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'With the poo vac,' her mother finished. 'Now we reach this part here. The part where your friend Kim puts this accomplice horse back in the broodmares' paddock.'

Shelby cut an avocado in half and scored the flesh into squares with her knife. 'Yes.'

'And this horse she put away looks the same as Diablo?'

'Yes,' said Shelby.

'Well, then it's obvious what happened.'

'It is?' Shelby asked.

Shelby held the cordless phone to her ear.

'Is Erin there?'

'Hi, Shelby,' said Erin's mum. 'I've been instructed to tell you that Erin isn't talking to you.'

'That's OK. I don't want her to talk. I just want her to listen.'

'Excellent. I'll put her on then.'

Shelby could hear Erin's mother handing over the phone. She licked her thumb, tasting traces of tomato sauce from dinner. She walked towards the bathroom to wash her hands. Then she heard Erin's breath blowing across the mouthpiece.

'I'm guessing you haven't done your science assign-ment,' Shelby said, tucking the phone between her chin and shoulder. Her voice echoed around her in the tiled space.

Silence. In the background Shelby could hear the television in Erin's lounge room.

'I know you're there. I can hear you breathing. Maybe you could blow twice in the mouthpiece for yes, and once for no.'

Shelby heard one breath. 'Are you saying no, or are you just breathing?'

Two breaths.

'Have you done the assignment?'

One breath.

'So, you haven't done it?'

More breathing. Shelby wandered up the hall to her bedroom and flopped on her bed.

'This is dumb, Erin. Breathing at me is communication. It's the same thing as talking.'

'Maybe I wasn't communicating. Maybe I was just breathing.'

'So which was it?' Shelby asked.

Erin huffed. 'It doesn't even matter now because you already tricked me into speaking!'

'You've got a video camera, haven't you?' Shelby asked, curling a ringlet of hair around her finger.

'Yes, why?'

'Bring it to the stables tomorrow. We're going to do our assignment together. If Hayley or Lindsey say you can't, tell them I have guaranteed you will get an A.'

31 The Experiment

'This is the science experiment assignment by Shelby and Erin from 8L,' Shelby said, staring into Erin's handheld video camera. 'I, Shelby Shaw, will conduct the experiment while Erin is the camera person recording the results.'

'And executive producer,' Erin added, turning the camera onto herself and waving.

'Our mystery that we are planning to solve is how Diablo, the stallion, magically disappeared and then turned up on the other side of the Gully. Was he stolen? No, he wasn't! We will prove that it's not magic. We will show a set of conditions which he can escape from, and how they occurred. Firstly, we have our control, which is Diablo normally.'

Erin zoomed in on Diablo, standing in the doorway of his stable, wearing a soft cotton rug and hood, and watching the girls.

'See how under these conditions Diablo is safely behind bars?' Shelby asked the camera. 'Now let us go to the first variable. Mrs Crook and the clippers.' She led the camera around, into the breezeway, where Blue was tied up as Ditto had been. 'Just imagine I am Mrs Crook. I want to use my clippers on Ditto, who is competing at the Royal Easter Show. This is Blue. Today he will be playing the part of Ditto.' Shelby pulled out the plug that provided power to the electric fence. 'I undo this plug here . . . and plug in my clippers. Except you'll have to imagine that I have plugged in clippers, because I don't have any. The important point is that the electric fence is now off.'

Shelby led the way back around to Diablo's gate. The stallion had moved out of his stable now, closer to the gate, watching the girls curiously.

'As you can see, Diablo is still locked in, therefore variable number one alone is not enough to cause Diablo's mysterious disappearance. Now let us move on to variable number two – the poo vac. Just imagine I am Mrs Edel with the quad bike, which the poo vac is attached to.'

Shelby held a make-believe steering wheel in her hands.