The Pea Soup Poisonings by Nancy Means Wright Read Free Book Online Page B

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