Small Town Filly (Sandbar Stables Cozy Mystery Book 1) (5 page)

"Good morning," said Alex. "Welcome to Sandbar Stables."

"Oh, thank you, honey! What a great place this is, right on the beach. Is it yours?"

"Yes. Yes, it is. I'm Alexandra Byrne."

The woman held out her hand. "So nice to meet you! I'm Lisa Bell."

"Hi, Lisa. What can I do for you?"

"Well, dear," said Lisa, looking around at the place with a big smile, "you can let me buy this property!"

Alex sighed and couldn't help but smile. "Well, Lisa, if you want to buy Sandbar Stables, I'm afraid you might have to take a number. I just got here a few days ago, and it turns out that just about everyone wants to buy this place, for one reason or another."

"Well, now, that's certainly understandable," said Lisa Bell. The woman was Southern through and through. "It's a great little piece of property in the perfect location. My clients were thrilled to learn that the former owners had moved away, and sent me out here right away to see if it might be for sale."

"I'm afraid it was a wasted trip," said Alex. "I have no desire to sell this place. It was left to me as an inheritance, and I intend to keep it."

"Oh, I see." Lisa looked around again, especially out at the beautiful view of the gulf. "How long did you say you'd been here?"

"Just a few days."

"And you're not from around here, are you?"

"No. I'm from Ohio."

"Well, now, Miss Alexandra, I'll tell you something. My clients aren't from around here, either."

"No?"

"No. They're from the United Kingdom. London, England, to be exact."

Alex frowned. "London? What would they want with a little piece of property out here in Florida?"

"Why, the same as everyone else out here! This is a wonderful area for investing, and they're looking for some good US investments.

"You see, I've actually been here to Argentina Shores as a child," Lisa went on. "My family was one of those who would come out for a couple of weeks in the summer for some fishing and some fun on the beach. So, I was able to tell my clients just the place to look for their investment opportunity!"

"Great," Alex murmured. "So, let me guess. They don't want to keep this place as a riding stable."

Lisa blinked and looked at her for a moment. "Why, no, no, of course not," she said with a laugh. "There's no money in that! No, they want this perfect little piece of property to build a nice big hotel on stilts, sitting over a parking garage. They believe they can get a couple hundred rooms right here with no trouble at all—maybe more!"

Alex closed her eyes. She couldn't imagine how small the rooms would have to be, or how tall the building to get upwards of two hundred hotel rooms over a parking garage on this small piece of land.

"Well, Lisa," Alex said, "I can assure you that I do not want to sell this place to anyone, but I appreciate your time in coming out here to see it."

"Oh, not at all, not at all," she said and handed Alex a business card.

Lisa turned to go, but looked back at Alex one more time. "You see, dear, you've only been here a very short time. I don't think you realize how much this place is changing, or how difficult it is for someone who's not…who's not from around here to understand the, let's say, local culture."

"Oh, you'd be surprised," Alex murmured. Then she looked at Lisa again. "Say, when you were down here as a kid, did you ever go for a beach ride?"

"Beach ride? On a horse?" She laughed. "Why, no, I really can't say I did. It was kind of expensive and there were six of us, so no, I never did."

Alex grinned. "I think I have the perfect way to show you exactly why I will never, ever sell this place."

***

              The next day, Alex and Lance got an early start on the feeding. They wanted to make sure all of the horses got worked under saddle again before the day of the beach ride, so Alex took one of the hay carts with just a couple of bales in it and headed to the paddock while Lance got started feeding the horses in the barn.

              "Hey, kids," Alex called, as she trundled the little wagon over to the paddock fence. "Room service! Come and get it."

              Jet was the first one to the fence, as always, and Thunder and Lightning found their own spots on either side of her. Alex tossed the flakes of hay into the paddock for them and watched as the horses jostled each other for the best pieces.

              "Hey, little guy," she called, as she pulled the hay cart back from the fence. "Come on out, before they get it all!" She walked over and peered behind the horses, looking into the large three-sided shed on the other side of the paddock.

There was no sign of Starfish.

Quickly, she went to the gate. The bungee cord that held it shut was still tightly wrapped around the gate and the fencepost, just as Lance had left it. But the Shetland pony was not anywhere to be found inside the paddock or the shed.

In a moment, she was hurrying back to the barn. "Lance! Did you move Starfish inside?"

Fanny trotted over to greet her, and Lance looked up from throwing flakes of hay into the stalls for the whinnying, demanding horses. "No," he said. "I didn't do anything with him. He's still out in the paddock, like always."

"No, he isn't," said Alex. "The gate is still shut tight with the cord, but that pony isn't in there."

Lance dropped the rest of the hay back into the cart. "Okay," he said calmly, "first we'll check all of the stalls. Maybe it was somebody's idea of a joke to hide him in here. Maybe even with another horse."

But a thorough check of the barn did not reveal the pony. "You go check the house," Lance said. "Somebody might have thought it would be an even better joke to put him in there. I'll check the hay barn and the garage."

Alex did as he asked. She went completely around the house and then rushed inside, looking through every room. She found no pony anywhere. He certainly would have nickered at her approach if he'd been in there alone, and the place would have started to smell like a barn pretty quickly. But the place was quiet and clean, as always.

She ran back outside. "Nothing," she said.

"Nothing here, either."

"I guess you didn't hear anything last night? Or this morning?"

"Nothing. And no, Fanny didn't bark. All I remember is being very tired and falling asleep exhausted on the hay bales, as usual.”

He paused, thinking. "I started to wake up once—I thought I heard hoofbeats—but figured I just dreamed it. I started to sit up, but didn’t see or hear anything. Fanny came over and sat down in front of me, but she was quiet, too. That's all I remember from last night."

"The hoofbeats could have come from Jet and the others out in the paddock, or even one of them moving around in the barn." Alex sighed. "But aside from all that—where's Starfish?"

"Somebody must have taken him. If the gate is still wrapped shut and the fence is still up, then he didn't get out by himself. There are no gaps under that fence where he could roll out. I made sure of that myself."

"Oh, my god," Alex whispered. "What would somebody want him for? To sell him?"

"Could be any reason. Could want him for a pet for their kids. Could want to sell him for meat and get a little quick cash."

A cold chill hit her. "All right. I'll call the cops right now. Somebody must have seen something."

"He's pretty easy to handle. I think he might have been part of a traveling pony ride or something before he ended up out here. He'd probably load into a trailer or a van—maybe even a car, if somebody had some sugar or a little grain."

She reached into her pocket for her phone and began scanning down the list for the number to the local police—and just then, the horses outside began loudly whinnying and calling.

Lance and Alex ran out of the barn. Sure enough, Jet, Lightning and Thunder were all lined up at their fence and ignoring their morning hay. Instead, they were looking eagerly towards the road and calling anxiously.

And who should be walking across the road next to an aged, heavily suntanned woman but Starfish.

"Oh! Thank you! Thank you!" cried Alex, running to meet the woman and the pony. "Where was he?"

"In my backyard," the woman said in a raspy voice. Alex noticed that she was holding a lit cigarette in one hand and leading Starfish by a belt around his neck with the other.

"Your backyard?" Alex wasn't sure she was hearing right.

Then she stepped back as Lance, with Fanny beside him but staying quiet as ordered, quickly took hold of Starfish. He pulled the belt off of the pony's neck and handed it back to the woman. "Thank you very much, ma'am," he said. "I'll put him back now."

Lance led the pony by his mane and steered him towards the paddock, which was no trouble because Starfish was quite eager to get back to his breakfast and his friends.

Alex turned back to the woman. "I'm Alex Byrne, the new owner here," she said. "Now, you say you found our pony in your back yard this morning?"

"I sure did," the woman said. "I walked out back to take my little dog out, and there he was. The back has a chain-link fence around it where my kids played when they were young." She laughed, coughing a little at the same time. "Boy, they sure would have liked finding this little guy out there!"

"But I'm so sorry this happened. I have absolutely no idea how Starfish got in your back yard!" Alex looked at the woman again. "How did you know he was ours?"

"I didn't. But I did know I'd never seen him before, and I knew that some of your horses got loose the other day and ran across the road." She shrugged. "I thought maybe this one got out again, and somebody didn't know where he belonged and put him in my yard to keep him off the road."

"Yeah. Maybe so," Alex said. "What was your name again?"

"I'm Jonni. Jonni Lowe."

"Oh! I thought you sounded familiar. I talked to you yesterday about coming on the beach ride with us—remember?"

"Sure do. I've got my husband and my cousin coming, too, and Jeannie Turner, who told me about the loose horses, and–"

She stopped and frowned. "But right now, I just want to know how the heck your pony got into my yard."

Alex could only shake her head. "Ms. Lowe, I have absolutely no idea in the world about that. We just realized he was missing a few minutes ago. The cord on our paddock gate is still fastened tight. And you say the gate was closed on your yard?"

"Yes. It was. It's always closed to keep the neighborhood dogs out. That pony couldn't have just wandered in."

Lance came back over to them. "Somebody had to have taken the pony across the road and out to your yard and put him inside with the gate shut. And I'm thinking it was probably the same person who let all four of those horses out the other night."

***

              That evening, Alex was almost ready to leave the stables and go back to her motel room, but found herself standing beside her car and looking out over the gulf. She tossed her purse into the car and walked towards the back fence.

              There was a wide gate in the fence between the house and the paddock. She opened it and slipped out, walking along the wide sandy lane that led down to the beach.

              The sun had just set, but the western sky still had a beautiful glow in it. The waters of the gulf appeared smooth as glass in the twilight, as far out as she could see. Near the shore was the endless rushing of the low waves across the sand and fine gravel and ground seashells of the white beach.

              Back in the east, there was another glow in the sky—this time from the moon that was just one night past full and would be rising soon. It would be the perfect night for a short walk on the beach.

              She stopped at the end of the lane and breathed in the fresh sea air. There was no one else out here. A few boats moved slowly along the horizon, but they were far out and could only be seen by the small red, white and green points of their running lights.

              Alex turned and started walking down the beach, away from the stables and the marina, and tried to think.

              She'd been here less than a week, and not only had all kinds of people come out of the woodwork wanting to buy her place and get rid of her, but somebody had turned four of her horses loose to run across a busy highway—and then had outright stolen one of them.

              It must have been someone that Fanny knew, since Lance said she hadn't barked on either night when the horses were tampered with.

              But who around here did Fanny know that well? She was a stray, according to Lance. He didn't know where she came from. She could easily have been a tourist's dog that had been left behind, for all they knew.

              Alex sighed, looking out across the darkness of the gulf. There was enough ambient light from the buildings along the road to see the beach, and she paused as she realized the stars were emerging from black night sky over the water.

              It was a perfect moment, standing under the moon and stars with only the soft sounds of the waves surrounding her. She could see why people came to love this place. And somebody sure was serious about wanting her to leave it.

Then she froze in her tracks as another thought came to her.
What if that somebody was Lance?

              She went on walking and tried to think it through. She really didn't know much about him. The locals knew him, and he'd been here for a while, but he wasn't born and raised here like most of the others.

              He was a fine horseman, that much was certain. He'd be quite capable of running this place, leading the beach rides, training the horses and even giving riding lessons. And he needed a job and a place to live.

              Maybe he thought that if he could chase her away, he'd be able to buy this place—if he wasn't really as destitute as he looked—and then run it himself.

              That would give him exactly the life he seemed to want—horses, the beach, and fishing—and he could live quietly and alone with no inexperienced Yankee girl telling him what to do with his place or his horses.

              Alex walked down to the very edge of the rushing white surf and just stood there, with her arms tightly folded over her chest.

              It was all getting to be too much. She couldn't trust anyone. Her horses were in danger. She might be in danger, too. And she'd been offered three million dollars for this little chunk of sand.

              Why on earth wouldn't she just take it, run and never look back?

              She turned and looked back toward the house and stables. There were sixteen horses there who needed her. Yes, Lance had been caring for them, but she was the one who controlled the money that was buying all that hay and grain and veterinary care for those animals.

              She simply could not believe that Lance was the one causing the trouble here. He certainly hadn't killed the previous caretaker. Lance had an airtight alibi for that night, anyway. He'd been working at his hotel maintenance job, and plenty of people saw him there the whole time.

              He was a loner and kept to himself, but that was no crime. He was very hard-working and cared about horses that weren't even his, and had cared for a stray dog at a time when he was hardly able to care for himself.

              Lance Donovan was very different from any man she'd ever met. She needed him to help her run Sandbar Stables, but he needed her, too, in his own way.

              The two of them were going to have to be a team—for the horses, if nothing else. She already knew that among true horse people, their love and respect for their animals always came first.

              At least for right now, Alex was determined to stick to her plan to keep the stables and do all she could to make friends with the neighbors. With one last look out over the beautiful gulf waters under the starry sky, she walked back to her home.