Small Town Filly (Sandbar Stables Cozy Mystery Book 1) by Bethanie Cushman Page A

why Fanny finally barked last night," she said. "Somebody threw a rock through the kitchen window!"
                  "Through the window? You mean, the window's broken?"
                  "Yes. It sure is. It's a small hole, but it's busted through."
                  He sighed. "I swear, I never heard a thing until Fanny woke me up. I looked, checked the doors, and everything seemed fine."
                  "It was the kitchen window—the small one over the sink. It would be easy to miss seeing that in the dark."
                  "Yeah, I sure missed it, all right." He caught sight of the note in her hand. "What's that?"
                  She held it out to him. He took it and studied it closely, running one finger over the awkwardly taped letters, and then looked up and frowned. "'You're booted?' What the hell does that mean?"
                  "I guess it means we're kicked out. And they hate horses. But whatever it means, I sure am tired of it."
                  She took the note back from him. "I'll call the cops. Again. And they can take the rock and the note and the broken window and add it to their collection of Sunrise's pictures."
                  Alex looked down at Fanny, who stood close beside Lance while gazing up at him and wagging her tail. "Well, at least you tried this time," Alex said. "I sure wish you could talk."
    ***
                  The rest of the day passed uneventfully. The horses were doing well during their schooling sessions, and Alex was getting to know them better all the time. And she was getting sorer all the time, too, from all the unaccustomed riding, but it was well worth it.
                  The next morning while driving in, Alex told herself to keep her spirits up. There was no reason to believe that anything else would happen to the horses or the property. The police were making extra patrols on the road at night, and Lance was sleeping in the barn aisle at night with Fanny on guard duty—at least, guarding the place against anyone she didn't already know.
                  But as she approached the stables in the early light, the first thing she saw was the flashing strobes of police cars and ambulances.
                  Alex did not know whether to be furious or scared to death. She was filled with an awful combination of the two.
    As she got closer, she saw that there were two ambulances parked at the edge of the road with lights flashing, and two police cars pulled over on the other side of the road.
                  Then she realized that the emergency vehicles were not at Sandbar Stables at all. They were pulling into Wood Marina next door.
                  Alex threaded her car through the slow traffic and the parked cop cars and finally managed to turn into Sandbar's driveway. She threw the car in park, turned it off, and leaped out, running straight through the barn to the far end.
                  Lance was already there, standing at the fence and watching the scene. Alex dashed over and stood beside him. "What's happened now?" she said. "Even though I'm afraid to ask!"
                  "Not sure. They seem to have found something in the water, at the end of one of the docks. There's a diver down there."
                  "Found something? Found what? Why would they send ambulances and a diver unless somebody…unless maybe somebody fell in?"
                  "Yeah, you have to wonder. But they've definitely got something right there." He glanced at her. "At least it wasn't us having trouble this time."
                  Alex nodded. "That's the first thing I thought of as I pulled up this morning. But somehow that doesn't make me feel any better."
    She took a breath, watching the scene next door with the many police and Florida Highway Patrol officers gathered at the