Photo Finish (6 page)

The Saddle Club turned and started toward Monkeyshines’s stall again. But before they’d taken more than a few steps, they saw Blackie trotting toward them from the end of the row.

“Look, he found something else to chew on,” Lisa commented. “It looks like hay. He must have snitched some from Monk.”

Carole watched the goat for a moment. “It doesn’t look like he’s really eating it though, does it?” she said. “Maybe that rag filled him up.”

Blackie shook his head, seeming annoyed. He spat out
the mouthful of hay. Then he picked it up again and worried it with his teeth. After a few seconds he spat it out again.

“What’s this? Have pigs learned to fly?” said Eddie Hernandez’s voice from behind the girls. “Did I really just see that bottomless pit spit out some food?”

Carole turned and saw that Eddie had an armload of hay and a couple of halters slung over one shoulder. His eyes were riveted to Blackie. “I guess he’s full,” she said with a shrug.

“Full?” Eddie shook his head. “I doubt it. We’d better ask your pal Judy Barker to take a look at him when she gets back. If Blackie has stopped eating, there’s got to be something seriously wrong with him. Maybe I’ll take a look at him myself when I have a half a second to do it.” With that, Eddie disappeared into a nearby stall.

Carole was pretty sure the groom was joking, but just in case, she hurried forward and knelt down in front of the goat. “Are you feeling all right, Blackie?” she asked, scratching his head between the hard little horns. On a hunch, she leaned over and picked up the slightly soggy mouthful of hay the goat had dropped. She examined it for a second, then jumped to her feet. “Hey, you guys! Look at this,” she exclaimed. “This hay is moldy through and through!”

Stevie and Lisa hurried over to see for themselves. “You’re right,” Stevie said with a low whistle. “No wonder
Blackie didn’t want to eat this. It would have made him as sick as—”

“Monkeyshines!” Carole interrupted her. She rushed off down the aisle. “If Blackie stole it from Monk’s stall, there might be more. We have to get it before he does—if we’re not already too late!”

“O
H
,
GOSH
,
SHE
’
S
right,” Lisa said, hurrying after Carole. Stevie was close behind her. All three of them knew that just a few bites of the moldy hay could make Monkeyshines much too sick to race that day.

Eddie reemerged from the other stall in time to see them racing down the aisle. “Whoa there, what’s going on?” he shouted, hurrying after them.

Carole didn’t pause to answer. Calling a greeting to Monkeyshines so he wouldn’t be startled by her abrupt arrival, she quickly unlatched the webbing that was stretched across the open doorway and let herself in. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that the colt was facing away from his metal food manger. He greeted her with a nicker, and she reached out to pat him with her
left hand, while her right hand searched the manger for more hay.

“Got it,” she said a moment later, emerging from the stall and latching the rope carefully behind her. She was clutching a handful of moldy hay.

Eddie reached them at the same moment. “All right, what’s going on here?” he demanded, sounding a little angry. “Don’t you know you shouldn’t go barging into a racehorse’s stall like that, no matter how good-natured he is?”

“Sorry,” Carole said. “I do know. But this was an emergency.” She held out her hand so the groom could see the hay. “I had to stop him from eating this.”

Eddie took the hay from her and examined it. The angry lines in his face relaxed, and he looked puzzled. “Moldy hay. How did you know this was in there?”

“That’s what Blackie had that he wasn’t eating,” Stevie explained. “Carole saw that it was moldy, and she figured it must have come from Monk’s stall. She didn’t want him to eat it and get sick.”

Eddie’s eyes widened. He looked down in time to see Blackie scoot under the rope and into Monkeyshines’s stall. “Boy, it’s a good thing that goat is such a pig!” he exclaimed. “That was good thinking on your part, Carole—I can’t believe I didn’t think to stop and check on Blackie myself. I should know better than to just let that kind of strange behavior go, no matter how busy I am.”

He handed the moldy hay back to Carole and quickly
stepped inside several of the other stalls nearby, checking the hay in each. “Nothing in any of these. Looks like Monk was the only unlucky one. It’s a good thing you girls caught it in time. Otherwise Monk would have ended up out of the race with a bad case of colic.” He shook each of the girls’ hands in turn. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” said Carole. “Although Blackie probably deserves most of the credit. How do you think that moldy hay got in there anyway?”

Eddie shrugged. “Who knows? I fed the horses myself this morning and I know the hay was fine then. I also know that Monk polished off every bite of his breakfast—the trainer wouldn’t let him run today if he hadn’t. Someone must have given him some more hay later and not checked it carefully enough.”

“That seems kind of strange …,” Lisa began to say slowly.

“Hey, stranger things have happened,” Eddie said with another shrug. “It was a close call, but luckily it seems to have turned out okay. I’ll ask Judy to give Monk a close look when she shows up, but other than that, all we can do now is forget about it.”

“But—” Carole objected.

“Don’t worry about it,” Eddie said. “It was probably an accident.” He hurried off down the aisle.

Carole, Stevie, and Lisa traded glances. They were silent for a moment.

“Do you think it was an accident?” Carole asked at last.

“No way,” Stevie said. “How could moldy hay just accidentally end up in the feed bin of one horse—one horse who happens to be running in the Preakness that very day?”

“It does seem kind of suspicious,” Carole agreed, staring down at the hay in her hand. “This isn’t just a little moldy—it’s moldy through and through. It would have been hard for someone to miss it.” She shuddered as she thought about Monkeyshines’s close call. If he’d eaten the hay and gotten colic, he would have been very sick—he might even have died. From all her experience of working with horses, Carole had learned that it was always better to be too cautious than not cautious enough. That meant always checking hay and other feed for spoilage. And right now that also meant wondering if there might be some other explanation for the moldy hay than “accident.”

Lisa looked thoughtful. “I don’t know, you guys,” she said. “I agree that it’s strange, but it must be an accident. What other explanation is there?”

“I’ll tell you: Someone was trying to poison Monkeyshines,” Stevie said darkly. “Someone knew that his owner and trainer and most of the other people from the stable were out with the other horses. Eddie was over getting hay, so he was out of the way. It was a perfect opportunity to knock Monk out of the race.”

Carole stared at her friend. “But why?” she asked. “Why would someone do that?” She reached out and stroked Monkeyshines’s nose. “What a horrible thing to try to do!”

Stevie nodded in agreement. “It is terrible,” she said. “And we’ve got to find out who did it. This calls for a Saddle Club investigation! Lisa, why don’t you get a few pictures of the scene of the crime?”

Lisa still looked unconvinced. “I don’t know, Stevie,” she said. “Why do you think it was a crime and not just a stupid mistake? Everyone around here is so busy today—maybe someone just didn’t check the hay carefully enough, like Eddie said.”

“Well, it’s possible,” Stevie said grudgingly. “But we should try to find out who it was so it doesn’t happen again.”

“I guess you’re right,” Lisa said uncertainly. She snapped on her flash attachment and quickly took a few photographs of Monkeyshines’s stall and manger, though she wasn’t sure what good it would do—there was obviously no evidence there now.

“Here, get a shot of this,” Carole suggested, holding up the moldy hay she was still clutching.

Lisa obligingly focused on the hay and snapped a few pictures of it. Then the girls drifted back toward the stable entrance, discussing possible suspects.

“The first thing we need to figure out,” Stevie said, “is a motive.”

But before she could go any further with that line of thought, Max and Deborah entered and spotted them.

“There you are,” Max called. “Judy thought we might find you here.”

Deborah held up several white paper bags. “We brought breakfast.”

“Breakfast,” Carole repeated blankly. Her stomach grumbled. “Oh! What time is it?”

“It’s after seven,” Max said brightly. “We brought doughnuts and juice for all of you.”

“Great!” Stevie said, taking one of the bags Deborah was holding and peering hungrily inside.

“Enjoy,” Max said. “We’ve got to get going.”

“Aren’t you going to have breakfast too?” Lisa asked.

“We already ate,” Deborah told her. “I’ve got a ton of work to do on my story before post time. Max is going to help me.”

“That’s right,” Max said with a grin. “Deborah has been such a good sport about learning everything there is to know about
my
job and pitching in at Pine Hollow that I thought I’d return the favor. I’m now her official pack mule and gofer. So you girls are on your own for a while.”

After Max and Deborah had left, The Saddle Club settled down in an empty stall to eat their breakfast and continue discussing the moldy hay incident.

“All right, first of all, let’s come up with a list of likely suspects,” Stevie said.

Lisa shook her head. “We can’t do that until we figure out what anyone would gain by poisoning Monkeyshines.”

“That’s obvious,” Carole said. “Someone must have wanted to keep him from racing today so that Garamond would win.”

“That seems a little
too
obvious,” Lisa pointed out. “I seriously doubt anyone from Garamond’s stable would do something so risky.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Stevie said, poking a straw into her juice box and taking a big gulp. “After all, everyone around here keeps talking about how much money is at stake. Who knows what someone would do for money?”

Lisa dug a notebook and pen out of her camera bag. “All right,” she said. “I’m still not sure there’s really a crime here to be solved, but just in case there is, we’d better look at this logically.”

Carole and Stevie grinned at each other. Lisa could always be counted on to bring logic into any dilemma.

“Great,” Stevie said. “First, write down all the possible motives someone could have.”

Lisa nodded and wrote
MOTIVES
at the top of the page. Under that she wrote
MONEY
. Then she paused and stared at her friends. “Well?”

“How about revenge?” Stevie suggested.

“Revenge?” Carole said. “Where do you get that?”

“I don’t know.” Stevie shrugged. “That’s always a motive in the movies. Maybe someone out there hates Mr.
McLeod passionately and wants to make sure his horse doesn’t win.”

Lisa looked more doubtful than ever, but she wrote
REVENGE
under
MONEY
. “I have another one,” she said. She wrote
ACCIDENT
.

Stevie looked over her shoulder. “Accident?” she said.

“Yes. If we’re going to investigate, we have to consider the possibility that there’s no big conspiracy at all behind that moldy hay,” Lisa said, looking a little stubborn.

Carole knew there was no point in arguing with Lisa when she had that expression. Besides, there was just the slightest chance she was right. “Okay, then,” she said. “We have the motives. Now let’s move on to suspects.”

“Great,” Stevie said quickly. “I nominate Kelly Kennemere.”

Carole raised her eyebrows. “Good one!” she said approvingly. “She was really nasty to us yesterday. Maybe it was because she knew we were from Monkeyshines’s barn and she had a guilty conscience.”

Lisa wrote
SUSPECTS
and jotted Kelly’s name underneath. “Who else?” she asked.

Stevie thought hard. “Well, there’s Kelly’s father,” she said. “After all, he’s the one who would profit the most if Monk were out of the race. Garamond would be almost certain to win the first-prize money.”

“I guess so,” Lisa said. “Although there’s a chance he would anyway—he already won the Kentucky Derby, remember?”

“Write him down anyway,” Carole said. “We don’t know what kind of person Mr. Kennemere is. He could be super-greedy or just super-mean. Judging by his daughter, I wouldn’t doubt it.”

“I still don’t think someone like that would take such a big risk,” Lisa said as she wrote Mr. Kennemere’s name under his daughter’s. “Although I suppose it could have been someone else in his stable—maybe the jockey. Doesn’t he get a percentage of whatever money the horse wins?”

“You’re right,” Carole said. “Write that down.”

Lisa wrote
THE JOCKEY OR SOMEONE ELSE IN THE STABLE
.

The girls continued to think as they finished their breakfast, but they couldn’t come up with any more likely suspects.

“Well, we’ve got three suspects on our list. The best thing to do,” Stevie suggested as they stood up and walked to the nearest trash can to deposit their bags and cartons, “is to keep our eyes and ears open for the rest of the day. Maybe we’ll see or hear something that will give us a clue.”