Hide & Seek - Alyssa Brugman [47]
Molly nodded. 'Keisha had a fall,' she told the others. 'She still hasn't got her confidence back.'
Keisha looked away, scowling.
Shelby didn't know what to say, so she changed the subject. 'What's next?'
'Keen!' Molly said, smiling. 'Step-downs are the same as a step-through, except that, after you have slipped your leg through, you drop down, as though you're getting off, bounce off your toe and then get back on again. Show her, Keisha.'
Keisha pushed her horse into a canter and did a neat step-through, dropping onto her pointed toe, like a dancer, in the middle.
'You make it look easy,' Shelby said.
Keisha pulled into the station without a word.
'It's easier when the horse is moving faster. You can use their momentum,' Molly said.
As she rode around, practising her step-downs, Shelby remembered why she was here. She was supposed to be kibitzing. Shelby tried to think of a way of bringing up Diablo.
'Did you ride that stallion while he was here?' she asked, stopping Texas at the station.
'Do you think we should have? How does he go?' asked Molly.
'I haven't ridden him myself,' she said, with a secret smile, imagining Mrs Edel's horror if she should ask. 'I've seen him move, though. He's got nice action.'
'We've seen him in action too,' Molly said. She and Keisha traded a glance and then burst out laughing.
'What?' Shelby asked. She looked over at Chad, but he shrugged, just as perplexed as she was.
Molly shook her head. 'One of our mares . . . um, we haven't had a vet test yet, but we think she might be in foal.'
'She was in season?' Shelby asked. 'Do you know how much a service from Diablo is worth?'
'About as much as the fence he broke down to get to her,' Zeb called out.
30 Jigsaw
'We have a motive now!' Shelby beamed at her mother. Shelby was wearing an apron over her pyjamas and fluffy slippers. She finished cutting the onions and slid them off the cutting board into a bowl. She spoke loudly over the sizzle of the barbecue. Flames licked up between the bars, searing the steaks as her mother turned them over.
Shelby continued. 'Way back when it happened, I said, "Why would Diablo leave the mares?", and Lindsey told me he would if there was a mare in season in the Gully, which she thought was unlikely, at the time, but now we know there was one!'
'And what about this accomplice you have here?' her mother said, pointing with the tongs. They had laid the chalkboard on the outdoor table between them.
'Yes, the escape artist,' Shelby said. 'I thought she looked a lot like Diablo. Monica thought not. It depends on who you ask.'
She rinsed the cutting board under the garden tap and then started shredding lettuce for the salad.
Her father wandered through the barbecue area with a basket of washing that he had just taken down from the line. He looked Shelby up and down. 'That's a great look you've got going there. What if your um friend saw you now?'
'Chad was there today,' she told her parents. 'He watched us practising. I was going to talk to him after, but he just said "See ya", and rode off on his bike. I don't think he likes me as an um friend.' She shrugged. 'He's been going over there a bit. He might have a hotty on for Keisha. I don't know why else he would go there.'
'I'm sorry, honey,' her dad said, suddenly concerned.
Shelby sighed. 'It wasn't even anything in the first place. Jeez, Dad. You need a hobby!'
Dad took the tongs from Shelby's mum and squeezed Shelby's nose with them.
'Ow! Yuck!' she protested, wrestling the tongs away from him. 'They've got grease on them. How disgusting! What is this nose obsession you have, anyway?'
'Eww, how disgusting,' he squealed, mimicking her as he took the washing inside.
'Hush, you two, this is serious business.' Her mother stared at the board with her hands on her hips. 'Go back to the beginning, Shel. At four forty-five you fed Diablo.'
'And then I walked through the breezeway – stopping to talk to Mrs Crook.'
'Who was clipping the horse, is that right?'
Shelby nodded, wiping her greasy