The Mystery of the Castaway Children

Ella in her wheelchair, beside her sewing machine. Though her brown eyes sparkled with pleasure at their visit, her hands kept on working. Her lap was heaped with the inn’s linen, which she mended to earn her board
    and room. She was sorting articles from a huge clothes basket, then folding those that didn’t require mending.
    “I saw you coming,” she greeted them warmly.
    “We thought you might,” Honey said.
    While the “How are you’s” and “I’m fine’s” were being exchanged, Trixie walked to the window in front of Ella’s sewing machine.
    “Have you seen a stranger on a horse lately, Ella?” Trixie asked casually.
    Honey threw her a warning frown, but Ella looked interested.
    “How lately?” Ella asked.
    “Like last night,” Trixie said.
    “My goodness, Sergeant Molinson asked me that very same question,” Ella fluttered.
    Trixie felt a twinge of disappointment. She’d forgotten that the sergeant had mentioned following the road all the way to the inn. And she thought she’d been so brilliant, seeking out leads from Ella.
    “Why should I notice one horse?” Ella chattered on. “Seems like half the people on the Hudson own horses. Why, right over there in Chester there’s a statue marking a horse’s grave.”
    Trixie knew about Hambletonian’s red granite obelisk. She wasn’t a really “horsey” person, but she loved the small mare, Susie, and she always listened to Regan’s “horse talk.” She recalled hearing that Hambletonian had fathered one thousand three hundred thirty-five foals, among them a lot of champions. If one horse reproduced himself so many times, it was impossible to imagine what New York’s horse population must be. Scatter all those horses along all those roads she had thought about the previous night, and what did you have? A lot of horses and a lot of miles of roads, that’s what you had.
    Trixie wasn’t one to become discouraged easily, but a heavy sigh escaped her. “May I use your phone, Ella?” she asked abruptly. In answer to the question in Honey’s and Ella’s eyes, she added, “If you don’t ask questions, you won’t find answers.”
    Still, when she had finished a stiff, short conversation with Mr. Lytell, Trixie was no closer to an answer. Swaybacked Belle, the storekeeper’s aged mount, had not lost a shoe. In fact, Belle was growing fat from lack of exercise. “We’ll ask Dan about Spartan,” said Honey. “That’s pointless,” Trixie decided. “We both know Dan takes care of Spartan’s feet. He even carries a hoof-pick in his pocket all the time.”
    “Whatever for?” Ella asked.
    “There are lots of boggy places and rocky ridges on the game preserve,” Honey explained. “Dan doesn’t want Spartan’s feet to become tender, so he cleans them with a hoof-pick.”
    “See? I’d never have known about hoof-picks if you hadn’t dropped in,” Ella said. Coming from another person’s mouth, her words might have sounded like sarcasm, but Ella Kline was interested in the small events that made up the lives of her friends.
    A voice called at the door, “It’s Pete, Ella.”
    “Come in.”
    A tall teen-ager carried in a huge basket of laundry, and Ella set to work without delay. She told Trixie and Honey, “The inn has its own laundry room in the basement. It’s hard for me to get to it in my wheelchair, so Pete brings a load when he has a spare minute.”
    Ella flipped a man’s white sock into her basket. “You didn’t see if that needed mending,” Trixie said.
    “I mend only the inn’s linen,” Ella explained, “but anything that’s left in a room gets washed. Someone probably kicked that sock under a bed or left it in a bathroom. Sometimes people reclaim things they leave in a room, but usually they don’t. The manager gives the good stuff to charity.” She held up a lace-trimmed slip. “Like this. Oh, we get all kinds of articles.” She rolled her chair closer to the basket and dug to the bottom. “Some of them are kind of mysterious, too. I’ve been curious about this, for example. Does either of you know what it is?” She lifted up a mass of fine mesh.
    Trixie shook it out, exposing dangling strong ties. “A fly sheet!” she exclaimed. Immediately, she dropped on all fours and told Honey, “Pretend I’m a horse. It’s a hot day, and I’m just in from exercise. Here comes a cloud of pesky flies.” Carried away by her own imagination, she whinnied with annoyance.
    “Whoa, girl,” coaxed