Read The Pea Soup Poisonings for Free Online Page B

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