The Case of the Missing Dinosaur Egg (3 page)

Wiping the lipstick from her nose with a scrunched up tissue, Tayla’s mum said, “I want you girls to promise not to go anywhere near that horrible place while you’re staying here.”

“Mum—are you for real?” Tayla gave an eye-roll and shook her head. “Nothing short of an earthquake would get me inside that mad-man’s front gate.”

I didn’t answer.

The old guy in the ute might look vague, almost dreamy, but there was something weird going on. What was he trying to hide? Why didn’t he want people on his property? I could feel my detective’s nose twitching and itching, preparing itself for a gargantuan sneeze—a sure sign of a mystery in the air. I couldn’t wait to dig out my notebook and write down the important points of this new case. In my mind I could even see the opening paragraph of the new Rebecca Turnbull P.I. mystery I’d write for
Kidlit
magazine…

*

Rebecca Turnbull slid her right hand into the deep pocket of her trench coat feeling for the cold hard metal of her trusty snub-nosed revolver.

“Trespassers shot on sight? Vicious bull – eats people? Ha! Bring them on”, she growled.

The private investigator business had slowed to a crawl lately and she and her slavering Doberman, Fang, were edgy. They couldn’t wait to take on a people-eating bull or a gun-toting psychopath—whichever came along first.

*

As Neil’s car pulled up in front of a large rambling old country house surrounded by tall trees and white fenced paddocks, I flipped my mind back to the present.
Treehaven Stables
looked okay—and would look better if they’d ship all their horses to the forests of Transylvania. Taking a deep breath, I pushed the helmet and riding boot off my lap and slowly opened the car door.

Okay, I’d left one unsolved mystery behind at the museum—but with the hint of another mystery around the corner—perhaps these holidays weren’t going to be such a complete waste of time after all.

FOUR

Fat horses—skinny horses—wild, woolly horses that looked like they’d been crossed with prehistoric mammoths.

Treehaven Stables
had them all.

There was even a dog-sized horse with a polka-dot bow tied to his mane running loose. The little monster tried to pinch my notebook while I carried my luggage from the car to the house.

Big and rambling, with a verandah all around, and umpteen dozen windows, the house was surrounded by giant ghost gums. A flock of yellow-crested white cockatoos perched on the branches, arguing noisily.

“Brilliant house,” said Tayla as we trudged up to a wire screened front door with a colorful wooden horse motif nailed on each side.

“My Aunt Kate bought
Treehaven
about fifteen years ago,” Sarah informed us with a flick of her golden hair. “Before that it was a juvenile detention center for bad boys.”

I soon found out that Sarah’s Aunt Kate continued to run the place like a detention center. Every excuse I came up with to avoid actually
getting on
a horse was shot down like tin ducks in sideshow alley. When I said I had a headache, she offered me a headache tablet. When I said I was going to chuck up, she raised one eyebrow and pointed to the passage leading to the bathroom. Talk about treating me like a naughty five-year-old trying to get out of eating her spinach.

So…two hours later, still muttering and grumbling and making excuses, I dragged my boots, toes first, through the dirt, heading for the stable. Yeah. You guessed it. I’d been summoned to the torture chamber by Kick-ass Kate.

The closer I came to the stables, the more rubbery my legs felt. Now I knew how those poor French aristocrats must have felt on their way to the guillotine. Of course Tayla had breezed through her first riding-lesson half an hour earlier and was so wired she was still gabbing away like a toy with a new battery. ‘Kate said this,’ and ‘Angel, my pony, did that,’ and ‘Can’t wait till I’m allowed to canter.’

Suddenly, I had an idea. Perhaps if I tripped and broke my wrist I’d get out of riding over the holidays. Nah. Kate would probably laugh, strap my wrist up with fencing wire and throw me up on the horse anyway.

I let out a long sigh.

I could see Kate waiting, long whip at the ready, in the middle of a large sandy round-yard. She was dressed in knee-high leather riding boots, hip-hugging black and white check jodhpurs and a snowy white shirt. What with her china-doll face and long silky smug-looking hair, she could have been my step-sister Sarah in twenty or thirty years’ time.

Beside her, tied to the fence, was an ancient horse that looked as though it had died a couple of weeks before and no-one had noticed. Its head drooped, its woolly off-white hair stood on end and its eyes were glued shut.

“Ready, Chiana?” Kate Peterson, white teeth gleaming in the sunlight, smiled as she untied the horse from the rail and dragged its head up off the ground.

“Hey, don’t bother waking him up,’ I said. ‘Let him sleep. I don’t mind if we give riding a miss for today.”

“No, no. Shakespeare’s been retired for a number of years now but I’m sure he won’t mind. The horse you were assigned to has an abscess in its hoof—so Shakespeare’s filling in.”

“Shakespeare?”

That figured. The horse looked old enough to have taken part in the original Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Reluctantly I took the hard white riding helmet Tayla handed me, shoved it on over my untamable copper-colored hair and fastened the safety strap under my chin.

“Now, Cha, before we begin the lesson, I want you to give your horse a good strong pat on the neck. Let him know who’s boss.”

Not likely. If he finds out who’s boss—I’m dead meat!

“Chiana, pat your horse.”

“Whatever.”

Expecting to lose at least one finger, I inched my hand nervously toward Shakespeare and tickled him behind his left ear. The hair felt soft, his ears warm. Instead of chomping my hand off at the elbow, his eyes shut fast again and I swear he purred like a cat.

“Are you sure this horse won’t collapse if I sit on him?”

“Don’t worry about Shakespeare—he’s stronger than he looks. Now, up you go. It’s time to enjoy the thrill of riding. There’s nothing like it to get the adrenalin pumping.”

Kate grabbed hold of my left leg in a grip that proved pushing a dirty great wheelbarrow full of horse-manure was a much better muscle-building exercise than working out at a gym. She threw me high in the air.

High in the air—over the top of the saddle—and down the other side
.

Aaaaaaaaaaargh!

It was like some slapstick comedy routine from a dumb black and white television re-run. Only this was for real. Sprawled on the ground, one arm elbow-deep in a squashy pile of fresh, warm, oozing horse-manure, I could definitely vouch for how real it was.

With a furtive glance to check that no-one other than Tayla was watching, I looked straight into the grinning face of Noah Peterson, horse-rider extraordinaire. Noah had won the Junior Show jumping Championship at last year’s Royal Adelaide Show. And being Kate’s son, everyone at
Treehaven
treated him like he could walk on water.

Everyone but me
.

“One word, Noah Peterson, and you’re snail-bait,” I snarled from the corner of my mouth.

His answering grin almost broke his face in two. Of all the people to witness my red-faced embarrassment—why did it have to be Noah?

Face on fire, I hurled a full-on, force-ten, mega-mean scowl in the enemy’s direction. Instead of scuttling back to his hole like he was supposed to, Noah swung himself up onto the round-yard fence. Then, still grinning, he settled down, legs swinging, sunglasses perched on his nose—all the better to watch the circus.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

“Come on Chiana, stop playing games, and wipe that muck off your arm,” Kate ordered, handing me an old sack that smelt like it had been used to wipe down a family of wet dogs. “I’m not here to give you flying lessons, you know. Next time, grab the saddle or the horse’s mane and pull yourself on.”

Now she tells me…

On the second try, I grabbed at handfuls of Shakespeare’s stringy moth-eaten mane, praying the hair wouldn’t come out in my hands. With a final weight-lifter’s push from Kate, I heaved myself into the saddle and held on so tightly every knuckle went white, pink, blue and then back to white again.

“Off you go.” Kate clipped a lunge line onto Shakespeare’s bridle and walked to the middle of the ring. “A couple of circles at a trot will do to start with.”

A couple of circles of ‘staying on’ would do to start with.

I glanced first at Tayla, who gave me the thumbs-up sign, then at Noah who sat talking into his mobile phone. Probably discussing children’s rights with the Prime Minister of Australia.

Okay—this was it. Time to ‘face my fears’, as Tayla’s self-help books would say. I took a deep breath and clenched my teeth so hard it’s a wonder they didn’t develop hairline cracks and slowly crumble. Then, letting my deep breath out in a whoosh, I patted the hairy neck in front of me and politely asked Shakespeare to go.

Nothing happened.

In fact, I’d known rocks that were more active than the Ghost of Christmas Past who was snoring beneath me.

“No, that’s not how you do it,” growled Kate, flicking her long black lunging whip in the direction of the horse’s rear end. “Garn, get up you lazy old fox.”

With a grumpy glare and a half-hearted kick in Kate’s direction, Shakespeare set off around the sandy ring at a ragged trot.

A trot that jarred every bone in my body.

A trot that made my teeth rattle like jellybeans in a jar.

A trot that threatened to shake off any body-part that wasn’t screwed on tight.

“Good girl!” yelled my instructor, her dazzling grin set like cement. “Now see if you can rise up and down to the trot. Count in time. One-two. Up-down. One-two. Up-down.”

“I c-c-c-can’t.”

My teeth rattled and clanked together, a cacophony of noise inside my head. Whenever Shakespeare went up—I hit the saddle with a loud thwack.

“Yes you can,’ Kate insisted. “And look as though you’re enjoying yourself, dear.”

She had to be kidding…

“Now Cha, when I say up—put your weight in the stirrups and stand up. When I say down—sit softly in the saddle again. Okay?”

“C-c-can w-w-we s-s-stop n-n-now?”

If I bounced around much longer the corn-flakes I’d eaten for breakfast would be decorating Shakespeare’s mane, like tinsel.

“Concentrate, dear. Up, down. Up, down. Up, down.”

“Ouch! I b-b-bit my t-t-tongue!”

“Up, down. Up, down.

“I’ll n-never e-ever—” I gasped. “Hey, I got that one right!”

“Good girl. Keep going. That’s the way. Easy, isn’t it?”

And it was. I could stand in the stirrups then sit down again in perfect time to Shakespeare’s trot. It was cool. It was amazing. It was fun.

Up, down. Up, down.

A grin spread across my face. The buzz of success galloped with a crazy beat through my bloodstream and kept time with the rhythm of the trot. I leant forward to pat Shakespeare on the neck, missed his neck and somehow, not sure how, did a slow slithering somersault and hit the ground.

Kaaaaa…thud
!

This was followed by a long agonizing breathy silence. I peered up from under the peak of my helmet. Was there a conspiracy going on here? Not only were Tayla, Noah and Kate grinning like a team-ad for family dental-care, but there was even a smirk on the horse’s face.

I clenched my already aching teeth in a snarl fit to scare the spout off a teapot and jumped to my feet.

“Okay, you…you…
thing
you,” I growled, locking eyes with the grinning horse. “It’s time we got one thing straight here. I’m the boss. I’m the chief. The big Kahoona.” I gave him a noisy slap on the neck just to make sure he got my drift. “And I say we try that trotting stuff one more time. Right?”

“Dunno whether that’d be a good move.” Noah banged his boots against the wooden fence as he spoke.

I eyeballed him but didn’t answer.

“See, we have rules here at
Treehaven
,” he went on, his voice smoother than the chocolate on a Mars bar. “If someone falls off their horse they have to take a dare from the Dare-Box.”

I frowned. Dare box? What was this scabby, pip-squeak raving on about now?

“You’ve already come off twice today so you’re facing the Double-Dare box. One more fall and you win the jackpot.” He tipped his head to one side, dangled his tongue from the side of his mouth like an idiot. “Whoooooo!” he moaned, all scary-like. “Who knows what dangers are hidden in the
Triple-Dare
box?”

I must have looked like a fish in a goldfish-bowl as I opened my mouth to give him a blast—couldn’t think of anything mean enough to say—so closed it again.

Before climbing back on Shakespeare, I stood and watched Noah swagger off to the stables.

Short. Dark. And totally irritating.

And one to watch out for if I didn’t want to land in more trouble.

FIVE

I gazed at the baggy green canvas thing puddling at my feet. Okay, I knew it was a horse rug. I also knew it belonged to Shakespeare because Kate’s last words before she shut the stable door and walked off were “…and don’t forget to put Shakespeare’s rug on when you’ve finished brushing him.”

Duh…

I’d also worked out that wrapping Shakespeare in this heavy piece of canvas was a good idea because:

(a) With his bony old body he’d probably feel embarrassed without a coat.

(b) It was a good way to get his sticking-up hair to lay down flat.

(c) Old people feel the cold so I guess old horses do too.

Determined to succeed in my mission this time, I grabbed the rug firmly in both hands and heaved it in the direction of Shakespeare’s back.

If only I knew which end was up.