Sweetie Belle and I searched the area for clues, determined to find something. Scootaloo was still a mess after finding out her scooter had been stolen, so Apple Bloom had taken her back to the Apple family's house until she could calm down. I sympathized with Scootaloo. That scooter was her one prized possession. I can't imagine having something like that taken from me.
"Find anything yet?" Sweetie Belle asked. I didn't want to respond. After scouring the area for almost an hour, I hadn't found anything.
"No," I said dejectedly, "There's nothing here. I don't even know what to look for. Anypony could've just waltzed in here and taken it."
"So what do we do? Scootaloo's going to be so sad if we don't find out who took her scooter." Her tone showed she was just as sad as I was.
"I know. I know," I hadn't known Scootaloo before today, but still, I couldn't leave the situation as it was. I felt like I owed her this. No, it wasn’t just her, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom, too. I owed them all for letting me into their group. I needed to show my usefulness. I had about 5 hours before it got dark, which would be plenty of time, if we knew where to start.
"Think, Sweetie Belle, why would somepony take her scooter?" I asked hoping to find out if anypony would have a reason for this horrible action.
"Well," she started, "Diamond Tiara hates us, so she could have done it. I don't really know anypony else who would do it. There was a really mean griffon in town a while back who liked to do mean things just because she thought they were funny, but she hasn't been seen in almost two years."
"Hmm..." I pondered what Sweetie Belle had just said. Would Diamond Tiara really go so far as to steal just to get back at us? It seemed like a stretch, but not impossible. I highly doubted the griffon thing, but without much to go on it'd have to be our backup plan. "Ok, Sweetie Belle, let's go ask Diamond Tiara what she's been up to today."
"But what about the other two?" she asked, "Shouldn't we at least check up on Scootaloo?"
"Oh, uh, right, of course." I said. Apparently, I still had some work to do on being a friend. The thought of Scootaloo's emotional state had slipped my mind the moment I got wrapped up in finding the thief.
We walked down the road leading to the Apple family's house. The silence was horrible. I looked over at Sweetie Belle. Her head hung low as we walked along, the look of disappointment shown clearly on her face. She must have been thinking the same thing I was, finding Scootaloo's scooter based on what little we had to go on was going to be like finding a needle in a haystack. Then it hit me like a Sonic Rainboom. That's it! I laughed at the way my mind worked sometimes. I couldn’t believe I didn’t see it before, the needle in the haystack.
"Sweetie Belle, how many ponies know about the clubhouse?" I asked hurriedly.
"Umm... Well everypony does. We didn't make it a secret after we renovated it. Well, Apple Bloom did most of it." She answered.
"No, no. I mean the exact location of it. How many ponies know exactly where it is?" I was starting to get anxious. Her answer could narrow the amount of ponies who could have taken the scooter down to a handful. Sweetie Belle looked at me for a moment and then her eyes lit up. She finally understood what I was getting at.
"The only ponies who could find it besides me, Scootaloo, and Apple Bloom are Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, the rest of the Apple family, Diamond Tiara, and Silver Spoon. And Babs Seed, too, I guess, but she lives in Manehatten." She had listed the ponies, more than I had hoped for, but I'd take what I could get at this point. This was a significant break for us.
"Ok, so leaving off Granny Smith, for her age and lack of mobility, and Babs Seed, for not being in town, our list has dropped from all of Ponyville down to nine ponies." Finally, we had something to go on. I let out a sigh of relief. This actually felt like something we could accomplish now. We ran off towards the Apple family's home, eager to tell Scootaloo the good news. When we arrived, Sweetie Belle was the first to the house, I was a few paces behind her. She burst through front door so hard I thought it was going to fly off of its hinges. I wish it would have. The door bounced off the wall and slammed back right into my face. Through my now splitting headache, I could hear Sweetie Belle.
"Scootaloo! Scootaloo!" she yelled excitedly, "Guess what we found? Well, really Sherlock found it, and it’s not so much as found, as it is a possibility."
"Woah, Woah you lost me." That was Scootaloo's voice. I could make it out over the ringing I was starting to hear. I need to remind myself to get a concussion test after this is over.
"Yer not the only one, sugarcube," I didn't recognize the voice but it sounded older and it definitely belonged to a mare. I had finally regained a semblance of balance as I stood up I checked to make sure I was still in one piece. Besides my head, everything seemed fine. I slowly opened the door for fear of hitting somepony in the process. I step inside and turned the corner to see where the voices had been coming from.
"There he is!" Apple Bloom cheered. I looked around the room to see who the other voice belong to and sitting in a chair across from me was an older mare with tan fur and three apples as her cutie mark. She picked up a farmers hat sitting on the table in front of her and placed it on her head, then she leaned back in her chair and smiled a big, warm country smile.
"You must be Sherlock." she said.
"Yes, that's me," I replied.
"Nice to meet ya, I'm Applejack. You and Sweetie Belle were out there playin' detective, right? Care to explain what she was yammerin' about?" Right, I needed to clean up Sweetie Belle's awful explanation.
"So contrary to what Sweetie Belle said we didn't actually manage to find any evidence that would implicate..." I began to explain the situation but I was quickly cut off by Applejack.
"Hold up there darlin', you can cut that fancy talk. I need ya to explain it in simpler words." She was not a smart pony, she made that very clear, but the fact that she was honest about it and wasn't ashamed by her lack of intelligence is very commendable.
"Oh sorry, let me try again," I restarted my explanation, "So what Sweetie Belle said was wrong. We didn't find anything that would help us find the thief. But we did figure out that only a few ponies could be the thief because only a few ponies know where the clubhouse is."
"And how did you come to that conclusion?" Scootaloo asked.
"Because the clubhouse is located in the thick of the trees on the farm, ya wouldn't be able to find it, if ya didn't know yer way around," I was shocked. The response didn't come from me or Sweetie Belle. Applejack had quickly caught on to our train of thought and reached the same conclusion. I had misjudged her. She was smart, just not well-read.
"Exactly," I said, "So by this logic and Sweetie Belle's help, I've narrowed the list of ponies down to the Apple family, Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Diamond Tiara, and Silver Spoon."
"Wait," it was Scootaloo who spoke up this time, "More ponies may know about it." She twiddled her hooves and stared at the ground.
"How many?" Apple Bloom asked.
"Well you know how I started the Rainbow Dash fan club? I couldn't find anywhere else to hold the meeting so I held it in the clubhouse, everypony in our class was there." Groans filled the room. Nine was already a lot of suspects, adding in the rest of our class brought the total up to fourteen. This was going to take longer than I thought.
"Hahahaha," laughter escaped from Applejack's mouth, "Well, let me see if I can help y'all out a lil' bit. Twilight's in Canterlot so she didn't do it. As for me and Big Mac, we been in town sellin' apples all day when we got back, we saw Scoots and Apple Bloom sittin' in here." That seemed like a reasonable excuse, I'd have to check with somepony in town to see if that were true, just to be safe.
"Great, so were down to eleven possible thieves. One of them's got to be it," I said trying to sound as confident as possible. I didn't want to think about what would happen if I was wrong.
"Alright, well yer off to a great start. Keep up the good work and I'm sure y'all will have this case wrapped up in no time." Applejack was a really supportive sister, it must be great to have a sibling like that, "Get movin'. yer burnin' daylight." She was right about another hour had passed. If we wanted to make any progress we needed to hurry before it got dark. We all left the Apple's home and thanked them for their hospitality.
"So where to first?" asked Apple Bloom. It was the question on all of our minds. Ponyville's a big place. We wouldn't have time to question everypony today. We needed to find the name that came up the most, somepony who had motive and knew how to find the clubhouse. There was only one name.
"Diamond Tiara's," I said.
"What about Silver Spoon?" Sweetie Belle chimed in. She had just ruined my moment, but she was right, there were two names.
"Her, too," I added. We rushed off to find our prime suspect.