At the hotel desk, the girls found another note from the Wheelers. Honey waited until they were in their room before she unfolded it and scanned it quickly. “Oh, no,” she moaned.
“What is it?” Trixie asked. “Is something wrong?”
“Not exactly,” Honey replied. “At least, I’m sure Daddy didn’t think so when he wrote this note. He’s arranged another surprise for us: We’re to have dinner tonight with Mr. Worthington, Mr. Stinson, and Mr. Stinson’s daughter, Joan.”
“Oh, woe.” Trixie looked stricken. “Honey, I can’t stand it. Let’s think of some excuse for not going—let’s say we’re both sick or something. I simply can’t sit around a dinner table, tonight of all nights, and make small talk with the two men Regan suspects of trying to frame him.”
“We have to, Trixie,” Honey said. “For one thing, it’s our duty as detectives. We have to be there to listen to what Worthington and Stinson say, in case they drop any information. And we also have to be there to keep them from dropping one specific piece of information.”
“Gleeps!” Trixie cried, following Honey’s thoughts. “Regan’s name! Why didn’t I think of that before? If Stinson mentions Regan in front of your parents, like he did in front of us yesterday, the whole story will come out. If your parents find out Regan used to work for Worthington Farms, they’re sure to realize that Regan left the Manor House the same day Mr. Worthington came to visit, and they’ll probably decide that he ran because he was guilty. Regan might lose his job. They might even call in the police. Oh, woe!” She slumped despondently on the bed.
Honey nodded, her face solemn. “I wasn’t worried before, because I know that Daddy feels very strongly about respecting other people’s privacy. He wouldn’t volunteer the story of Regan’s disappearance to someone he doesn’t know very well, like Mr. Worthington, because he’d feel that it wasn’t his story to tell. Carl Stinson obviously doesn’t feel that way, since he told us all about Regan the first time we ever met him. So we have to be there tonight, Trixie.”
“We might as well start getting ready,” Trixie said. “At least tonight, I’m too worried about everything else to care how I look.”
By the time the dessert was served at the restaurant that evening, the girls realized that they could easily have left the Wheelers alone with Carl Stinson without worrying about what he might say. The trainer was in a silent, sullen mood. Aside from answering a few questions with a yes or a no and giving the waiter his order, Stinson had not spoken all evening. His daughter, a pretty, intelligent young woman, had tried to fill in the awkward gaps in the conversation, but she had grown increasingly embarrassed at her father’s behavior, and finally she, too, was silent.
Trixie and Honey said very little, afraid that they might accidentally bring up a topic of conversation that would lead the trainer to another outburst against Regan. Thus, it was Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler and Mr. Worthington who did most of the talking, with Worthington dominating the discussion.
On the surface, the man seemed as friendly and charming as he had the day before at the track. But with Regan’s description of him echoing in her mind, Trixie found herself looking at him—and listening to him—in a different way. He was, indeed, a man who liked to give orders rather than take them. He had chosen the restaurant, and he and the Stinsons had been waiting when the others arrived. Worthington took charge immediately, instructing everyone on where to sit and what to order from the menu.
Maybe he’s just trying to make us all feel comfortable, Trixie thought. But if that was Worthington’s intention, he was failing—in Trixie’s opinion, at least. She felt suffocated, as though her entire evening were being planned to the last detail without regard to what she herself wanted.
Trixie found herself remembering the incident at lunch the day before, when she’d asked Worthington if he’d rather have losing seasons at the track than risk losing his trainer. The angry look that had crossed his face had frightened her then, and she found herself giving in to his orders at the restaurant to keep from seeing it again.
A large ego and a bad temper, Trixie thought.A combination like that makes for a person who could seek revenge.
“That was a lovely meal,” Joan Stinson said, bringing Trixie’s thoughts back to the table. “But I overate, as usual, and I’d like to take a walk to help my digestion. Would you girls care to join me?” Eager to get away from the silent trainer and his overbearing employer, the girls readily agreed.
The restaurant was built around a small courtyard with carefully tended flowers and shrubs and a small, man-made stream. It was there that Joan, Honey, and Trixie walked, silent at first, until Joan Stinson broke the stillness of the summer evening.
“I feel that I should apologize for my father’s behavior during dinner. He made me feel terribly uncomfortable, and I assume that everyone else was feeling the same way. He has a lot on his mind tonight. Mr. Worthington just told him that he’s entered my father’s favorite horse in a claiming race the day after tomorrow.”
“Not Gadbox!” Honey exclaimed.
“What do you mean—just told him?” Trixie asked at the same time.
Joan smiled wryly. “Yes, Gadbox, and just this evening, to answer both your questions. Mr. Worthington offered us a ride to the restaurant, then broke the news to us on the way. I wouldn’t put it past him if he planned the whole thing that way,” she added, her voice suddenly bitter, “telling us on the way here so that my father couldn’t voice his objections.”
“But why would Mr. Worthington enter Gadbox in a claiming race?” Trixie asked. “We just saw him race yesterday, and he was fantastic. He won easily!”
Joan Stinson shrugged. “J. T. Worthington is not a man who feels he must explain himself to his hired help,” she said. “He pulled this same trick seven years ago, right after my mother died. It cost my father his self-respect and a chance to become an owner instead of just a trainer, and I always believed it cost me, at least indirectly, the man I was in love with.”
Honey and Trixie exchanged stunned glances. Could Joan Stinson be talking about Regan?
“The man you loved?” Honey prompted softly. Joan Stinson laughed mirthlessly. “Forgive me. I’m being overly dramatic, I suppose. Regan wasn’t really a man at the time. He was a seventeen-year-old boy. And I was only sixteen, so what I think of as true love may have been just a childish infatuation. But I never got the chance to find out. Against my father’s wishes, Mr. Worthington entered a horse in a claiming race. After the race, it was discovered that the horse had been drugged. Suspicion turned to Regan, and he ran away, without even telling me good-bye. I didn’t believe that he was guilty. I still don’t. But I never got a chance to tell him that, either.”
Trixie felt suddenly dizzy as she tried to accept this stunning revelation about Regan’s past.
This beautiful young woman had once been in love with Regan. Trixie had often wondered why Regan never dated any of the eligible women in Sleepyside. She was sure that any of them would be happy to accept an invitation from the handsome groom. Maybe this is the answer, Trixie thought. Maybe Regan has never forgotten Joan, just as she’s never forgotten him. When the mystery was solved, Trixie vowed silently, she’d see to it that Regan and Joan had a chance to meet once again.
Trixie caught Honey’s eye, and she could tell from her friend’s expression that Honey had just made a similar vow.
“Don’t you have any idea why Mr. Worthington made the decision to enter Gadbox in the claiming race?” Honey prompted.
The muscles in Joan Stinson’s jaw tightened. “Oh, I have an idea, all right,” she said harshly. “I think Mr. Worthington is afraid of letting my father have a winning horse, because he’s afraid that Daddy will use the winnings to get out from under the great man’s thumb. I think he’ll wait just a few more years, until Daddy is too old to think about leaving Worthington Farms to establish a stable of his own. Then he’ll start letting my father keep his winning horses. But then it’ll be too late. My f
ather will be an old and broken man whose dreams have passed him by, and J. T. Worthington will line his own pockets with the winnings that my father should have earned for himself.”
“That’s enough, Joan!” Carl Stinson barked. Honey, Trixie, and Joan whirled around to see the trainer standing in the entrance to the courtyard, his face reflecting his struggle to control his anger. “We’re going home.”
“All right,” Joan said, making an effort to keep her voice calm. “Just let me go back inside and say good-bye to—”
“You’ve said enough already,” her father said sharply. “Let’s go.”
Joan walked quickly to the doorway, her head lowered in embarrassment.
Carl Stinson turned and gave the girls a long, harsh glare, then followed his daughter out of the restaurant.
The two girls stood in shocked silence for a long moment after the Stinsons had disappeared.
“You can’t say we haven’t learned a lot tonight,” Honey said finally.
“And I don’t much like what we’ve learned,” Trixie added. “There’re an awful lot of bad feelings between Mr. Worthington and Mr. Stinson, from what Joan said. Who knows what either of them might have done seven years ago for revenge?”
“That’s not all, Trixie,” Honey added, her eyes cloudy with fear. “Who knows what they might do before the claiming race this week?”
Trixie felt a wave of terror go through her as the
meaning of Honey’s words struck her. This new claiming race could end in the same kind of tragedy as the other one had, seven years ago. Or something even worse, Trixie thought. At least seven years ago no lives were lost. She shuddered.
“All we can do is keep our eyes open,” Honey said helplessly.
“Wide open,” Trixie added.
Captured! • 14
THE NEXT MORNING, Trixie and Honey responded eagerly to Mr. Wheeler’s invitation to accompany him to the track. “It’s good to see that you’ve got your need for exercise out of your systems,” Mr. Wheeler teased.
Trixie felt herself turning red as she remembered guiltily that she and Honey had never actually got around to riding the day before. Does Mr. Wheeler suspect anything? she thought. Looking at him intently, she decided not. Just because I've begun to suspect everybody of everything since I got involved with this mystery, I think everyone else is suspicious, too. That's just plain silly.
Trixie’s own suspicions were not lessened by what she found at the track, however. As the girls and Mr. Wheeler approached the stables where the Worthington Farms horses were kept, they discovered Mr. Worthington and his trainer in the midst of a heated argument.
As soon as Mr. Worthington saw them, he broke off his argument in mid-sentence and forced his face into a slick, charming smile. Carl Stinson, still scowling, turned and stalked away.
“Good morning, good morning,” Worthington said with exaggerated cheerfulness. “My trainer and I were just having a little, shall we say, difference of opinion. After twenty years, Carl sometimes forgets who’s boss.”
And you sometimes forget how much you owe him, Trixie thought angrily.
Mr. Worthington noticed Trixie’s scowling look, and he looked flustered for a moment. He soon recovered his composure, however, and was as outgoing as ever as he escorted them to the workouts, bought them lunch, and then settled down with them in his private box to watch the races.
Honey, always tactful, managed to enter into the stream of small talk that Mr. Worthington and Mr. Wheeler exchanged. Trixie knew that she was being ungracious and risking hurting Mr. Wheeler’s feelings with her silence, but her resentment of Worthington’s attitude, coupled with her resolve to keep her eyes open for clues, made it almost impossible for her to think of anything to say. She pretended to concentrate on the races, cheering when the crowd cheered, but her mind was busy working over the mystery. She constantly scanned the crowd for a glimpse of the scar-faced man.
She had no luck in finding him, however, until after the last race, when she and the Wheelers accompanied Mr. Worthington back to the Worthington Farms stalls. Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the scar-faced man lurking near Gadbox’s stall. She nudged Honey, her mind searching frantically for an excuse to leave Mr. Worthington’s side in pursuit of the man.
Her mind went blank, and even Honey’s usual diplomacy failed her. The two girls stood in desperate silence as the man disappeared into the crowd.
For the next several hours, the girls faced the same frustrating situation they’d found themselves in the first time they’d gone to the track: Unable to find any time alone, they couldn’t discuss the scarfaced man’s appearance and disappearance.
It was not until after dinner, when the girls were alone in their room, that they were able to talk. Then, it was hard for them to know what to say. They both agreed that the bad feeling between Worthington and his trainer was building to the breaking point. They agreed, too, that the appearance of the scar-faced man near Gadbox’s stall the day before the claiming race was certainly a cause for suspicion. But what could they do about their worries?
“The claiming race is tomorrow, Honey,” Trixie pointed out. “That means, if something is going to happen, it will happen tonight. And it will happen at the track, which is exactly where I think we should be.”
“Oh, Trixie, I don’t know,” Honey responded. “That sounds awfully dangerous to me. Besides, if we go to the track because we think the scar-faced man might be there, we’ll be breaking our promise to Regan.”
“No, we won’t,” Trixie said. “I told you, Honey, I have no desire to get involved with that man. If we do see him, we’ll go get the police. We might not see him, anyway. For my money, the culprit in this case is just as likely to be Carl Stinson or even J. T. Worthington himself.”
Honey sighed, unable to refute her friend’s usual evasive logic. “Okay, Trixie,” she said. “Let’s say we won’t be in the slightest bit of danger and we won’t even be bending our promise to Regan, let alone breaking it—although I don’t know if I really believe either of those statements. How do you suggest we get out of this hotel, past the front desk, and out to the track without being stopped and returned to my parents, who would lock us in our hotel room or return us to Sleepyside in handcuffs
to keep us out of further mischief?”
In spite' of her tension, Trixie giggled. “They might even ask Sergeant Molinson to lock us up in jail for disturbing the peace. Knowing Sergeant Molinson, I think he’d probably do it, too!”
Honey’s mouth curved upward in a smile, but she forced herself to sound stern. “Don’t change the subject, Trixie. How will we get to the track without being seen?”
“I have that all figured out,” Trixie replied eagerly. “We’ll wait a couple of hours, until your parents think we’re asleep. Then we’ll go down the back stairs, which come out in back of the hotel.” Trixie grinned sheepishly. “I checked that out when you were showering before dinner. We’ll walk a block or two from the hotel, so no one will know where we came from, and then we’ll catch a taxi to the track.”
“And what if the cabdriver asks us why we want to go to the track hours after it’s closed?”
Trixie shrugged. “We’ll tell him we’re going there to meet someone. That’s true, in a way.”
“You win, Trixie,” Honey said, “if only because it would be a shame to let all that careful planning go to waste.”
Two hours later, Honey and Trixie, both dressed in blue jeans, sneakers, and T-shirts, walked quickly down the back stairs of the hotel and out onto the street. Even in the middle of town, the stillness of the August night seemed mysterious and frightening. Trixie took a deep breath to calm her suddenly jittery stomach. A block from the hotel, she flagged down a cab. She and Honey climbed into the backseat, and Trixie said, “To the racetrack, please.”
The two girls waited fearfully for the driver to ask the reason for their strange destination, but he simply turned down the flag on the meter and mo
ved off into the dark night. That's one hurdle out of the way, Trixie thought. How many do we have left to go?
At the track, the girls paid the driver, then looked around for a way to enter the track. They had to walk completely around the fenced-in enclosure before they found a place where they could scale the fence.
Once inside the track area, the girls stood still for a moment, unsure which way to go to find Gadbox’s stall. Finally, Honey tapped Trixie’s shoulder and pointed to the left, her eyebrows raised as a signal that she was still not entirely sure of her directions. Trixie shrugged and nodded her agreement that that was as good a place to start as any, and the two moved silently across the deserted enclosure.
The girls had gone some distance before their surroundings began to look familiar. Trixie tapped Honey’s arm and pointed to the right. The Worthington stalls were right around the corner of the barn they were walking past—she thought.
Rounding the corner, Trixie spotted the Worthington stalls, exactly where she’d thought they’d be. Home free, she thought—just as a shadowy figure stepped out of the darkness, clapped a hand across each girl’s mouth, and dragged them, stumbling, into an empty stall.
Trixie and Honey both fell backward into a mound of fresh, clean straw. Looking up, Trixie saw a man’s form towering above her, hands on hips. The moonlight that streamed in through the open doorway outlined his figure and glinted on his bright red hair.
Regan! Trixie thought, her heart pounding so hard that she thought her ribs would be shattered by the pressure. Oh, no, Regan! We were so sure you were innocent!
Regan knelt in the straw in front of the girls, his face a stony mask. Trixie felt herself cringing away from him. At the sight of her terror, Regan’s expression changed to one of sympathy. “Hey, Trix,” he whispered, “don’t be frightened. I’m sorry I grabbed you out there. I didn’t recognize you in the dark. I guess I don’t have to ask what you two are doing here. You heard about the claiming race and came out to try to catch someone drugging Gadbox, right?”
The Mystery at Saratoga Page 11