The Pea Soup Poisonings (3 page)

“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 once
1
? 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.

“Anyway,” 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?”

“Here’s the key,” Alice whispered, and thrust a key ring shaped like a whale into Zoe’s hand. “I’ll come if I can.”

“If we don’t see you,” said Zoe, “we’ll meet tonight on Spence’s porch. Six o’clock sharp.”

“Tonight?” whispered Alice. “To get those boxes?”

“To get your Aunt Thelma out of Rockbury.”

“Oh. You mean...”

“I mean kidnap her back. That’s what I mean.”

Chapter Seven

The Search Is Interrupted

Aunt Thelma’s house, Zoe knew, had once been a one-room, one floor schoolhouse. The classroom was made over into a large living room, and a tiny kitchen and bedroom were added on. Still, it was like a doll’s house; even the furniture was small: a narrow Shaker rocking chair Aunt Thelma would never get her plump butt into. But Zoe wouldn’t mind living here herself, just to get away from her brother Kelby.

“You take the bedroom and I’ll look around the kitchen,” Spence said with a sly smile.

“We’ll both look through the bedroom,” said Zoe. “Don’t your parents ever feed you?”

“Not enough,” said Spence, and sucked in his cheeks until he looked like a ghoul. He was rather bony, Zoe had to admit. And a full two inches shorter than she. Of course she was tall for her age, which was okay except that she wished her feet would stop growing.

“We’ll look in the kitchen afterward,” she relented.

Zoe could see that Aunt Thelma had left in a hurry. The bed was rumpled where she had probably been taking a nap, and the bureau drawers were still open, as though someone had been searching around in them.

“Looking for something important,” she said. “Something they didn’t find.”

“Or maybe they
did
find it,” said Spence, “and didn’t have time to pick up after.”

“Maybe,” Zoe admitted. But privately she thought if they
had
found what they were looking for, they would have been careful to shut the drawers. The open drawers showed their frustration at not finding whatever it was. Like the time she’d searched Kelby’s drawers for a box of chocolates, and it turned out he’d hidden them in a basket of dirty underwear. She hadn’t
wanted
a
chocolate after that.

She searched through the drawers anyway, but found nothing beyond huge baggy underpants, a pink nightgown, a pile of handkerchiefs, and two sweaters with moth holes in them. When she straightened up, Spence was holding up a small gold key.

“Where’d you find that?”

“In this,” he said, pointing at a red leather jewelry box. “It was all tangled up with some gold necklaces. What do you suppose it opens?”

“Or what it locks,” she said. It didn’t belong to the outside doors, she saw, it was too small. She put it in her pocket. “We’ll ask Aunt Thelma when we see her tonight.”

“You’re not really planning to take her out of Rockbury?”

“We might. We just might. After we find a place to hide her, that is.”

“You’re kidding. We’re going to hide her someplace? Not in my house, we can’t. My mom would have a fit. She even complains when my grandmother comes to visit. Nana sings out loud and disturbs the piano lessons, Mom says.”

“We’ll think of a place. Thelma might know one.”

“And how are we supposed to get to Rockbury? Your dad going to drive us up? ‘Hey, Dad,’” he mimicked, ‘“we’re going to Rockbury to kidnap an old lady. You want to come along?’”

“Funny,” said Zoe. “You’re absolutely hilarious, Spence. Of course we’re not going to involve our parents in this. We’ll take a bus.”

“You can pay for a bus? I’ve already spent this week’s allowance.”

“I’ve got a little saved up. Now let’s get out of here.”

“We haven’t examined the kitchen yet.”

“Okay. But if there’s leftover food, it’ll be moldy by now.”

“Cookies don’t get moldy so fast. And we ought to have something to take to Aunt Thelma. When my mother visits people in the hospital, she takes stuff.”

“Then go look for cookies. I’ll throw this black sweater in a bag. Thelma had only a dress on when they took her up. She’ll need something warm in case we get her out tonight.”

Spence came back a moment later with a box of Fig Newtons and a big smile. “She won’t mind if we take one or two, will she? I mean, we’re risking our lives for her.”

“I guess not.  But no more than two. Now let’s lock up and go.”

Spence opened the front door – and then shut it again quickly.

“It’s them!” he hissed. “It’s that blue car.”

“That proves it,” said Zoe. “They
didn’t
find what they were looking for. Come on.” She ran back in the bedroom and pulled open the bureau drawers so the kidnappers wouldn’t suspect someone had been in there.

“Let’s go,” Spence pleaded. “Out the back door.”

“You crazy? This is our big chance to find out what they’re looking for. We’ll wait.”

“And let them take
us
to Rockbury? Oh no.” Spence’s mouth was a round O.

“Under the bed,” whispered Zoe as a key turned in the front door. “Quick! Get down!” She gave Spence a shove, and crawled under the bedskirts after him.

Chapter Eight

A Close Encounter

“Thelma wants her black sweater sent up,” the woman’s voice said.

“Uh oh,” Spence breathed.

The bag with the sweater and the cookies was stuffed under the bed beside Zoe. She could hear the bureau drawers opening and shutting.

“The sweater’s not here anywhere,” said the woman. “Maybe she left it next door.”

“Never mind the sweater,” the man called from another room. “We have other f-fish to fry.”

“Fish?” Spence whispered, and Zoe shushed him.

“S-start looking for it,” said the man – Cedric, Zoe assumed. She noticed that he had a slight stutter. She heard his footsteps thumping into the bedroom. “It has to be in the house,” he said. “And close those drawers. N-nothing we want in there.”

Zoe heard a clunking and then a tinkling.
They’re probably looking through the jewelry box,
she thought.

“There’s a pretty jade necklace in here,” the woman said. “It would go nice with my green silk blouse.”

“Leave it, Chloe,” the man growled. “We’re not looking for any f-fool necklace.” His gruff voice reminded Zoe of a pit bull on the attack.

Zoe felt Spence shiver beside her. The pupils of his eyes widened as he stared into hers. She was scared herself, but she wasn’t going to let Spence know.