The Pea Soup Poisonings

by Nancy Means Wright

  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.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  A Blue Car in the Bushes

  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.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Black as a Blackbird’s Eye

  “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 bei
ng 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.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Safe Deposit Box

  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, h
er 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.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  A Suspicious Policeman

  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.