Recipient of an Agatha Award
for Best Children’s/YA Novel
The Northern Spy Club was waiting in the barn when Zoe Elwood entered. Five boys sat there in the hay, their pockets bulging with green apples. Their tin badges gleamed in the July sun that slanted through the loft window. The old barn was thick with dust and mold and the ripe smell of apples. Zoe sneezed and heard the boys snicker. Planting her feet wide, she stared up at the rafters, and at the wood beam that spanned the width of the barn overhead. It overhung a mound of hay, her father’s broken tractor, and a couple of jagged saws. The sun rays bounced off the half-rusted steel like knives.
She heard the whispers in the hay. They echoed through the gloom. “She can’t do it. A sissy girl?”
“I can,” she said, the words thick in her throat. “I can walk that beam.”
You had to do two things to get into the Northern Spy Club. You had to walk the beam and you had to solve a crime. Her brother Kelby had made those rules. He had named the club Northern Spy because its headquarters were in the hut under a Northern Spy apple tree, one of a hundred trees in their father’s apple orchard. When Kelby declared himself Chief Detective right after the close of school, the neighborhood boys had rushed to join up. They had all walked the beam (they said), and now they were busy solving a crime.
It was the Bagley sisters’ pea soup that had poisoned Tiny Alice Fairweather’s grandmother, Kelby said; the police had found a trace of a poison in it, and the Spy Club was out to prove that the old ladies had done it. Zoe liked the Bagley sisters. She was sure someone else had put the poison in that soup. She wanted to prove the sisters innocent.
But to prove them innocent she would have to find the real culprit. How was she going to do that?
Well, tomorrow she’d go investigate the scene of the “poisoning”: the Bagley sisters’ kitchen. But before she could solve the crime, she had to walk the beam.
“I can, too, do it,” she whispered, and started toward the rickety ladder that led up to the beam.
The rungs were thin and worn. She glanced up as she climbed. The beam looked frail, as if it were attached to the wall by nothing but cobwebs.
The ladder jiggled under the weight of her body. She could fall and kill herself before she even reached the beam! She imagined the funeral: her mother sobbing into a tissue, her father’s face red and sorrowful. Her nose filled at the thought, and for a moment she couldn’t see.
A few feet from the top she felt herself swaying. A tiger kitten rubbed against the foot of the ladder. A swallow swooped low overhead. She gasped. If it struck the ladder she’d go down. And that would be the end. She’d be in a black hole somewhere, like Tiny Alice’s grandmother.
Somewhere far below she heard them teasing her.
“Uh oh-baby Zo-eeeee...”
She took a stabbing breath and went the last two rungs to the top. She wrapped her arms around the splintery beam. She heaved herself up, the way she did on the jungle gym at school – until she was standing, her face to the side of the barn. A wave of nausea flushed through her body.
When she managed to twist herself around, she saw how narrow the beam was. It was wide enough for only one foot at a time, and her left foot was in front of the right. She cursed those long feet she’d inherited from her grandmother Elwood. Slowly she found her balance, staring down at her shoes to keep from looking into the void. It was a long way across, maybe thirty feet. She remembered the saws lying in wait below, their rusty points aimed at her heart.
“Oh woe – there goes Zo-eeeee,” the Spies chanted.
Biting her lip she took a blind step out onto the beam. The third step out her left foot landed on top of her right. She lifted it up and balanced there on one foot; the other crooked out like a dancer.
“She’s gonna fall!” the Spies cried out below.
Her left leg scissored in the air. Then it dropped down on the beam to rest, trembling, just ahead of the right.
The beam was rougher toward the middle, full of bumps and hollows that caught her sneakered toes. Pulling out a caught foot, she looked down and was giddy. She wasn’t yet halfway.
She couldn’t do it.
“I can,” she told herself. “I can.”
She inched onward. The beam was smoother now, she moved faster. Her heart beat everywhere: in her head, her knees, her feet. She was almost a third of the way. She glanced ahead. The end was a blaze of sun; her eyes were full of it. She couldn’t see her feet. She couldn’t see the beam! The air was filled with shouts. She had to go forward. She took a step – and met air.
There was a sharp pain in her thigh where she’d fallen onto the beam. The next she knew she was upside down, arms and legs cradling the beam like a monkey. The beam seemed to gallop away with her. Her chest was cramped, she could hardly breathe.
She had to get up again, up!
But she wasn’t monkey enough. Something grabbed her; she felt herself being lifted away, onto a ladder. A voice boomed in her ear, her father’s voice. She saw his brown hair standing on end as he bore her downward. He was shouting. She heard the others arguing, Kelby’s voice shrilling above the rest.
“It was not dangerous,” Kelby shouted. “You know you like the Spies, Dad. It was nothing. We all did it. She’s a baby, that’s all. You’ll never make the Spy Club, baby! You’ll never solve a crime.”
“I’m not. I will. I can do it. Let me back up!”
But the arms pulled her relentlessly down.
Supper at Zoe’s house was quiet. Her mother, who was teaching summer school, brought out a zucchini quiche, then ran upstairs to prepare Monday’s class. Her brother Kelby was shut in his room – to repent, his father said. “To think up new ways of annoying her,” Zoe told her friend, Spence, who had invited himself over. Spence didn’t belong to the Spy Club either. His father, a guitarist who liked music better than spies, wouldn’t let him join.
“I can walk the beam,” she whispered to Spence. “I will. You’ll see. And I’ll find that poisoner.”
Spence looked at her, wide-eyed, humming in his throat. “I don’t want to see,” he whispered. “And what’s this about finding a poisoner?”
“It’s Tiny Alice’s grandmother. She was poisoned, and the police think the Bagley sisters did it.”
“What? Those old crazies?” Spence whistled, and sank down cross-legged on the floor.
“You know how they send around soup to all the old people in town? Well, the police found an insecticide in it.”
“They found a what?”
“Insecticide. They spray it on apple trees to kill the maggots and bagworms. Anyway, Kelby went to spy on the sisters once and says they were having an argument with Alice’s granny. He says Miss Maud told the grandmother she could ‘kill her’ for saying what she said. He’s going to tell the police!”
Spence whistled again; his thatch of carroty hair fell in front of his eyes.
“Well, don’t just sit there and whistle. We have to talk to the Bagley sisters. We have to hear their side of the story. Miss Maud was my second grade teacher. We have to find out who the real killer is.”
“Suppose we find it really was the Bagley sisters?”
“Then Kelby wins. And I don’t get to join the Northern Spy Club.”
“So?” Spence said, and stuck a wad of Juicy Fruit gum in his cheek. “Why do you have to join that bunch of show-offs, anyway?”
Zoe accepted the stick of gum Spence offered, and chewed thoughtfully for a minute. She tugged at her brown ponytail. Finally she said, “I have to, that’s all. I just plain have to.” Sucking in her lip she glanced at Spence, and then up at the ceiling - she’d heard a thumping sound. Kelby’s room was directly overhead; there was a hole where the stovepipe went through. She knew that Kelby was crouched there on the floor, listening.
“I can do it,” she said loudly.
A voice came back, sounding hollow and mysterious and not like Kelby’s voice at all.
“Five days. Starting at midnight, you have five days to disprove the Bagleys killed Alice’s granny. Or else the sisters are going to prison!”
“I’ll do it, I promise you that,” she said, shivering, her chin lifted to the stovepipe hole. “You’ll see. I’ll do it.”
“Tomorrow at nine,” she whispered to Spence. “We meet at the Bagley sisters’ back door. Bring your tape recorder.”
“Okay. But I won’t eat any of their pea soup,” Spence said. “Don’t ask me to do that!”
He yelped when Zoe stuck an elbow in his ribs.
“Got the tape recorder?” Zoe asked when Spence came running up to the Bagley sisters’ gate, out of breath and peeling back a banana. He was wearing a T-shirt that read BANDS NOT BOMBS.
“Oops,” said Spence, “I forgot.”
“Run back and get it, then. You don’t get paid till you have it.”
“I get paid for doing this?”
“Yup.” Zoe held out a fistful of chocolate-covered peanuts. “One for every fifteen minutes you work for me.”
“I’m working for you?”
“Of course. I’m the head detective and you’re in my employ. Now hurry up and get that tape recorder.”
“Jeezum,” Spence said, “you’re as bad as your brother,” and he dashed off across the road.
“Oh, no, I’m not,” she hollered. “I’m not as bad as Kelby. You take that back, Spence Riley!”
But he had already slammed through his front door.
Sighing, Zoe walked around to the Bagley’s kitchen door and peeked in through the screen. It was a warm July morning and the sisters were sitting at the breakfast table. Miss Maud wore a purple sundress that fell raggedly to her ankles and Miss Gertie wore saggy dungarees and a blue cotton shirt. Gertie was the younger of the two, although she looked as ancient as her sister with her white hair falling out of its pins and straggling halfway down her back.
The two were drinking their morning Raspberry Zinger tea out of flowered cups. Already a huge iron pot of something smelly was steaming away on the stove. Bunches of dried plants hung from the beams overhead - they were actually poison hemlock and bloodroot, Kelby said, but Zoe didn’t believe it.
“Well, come in, child,” Miss Maud said, “Don’t just stand there. Your nose is poking a hole through that screen.”
The screen was already full of holes, but Zoe smiled anyway, and walked in. The sisters seemed happy to see her; they dragged over a chair and Miss Gertie plunked down a glass of milk and a sugary doughnut at her place.
“You know why I’m here,” Zoe said, getting right to the point.
“Do we?” said the sisters.
“It’s about the pea soup poisoning,” she explained. She stuck a thumb in the direction of Tiny Alice’s house.
“Oh, dear,” said the sisters, and glanced at each other. Then they both started talking at once. Zoe heard the words “police” and “our pea soup?” And “How can they possibly think that we...” Then Spence arrived and the sisters turned on him. “We didn’t do it!” they cried.
“Uh huh,” Spence murmured, and when Zoe made a face at him, “I mean, no, no, of course not,” he said, and the sisters sat him down with a glass of milk and a doughnut.
“We know you didn’t poison Alice’s granny and we want to prove it. So we need to ask some questions,” Zoe said. “But we have to warn you that you’re being recorded.” She pointed at the tape recorder Spence was pulling out of his pocket.
“Oh,” said the sisters, looking thrilled at the idea of being recorded. “How things change,” said Miss Maud. “I used to ask all the questions in class and now you’re asking me!”
“Okay then,” said Zoe. “What did you put in the pea soup you took over to the Fairweathers’ house ten days ago?”
Maud looked at her sister. “You made that batch, I think, Gertie.”
“Oh, no,” said Gertie, “you did, Maud. Oh absolutely. I was making lentil soup that day. For the Meals On Wheels. It was your pea soup you were taking around the neighborhood.”
Maud thought a minute. “Oh, maybe so. Well, I just put in the usual. Split peas, onion, a little ham, a few spices.”
“What spices exactly?” said Zoe, frowning at Spence who was wolfing down a second doughnut.
“Let’s see, now. We-ell, a bay leaf, garlic, red wine vinegar, a pinch of dry mustard…’
“I never put in dry mustard,” Gertie argued.
“Well I do. It gives it a certain je ne sais quoi. Agnes Fairweather loves the mustard.”
“Past tense,” said Miss Gertie. “Agnes is dead now.”
“Oh, yes, oh dear. And a garnish of fresh parsley,” Maud finished. “Then I put some here in the freezer and ran a potful over to Agnes.”
“You took it to her yourself then? Let’s see. It was a Thursday afternoon, I believe,” said Zoe, putting a restraining hand over Spence’s as he reached for a third doughnut.
“Oh, yes,” said Miss Maud. “I mean, I left it on her kitchen table. She was upstairs resting, young Alice said. And Alice’s mother – ”
“Madeline,” said Zoe.
“Madeline, yes. Though I don’t hold with children calling their mothers by their first names. Anyway, Madeline was there, too, making a meatloaf, as I recall. She said she’d serve the soup as soon as the grandmother came downstairs. Agnes had been poorly for the last month, but before that she was in good health, which is what I don’t understand. I mean how she could up and die? Just like that?” She snapped her fingers.
“Would you repeat that, please?” said Spence, who was taking notes as well as recording the conversation.
“Never mind,” said Zoe. “It’s on the tape. So, Alice and her mother were the only ones there when you came?”
Miss Maud squinted thoughtfully at the ceiling. “Well, Thelma was there, she’d been working in the garden, as I recall. She had a spade in her hand.”
“Maybe she put the poison in the soup,” Spence suggested.
“Oh, but she’s Agnes’s sister!” cried Miss Gertie. “Would Thelma poison her own sister? Not on purpose, anyhow.”
“I wouldn’t think so, oh, no, no. Thelma’s a little spacey, but she’s a good person,” said Miss Maud.
“Mmm,” said Zoe. “Well, that’s all the questions for now, thank you.” She tapped Spence on the shoulder. Reluctantly he got up, still gazing at the doughnuts.
“Now, if my brother Kelby comes over, don’t tell him anything, please?” Zoe begged. “You remember those tricks he used to play in school?”
“Oh, yes,” murmured Miss Maud. “The time he set off alarm clocks every fifteen minutes and they set me back a whole day?”
“You’ve got it,” said Zoe. “And one more thing.”
“Yes?” The sisters looked at her expectantly.
“Could I have a sample of your pea soup? You said you put some of it in the freezer?”
“Of course, dear,” said Miss Maud, and hustled over to the refrigerator, the white topknot wiggling on her head. “Maybe your mother would like some, too.”
Spence groaned, and Zoe narrowed her eyes at him. “She’d love it. But just enough for a bowlful, please.”
“But it’s frozen, dear, take it all. You can eat it. A family of four?”
Zoe thanked the sisters and pushed Spence out the door ahead of her.
“You’re not really going to eat that,” he said. “I hear they make it in a chamber pot!”
“Of course, I am. To prove it’s all right.”
“I’ll come to your funeral.”
“You won’t have to. So let’s go to my house. We’ll listen to that tape again.”
“What for? They didn’t say anything much.”
“It isn’t what they said, it’s what they didn’t say. You have to listen between the lines.”
“What lines?” said Spence. “Speak English, please. Anyway, if you want to know exactly what was going on in Alice’s kitchen that day, why don’t you ask Alice?”
“Exactly my thoughts,” said Zoe, handing over a couple of chocolate peanuts. “We’ll phone her when we get to my house.” Zoe was angling fo a cell phone for her birthday, but her parents said not till she turned thirteen.
As it turned out, she didn’t have to phone Alice because just as they were entering the house with the frozen soup, her father called to her that Alice was on the line.
“Zoe,” cried Alice, her voice all breathless and quivery, “something terrible’s going on. Next door at Aunt Thelma’s. I need you. Come quick!”
And the line went dead.
Tiny Alice was outside staring over at her Aunt Thelma’s house where a car painted two shades of blue was idling in the driveway. Alice’s face was red with tears; her long chestnut hair was whipping about in the wind. “They’re taking Auntie away!” she cried when she saw Zoe. “And she doesn’t want to go-oo...”
It was true, Zoe saw. Alice’s great-aunt Thelma was being hustled into the car between a man and a woman. The man was big and beefy, he seemed almost seven feet tall. Thelma’s chocolate-brown eyes looked pleadingly at Zoe. Help me, the eyes said.
“Get the license number,” Zoe told Spence, and she dashed across the lawn.
“Leave her alone!” Zoe yelled, and yanked at the man’s arm. He brushed her off as if she were a fat black fly.
“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.
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 serene 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.
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.”
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.
“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.
The two were standing by the bed; Zoe could see their feet under the cotton bedskirt. The woman’s swollen ankles were stuffed into shiny red pumps; the man was wearing enormous black shoes with scuffed toes. One kick and he could send her and Spence to the moon!
It was dusty under the bed. Zoe’s allergies were acting up again. She was desperately trying not to sneeze. She saw that Spence had a sneeze coming on, too. She didn’t want to think what would happen if he let it out. He was going, “Ah-ah-ah,” and she held her breath. He pressed two fingers under his nose and finally the sneeze subsided. She let out her breath with relief.
The feet moved away from the bed. For what seemed an hour the couple banged about the house, searching. And finally, finally, they opened the front door. The wind swept through the house and into the bedroom. It felt refreshingly cool, like rain after a dry spell.
Cedric said, “It’s not here. Unless she buried it in the garden or something. We’ll have to go back to R-Rockbury. We’ll make her t-talk. T-tell us where it is.”
“She won’t tell,” Chloe said. “She won’t even talk to us now.”
“We’ll find a way to make her t-talk.”
“After dinner,” said Chloe. “Not now. I’m starving.”
“I could eat something myself,” said Cedric. “There’s a steak house in town. We’ll go up to R-Rockbury after.”
“But what if those kids found it?” said Chloe. “If they’ve been in here? That girl who tried to stop us when we took Thelma? A little busybody if ever I saw one.”
“Kids?” Cedric scoffed. “Don’t worry about k-kids. We can take care of them.”
The door banged shut on their voices and Zoe felt her body slowly unthaw.
“You got it?” Spence whispered.
She stuck a hand in her pocket and encountered the key. It felt cold and hot all at once. Any minute, she thought, it might burn a hole in her shirt.
“Let’s go,” she said, wiggling out from under the dusty bed and letting out the sneeze she’d been holding back. “We’ve got to catch the evening bus. We’ve got to get to Aunt Thelma before those two get there!”
“Alice called,” Kelby said when Zoe and Spence arrived at her house. “Her mother has the night off from her job at Chat & Chew Restaurant and Alice has to stay home to help clean the attic.”
“Bad luck,” said Zoe. “That means she can’t go to Lili Laski’s supper party with us.”
“Lili Laski’s having a supper party?” asked Spence.
“Of course. We’re both going. You remember,” said Zoe, and gave Spence a knowing look.
“Oh, that party,” he said.
“Zoe arranging your social calendar now, Spence?” Kelby asked. Spence reddened, and then coughed.
Kelby was sitting at the table staring at a bowl of pea soup. “I can’t eat that,” he told his mother. “The Bagley sisters made it. In a chamber pot. It killed Alice’s granny.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” their mother said. “I ate the soup and I’m perfectly fine. Now sit down, Zoe, and have some supper. Bowl of pea soup, Spence? It’s delicious. I added a little ham. I think the sisters are vegetarians.”
“Uh, no thanks,” he said. “But I’ll have some of that.” He pointed at a dish of macaroni and cheese.
“Sorry, we don’t have time,” said Zoe, tapping Spence on the shoulder. “We’re having supper at my friend Lili Laski’s house. Can you drive us into town, Dad? Please?”
Town was only three miles away. They would catch the six-thirty-five bus to Rockbury and then walk to the place from there. Zoe hoped it wasn’t far.
“Please, Dad?” Her father hadn’t sat down yet. He always had something else to do when dinner was served. One time, just for fun, her mother had called him to eat at three in the afternoon, only to see him wheel about and stride off to the apple barn to do “one more job.”
“Actually,” her father said, running a hand through his shaggy hair, “I have to pick up an herbicide at Agway.”
“Oh, Dan,” said their mother. “Then everything will get cold,” She sighed heavily, then brightened up. “Last one finished does the dishes!”
Zoe’s father shrugged and grinned at Zoe. “Let’s go then, kid. I’m the best darn dish washer you ever saw.”
Her mother laughed. “We’ll have to rent you out.”
“Three and a half days,” Kelby hissed as Zoe and Spence left. “And we have new evidence. Damaging evidence. Gonna put those old ladies right behind bars.”
“What evidence this time?” Zoe demanded.
“Oh, you’ll see.” He gave a sly smile and heaped macaroni and cheese on his plate. He didn’t want to have to do the dishes.
In five minutes they were at Lili’s house. Luckily Zoe’s father drove off at once so they didn’t have to go in. They ran off to the Citgo gas station where the bus made its stop – and just in time.
“Where to?” the driver said, a big brawny man with a round bald spot in the center of his head.
Zoe said, “Two for Rockbury, please.”
“We’re going to visit a relative,” Spence informed him, and Zoe sighed. “You don’t have to explain,” she said. “Lots of people live in the town of Rockbury.”
“When are we going to eat?” Spence asked as they took their seats in the center of the bus. She knew he was thinking of that plate of macaroni and cheese he’d missed.
“We’ll eat afterward.” Zoe shook out a handful of chocolate peanuts. “Here. This is a salary advance against tonight.”
Spence shoved the peanuts into his mouth and smiled. “So what’s the strategy? We go in there and snatch her? And then what do we do with her?”
“We wait and see. We play it by ear.”
“The way I play my cello?”
“I guess so. You certainly don’t look at the notes when you play. I mean, it sounds like a fingernail scraping a blackboard.”
“That’s an insult,” said Spence. “And I’m getting off the bus right this minute.” He stood up – and Zoe pulled him back down.
“I’m just kidding. You’re a brilliant cello player. Really.”
“Tell that to my mom,” said Spence. The bus lurched around a corner and threw him against Zoe’s shoulder. “Oops,” he said. “You’ve got sharp bones.”
“The important thing,” said Zoe, ignoring the comment about her bones, “is to find out what this key is for. And warn Alice’s auntie about those bad relatives wanting it. Then we can kidnap her next trip – after we figure out where to hide her.”
“In the blacksmith shop across the street?” said Spence.
“What?”
“It’s locked up, but my father has a key. He owns the land it’s on. They’re trying to turn it into a historic landmark, but for now it’s on our land. It’s got running water and a sink.”
“Perfect. We might kidnap her tonight then. I have enough money for one more ticket.”
“But you were going to use that money for supper.”
“We’ll see.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Rockbury,” the driver announced. Fifteen minutes later the bus came to a smelly, grinding stop in front of a convenience store.
“What time is the bus back to Branbury?” Zoe asked.
“Nine-forty-eight, kid. Sharp. We don’t wait for nobody.”
The doors squealed open and Zoe and Spence found themselves on a cold cement pavement without a soul in sight. The convenience store where they’d stopped had a CLOSED sign in front. The mountains loomed up beyond it, cold and dark blue. It was as though the whole town had gone to bed, and it was only seven-twenty by Zoe’s watch.
“So where is this Rockbury place where they’ve got Alice’s aunt?” Spence asked.
Zoe could only shake her head and stare out at the silent town.
“There it is,” said Spence, after they’d walked up the road for what seemed an hour but had been only – Zoe peered at her watch in the gathering twilight – twenty minutes. Spence pointed at a large building looming up out of a dark woods.
A sign on an open gate at the foot of the driveway read: ROCKBURY HOME FOR THE DEVELOPMENTALLY DISABLED.
“Some ‘home,’” said Zoe, staring up at the gray stone walls. “It has bars on the windows.”
“Jeezum. How do we get her out then?”
“We’ll find a way. I told you we’d play it by ear.”
“Tootley-too,” went Spence on his imaginary cello, and Zoe shushed him. “We’re ‘relatives’ you know,” she reminded him, and turned the brass handle of the large wooden door. A handwritten sign read “VISITING HOURS: 2-3; 7:30-8:30.” But the door was locked. She banged loudly.
At last a slot opened up and a pair of watery green eyes squinted out. “Relatives coming for visiting hours,” Zoe shouted, and the door swung open.
“Hello,” she said cheerily to an ancient female with a cloud of bluish hair who stood behind, looking suspicious. “I’m Zoe and this is my brother Spence. We’re here to see our aunt, Thelma Fairweather.” She held up Thelma’s black sweater. “We’ve come to bring her this. She left without it. Old people’s bodies need heat, you know.”
She shivered a little in the chill air.
The woman’s face softened. “I know,” she said. “I’ve been telling them that. I’m just a volunteer here. And I have to wear a jacket, even in July! The cold just clings to these old walls.”
“Something should be done,” Zoe agreed. “I’ll write a letter.”
The woman’s smile pushed her cheeks into a hundred wrinkles. She let the children in and handed Zoe a pass. “Thelma is in Room 304,” she said, consulting a chart on the scarred desk. “She had visitors only yesterday evening,” she added, as though it was against the rules to have more than two visitors a week. A Mr. and Mrs. Cedric Fairweather. Are they your parents?”
“No,” said Spence.
“Yes,” said Zoe, stepping on his big toe. “That is, my parents. Jack here is my half brother, you see. He has a different mother.”
The woman looked sympathetic, and pointed to a stairway in the center of the room. “Three flights up and no elevator,” she complained. “But you children have young legs.”
“We’ll tell them to put in an elevator, too,” said Spence, and smiled sweetly at the woman. She patted him on his carroty head.
“How’re we going to get Thelma out past her?” he hissed as they climbed the steep steps.
“You’ll have to distract her.”
“How?”
“You’ll find a way.” Zoe jumped up on a bench on the second floor landing and balanced there for a moment. “Just practicing,” she said when Spence glared up at her.
She paused at the door of room 304, and then pushed it wide. It creaked horribly.
“Get out!” cried a voice.
“Aunt Thelma Fairweather?” said Zoe. “Don’t you remember us? We’re Alice’s friends. We brought you your black sweater.”
“And some Fig Newtons,” added Spence, holding them out.
“I’m not Aunt Thelma Fairweather,” said the voice, “and I said to get out. So get out!”
Zoe saw that there were three women in the room: all seated on a black horsehair sofa. The television was shrieking: on the screen a woman’s stomach was ballooning in and out. “I’ve seen that commercial,” whispered Spence. “The lady has gas. And always right at our dinner time.”
“Get out,” the voice repeated.
“I’m Thelma Fairweather,” said the woman on the end of the sofa. “I say they stay. You can get out,” she told the first woman.
“Then I will,” said the woman, and shuffled out of the room in dirty pink slippers, and then back in again. “But there’s nowhere to go in this place.”
“Then sit down and keep quiet,” said Thelma. She motioned the children over to a bed in a corner of the room. They perched on the edge while Thelma got up and put on the sweater Zoe had brought. “Did they tell you to bring it? That Cedric and Chloe? That pair of phonies? I’d never in my life heard of a Cedric and Chloe until they showed up, and I’ve lived on this earth seventy-six years.”
“They didn’t tell us,” said Zoe. “We thought of it ourselves. Alice wanted to come,” she explained, “but her mother stayed home from work and wouldn’t let her out of the house. I mean, no one knows we’re here.”
Thelma squinted at Zoe through round gold spectacles. She was a plump woman with fuzzy white hair that surrounded her crinkly pink face like a halo around the sun. “You were the one who tried to help when they took me away,” she said. “Thank you for that. They say I’m losing my mind. And it might happen if I have to live one more day with that pair.” She pointed at the two frazzled-looking women on the horsehair sofa.
“You won’t have to,” said Spence. “We’re taking you out of here tonight.”
“Maybe,” said Zoe. “That is, we won’t take you without your permission. We just need to know a few things. You see, we’re trying to find out who put the herbicide in your sister’s pea soup. And when you were kidnapped, well, we figured the two cases are connected. So Alice let us into your house, and we found...this.” She held up the small gold key. It shone in the dim light of the single ceiling bulb. “They were looking for it,” she said, “that Cedric and Chloe. And we need to know why.”
Aunt Thelma took the key in her pale veined hands. “So that’s it,” she exclaimed, as though she’d just discovered the answer to a difficult math problem. “It’s the key to my safe deposit box in the Branbury National Bank. Now what on earth would those two want to get into that for?” Her forehead wrinkled with the question. “I don’t there’s much of any value in it.”
“Think hard,” said Zoe. “They’re coming here tonight, those two. Keep an eye on the window, Spence.”
“Right,” said Spence, and pressed his nose to the chill glass.
“Well now, there’s my will,” said Thelma. “But my lawyer has a duplicate, so that won’t do them any good.” She swallowed her lower lip with her yellowy upper teeth and stared at Spence as though he might have an answer. He just shrugged, and went back to his watch at the window.
“What else?” asked Zoe. “There must be something else.”
“Oh, a couple of deeds. I own farmland, and then a couple acres in the Branbury swamp – but who wants that except the salamanders? And then...” She paused. She stuck out a pale pink tongue as if to catch the thought.
“And then?” Zoe urged.
“And then...” Thelma began.
“They’re here!” said Spence. “They’re coming up the driveway. I recognize that blue car with missing hubcap!”
Zoe jumped up. “We can’t stay,” she told Aunt Thelma. “But we’ll get that safe deposit box for you. And hide it.”
“But you can’t get it without my signature,” said Thelma. “Unless I’m dead, and maybe that’s what they want.” She struggled up from the bed. “I’ll go with you. There’s a dumbwaiter at the other end of the hall. I suppose we could take that. Avoid the stairs. It goes down into the kitchen.”
“A dumb waiter? You mean he can’t speak?” said Spence.
“It’s a small elevator that carries trays of food,” explained Zoe, who’d read about one in a book. “Now, come on. Hurry!”
“Take me, too,” hollered the woman on the horsehair sofa as the three hurried out. “Take me!”
“Take me!” echoed the third woman, waving a pink chenille arm.
“We’ll try to come back for you,” said Zoe, not wanting to hurt their feelings, and followed Thelma down the hall.
“What children? We have no ch-children.” Zoe heard a man’s voice shout up the stairwell.
Thelma pressed the button and Zoe and Spence waited anxiously as the dumbwaiter cranked slowly up from the depths of the building. Somewhere on the floor above a woman screamed, and Thelma’s eyes gazed into Zoe’s, huge and full of fear.
They were squeezed into the dumbwaiter like glasses of juice. Zoe squatted on Miss Thelma’s lap and Spence on hers. She didn’t dare breathe or she might expand and squash the others. It seemed forever as the square box slowly, crankily, descended.
When it finally opened up they found themselves in a stainless steel kitchen crammed with hanging pots and pans and gleaming knives. Zoe put a small knife under her shirt just in case. It might come in handy.
“How do we get out of here?” Spence whispered.
Zoe looked at Thelma, but she just shook her head. The back door was padlocked. A swinging door led to a dining room that led to the inner part of the building; Zoe could hear voices. One guttural howl she recognized as Cedric’s – upstairs. He would have discovered that Thelma was missing.
Spence jumped onto the countertop and shoved up a small window. A rush of night air filled the room and Zoe almost laughed aloud. Spence climbed out first, and then helped the others through the window. Aunt Thelma got stuck halfway - her plump purple bottom filled the whole space, but Zoe was finally able to push her out and into Spence’s arms. The pair tumbled together onto the damp grass. Zoe closed the window carefully behind her; she wanted Cedric to think they were still in the building.
They crept along the side of the building to the front gate.
But found it locked!
“We’ll have to climb the fence,” Zoe said, and Aunt Thelma cried, “Oh, no, no, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can, you have to,” said Zoe, feeling her way along in the dark. There was a sliver of moon, so she was able to see the outline of the fence. It was not especially high, but was made of iron, with something that looked like barbed wire on the top.
It was not barbed wire, she discovered when she reached the top, but tree branches reaching across. For a mad moment she wondered how it would be to try and walk along the top. Then remembering the kidnappers, she abandoned the thought.
“Spence,” she hissed, “you help Aunt Thelma get a foothold in the fence and then hang on to her, and I’ll pull her up and over.”
“Oh, my stars,” moaned Thelma as she groped for a foothold.
“Ooh-h-h,” groaned Spence, holding Thelma’s weight in his cupped hands. “Hurry and get her over. I can’t hang on much longer.”
“Grab hold,” said Zoe. When she felt Thelma’s hot damp hands clasp hers, she hoisted her up to the top. For a moment Thelma lay across the narrow top like a body slung over a saddle.
Finally Spence was able to tip the old lady over and into Zoe’s arms.
“Jus’ a min - ” Aunt Thelma said, panting for breath, but then moved gamely forward.
“Keep going,” Zoe whispered, “I’ll catch up.” Pulling out the kitchen knife she went to the blue car and poked a small hole in one of the front tires. With luck, it would slow the kidnappers a little. Then she ran crazy-legged after the others - though she didn’t have far to go because Thelma couldn’t walk very fast.
“It’s my arthritis,” Thelma explained. “You’d better leave me here. I’m afraid those two will hurt you if they catch us.”
“They’ll be hunting through the building first. The lady won’t have seen us go out, you know,” said Zoe. “And then they’ll have to change a tire if they want to go very fast.” She held up the knife.
“Smart thinking,” said Spence.
“Nothing to it,” Zoe said modestly, though her arms ached from hauling Aunt Thelma through a window and over a fence. And she worried that she’d caused only a slow leak in the tire.
A quarter of the way to the bus stop, Thelma stopped walking. “I can’t go on another blessed minute. I’m all bruised from that fence.” She sank down on a rock.
“Then we’ll carry you,” said Zoe.
“We will?” said Spence, who weighed a good hundred pounds less than Thelma.
“We’ll make a chair with our crossed arms. Come on, Spence, you can do it.”
“I can?”
They crossed their arms and gripped one another’s wrists and Aunt Thelma sank heavily into the human chair. Zoe heard Spence groan but he held on manfully. Zoe’s arms were numb.
A car came down the road, its lights flashing, and screeched to a stop. “If it’s the kidnappers, head for the woods!” cried Zoe.
But a girl’s voice called out, “Want a ride? Somebody hurt there or somethin’”?
“It’s our grandmother, she sprained her ankle,” said Zoe. “Are you going to town? We have to catch the nine-forty-eight bus.”
“Hop in,” said the girl, and the children climbed in back, while Thelma sat hunched and rubbing her aching legs in the front passenger seat.
“Are you all right, Spencer?” Thelma asked. “I could hear your bones crunching, carrying me like that. It would be on my conscience the rest of my life if you broke something.”
“It was nothing,” said Spence, massaging his bruised wrists. “We could of carried you all the way to Branbury.”
Zoe smiled.
The girl had just gotten her license, she told them, and she was sixteen – skinny as a pencil with dyed yellow hair frizzy as a mop. “Why, I just love to drive! This is my stepfather’s car. He let me use it to get ice cream. But the stores are all closed in this hick town so I have to go to Vergennes.”
“Ice cream?” said Spence, forgetting his hurt wrists.
“You can drop us at the bus stop, please,” said Zoe, ignoring Spence, although she wouldn’t mind some ice cream herself.
But when they got to the bus stop the blue car drove slowly past and careened into the gas station across the street. The kidnappers were honking, trying to get the owner of the gas station to open up and patch a tire. Thelma had seen the car, too; she hunched way down in her seat.
“I think we will go to that ice cream store with you,” said Zoe. Spence said “Hurrah!” and the girl drove on. Thelma’s head came slowly up, like a night flower.
It was a slow, loud ride to Vergennes. The car had a broken muffler. The girl wasn’t always sure which was the gas pedal and which was the brake. But they arrived safely at an Eat Good Things shop where Spence had a large Chunky Monkey cone and a chocolate Cow-Pie, and Zoe had a cup of her favorite Cherry Garcia. Aunt Thelma downed a Tylenol in a glass of water. She was too nervous, she said, too exhausted to eat.
“Have you thought of what else is in that safe deposit box?” asked Zoe while the girl was still at the counter paying for her stepfather’s ice cream. Zoe had bought the girl an ice cream soda – it was the least she could do.
“Well, I do remember I had a diamond ring in there. It was a present from the man I was engaged to. When he died in a war, I couldn’t bear to wear it anymore. But it wasn’t a very big diamond, and I can’t imagine that’s why they want the key.”
“Keep thinking then,” said Zoe. For the girl was coming back with her soda and Zoe figured they’d better be getting on back to Branbury. Her parents would be calling Lili Laski’s house if she wasn’t in by ten o’clock. She glanced at her watch. It was already nine fifty-five. “Oh dear,” she said, and got up to use the phone.
“We’re playing Monopoly, and I’ve almost enough money to win this big red hotel,” Zoe told her father, who loved Monopoly himself and was always indulgent, except when it came to walking high beams. “And please can I have another half hour? Just till ten-thirty, that’s all? I mean, it’s summer, Dad! Lili’s mother will drive Spence and me home. Oh, and would you mind calling Spence’s mother for me? He’s in the middle of a big move and can’t possibly call...oh, thanks, Dad. You’re a sweetheart, Dad.”
Her father sounded a bit dazed after all that explanation, but he said he supposed it would be all right. Their mother was watching an old video of Vanity Fair and probably wouldn’t come up for air, he said, until ten-thirty or eleven o’clock.
“So we’d better get moving,” she told Spence.
“How?”
“We’ll get a taxi. I’ve still got two dollars since we saved the bus fare.”
“Hey, it’s only twenty minutes down the pike, lemme take you,” the girl offered. “I’m just getting the hang of this driving thing, it’s fun. Whee-hee!” She wouldn’t hear No, and they all piled back into the ancient car.
“I’m afraid your ice cream will melt,” said Aunt Thelma.
“Nah, it’s frozen up like the North Pole,” the girl said as they sped noisily off.
This time she drove faster, and in fourteen minutes by Zoe’s watch they were in Branbury. Zoe asked the girl to stop in front of the blacksmith shop.
“You live here?” said the girl. “In this cute little stone house?”
“Not exactly,” said Zoe. “It’s just that we’re late, and we don’t want our parents to see us being dropped off at the house by a stranger. You know how it is.”
“I sure do,” said the girl, sticking out her hand. “Well, it was a pleasure, I’m sure.” She refused the two dollars Zoe tried to fold into her pocket. “Heck, it was a learning experience. I mean, I really know where the brake is now! I’m thinking I might be a race car driver. Brr-oom!” She peeled off, leaving her three passengers waving away the fumes in front of the blacksmith shop.
It was ten-twenty. There was time to settle Thelma in.
Or was there? A car limped down the road on a saggy tire.
“Get down,” Zoe said, and they dropped into the bushes in front of the shop. The lights flashed by and then turned in at Thelma’s house.
“Get the shop key,” Zoe told Spence, “and we’ll meet you around back. Bring a blanket and pillow.”
“And a couple of doughnuts,” whispered Spence. “We’ll have a homecoming party.”
But he was no sooner across and into his house when the blue car came slowly back up the road.
“Quick. This way,” said Zoe as the headlights illuminated the area and lingered in front of Spence’s house. She hustled Miss Thelma around behind the blacksmith shop and next door to the Bagley sisters’ house, where a kitchen light was shining. Surely Spence wouldn’t come out with the key while the blue car was waiting...
“Besides,” she whispered to Thelma, “the sisters have a bed and a bathroom. You might not find either in the blacksmith shop.”
Miss Maud threw her arms around Thelma. “We heard you were up in Rockbury. Oh, you poor dear thing! Oh come in, come in. How did you ever get back?”
“This dear child rescued me,” said Thelma, still puffing and out of breath. She dropped gratefully into a kitchen chair.
“Oh, you sweetheart,” said Miss Maud, and hugged Zoe.
Miss Gertie came into the room and served up hot lentil soup, cheese and crackers and Kickapoo juice, made from lemonade and iced tea. When they were seated around the table she flung up her arms and said, “Now tell us all about it. Every last detail.”
So Thelma and Zoe took turns with the story of the kidnapping and then the Rockbury rescue. It turned out that Miss Gertie had actually watched the relatives with Thelma from a window.
“So I said to Maud, ‘Maudie, something is wrong here. Thelma doesn’t want to go with that pair. You can see it by the way she’s resisting!’ So I can be a witness when you take them to court, Thelma.”
“First we have to catch them. Prove they’ve done something really bad. But we’re working on the case,” Zoe said.
“My stars,” said Thelma, patting Zoe’s shoulder, “this is one precocious child. Without her and that young Spence Riley I’d still be in that awful room with those two crazies.”
“Maybe they weren’t so crazy when they got there, either,” said Zoe thoughtfully. “Maybe we can reform the whole system.”
“My,” said Miss Maud, “I taught you right, didn’t I, child. I’m so proud of you!” She pulled herself out of her seat and planted a soupy kiss on Zoe’s cheek.
The four talked for a while longer until Miss Gertie noticed the glazed look in Thelma’s eyes and escorted her up to bed.
“Don’t let anyone know she’s here,” Zoe warned. She followed the sisters upstairs where Miss Gertie was already running a warm bath.
“Oh no, dear, we’ll keep mum as a chrysanthe-mum,” Miss Maud promised.
“And soon,” said Miss Thelma, rubbing her bleary eyes, “we’ll go to the bank and get out that safe deposit box. And see what it is those two are looking for.”
“Tomorrow morning, please?” said Zoe.
“Tomorrow? Well, all right, dear,” said Thelma. “We’ll have to take a taxi.”
“But Miss Thelma will have to go in disguise,” Zoe reminded the sisters. “In case those kidnappers are hanging around the bank. Can you help us?”
“Count on us,” said Miss Gertie. “I still have that blond wig I wore at Halloween.” She wiggled her hips in a mock dance, Zoe giggled. Gertie had looked absurd at Halloween in a yellow wig and a pink mini skirt with her knobby knees bulging out.
Zoe was on her way downstairs when she had another thought. “Have you seen that pair before? That Cedric and Chloe? I mean, before they took off with Miss Thelma?”
Miss Maud thought a moment. “Well, I didn’t exactly see them, dear, but come to think of it, I did see a blue car the day Agnes Fairweather died. It arrived just after we went over with the pea soup. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. But now...” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh. Do you think they did it? Killed Agnes Fairweather?”
“Maybe,” said Zoe. “But why? And how? And what is it they want? We’ve got to figure all that out.”
Spence opened the front door and tiptoed up the stairs, carefully avoiding the fourth step that creaked. His stealth didn’t work. His mother stood at the top landing. Her elbow was bent, her eyes on her thin gold watch.
“Ten-thirty-five? Past your curfew,” she said, her lips in a “You-were-told-not-to-and-you-did-it” grimace.
“Well, you see I was – I mean we were, I mean – ” Spence only stammered when he was in the wrong. His mother knew it. She smiled grimly and pointed a finger at his nose.
“You weren’t at Lili Laski’s house. I called next door. Zoe wasn’t either. So where were you, please, Mister?”
“I was... I was...” Spence couldn’t remember what Zoe had made up for an excuse. Or had she made one? He only knew he had to get his mother off his back. He had to get a key and a pillow over to the blacksmith shop. Zoe and Miss Thelma would be waiting out back. It was a cool night, Miss Thelma was tired. She had fallen asleep just as they arrived in Branbury, and they’d had to wake her up.
But he couldn’t tell his mother all this. She definitely wouldn’t understand. She was a good mother as mothers went; she bought all his favorite foods, but she had her rules. She wasn’t flexible like his dad.
Spence didn’t like to lie. For one thing, he never got away with it when he did. His mother always saw through him.
On the other hand, he couldn’t tell her the truth. He couldn’t betray Zoe and Miss Thelma.
“We were in town,” he said finally. “Fooling around. We met some...kids. We had to walk home.”
“What? Three miles you walked in the dark?”
Now he’d done it. She was really mad.
“Ronald,” she called to his father, who was in the living room tuning up his guitar. “This boy walked three miles in the dark.”
“Uh huh,” his father said, and went on tuning the guitar.
Now his mother was mad at his father. She marched downstairs and Spence heard the guitar stop and his mother’s voice telling his father he was “too lenient. Why, the boy might have been run over-or worse!” Her voice rose to a shriek. Spence wondered what she had meant by ‘worse.’
He seized the chance to escape. He snatched up the shop key from a pantry hook, then went to his room and stuffed a pillow into his backpack. He hollered “Good night” to his parents, and arranged a second pillow in his bed to make it look like he was sleeping there, and turned out the light.
Then he ran down the back stairs and out the back door. Inside the house his mother was still lecturing his father.
The night was quiet, except for a light rain sprinkling the trees and bushes. The mountains looked dark and brooding; the moon had disappeared. Now it would be Zoe’s turn to be mad. She and Miss Thelma would not only be tired, but wet, too. He hurried across the road and around the south side of the blacksmith shop. He didn’t dare call out in case his parents stopped arguing and heard him.
Something grabbed his arm and yanked him off his feet.
“Zoe, I tried – ” he began, and a hand clapped over his mouth. A car door opened and he was shoved in. The door slammed, and locked. Before he could catch his breath he was rushed down the road, with a handkerchief stuffed into his mouth.
“Eh ee o-o-o,” he cried, but no one answered. No one heard.
“Keep the doors locked now,” Zoe warned Miss Maud as she left the house and headed for Spence’s place. It was raining, but she wanted to give him the rest of the chocolate peanuts she owed him for a good night’s work. And she wanted him to know that Miss Thelma was safe at the Bagley sisters’ house.
But when she got out in the road, the blue car was still there, parked in a patch of bushes by the blacksmith shop. The kidnappers would have seen something when she and Spence arrived with Thelma. Or else – and her heart skipped about in her chest – they were waiting for her. Or for Spence. To make them tell where Aunt Thelma was. Suddenly panicked, she ran back to the Bagleys’ house.
But Spence might try to cross the street to meet me and not see the blue car, she thought as she stood looking out the Bagleys’ front door. Taking a deep breath, she plunged outside again and walked quickly back to the blacksmith shop.
The blue car was gone!
And she didn’t see Spence. So she ran across the road and tapped boldly on his door. It was late, but she knew that Mr. Riley was a night owl. Whenever she opened her window at night she could hear him thumping away on his guitar.
She wasn’t prepared for the reception she got. Both parents swept her into the house and lectured her for coming in so late. And where was Spence? they demanded. Mrs. Riley peered into the darkness behind Zoe, expecting to see him.
He wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the house either, they said. He wasn’t at Zoe’s house, for the Rileys had already contacted her parents. And he wasn’t at Tiny Alice’s house, because they’d called there as well.
And he wasn’t at the Bagley sisters’ house. Zoe saw that the lights were out. The night was as black as a blackbird’s eye.
Zoe crossed her arms tightly over her shivering chest. There was only one place he could be. And she had to tell his parents, even though it meant they would call the police. And then it wouldn’t be her case anymore because the police would solve it.
Or try to solve it. She sank down into a chair in the Rileys’ living room and poured out her story of the kidnappers (without mentioning Miss Thelma’s rescue) while the parents looked on, openmouthed. The police arrived – called by a hysterical Mrs. Riley – and Zoe had to tell the story over again and describe Cedric and Chloe. For she was sure they were the ones who had taken Spence.
It was all her fault. Spence hadn’t wanted to get involved in the first place; he hadn’t even wanted to join the Northern Spy Club. He could be badly hurt and all because of her.
Things were even worse, she discovered, when she got home that night. Her parents were upset that she had arrived so late and had fibbed about spending the evening at Lily’s house. They had called Lili’s mother and discovered the truth.
Worse again, an hour ago the police had come to see Zoe’s father. An anonymous caller had warned that there was an insecticide called “malathion” in the Elwood’s apple barn, and the police had a warrant to search there. It was malathion they had found in that fatal bowl of pea soup.
“Sure, I have malathion,” her father protested. “I use it to zap the apple maggots and bagworms. But I certainly didn’t put it in Agnes Fairweather’s pea soup!”
“Of course you didn’t, Dan,” said Zoe’s mother, patting his arm. “We all know you didn’t.”
“But they don’t know,” said Zoe’s father, and balled his hands into fists.
“Can’t you see, Dad?” said Kelby’s voice, echoing down the stovepipe hole. “That’s where the Bagley sisters got it. They came over at midnight and stole it and they put it in the soup. You never lock the barn, Dad.”
“It’s true, I don’t,” said their father, looking thoughtful.
“But the sisters didn’t steal it, I know they didn’t!”
“You can’t prove that,” growled Kelby through the stovepipe hole. “You know you can’t.”
“I can. I really think I can,” said Zoe, frowning at the hole. When her parents looked at her she reddened, and then shrugged. Kelby was listening. She didn’t want him or her parents to know what the sisters had said about the kidnappers’ car being in Alice’s driveway on the day of Agnes Fairweather’s death. Not yet, anyway. Not until she had more proof. Not until she found out exactly what the kidnappers wanted with that safe deposit key. Not until Spence was safe and back in his home, playing his cello.
Oh, Spence.
She told her parents about Spence being missing, and probably kidnapped. Her mother gave a shriek and started for next door to comfort Spence’s mother. She told her husband to “stay with the children till I get back, and lock the door behind you.”
“Three more days,” Kelby hissed down the pipe while her father was deep in a telephone conversation with Spence’s dad. “Only three more day-y-s.”
“I know, I know, don’t remind me,” said Zoe, and sank down helplessly on the sofa.
When Zoe arrived at the Bagley sisters’ house Wednesday morning she found a stranger in the kitchen: a woman in a curly black wig with hot pink lipstick and a shapeless flowered Muu-Muu that made her look like a cross between a mango fruit and a circus elephant.
But the voice was familiar, and when she heard it she had to smile. It was Miss Thelma. Miss Maud was holding up a purple hat with a peacock feather to complete the disguise.
“How will the bank clerk know it’s you under that hat?” asked Zoe, aware that the disguise could create a problem.
“I can take off the wig when I get into the bank, can’t I?” said Thelma.
“And have everybody staring at you? Don’t you have a gray wig?” Zoe asked Miss Gertie.
“Wait right there, dear, I have just the remedy.” Miss Gertie trotted upstairs.
She came back down with a jar of powder in her hand. She draped a kitchen towel over Thelma’s shoulders and sprinkled the powder over the black wig. In moments Thelma was no longer white-haired or black-haired, but more or less gray-haired.
“I just love doing this!” Miss Gertie exulted as she smoothed out the pink lipstick and added a little rouge to her wrinkled cheeks.
She held up a mirror and Thelma gave a shriek. “Who is it?” she cried.
“Don’t worry, it will all wash off,” said Miss Maud, and glanced at her watch. “The bank opens at nine, so shall we go?”
“But I haven’t called the taxi,” said Zoe.
Miss Maud said, “Taxi? Heavens no. We’ll drive.”
Zoe wasn’t so sure about that. Miss Maud’s license had been suspended, Zoe’s mother said, for driving too fast through the village and then knocking down a row of traffic signs.
“I’m not going to drive,” said Miss Maud. “Gertie will.”
Oh well, thought Zoe, it was only five minutes into town. And Miss Gertie’s eyeglasses weren’t quite as thick as Miss Maud’s. So they all piled into the sisters’ twenty-year-old green Dodge and in twelve minutes by Zoe’s watch they were at the bank.
There was no sign of the two-tone blue car as Aunt Thelma went into the bank with Zoe a few feet behind. The clerk looked startled when she saw Miss Thelma, but Thelma produced the proper identification and followed the clerk into the inner sanctum while Zoe stood guard.
The Bagley sisters remained in their car to look out for the police, for it turned out that Miss Gertie’s license hadn’t been renewed either, since the time she’d ploughed into the back of the funeral director’s limousine. Unfortunately, it had a body in it, and he took her to court.
Miss Thelma came out fifteen minutes later, her eyes sparkling with the excitement of the adventure, her wig askew. She nodded at Zoe and exited the bank. Zoe followed her out to the parking lot. Seeing no one watching, she hopped into the car behind her and locked the door.
“Home, James,” said Miss Maud.
Zoe asked, “Who’s James?”
“Just a manner of speaking,” said Thelma.
Miss Gertie ground out of the parking lot, barely missing an elderly man who was tapping his way along with a hand-carved cane. But the old man leapt easily out of the way. His hat blew off in the wind and Zoe saw that he had a long thin nose like Cedric. He jumped into a yellow taxi and it roared off.
“Follow that taxi,” she told Gertie. She explained about Spence being missing and probably kidnapped, and the three women cried out in shock.
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh my, oh goodness gracious,” Miss Gertie kept muttering, wild-eyed and pink-cheeked. She careened around a corner after the taxi and then down Main Street, and then into Seymour Street where she knocked over a STOP sign. She came to a halt across from a green house with green shutters and a sign that said ACTORS STUDIO.
The man clambered out of the taxi and pulled off a white wig. It wasn’t Cedric at all. It was a much younger man, with frizzy blonde hair. A woman came out on the porch to greet him and it wasn’t Chloe, either.
“It was a red herring,” said Zoe, who’d learned the phrase from reading Nancy Drew mysteries. “It wasn’t the kidnapper, and we didn’t find Spence. But we will, oh, we will. We have to!”
“Home, James,” she said to Miss Gertie.
Back at the house, Aunt Thelma opened up her roomy black purse and emptied out a pile of papers. Zoe had almost forgotten the safe deposit box in the excitement of the taxi pursuit.
“Did you find it?” she asked, goosebumps running up and down her spine. She sat down at the table beside Miss Thelma while the sisters went out to work in the garden.
“I don’t know,” said Thelma. “I didn’t take time to look through ev-rything – I just dumped it all in my purse. So you can help me look.”
There was a will, a deed to Thelma’s house, and a diamond ring. Miss Thelma looked misty-eyed as she held up the ring. Zoe wanted to ask about the ring, but Thelma’s face kept her from asking.
There was a birth certificate showing that Thelma had been born in Alburg, Vermont on July 22, 1929. Her half sister, Agnes, was two years older. “And Agnes never got over that. She always bossed me around.”
“But you loved each other?” asked Zoe, who yearned for a sister, but had only the one annoying older brother.
“Yes, we argued, but we got along. After all, we had the same mother. We would have liked to live together after Agnes became a widow. Agnes wasn’t comfortable in that house after her son, Alice’s father, died, but she stayed put because of young Alice.”
“Then eventually she was planning to move in next door with you?” asked Zoe, who loved to hear about other people’s lives. She reached for a doughnut. She did love the sisters’ homemade doughnuts. She felt sad, thinking how Spence would probably like one right this minute.
“Not next door, no. There’s only the one bedroom and Agnes liked her own space. No, we were planning to go to the farm.”
“The farm?”
“Up in Alburg. It was my great-grandfather’s farm. He bought the land just after the American Revolution. Vermont had declared itself a Republic at that time, you know. Independent of all the American colonies!” Thelma seemed proud of that Republic: her chin thrust up, her eyes sparkled.
“You still own that farm?”
“Yes indeed. All three hundred-sixty acres. It will all go to Alice when I die. If she doesn’t want it, the land is to go to the state of Vermont. So no one can develop it.”
“No one lives there now?”
“No, but I rent out the land to a farmer. He keeps a few cows and sheep. We used to have forty cows in the barn, though. Oh yes, it was a well-kept farm.”
“Do you have the deed?” Zoe reached for a second doughnut. She was sure the sisters wouldn’t mind.
Thelma fumbled through the papers and peered closely at them through her gold-rimmed glasses. Finally, she held up a paper and waved it. “Round Hill Farm, Ridge Road, Alburg, Vermont,” she read. “Three hundred-sixty acres and one eighth. We’ve had offers,” she said. “Oh yes, we’ve had offers to buy it. A million dollars one offer was! They were planning to put sixty houses on it. They’d make a good ten million dollar profit.”
“Whoa,” said Zoe, her eyes widening. “But you wouldn’t sell?”
“No, child, we wouldn’t. Not ever,” said Thelma. “Agnes and I wouldn’t sell so much as one half-acre.”
“Ten million,” said Zoe, the doughnut ballooning out her cheek. “I suppose a person would kill for that farm.”
Thelma looked up slowly; a glimmer of understanding came over her face.
“A person would kill to have that farm,” Thelma repeated. “Yes, indeed, a person would.”
When Zoe got back to her house she found a policeman waiting. He was a tall, robust fellow with a mole by his nose and a shiny badge. He wanted to question her again.
“There’s nothing more you can tell us?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he said, “What were you two doing that would make that pair want to kidnap you? If it was that pair,” he said. “We haven’t ruled out a runaway boy.”
“Spence wouldn’t run away!” cried Zoe. “Never! And I’m sure it was that pair. We happened to see them kidnapping Alice Fairweather’s Aunt Thelma, I told you, and they want us out of the way. Oh yes,” she said when the policeman looked skeptical. “I tried to stop them, and then Spence got the license number. I mean, part of it.”
The policeman looked interested. He reached out a hand as though Zoe had the license number on a piece of paper, when she actually had it in her head. That is, half of it in her head. “It began with MBV.”
“It was a blue car, you said.”
“Half and half. I mean half dark blue and half light blue, like it had just been painted.”
While the officer was phoning the information into the police station, Zoe recalled the beeper they’d heard on the tape recorder. She’d wanted to keep that beeper to herself, but they had to find Spence. Finding Spence was more important than her solving the case, wasn’t it? Tears sprang to her eyes thinking of her friend, wondering where and how he was.
“She’s just a little kid,” said Kelby, coming into the room. He was wearing his Northern Spy Club badge, trying to look important. “She doesn’t know anything about anything,” he told the policeman.
“I do so!” she cried. “I know a lot about a lot!” Her voice softened when she saw the man lean forward. “I mean – other things. I’ve told you all I know, officer. Except...”
“Except?” the officer said.
“Except that Cedric had a beeper. It went off when they put Miss Thelma into the car. But he turned it off again so I couldn’t hear what it said. But it could mean he’s an ambulance volunteer or something.”
Kelby scoffed. “It could mean a lot of things. Anyone can wear a beeper. I could wear one.”
“Sonny, I’m talking to your sister,” said the officer. Kelby frowned and polished his badge with his bony knuckles.
“The officer is talking to me,” said Zoe, making a face at her brother. She wasn’t going to be intimidated by any badge. Although she wanted one terribly, she had to admit. “But there’s nothing more I can tell you, sir.”
“Well, now, if you think of anything more, let me know,” he said, smiling down at her, and she said, “Find him please. Find Spence!”
Kelby ran after the man as he was leaving and Zoe heard him say: “Bagley sisters. They’re the ones you should be investigating, officer –not my father or this man with a beeper. I mean, it was their pea soup. They were arguing, too. With Agnes Fairweather. Just before she died. And the sisters came over to our house to get cider. They could’ve stolen that insecticide from Dad’s barn.”
The officer said he might pay another visit to the Bagley sisters after he inspected the apple barn, and then he went out.
“Traitor!” Zoe hollered after Kelby, and she banged out of the house.
She ran back over to the Bagley sisters’ to warn them about the officer. “He shouldn’t see Miss Thelma here,” she told them, out of breath from running. “The police think she’s still at Rockbury. And Kelby thinks you were having an argument with Alice’s granny before she died. He made it sound suspicious.”
For a moment the sisters didn’t say a word. Zoe worried that there might have been a bad argument. But then the two burst out laughing.
“We argued over the pea soup!” Miss Maud said, and Miss Gertie said, “We always put in onions, and Agnes thought that onions spoiled the soup. We said the soup was dull, dull without it, didn’t we, Maud?”
“Absolutely,” said Maud. “The onions add personality. I mean, it isn’t as though Agnes is –was allergic to onions, oh no. She was stubborn, that’s all. She wouldn’t even taste the soup with onions, would she, Gertie? We put a bowl in front of her and she just sat there, staring at it. It was rather annoying.”
“No, she wasn’t an adventuresome person at all. And that’s why we sent over a pot of plain pea soup, no onions. But,” Gertie added quickly, “she was a lovely, sweet lady. We all had good times together, didn’t we, Maud?”
“Yes, yes, we did. Oh indeed, we did.” Miss Maud wiped away a tear with an embroidered hankie.
Miss Thelma came into the house then, with an armful of rosy colored flowers. “Alice picked them. She happened to see me in the garden. I know, dear,” she said to Zoe, “I shouldn’t have let anyone see me. But I saw Alice coming out of her house and I just needed a hug, oh, so badly! So I beckoned her over, and we both hugged and wept buckets.”
“It’s oleander,” said Miss Maud. “It’s a poisonous plant. But it has such gorgeous red blooms. Just don’t eat them, that’s all.”
“Or put them in the soup,” said Miss Gertie –“though once we almost did,” and both sisters giggled.
Alice popped through the door and everyone started talking and hugging at once until a police car pulled into the driveway and Miss Gertie hustled Thelma upstairs. Miss Maud brought out a pitcher of milk and fresh doughnuts and arranged the oleander in a vase. And they all sat down around the table as though they hadn’t a care in the world.
When the officer came in with his shiny badge and his ironed blue shirt, they looked up innocently. “The argument was over pea soup, officer,” said Zoe. Miss Maud explained again about the onions, and they all smiled. Except the officer. He was jotting down notes on a yellow pad. He looked serious. “The Community Players are putting on a show in town,” he said. “My wife is in it. It’s called Arsenic and Old Lace.”
Zoe had heard of that play; her parents had rented the movie version on video. It was about two old ladies who poisoned their gentlemen visitors with arsenic. “To put them out of their misery,” as they explained it.
Miss Gertie jumped up out of her chair to face the officer. Her face was as red as the oleander blooms. “I don’t care for the insinuation, officer. Not one bit, no. We don’t take in gentlemen callers, and Agnes Fairweather was a good friend and we certainly didn’t poison her!”
“Indeed not,” cried Miss Maud, standing up beside her sister. “You can’t judge a book by its cover, Mr. Policeman. We may look like the ancient ladies in that play but we’re not poisoners, oh, no! And I’ve a mind to sue you for implying that we are. Why, we were devastated by Agnes Fairweather’s death! All our old friends dying away. One by one.”
“One by one,” murmured Miss Gertie, sitting back down, looking tearful.
“First Agnes,” Miss Maud went on, “and now Thelma. Poor Thelma, her half sister. Who was responsible for taking her away? Think about that, officer. Find out what that person put in the pea soup!”
The officer colored; he stuck a tongue in his cheek. He scribbled something on his notepad. He was looking more sympathetic now. He admired the red oleander flowers in the vase. The sisters offered him a sugar doughnut and he looked longingly at it, but then refused. He had to get on, he said. There was work to do. A missing boy.
“It’s possible that it’s all connected: the kidnapping and Agnes Fairweather’s death. And Thelma Fairweather’s, um, departure,” he said, as though he was the first one to think so.
“Why, there’s a brilliant thought,” said Miss Maud, winking at Zoe, and the officer smiled and took the doughnut anyway. Miss Gertie wrapped it up for him in a yellow napkin. “And give these flowers to your wife,” said Miss Maud, pulling the rosy oleander blooms out of the vase. “But don’t let her put them in your soup,” she warned, “they’ll poison the lot of you.”
The officer looked startled. He waved away the flowers. He squinted his eyes at the sisters. But before he could say anything, his beeper went off. Zoe heard a crackly voice saying, “A blue car with the New York license MBV285 was spotted at the East Branbury Mobil station. Get out there at once.” The officer dashed out to his car.
Zoe looked at Miss Gertie and said, “I think you need gas in your car, don’t you?”
Miss Gertie looked confused at first, and then her eyes brightened and she said, “Yes. Yes, we do need gas. You’re so perceptive, Zoe. We’re off again then, are we?”
“And hurry,” said Zoe. “To the East Branbury Mobil!”
Spence heard a door slam downstairs and then everything was quiet. Even the woman, Chloe, was gone – otherwise he would have heard the soap operas, the coffee grinder, now and then a curse when she tripped over a cat or a can opener didn’t work.
He tried the attic door for the hundredth time, but of course it was locked. There were bars on the two windows. Outdoors he could see no other signs of habitation, only a chimney poking up through the maple leaves. If there were people living next door, they couldn’t see him. Just in case, though, as he had done every hour since they brought him here, he waved his arms. He wrote HELP with a piece of chalk he’d had in his pocket. Once the woman had come up when he was at the window and he’d had to erase it quickly with his sleeve.
But no one came to rescue him. No one knew he was here. Not even his parents. Not even his friend, Zoe.
At first he was mad at her for getting him into this.
If she hadn’t wanted to join that foolish Northern Spy Club...if he hadn’t said he would help...if they hadn’t gone to Rockbury and kidnapped old Aunt Thelma...if he hadn’t gone home to get the key for the blacksmith shop...if he hadn’t come back with it and stumbled on that pair...
But he had. He sank down on one of the dusty boxes that was piled up by the window. He had done all those things. And to tell the truth, it had been kind of fun. More fun than sitting home, practicing the cello. More fun than cleaning the bathroom and having his mother tell him it wasn’t done right, to do it over again – he’d forgotten to wash the soap dish.
Besides, he liked those old ladies, the Bagley sisters. He didn’t want them to go to jail. He didn’t want anyone hurting Alice’s aunt Thelma. She was a good sport, and a lot more fun than his own Aunt Beatrice, who wrinkled her nose when he played a piece on the cello and said, “So that was Mozart?”
And now he was useless. He’d been caught, and he couldn’t help Aunt Thelma or the Bagley sisters or Zoe.
He got up from the box, feeling restless. Then he realized he had sunk down into it; the top flaps had caved in. Curious, he opened it up. Inside were piles of letters. They looked quite recent, all with this year’s date. Oddly, they were from zoos. The New City Zoo, the Plum Bush Zoo, the Land’s End Zoo. What, he wondered, would the couple want with zoos? He hadn’t heard any animals in this house bark or snarl or growl. A cat maybe, but cats weren’t in zoos.
He opened up one of the letters.
Dear Mr. Wolfadder:
In response to your query, yes, we will be able to provide your wildlife park with an aging male lion and a female tiger. However, we have had other requests, so please let us know as soon as possible when and where to transport them.
Yours,
Walter S. Bayre
Spence opened up another letter. This time it was a wild boar and two twenty-year-old black bears. All being offered to the Wildlife Park. A third zoo would send along a seventy-year-old elephant and two elderly zebras.
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.
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.
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?
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.
And where was Spence? She stumbled about the space, she couldn’t stand upright without hitting her head. But she saw no one. He had been here, though. There was a banana peel on the floor, a mattress and pillow, and a chamber pot. Well, at least it had been emptied. The pillow had the indentation of a head. Spence’s head. Was this where she was to sleep? But where was Spence? What had they done with Spence, her good friend, her fellow sleuth?
“Oh, Spence, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she moaned, dropping down on the mattress. “I got you into this and now...”
Her face was a waterfall. She wiped it with a sleeve.
“Now we’re both in a heck of a mess,” said a voice. Zoe sprang up. “What? Oh, Spence, Spence!” She jumped up to hug him. For there he was, standing over her.
Then embarrassed, she pushed him away again. “So where were you? I didn’t see you when I came in.”
“Sleeping,” he said. “Over there. Behind that pile of boxes.” He pointed to a far corner of the attic. “I was going through some of the boxes. Thinking I might find something. He looked pleased with his detective work. “And I did find, well, some stuff.” He patted his pocket. “But then I fell asleep. I think they put something in the spaghetti sauce they fed me. It’s been hard to stay awake.”
“Why did you eat it then? Why didn’t you throw it out?”
“Where? On the floor? They’d notice. Force it down my throat.”
“Has it been awful?” she asked. “Have they mistreated you?” They were both sitting on the mattress now. She hoped they’d bring one for her. There wasn’t room for two people to sleep on this one.
“Awful,” he said. “Humungously awful. They haven’t hit me or anything, but they shove me around and talk mean. Especially since they can’t get any information out of me. I didn’t say a word about the key. I promise I didn’t!”
“I know you didn’t. I overheard them say that. You deserve a whole bunch of these.” She pulled the baggie of chocolate peanuts out of her pocket.
“Thanks,” he said, stuffing a handful into his mouth. “I miss being home, you know. I miss my parents.”
“They’re upset. Both of them. Worried about you.”
“Yeah. Jeezum. I’m sorry I lost it when Mom got mad at me last night, when we came in late. I didn’t know, well, what was going to happen.”
“It was two nights ago, Spence. It was last night when they got me. Rolled me up in a rug and then dumped me somewhere. It must have been downstairs or you would have seen me.”
She was suddenly aware. “That means today’s Thursday. The next to last day. I have to solve this crime by tomorrow midnight or I won’t get that badge!”
“You have to walk the beam, too,” Spence reminded her.
“Oh I can do that anytime. I’ve been practicing in between.”
“In between what?”
“In between looking for the kidnappers. And trying to find you. And hiding Miss Thelma. And dealing with the police.” She told the whole story, whispering, of course, in case someone was eavesdropping beyond the attic door.
“It was my fault,” said Spence.
“What was your fault?”
“Getting caught. Going across the street with the pillow for Miss Thelma and letting myself be ambushed. I never saw them, honest.”
“Of course not. You didn’t know they were hiding there. But you did me a real favor, Spence.”
“I did? What was that?”
“You led me to the kidnappers’ hideout. Now we know where they are. And I’ve got enough evidence to convict them. Well, almost. We can’t prove they killed Alice’s granny, but we’ve got a motive. Oh, gosh.” She sighed deeply.
“What? What is it?”
“It’s Miss Thelma. She’ll be the next one, oh, I know it. She’s the heir to that farm.”
She told Spence about the deed, and he whistled softly. “And Cedric is a relative, at least he said so. If Thelma dies, he can claim it. Oh Spence, we have to get out of here. Now.”
“But how do we do that?”
“Your tape recorder.”
“Huh?”
“I took it. Out of your room. I had it turned on when I was hiding.”
“Hey!” said Spence. “Good thinking.”
“But I left it in the back of the closet. I was in a hurry to get out of Thelma’s house.”
“Jeezum.”
“But if somebody does find it, they’ll know we’re next to the Plumleys – wherever they live.”
“It’ll be in the phone book. Maybe.”
“Alice knows I took the recorder. She might go looking. She’ll know by now I’m gone. She was watching the house.”
“But they wrapped you in a rug, you said. How could she see you go out?”
Zoe sank her chin in her hands. Then lifted it again. “But Miss Gertie will worry. She was all ready to follow the kidnappers’ car. She’ll have seen it leave. Maybe since she didn’t see me, she’ll figure I was in that rug.”
“I don’t know,” said Spence. “A rug’s not a place she’d expect to see you.” He didn’t sound too encouraging. “Anyway, she still won’t know we’re here. In this house.”
“You’re right. We’ll have to find a way out of here ourselves.”
Spence sat up, thought a minute. His chin dropped in his hands.
“The woman, Chloe,” he said finally. “I don’t think she likes it that I’m here. We could bribe her.”
“With what? What have we got to offer?”
“Well, if she’s caught, she’ll go to jail, right? If she lets us out they might go easy on her.”
“Uh huh. But Cedric. When he finds out she’s let us go – I mean, she’s afraid of him. I could tell by the way her voice got all shaky when she stood up to him.”
“We could try anyway,” said Spence, flipping over on his stomach.
“So what was in those papers you found? Anything incriminating?”
Spence sat up straight as if he’d just remembered something important. He pulled a letter out of his pocket and handed it to Zoe.
She read it and frowned. “A female tiger? A lion? What would they want with animals like that? What would anyone want except a zoo? I mean, these are old animals.”
“That’s what I asked myself. Sounds crazy to me.”
Zoe remembered something her parents had been listening to on the evening news. Something about wild animals. What was it? She couldn’t seem to think straight. Her mind was frazzled; a tin drum was beating in her head.
“Maybe they’re starting their own zoo on that farm,” Spence said. “Maybe – ”
“Shush,” Zoe interrupted. She could hear footsteps on the attic stairs. “One of them is coming.”
“I hope they’re going to feed us.”
“At eleven o’clock in the morning?” said Zoe, looking at her watch. “They’ll have something else in mind.”
“Like what?”
“Like setting a boa constrictor loose in the attic. Like…” She felt a sneeze coming on, and stuck a finger under her nose. She’d have to do something about her allergies if she was going to be a detective.
She sneezed, twice. “Ker-CHOO! Ker-CHOO.”
“Gezuntite,” said Spence. “Let’s hope it’s Chloe. I’ll start the sweet talk.”
The attic door opened. It wasn’t Chloe. Out of her watery eyes Zoe saw a large black shoe.
And beside it, a dangling rope.
“Hold out your h-hands,” said Cedric in his gravelly, stuttery voice.
“What for?” said Zoe bravely, although she could tell what Cedric was planning to do by the way he held out the rope.
“We’re not going anywhere,” said Spence. “Why do you have to tie our hands?”
“I ask the q-questions around here, not you,” said Cedric. He bound first Zoe’s, and then Spence’s hands, at the wrist.
“Ow, too tight,” Zoe complained, but Cedric only glared down at her from his great height.
“Be thankful I didn’t t-tie ’em behind your back,” he growled. “Now down those steps. And not a word out of you.”
Zoe stumbled on the top step and Cedric grasped her shirt collar. “W-watch where you’re going.”
She moved on down the rickety attic steps, and wondered if she could walk the barn beam with her hands tied. It would be interesting to try, she thought. She stumbled again, banging her hip bone against the wall. She did need her hands for balance, after all.
“Her hands look blue. The rope’s too tight,” said Chloe, who was waiting in the kitchen where they were herded. She was dressed for traveling. She carried a red purse that matched her red alligator shoes. Zoe looked at her gratefully, and held out her hands.
But nasty Cedric shook his head. “Get in the car. And if you make a sound, you’ll be s-sorry.”
It wasn’t the two-tone blue car. It was a white car with a green Vermont license plate that read CCQ258. Zoe said the numbers three times to herself so that she’d remember them. Cedric shoved her and Spence into the back seat. Chloe got in beside them to keep guard.
The car started up with a growl and a puff of exhaust. Chloe made them keep their heads down so they couldn’t see what direction they were moving in. When Zoe turned her head she could only gaze into Spence’s wide blue eyes. He was scared, she could see that. And so was she; she had to admit it. Her palms were sweating, her throat dry. They were moving out of town. She could sense it, there was less traffic here. It was as if they were traveling to the far ends of the earth, away from everything they loved: parents, pets, friends, the apple orchard.
She even missed Kelby. Kelby, with all his teasing, bulldozing ways. She would give anything just to see old Kelby! And her parents – how upset they must be. How worried, not knowing how she was, where she was. The thought of no one knowing where she was made her feel even more alone and scared.
But there was Tiny Alice. And Miss Gertie. They had seen the white car. They would have gotten its license number, wouldn’t they? And someone might find that tape recorder? Her hopes rose again.
And then fell. Who would know where they were now? Where they were going?
The car raced on. They were definitely out in the country. She hadn’t heard another car pass by for at least fifteen minutes.
Then Spence spoke up. “I have to pee,” he said. “I need to get out.”
“Hold it,” said Cedric from the front seat.
“I can’t,” said Spence. His anguished face told Zoe that he really couldn’t.
“Dumb kids,” Cedric muttered, and skidded to a stop at a wooded area. “Make it q-quick then.”
“I have to go, too,” Zoe told Chloe.
“When the boy comes back.” Cedric got out and followed Spence toward the bushes.
When the pair came back, Chloe rebelled. “I can’t move another step,” she said. “Where’s the girl going to go anyway with those hands tied?”
“Go with her,” Cedric ordered.
“You don’t have to come,” Zoe told Chloe as they started down a little path. “You don’t want to ruin your pretty red shoes.”
Chloe looked down at her shiny new shoes. “Then be quick about it and get back here.” Breathing hard, Chloe leaned against an oak tree. There were tiny beads of perspiration on her brow.
Zoe moved out of sight, but she called back to assure Chloe that she was still there. “It’s going to take a while with my hands tied,” she said.
She noticed that the path continued past the clump of bushes, and then forked. A path meant that someone had made it – it must lead somewhere. Someone might live at the end of it. She moved quietly on down the path, trying not to step on twigs or stones that would scatter. She didn’t want to leave Spence, but it might be the only way she could find help for both of them.
She broke into a run, taking the left fork. She heard Chloe’s voice calling from a distance behind her. But the woman would never be able to catch up in those spike heels.
Far behind, she heard Cedric’s voice. He would have discovered that she was gone. She ran on, taking another fork in the path. He wouldn’t know which fork she had taken.
The path ended suddenly at a stone wall. It would be hard to scale it with her hands tied. But she managed to loosen the rope a bit on a sharp twig. She wedged her feet in the crevices and propelled her body up and onto the top. She lay there panting. She could hardly move; her legs and arms were paralyzed with fear.
But she had to keep moving; she had to escape, to call the police. She had to save Spence.
She pulled herself up and staggered along the top for a few yards. She could do it, even with her hands tied. She’d show Kelby!
But she had to get back home, if she was to show him.
Hearing Cedric’s voice again, and closer, she jumped down and found herself in a cow pasture. A dozen brown Jersey cows were grazing in a field. They all turned to stare at her. “Excuse me, ladies,” she said, and stumbled past them, hardly feeling her legs. One of them bellowed. Where there were cows, she knew, there must be people.
She ran on through daisies, burdock and thistle. The Adirondack Mountains rose purply-blue in the west; she sensed that she wasn’t far from Lake Champlain. She couldn’t hear Cedric’s voice – he might have taken the wrong fork. She was out of breath, her chest pained from running. Her eyes, too, were running, her allergies again. There was a wagon full of hay in front of her. And beyond it, a red barn. She lurched toward it, and burst, exhausted, through the double doors.
Inside, a woman in blue jeans was cleaning out a stall. She wheeled about, startled, to see Zoe.
“Good heavens, child. Where have you come from? What are you doing with your hands tied like that?”
Zoe sank down on her knees. She was too dazed to talk. She could only hold out her bound hands, and the woman cut through the rope with a pair of shears.
After that everything was a blur. Zoe was in a farmhouse kitchen, seated at a table with a yellow checkered cloth, drinking milk and munching a chicken sandwich. It tasted wonderful. The woman was kind, concerned; she wanted to hear what had happened to Zoe. She wanted to know if she should call Zoe’s parents.
“Oh yes, please,” cried Zoe. “But wait – I have to talk to the police first. I need to give them a license number. Where are we now? What town are we in?”
“This is Shelburne Falls, dear. We’re in the country, but not far from the city of Burlington.”
“Then call the police, please. The Branbury police department. And hurry! The kidnappers still have my friend, Spence.” She wrote down the plate number on a paper napkin. Her hands were shaking from nerves and fatigue. The chief promised to send out officers at once. “And they’re the ones who killed Agnes Fairweather,” Zoe cried. “I’m sure of it. I can’t prove it yet, but give me time.”
Although there was hardly any time left, she realized. It was already three o’clock. By tomorrow midnight her time would be up.
The chief was still talking, saying how relieved they were that she was all right. Saying what a good job she’d done to help locate the kidnappers. A police car would come by shortly to pick her up at the dairy farm and take her back to the police station. Her parents were frantic and wanted to see her. The police had more questions to ask about the kidnappers.
“I can’t go home yet!” she cried. “I have to find Spence. You need me to help find that white car. To identify the rogues!”
“Well,” said the chief, “well...”
“Please,” Zoe begged. She handed the phone to the farm woman, who gave directions to her farm. The husband came in, “dying of thirst,” he said, his face was tomato-red. He nodded at Zoe as though he was used to seeing her there in his kitchen. She watched him gulp down three large glasses of iced tea and lemonade with hardly a pause.
She drank half a glassful herself. But put it down when a car swung into the driveway and a cheerful-looking female officer with honey-colored hair and eyebrows said that Zoe should come at once. Now that they had the description of the kidnappers’ car, the officer was sure they would close in on it soon. The Branbury chief had agreed that Zoe could come along, on condition she would not get out of the car.
“You should keep down low in the seat,” Officer O’Hare warned. “We’re an unmarked car, but that couple might be dangerous.”
“They might hurt Spence,” Zoe agreed. “So please hurry before they get to the Game Farm. They might put him out in the bushes with the lions and tigers!”
The officer looked at her blankly. “Lions and tigers?”
“And bears and elephants. They won’t hurt him, but the hunters will.”
For Zoe knew now what the kidnappers were doing with Aunt Thelma’s farm. They were turning it into a game farm where people could hunt the animals and take home their pelts as trophies. That was what her parents had been talking about after that TV newscast.
And if Spence were turned loose in the woods, he, too, could be hunted down!
When Cedric got back from chasing Zoe he was in a fury. Spencer saw his dark eyes bulge, a muscle throb in his neck.
“You n-numbskull!” he yelled at Chloe. “You idiot! Now you’ve done it. Now you’ve let the c-cat out of the bag. The girl will go back and blab, we’ll have the police on our tail, and our plans will be wrecked. And all because of y-you. You!” He pointed an angry finger.
Chloe was mad, too. She teetered on her red heels; her face was as red as the shoes. She pointed a finger right back at Cedric.
“Our plans were wrecked when you kidnapped those kids. I told you that was a dumb thing to do. Now we’ll go to jail if they catch us.”
“If they catch us,” said Cedric, pulling himself up to his full height. Spence could only look at his huge, stump-like legs in their worn jeans.
“Now listen,” he said. “There’s no life around here. It’ll take an hour for the girl to find a house. So g-get in the car. We’ll hide it at the f-farm, pick up the truck and take off for Canada till things cool down. Get that k-kid in the back. And keep his bloody head down!”
Spence climbed back in. He almost smiled. Zoe had gotten away! Remembering the old Hansel and Gretel fairy tale, he kicked off a shoe; someone would find it he hoped, know he’d been here.
Then he was sorry he’d done that. He might need the shoe. Zoe would lead the police to this spot anyway, wouldn’t she? She’d pick up the shoe?
The farm, he thought, as the car jolted off. That’s where they were headed. The farm where they were going to keep the tigers and lions. Was that Miss Thelma’s farm?
He wished he’d had time to leave a note. “Thelma Fairweather’s Farm,” he would have written. “In the north.” But where in the north? East or West? Well, Miss Thelma would give them directions when Zoe got to the police. If Zoe got to the police. She could be lying, hurt, in the woods somewhere. This was a wild and lonely countryside. There could be wolves and wildcats lurking about.
And what would the kidnappers do with him when they took off for Canada? They wouldn’t want him to tag along. What then? He squeezed his eyes shut, tried to pretend he was just sitting in his room, safe in his bean bag chair. He could almost hear his mother downstairs, playing the piano, in between lessons. She was a good pianist, his mother. She should be playing with some symphony orchestra. Although she’d tried. She always complained that some younger person got the piano solos. Now she was waiting for him to play in an orchestra. So she could tell friends: ‘My son is a concert cellist…’
But he didn’t think that was going to happen. He’d rather play hockey. Or chess with his dad. One thing he didn’t want to do again was to play at being a detective. No way. If they got out of this alive, Zoe would have to be on her own.
The car sped along at a breathtaking speed; it might be going eighty, ninety miles an hour. Chloe was shouting at Cedric to “Slow down! You want the cops on us? That’s a good way to get caught. With this kid here in the back? Lemme untie his hands, okay, Ced? In case we get stopped?”
“Leave ’em tied,” Cedric growled, but the car slowed down a little.
There was more traffic now. Spence sensed they were on a thruway. The thruway, he knew, wound around the city of Burlington. Maybe that’s where Thelma’s farm was – just north of Burlington. There was an address on the letter in his pocket, but he couldn’t get into his pocket, not with his hands tied. Anyway, he didn’t want Chloe to see the letter.
They kept speeding along, swerving in and out of traffic. Soon they were leaving the thruway; the traffic was quieter, there weren’t any sirens or honking horns. He couldn’t hear any other cars at all. Where were they? Would they skip the farm altogether and just head for Canada?
If so, Zoe and the police would never find them. Canada was a vast wilderness, parts of it anyway. They would hide him there among the moose and the bears and the huge silent trees and lakes. They would leave him there to starve, with his hands still tied so he couldn’t forage for berries or wild roots.
No one would find him. Ever.
“Jeezum,” he whispered to himself and a tear squeezed out. “Jeezum...”
“White Honda Civic with Vermont plates CCQ258 sighted on Route 2. Heading northwest,” the officer’s radio crackled, and the unmarked car veered sharply to the right.
Zoe was sitting in back, clutching Spence’s blue sneaker. She’d spotted it when she led the sergeant back to the turn-off where she’d escaped. What did it mean: a single shoe dropped in a patch of weeds? She was afraid to think.
A low causeway loomed up ahead and they swung across it. On either side the water lapped calm and blue-gray. A girl in a canoe drifted lazily along as though she had all the time in the world to get to where she was going. As though all was well with the world.
When it wasn’t. When Spence was still in danger.
Sergeant O’Hare saw Zoe’s concern. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll just follow at a distance. Let the kidnappers lead us to their destination before we stop the car. We’ll be sure your friend is safely out of the way before we close in.”
The sergeant sounded confident. Still Zoe worried. Things could go wrong. In the movies things always went wrong before they got better. Sometimes they didn’t get better.
“He’s heading up toward Alburg. Toward Canada,” the radio reported. “We’ve warned them at the border.”
“Alburg!” Zoe cried. “That’s the place. That’s where Miss Thelma’s farm is. The one they want to turn into a game park.”
Zoe explained about the letters, how the kidnappers were planning to turn Round Hill Farm into a place where people with guns could hunt down the tired old animals.
“And then skin them and hang the pelts on the wall for trophies,” she said, feeling outraged.
The sergeant flung up a blue arm. “Hey! That’s illegal.”
“It’s more than illegal. It’s wrong,” cried Zoe. “Those poor animals wouldn’t have a chance to get away. They’re not in their native habitat. You’ve got to stop them!”
“You can betch your life, we will,” said Sergeant O’Hare. She radioed Zoe’s partial address on to the lead cop car.
The voice came back. “Can she remember the full address?”
Zoe thought. And thought. But couldn’t recall. She’d only glanced at the deed Thelma had taken from her safe deposit box. She only remembered the Alburg part. The name had reminded her of a burger. “Veggie burger, hamburger, turkey burger,” she recited in her head. But nothing more would come.
“Keep trying.”
“I will. If only Miss Thelma were here, she’d know.” She tapped Sergeant O’Hare on the shoulder. “We can call Thelma. She’ll know! Or the Bagley sisters will. But I don’t know their number.”
“We have to keep moving, kid. We have to keep following that car. It might not be headed for Alburg at all.”
They drove on mile after mile, past ice cream parlors and pastures full of cows. Past Kentucky Fried Chickens and Veggies-for-Sale- stands. Past Elm Streets and Maple Streets and Lincoln Ways and Cow Hill Lanes. James Road, Cider Mill Road, Ridge Road.
“Ridge Road,” she said aloud, “that’s it! That was the address on the deed. I don’t remember the number, but the farm is on Ridge Road. Ridge Road in Alburg.”
“Good girl,” said the sergeant, pushing a wisp of honey hair out of her eyes. “We’ll take a chance on that. Let the others keep after the car.” She radioed the message to the other police cars and pressed down on the gas. She was originally from this area, she said, she knew a perfect shortcut.
Zoe felt the thrill of the chase fill her throat, crawl up her spine. On and on they sped, twisting this way and that, until finally the car pulled into a long winding drive. Two white silos loomed up on the right, a long red barn with a cupola. A sign read ROUND HILL FARM: Holsteins, Merino Sheep. On the left was a white farmhouse with a wide saggy porch in need of paint. An ancient blue truck was parked in front of it. Sure enough, a round green hill rose up behind the barn.
But no lions or tigers or chimps – at least, none were visible. Only three hungry-looking black and white cows stood motionless just beyond the barn.
Of course the kidnappers hadn’t opened up the game park yet. They were waiting for Thelma to hand over the land. Or die.
Zoe’s heart lurched at the thought. At this very moment someone, an unknown partner of the kidnappers perhaps, could be hunting for Thelma. She hadn’t thought of that. A third partner?
The sergeant parked the car behind the barn. She didn’t want the kidnappers spotting it when, that is – if they drove in.
“Wait in the car, stay low,” she told Zoe, and she edged around to the side of the barn. Zoe saw that she had a gun in her holster.
A short time later Zoe heard a car pull in. Instinct told her it was the kidnappers. She couldn’t bear to wait inside a police car. She got out quietly and ran to the other side of the barn where the sergeant wouldn’t see her. It was the white car all right; it was stopped in front of the farmhouse. And there was Spence in the back seat, his hands still tied! Chloe got out first. She yanked on Spence’s arm.
“Spence,” Zoe hissed – but to herself, she mustn’t warn them. “Spence,” she whispered again, and as though he’d heard her he looked toward the sound of her whisper.
“Move away from them,” her inner voice said. And again, Spence hobbled away, on one shoe, toward the barn.
“Where you going? Over here!” Cedric cried, and Spence just stood there, as if disoriented. Chloe went over to pull him back and then Sergeant O’Hare ran forward, brandishing her gun and yelling at the kidnappers that they were “Under arrest!” The policewoman had a big voice for her slim body.
Chloe grabbed Spence’s arm, but Zoe raced out from the side of the barn and yanked him away.
“Get back!” the sergeant called to Zoe, and she did. But she had Spence. She hugged him until he cried out.
“I can’t hug back,” he said. “My hands are tied.” She picked up a sharp stone to set his hands free.
After that it was chaos: two more police cars roaring up and skidding to a stop on the dirt drive. Dust clouding the air, the three cows bellowing. Somewhere, a pair of sheep was bawling, and hens were squawking.
When Zoe could make out shapes again, Cedric and Chloe were in handcuffs. A second officer called for her and Spence to officially identify the pair as kidnappers, and of course, they did. Zoe felt a little sorry for Chloe who was weeping and wringing her hands, her pretty red shoes all covered with dust. But she wasn’t too sorry.
“This is what you get for kidnapping kids and old ladies,” Zoe said, striding up to Cedric, hands on her hips. He looked away. Sergeant O’Hare asked him about the game park he was planning to operate on Thelma’s farm. But Cedric just shook his head, feigning innocence.
“It’s true. I’ve got proof,” said Spence. He drew the letter from the Plum Bush Zoo out of his pocket and read it aloud.
“Try and deny that,” said Spence, looking pleased with himself. And Cedric couldn’t. In fact they could hardly understand what Cedric said, his stutter was so bad.
So they had the kidnappers on three charges. Kidnapping Thelma and putting her in the state mental institution. Kidnapping Zoe and Spence. And trying to illegally establish a big game hunting park on land they didn’t even own.
But the police had no proof that the kidnappers had killed Alice’s grandmother. The Chief back in the Branbury police station that evening shook his head when Zoe insisted that Cedric and Chloe had put the insecticide in poor Agnes Fairweather’s pea soup.
“We’re working on the case,” the chief said, “but we can’t find any hard evidence. We’ve already sent two men to search the Wolfadders’ rented house, and no cigar.”
“No what?” said Spence.
“No malathion, no proof of any kind, except those letters about the game farm,” explained the chief.
“Which establishes motive,” said Zoe, who’d learned that phrase from watching MYSTERY on public television.
“Right,” said the chief, impressed with her answer. “But without proof...” He spread his fingers, waggled his head and went back to his desk.
“We’ll get the proof,” said Zoe as they got into the police car to go home. “Won’t we, Spence?”
“I guess so,” said Spence, who just wanted to go home and eat and then sleep for fifteen hours. At least he had two shoes to go home with, Zoe reminded him. They were new Reeboks; his mother had warned him to take good care of them.
But when they arrived at Spence’s house, his mother was so thrilled to find her son alive and well that he could have lost both shoes. She smothered Spence with tears and hugs. “Dinner is vegetable lasagna with lots of cheddar cheese,” she told him, “and cherry pie with whipped cream. And you’re all invited.”
“We’re running out of time,” Zoe reminded Spence.
He swallowed hard. “Sure. But for now I have to do what Mom tells me,” he said. He winked at Zoe. “You know.”
“Sure, I know,” she said, winking back. “But when you’ve finished stuffing yourself and sleeping ten hours, you can meet me at Tiny Alice’s. Time is running out and I’ve got to find who did kill Alice’s granny.”
When she arrived at her own house, and her parents hugged and kissed her until she cried for release, Kelby was waiting. Seeing his grinning face, she couldn’t understand why she had actually missed him when she was in captivity.
“Tomorrow night at midnight,” croaked Kelby, “your time is up. And you know what that means.”
She did know. It meant that she had only one day left to solve the crime.
Could she do it?
“Where’s Miss Thelma?” Zoe asked the next noon, after submitting herself to a hundred embraces from the Bagley sisters. She had never been so hugged and kissed in her whole life! It was exhausting, to tell the truth.
But enough was enough. And she had work to do, evidence to find. Why had she slept so late?
“Miss Thelma?” she repeated, surveying the doughnuts, cookies, and pastries Miss Maud had heaped in front of her.
“Why, she’s gone,” said Miss Gertie. “As soon as your parents called that you and the boy were safe and the kidnappers caught, she went back home.”
“Oh no!” said Zoe, pushing away a plate of doughnuts. “She may still be in danger. I mean we don’t know that the kidnappers acted alone, do we?”
“Oh dear, we didn’t think of that,” said Miss Maud. “But who on earth could have helped them?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to try and find out.” Zoe dashed across the road to Thelma Fairweather’s house and drew a big breath of relief to find the old lady alone in the kitchen, preparing a lunch of pasta and veggies.
“It was lovely staying with the Bagleys,” Thelma said, “but I must admit I’m awfully sick of soup. Asparagus soup, lentil soup, pea soup.”
Zoe had to agree. In fact she’d like nothing more than a nice apple crisp right now, the kind her mother made with Northern Spy apples and sugar and lots of cinnamon.
“No, thank you,” she said to the pasta and veggies. She would wait for the apple crisp. Each fall her mom stored quarts of it in the freezer.
She warned Thelma not to let in any strangers – or anyone slightly suspicious for that matter, and ran next door to see Tiny Alice. It was time to look in the grandmother’s boxes. There might be a clue hidden inside one of them. The Clue in Grandmother’s Box, she would call a mystery novel if she ever decided to write one. And she might.
Tiny Alice was in the kitchen, baking, with her mother. A delicious aroma of chocolate filled the room. Madeline Fairweather seemed surprised to see Zoe. Then she tried to hug her, but Zoe pulled away. She’d had enough embraces for one day.
“We get to lick the frosting pan,” said Alice.
“Mmm,” said Zoe. “But first,” she whispered while Mrs. Fairweather was in the pantry, “I want to look into your granny’s boxes.”
“Madeline,” said Alice, “Zoe and I are going down in the basement to look for something.”
“Look for what, dear?” said Mrs. Fairweather, her gray eyes questioning. She seemed nervous today. She was twisting her wedding ring round and round on her finger. Of course it had been hard for her, Zoe realized, with the grandmother murdered and then Miss Thelma kidnapped.
“For my cross country skis,” Alice fibbed. “We’re going out for the ski team next winter. I want to see if they’re big enough for me. They were a present from Dad.”
“I’m afraid they’ll have to do,” said Mrs. Fairweather. “At this point we simply can’t afford to buy you a new pair. And things – well, things just haven’t worked out the way I’d hoped for you and me. Though one day, when you inherit that farm…”
Seeing Zoe’s watchful eyes on her, she changed the subject. “Well, go ahead down then. I want to finish this cake.”
The cellar was moldy. Zoe sneezed three times and used up four tissues. But she had to see what was in those boxes. There were six stored high on a basement shelf. Her dad had made those shelves, Alice said, “before he died.”
This time Zoe handed Alice a tissue to wipe her eyes.
They went quickly through the boxes, pulling out shoes and nighties, scarves and blouses, old photos and yellowy newspaper clippings, and a hundred other bits of memorabilia. Alice got weepy again, looking at an old photo of her grandmother sitting on a porch swing with Alice’s dad. Beside him sat a pretty young woman with long red hair.
“Who’s that?” Zoe asked, and Alice said, “Oh that’s my mother. It was taken the year before I was born.”
When Zoe looked at her, questioning, Alice explained: “My mother left us when I was two years old, and then Dad married Madeline.”
Zoe was amazed. “Then where is your real mother now?”
“Somewhere in California, I think. She was trying to get into films. She sends me presents on my birthday, but I haven’t seen her since she left.” Alice looked sad, and Zoe felt sad for her. Secretly, she told herself that her mother would never have left like that. But she didn’t say it out loud.
Another photo was of Madeline Fairweather, looking fifteen years younger and quite carefree, the way she’d flung one arm up over her head. Standing beside her was a dark-haired woman in a red dress. She looked strangely familiar, but Zoe couldn’t place her.
Alice didn’t know either. “Just one of Madeline’s friends, I guess.”
But Zoe couldn’t stop looking at the photo. Lighten up the woman’s dark hair, she thought, and it could be – why, it could be Chloe! Was Chloe a friend of Madeline Fairweather’s? What could it mean, anyway?
“I don’t know,” Zoe said, sneezing again, her nose filling up. “I don’ dow how I goin’ probe anyting. I bean who kill your granny.” She blew her nose again.
“What? Oh. But you said the kidnappers’ car was here the afternoon my grandmother died.”
“That’s just circumstantial evidence. It doesn’t prove anything.”
“Cir-cum-stan-stan...,” said Alice, trying her tongue around the word. Giving up, she sank down on a box. Then she brightened. “What about the tape recorder? I couldn’t find it in Aunt Thelma’s house.”
“It must still be in that closet. But I heard everything the kidnappers said. They didn’t say anything about your grandmother.”
Upstairs a door banged shut and the girls quickly piled the boxes back up on the shelf. A few things fell on the floor while they were doing it, but Alice said she’d clean up later.
The boxes had been Zoe’s last hope. It looked now like she’d never solve the crime.
The kitchen was empty; Madeline Fairweather had evidently gone out. “We could at least have a piece of chocolate cake,” said Alice, and Zoe thought that might be a good idea.
The cake was there on the counter. A large piece was missing. “I guess she’s taken it over to Thelma,” Alice said.
“Thelma!” Zoe cried, thinking of that banging door. Was that where Alice’s mother – no, stepmother – had gone? To take the piece of cake to Thelma? Could Madeline have put something in the frosting? Something that would make Thelma sick, or worse?
“Call the police if I signal and warn them we might be coming with a poisoned cake,” she told Alice.
“What? Oh, no! Poisoned?” cried Alice. “Why would she do that? But-but what signal? How will I know?”
Zoe knew where Thelma kept her flashlight. “I’ll flash it three times. From the living room window. Then you can run over to the Bagley’s and have Miss Gertie get the car out, ready to take me and Thelma’s cake to the police.”
“B-but you and I were going to eat it! Would Madeline poison us, too? I get mad at her, but she took care of me when my mother couldn’t. I think, I do think she really cares about me.”
“Not you, I don’t think. The poison was probably in the frosting of that one piece.”
Zoe found Miss Thelma in the kitchen finishing up her pasta and veggies. A large hunk of chocolate cake sat enticingly on a blue plate on the kitchen table.
“It does look delectable,” said Thelma, pulling it toward her.
“Though I might wait a bit. I’m so full right now from the pasta.” She smiled at Zoe, her pink cheeks dimpling.
“Oh, come on. You know you love chocolate,” Madeline Fairweather urged. She pushed it closer so that Thelma could smell the aroma. Zoe noticed that Madeline’s hands were shaking.
“It’s an awfully big piece,” said Zoe, pulling up a chair, although the stepmother frowned at her. “Why don’t you two share it? I’ll get another plate.”
Madeline smiled grimly at Zoe. She ran a shaky hand over her perspiring forehead. “Look, I’ve plenty more at home. I brought this for Thelma. A homecoming present.” She softened her voice.
“Where’s Alice?” she asked Zoe. “You and I must go back and see what she’s up to.”
“In a minute. I’ll just get a napkin for Miss Thelma,” said Zoe. She grabbed a paper napkin from the counter top, scribbled DON’T EAT THE CAKE, and placed it on Thelma’s lap.
Thelma smiled at her, but she didn’t look down. She pulled the plate toward her.
“Oh look,” said Zoe. “You dropped some crumbs on your napkin.”
Thelma looked down, squinted, and held the napkin to her lips. Her eyes widened at Zoe, her left eyebrow questioned. But she had read the note. “I’ll love it, I know,” she told Madeline. “I’ll eat it while I watch the evening news. You go ahead now, Madeline. And thank you so much for bringing it over.”
“You’ll be glad to hear that they caught those kidnappers,” Zoe told Mrs. Fairweather. “I’m sure they’ll make them talk. Did you know that they were trying to turn Miss Thelma’s farm into a game farm for wild animals?”
“Oh, dear,” said Madeline Fairweather, turning three shades of pink. “Really? I didn’t know. Well, I...I really must be heading out.” She dashed out the door.
“Now what on earth was that all about?” Miss Thelma said. “What you wrote on my napkin, Zoe? Why shouldn’t I have eaten the cake?”
Zoe told Thelma about her suspicions and the old lady gasped and shoved away the plate. Then she wrapped the piece of cake in foil while Zoe went to the living room window to signal Tiny Alice. She saw Alice scurry out of the house and start across the road. Moments later Zoe followed with the cake.
“Please,” she told Miss Gertie. “We have to go to the police station. Right this minute.”
When Miss Gertie raised an eyebrow, she said, “To solve a murder. And prevent another one.”
But when Zoe arrived in his office, the police chief looked skeptical. He sniffed the cake. It smelled perfectly all right to him, he said. “In fact, it smells delicious. We can go too far with all this, you know. Suspecting housewives who bake a cake for their friends.”
He sniffed it again. He looked as though he might take a bite. But then he stuck a tongue in his cheek, and thought better of it.
“Test it, please,” said Zoe. “Mrs. Fairweather might be in cahoots with those kidnappers. She’s a friend of Chloe’s; I saw them together in a photo. She wants Miss Thelma’s farm. She needs money. Alice says they have a drawerful of unpaid bills. The kidnappers probably promised her a share of the game park. Alice would be next in line to inherit, you know. And Madeline would be right there with her.” Zoe was out of breath with that long speech.
“Game park?” inquired the chief, who hadn’t yet heard about the scheme.
“Officer O’Hare can explain that,” said Zoe, pulling up a breath. “Anyway, can you test the frosting right away, please?”
“Sorry, young lady, I can’t do that,” said the chief, smiling down at Zoe. “It has to go to the forensics lab up in Burlington. No one there can test it at this hour. It’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning. And even then it may take time a week or so.”
“But I can’t wait that long!” cried Zoe. “I only have – ” she looked at her watch; it read one-thirty-two. “Eleven hours left. That’s all my brother will allow me. And he’s president of the Spy Club.”
The chief looked sympathetic. “I’m sorry, miss, but you’ll have to wait. It can’t be done today.” His weary sigh said that he doubted they’d find anything, anyway.
Zoe went back to the car, hanging her head.
“What’s the matter, dear? They didn’t find anything?” said Miss Gertie.
“Not yet. Not in time anyway,” said Zoe. “So I’ve lost. I’ll never get into the Northern Spy club. I’ve just plain lost.”
“Too bad,” said Spence, looking sympathetic, “but you and I can start our own club, can’t we? We can call it the Outsiders’ Detective Agency.”
Spence was still rubbing his belly after a huge late lunch that ended with his favorite strawberry-apple-rhubarb whipped cream pie. He thought he wouldn’t mind getting himself kidnapped again if his mother would make another meal like that.
“I don’t want to be an outsider,” said Zoe. “I want to belong to the Spy Club. I can quit later if I want, but at least I’ll have earned that badge. And now...” She slumped down on Spence’s porch step.
“Why don’t you talk to your brother? I mean, ask for an extension? I asked for an extension on a book report I had to write last spring and Ms. Hopgood gave it to me. You just have to act sincere and upset, that’s all. Like you’d die if you couldn’t get that extension. I mean, you know who the killer is, right, Zoe?”
“Not really, I don’t. Not for absolutely positively sure. And Kelby will never give me an extension.”
“You can try. Come on, we’ll talk to him. He’s not a monster. Is he?’
“No, he’s not a monster. Not quite. He has his good points. But he’s loud. And stubborn. And he loves to play tricks. I mean, he’s my brother! But, well, okay, I guess it won’t do any harm. We’ll go talk to him.”
Kelby was in his room, a room crammed with hockey sticks, baseball bats, golf clubs, basketballs – there wasn’t a sport that Kelby didn’t play, or want to play, or try to play. Sports were his whole occupation in life, except, of course, for the Northern Spy Club.
He was lying back on his bed, reading Sports Illustrated. He peered at Zoe and Spence over the top of the magazine. Then he lowered it, a broad smile on his face, as though he’d been expecting them.
“You’re here to surrender,” he said, like he was some Civil War general. He made a tsking sound with his tongue.
“No, I’m not here to surrender,” said Zoe. She took a stand in front of the bed, her hands folded tightly across her chest. “I’ve already found the kidnappers. And I’m pretty sure that Madeline Fairweather poisoned Alice’s granny. We think she laced Thelma’s chocolate frosting with that insecticide! We’re waiting right now for the forensics report.”
“Oh yeah?” said Kelby. He looked a little uncomfortable. He waggled his shoulders back and forth. “You have only – ” he glanced at his sports watch where the hands ticked across a Red Sox player’s face – ”eight and a half hours. There’s not enough time for any forensics report. You’ve lost. Let’s face it.” He relaxed back onto his pillow again.
“You can give her an extension,” said Spence, coming bravely forward. “She already solved three kidnapping crimes. You can at least give her till tomorrow noon to solve this one. I mean she’s solved it. She just needs the final proof.”
“Cello-boy,” said Kelby, who never called Spence by his real name, “those crimes aren’t the ones she was supposed to solve. The crime she was supposed to solve was Who Killed Alice’s Granny. That was the one she was supposed to solve.”
He smiled sorrowfully, closed his eyes as if he were about to go to sleep.
“Just till tomorrow noon?” Spence pleaded. “Zoe’s your younger sister”
Kelby looked pained. “I know that,” he said. “That’s why I know she won’t be able to solve the crime. Or,” he added, “walk the beam.”
“I can walk the beam right now,” Zoe shouted, rushing at her brother, pummeling his arm with her fists. “But Dad won’t let us in the barn. Find me another beam and I’ll walk it.”
“Okay. Okay,” said Kelby, warding her off with a hand. “I’m a nice guy. I’ll let you off the hook to walk the beam until tomorrow at one-thirty. Dad has to go to some meeting in Rutland. I’ll call a couple of the other kids and we’ll let you try and walk it.”
He lay back on the pillow again. His Northern Spy Club badge glittered in the overhead light.
“Hey, thanks,” said Spence. “Hear that, Zoe?”
Zoe knew there’d be a catch. And there was.
Kelby held up a finger. “But that’s only if you can prove – I repeat prove – by midnight tonight exactly who killed Alice’s granny.” He folded his arms again, peered at his sister through slitted eyes.
Zoe’s eyes filled. She fought back the tears. “How can I do that, Kelby? We won’t have that forensics report till tomorrow. If then. And even then – ”
“Even then,” Spence added, “it won’t prove that she killed Alice’s granny. I mean, unless she confesses. Do you really think she’s going to do that?” He gave a self-satisfied smile.
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.”
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?”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Electronic sales: ebooks@belgravehouse.com
This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.