away!”
“That’s not true!” Beth flared, stung. “Watch!”
Still holding on to the horse’s halter with one hand, she set the pail on the floor, then took a handful of the grain and held it up for Patches’s inspection.
The big horse eyed the grain, then tentatively opened her mouth and licked. Beth raised her hand, and the horse’s lips curled out, closed, and pulled in the oats. As she munched slowly, then swallowed, Beth reached down for another handful.
“That’s the way,” she crooned softly as the horse ate the second handful. “See how good they are?”
“Big deal,” Tracy replied, her voice scornful. “A horse will eat anything, if you shove it into its mouth.” Snickering, she turned away, and left the stable as silently as she’d come.
Beth felt a sudden stinging in her eyes, and glared after Tracy. “But you do like me,” Beth said to Patches when she was once again alone with the horse. “You like me better than anyone, don’t you?”
She picked up the pail, and held it while Patches, snuffling with apparent contentment, finished off the oats. Then, patting the horse on the neck, Beth let go of her halter and left the stall to take the bucket to the sink, wash it, and return it to its place by the tackroom door.
She was just about to turn Patches out into the paddock when she heard her mother’s voice calling her to come in. She hesitated, then patted the horse once more. “I’ll be back later,” she promised. “And maybe we can go for a ride. Okay?” The horse whinnied softly, and her tail flicked up. Then her tongue came out to give Beth’s hand a final lick. “Who cares what Tracy thinks? Who cares what anyone thinks?”
But as she left the stable, Peter Russell was coming in, and Beth could tell by the way he looked at her that Peggy had, indeed, told him all about yesterday morning. And though he said nothing, Beth felt herself redden. She did, after all, care what people thought.
Beth was just coming back into the stable an hour later when she heard Patches’s first high-pitched whinny, followed by the crash of hooves against the wooden walls of the stall.
She raced down the broad aisle between the two rows of stalls and got to the big mare just in time to see the horse rear up, her forelegs lashing at the air, then drop back down. She stamped her feet, then once more reared, her teeth bared and her mouth open as if she were trying to bite some unseen enemy.
Terrified, Beth backed away from the stall. “Peter!” she yelled. “Come quick!”
But Peter was already there, coming out of the stall that belonged to the big Arabian stallion named Thunder. He stared at Patches in amazement for a moment, then dashed down the aisle between the two rows of stalls, climbed the fence into the paddock, and hurried back toward Patches’s stall. As the mare, her eyes glazed now, bolted out of the stable, Peter made a grab for her halter, but missed. Bucking and snorting, Patches moved out into the center of the paddock, then stopped for a moment, glancing around wildly, as if searching for the unseen attacker. Then she dropped to the ground, and began rolling over, her legs thrashing violently. A moment later Beth, her face ashen, appeared at the open stall door.
“Peter, what’s wrong with her?”
Peter hesitated, his eyes fixed on the agonized horse. “I don’t know,” he said. “Get me the lead, then go up to the house and have someone call the vet.”
Beth darted back into the stable, grabbed a lead, then ran back outside and gave it to Peter. She stared at Patches for a moment, then dashed to the paddock fence, climbed over it, and charged up the slope toward the house.
A moment later she burst through the back door, calling out for Hannah.
“What is it, child?” Hannah asked, bustling out of her room.
“It’s Patches,” Beth gasped. “Hannah, we have to call the vet right away. Something’s wrong with Patches! I … I think she’s dying!”
As Beth and her mother, together with Phillip and Tracy Sturgess, looked on, Paul Garvey shook his head, and slid a large needle into a vein in Patches’s right foreleg. He pressed the plunger on the hypodermic home, and a moment later Patches shuddered, seemed to sigh, then lay still.
“It’s better this way,” the veterinarian said softly, rising to his feet. “There wasn’t any way to bring her out of that.”
“But it was colic, wasn’t it?” Phillip asked, his eyes leaving the dead horse to fix anxiously on Garvey.
“I never saw a case that violent before,” Garvey replied. “If I had to bet, I’d put my money on poison.”
“Poison?” Carolyn echoed, her eyes widening. “But who—”
“I’d like to check her feed,” Garvey interrupted, his attention shifting to Peter Russell. “Any of the other horses showing any symptoms like this?”
Peter shook his head. “They hadn’t even been fed yet. At least not Patches. I’d just filled Thunder’s trough, and Patches would have been next.”
The vet frowned. “The horse hadn’t eaten anything?” he asked, his voice conveying his doubt.
It was Tracy who answered him. “It was Beth,” she said, her voice quivering with apparent fury. “Beth was feeding her oats this morning.”
Garvey’s frown deepened. “Oats?” he echoed. “How much?”
“A whole bucketful,” Tracy said. “They’re in that bag over there.” She pointed to the big feedsack that still sat against the wall beneath the hayloft, and Garvey walked quickly over, reached deep into the sack, and pulled out a handful. Holding the feed close to his nose, he sniffed deeply. Garvey frowned, then sniffed again.
“Well?” Phillip asked.
“Doesn’t smell right,” Garvey said. “I’ll take some of this back to my lab. In the meantime, don’t let any of the other horses anywhere near this stuff.”
There was a moment of silence as the import of his words sank in, and then suddenly Tracy’s voice, shrill and angry, sliced through the stable once more. “She poisoned her! She poisoned my horse!”
Beth gasped, and turned to look at Tracy, who was pointing at her accusingly. “I didn’t do anything—” she began, but Tracy cut her off.
“You killed her!” she screamed. “Just because you hate me, you killed my horse! She didn’t even want those oats! I saw you, and you were making her eat them. You were shoving them right into her mouth!” She lunged toward Beth, but her father grabbed her, holding her back.
“Tracy, nobody would try to kill Patches—”
“She did!” Tracy wailed. “She poisoned the oats, and then made her eat them.”
Beth stared at Tracy for a moment, and suddenly remembered the way Patches had snorted, and tried to pull away from the pail. It wasn’t until she’d taken the food in her own hand, and almost shoved it into the horse’s mouth, that the animal had finally eaten it. Bursting into tears, she wheeled around and fled from the barn.
As Phillip held his crying daughter close, he and Carolyn exchanged a long look. Finally, after what seemed an eternity of silent decision-making, he spoke.
“I’ll call Alan,” he said quietly. “I guess maybe it’s time we did something.”
As he spoke the words, he thought for a moment that he felt Tracy relax against his body, and her sobbing seemed to ease.
Tracy Sturgess emerged from the swimming pool at the Westover Country Club, grabbed a towel, and flopped down on the lawn, shaking the water out of her hair. She’d been at the club for an hour, and even though no one had told her, she was almost sure she knew why her father had suddenly suggested — even insisted — that she come here this afternoon.
They were going to move Beth out of the house while she was gone.
And almost as good as that was the fact that her father had promised her a new horse, and even given in when she’d demanded an Arabian just like Thunder. She’d had to cry, of course, and act as though losing Patches was the worst thing that had ever happened to her, but that was easy. She’d always been good at things like that.
Now she propped her head up on one arm, and grinned at Alison Babcock, who was her best friend this summer. “What’s everybody talking about?” she asked.
“Your grandmother,” Alison replied. She rolled her eyes toward Kip Braithwaite, who was sprawled on a
