Unicorn Uproar (7 page)

Nancy stared at Bess. Hannah's garden wasn't the only garden that had been nibbled on. So that meant one thing….

“That's great!” Nancy exclaimed.

“What's so great about trashed gardens?” George asked.

“Not about the gardens—about my wand,” Nancy explained. “It wasn't anywhere near Bess's neighbors' garden, so it couldn't have made the veggies disappear.”

“Huh?” Bess asked.

“My dad thought deer had eaten the veggies,” Nancy explained. “Now I think it was Sparkle—the horse!”

“But Sparkle has a
horn
!” Bess said.

“We never saw Sparkle up close,” Nancy said. “His horn could have been fake.”

“Oh, phooey!” Bess complained. “We finally see a real unicorn and he's not even for real.”

“Well, now that we think Sparkle is a horse,” Nancy asked, “how do we catch him?”

Bess tapped her chin as she seemed to think about it. Her eyes finally lit up, and she said, “Follow me!”

Nancy and George followed Bess as she collected carrots from Seth, string from Mrs. Fayne's
cake boxes, and a coat hanger from Lady Sue and Lady Inez's costume tent. In less than an hour Bess had built a new gadget.

“Ta-daa!” Bess sang. She held up her carrot mobile.

“How does it work?” Nancy asked.

“If Sparkle likes carrots,” Bess explained, “we hang it in the woods and wait until he gets a snack attack.”

The girls weren't allowed into the real woods, so they hung the carrot mobile in the Wizardly Woods instead.

George gave Bess a boost so she could hook the mobile onto the branch of a tree.

There was nothing to do now but wait.

“NEEEEEEEEEYYYYYY!”

Nancy, Bess, and George froze.

“Did you just hear what I just heard?” Nancy asked.

The girls turned and walked a few feet into the woods.

There, munching on the carrots, was a horse. A big beautiful white horse!

“It's Sparkle!” Nancy whispered.

“He still has a silver horn in the middle of his forehead,” Bess whispered.

Sparkle kept munching as the girls stepped closer. Nancy gently touched the horn. It felt like cardboard. And silver glitter came off on her hand.

“It's not real,” Nancy confirmed.

George tugged at an elastic band under Sparkle's mane that connected the horn to his forehead. “Tacky, tacky, tacky,” she said. “I wear better costumes on Halloween!”

“But look at this,” Bess said. She pointed to a delicate collar around Sparkle's neck. It was decorated with tiny golden bells. “No wonder I found a bell inside his pen.”

“The main thing is that we found Sparkle,” Nancy exclaimed, petting the horse's fluffy white mane.

“Now that we've found Sparkle the horse,” George said, “how do we get him back to the fair?”

“Like this,” Bess answered. She pulled a carrot off the mobile and held it up. “Sparkle, forward march!”

Sparkle followed the girls out of the woods while Bess waved the carrot high in the air. As they made their way through the fairgrounds, people stopped to point.

Rex ran toward Sparkle, a huge smile on his face.

“Huzzah, good people!” Rex shouted. “Our unicorn has returned to the Dragon's Breath Fair!”

Nancy and her friends stopped walking. Sparkle was happy to nibble on the carrot, still in Bess's hand.

“You mean
horse
, Mr. Martindale,” Nancy corrected.

“H-h-horse?” Rex stammered.

“A poor hungry horse who had to eat veggies from people's gardens because he couldn't find his way home,” Bess added.

Rex whisked the girls away from the crowd. “Ixnay on the orse-hay, will you, kids?” he hissed.

Nancy frowned. Rex still wanted to keep the secret of the unicorn. But this was one secret Nancy refused to keep.

“Sorry, Mr. Martindale,” Nancy said. “But why didn't you tell Police Chief McGinnis that Sparkle was missing?”

Rex's eyes darted from side to side. Then he took a deep breath and said, “Look, I didn't tell the police because they would have called
the River Heights Riding Academy!”

“The River Heights Riding Academy?” Nancy repeated. “What do they have to do with Sparkle?”

“That's where I borrowed Sparkle from,” Rex explained. “I needed a white horse to disguise as a unicorn.”

“And they gave him to you?” George asked. She snapped her fingers. “Just like that?”

“My friend Matt works at the riding academy,” Rex explained. “He said I could borrow the horse for the fair as long as I promised to take good care of him.”

“So if Matt had found out you'd lost Sparkle, he'd know you goofed, right?” Bess asked.

“Right,” Rex sighed.

Nancy watched Rex nod his head. He looked so sad that it seemed the feather in his cap practically drooped. But there was something about his story that sounded familiar. Matt … River Heights Riding Academy … Where had she heard all that before?

“NEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYY!” Sparkle suddenly whinnied.

Everyone gasped as the white horse shot off and galloped across the fairgrounds.

“Get him!” Rex cried. “We can't lose him again!”

Bess lifted the hem of her skirt and groaned, “Here we go again!”

Rex and the girls chased Sparkle past the food and game stalls. Sparkle's belled collar jangled as he headed straight toward his pen.

Standing near the pen was Seth. The moment he saw the charging horse, his jaw dropped.

“Open the gate, Seth! Open the gate!” Rex shouted.

But before Seth reached the gate, Sparkle took a flying leap over the fence.

“Wow!” George gasped. “Did you see that?”

Everyone watched as Sparkle trotted over to a pile of hay and began to eat.

“I never saw a horse jump that high!” Seth exclaimed.

“So that's how Sparkle got out of his pen,” Nancy said excitedly. “He jumped over the fence!”

While Rex and Seth entered the pen through the gate, the girls traded big high fives.

“Good work, Clue Crew!” Nancy said. “We solved the case of the missing unicorn that turned out to be a missing horse!”

“Thanks to Bess's carrot mobile,” George declared.

“A piece of cake!” Bess said, flapping her hand.

Carrot … Cake?
Nancy grinned as everything else fell into place. The River Heights Riding Academy … Matt the instructor … Sophie Wang.

“You guys,” Nancy said, “I think I know the horse's real name. And it isn't Sparkle!”

“Go, Carrot Cake!” Nancy cheered.

It was a week after the Dragon's Breath Fair. Nancy, Bess, and George were having a great time watching the River Heights Riding Academy horse show.

Nancy waved her wand as she cheered. It was
the same beautiful wand she had gotten back from Enchanted Elly before the fair had ended. It had never been magical, but it was still pretty.

The girls cheered for Sophie as she jumped Carrot Cake over a row of fences. Nancy remembered Sophie's shock when they'd told her about Carrot Cake.

“Are you sure it's Carrot Cake?” Sophie had asked.

“Totally,” Nancy had assured her.

“He really was lost, but we found him!” Bess had said.

“But why didn't Matt just tell me he'd lent Carrot Cake to the Dragon's Breath Fair?” Sophie had asked.

“Rex wanted the unicorn to be a secret,” Nancy had explained. “He probably told Matt to keep the secret too.”

“The most important thing is that Carrot Cake is safe and back in time for the show,” Sophie had said. “I knew you guys were good.”

Sophie had said thanks by giving Nancy, Bess, and George tickets to the horse show that coming Saturday.

“I think I'm going to eat more carrots from now on,” George said as Sophie rode around the ring. “If they can make Carrot Cake jump like that, think of what it can do for me when I play basketball.”

“Nancy,” Bess asked with a dreamy look on her face, “do you think we'll ever see a leaping unicorn?”

Nancy watched as Carrot Cake jumped over the highest fence in the ring.

“We just saw a flying horse,” Nancy said excitedly. “So
anything
is possible!”