Moonlight: Star of the Show (5 page)

Silence.

“I’ll tell you why, because there’ve been people here sniffing around,
that’s
why. I’ve got my hands on the pony you wanted and I’ve kept him well
hidden, but I’m sure someone’s got wind of what you’re up to. I want this pony off my yard. I’m in the business of selling ponies, not being security and keeping nosey girls out. Got it?”

Alice held her breath, straining to hear the dealer’s next response.

“Just come and get him as soon as possible, will you?”

Silence.

“Well, I suppose sometime after four today will have to be all right.”

She heard the phone slam down and, grabbing her gloves tightly, she turned tail and sprinted out of the yard.

When she reached the others her chest was burning from running so fast.

“Where’s the fire?” Rosie asked. Alice ignored her and all but vaulted into the saddle, fishing for her stirrups as she set off on a surprised Scout at a rapid trot along the lane, saying she’d tell them when they’d got further away.

They stopped when they saw a bridleway leading into a wood and found a shallow brook in the shade. They let the ponies have a drink, and a splash around, cooling their legs down as Alice told them in a single breath what she’d heard.

“I don’t know who was on the other end of the phone but it
has
to be Moonlight in that stable, doesn’t it?”

“And whoever Harry spoke to will be coming to collect him today,” Mia said urgently, checking her watch.

Alice nodded.

“There’s only one thing for it then,” Mia announced solemnly. “We can’t afford to miss the handover – we’ll have to go back and do a stake-out.”

Chapter Five

A shot of fear rushed through Alice at the thought of staking out hulking Harry Franklin’s yard. Imagine if they got caught! Harry would probably feed them to Growler. Half of her was excited, the other half terrified. Either way, Alice was determined not to give up now that they were so close to solving the mystery, not when she was just starting to feel like a proper detective.

Rosie was looking less convinced.

“I’m not doing anything before we go back to the farm for some lunch,” she said, pointedly breathing in to make herself look in need of a good meal. “All this talk of steaks is making me even hungrier than ever!”

“STAKE, not STEAK!” Charlie cried, tapping
Rosie’s crash cap with her crop. “And anyway, if we go back to Blackberry Farm we might miss the handover – what if whoever’s coming arrives early?! Then we won’t have
any
way of finding out who took Moonlight.”

Rosie twirled her whip, her lower lip jutting out.

“Think of Poppy – we’re doing this for her,” Alice said.

“I’d rather be doing something for my stomach right now, if you don’t mind!” she snapped back. “And your plan won’t work anyway. We couldn’t hide last time with our ponies, remember. We’ll have to go back to drop them off.”

“Annoyingly, Rosie
has
got a point,” Charlie said, looking frustrated.

“Again,” Rosie said, a small smile of satisfaction spreading over her round face.

“I know!” Alice said, suddenly thinking of a way round the problem. “Daisy’s house isn’t far from here. We could see if she’d let us turn out
our ponies in one of her fields, then we could come back on foot.”

Three of them agreed, but Rosie still wouldn’t budge.

“She might make us sandwiches,” Alice said, trying to persuade her.

Alice also had her own reasons for this new plan. Daisy had a full set of show jumps that her father drilled her over endlessly in his efforts to transform Daisy from a slightly dippy rider into an international show jumper. Alice was hoping she could school Scout over them before turning him out.

So with Rosie grumbling loudly about how faint she felt, they set off in the direction of Daisy’s. After ten minutes walking the ponies on long reins they reached Daisy’s detached, isolated house. Alice jumped off and ran up the path to ring the doorbell. It echoed loudly inside. Empty. Alice walked round the side of the house and saw Daisy’s black pony, Shadow, grazing alone.
He lifted his head when he saw Alice and flattened back his ears, shaking his head grumpily and flicking his tail before returning to graze. In the next field were the pristine show jumps, in a clearly marked-out arena. It was so tempting, but Alice knew they couldn’t just ride round without asking, or unsaddle their ponies and turn them out without permission, especially knowing what Daisy’s dad was like. He’d be furious if he found out that the ‘competition’ were using his jumps to improve their chances of winning the Cup and depriving Daisy.

For Rosie, finding no one at home was the last straw. She muttered, “I
knew
this was a bad idea!” before heading Dancer down the lane in the direction of home. Reluctantly, the others followed. There was nothing else they could do. They’d have to go back to Blackberry Farm after all.

At the end of the lane they walked and trotted quietly for a while through the woods feeling
glum, when suddenly Daisy shot out of a side path, almost riding straight into them. She looked totally startled.

“Wow!” Charlie exclaimed as Pirate jinked sideways. “You don’t hang around!”

“Wh— what do you mean…?” Daisy whispered, her eyes as big as saucers and her face looking a shade paler than normal.

“We rode past your place about twenty minutes ago,” Alice explained, still thinking of the show jumps, “and it was deserted apart from Shadow. You must have got back and tacked up about a second after we called for you.”

“Bad timing,” Rosie sighed grumpily. “If only you’d turned up five minutes earlier we could have been enjoying a decent lunch by now.”

Daisy looked alarmed. “You… you called at my house? What, for lunch…?”

“Not exactly. We were hoping we could turn out our ponies with Shadow for a while, that was all,” Charlie replied, as Daisy hurriedly started
to circle her pony away on the narrow path.

The girls exchanged looks. Daisy was often a bit on the loopy side, but she was behaving more bizarrely than usual even by her standards.

“Sorry,” she replied hesitantly over her shoulder, not looking the others in the eye. “I’d ask you back now, only, well I know my dad wouldn’t like it. He can be a bit funny about… erm…”

“Everything?” Rosie huffed.

Daisy nodded slightly. “Kind of.”

Mia was about to push it, but Alice jumped in. “It’s okay, Daisy, it was only a thought. Thanks anyway.”

Daisy gave Alice a weak smile as she quickly walked Shadow away and disappeared down the path the girls had just ridden along.

“Is she going home already?” Charlie asked. “Shadow can only have been out for about ten minutes. That’s hardly enough time to even warm him up.”

“She’s getting odder each time we see her,” Mia said.

“It’s really not her fault,” Alice replied, defensively. “
She’s
all right – I bet it’s her ridiculously strict dad piling on the pressure this close to the Show.”

“Well, he can’t be that strict or he’d make sure she groomed that poor pony properly,” Mia sniffed. “He looks dreadful. I’d never turn Wish out looking like that, even for a hack.”

Charlie, Alice and Rosie smiled at one another. Mia often said the same thing about their ponies, especially Pirate, whose bushy black mane defied gravity no matter what Charlie tried. No one lived up to Mia’s high turnout standards, and if she was annoyed with someone, being superior about their grooming was Mia’s favourite put-down.

“Looks like we’ll have to go back home after all,” Rosie said. She tried and failed to keep the triumph out of her voice.

Once they reached Blackberry Farm the girls turned out the ponies as soon as they’d drunk some water and had their backs and legs hosed down. Scout got down straight away and rolled happily and Dancer copied him, grunting loudly as she kicked her legs in the air and almost got stuck on her broad back.

Alice drank some water from the hose on the yard, and when Charlie tried to take it the hose flipped, accidentally, on Mia, who shrieked as if someone was trying to kill her. Before Alice could stop her, Mia had grabbed the hosepipe to exact her revenge and after a couple of well-aimed blasts they were all sopping wet. Even Rosie, as she emerged from the tack room with her packed lunch in her hand, got a blast full in the face.

“Mind my sandwiches!” she shrieked, holding them above her head.

The girls sat on the paddock fence in the sun
to dry off, hungrily eating the lunches they’d brought with them from home. The ponies all wandered over to them, with Dancer stretching out her neck and nibbling Rosie’s knee until she gave in and shared her sandwich with her. After they’d finished, Mia checked her watch and flipped open her notebook again. Looking down the clues, they felt pleased with what they’d found out so far.

“I can almost taste victory!” Rosie announced.

“What, even through cheese and pickle?” asked Charlie.

Mia coughed. “Listen, we haven’t got long to go through this before we have to head back to Harry’s – we need to concentrate.”

Rosie saluted Mia, making Charlie and Alice giggle as they all turned their attention back to the notebook:

They sat back, satisfied.

“There’s no point getting settled, everyone,” Mia said, turning the page on her notebook to reveal the following:

“We’ve got to go back there without any further delay,” Mia announced, jumping down from the fence.

“Has anyone actually thought about
how
we’re going to get there? There’s no way I’m walking that far!” Rosie complained. “And we can’t take the ponies out again – they’ve done enough today already and they’d be a bit of a giveaway, anyway, unless we teach them all to hide under that big bush.”

“We could cycle,” Charlie suggested. “It’s only two now, so we could be there by three at the latest.”

“Great – my bike’s got a puncture, I can’t go,”
Rosie huffed but was secretly pleased. She didn’t like the idea of cycling so far in the blazing summer heat one little bit.

“We could take it in turns to double up?” Alice offered.

“I hardly think so. You don’t want to be carrying around a lump like me,” Rosie said, puffing herself out to make herself look as big as possible.

“Well, if you’re staying you won’t mind me asking if I can borrow your brother’s bike, seeing as I haven’t got my own here,” Mia said, pleased that she’d thought of it first – Rosie’s brother Will had a
really
good bike. “But if you don’t come, Rosie, and we find Moonlight, you lose your share of any reward.”

Rosie narrowed her eyes. “But I got the clue about the hoof prints.”

“Look, come or don’t come. Either way, we have to get going. And I think we should call our parents to let them know we’ll be late home.” Mia got up briskly, reaching for her mobile.

Charlie and Alice followed. Alice turned to see Rosie sitting moodily on the fence still, gently pulling Dancer’s ears, and thought for a second that she really was bailing out. But as they turned the corner Rosie suddenly jumped down and ran to catch up. When she saw Alice and Charlie smiling to themselves, she dropped back to a grumpy walk.

Fifteen minutes later they were ready to leave the yard. Mia had found Will out in one of the fields checking on the sheep. He’d cheerfully headed back to the yard and wheeled out his huge red bike for her, and Rosie had reluctantly agreed to take it in turns to double up with the others.

Alice was first to cycle with Rosie as it had been her suggestion. Rosie sat on the saddle and steered while Alice held the handle bars and pedalled standing up. After about a quarter of a mile Alice was exhausted and Rosie swapped onto Charlie’s bike, but Charlie couldn’t manage to pedal hard enough to keep her small bike going
with Rosie sitting on it. Rosie stomped over to Mia, who could only just reach the pedals on Will’s bike.

Mia panicked after three minutes, braking violently, and claiming that she swore she heard the main shaft crack. None of the rest of them knew what a ‘main shaft’ was but it sounded important and Mia convinced them it was serious. So Rosie got shunted back to Alice and they muddled along, with Rosie moaning in Alice’s ear every five seconds that she couldn’t see to steer. Alice thought at first she was just being awkward until they wobbled headlong into a bramble bush.