The Mystery at Saratoga

asked quietly.
    Honey nodded. “Daddy says that some of the worst cases are people who work at the track. They become so convinced that they know the horses and can pick winners that they gamble their whole salaries away. They never save up enough money to get ahead—sometimes they can’t even look for a better job, because they’ve borrowed so much money from their employers. Daddy says that sometimes people like that get so desperate that, after they pawn everything they own, they wind up falling in with bad characters who offer to give them money in return for helping them to fix a race. If they’re caught, they’re banned from the track, of course. But sometimes, they just take their money and disappear, probably to go off and do the same thing at some other track, Daddy says.”
    Trixie grabbed Honey’s arm and spun her around so that the two girls were face-to-face. The anger in Trixie’s eyes terrified her gentle friend. “What are you trying to say?” Trixie demanded.
    Realizing what Trixie was thinking, Honey gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, no, Trixie!” she wailed. “You don’t think that I—1 wasn’t even thinking about Regan when I said those things. Please believe me!” Tears again welled in Honey’s hazel eyes, and two spilled over and slid down her cheeks.
    Seeing how sincere her friend was in her denial, Trixie immediately felt ashamed of her suspicions. She put her arms around Honey and hugged her. “I’m sorry, Honey. I know you weren’t thinking about Regan. But to me, as I listened to you—I don’t know. It sounded almost as if you were explaining why Regan drugged Gadfly and then ran away. But it isn’t true. It can’t be,” she concluded firmly.
    The two girls walked on again in silence, sharing the same unhappy, unspoken thoughts: Both girls realized that, however much they might try to deny it, what Honey had been saying about people who worked at the track, people who were afflicted with the gambling disease, could explain Regan’s running away from Saratoga seven years before. As loyal as they were to the young groom, they both had to face the fact that they didn’t know very much about his past. He’d never been exactly secretive, but he hadn’t spoken much about it, either. Everyone who knew him in Sleepyside had assumed that the silence was due to unhappy memories of those earlier days. But couldn’t it also be due to Regan’s having something to hide?
    “It isn’t true,” Trixie repeated aloud. Even though she was starting in the middle of a thought, Honey had no trouble following it, because her thoughts had been running along such similar lines. “But even if it were,” Trixie continued, “Regan’s taking the job with your father would show that he was trying to get away from the gambling disease, trying to keep himself away from the track. That would mean that he really is a good person who just couldn’t help the fact that he had a gambling problem.”
    “That’s true,” Honey said. “I mean, no, it isn’t. I mean, that theory makes sense, but I can’t believe that it’s right. I just can’t believe that Regan would fix a horse race, and I can’t believe that he was ever a compulsive gambler, and I can’t believe that—” She broke off as Trixie clutched her arm. Turning to look at her friend, she saw that Trixie’s face was pale beneath its freckles and that her blue eyes were wide with horror.
    “Honey, look!” Trixie breathed. “Those riding boots in the window of that pawnshop—they’re Regan’s!”

The Pawnshop • 8

    HONEY CLOSED HER EYES for a moment, as if she were afraid of what she might see. Then her shoulders rose and fell as she took a deep breath, and she turned slowly to face the window of the pawnshop.
    Even knowing what she was going to see had not prepared her for the shock, however. She was speechless for a moment, and when she did speak, her voice came out as a gasp: “Oh, Trixie, you’re right!”
    The girls both walked up to the window as if they were pulled by invisible strings. They stared through the window at the boots for a long, silent moment. There could be no mistake about it, they knew, although neither one of them wanted to be the first to admit it out loud.
    The boots had been Regan’s pride and joy. They had been handmade, especially for him, out of a soft, red brown leather. A fancy, scrollwork R was embossed on the top of each boot.
    Honey and Trixie were both