort of suspicious.”
“You’re telling me,” Stevie said firmly. “Once I got to thinking about it, I realized we should have paid more attention to Shannon right from the beginning. She’s always been kind of odd. She hardly ever talks to anybody, and in the past month or two it seems like she’s been absent from school more than she’s been there. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but now it’s clear that she’s been acting suspicious for a long time. I wouldn’t be surprised if the things from Pine Hollow aren’t the first things she’s stolen.”
“Don’t get carried away,” Lisa said. “Besides, I have another idea about who may have done it. I started to tell you before.”
“Another suspect?” Stevie said. “Who is it?”
“This afternoon when I got to the stable, I went to the student locker room to drop off my school stuff,” Lisa said. “And guess who was coming out of the locker room just then?”
Stevie shrugged, not looking very interested. “I don’t know. Max? Mrs. Reg? Veronica?”
Lisa shook her head. “Nope. It was Troy.”
Stevie looked confused for a second; then her expression cleared. “Oh, I get it. You think Troy is the thief?”
“I don’t know,” Lisa said, tapping her fingers thoughtfully on the rock again. “It’s certainly not evidence or anything, but it did make me think. There’s no reason Troy shouldn’t have been in the locker room, but there’s no good reason he should have been there, either. Normally I wouldn’t even have thought about it—”
“But now there’s a mystery to solve, and anything could be a clue,” Stevie finished for her, nodding. “And we don’t know much about Troy, and he never talks about himself.” She leaned back again on the dry, brown late-autumn grass. “Well, I guess it’s possible that he could have done it. But I still think Shannon is a more likely suspect.”
“But you’ve known Shannon for years, right?” Lisa said. “Even if she is a little shy and withdrawn, she’s never done anything before this to make you think she’s a thief. Besides that, she’s rich. What motive could she have to steal things?”
“Who knows what drives a criminal mind?” Stevie said mischievously. “But seriously, she could have the same motive we thought Veronica might have—wanting attention. Or maybe she’s sick. You know, she could have that mental illness, the one that makes you steal things. What is it, kelpo—kleppa—”
“Kleptomania,” Lisa supplied. “Come on. Isn’t that a little farfetched, even for you, Stevie? The bottom line is, Shannon doesn’t have any clear motive. Troy does. He’s at Pine Hollow because he needs money, right?”
“True,” Stevie said, watching as a fat horsefly flew lazily above her. “But if he’s trying to make a living as a thief, he’s not doing a very good job. How much money could he get selling black-market yarmulkes and paperback books? Not to mention a partnerless glove.”
“Well, I guess you have a point,” Lisa admitted. “But maybe it’s like you said before—he didn’t have time to be picky. He just grabbed what he could and ran.”
Suddenly Stevie smiled. “Are you sure you’re not suspicious of Troy because he looks like that character in your mystery book?” she joked. “You know, the leather jacket, the earrings, the dark stubble …”
“Of course not,” Lisa answered quickly. She picked up a small pebble and tossed it into the creek, trying to make it skip. “Just because Troy looks like that character doesn’t automatically mean he’s a thief. That’s patently absurd.”
“Patently absurd?” Stevie repeated. She and Carole liked to tease Lisa about the fifty-cent words she sometimes used. “Couldn’t you just say that’s dumb, or, like, duh?”
Lisa stuck out her tongue at Stevie. “You know what I mean,” she said.
Stevie giggled. “But that’s beside the point,” she said. “I have to admit, you may be on to something. He has the motive, he had the opportunity—as much as anyone else at the party, anyway—and we really don’t know him at all. He hasn’t given us any real reason to suspect him, but he hasn’t given us any reason to trust him, either.”
“So you think he’s the thief?” Lisa asked.
“I didn’t say that,” Stevie said. “I still think it’s Shannon. But we’ll put him on the suspect list.” She glanced at her watch and stood up. “I guess we should head back. Ready to go?”
“I’m ready,” Lisa said, tossing one last pebble into the water before standing up herself. She shivered a little. “It’s getting a little cold to keep sitting here. Ready, Carole?”
Carole nodded and followed her friends toward the horses. Lisa realized that Carole hadn’t said much during their conversation, but she figured her friend was just tired. She’d mentioned that her nightmare had kept her up half the night. She was sure to snap out of it after a good night’s sleep.
As The Saddle Club rode back toward Pine Hollow, Stevie and Lisa continued to talk about the mystery for a while, then eventually shifted to the topic of what they were going to wear to Phil’s bar mitzvah. Stevie’s parents were picking them up right after Horse Wise to take them to the synagogue, so they would have to shower and change clothes at the stable.
Carole responded when she was spoken to, but that was all. Most of her attention was not on the conversation but on her own thoughts. She knew that a bad fall could make even an experienced rider a little nervous for a while, but she didn’t feel a bit nervous riding Barq today. It was only the thought of riding Starlight that made her stomach clench up in knots, and she didn’t like what that seemed to mean.
Could Carole possibly be afraid of her own horse?
THE NEXT DAY, as soon as Stevie rode Belle into the outdoor ring for riding lessons, her eyes lit up. Shannon was there! She was leaning on the fence outside the ring with her eyes trained on Joe, who was clearly showing off for her as he rode his mount, a dark chestnut gelding named Rust
y, around the ring at a trot.
“Check it out!” Stevie whispered to Lisa, who was right behind her on Prancer. “Joe must have invited her to watch the lesson.”
“Hmmm,” Lisa said.
“This will be the perfect chance to scope her out,” Stevie said excitedly. “Not that I haven’t been keeping an eye on her in school, of course. But this is much better. She’s returned to the scene of the crime. Aren’t all criminals supposed to do that?”
“I guess so,” Lisa said. She glanced around. “By the way, where’s Carole? Is she going to be able to ride today, or is Starlight’s neck still bothering him?”
“I saw her inside,” Stevie said. “She was carrying his tack, so I guess she’s decided to ride him. If you ask me, she was being a little overcautious yesterday anyway.”
In the barn, Carole was thinking the same thing as she carefully tacked up Starlight. She was also thinking that for once in her life she didn’t feel like riding. She’d had another scary dream the night before in which Starlight became the phantom horse, and she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She frowned at herself and did her best to put it out of her mind. If she was nervous and uncomfortable, her horse would pick up on it and become nervous and uncomfortable himself.
She tightened the gelding’s girth and led him toward the stable entrance. It was time for the lesson to start, and Max hated it when his students were late. Carole wasn’t looking forward to the coming hour, but she had to get through it somehow. She’d just have to concentrate on what she was doing and hope for the best.
AS THE LESSON began, Stevie vowed to keep a close eye on Shannon. But Max had other ideas. Every time Stevie snuck a peek at Shannon, who was sitting in the bleachers between the ring and the stable building, Max noticed and yelled at her. That didn’t stop Stevie from doing it, but it stopped her from doing it as often as she would have liked. And it kept her from being a hundred percent certain that Shannon hadn’t moved from her seat.
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