The Mystery of the Wild Ponies Read online

  Winifred nodded. “The black horse is definitely the best. The others are worthless.”

  “I’ll start lining up a buyer as soon as I get back,” the man promised.

  The kids stared at one another. They were talking about a black horse! It could only be Midnight.

  With his finger to his lips, Henry motioned to them to head inside. They crept down the boardwalk and into the front entrance of Gullwing Cottage.

  Once inside, everyone spoke at once.

  “She’s trying to sell Midnight!” Benny cried.

  “We don’t know that for sure,” said Henry. “But it does sound suspicious. They were definitely talking about a black horse.”

  “If she took Midnight, where is she keeping him?” asked Violet.

  “Even more important,” said Jessie direly, “if she somehow managed to capture Midnight, why is she selling him? She could just return him to the herd.”

  Henry shook his head. “I think Winifred Gorman may have committed a crime.”

  “Yeah,” said Benny. “Horsenapping!”

  CHAPTER 6

  A Stranger at the Clambake

  The children gathered in the living room to discuss what they should do next.

  “But how can we prove that Winifred took Midnight?” Violet asked.

  “We can’t,” said Henry. “Not yet, at least. We’ll need to look for evidence that Midnight was stolen.”

  “But we can’t let Winifred know that we’re suspicious,” Jessie pointed out. “We need to act ordinary, like we’re on vacation.”

  “Well, we are on vacation!” Benny said with a laugh.

  Grandfather came into the room just then.

  “We’re going to have a clambake for dinner tonight,” he said. “Would you like to come with me to the seafood market?”

  “Oh, boy!” said Benny, jumping up and down. “A clambake!” Then he stopped hopping. “What’s a clambake?”

  Everyone laughed.

  “You’ll see,” said Grandfather with a mysterious wink.

  The kids changed quickly. Grandfather had promised they could eat lunch out.

  The seafood market was located in a group of little stores. The stores were connected by a series of boardwalks along the Sound.

  “Can we do some shopping first?” asked Jessie. She had some money saved from her allowance.

  “Of course. I’d like to wander around myself,” Grandfather said. “Let’s meet here in half an hour. Then we can eat at that sandwich place over there.”

  The four children hurried down the wooden ramp. Henry and Benny went into a shop that sold only games. Jessie and Violet browsed in a jewelry store next door.

  “That ring looks good on you,” Violet told Jessie, who was trying on a silver dolphin band.

  “I think I’ll get it,” Jessie said, pleased. “What are you buying?”

  After much deliberation, Violet chose a dainty chain of silver links.

  As the girls were leaving with their purchases, Jessie spotted some odd necklaces on a rack. Dark gray pointed objects dangled from chains.

  “These look like teeth!” she remarked.

  Violet read the sign. “They are. Ancient sharks’ teeth.” She shivered. “I don’t think I’d want a shark’s tooth around my neck!”

  Outside, Benny showed them the trick deck of cards he had bought.

  Henry had gotten a pocket chess set.

  “I’m going to teach myself how to play,” he said.

  They found Grandfather at the sandwich shop. It was crowded, so the Aldens took a number. They sat on high stools along one counter to wait.

  Benny twirled on his stool. When it stopped, he was facing a poster on the wall. It showed a picture of a black horse.

  “Look,” he said, tugging on Jessie’s sleeve. “Is that Midnight?”

  Jessie scanned the poster. “Yes, it says Midnight is missing.”

  “I bet these posters are all over the place,” said Violet. “Officer Hyde probably had them made.”

  When their club sandwiches and sodas came, the children filled Grandfather in on the missing stallion.

  “I hope Officer Hyde finds him soon,” James Alden said.

  The children looked at one another. Grandfather didn’t know anything about their suspicions. Better to keep it a secret, since Grandfather was hoping for a mystery-free vacation.

  After eating, they walked to the seafood market. Grandfather bought a big bucket of clams. Jessie picked out fresh corn, potatoes, and tomatoes.

  They returned to the cottage and took the food down to the beach.

  Benny was puzzled when he saw the pit Grandfather had dug in the sand earlier in the day.

  “Are we going to eat in that hole?” he asked.

  Grandfather laughed. “No, the food will steam in this pit. Now I need rocks and wood for a fire.”

  The girls collected stones and driftwood, while the boys wrapped the potatoes in foil. Then Grandfather laid the rocks in the bottom of the pit. Henry added the driftwood and lit a fire.

  “The trick is to let the rocks get hot,” said James Alden. “Then we will cover them with wet seaweed.”

  Henry nodded. “Which makes steam.”

  “What about the food?” Benny wanted to know. This was certainly a strange way to cook!

  “You’ll see when the fire burns down and heats the rocks,” said Grandfather.

  While the fire burned with Grandfather watching over it, Henry, Jessie, Benny, and Violet took a long walk down the beach to collect seaweed. When they returned, the firewood had burned down to a fine ash and the rocks were good and hot. Grandfather carefully laid the weed on the rocks. Then he set the foil-wrapped potatoes on top of the seaweed, then the corn, still in the husk. The clams in their thick shells went on last.

  Henry covered the pit with a sheet of heavy canvas and shoveled sand over it to weigh it down.

  “Now we can have fun while our dinner cooks,” said Grandfather. “It’ll be ready in a while.”

  The afternoon passed quickly. Everyone swam in the ocean, then stretched out under the umbrella to read or nap. Violet drew in her sketchbook.

  Jessie was reaching for the sunblock when she saw a figure on the dune. It was a boy with hair so blond it was nearly white. The boy was staring at them. When he saw Jessie sit up, he ducked behind the dune.

  Jessie frowned. People here were usually very friendly. And she had the feeling she’d seen him before, but where?

  “Food’s ready!” Benny called. He and Grandfather were checking under the tarp without lifting it all the way off the steaming mound.

  “Not quite yet, Benny,” said Grandfather. “But we can bring down plates and drinks.”

  Jessie and Henry went back to the cottage. She told him about the mysterious boy.

  “He was right there,” she said, looking up and down the empty dune.

  “Well, he’s gone now,” said Henry.

  “I wish I could remember where I’d seen him before,” she said.

  “It’s probably not important,” Henry told her. Inside the cottage, he sliced tomatoes while Jessie put silverware, plates, glasses, and napkins into a big basket.

  Henry carried the basket down to their blanket on the beach. Jessie followed with a huge thermos of iced tea, a box of chocolate cookies, and a container of butter.

  Opening the clambake was exciting. First Henry shoveled off all the sand. Then Grandfather peeled back the heavy canvas. Underneath were sweet, steamed clams, then a layer of juicy corn on the cob, and then the potatoes. The delicious smell of the cooked food filled the air.

  They sat cross-legged on the blanket to eat. Jessie finished an ear of corn and as she reached for another she saw the mysterious blond boy peering at them from over the dune’s edge again. And again he ducked out of sight when he saw Jessie looking his way.

  “This is delicious!” Benny exclaimed, licking butter off his fingers.

  “It is good,” agreed Violet with a contented sigh,
and they all ate in silence for a while.

  Jessie was thinking about the mysterious boy. Suppose he was still nearby, hiding somewhere. It seemed sad, the boy alone while they were all together, happily eating.

  While the others were cleaning up, Jessie fixed a plate of leftover clams, corn, tomatoes, and a baked potato. She set the plate on the upturned plastic clam bucket and covered it with another plate. She put a rock on top to hold the plate down.

  Then everyone went back to the cottage to take a much-needed shower.

  “You should see how much butter and sand you have on you,” Violet said to Benny with a giggle.

  After they showered, it was still too early to go to bed, so the children asked if they could walk on the beach. Grandfather stayed behind to read the paper.

  On the boardwalk, Jessie told the others that she had put out a plate of food just behind the dune for the mysterious boy.

  “There’s something about that boy,” she said. “I know I’ve seen him somewhere before. I thought he might be hungry, the way he was staring at our clambake.”

  “He might have been just curious,” said Henry. “But it was a good idea, Jessie.”

  Thick gray mist rolled in from the ocean. Tatters of fog blew across the dune like ghostly flags.

  Through the mist Jessie spied a figure walking down the beach ahead of them. The person was carrying a bucket.

  “I bet that’s him!” she exclaimed. “He’s carrying the bucket I put the plate on.”

  Violet stared into the fog. “I can’t tell if it’s a boy or not. And the bucket looks heavy, the way he’s carrying it. What could be in it?”

  Beside her, Benny froze.

  “What is it?” she asked him.

  A break in the wispy clouds unveiled a silvery moon. Bathed in moonlight, a horse galloped across the sand. Puffs of sand shot up from its hoofs.

  The horse pelted down the beach, well beyond the figure with the bucket.

  “It’s Magic, the ghost horse!” Benny cried.

  And then the horse was gone, vanished like a breath in the mist.

  “I just had a glimpse,” said Henry. “Too foggy to tell what color it was.”

  “Let’s follow him,” Benny suggested. “Maybe we can catch him!”

  Ragged clouds closed over the moon, shutting out the light. Like ghostly smoke, fog blanketed the beach.

  “The fog is even heavier now,” Henry said. “It’s too dangerous. We have to go back.”

  Jessie shivered. What had they just seen?

  The next morning was clear, with no sign of fog. After a quick breakfast, the Alden children hurried to the beach.

  “I put the bucket right here,” said Jessie. “It’s gone! So is my plate of food.”

  “The person we saw last night was walking up here,” said Henry. Soon he found a line of prints. He put his own foot next to one. “A little bigger than mine.”

  “It could be an older boy,” said Jessie. “Like Jeremy or one of his friends.”

  “Those prints could also belong to a woman,” Violet pointed out. “Like Winifred. We’re in front of her house.”

  “Shad’s feet aren’t very big, either,” Benny added. “Let’s see if we can find hoofprints.”

  But last night’s tide had washed the shoreline clean.

  “We definitely saw a horse,” said Jessie. “We couldn’t have all been dreaming.”

  “But who was the person?” Violet asked.

  “Let’s go visit Winifred,” suggested Henry. “We can ask her if she was out walking last night. And we can look at the size of her shoe at the same time.”

  For once, Winifred Gorman seemed to be waiting for the Aldens. She was standing in her carport, hands on her hips.

  “There you are!” she said, her face angry under the straw hat. “I have a bone to pick with you kids!”

  CHAPTER 7

  The Shark’s Tooth Necklace

  “What are you talking about?” Jessie asked.

  Winifred glared at them. “I left a bowl of apples here yesterday. I’d just bought them so I could paint a still life today. Now they’re gone!”

  “You think we took your apples?” said Henry. “Why would we do that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Winifred, holding up the empty bowl. “Things keep disappearing around here.”

  “Well, we’re not doing it,” Benny said defensively. Then he added, “But we saw somebody on the beach last night. He was carrying a bucket—”

  “—and the bucket looked heavy,” Violet broke in. “Like it could have had apples in it.”

  “Did you see who this person was?” Winifred demanded.

  Jessie shook her head. “No. We were wondering if you noticed anybody walking past your place. It was around nine o’clock.”

  “I was watching the news then.” Winifred set the bowl down. “I’ll have to paint something else, I guess.”

  Abruptly she went inside her house.

  Jessie clucked her tongue. “That woman has the worst manners! She doesn’t even say good-bye, after she accused us of stealing her apples.”

  “She’s not very polite,” Henry agreed. “But at least we found out one thing. She was in her house when we saw that person, so it couldn’t have been her.”

  “That’s what she says,” Benny replied. He wasn’t sure he trusted the artist.

  “I looked at her feet,” Violet reported. She held her hands apart. “They’re really big.”

  Jessie giggled. “Yeah! Way bigger than the footprints we found.”

  “Okay,” said Henry. “So it wasn’t Winifred who left those prints.”

  The children wandered down to the beach again. They walked along the water’s edge and discussed the case.

  “Who keeps taking Winifred’s stuff?” asked Jessie.

  “My stuff, too,” Benny said. “Somebody swiped my peanut butter, banana, and mayonnaise sandwich, remember?”

  Violet ticked off the missing items on one hand. “Winifred’s beach towel, Benny’s sandwich, and now the apples. Things taken from our house and her house.”

  “But not Jeremy’s house,” Henry observed, glancing back at the brown house. “The college kids haven’t complained once about anything being stolen.”

  Violet thought of something. “The person we saw last night was walking toward the college kids’ house—”

  “And Jeremy likes to play jokes,” Henry reminded them. “He told us so himself. Suppose he took the towel and the apples to be funny. And remember how he ‘borrowed’ a goat to play a joke on his professor?”

  “I suppose he could be a suspect,” Jessie admitted reluctantly. She thought Jeremy was nice.

  Violet stooped to pick up a rosy shell. “Who else can we think of?”

  “In which case?” asked Henry.

  “What do you mean?” Violet said.

  Henry tossed a pebble into a tide pool. “We’ve got two mysteries here. The missing items. And the missing horse.”

  “Midnight is more important than a bunch of apples,” Benny declared. “What could have happened to him?”

  “Well, we saw the picture Winifred painted of a black horse,” said Jessie. “I bet that horse is Midnight.”

  “But she claimed she didn’t see any horses the day she drove to the sanctuary,” Violet said.

  “Like Benny said, that’s what she told us,” said Henry. “Maybe she got Midnight away from the herd, took him somewhere, and painted his picture.”

  “Or maybe she isn’t only an artist but also a horse thief,” said Violet. “Maybe she paints a horse and finds a buyer by showing the painting.”

  “I don’t know,” said Henry. “She said she’d moved here without really knowing anything about the horses.”

  “But maybe she told us that on purpose!” Jessie said.

  Henry looked at his sisters with approval. “Those are interesting theories. You two got a lot out of that conversation we overheard.”

  Jessie and Violet smiled at ea
ch other.

  “What do you think Winifred meant when she said the horse was ‘the best’ and the others were ‘worthless’?” Violet wanted to know.

  Jessie thought a moment. “Maybe when she saw the herd she figured Midnight was the prettiest and that’s why she painted him. The others aren’t as pretty.”

  “I think they are,” Benny chimed in.

  “I think so, too,” said Violet. “But Winifred is an artist. She sees things in a different way.”

  “We can’t rule out Jeremy, either,” Henry said. “He keeps talking about the big stunts he pulled. If he took Midnight, that would be a really big stunt.”

  “You’re right,” agreed Benny. “Jeremy could have horsenapped Midnight as easily as Winifred.”

  “We’re forgetting a suspect,” said Violet. “Shad.”

  Henry nodded. “Shad has the biggest reason of all for taking Midnight.”

  “What’s that?” asked Benny. He liked the old fisherman.

  “He hates the way the ponies are locked up,” Henry replied. “Shad wants them loose, like they used to be.”

  Jessie threw up her hands. “As usual, we have a lot of questions and no answers! Let’s check where I put the food out last night. Maybe we’ll find a clue we overlooked.”

  Near the dune, they located a ring-shaped mark in the sand where the bucket had stood.

  Benny noticed a glint of silver tangled in the sea grass. He pulled out a fine silver chain with a dark gray object dangling from it.

  “What is this?” he asked, holding up the chain.

  Jessie knew instantly. “It’s a shark’s tooth. Violet and I saw necklaces just like that in the jewelry store yesterday.”

  “A real shark’s tooth?” Benny was fascinated.

  “Whoever took your food probably lost this necklace at the same time,” Henry said to Jessie. “Probably when he—or she—bent over.”

  “Can I have it?” Benny asked. The necklace was the coolest thing he’d ever seen.

  “We might find the owner,” Jessie told him. “So I’d better hang on to it for safekeeping. But the next time we go to those little shops, Violet and I will buy you a shark’s tooth.”

  As he watched his sister stow the necklace in her shorts pocket, Benny had a niggling thought. The necklace looked sort of familiar.