Phantom Horse by Bonnie Bryant Page B

pen sticking out of his shirt pocket? A
gold
fountain pen—just like the one Adam had lost?
    “A missing barrette?” Troy drawled. “Better call in the National Guard.” With a short, abrupt laugh, he continued down the corridor.
    The second he was out of sight, Stevie grabbed a startled Carole by the arm. “Did you see that?” she whispered.
    “See what?” Carole asked.
    “What was in Troy’s pocket,” Stevie replied. “It looked like Adam’s pen! At least it was a pen and it was gold. I mean, I didn’t actually see Adam’s pen before it was stolen—”
    “Did you see the top of it?” Lisa asked urgently.
    Stevie nodded. “It had some kind of silver band around it.”
    “That’s Adam’s pen,” Lisa said grimly. “I saw it after they gave it to him in school. I knew Troy was the pilferer!”
    “But what do we do now?” Carole asked. “We can’t just go up to him and accuse him of being a thief, can we?”
    “Not unless we have to,” Stevie said. “Come on. Let’s follow him. Maybe we can catch him with some of the other stuff.”
    “Shouldn’t we just tell Max what we saw?” Lisa asked, glancing over her shoulder at the stable owner.
    “Not yet,” Stevie said. Before Lisa or Carole could protest any further, she turned and raced out of the room. With a shrug, they followed.
    As they left the locker room, the girls were just in time to see Troy stroll around the corner into one of the aisles of stalls.
    Stevie held a finger to her lips as they neared the corner. “Shhh,” she cautioned, turning to give her friends a warning look. “We don’t want him to know we’re—Oh!” she gasped as she rounded the corner and bumped into someone.
    It was Troy. “What’s going on?” he asked them, rubbinghis shoulder where Stevie had hit him. “Don’t you girls watch where you’re going?”
    “Oh. sorry,” Stevie said. “Um, I guess we, um, ah—Say! Nice pen!”
    Lisa did her best not to groan, and she suspected Carole was doing the same. If there was one quality that didn’t come easily to their friend Stevie, it was subtlety.
    Troy looked confused for a second, then glanced down at his shirt pocket. “Oh. You mean this?” he asked, fingering the pen.
    Stevie nodded. “Where’d you get it?” she asked, with an expression of what she hoped was complete innocence. “Oh, if you don’t mind my asking, that is. You see, my father’s birthday is coming up, and I’d love to get him something like that as a present, and—”
    “I found it,” Troy interrupted her.
    “Wow, really?” Stevie said. “Where did you find it? Was it in the student locker room?”
    Troy stared at her suspiciously. There was a long moment of silence, during which both Carole and Lisa wished they could sink into the floor and disappear. They had the feeling Troy knew exactly what Stevie was driving at. But was that because Stevie wasn’t as subtle as she thought, or was it because Troy had a guilty conscience?
    “I was just wondering,” Stevie said, beginning to babble a bit. “Because one of the students here lost a pen that looked a lot like that one, and I was just wondering if maybe it fellon the floor and then you found it, and if so if maybe you noticed a few other things that are missing, or …” Her voice trailed off. Troy’s suspicious expression had just turned to one of dismay. Stevie held her breath. Maybe her questioning had worked. Maybe Troy was about to confess!
    But instead of confessing, Troy just shouted one word:
“Princess!”

T HE S ADDLE C LUB exchanged confused glances. “Princess?” they repeated in one voice.
    Troy was shaking his head grimly. “That darn dog,” he muttered. He glanced at the girls. “Come on,” he said, his voice completely neutral. “If you want to get your missing stuff back, I have a pretty good idea where it might be.”
    The girls followed as the groom headed outside. He led them to a row of bushes near the main stable entrance and knelt