The Pea Soup Poisonings (13 page)

“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

Kelby didn’t believe her, of course, when she charged into his bedroom, followed by Spence and Butch – Tiny Alice had gone home to pack her things. Her birth mother was on her way and Alice thought she might take her back to California.

“Prove it,” said Kelby.

“Okay, Kelby. You want proof, we’ve got proof.”

Spence displayed the pictures on his digital camera. There was Zoe, in every one, tilting across the beam like a high-wire acrobat.

“Huh,” said Kelby, trying to act unimpressed.

“And we have a witness,” said Zoe, pointing at Butch Green, who stood there in one green sock and one blue, his Adidas untied and his shirt buttoned wrong, as if he’d gotten dressed in a hurry. Which he had.

“She did it. I saw,” admitted Butch. He lowered his eyes. He knew it wasn’t what Kelby wanted to hear.

“Now, I want my badge,” said Zoe, holding out a hand.

“She wants her badge,” echoed Spence. “Let her have it.”

Kelby sighed. And pointed. “In the top drawer. My desk.”

It was there all right, gold-painted tin and glinty. But it was The Badge. It read DETECTIVE, NSC. Northern Spy Club.

It was gorgeous.

“Go ahead and pin it on her, Butch.” Kelby was lying back on his pillow, his hands cupping the back of his head.

“No. I want
you
to pin it on me, Kelby. Then I want a ceremony. This afternoon with the whole club here.”

“Jeezum crow. Girls,” said Kelby. Sitting up, frowning, he pinned it on.

“Ouch,” said Zoe, where he’d pricked her skin. But she smiled. She felt like a queen.

Then she thought that she felt like a real life kid-detective. For that’s what she was now. A detective.

She and Spence started out to the barn to feed the tiger kitten. Detectives, she told Spence, needed a mascot.

“What do you want a cat for,” said Spence, “when you’ve got me?” He held out a hand for chocolate peanuts.

Zoe handed over the whole bag. “You’ve earned it, partner.”

He gave her a crooked grin and did a back flip in the grass. But it backfired and he flopped over on his side.

Zoe laughed. “If you’re going to be my partner-in-crime,” she said, “you’ll have to learn how to do a back flip. Like this.” She flipped neatly backwards the way she’d learned in gym class.

And landed, like a cat, on her feet.

“Okay,” said Spence, “I’ll keep practicing. So I can be your partner. But I won’t walk that beam. And I still won’t eat any of the Bagley sisters’ pea soup.”

“It’s a deal,” said Zoe, shaking his hand. “So let’s go find that kitten. What’ll we name him?”

Spence sucked in his lower lip and thought. “Victory?” he suggested.

“Good name,” said Zoe, flinging up her arms.

Then she did three cartwheels in a row that landed her right in front of the apple barn.

Acknowledgments

Heartfelt thanks to the following, who inspired and/or generously helped with the creation of this book: Llyn Rice; Gary, Lesley, Donald, and Catharine Wright; Spencer Wright; the Collier family; the late Lachlan Field who did the cover drawing; Hilliard and Harris publishers—and Neff at Belgrave House, who artfully turned this novel into an e-book.

Dedication

For Zoe, Spencer, Alex, Zelie, Rosalie, Connor, Forrest, Austin

Copyright © 2006 by Nancy Means Wright

Originally published by Hilliard Harris [1591331625]

Electronically published in 2012 by Belgrave House

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Belgrave House, 190 Belgrave Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117-4228

     http://www.BelgraveHouse.com

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.