The Pea Soup Poisonings (8 page)

Why did the kidnappers want old animals,
Spence wondered. Because they were cheaper to buy? He couldn’t imagine. Where was this wildlife park located? And was Wolfadder Cedric’s surname? Well, it figured.

Just then he heard a car in the driveway, the back door clang. Quickly he rubbed off the new HELP message he’d chalked on the window, closed up the box and smoothed out the top so it wouldn’t look like he had broken into it.

Footsteps were click-clacking up the attic steps. They were Chloe’s, he knew the sharp heels. He stretched out on his mattress and shut his eyes. When she stood over him, he opened them a crack, and rubbed them as though he’d been sleeping the whole time.

“Here, kid. I brought you some soup and a hot dog for lunch.”

He sat up, blinked at her. She looked like a genie that had just stretched up out of a bottle of red ink. He narrowed his eyes at the soup. It was a dull green.

“Pea soup?” he said.

“Kid, this ain’t a restaurant. You eat what you get. You don’t want it, you can go hungry.” She click-clacked out on her red heels. Spence heard the door snap shut behind her.

He ate the hot dog, he had to keep up his strength. But he left the pea soup in the bowl.

Just looking at it made him want to throw up.

Chapter Eighteen

A Message at the Mobil Station

Three police cars surrounded the Mobil gas station, but there was no sign of the two-tone blue car. It had obviously gotten away before the police arrived. One by one the police cars rumbled off, and Miss Gertie started to follow. Zoe said, “Wait, please.” She wanted to ask the gas attendant a few questions.

The attendant was a teen-aged boy with a pimply face and hair the color of hay. He looked suspiciously at Zoe when she inquired about the car.

“It
was
here. I told the fuzz.”

“The who?” she asked.

“The cops,” he said, glaring at her as if she were stupid. “But it took off before they got here. I heard a beeper go off.”

“Oh! Did he answer the beeper? What did he say?” Zoe’s chest was doing a drum roll. Cedric, she figured, would have a cell phone.

“Who are you anyway?” The boy’s eyes narrowed. He stuck dirty hands on his hips, leaned forward to look in her face. He smelled of gas and garlic.

Zoe wished she had her Spy badge, but she hadn’t earned it yet. So she put her hands on her own skinny hips and said, “They abducted my best friend. Why do you think the police were here, anyway? If you don’t help, they’ll throw
you
in jail.”

The boy blinked his eyes, and scowled. “Yeah, he called back on his cell. I heard him when he paid for the gas. But I can’t remember what he said. I was counting the money. He paid in ones.”

“Try. Try to remember,” Zoe urged. “You want a boy’s death on your conscience?”

The boy furrowed his brow. He thrust out his lips like a goldfish. “Okay, he said something about ‘Meet me at the old lady’s at noon.’ Yeah, that’s what he said. Then he said he’d ditch that car. Somebody was on to him.”

“The police. That’s who was on to him.”

“Maybe.” The boy shrugged, and went out to gas up a red Blazer.

The old lady’s,
Zoe thought. It could mean Thelma’s house. The kidnappers would search again for that key. If she hid in the house while they were searching, they might reveal Spence’s hiding place. And she could go to save Spence!

“Home, James,” she ordered Miss Gertie, and Gertie smiled and turned the car around. Then Gertie recalled that she really did need gas, and started to turn back. But it was already ten-thirty and Zoe was in a hurry to get home. “Please?” she asked. She had an idea about how to prove that the kidnappers were after the deed to the Alburg farm.

The car ran out of gas right in the sisters’ driveway. Zoe told Miss Gertie to call her dad, and he would bring along a canful. Her dad was fond of the old ladies. Miss Maud had taught him in school, too.

Zoe told Miss Thelma her plan, and Thelma grinned and hugged her. “We can make a copy of the deed,” she said, “but how will we do it? We don’t have a copier here.”

“My mom has one,” said Zoe. She ran up the street with the folded deed.

Kelby met her at the door. “What’s that in your hand?”

“Nothing. Just a drawing I did at the sisters’ house.” She held it tightly in her fist. She didn’t want her brother to see it. She didn’t want him to know she had evidence. Not yet.

“You told them what I said about the argument, didn’t you,” Kelby accused. “You ran right down and blabbed. You didn’t like to hear about that argument, did you? You know I’m right. That the sisters poisoned that soup. The officer came back here. He said they had a poisonous plant in their kitchen.”

“Really?” said Zoe, lifting an eyebrow. “What kind of plant?”

Kelby couldn’t remember the name. “Olee-something,” he said. “It would kill you just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

“Oh, scary,” said Zoe, and ran upstairs to her mother’s study. In a jiffy she made two copies of the deed and placed them inside a folder.

“Two and a half days. Two and a half days left to earn your badge,” Kelby warned when she came back down. He shook his head sorrowfully.

“I’ve been practicing,” she said. “I could walk that beam right this minute.”

“Sure you could.” He looked skeptical. “But you haven’t solved the crime. You won’t get the badge till you do. And,” he said, lifting his chin, “it looks like I’ve got the crime sewed up. That officer agrees with me. It’s definitely the sisters who did in Alice’s granny. They’re professional poisoners.”

“Is that so?” said Zoe. She watched him shuffle off to the kitchen. Then she called up Tiny Alice to ask her friend to meet her with the key to Miss Thelma’s house.

For good measure she brought along Spence’s tape recorder. She’d found Spence’s parents still huddled by the phone, hoping for good news, or maybe a ransom call. But his dad waved her on upstairs when she asked to borrow the recorder. She could hide it somewhere in Thelma’s house, couldn’t she? She’d seen a TV show once where the police did exactly that and caught the bad guys.

“You could put it in a kitchen drawer,” Alice suggested when Zoe got there with the deed. “You can’t just leave it out or they’d suspect something. I mean, it wasn’t there before when they looked.”

Zoe thought that was good advice.

There were several papers folded up in one of the kitchen drawers. Zoe hid the folder between instructions for how to clean the oven and how to work the electric can opener. The relatives, if they really were relatives, would need an original deed to prove they owned the farm. And then, Miss Thelma said, they would have to show that Alice, her heir, was too young to run a farm on her own and that Thelma was mentally incapable of making her own decisions.

Or they could do away with her,
Zoe thought, and panicked. She must catch the pair before they found Miss Thelma!

It was eleven-thirty and Zoe decided to wait in the house until the couple came.

“Can I hide, too?” asked Alice. “I can squeeze into a small space.”

“I’d like the company,” said Zoe, “but someone has to know what’s going on in case they get
me.
You never know.” She smiled, but her insides froze. Alice, too, was in danger, she realized. Although at least she had her mother to protect her. Alice’s mother wasn’t born a Fairweather. She probably wouldn’t know Fairweather relatives if she fell over them.

“How will I know if they get you?” asked Alice, biting her lip.

“Just watch the house. You can see it from your window, can’t you? And if your mother wants you for something or other, listen for the car and then run to a window. Tell her you’ve just seen a bluebird! I mean, it might not be a blue car. Cedric might have rented a different one. If I don’t come over to your house when they’ve gone, you’ll know they’ve got me.”

“Oh-h-h,” said Alice, wringing her hands together. Her eyes were the size of coconuts.

“Can I count on you?” Zoe grabbed Alice’s hands.

“Yes, yes you can. You can count on me,” said Alice, sounding breathless. “But don’t let them get
you.”
She hugged Zoe fiercely, and raced out the back door.

Chapter Nineteen

Hiding in the Dust

At the rear of the bedroom closet was a small rectangular door, leading into a dusty, cobwebby space under the eaves. The kidnappers would never think to look in here, would they? For one thing, they were too big to get through. Zoe herself had to squeeze her way in. She didn’t dare leave the tape recorder in the closet; it made a soft whirring sound. But she would leave the small door open when the couple was not in the bedroom. Miss Gertie was her back-up: the phone would ring as soon as Gertie saw the pair go out to the car, Zoe would jump in Gertie’s car, and off they’d go in pursuit.

She crouched there for at least thirty suffocating minutes. It was already twelve-twenty. Had the gas attendant made up Cedric’s words? And yet they made sense. How else would the boy have known about an “old lady’s house?”

She was just changing position on the grimy floor when she heard a car door slam, and the front door crack open. Then a voice: Cedric’s voice. Then Chloe’s. She couldn’t make out the words – they were still in the hall, but she could hear footsteps moving in her direction.

“Go through those bureau drawers,” Cedric ordered.

Chloe said, “But we already looked in those.”

“You could have m-missed it,” Cedric said in his gravelly voice. “Do it again. Then look in the c-closet there. I’ll take the hall c-closet.”

Zoe crouched in a ball, her ear against the little door, the recorder whirring. She heard bureau drawers open and shut, objects bang and thump.  She heard Chloe mutter to herself, “It’s a waste of time.”

Finally Chloe entered the closet. A dozen dresses and coats were hanging from a wooden rack; they would hide the little door. The floor was cluttered with boots and shoes: there were hats and sweaters, Zoe recalled, folded up on a shelf.

Zoe’s eyes and nose were running. She was allergic to dust, all right. It was thick on the floor. Her pants and shirt were already filthy.

“Nothing here. No key,” Chloe called back to Cedric. He answered, but Zoe couldn’t make out the words.

Chloe sighed loudly, and then sneezed. “The old bag needs a housecleaner,” she said. “Boy, these hats must date back to the nineteen- thirties!” Zoe heard her giggle, and then back out of the closet. When the footsteps clicked out of the bedroom, Zoe pushed open the little door again and folded herself up into a long yellow robe that hung on one side of the closet. She could hear everything they said from here. And so could the tape recorder.

The search went on in the kitchen. Pots and pans rattled, the oven door clanged.

“What’s in that drawer?” Cedric asked.

“Just a bunch of kitchen stuff,” Chloe said. “Look, I told you it was a waste of time. There’s no key here. The old lady must have it in her purse. I told you to look through it when we took her up to that place.”

“And let her know what we were up to? Did I know she was gonna disappear like that? Those m-miserable k-kids...”

“We got one of them, anyway. But he won’t talk. Says he knows nothing about a key. And I believe him, Cedric. Ced, we gotta let him go. We can’t keep him in the attic any longer. The Plumleys next door’ll hear him yell, call the cops.”

“He knows who we are. We can’t let him go now.”

“But he doesn’t know
where
we are, Ced. You had him blindfolded, right? We can let him go, take off, change our names, start a new life. Right, Ced?”

“Wrong,” said Cedric. “I want that f-farm. It’s my right. I’m a third cousin. My great-grandfather’s name was F-fairweather.”

“But it might not be the same branch, Cedric. It might not be
this
Fairweather family. You can’t prove that, Ced, can you? I mean, how?”

“I have ways. Never mind how. Now, look through that bottom drawer. We gotta get outa here. That k-kid lives on this street. That pesky girl. I don’t want her poking around in here.” A drawer squeaked open and Zoe’s hopes rose. It might be the one. She unwound from the yellow robe. They would find the copied deed and leave. She’d have to run fast to get in Gertie’s car.

She was right. A moment later Chloe gave a triumphant cry. “Got it! We don’t need that key. It’s the deed! We’d never thought to look in here last time.”

There was the sound of scuffling feet, the front door slamming. Zoe emerged, grinning, from the closet. She brushed herself off and a halo of dust surrounded her head. The front door opened again – had they forgotten something? Uh oh. She saw Chloe’s pocketbook lying on the hall table.

She drew back, hid behind a door. But she couldn’t keep it back, the sneeze. It came out in a loud whoop. Kershoo... kershoo... kerCHOO-three sneezes in a row.

She knew they’d heard. She raced through the kitchen, struggled with the back door. It was stuck! She pulled with all her weight.

But Cedric was already on her. She felt herself held fast. Her heart turned upside down. He yelled for Chloe.

Moments later she was wrapped in a rug, carried out to the car. Her cries came out muffled, no one would hear. Alice and Gertie would think the couple was stealing a rug, not a girl. Gertie wouldn’t follow until she saw Zoe herself. They would never find her. The kidnappers would do her in, along with Spence.

Spence,
she thought. At least she’d see Spence. At least he was alive.

But would either of them be for long?

Chapter Twenty

No Way Out

Zoe woke up the next morning in a hot cramped attic. Her head ached, her face was swollen. She felt terrible; they must have put something in the milk they gave her to drink. She peered about the room. Its two barred windows blinked off toward a grove of maple trees. If there was a house beyond, it was certainly invisible.

But someone lived there. When she squinted, she saw a chimney poking up between the trees. Cedric had mentioned neighbors, someone called Plumley – she recalled that now. She would somehow have to attract them.