The Puddle Monster Ghost Case, Part II: A Pony Detective story

What starts as a sloppy-track spill quickly turns into a case of fog, folklore, and a missing favorite. Read on for the conclusion to the Puddle Monster Ghost Case.

By N. A. Souer

You can catch the first part of “The Puddle Monster Ghost Case” here. 

An hour later, M and Mousy stood in an underground tunnel.

“What’s above?” M asked, staring upward.

“The backstretch,” an old gelding in charge of track maintenance answered.

“And what’s this for?” M asked, motioning with his nose to a long hatch-like door above their heads.

“That’s an emergency evacuation door.”

Mousy glanced back at the semi dark tunnel, which led to a maintenance building near the center of the track.

“All the valve controls for the drainage panels are back there,” the old gelding said, pointing to the distant maintenance building. “But for this door, there’s also a release on the wall.”  He walked over to a large rocker switch and inspected it. “That’s strange,” he said, more to himself.

“What?” Mousy asked.

“This switch is supposed to have a plastic tie through it.”

“So you’re saying this switch has been tampered with it?” M asked.

The old gelding nodded.

“The only time this plastic cable should ever be removed is if there’s an emergency requiring this door to be opened,” he said.

“What’s that up there?”  Mousy asked, pointing a paw up at one of the high-powered springs above their heads.

M and the old gelding looked up.

“Well, if the door was recently opened,” M said, “I suppose a few cobwebs got disturbed.”

Mousy didn’t respond. Instead, he kept staring upward.

“I think it’s a snag of hair,” he finally said.

M wasn’t sure, but he knew Mousy’s younger; kitty vision was sharper than his.

“Think you can get a closer look?” M asked.

Mousy nodded, then climbed a nearby ladder, and called down, “I was right! It is hair!”

“And I bet it’s from Charmie,“ M said.

“Either that,” Mousy said with a grin, “or puddle monsters get hairballs.”

***

The next morning M’s phone rang early. “Charm Bracelet’s grandmother has received a ransom note,” a voice said.

M was barely awake. He glanced out the barn door into the early darkness.

“What time is it?” he asked, vaguely recognizing old Sollie Joe’s voice.

“It’s already six,” he answered excitedly, “and she just told me during workouts.”

“Don’t handle it,” M instructed. “I’ll get someone down there to dust it for prints.”

By the time M got to the track, Mousy was already there. Not for the first time M was thankful he had a nocturnal employee on his team that operated better than he did in the early morning hours.

“We already have a match on the prints,” Mousy reported to his boss. “They belong to Little Big Hoof, a juvenile punk POA from the reservation. At least, he must have delivered the note, but I don’t think he wrote it.”

“Why? Were there any other prints?” M asked.

“Yeah, there’s one set we can’t rule out,” Mousy said. “I’d be willing to bet it’s whoever wrote the note.”

“And what are the demands?” M asked.

“Well, it’s a strange one,” Mousy explained. “The note demands mineral rights for the land the track sits on to be signed over to some bogus land development firm in exchange for Charmie’s safe return.”

It sounds like something the TB mob would do,” M said.

Mousy thought for a moment. “Yeah,'” he said “but why would they use some juvenile colt off the reservation.”

“It’s hard to say,” M said, “But I think it’s time we run the prints through the NPSS database, and see what comes up. Let me make some phone calls.”

***

Back at the barn, everyone gathered in the tack room.

“What is the latest?”  M asked.

“I talked to Old Zeke Tanner,” Tweak said, “the track farrier. He said there was something odd about Charmie’s shoes.”

“What do you mean?” M asked.

“For starters, he couldn’t get them from the usual vendor and was directed by one of the sales reps to another company. The strange thing is it was a vendor he had never heard of before, and when he tried to order more supplies a week later it was like the company had never existed.”

“What does this have to do with our case?” Sasha asked. “Equine supply vendors come and go all the time.”

“Yeah, but why would someone set up a temporary company for just farrier supplies? It makes me think there was something different about Charmie’s shoes that might have to do with how she was kidnapped.”

“You might be onto something,” Mousy said, holding up a paw.  He glanced at his notes. “I did some looking into this Little Big Hoof character, and besides being a punk pony, he’s also a techie whiz. It turns out the model of door hatch that we seen under the back stretch can be opened remotely by computer, as long as the plastic cable tie on the latch itself is cut.”  Mousy paused and looked over at M, then added, “A techy colt like that could easily hack into the track’s maintenance computer system and do some reprograming.”

***

“That’s an Interesting theory,” M said, “but it doesn’t tell us where Charmie is.”

“Maybe it can,” Mousy said.  “Remember old Sollie Joe said there had been another incident?  I went out on the tracks website and looked up archive video. It was raining that day too, but unlike today it was really hot.”

“Why is that important to our case?” Tweak asked.

“Because I am starting to think the two incidents are connected, and it’s no coincidence it was foggy both days.”

“I don’t follow,” M said.

“After doing a bit of research,” Mousy explained, “I learned if a drainage system is installed incorrectly it can cause inversion fog under certain condition.”

“So, you think the drainage tiles were installed improperly?” Tweak asked.

“Yes, but on purpose. I also suspect the first incident was some kind of practice run.”

“But what would that have to do with Charmie’s shoes?” Sasha asked.

“The shoes don’t have anything to do with the drainage system,” Mousy said, “but there could be some kind of a device implanted in them that emits a frequency to suddenly release the evacuation door we seen in the tunnel under the back stretch.”

***

M smiled a big, pony grin, then said, “And that would look like Charmie was swallowed by the great puddle monster in the mud.”

“You got it,” Mousy said.

“But if the door was opened,” Tweak asked, “why didn’t any of the others fall down in the tunnel?”

“The door has extremely high powered, pneumatic springs and can be both opened and closed almost instantaneously. Whoever planned this out must have studied Charmie’s running style and knew she’d lead on the back stretch.”

“Why didn’t any of the other horses see this?” M asked.

“Zina Lite did,” Mousy said.  “She seen Charmie go down, but by the time she got to the same spot the door was closed.

“Why didn’t anyone hear it?” Tweak asked.

“I can only speculate, but I would guess with all the fog, mud, and panic, no one heard the air springs discharge a second time.”

“This still doesn’t tell us where Charmie is,” Sasha said.

“If we can figure out the frequency used to open the evacuation door, it might lead us to Charmie.”

“What I don’t understand is why Charmie was singled out,” Tweak said, as M’s phone began to ring back in his stall.

“I wondered about that too,” Mama Kitty said.  “So I did some digging into her family history.” Mama Kitty paused and glanced at her notes.  “Did you know Charmie’s grandfather was one of the founding owners of the track? Now that he has passed, his will states she will inherit his voting rights on the board of directors.”

***

“They’ve matched the second set of prints,” M announced, coming back from his stall. “The NPSS database shows it’s someone called Vignetti, a small time thug from the TB mob. From his criminal history I doubt he’s too high up in the organization. Fortunately for us, he’s been under surveillance for the past several months.”

“I don’t get it,” Mosey said. “Why is NPSS involved? “

“Apparently this guy has a whole list of charges against him,” M went on. “Things like betting and investment scams at tracks all over the country. NPSS agents have already picked him up and they’re sweating him out.”

“How long before he tells us what he did with Charmie?” Tweak asked.

“That’s a problem,” M said. “The guy lawyered up right away and he’s not talking.”

“So how do you know what he’s charged with?” Sasha asked.

“An old buddy that’s still in the service worked the case,” M explained. “It turns out Little Big Hoof was the foreman for the excavation crew Vignetti arranged to install the drainage system. The plan was to submit a bogus soil test report to the board of directors, which indicated the presence of large amounts of rare earth minerals.”

“What do earth minerals have to do with drainage?” Tweak asked.

“It sounds like they were using a fake report to convince the board of directors the land the track sits on is more valuable than the track itself,” Mousy said.

“Right,” M said, “only they never planned on discovering skeletal remains. When the Appaloosa Horse Council voted to relocate the remains, Little Big Hoof got an idea. Being from the reservation, he knew the generational folklore about the Great Puddle Monster Spirit. So he and Vignetti simply made up a modernized version to cover the kidnapping of a founding track owner’s granddaughter in order to blackmail away the land.”

“Okay,” Sasha said, “it’s starting to make sense. But we still don’t know where  Charmie is.”

M turned to Mousy. “Think you can find her?” he asked. “After this long without food and water she might be in tough shape.”

“As long as she still has her shoes on,” Mousy said, “I think so.”

***

Hours later, Tweak and Mousy were searching the tunnel under the backstretch with a frequency detection device.

“What makes you so sure Charmie is here?” Tweak asked.

“We’ve searched everywhere else,” Mousy said, staring down at the gadget in his paws.  “I’m starting to get a reading on this thing.”

“How do we know if it’s detecting Charmie?” Tweak asked.

“We don’t, but if she still has the bar shoes on we will find her. Otherwise,“ Mousy paused, not wanting to finish his sentence out loud, “we will only find the shoes without Charmie.”

Suddenly the gadget in Mousy’s paws began to buzz. “It’s reading a strong, nearby frequency.”

“Meaning? Tweak pressed.

“We are close to something,” Mousy said.  “What’s back there?” Mousy asked, motioning further back in the dark recces of the tunnel.

Tweak cautiously trotted ahead and took a look with his halter head lamp. “It looks like where they store a bunch of old maintenance and barn stuff”.

“Tweak?” a weak voice whispered from somewhere nearby. “Is that you? “

“Charmie?  Where are you?”

“Over here, the voice whispered, “in the corner.”

Mousy and Tweak worked their way through the piles of ladders, leftover construction debris, and miscellaneous barn junk. In the dark corner they found Charmie, in a makeshift pen, tied to the wall with a gag-bit, and shackled with hobble chains on all four legs.

Tweak heard Charmie begin to cry softly, fearful and exhausted tears.

“I thought no one would ever find me,” she sobbed, barely audible.

“It’s okay,” Tweak said to his friend. “We’re going to get you out of here.”

Behind him, Tweak heard Mousy on his cell phone, reporting to M.

“She is scared, weak, and probably dehydrated,” Mousy said, “but she’s alive.”

***

Two months later, the whole team from the M&T Pony Detective Agency cheered from the rail.

Overhead, the announcer’s voice called out from the loudspeaker.

“At the far turn, Charm Bracelet has broken away from the pack. Down the home stretch, it is Charm Bracelet at the wire. Charm Bracelet has won the Charmed Life Memorial Charity Stakes race.”

Sollie Joe looked down at M.

“Wow!” he said in excitement, “That little filly has heart!  What a race!”

“She is amazing,” M said.

“She’s awesome!” Sasha added. “And, she still plans to donate her winnings for  colic research.” Sasha turned to Sollie Joe. “Thank you for hosting a second charity race this year.”

Sollie Joe smiled.

“Well, I was only a small part of the decision,” he said. “The board of directors felt it was fitting to host a second race in memory of Sir Charmed Life. And,”  Sollie Joe added, motioning to Charmie trotting over to the winner’s circle, “it’s even more fitting his granddaughter is our first winner. “ Sollie Joe looked back at M and said, “I predict big things for that little red filly.  Really big things!”

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N.A Souer (Nancy) got talked into submitting the first Pony Detective story by her miniature horse, M&M, who fancies himself a writer. When Nancy explained to M that no one would believe a miniature horse could write, he told her if she did not submit his stories under her name he’d dump her out of the cart on the next trail drive. LOL M (and Nancy) live in the south-metro area of MLPS-St. Paul.  Although semi-retired now at age 26, when he is not writing M enjoys an occasional trail drive, but mostly these days he takes Nancy out on walks because the “people vet” told him he should exercise her more.