The Mystery at Saratoga

and joke with ’em to make ’em feel better, but it doesn’t work. I always want to say, ‘Hey, you can’t do any good cornin’ out here with your man and sufferin’ while you watch him lose the rent money. Why don’t you just wait at home, watch TV or read a book and try to take your mind off the inevitable?’ I always want to say that, but I never do. Probably wouldn’t do any good, anyway.” The cabbie shook his head again.
    “Excuse me,” Honey said quickly as the cabbie paused briefly in his nonstop chatter, “you see so many people here, I was wondering if you could answer a question for me. I’ve been wondering all day if there’s some kind of superstition about redheads causing bad luck at the racetrack, or something. It seems as though I didn’t see a single redhead all day. You see, my brother is a redhead, so I’m very conscious of them, and that’s what made me think of it.”
    The cabbie chuckled. “There’s no superstition about redheads at the track that I know of, and I know ’em all: rabbits’ feet and horseshoes over the barn doors and lucky shirts and lucky rings and lucky days of the week. Nope, I’d say there are probably just fewer redheads in the world than you think there are, since your brother’s a redhead.
    “Matter of fact,” the cabbie continued, “I had a guy with bright red hair in the cab just this morning. Nice-looking young fellow he was, and real polite, even though he did smell to high heaven of horses. He apologized for it, which is more than those ladies with their heavy perfume ever do, even though I’d rather have the smell of horses in my cab any day than all those exotic concoctions. At least he came by his horse perfume honestly, since he works at a boarding stable around here, I found out. Yessir, he was a real nice young guy, and a redhead to boot.”
    The cabbie continued his conversation with himself, but the girls were beyond listening to him. Trixie grabbed Honey’s hand and held it hard to keep from shrieking in her excitement. From the pressure Trixie felt from Honey’s hand, she knew that her usually quiet friend was having just as much trouble trying to keep her excitement in check.
    The minute the cabbie stopped in front of their hotel, the girls paid him, thanked him for the ride, and raced through the lobby and up to their room. Sitting cross-legged on one of the large double beds, they began to discuss the events of the day.
    “I just know it was Regan that the cabbie took to the track this morning,” Honey said.
    Trixie nodded. “And I’m sure, now, that it was Regan I chased through the crowd at the track. Drat! I wish I’d been able to catch up with him. Then our search would already be over, and we’d have the entire story by now. But we’re so close, Honey! There can’t be that many boarding stables around, even in a horse town like Saratoga, I’ll bet anything that by this time tomorrow, we’ll have found Regan. And it’s all thanks to you, Honey, for playing your hunch and asking the cabbie about redheads at the track. I’ll have to start calling you ‘Supersleuth Honey’!”
    To Trixie’s astonishment, Honey suddenly burst into tears. “What is it, Honey? What’s wrong? You should be thrilled! Our search for Regan is almost over!”
    Honey’s response was to cry even harder. She threw herself onto the bed, burying her face in one of the pillows, her shoulders heaving as she sobbed.
    Trixie was becoming really frightened. Her best friend was, she knew, a very sensitive and, sometimes, highly emotional person, quick to feel both joy and sadness. But never before had Honey reacted with such intensity—and with so little warning. Trixie was at a loss to know what to do. Finally she went into the bathroom and pulled some tissues out of the dispenser on the wall and took them in to Honey, who took them wordlessly, still crying too hard even to say, “Thank you.”
    Then Trixie sat on the other bed and watched and waited until her friend’s sobbing diminished. When it had almost stopped, Trixie got up and went into the bathroom again, returning with a washcloth that she had wrung out of cold water. When she returned to the bedroom, Honey had rolled over to lie on her back. She was staring at the ceiling, her chin trembling from the effort she was making to hold back her tears.
    Trixie held the washcloth out to her. “Fold this up and put it over your eyes,” she instructed her friend. “That’ll keep your