The Great Circus Train Robbery (2 page)

“You can’t stop somebody from doing something you don’t know he’s really planning on doing!” Spence glared at her. He obviously thought she was over-reacting. There was something rather literal about Spence that bugged Zoe.

He was a boy, that was his problem. In her opinion, he was more interested in things that ran and tooted and smelled good enough to eat than in things of the imagination. Like three red balls all moving in the air at once. “Okay, I’ll go to his house alone,” she said. “If I don’t come out, you can call the police.”

“You’re going to see this bully?”

“Of course! How can I find out anything unless I knock on his door and talk to him face to face? Tell him we’re neighbors. Bring him some apples.”

Spence looked skeptical. “Apples aren’t ripe yet.”

“Some of the greenings are.   We can bring him a pie. There’s a frozen apple pie in the freezer.  Mom won’t mind.” She poked a tongue in her cheek and felt it dimple. She usually got a reaction out of people with that dimple. “Besides, his house is full of snacks. Chips and pretzels and fries.”

“Sweet potato fries or plain potato?”

Spence liked sweet potato fries. She’d discovered that one day when he ate up a whole plateful her mother had made. “They
looked
like sweet potato fries,” she said, keeping the tongue stuck in her cheek.

Waiting for his response, she juggled two red balls and then tossed up a third. And kept them going a whole thirty seconds. She watched the balls fly up and down and up again like a flight of birds. She was dazzled. She was doing it!

Spence pressed another knob and the engine hooted and wailed; the train ground slowly to a halt.   He jumped up. “Chips and sweet potato fries, huh? So when are we going?”

3

APPLE PIE AND A PERILOUS MISSION

Zoe’s mother was pleased that she wanted to take a pie to the new neighbor. “I’d meant to do something myself,” she said, “but I’ve a paper to write.” Mrs. Elwood was studying for an advanced degree at Branbury College French School. She’d taken a pledge to speak French only, but had special permission to speak English with her family. She would come home giving orders in French and not understand why her children didn’t carry them out. It was all rather convenient, Zoe thought.

“But just so you’re going there with Spence,” her mother said. “We don’t know who this man is. He keeps to himself, we’ve noticed.” She pushed her damp hair back behind her ears, her face was perspiring in the August heat. “I don’t want you going alone,” she went on as she wrapped the warmed-over pie in Reynolds Wrap and put it in a basket for carrying. “Just bring back the basket.”

“Okay, Mom.” Zoe was planning to meet her friend at four o’clock and they would go together. They would find out what they could about this suspicious man.

But here was Kelby, trudging up from the backyard hut where the spy club held its meetings. He’d painted five gold stars on his white T-shirt—although Zoe couldn’t think what those stars might stand for. All her brother did was spend two weeks each summer at Camp Abenaki, then come home to run the spy club and order its members about. One day he’d be a CEO of something, their father said, and sit at his desk all day and shout things like “You’re late to the board meeting! You’re fired!”

“We just had a meeting. Where were you?” Kelby crossed his thin arms over his star-studded chest and stared his nasty stare. You weren’t supposed to miss a meeting unless you had a 103-degree fever. A broken arm or leg was no excuse either; you could always hobble down to the hut where the meetings were held. If you missed without a proper excuse you were demoted. And Zoe was upward-bound.

“I was working for the spy club,” she said, thinking fast. “I was planning a meeting with the enemy. I’m going over right now to his house. I’m taking an apple pie so he won’t suspect anything.” All of which was true.

Kelby sucked in his cheeks, he was keeping up the stare. He was either wondering what she was up to, or he was thinking how brave she was to walk right up to the enemy’s door with an apple pie. Though he’d never say
brave
to her face.

“I thought you’d be glad I’m going up there,” she said. “Spence is coming with me.  And you didn’t clean the cat’s litter box this morning. It was your job. I cleaned it for you. I didn’t tell Mom—this time.”

“That idiot Spence is going with you?” He waved away the litter box, though she knew he’d keep it in mind. He called Spence an idiot because Spence refused to join the spy club. Spence called Kelby an idiot, so they were even.

Butch Spinelli, who was second-in-command behind Kelby, trotted up behind his chief. He wore untied sneakers that were always tripping him up, and a feed cap with the back pulled down over his butch haircut. The bill poked out in the rear as if he was coming and going at the same time.

Butch pointed  a  grubby  finger at  Zoe.  “You  weren’t there.”

“So?” she said, glaring at Butch. It was Butch’s older brother who should’ve been the enemy, she thought. The brother and a friend had blown up three mail boxes and a Portapotty with a homemade pipe bomb. Now they were home awaiting a court hearing.

Kelby was quiet a minute—thinking, no doubt, of the uncleaned litter box. Finally he told Butch: “Zoe’s on a special mission. I knew she wasn’t coming to the meeting.”

Zoe smiled sweetly at the pair and ran next door. She found Spence putting away the lawn mower for his father, who was in the gazebo locking together two new sections of track. “Hi, there, Zoe,” Mr. Riley said, looking up. He was an older version of Spencer with his reddish hair and freckled face. “What’s your dad up to this afternoon?”

“The usual,” she said. “Cleaning out the barn. Hiring apple pickers.”

“Well, tell him to take a break and come over and see what we’re doing.”

She nodded. “But first we have to deliver an apple pie.”

“Ah. Well, you can take it right in through the kitchen.”

Zoe smiled. Smiling was the best way to deal with friends’ fathers, who were or weren’t joking—it wasn’t always easy to tell. “We’ll be back soon,” she promised, and picked up a red ball that had fallen out of her pocket. When Mr. Riley raised an eyebrow, she said, “I’m thinking of joining the Quirkus Circus when it comes this weekend.”

“Really?” Mr. Riley said. “So what would you do? Ride an elephant? Walk a tight rope?” He looked skeptical, of course, she expected that. Grownups underestimated what kids could do.

“I’m learning to juggle. But for now I can take tickets or usher and get in free. Ms. Delores—she’s the town librarian—has a niece who works at that circus. She might take me to meet her. You could come, too,” she whispered to Spence.

“Dad would never let me work there,” Spence said when they got out to the road.  “He says they exploit animals.  He doesn’t even like the wild animal car on the new train, but Mom says it’s just a train, so relax—and he does like trains. But don’t mention
circus
again in front of Dad.”

“Okay.” She led the way down the street. Mr. Boomer’s house was a small yellow cape. A yellow garage leaned to one side, with the rear end of a dark green automobile poking out; it had a New Jersey license plate. A row of yellow and orange chrysanthemums hung their heads in front of the house. The two women who’d lived in the house before Mr. Boomer, made lampshades. Kelby had been suspicious of them, too, because once he saw a man going in who didn’t come out; he said the Shady Sisters had turned the man into a lampshade. She could see a lamp in the front window, and wondered if that was the man. She slowed her step.

“Why are you stopping?” Spence said, a step behind her.

“Nothing. Just thinking.” She waited for him to come up beside her. She felt better when he did—it was a perilous mission ahead. Spence was a half inch shorter than she, but he was feisty when you got him going. He played soccer at school; he was good and he was fast.

“Okay. We’re on.” She charged up the porch steps, took a deep breath and held up her fist, ready to knock. Then looked back to be sure Spence was still there. He gave a jaunty wave and winked.

She thrust up her chin and banged on the door.

4

A RACK OF GUNS AND AN ANGRY MAN

Zoe knocked three times, but no answer. She was almost relieved, wasn’t she? They’d try again another day? She knocked one more time, then sighed, and turned away.

“Look,” Spence whispered, and nudged her elbow.

A frowning giant stood in the doorway in brown plaid slippers and rumpled blue bathrobe. He appeared twice as big as he had through the back windows. Even the dimple in his chin was a giant’s dimple.

“Don’t want any,” he said when she held up the basket of pie. “Go peddle ‘em somewhere else.” He went to push the door shut and she put her foot in it.

“Please,” she shouted so her voice would rise to his ears, “it’s an apple pie. My mother sent it. We live two doors over.” She pointed and the man narrowed his mud-colored eyes.

“She made it herself,” Spence said. “I mean, her mother did. She grows the apples. Or he does. I mean, her father...”

“My father,” Zoe said, “is an orchardist.” She took the pie out of the basket. Surely Mr. Boomer wouldn’t shut the door on an apple pie.

The man hesitated. She saw the muddy eyes blink, the hairy brows lift, the nostrils quiver. He smelled the apples that were still warm from the oven and fragrant with cinnamon. She could almost hear Spence salivating behind her. Last May he’d won a watermelon contest sponsored by the library—he ate a whole watermelon in forty-five minutes and then broke the record for long-distance spitting. Even Kelby was impressed.

The beefy arms reached out for the pie basket and held it to his chest where black hairs poked out between two missing buttons.  “All right,” he said.  “But don’t come round again. This is a private home. I’m a busy man.” The door slammed.

“Thank you for the pie. Thank you for your hospitality,” Zoe said to the yellow door.

“He’ll eat it though,” Spence said, taking the four front steps in a single leap. “And there’s no point going back. He won’t let us in. Did you see that rack of guns?”

“What? You saw guns?” She hadn’t looked beyond the man’s wide, whiskery face.

“In the front hall. Just over his head,” Spence said as they walked back toward his house. The Rileys’ lawn was freshly mown and the grass fragrant with red clover. It was all the sweeter after the unwashed smell she’d noticed when Mr. Boomer opened the door. “It was a rack with three antique muskets. I’ve seen some like them in the Branbury Museum.”

“You can’t hurt anybody with antique guns.”

“Oh yeah? Just try firing one. See what you can bring down.” Spence had a know it-all-look on his face. A satisfied smile. Each year he went to Fort Crown Point with their two fathers to see the Revolutionary War re-enactments.

She made a mental note of guns. Guns were something she could relay to the spy club. They’d be thrilled to think
guns.
It would keep them guessing for days.

“Did you notice the smell?” she asked, not to be outdone by the guns.

“Cinnamon,” he said. “Nutmeg maybe. That’s what Mom put in the pie she made one time.” His voice sounded nostalgic. Spence’s mother was too busy with her piano and singing lessons to make pies. So Spence had a habit of hanging around the Elwood house during apple harvest.

“Not the pie. Something in the house. Can you record a smell?”

“Not on my tape recorder. I can try the iPod.” He’d gotten a reconditioned iPod from his father to download music on, lucky kid. Zoe’s parents weren’t keen on electronics. “All that stuff breaks down,” her mother complained. Though of course she used a computer to write her French papers on.

“I doubt it will work,” Zoe said. Now Spence was running toward his backyard gazebo, eager, she supposed, to get to his trains. “Slow down,” she called, out of breath. “We have to make plans.”

“Plans for what?” he called back.  “We just did our plans. Went there and he threw us out. Me, I’m not going back.” His feet kicked up mown grass as he ran.

“Not to see him, no,” she said when she finally caught up with him. “But to see inside his house.”

“What? He’s always in it, you said.”

“Not always.  He has a car. He has to buy groceries. Toothpaste, shaving cream, root beer.  We’ll wait till the car’s gone, then go in.”

“Break a window? Nuh-uh. I’m not doing that. I can’t be on the soccer team if I get in trouble. Coach says so.”

“I mean through the basement. There’s an old wooden door you can lift. I’ll bet a quarter it’s not locked. Kelby got in once when the Shady Sisters lived there. He couldn’t get upstairs, but he could prowl the basement. And the basement is where—

“The body is. Yeah, yeah, sure. Tell me another.” Spence picked up the controller and the train thrummed along the track.

She had to make him listen. Antique guns and a bad-tempered man. A body in the basement—or the possibility of one. She had to keep that from happening! An awesome responsibility welled up in her head. “We’ll keep a watch. I’ll make a schedule.”

“A what?” he shouted over the rumble and clatter of the trains.

“A schedule,” she hollered. “We can’t talk over the noise of that train!  To see when he leaves the house.  I’ll make it up. We’ll spy on him starting at seven tomorrow morning.”

“You
can spy on him.” He knelt to caress his engine as it chugged to a stop. “I’m not getting up at that hour.”

“Then I’ll take the early shift,” she said. “You can take over at nine. We’ll switch every two hours. Keep each other informed on the walky-talky.” They were both angling for a cell phone at Christmas, but their parents weren’t keen on making more monthly payments. “If he gets in his car—off we go.”

He stared at her. “You don’t mean—”

“Of course I do! How else are we to get in that house if
he
won’t let us?”

Spence jumped up; he pointed a bony finger at her. “I can’t spend half the day spying and trespassing. I’ve got research to do. I’m entering a contest.”