The Pea Soup Poisonings

by Nancy Means Wright

  Downstairs the phone shrilled. Zoe’s mother called up: “Zoe? It’s Alice on the phone. You can take it in my bedroom.”

  “You’re mean, you know that, Kelby?” Zoe shouted as she left the room. “You’re mean and stubborn. You can’t prove who killed Alice’s granny, either, you know you can’t!”

  “I don’t have to,” said Kelby. He yawned, and stuck his nose back in his magazine.

  “It’s Madeline,” said Alice’s voice, sounding breathless and teary. “She’s gone! She packed a suitcase and now she’s gone. She told me to call my birth mother out in California to come and get me. She left a number.”

  “Then that proves she’s guilty! She thinks Thelma ate that poisoned cake. She thinks the kidnappers might tell on her. Why else would she run away like that?”

  “I d-don’t know,” wept Alice, who was all alone now in the house.

  Zoe thought a minute; she wrapped herself up in the phone line. “Why, I’ll bet Cedric and Chloe will tell on her. That she was part of the whole scheme. Look, Alice, I’m going to call the police right now. I’ll make them question those kidnappers.”

  “That’s n-not all,” said Alice. She blew her nose, and went on. “I went back down to clean up the cellar? After that stuff fell when we were putting back the boxes? And I found a small bag of white powder. Oh no-o-o. Do you think –”

  “Malathion!” shouted Zoe. “I mean, it could be. Wait right there, Alice. Hang on to that bag. Spence and I are coming over.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Hurry Up and Wait

  At seven o’clock that evening Zoe got her dad to drive them all to the police station. After all, he’d been a suspect himself. He wanted this crime cleared up “once and for all.”

  The police chief wasn’t exactly happy to see a determined father and three children in his office. He was about to leave the station, he told them, he was leaving it in charge of one of his lieutenants. Anyway, he said, how many homicides do you get in one month in the small town of Branbury? He chuckled.

  “Besides,” he added, “my wife is expecting me. She’s holding dinner. It’s my birthday.” He gave them all a self-pitying look.

  “Don’t you want to solve this crime?” Zoe’s dad asked. “The townspeople are worried, you know. They’re locking their doors. You’ll be a hero to them, I guarantee.”

  The chief thrust back his shoulders. The thought obviously fed his ego. His hand trembled a little when Zoe handed over the bag of powder. It was indeed malathion, her dad confirmed. It had probably come from his apple barn. “Stolen of course,” he reminded the chief. “I only use it to kill apple maggots, not human beings.”

  “And now she’s gone,” said Zoe. “Alice’s stepmother. You’ll have to find her. But I’ll bet the kidnappers will snitch on her. Just ask them.”

  The kidnappers, the chief said, were in the local lockup. He was planning to interview them tomorrow. “Not tonight.” He glanced at his watch and nodded.

  “But you’d better get the word out to your officers right now to watch for Madeline Fairweather,” Mr. Elwood urged.

  “She drives a t-tan Honda Civic,” said Tiny Alice, who was weeping again from the shock of it all. “The license plate is um, um: CCV288.” Zoe handed her a tissue, and Alice blinked at her gratefully.

  “Yes, of course,” said the chief. He peered down at Tiny Alice as though she was an ant that had just crawled up on his shoe.

  “And send a detective to interview the kidnappers if you can’t go yourself,” said Zoe’s father. On the way to town Zoe had told him about the Northern Spy Club and her midnight deadline.

  “The local paper comes out tomorrow morning,” Mr. Elwood reminded the chief.

  The chief examined his fingernails for a moment, and then he picked up the phone.

  “And get back to us before midnight, please” said Zoe’s dad. “And happy birthday,” he called back as they left the station.

  “Happy birthday,” echoed Zoe and Spence. Alice gave a forlorn little wave.

  Back home, Zoe’s parents decided that Tiny Alice would spend the night with Zoe. Meanwhile they would keep trying to contact the girl’s birth mother, who hadn’t been home when Alice tried to call earlier. The thought of seeing her birth mother made Alice smile. And Zoe was glad for that. Poor Alice. Though she worried about the birth mother – whether she’d want Alice back or not.

  “You girls can go to bed anyway, when you’re ready,” said Mr. Elwood after they’d all had a late snack of apple crisp and vanilla ice cream. “I’ll come up if there’s any news.”

  But Zoe knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. What if the kidnappers didn’t tell on the stepmother? What if there wasn’t poison in that frosting, and the stepmother wasn’t involved? And it was some third party Zoe didn’t even know about? What if the chief decided to go home and have his birthday dinner and not have anyone interview the kidnappers?

  And what if Alice’s birth mother didn’t come home to take care of her daughter?

  “Oh, Alice,” she sighed to the mute pillow beside her. “What if all this doesn’t work out at all? What then?”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  A Late Night Phone Call

  Zoe was dreaming. She was walking the high beam in the apple barn – or trying to. She was halfway across when she had a terrible urge to sneeze. She couldn’t hold it back. She sneezed once, twice, three times – and lost her balance. She was falling-down, down and down…

  She was tumbling into a pile of boxes. They were making a rackety, crackling sound. But they were empty, all of them – empty. Somewhere a siren was shrilling – or was it a phone? What was a phone doing in a barn?

  She sat up with a start. What had the dream meant? Had her time run out – to solve the crime? Was that why she’d dreamt of falling? Tiny Alice was sleeping quietly beside her in the big double bed. Zoe didn’t want to waken her, but she had to know the time. She turned on the night light.

  It was eleven-forty-eight. Oh no... In twelve minutes she would have lost.

  But someone was coming into her room. A moving shadow. She rubbed her eyes, and squinted. It was her father. He was probably coming to tell her to turn out the light. She looked up at him, feeling drained, like an empty glass.

  Then she remembered the ringing. Was it in her dream or was it for real?

  She climbed out of bed. Her dad was hugging her. He was trying to tell her something. Something about the police. About how they’d caught Madeline Fairweather. How she’d tearfully confessed. How she’d had to confess because the kidnappers had already implicated her. “Implicated,” her dad said, “it means – ”

  “I know what it means,” said Zoe, her heart pumping away. “They snitched on her.”

  “They snitched on her, right,” her dad went on. “She was going to get part of the profits from some game park the kidnappers were planning to operate on Thelma Fairweather’s farm. She said she was desperate for the money. For herself and Alice. She seemed genuinely concerned about Alice, poor kid. Now what kind of game park would that be?”

  “To kill animals. I’ll explain more tomorrow,” said Zoe. “But Madeline confessed that she’d killed Alice’s granny? Did she confess that, Dad?” She glanced at her watch – she hadn’t taken it off since the week started. She could hardly see its face in the dim light; her arm was trembling.

  Oh no! It was almost midnight! Five minutes of.

  “She confessed,” said her dad. “For months she’d been putting a pinch of malathion in Agnes’s food. She claimed she didn’t think it would kill. Just make her sick, so she’d turn over the farm to the ‘relatives’ – who would ‘take care’ of the place, they said, until Alice came of age. But Agnes had a heart problem; the insecticide finally did kill her. The final pinch went into the pea soup the Bagley sisters brought over.”

  “And Thelma?” Zoe asked. “Did Madeline admit she put the malathion in the cake frosting?”

  “She did,” said Zoe’s dad.
“She admitted it. And this last one was a stronger dose. It was a good thing you went over, and just in time.” He gave his daughter a bear hug.

  “You see,” he explained, “Madeline was getting desperate by that time. It seems she owes a lot of money on her credit cards. So she fell in with the Wolfadders.” He sighed. “But now I’m cleared, and so are the old ladies.”

  Zoe gave a shriek. “I knew they didn’t do it, the Bagley sisters. Ha! Did you hear that, Kelby?”

  Alice sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes. “Wha? Who?” she said.

  “What’s all that shouting?” Zoe’s mother called from the big bedroom.

  “It’s all right, everything’s all right,” Zoe told her. She hurried her father across the hall to Kelby’s room. She wanted her dad to tell Kelby the news. Kelby would never believe her.

  Kelby didn’t say a word. He just listened.

  “I’ve won, I’ve solved the crime!” Zoe exulted after her father went back to tell her mother what had happened. “I want my badge, Kelby. Right now. This minute.”

  “But you haven’t walked the beam yet,” said Kelby, stretching up his arms, giving an enormous yawn – although Zoe could see he was disappointed that she’d solved the crime. “Dad’s meeting tomorrow is cancelled. He won’t let us in the barn.” He gave Zoe a satisfied look.

  “Then we’ll find another barn. Another beam,” cried Zoe, and slung a pillow at her brother.

  But Kelby, who didn’t like to lose, simply put the pillow over his matted head, rolled onto his side, and lay there like a mummy.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Zoe Finds a Witness

  Zoe’s alarm woke her up at five-fifteen. She had a plan. She shook Tiny Alice awake. “It’s time,” she said.

  “Wha?” said Alice, her eyes tiny brown slits. “Time for wha?”

  “Time to walk the beam. Before Dad gets up. Can you go wake Spence? Throw pebbles at his window. It’s the one with the Star Wars poster. Tell him to get Butch Green. Butch owes me one for writing a book report. And tell Spence to bring his camera.”

  “But what if his parents hear? They’ll be mad if I wake them up.”

  “Then tell them we’re planning to watch the sun rise. It’s a nature experiment.”

  When Tiny Alice had tiptoed out in her size three sneakers, Zoe swallowed two of her mother’s iron pills in a glass of orange juice and ran up and down the steps nineteen times. Then, choosing a single long floor board in the front hall, she walked it carefully, one foot in front of the other, down to the front door, and back again. She leapt from the board to a hall chair, and stood there, balancing first on one foot and then the other.

  Finally she tiptoed out the front door. It was just getting light: the birds were singing their cheerful good morning songs. The world was green and rosy; the mountains had a pinkish halo over their purple peaks.

  She ran out to the apple barn, and uh oh! It was locked.

  She’d forgotten; her father had kept it locked since the theft of the insecticide. She raced back to the kitchen, snatched up a handful of keys from the key hook. Back at the barn she tried three of them; the fourth one worked.

  She entered. It had been almost a week since she’d been in here. The barn seemed bigger than ever now and more mysterious in the dim light. She saw the broken tractor her father had not gotten fixed, the big jagged saws.

  Her father was right after all. She shouldn’t try to walk the beam. It was dangerous.

  Something skittered across the floor and she cried out. It was a gray tom, one of the stray cats that always seemed to find a home here. It dashed into a pile of hay, and she sneezed, twice. “Here, kitty, kitty,” she called, and heard her voice hollow in the expanse of barn.

  “Here kitty, kitty,” she called again, and heard a distant mew. Where was it coming from? It sounded like it came out of the air. She moved about the barn, calling, but always the answering mew echoed from above.

  At last she looked up. Her legs trembled as she looked. She saw where the mew was coming from. It was coming from the old beam. And there was the tiger kitten she’d seen five days earlier, huddled near the far end – the end where there was no ladder. His body was humped up like a tiny camel. He was squealing louder now, he wanted to come down. But he couldn’t seem to move. His eyes were like two green apples, hanging motionless, in a tree branch.

  “All right then,” she said. “I guess I’ll have to come up.”

  She took a deep breath and headed for the ladder. The gray cat shot across her path, pursued by a black tom, and she shrieked. His fur felt sticky, like spider webs against her legs. She climbed the first few rungs of the ladder. It quivered under her sneakered feet. Far across the beam the kitten mewed. It was a sad, weepy sound, and she climbed faster.

  At the top she flung herself at the beam. It felt rough and almost comforting to her hands after the jiggly ladder. She pulled herself upright, and pressed her back to the wall while she caught her breath. A wave of panic washed over her, but it faded with the third full breath.

  “I’m coming,” she gasped, and launched off.

  Partway, where the beam seemed to thin out and leave room for only half a foot, she felt the old sickness well up inside. She could solve a crime, but she couldn’t walk a beam. The floor appeared to rise, and then go into a slow roll. She focused her eyes on the kitten, reached out her arms. If she could get him to come to her...

  She’d solved the crime, wasn’t that enough? Why did she have to walk the beam anyway?

  “Come on, kitty,” she called as she stepped farther along the beam. She was almost halfway now, her arms spread so wide they ached. She kept her eyes fastened on the cat. He was getting up. Slowly he rose into a little tiger hump. Whistling softly, Zoe moved toward him, holding out her arms.

  The kitten moved, but not toward her. There was a cat fight below; the air was filled with hisses. The kitten huddled at the far end of the beam in a quivery ball.

  She stood, paralyzed, in the center of the beam, her arms held out stiffly. The beam seemed to rock under her feet. The kitten mewed.

  She heard a voice below. It was Tiny Alice. “They’re coming,” she called up to Zoe. “Spence is getting Butch Green. I told him he’s needed as a witness. To watch you walk the beam.”

  “Oh,” said Zoe. She’d almost forgotten about the others. She had to walk the beam now, didn’t she? Somehow Alice’s presence made her feel braver. For one thing, she had to rescue that kitten! She took four rapid steps toward it. The kitten mewed again, a pitiful sound that melted her heart.

  “Here I come,” she said. She moved along the beam. It was actually wider in this part; she hadn’t gotten this far the week before. Another nine or ten steps and she’d reach the kitten – if he didn’t panic and try to climb the wall.

  But he just crouched there, like a baby porcupine, the fur up on his back as if he were face to face with a fox.

  As if he were face to face with Kelby, she thought, and moved on. She was almost to the cat now. She took the last quick steps. Her fingertips touched the soft fur of his ear. She had to wrench him off the beam, he was so scared. His body wriggled in her arms. He clawed at her.

  “I’m trying to save you,” she told him. “Be grateful.”

  She glanced back across the beam. Could she walk it with a wriggly kitten in her arms? She thought not.

  “Hey!” said Spence, down below.

  “Hey,” said Butch Green, who was Kelby’s best friend, and the Number Two man in the Northern Spy Club.

  “Find some boxes to stand on,” she called down. “Some hay. Anything. I’ll drop the kitten into it.”

  “Hay will work,” said Spence. “I’ll make a pile of it.”

  “Hurry!” She was feeling woozy.

  “I’m hurrying.”

  It seemed an hour that she crouched there, holding the quivery kitten against her chest, her back against the side wall for balance. She could hear the boys’ feet scuffling, Spence’s voice tum-
tumming.

  At last Spence said, “Ready.” She looked down and there he was, standing tilted in the hay, the camera around his neck, his arms stretched high to receive the kitten.

  It screeched as it flew through the air.

  “Got ’im!” Spence yelled. “You want to come next?”

  She hesitated, and looked across to the other end of the beam. It was a long, long way. She looked down again, saw Spence’s camera. Saw Butch Green, his arms folded across his chest, a skeptical look on his face.

  “You better come down,” Butch said. “How’d you get over to that end anyway?”

  “I walked the beam,” she said.

  “Huh.” He still looked skeptical.

  “Watch me,” said Zoe. She stood up slowly, awkwardly. One sneakered foot slipped and she windmilled her arms. Then, slowly, she regained her balance and moved along the narrow beam. Two steps. Three. Four. Seven eight nine...

  She saw the camera flash again, and again.

  She was doing it. She wasn’t afraid at all. She was walking the beam. Non stop!

  She kept her eyes on the far wall. She was breathless, as if she were flying. As if she had no feet at all, only her weightless body, her head, high in the clouds.

  A dozen more steps and she was at the ladder. She swung onto the top rung and began the slow descent, dropping from rung to rung like a monkey. At the last rung she leapt lightly to the ground. She leaned against the ladder to catch her breath.

  She’d done it. She’d walked the beam. More than that, she’d proved the Bagley sisters innocent. She’d found the killer.

  She thrust up two trembly arms, in victory!

  “Hurrah! Hoo-ray! Woo-hoo!” Her friends’ cheers echoed through the barn.

  It was like sweet, sweet music in her ears.

  Chapter Thirty

  Partners-in-Crime