A Silver Christmas (Tipperary Carriage Company Mystery Book 4)

by J A Whiting

  Yet Mae still found herself watching everyone very closely, especially if they looked like they might try to feed something to the horse. She decided she'd just tell people that the horses were not allowed to eat while working and hope they'd understand.

  Her evenings at home were spent scanning the Internet for photos of anyone feeding Silver that night at the Fair, but there was nothing. She came across a few of the selfies that people had taken non-stop, but that was all. No one in the pictures looked at all familiar, though Mae knew she’d never remember the hundreds of people who had ridden in her sleigh or spoken to her at the Holiday Fair.

  I spend most of my time out there looking at a horse's backside anyway, not at the people I drive.

  By the time the following Friday came around, Mae was feeling a little better. She had decided to stick with driving Silver and the sleigh for the remainder of the event, since the combination had proven so popular, and she was having a wonderful time in the pretty little sleigh-on-wheels with her gorgeous Saddlebred.

  It also helped that Ross seemed unconcerned about going back to the Holiday Fair. That evening he planned to drive Falling Star, Mae's Friesian horse, and Mae found she was looking forward to the sight of the coal-black horse wearing harness bells and hooked to the decorated black Landau.

  Mae knew that Ross enjoyed driving Star, who was a beautiful animal, but did require a steady and encouraging hand. Mae silently suspected that he rather liked Star's showy way of going, though she figured she could take him on anytime with the very high-stepping Silver.

  But what really mattered at the fair was making the customers happy and, most of all, keeping the horses safe. When she started her business, Mae had learned almost right away that she would come across all sorts of people while working a carriage-driving service, from the very best to some of the very worst, and she’d decided from the start that she would not let a few bad ones keep her from doing what she loved.

  Most of the time, the people she met were the very best types and she loved bringing her horses out for them to see, but she would certainly be watching her horses extra carefully that night.

  The evening's rides went well and Mae had been very glad to see that the fair had put up additional wooden barriers to form a lane for the horses at the pick-up stand. That would keep the people back at least somewhat. They could see the horses and get pictures if they wanted to, but the event-goers couldn't get close enough to feed or touch them.

  She wondered if the police had quietly talked to the fair management. They may have, or else the management had just heard the rapidly spreading stories about a poisoned apple being found at the carriage stand.

  Whenever she had the chance, Mae would scan the faces standing at the barrier to see if any of them looked familiar. The only ones she noticed were the young couple who had picked up Silver's reindeer antlers out of the street on that very first night she'd been out there. The two of them waved, and Mae nodded back to them as her next set of passengers got in.

  The couple was still taking pictures of all the horses as Mae left for her next drive. She guessed that the two of them probably worked somewhere at the fair and just liked looking at the horses whenever they were on their break. She was beginning to recognize a few of the other folks who ran booths there, too.

  There was nothing about that young couple, or anyone else she saw who was working at the fair, that aroused any suspicion that they were the ones who had deliberately tried to harm a horse. But Mae's guard was up, and as far as she was concerned, everybody was a suspect until she found out who had done such an awful thing.

  Mae found that having the barriers to keep the crowd back did help her to relax a little more. It turned out that she enjoyed her evening of driving Silver through the neighborhood and making quite a nice collection of cash by doing so.

  Before she knew it, it was time to load up and go home.

  After being in business for nearly a year, Mae and Ross had become very efficient when it came to loading and unloading carriages and horses for each of the driving events, and tonight was no exception. Their two trucks were parked on opposite sides of a small parking lot to allow plenty of room to maneuver the carriages.

  It was nice and quiet, though there was still a steady stream of people both leaving the fair, mostly families with young children, and some just arriving since the live music and dancing was scheduled to go on into the later hours and the college-age crowd was showing up for that.

  Nice and quiet, but not deserted. Just the way I like it.

  They stopped the horses one behind the other, lined up with the stock trailer that was hooked to Ross's big maroon truck. Once each horse was unhooked, Mae held the reins while Ross blocked one of the wheels. Mae's carriages did not have brakes, so she and Ross simply used wheel blocks when the vehicles were parked without a horse hooked to them.

  Very soon both Star and Silver were unharnessed and warmly blanketed, and then they were led a few yards away into the big white stock trailer hitched to Mae's dark green truck.

  Star went into the front half while Silver stayed in the back, with a gate between them. Ross preferred to haul horses untied when he could, letting them find their own most comfortable positions for riding down the road. Each of them had plenty of room inside the trailer as well as plenty of hay to keep them occupied.

  With the horses settled, it was time to load the vehicles in the other stock trailer, the one hitched to Ross's maroon truck. The big Landau would just fit as long as it had the shafts taken off, though it was heavy and always took both Ross and Mae to push it up the ramp and into the trailer.

  They were just lining it up on the ramp when something behind them caught Mae's eye. "What’s that?"

  Ross turned and glanced back. Then he saw it, too.

  The sleigh was rolling. It was rolling backwards across the parking lot and picking up speed because the lot was slightly tilted toward the street to let the rainwater drain.

  The valuable, beautiful, one-of-a-kind antique sleigh was already moving past Mae's truck and past the stock trailer with the two horses in it. In just a moment, it was either going to hit one of the large oak trees at the edge of the lot, or go bouncing over the curb and roll right out into the street.

  "Oh, no! We've got to stop it!" cried Mae, though she had no idea how they’d accomplish that. She only knew they had to try.

  The sleigh wasn’t large, as horse-drawn vehicles went, but it was large enough and heavy enough to cause some damage, especially at the speed it was rolling.

  Mae and Ross left the Landau sitting at the base of the ramp and dashed across the parking lot after the wayward sleigh.

  10

  "How are we going to stop it?" shouted Mae, as they ran across the asphalt lot toward the bouncing, jittering sleigh. "Even if we can catch it, it's too heavy to drag to a stop."

  "Mae! This side!" yelled Ross, still running. Both of them ran up on the same side of the sleigh and as they got alongside it, he yelled again. "Push! Push the back end around!"

  Together they gave the vehicle a big shove over the rear wheels, and then another and another. Mae realized that was supposed to push the back end to one side, as Ross had said, and stop it from rolling.

  But it was a sleigh designed for sliding over the snow and not for rolling. The wheels just inside the runners were not very big and not very flexible, and pushing the back end only had the effect of lifting up the entire side and threatening to flip the whole thing over, not spin it around.

  "Pull it back down," Ross instructed as they jogged alongside the sleigh.

  He and Mae grabbed the side, hung on tight, and pulled on it. The sleigh bounced a little and slowly settled to a stop, while Mae kept a tight hold of it and tried to catch her breath.

  "Oh gosh," she gasped. "How did it start rolling? I know you blocked the front wheel. It's always been fine before."

  "I did block it," said Ross. "But it was a front wheel. Maybe with this little toy, I should
block one front and back."

  "Maybe so," said Mae, nodding. "This lot is kind of slanted. I've got a couple more sets of wheel blocks at home. I'll make sure that we…. "

  Mae paused, looking across the dimly lit parking lot. She could have sworn she’d just heard the familiar rattle of a big diesel engine starting up.

  "Is that your truck running?" said Ross.

  "It couldn't be," Mae told him. "I wouldn't leave it running with horses inside the trailer. The keys are in my pocket. Right here."

  Then both she and Ross yelled out again as the dark green truck began to move toward the driveway, taking the stock trailer with Star and Silver in it.

  "Stop. Stop," shouted Mae, running faster than she ever had in her life. "My horses are in there! Stop! Stop right now."

  But the truck kept rolling straight toward the driveway that led to the street.

  It was moving slowly, but tended to jerk left and right, as though the driver didn't really know how to move such a large vehicle. Mae could hear the horses stomping around in the trailer as they tried to keep their balance.

  We have to stop them. In another second, they'll be out on the street and gone.

  Running as hard as she could, Mae got up to the right side of the truck and started banging hard on the panels. "Stop! Stop! That's my truck! Stop!"

  There was a hand on her shoulder. She was about to scream when she realized it was Ross, shoving her back away from the truck as he ran past her.

  She stopped right there in the lot, feeling terribly helpless as she watched him. He had his Colt .45 in his right hand as he pounded first on the side door, and then on the front panels of the truck.

  The truck and trailer kept rolling, but Ross wasn't backing down. The thief would have to either run him over or risk being shot … or both.

  "Stop or I'll shoot!" roared Ross, and managed to get in front of the slowly rolling vehicle and move along with it. He banged on the hood with one fist and aimed the gun squarely at the windshield. "Stop and get out! Now!"

  Mae forgot to breathe. If Ross had to shoot, he would be aiming toward the horses in the trailer, and all she could do was pray that whoever was taking her truck either didn't have a gun or would be too afraid to use it.

  The truck crept along, still rolling very slowly for it was about to go down the slight incline of the driveway and out onto the main street. If it started down, there would be no stopping it like they had stopped the sleigh. This was thousands of pounds of truck, trailer, and horses.

  As it continued moving, the driver's side door popped open. It looked as though someone rolled out although Mae could not see him clearly.

  Is there only one? Is there another still inside, down on the floor?

  "Stop!" Ross shouted again, still walking backwards. But there was only the sound of running footsteps heading away from the lot and apparently running through the shadows of the big oaks lining the street.

  Whoever it was – he was gone.

  Ross was forced to jump back as the truck started to go down the driveway. Mae knew she had only an instant to act.

  She grabbed the passenger side door handle and let it pull her along for a couple of running steps. Then she managed to get the door open and pull herself inside.

  Thankfully, no one else was in there. She got hold of the steering wheel, pulled herself along the seat, got behind the wheel, and jammed hard on the brake.

  The truck jerked to a stop. She could hear the horses stomping in the trailer as they caught their balance.

  Sorry, guys.

  The important thing was that the truck was stopped and under control. Her heart beating wildly, Mae closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief that the whole frightening incident seemed to be over.

  She opened her eyes again and saw that Ross was pointing his gun at someone across the street, at an all-black silhouette running fast along the sidewalk and then disappearing into the distance.

  Finally, Ross raised the tip of the gun. He walked over to the driver's side window and Mae rolled it down.

  "You all right?" he asked, glancing over his shoulder.

  "Yeah, I think so. Are you?"

  He still had the Colt .45 in his hand, pointed upward. "Is there a key in that ignition?"

  Automatically, Mae reached for the side of the steering column. "No. No key. But the engine is running. What did they do?"

  Ross kept looking around him, holding the gun upright. "They hot-wired it. You'll probably see wires hanging down under the column. Don't touch them."

  Mae leaned down to look. "Yeah, you're right. Looks like they pried something open." She sighed deeply, trying to steady her nerves. "Should I put my key in it?"

  "No, just let it run and drive straight home. We'll get it fixed tomorrow." He continued to look around, but except for a few people standing on the other side of the street watching the commotion, there was no sign of anyone else coming near the parking lot.

  Then Mae remembered something. "Oh, my gosh. We still have to get the carriages loaded. We can't leave them here. Somebody just tried to take my truck. That Landau and the sleigh would be gone in ten minutes."

  Ross looked around at the carriages. "I'll get them loaded. You stay right here with the doors locked."

  "But, Ross, the big carriage is so heavy. I know how hard it is to load. The sleigh isn't much better."

  "Don't worry. I know a trick or two. Stay where you are. Don't think of leaving this truck. Your horses need you right now."

  Well, he had her there, but she hated the thought of this man pushing those two heavy vehicles up into the trailer by himself.

  It seemed Ross had a plan as he got into his truck, started it up, and turned it around so that it was parked on the downward slope toward the side street, the same slope where the sleigh had almost gotten away from them just a few minutes earlier.

  Once parked like that, it only took him two attempts to get the Landau to roll down the lot, up the ramp, and into the trailer … and he managed to drag the carriage to a stop before it could bang into the front of the compartment.

  In a moment, he had it secured. He was working fast, but they were still out here alone with a thief who had just tried to steal a truck and trailer right under their noses. Although Mae was very anxious to get out of there with her horses, she wasn't about to let Ross out of her sight.

  It took him only one try to get the sleigh inside the trailer. Mae breathed another sigh of relief when she saw him put in the ramp, lock the rear gate, and get back in the truck.

  Ross flashed his lights at her to go first. She knew he would stay right behind her all the way home. Carefully, she eased the truck and trailer onto the street and then headed out for Goodnight Farm.

  After about the longest twenty-five minutes of her life, Mae carefully eased the big truck and trailer into the driveway at the farm. She made sure it was parked in the right spot so she wouldn't have to move it later. How did one start a truck by prying open the steering column, anyway?

  She quickly jumped out to see to her horses.

  Mick and Mack raced over to greet her. All seemed well at the farm, peaceful and quiet on a country night brilliant with stars. She flipped on the lights in the barn aisle, and then got Silver unloaded and back into his stall.

  In a moment, Star was out, too, whinnying in a low tone as he walked back into the barn. The other horses greeted him in return and soon they were all eating their hay with contentment.

  Ross's truck pulled up as soon as she re-locked the gate on her trailer. He got out quickly and walked over to her. "I see you made it," he said, his voice as calm and low-key as ever.

  "I did, though I'm not entirely sure how," she said, managing a chuckle. "I'll call my roadside service tomorrow and see if they can fix that ignition. I don't want to have to hot-wire my truck every time I need to go somewhere."

  "You won't. Just hang on to your keys."

  "I always do. But…." She paused, looking around into the darkness. "
Do you think I should have locked my truck while we were loading the carriages? Normally, I don't, not when there are horses in the trailer."

  "No. The keys weren't in it. Usually that would be fine."

  "And it would have been fine tonight, too, if the sleigh hadn't suddenly rolled away." Mae paused, and looked up at Ross. "Maybe it wasn't an accident that those wheel blocks moved. Maybe they didn't move by themselves."

  "I don't think they did, either."

  "Boy, that was a fast thief, though," said Mae. "I wouldn't have believed anyone could start a truck that fast without a key."

  "They've probably had plenty of practice."

  "Yeah, they probably have." She took another deep breath. "I guess my next question is … why? Why try to steal a truck and trailer with two horses in it from a town parking lot with people walking by and both of us right there with it?"

  "Theft is usually a crime of opportunity. Somebody walked by and saw us busy with the carriages. Saw a chance to grab a truck, so they did."

  "I hate to think of what would have happened to the horses if they'd gotten away with them. Turned loose somewhere? Sold? Right back at the auction in the kill pen?"

  "Hard to say. The important thing is that they're safe now. We'll keep the trucks locked from now on whenever we're not in them."

  "I guess we'll have to." Mae paced a few steps. "I'm sure you're right that it was just a crime of opportunity. But I can't help but wonder if this was more … personal."

  "Personal?"

  She nodded. "There was a young couple out on the side streets the first night I was out. They just happened to be there when Silver's antlers fell off and they didn't hesitate to walk right up to me with them. I keep seeing those two almost every time we're there. They're always watching the horses and taking lots of pictures, especially of Silver."

  "They're at the fair every night? Are they working a booth?"