Horse Race Read Online Free PDF

“Garvey seemed awfully eager for you to exercise that other horse.”
And
, she added silently to herself,
Garvey seems like a bad person to make angry
.
    Toby laughed. “That’s just Garvey being Garvey,” he said. “Naturally you wouldn’t recognize them, but there were two other Maskee horses on the track waiting their turn for Garvey’s attention when we left. I’ll be back with the bay colt in plenty of time.”
    “You mean you don’t ride all of Maskee’s horses?” Stevieasked, watching as the jockey pulled out a light blanket and snapped it onto the chestnut filly’s back.
    Toby shook his head. “Unless we’re preparing for an important race, I usually don’t ride for Maskee in the mornings at all,” he said. “Garvey hires exercise boys to do that.” He gave the girls a wink and handed Cookie Cutter’s lead line to Carole. “I grab any chance I can get to sleep in.”
    He said good-bye and strolled down the aisle, where one of the grooms was waiting with the bay colt the girls had seen earlier. Now the horse was tacked up and ready to go, and Toby led him away in the direction of the track.
    The girls started walking in a big circle around the shed row. Carole led Cookie Cutter, and Stevie and Lisa walked alongside to keep her company.
    “There’s so much interesting stuff going on here, isn’t there?” Carole mused.
    Stevie nodded. “Especially when it comes to Garvey,” she said. “I think there might be something mysterious about him.”
    “Huh?” Lisa and Carole said in one voice, looking at their friend in surprise.
    “Think about it,” Stevie said. “He doesn’t want to answer any of Deborah’s questions, especially questions about his past. He’s mean and surly to just about everyone. He’s been changing his boss’s training schedule. What does all that tell you?”
    “It tells me you’ve been watching too many TV detective shows,” Carole said with a laugh. “Although no selfrespectingTV detective would get involved in anything with those pathetic clues.”
    Lisa grinned. “Actually, maybe Stevie’s having a flashback to our last trip to the racetrack,” she told Carole. “She remembers that we solved a mystery then, and she thinks we’ll probably stumble over another one here.”
    “Maybe.” Carole tried to keep a straight face. “But what are the odds of that?”
    Stevie’s face was bright red by now. “Okay, enough. You two are pretty funny. But I have a hunch about this. Something’s weird about Garvey.”
    Lisa shrugged. “Nobody’s arguing with you there,” she said. “But there’s nothing particularly mysterious about being weird and antisocial.”
    Just then they noticed a wiry young man walking toward them leading two sweaty horses. “Are you the Maskee hot-walkers?” he called out.
    “I guess those are our next customers,” Lisa said. “Come on, Stevie. Let’s go untack them.”
    As her friends hurried off, Carole continued to walk with Cookie Cutter. She was just rounding the far corner of the shed row when she heard someone calling her name. She turned and saw Josh coming toward her, a big smile on his face.
    “Hi there,” he said. “I see you get to walk the star.” He jerked his thumb at Cookie Cutter. “Does that mean you’re the star hot-walker?”
    Carole wasn’t sure how to answer that. She suspected itwas the kind of question that didn’t require an answer, so she just shrugged. “Where’s Leprechaun?” she asked. “I saw her going onto the track. Don’t you have to walk her after her workout?”
    “Nope,” Josh replied, falling into step beside her as she continued around the path. “We have hot-walkers, too, you know. I just took her back to the barn and untacked her. She’ll be walking for at least half an hour, so I figured I’d come over here and see what you were doing.”
    “Well, now you see it,” Carole said with a weak smile.
    Josh laughed as if it were the funniest thing anyone had ever said.