Nancy reached the open barn door just in time to see a car speed past the guard’s booth and disappear from the showgrounds, dust and gravel pluming out from the back tires. The morning light was so dim she couldn’t see the license plate. Still, Nancy thought she recognized the vehicle as the old station wagon Michael had driven the night before.
There was no time to think about what she’d seen. She had to get help for Gilly.
Nancy raced to the guard’s booth. Fred Dunlevy stepped outside to meet her. “What’s going on?”
“Call an ambulance,” she puffed. “There’s been an accident. One of the grooms is hurt!”
Fred hustled over to the phone while Nancy told him what she’d discovered. After he’d finished calling, she asked him about the car that had left.
“It roared by so fast that I couldn’t identify it,” Fred said apologetically. “I’d stepped out of the booth on the other side to check the pass of a van coming in.”
Nancy considered what Fred had said. She would be the only witness, and she wasn’t at all sure about what she had seen.
Ten minutes later Texel arrived, followed by the ambulance crew.
“She’s been hit on the head,” Texel told Nancy as he left the stall to make room for the three emergency medical technicians, who bustled in with trauma kits.
Nancy was leaning against the doorjamb. She was exhausted from lack of sleep and from worrying about Gilly.
“Now show me the horse that was with her when you found her.”
“Over here.” Nancy led Texel to Aristocrat’s stall. Curio stared at them, stalks of hay sticking out of his mouth. “Gilly was braiding him for the show. See?” Nancy pointed to the needle and thread still dangling from his mane.
Texel rubbed his chin. Shadows ringed his eyes, and Nancy figured he hadn’t gotten much sleep, either. “Can you hold the horse for me? I want to check his hooves,” he asked her.
“What for?”
Texel swung around to look at her. “Now, Miss Drew, haven’t you figured out what happened yet? This here horse must have kicked that girl. Not much of a contest when it’s a thousand pounds of critter versus a hundred pounds of human.”
Nancy’s jaw dropped. “Curio? He wouldn’t hurt a flea.”
“I’ve squashed plenty of fleas myself, and I’m a pretty nice guy.” Texel flipped open the latch. “Get a rope. I want to have something to report to the police when they come.”
Speaking softly, Nancy went into the stall. Curio nuzzled her palm, looking for a treat. She knew there was no way the horse would have purposely kicked Gilly.
“I’ll pick up the hoof for you,” Nancy said after attaching the lead. “It will prove that Curio’s a lamb. He would never have kicked Gilly.”
“Maybe not on purpose.”
Standing next to Curio’s right flank, Nancy ran her hand down his hind leg. Curio immediately picked it up. She cradled his hoof in her left palm. Bending, Texel inspected the horseshoe.
“There’s our proof.” He pointed to a crusted brown spot. “Looks like blood to me. A steel shoe combined with a powerful kick to the head would knock anyone out. I’m surprised it didn’t kill her.”
Slowly Nancy set down Curio’s hoof. “Something must have scared him, or else it was just a freak accident,” she protested.
“Maybe. We’ll let the police decide,” Texel said as he left the stall. From outside the barn Nancy could hear the shrill whine of sirens. She gave Curio one last pat, then unhooked the lead. As she latched the door, Texel said, “Now, is there anything you want to tell me before the cops get here and start stomping around?” He studied her face. “Like what you were doing here at five-thirty in the morning after being up almost all night chasing horse thieves?”
Nancy hesitated. She wasn’t ready to tell him that Gilly had wanted to confide something about the theft of Aristocrat. If Curio had accidentally kicked Gilly, that information wouldn’t matter. But she did think it was important to tell him about the person who had fled from the barn. He or she could be a witness—or maybe could have provoked the horse into kicking the groom.
“I came to help Gilly get the horses ready. When I realized she was hurt, I knew I’d better move Curio,” Nancy explained. “I was leading him down the aisle when I saw someone dart out of a stall and run around the corner to the other side of the barn. It all happened so fast that I couldn’t see who it was. The person got away in a car that I sort of recognized.”
Texel raised one eyebrow, but when someone came into the barn and hollered, “Texel, what’s going on around this place?” he put a finger to his lips and said, “Finish telling me later.”
Turning, he faced two uniformed police officers striding down the aisle. One was a woman with a badge over her pocket. The other was an older man who had hailed Texel.
“Just drumming up a little business for you, Yates,” Texel greeted the older officer. “Only I think this was an accident.”
“Yeah?” Yates shook hands with Texel, then slapped him on the back. “So you wrapped up the case for us, huh?”
Texel gestured to the stall. “The girl’s in there. The EMTs are getting ready to transport her to the hospital. She got a nasty blow on the head. Looks like a horse kicked her.”
“Any witnesses?” the other officer asked, pulling a pad from her shirt pocket.
“Not yet. Miss Drew here found her.”
“Did someone call Klaus Schaudt?” Nancy asked Texel.
He shook his head. “I’ll leave that up to the police. I don’t need that man breathing down my neck just yet.”
“Hey, let us in!” Nancy heard an irate voice boom down the aisle. Michael and Lee Anne stood in the doorway of the barn, where they’d been stopped by a police officer.
“That’s Michael Raines,” Nancy told Texel. “He’s Curio’s rider. The girl is Lee Anne Suna. I think you met them last night when Aristocrat was stolen. They both work for Klaus.”
“Right.” Texel stuck a toothpick in his mouth and began to chew on it. Nancy wondered if he was pondering the same thing she was—was there a connection between last night’s theft and this morning’s incident?
Just then one of the EMTs came out of the stall. “We’re ready to transport her, but first I need to find out a few things about the patient.”
“Lee Anne and Michael would be the ones to ask.” Nancy pointed to the pair, who were talking to the police officer at the door. The EMT headed toward them at a brisk pace.
