Saddled With Trouble by Michele Scott

comfortable.”
    “ In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t need a five-star hotel. I just slept on the ground in a pitched tent for weeks, Mick. I think a cot in the tack room would suffice. Besides, half the time I’m woken up in the middle of the night to take calls.”
    She started to reply, but the sound of a car door closing sounded outside the barn. Detective Davis entered the breezeway. “Ms. Bancroft?”
    “ Hello, Detective.”
    He walked toward them. “Good evening, Mr. Slater.”
    Michaela glanced at Ethan. Davis must’ve already spoken with him. Was he a suspect?
    Ethan nodded. “Evening.” He turned to Michaela. “I’m going to grab a few things, and I’ll be back.”
    “ Don’t worry about it. You needn’t come back. We’ll be fine.”
    “ Stubborn.” He shook a finger at her. “I will be back. If for nothing other than to make sure Leo is doing okay.”
    “ Where is your stuff anyway?” Michaela asked, curious about where Ethan had been staying since he’d returned.
    He hesitated. “Summer’s place.”
    Before she could respond, Ethan hurried out. Summer’s place? His ex-fiancé? The same Summer who stood him up at the altar a few months ago? The one he’d been loyal to and had even gotten her the job at Uncle Lou’s as his accountant? Oh boy, did they have something to discuss when he returned! She’d surely give him a piece of her mind.
    “ Ms. Bancroft,” Davis said. “Do you want to tell me what happened here?”
    “ It’s okay, you can call me Michaela. Why don’t we go on into the house?” She rubbed her arms. “I’m cold. I can fix us some tea or coffee.”
    “ That would be fine. But before we do that, you said something about a pitchfork being in one place and then not being there later?”
    “ That’s right. Follow me.” She led him to the tack room. “I needed to go over to the horse trailer and see if I had any more bran for my colt, and when I came back the pitchfork, which had been right here, was gone. I did notice my dog seemed to be bothered by something outside the barn. I figured it was a rabbit.”
    “ But the dog didn’t bark?”
    “ No.”
    Davis nodded. “Okay. Why don’t you show me around and we’ll see if anything else looks out of place. Let’s retrace your path as far as when you first came in to the tack room and spotted the pitchfork.”
    “ Sure.” She walked him through everything from the moment she’d entered the barn.
    “ You’ve got quite a crew here.” He nodded down the aisle of stalls at the horses. The more curious ones peeked their heads out at the newcomer.
    “ They’re my life. Keep me sane. Horses are good for the soul, you know.” She’d remembered Uncle Lou often telling her those exact words from the time she was a child. He’d been right. “They’re constant. There for you. Always.”
    “ I can see that.”
    “ Do you ride?”
    “ Me?” He laughed. “Hardly. Once, actually.”
    “ Where was that?”
    He stopped for a minute and shoved his hands in his pockets, kind of looking away from her. “Uh, Barbados.”
    “ Barbados?”
    “ Yeah. One of those expeditions, you know, trail rides.”
    “ But in Barbados?”
    He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “My . . . honeymoon. I was on my honeymoon.”
    “ Oh, right. Honeymoon. How nice.”
    They walked outside and headed toward the horse trailer about fifty feet away. Michaela squinted her eyes as they neared, then gasped. “Do you see that?” She reached out to touch the pitchfork leaning against the horse trailer, its metal spikes shining reflectively from a beam of light showering down off the top of the barn.
    Davis grabbed her hand. “No. Don’t touch it. I need to have it dusted for fingerprints.”
    “ Sorry.” She pulled her hand away and for some odd reason felt heat rise to her face, obviously angry over her faux pas. Or was it? For a brief second she couldn’t help feel Davis’s grip sending something electric