The man was elegantly dressed in a double-breasted black coat with long tails, a black top hat, and white breeches. High black boots reached to his knees.
“He looks as if he’s going to a wedding,” Bess joked in a low voice.
“That’s called a shadbelly coat,” Lee Anne said as she rushed up to Michael.
When he saw Lee Anne, Michael frowned impatiently. “Where were you? We’ve got to hurry. Curio needs a long time to warm up.”
“I went to meet Nancy and Bess,” Lee Anne explained. “You remember—the friends I told you about?”
“Nice meeting you.” Michael gave them a polite glance before turning his attention back to Lee Anne. “Meet me in the warm-up arena in fifteen minutes. And don’t forget the fly spray.”
Clucking to his horse, he left the barn, his boots echoing on the concrete floor.
Lee Anne flashed her friends an apologetic smile. “Sorry. He’s really tense. This is his first time competing Curio, and his ride on Thursday in the warm-up class was just okay.”
“Where’s his regular horse?” Nancy asked.
“Midnight Blue’s owner decided to show him herself.”
“So Michael doesn’t have a horse of his own?” Bess asked.
Lee Anne shook her head as she bent to put a jar of hoof polish into the grooming box. “Many dressage riders don’t have horses of their own. Horses competing at Intermediate and Grand Prix levels cost a lot of money, so riders like Michael are at the mercy of the owners. He was ready to compete Midnight Blue this summer when his owner moved the horse to another stable.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” Bess said.
“It isn’t. Curio’s a fine horse, but still, Michael’s had to start all over,” she said gloomily. “He’s trying to rack up enough good scores to qualify for the Pan American team. But now I don’t know.”
She pulled a spray bottle from the grooming box. “We’ve just got time to see Aristocrat before I have to meet Michael.”
“That’s Klaus Schaudt’s horse, right?” Nancy remembered Lee Anne talking about the stallion at lunch.
Lee Anne’s face brightened. “Right. Klaus has been competing him in Grand Prix since last year. They’ve done well, too, scoring in the sixty-five to seventy percentile range. They were even on the cover of my favorite horse magazine.”
“So we’re meeting a celebrity?” Bess said.
“Kind of,” Lee Anne said. “Lots of dressage fans have come by to see Aristocrat up close and to get Klaus’s autograph. Gilly’s been busy.”
“Gilly?” Nancy asked.
“Aristocrat’s groom.” Lee Anne walked over to a stall. “She even sleeps next to the horse.”
The door to the stall was open, and Nancy glanced inside. A cot stood in one corner, a sleeping bag, duffel bag, and pillow neatly laid on top. Bales of hay filled up the other half of the stall.
“Gilly must be with Klaus,” Lee Anne said. But here’s Aristocrat.”
Nancy joined Bess and Lee Anne in front of a steel-mesh door. In the stall, a brown horse was eating hay. When Lee Anne made a clucking noise, he turned his head to stare calmly at the trio. His coat gleamed, and his mane and tail were neatly brushed. Nancy was surprised that the celebrated horse looked like all the other brown horses in the barn.
“He looks like a horse even I could ride,” Bess said, echoing Nancy’s thoughts.
Lee Anne chuckled. “In Aristocrat’s case, looks are deceiving. When Klaus rides him into an arena, it’s as if a spotlight hits him. He might look like an ordinary horse, but he’s worth about two hundred thousand dollars.”
“Wow,” Nancy said. “That is a lot of money.” She looked closer, trying to imagine the horse leaping and prancing. Aristocrat only snorted.
Bess wrinkled her nose. “I guess we’ll have to take your word for it.”
“You don’t need to take my word for it. Tomorrow you can watch him perform.”
Anxiously, Lee Anne checked her watch. “Well, I’d better go help Michael. You guys should come and see his test. It’ll be awesome, and I can explain what’s happening.”
“Sounds great,” Nancy said as they headed up the aisle. “I’m really curious about dressage.”
“Nan and I have been riding since we were about eight,” Bess told her friend. “But we don’t know very much about dressage.”
As the three girls neared the cross aisle, Nancy stopped and sniffed the air.
Bess and Lee Anne stopped, too. “What’s wrong?” Bess asked.
“Do you smell smoke?” Nancy asked.
There were No Smoking signs posted everywhere. Still, some careless person could have dropped a match or sneaked a cigarette in a stall, Nancy thought.
Lee Anne lifted her chin and sniffed, too. “I smell something. We’d better find out where it’s coming from. With all the hay and straw in here, this place would go up like a bonfire.”
Nancy turned in a circle, trying to figure out where the smell was coming from. When she moved down the aisle toward the other side of the barn, she noticed that the odor grew stronger.
Breaking into a jog, she took off for the other side. A curl of gray smoke wafted up from a stall to her right. A horse danced in front of the closed mesh door, its eyes wild with fright.
Nancy raced over to the stall. The horse whirled crazily, but Nancy spotted flames leaping up from a pile of hay in the far corner.
