The Pea Soup Poisonings by Nancy Means Wright Mystery for Children Mystery for Kids

The Pea Soup Poisonings
by Nancy Means Wright
ISBN: 1591331625 ~ Hilliard and Harris

A novel for middle grade readers.

Zoe Elwood's know-it-all brother Kelby has started the Northern Spy Club -- named after a variety of apples in their father's Vermont orchard -- and declared himself president. to get into the club one must walk a narrow beam over rusted farm machinery, and solve a crime. In this case, the crime involves Alice Fairweather's grandmother, who has expired after eating a bowl of pea soup. According to Kelby, the elderly Bagley Sisters across the street who made the soup must be guilty. But Zoe is fond of the Bagley Sisters, and asks her friend Spencer to help her uncover clues that will prove the sisters innocent. Solving the crime and walking the high beam are something that Zoe is determined to prove a girl can do just as well as a boy.

"The story is well-written and extremely enjoyable. The characters are very likable, the mystery difficult for a younger reader to readily solve, and the story moves at a swift pace." (Round Table Reviews)

"Can a girl be a spy? Maybe an even better one than the boys in the neighborhood. A modern day Nancy Drew, Zoe proves that guts and determination do conquer all. Action, action - and more action! (Lee Wait, award-winnng author of Wintering Well and Shadows at the Spring Show.)

"Every page of Nancy Means Wright's The Pea Soup Poisonings twists and turns like a Vermont country road. In writing this one, she has the gas pedal crunched to the floor, the tank is full, and the trunk is packed with suspense, laughter and excitement. Enjoy the ride!" (Jim Defilippi, author of Duck Alley and Blood Sugar.)

The Northern Spy Club was waiting in the barn when Zoe 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, 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?"

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. But 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": in 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.

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.

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.

The 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 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 –

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.

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!"

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.”

"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."

"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."

"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.

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 dis-prove the Bagleys killed Alice's granny. Or else the Sisters are going to pri-son!"

"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!"

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