Stable Witch (11 page)

Lisa reflected for a minute on her practices with Veronica. Veronica
had
seemed extremely overzealous in offering advice. At the time, Lisa had attributed her sudden helpfulness to her wanting to show off how much she knew. “Anyway,” she said, musing aloud, “I don’t know what Veronica thought she had to fear from me. If she’d wanted to psych someone out, I’m sure she would be going after one of you.”

“Yeah, I guess Stevie and I should be thankful that we escaped without her playing witch’s tricks on us, too,” Carole remarked.

“Yeah …,” Stevie repeated, staring thoughtfully at the running water below her feet.

The sunny afternoon had made all of them a bit sleepy. Carole stretched. Lisa yawned. Stevie rubbed her eyes. And then it hit them. And when it hit
them, it hit them like an encyclopedia falling on a desk and making a loud slam. Carole gasped. Lisa clapped her hands together. Stevie jumped to her feet. And they all began shouting at once.

“Of course!”

“It’s been so obvious the whole time!”

“How could she?”

It took several minutes for the initial shock of their realization to wear off. When they could manage to talk rationally, the three girls started to go over the evidence of the case, piece by piece. Veronica diAngelo came up guilty every time.

“There’s no reason in the world why anyone at Pine Hollow would sabotage Veronica’s stirrup leather,” Lisa stated.

“Yup. That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Stevie confirmed.

“It makes everything fall into place, doesn’t it?” Carole said. “Just as Stevie said: Veronica has tons of enemies, but none of them would be so stupid as to play a dangerous trick like the slashing.”

The more they talked, the clearer it became that the only person who had benefitted from the sabotage was Veronica herself. She had made herself look like a helpless victim of a deranged attack in front of everyone at Pine Hollow and, most importantly, in front of
the judges. In the schooling show, it would probably be hard for the judges not to take pity on her. Of course, they would try to be fair, but they might give her higher marks because they felt bad about what had happened. Meanwhile, Veronica would be playing up her “innocent victim” role as much as she could.

At the same time, Veronica had made Stevie look like a mean and dangerously competitive bully. She had exchanged snide remarks with her before the Pony Club meeting, so that everyone knew they were feuding. Then she had arrived early at the stable on the day of the incident, and set Stevie up by asking her to tighten her girth.

“And,” Carole added, always thinking of the horse, “Veronica didn’t even think twice about scaring Garnet with her ‘fall’ and her shrieking and screaming. As usual, she just used Garnet to serve her own purposes.” Carole’s face flared an angry red.

Then, with her deductive mind, Lisa came up with the biggest giveaway of all. She thought back to her conversation with Veronica in the locker room the day before. Veronica had mentioned how lucky she was to have been wearing her oldest pair of breeches when she fell—not one of her sort-of-new pairs or one of her European pairs, but her very oldest pair. “She would never, ever have appeared in anything but her
best in front of the judges,” Lisa told her friends, “unless she had an extremely good reason—like she knew they’d get ripped. And now,” she finished triumphantly, “ladies and gentlemen—I mean, horses—of the jury, I rest my case.”

Stevie and Carole clapped loudly at Lisa’s conclusion. Then Stevie stood up and pretended to read from a scroll of paper. “The verdict is in. The defendant is … guilty as charged!” she declared.

“And will now be sentenced to never show her face at Pine Hollow again,” Carole added wishfully. Unfortunately, a Veronica-free Pine Hollow was more than they could hope for.

“Maybe she won’t be banished forever, but I doubt Max will take this lightly,” Lisa said. “What she did was probably the lowest thing anyone’s ever done at Pine Hollow, and she’s going to have to pay for it.”

With the mock trial over, the girls put their heads together to come up with a means of proving Veronica’s guilt to the rest of Pine Hollow. It wasn’t an easy task, largely because Veronica had gone so frighteningly far to win her grudge match against Stevie. After all, as Carole pointed out, she had been willing to fake falling off her horse and risk cutting herself. Convincing others that she had slashed her own stirrup leather
was going to be next to impossible. Who would believe Veronica would stoop so low?

“You know,” Lisa said reflectively, after the three-some had rejected a number of ideas, “sometimes you can win a battle by getting the other guy to surrender because she knows it’s for her own good.”

Carole and Stevie stared blankly at Lisa, trying to puzzle through what she was getting at.

In response to their confused faces, Lisa picked up her riding crop. She looked at it hard. “I have an idea that this is the answer, and Tuesday will be my solution,” she said.

“
What?
” said Carole and Stevie in unison. Lisa wasn’t making any sense at all. Had the excitement of being able to jump again had a negative effect on Lisa’s brain?

“Listen, if you two can solve my problem, I can solve Stevie’s!” Lisa declared. Ignoring her friends’ questions as to what in the world she was up to, Lisa jumped up, tightened Prancer’s girth, swung up onto her, and was off. Over her shoulder she called, “I just have to get back as fast as possible!”

Stevie and Carole stared after the retreating pair. “What do you think she meant?” Carole asked. “Where could she be going?”

“I don’t know,” said Stevie, preparing to mount Belle, “but I have a feeling it’s not to practice jumping.”

Carole shook her head. “With her cryptic messages, Lisa’s getting almost as bad as Mrs. Reg.”

R
IDING CLASS ON
Tuesday would be the last supervised practice before Saturday’s schooling show. As Lisa had predicted, the show was turning out to be every bit as competitive as a real show, if not more so. The excitement in the locker room had reached a new level of intensity. Nobody was talking much, but whenever someone cracked a joke, everybody laughed loudly—almost too loudly.

Over the past couple of days, the gossip about the stirrup-leather sabotage had died down somewhat. Rumors still circulated, however. It was no secret that Mrs, diAngelo was trying to keep Stevie from competing, Her white Mercedes had been parked outside of
the barn the day before, and she and Max had been cloistered in his office for almost an hour.

Still, the overall mood at Pine Hollow had grown progressively less sympathetic toward Veronica. Carole had overheard May and Jasmine complaining that they were sick of hearing Veronica recount the horror of the fall for the nine millionth time. And more than a few people had commented that they didn’t think she was hurt all
that
badly.

When The Saddle Club walked into the locker room together on Tuesday afternoon, a hush fell over the group of girls. Nobody had seen Stevie and Veronica in the same room since the confrontation at T.D.’s. Now, neither of them looked at one another. Stevie went to the opposite end of the room right away and began to pull her riding clothes out of her bag. She kept her eyes intently focused on the bag. She had no desire to make contact with Veronica as long as she was still letting people think Stevie was to blame. So far, Lisa hadn’t revealed her plan, but she seemed as confident today as when she had hit upon her mysterious idea.

Lisa chose a spot in the middle of the room to change. She glanced around quickly, noting with pleasure who was present: Betsy Cavanaugh, Polly Giacomin, a number of younger riders, and, of course,
The Saddle Club as well as Veronica. She checked her watch. The lesson would start in half an hour: it was time to make her move.

As Stevie and Carole looked on, Lisa stood up and walked over to the lockers, riding crop in hand. Her air of authority made people look at her to see what she was up to. After a moment or two, she cleared her throat. “It’s too bad Veronica won’t be competing on Saturday,” she said to nobody in particular, but loudly enough for everybody to hear.

Shocked silence met the comment. Even Stevie and Carole were speechless, crossing their fingers that Lisa knew what she was doing.

Finally, Veronica found her voice. “Excuse me? What did you say?” she demanded.

Lisa slapped her riding crop across her hand. “I said,” she repeated, enunciating carefully, “it’s too bad you won’t be competing on Saturday.”

“What do you think you’re talking about?” Veronica practically shouted. She pushed her face up close to Lisa. “In case you hadn’t heard, my chin is a lot better. It was touch and go for a while there, but I will be riding in the show, thank you very much.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think you will be, actually,” Lisa replied, a puzzled look on her face. By now, the rest of the group had frozen completely and were hardly daring
to breathe as they watched the scene between the two enemy camps playing out before them.

Lisa tapped the lockers a couple of times with her crop. Then she turned to face the riders in the room. “You know what,” she said cheerily, “I’ll bet that maybe if I use my riding crop, I can get that thing—whatever it was that Veronica dropped on Sunday—out from under the lockers.” She paused, turning to take note of Veronica’s reaction. “What do you think, Veronica? It’s up to you. Would that be helpful?”

The open threat in Lisa’s voice made the others even more curious. They looked at Veronica. She was clearly flustered and seemed to be trying to think up a response.

“I—uh—I didn’t drop anything,” she said finally.

Lisa eyed her coldly. “Oh, didn’t you? Here, why don’t I check.”

“That’s not nec—” Veronica began.

Lisa cut her off. “I know it would hurt your throbbing chin too much if you had to lean over,” she said sweetly. “But I could do it for you …” Lisa let her voice trail off. She had played her trump card. Now it was up to Veronica to decide her fate.

A hundred emotions—anger, fear, contempt—crossed the girl’s face. Then, very slowly, Veronica
touched her chin. “Umm … my chin
is
kind of hurting,” she admitted. “More than I thought.”

“Really?” Lisa asked sympathetically. “Gosh, that’s too bad. I guess if you can’t even lean over, then trying to ride would be pretty stupid.”

“Yes, I guess you’re right. I guess riding would be kind of stupid,” Veronica conceded, after a minute or two.

“And jumping would be even worse,” said Lisa. “At least,” she added, “
I
think it would be.”

“Oh, to be sure—jumping wouldn’t be smart,” Veronica responded.

“So, then, riding in a jumping
competition
would probably be just about the worst thing you could do if you want that chin to heal,” Lisa ventured.

“Yes,” Veronica said through gritted teeth, “competing would be pretty bad.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear you won’t be joining us on Saturday, then,” Lisa said with a smile.

Instead of answering, Veronica turned away and tore off her breeches. She yanked her street clothes back on in about two minutes, grabbed her stuff, and fled.

As soon as she was out the door, people began clamoring for Lisa to explain how she had scared Veronica into dropping out of the show.

“What did you find under the lockers?” Betsy asked.

“Yes, tell us!” Polly called.

“Does this mean Stevie didn’t do it?” May wanted to know.

For their part, Carole and Stevie were utterly confused but thrilled beyond belief. In a matter of minutes, Lisa had succeeded in getting Veronica to drop out of the show voluntarily. The two of them hugged her ecstatically.

“I have just one question!” Stevie yelled above the other voices. “How’d you do it, Sherlock?”

Lisa shook her head. Instead of answering, she pantomimed zipping her lip and throwing out the key. “A good detective never gives away her secrets,” she whispered, grinning like the Cheshire cat.

After veronica’s departure, the noise level throughout the stable went up about five notches. Everyone who had witnessed the scene ran to tell everyone who hadn’t. The news spread like wildfire.
Nobody
knew quite how Lisa had done it—or exactly what she had done—but one thing was clear: Veronica was out of the show, and Stevie was in.

Max marched down the stable aisles, barking at one group after another to stop chitchatting and get to
work. “Honestly, what gets into you guys sometimes?” he said, shaking his head.

The Saddle Club were the only three tacked up on time. They were ready and eager to start the afternoon’s jumping practice. This time, Lisa knew the stable witch—whatever or whoever she was—wouldn’t show up to put a curse on her.

A few minutes later, Max found the three of them gathered at the good-luck horseshoe. They were mounting up before the lesson. Excitedly he motioned them over to listen to something he wanted to share with them. “Veronica stopped by my office a little while ago,” he said breathlessly. “She was on her way home. I thought you should know what she said. She told me two things: First, she’s dropped out of the schooling show and won’t be competing.”