The Pea Soup Poisonings

by Nancy Means Wright

  “We’re just taking her out for a ride, dearie,” the woman said, smiling a fake smile at Zoe. She shoved Aunt Thelma ahead of her into the back seat. Seconds later the car roared off down the road. Zoe sneezed twice from the dust that sprang up in its wake.

  “Jeezum, Zoe,” said Spence. “They could of taken you, too. Did you see the way that man looked at you?”

  “Like what? How did he look?”

  “Like a cobra. Like a striped cobra, ready to strike. He was wearing a striped shirt, too.”

  “Did you get his license number?”

  “Oh, sure,” said Spence. “It was a white one, New York. MBV um...umm, well, something like that.”

  “You didn’t write it down?”

  “I didn’t have a pencil.”

  “You had your tape recorder.”

  “Oh,” said Spence. “I didn’t think of that.”

  Zoe ran into Alice’s house to call the police. The door knob came off in her hand as she entered – the house could use a few repairs. She was in the front hall describing the blue car when Alice’s mother interrupted on an upstairs phone.

  “It’s all right, officer. Just relatives taking my daughter’s great-aunt out for a ride. Thelma’s not well, you know. I mean, she gets confused. And you know children, their imagination...” She gave a little laugh. “Bye then, and sorry.” The line clicked off.

  Zoe went back outside and thumped down on the steps beside the others. Tiny Alice was crying, and Zoe put an arm around her thin shoulders. “We’ll get your auntie back,” she said. “We know what the kidnappers look like.”

  “How are you going to get her back?” Alice sobbed. “You’re just a kid.”

  “I’m bigger than you.” Tiny Alice’s head only came to her chin, Zoe saw, and Alice was the same age. “And Spence here will help.”

  “Sure,” said Spence, looking brave now that the aunt-knappers were gone.

  “You’ve never seen that man and woman before?” Zoe asked Alice.

  “Oh yes,” said Alice. “Once, when they came to visit. They were Fairweather relatives, Madeline said. The woman smiled a lot and Aunt Thelma said she was a phony. That’s what Auntie called her: “a phony.”

  “They were sisters, right?” she asked Alice. “Thelma and your grandmother?”

  “Half sisters,” said Alice, “on my dad’s side.” She blew her nose loudly into a tissue. Alice’s father had been killed in an automobile accident when Alice was only four, but the girl still cried whenever she thought about him.

  “Well, they must have something that somebody wants. Can you think what that would be, Alice?”

  “N-no,” said Alice, wiping her damp face with an orange shirt sleeve. “They were poor, that’s why my granny came to live with us, and Madeline fixed up a room for her. You see, Auntie Thelma has only that little yellow house with one tiny bedroom. Besides, I wanted Granny here.” Her face puckered again.

  The door banged open behind the trio and Alice’s mother stood in the doorway. “Alice, love,” she said in her baby-sweet voice, “you haven’t cleaned your room yet. Don’t you think you’d better? And then I have a surprise for you. Something sweet and chocolate.”

  Alice looked helplessly at Zoe, and then went inside.

  Mrs. Fairweather shook a finger at Zoe. “That was naughty of you to call the police,” she said. “When those folks were just taking Thelma out for a ride. They’re her relatives,” she said, as though all relatives were innocent as lambs.

  “Then why was she calling for help?” demanded Zoe.

  Mrs. Fairweather smiled indulgently. She ran her fingers through her frizzy blonde hair. “Thelma is so-so theatrical. She was once an actress, you know. She’s always on stage, so to speak. Now run along, both of you. Alice has work to do.”

  She shut the door, and then opened it again quickly. “I’ve just made a chocolate cake. Would you like to take along a piece?”

  “No, thank you,” said Zoe. “And neither will Spence.” Mrs. Fairweather shrugged, and shut the door firmly behind the pair.

  “I can speak for myself,” said Spence, glaring at Zoe. “And that’s all it was then. That Aunt Thelma was making a scene. Alice got us over here for nothing. And I wasted all this tape.” He stuck the recorder back in his pocket.

  “You got it all on tape? The whole kidnapping scene?”

  “Yup. Everything but the license. Nobody said the numbers aloud.”

  “Smart kid,” said Zoe, and gave Spence a handful of chocolate peanuts. He made a face like an ape and dashed off.

  “We’ll listen to the tape after lunch,” Zoe yelled after him.

  He swiveled about. “Why not now? We’ve got doughnuts in the pantry. I can eat as many as I like of my own.”

  “I have to practice walking the beam, that’s why not now. Anyway, those doughnuts are probably stale. Your dad buys them by the carload, and after a week they taste like cardboard.”

  “I’ll take them any day over that pea soup.” Spence made a gagging sound and did a cartwheel in the grass. He landed on his back.

  “I wish you’d learn how to do a cartwheel,” said Zoe.

  “I’m trying. I’m just top-heavy, that’s all.”

  “Well, you do have a big head.”

  “Better to think with,” said Spence.

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Zoe looked up at the mountains that rose lavender-blue beyond the apple trees. They looked as far away as all the crime solving she had to do in five days.

  “We have to find those kidnappers,” she said. “They might be the ones who killed Alice’s granny.”

  “How’re we going to do that? We don’t know where they went.”

  “We’ll find out. Somehow. We’ll keep our eyes and ears open.”

  “Right now I’m more interested in my mouth and stomach,” said Spence. He winked at Zoe, then dashed off; she heard his front door bang shut.

  Kelby popped out from behind a pricker bush as Zoe started for home. “I got evidence against the Bagley sisters,” he said. He held up a green stem with a droopy flower on its end.

  “What evidence is that?”

  “Purple nightshade.” He sounded triumphant. “It’s deadly. I found it in their backyard. They put it in the soup.”

  “Huh,” said Zoe. “It looks like a purple iris to me.” She ran down to the orchard to practice her high-beam walking.

  “Deadly nightshade!” Kelby yelled after her. “And you’ve got four and a half days to prove it’s not. If you can.”

  He laughed a diabolical laugh.

  Chapter Five

  New Clues on the Tape

  Zoe was standing on the stone wall that divided the apple orchard from a neighbor’s cow pasture. The black-and-white Holstein cows stood in a row, staring at her. “Hi, girls,” she said, but they just went on chewing the tall grass. Holding out her arms for balance, she began to walk the bumpy wall.

  After fifteen boring minutes, she decided it was time go next door to Spence’s house and listen to the tape. His mother was giving a piano lesson when Zoe entered. Bong, bing, bang, went the piano under the chubby fingers of a frustrated little boy; his face looked like a squeezed lemon. Mrs. Riley looked as though she needed to go to the bathroom but was forced to wait out the lesson.

  “We’ll listen to the tape in my room,” said Spence, and Zoe followed him upstairs.

  The room was the usual mess: papers, books, puzzles, old baseball cards, a guitar and cello, and a baseball bat and mitt on the floor, although Mrs. Riley disapproved of Spence playing sports. It might hurt his cello fingers, she said; she wanted Spence to play in a symphony orchestra. Which wasn’t exactly in Spence’s plans, but he gave in to the lessons anyway. He pushed aside a pile of Boys’ Life and Sports Illustrated magazines and sat down with the recorder. Zoe sat cross-legged beside him.

  At first it was all static and Zoe glared at Spence. “Just wait,” he said, and finally the Bagley sisters’ voices came on, sweet and ser
ene like they had nothing in the world to worry about.

  “When they might face a hundred years in jail,” Zoe protested, “if we can’t prove them innocent.”

  The recorder switched to a new scene. Zoe heard a woman’s shrill cry, and then a man’s voice thick as mud, saying, “Get in, I said.” Then a woman’s voice saying, “Just for a little ride, sweetie, it’s such a nice day.” And then Miss Thelma’s voice saying, “You’re hurting me. Let me go. I don’t feel well.” And the other woman: “We’ll stop at our place for a drink, won’t we, Cedr…” Here the recording was interrupted by Tiny Alice’s outcry.

  “Play that back!” cried Zoe. “I want to hear that Ced name again.”

  But the tape ran all the way back to the Bagley sisters’ interview and they had to listen to the whole conversation about pea soup again. Finally the kidnapping scene came up and Zoe held the recorder close to her ear. “Ced-ric,” she said. “It sounds like Ced-ric.”

  “Who ever heard of a name like that?” said Spence.

  “We have now. And the woman said they’d stop at their house. That means they might live nearby. Or rent a house nearby. Or at least in Vermont.”

  “Vermont’s a big enough state if you don’t have a car.”

  “Will you quit putting obstacles in our path?” Zoe folded her arms tightly across her chest. “We’ll look up all the Cedrics in Vermont and New York. We’ll find that pair. They must have Aunt Thelma with them.”

  “They’ve maybe locked her in the cellar. With the rats and cockroaches.”

  “Enough, thank you, Spence. Now let’s hear the rest of the tape.” She pressed PLAY. She heard Auntie screaming “Help!” and then her own voice shouting, “Leave her alone!” And the woman insisting they were just taking the aunt for a little ride, and to go away. But then she heard a beeper.

  “Hey!” she shouted, hitting the STOP button. “I’d forgotten that beeper. It went off in the man’s pocket. It must be connected with something. Some place he works for.”

  “A hospital?” Spence suggested. “He’s a doctor? A volunteer?” Spence’s father used to volunteer for the local ambulance until the beeper went off one time in the middle of his own concert and spoiled the guitar solo he was playing.

  “We’ll find out,” said Zoe, and pressed PLAY again. But all they heard this time were Auntie Thelma’s moans and cries and car doors slamming and then the car engine revving up and roaring off.

  “If only you’d gotten the license number,” she said.

  “Well I got part of it. MBV blah blah blah. We can call the New York Department of Motor Vehicles. They can tell us all the cars that start with MBV.”

  “Good thinking for once, Spence.”

  “What do you mean, ‘for once1? And hey, where’s the reward I’m supposed to get for all this recording? The peanuts?”

  “Right here in my pocket.” Zoe pulled out a plastic baggie. She counted out six chocolate peanuts for Spence and then crammed a bunch into her own mouth.

  “Not fair! You got more than me. And I was with you the whole time.”

  “Who’s the Head Detective here?” she said, and grinned through chocolate-flavored teeth.

  “Humph,” said Spence. He reached for a catcher’s mitt and pounded his fist into it. “I didn’t see you on the softball team last spring. I didn’t see you there when I made that home run.”

  “No,” said Zoe. “And you probably won’t either. I’m going out for lacrosse next spring. You have to think in that game. Not just sit on a bench half the time.” She jumped up. “And right now I’m going back to walking the beam. I don’t see you doing that.”

  “No, and you probably won’t, either,” said Spence, and thumped his catcher’s mitt three more times.

  “And while I’m practicing, Spence, please get on the phone with that Motor Vehicle Department, and then go to the library and look up all the Cedrics in the phone books.”

  “Jeezum. I get all the work.”

  “Sure. Boys work. Girls think,” she said, running out of the room. Then “Ow!” she cried as the mitt hit her in the back.

  Chapter Six

  Tiny Alice Has News

  Tuesday afternoon Zoe was in the orchard balancing on a log when Spence came running up.

  “Why don’t you practice on the real beam?” he asked.

  “Dad won’t let me. He says nobody walks that beam anymore.”

  “Then why are you practicing at all?”

  “Because. I am going to walk it. You know that.” She took two steps forward, wobbled, and flailed her arms for balance.

  Spence shrugged. “Makes no sense to me. Anyway. Why I came down here – ” He bit into a green apple, then made a face.

  “Well? Speak up.”

  “I wanted to say that there are no Cedrics in the county phone book. So if they live nearby, they must be renting.”

  “Uh huh.” Zoe gazed at the Green Mountains-they looked farther away than ever. “And?”

  “And the New York Department of Motor Vehicles keeps putting me on hold. But what I really came to say was – ” Spence knelt down to tie a loose sneaker lace he’d just tripped on.

  “Get to it, Spence. What?” Now Zoe had lost her balance and had to jump off the log. “Rats.”

  “Alice called. She called you first but you weren’t home. So she phoned me. She’s found out something.”

  “What? Why didn’t you tell me this right away?” Zoe stuck her hands on her hips.

  “You didn’t ask.”

  Zoe tossed an apple at him but he ducked. “So what did she find out? What? Tell me what?”

  “I’m trying, but you keep talking.”

  Zoe squeezed her lips shut and waited.

  “Actually, she didn’t say. She wanted to talk to you.”

  “Come on then.”

  “Come on where?”

  “To find Alice, of course. To find out what she found out. It could be crucial. Run!” She started for Alice’s house.

  They ran through the Rileys’ back yard and then up behind the Fairweathers’ house. Zoe tossed an apple up at Tiny Alice’s window. The window banged open and Alice shouted, “Come on in. Madeline’s gone to the Grand Union and I’m alone here.”

  “Perfect,” said Zoe, thinking she might take a look at the grandmother’s bedroom. The police had already been there, Alice said, but police could be dense. Once her father lost his driver’s license because he smashed into a police car on New Year’s Eve and his punishment was to ride the school bus with her when he had to go into town. She’d never been more embarrassed in her whole life!

  “We don’t have much time,” Alice said. “She’s been gone a half hour already.”

  “So what’s this you’ve found out?” Zoe asked when they entered the kitchen. She slapped Spence’s hand when he picked up a chocolate chip cookie.

  “He can have it,” said Alice, who had a crush on Spence, although it was obvious she never dared look him in the eye.

  “I’ll take two, then,” said Spence, and Alice smiled indulgently.

  “Well,” said Alice, leaning against the sink, “we know where Auntie Thelma is. She’s up at Rockbury.”

  “Rock-bury? She’s in a stone quarry?” said Spence.

  “Rockbury is the state mental institution,” Zoe said. “I know a kid whose mother works there.”

  “They take mentally disturbed people and lock them up,” said Alice. “But Auntie’s not crazy. She’s just an actress, like my mother says. But Auntie wasn’t putting on any act when they took her away. I know that. She was scared to death.”

  “I told you so,” said Zoe, nodding at Spence.

  “Who’s objecting?” he said. “So how’d you find out, Alice?” Spence settled down at the kitchen table. His hand inched its way toward the plate of cookies. Just as it touched the rim, Zoe pinned it down, and sat beside him.

  “He can have all he wants,” said Alice, and looked admiringly at Spence’s elbow.

  “A
nyway,” she went on, “the kidnappers called my mother, They said they were her closest relatives except for me, and they had papers to put her away. They said she was acting weird. Because of my grandmother’s death, I mean.”

  Alice’s eyes looked watery as she spoke of her grandmother. She blew her nose and went on: “They said they thought maybe Auntie caused my granny’s death - she’d been spraying her roses and the spray might’ve got into the pea soup. But Auntie wouldn’t let that happen. Those two were half sisters, you see. They giggled together a lot.”

  “And what did your mother say to all that?” Zoe asked.

  “She asked them why it had to be Rockbury, and they said if Auntie did put the poison in Granny’s soup, they could call her mentally in-com-pe-tent and she wouldn’t have to go to jail. They said Auntie needed a cure and then she could come home. But I don’t think she will. I think they’ll keep her there.”

  Zoe nodded. “I think they want something from her.”

  “We could go over to her house and look,” said Alice, hovering over the table. “I know where the key is.”

  “Good,” said Zoe, getting up. “But I want to look at your granny’s room first. Okay?”

  “I’ll wait down here,” said Spence, eyeballing the cookie plate.

  “I think you’d better come with us,” said Zoe.

  The grandmother’s room was pink. Pink curtains, pink cotton quilt, pink and white wallpaper, a pink armchair.

  “Granny hated pink,” said Alice. “But it’s my mother’s favorite color.”

  “Okay,” said Zoe. “Now you look in the closet, Spence. I’ll go through this little desk. Alice, you check the bureau drawers.”

  “Oh, they’re empty,” Alice said. “Everything’s empty. Madeline already packed things away in boxes.”

  “Where are the boxes?”

  “Down in the cellar.”

  “Let’s go down there then,” said Zoe. “Uh oh,” she said, hearing a car crunching up the pebbly driveway. “We’ll look at them later. Get that key, Alice. We’ll meet you at your Auntie Thelma’s.”

  They escaped through the kitchen door just as Alice’s mother banged through the front door. “Alice?” she called. “I need help with these bags. Where are you, sweetie?”