The Great Circus Train Robbery (5 page)

“Boomer.  That’s who stole it,” Kelby said. “It was Boomer. You better believe it was.”

“Boomer has bigger things on his mind than stealing a baggage car,” Zoe said, though she remembered that boy in the photo looking longingly at the train. Boomer
could be
the thief. But she didn’t want Kelby to tell the police and get all the credit.

The phone rang again and it was Ms. Delores. “Thank you for calling back, dear. So you’d really like to come this evening?”

“Yes. But somebody stole Spencer’s red baggage car. It was part of the one-of-a-kind circus train he got for his birthday.”

“Oh my!” Ms. Delores said. “Who would do such a thing?”

“We don’t know. But we’re planning to find out.”

“Ah. But it might be safer to tell the police first, don’t you think, dear?”

“His dad already called them. But I intend to, um...” She put a hand over her mouth. Kelby was lurking nearby. Kelby had elephant ears.

“My niece would love to see you,” Ms. Delores said. “But with the worry over this baggage car, we could find some other time.”

“I’m coming,” said Zoe. It was too big an opportunity to miss. Anyway, if Butch took the baggage car, he’d probably play with it and then return it—his parents would make him, wouldn’t they?

“I’ll come by and honk. Shall we say 7:15? Will you be done with supper by then?”

“Yes. Yes! Should I bring my juggling balls?”

There was a moment of silence, a giggle, and then, “Of course, dear. If you like. See you then.” The line clicked off.

Kelby was lying in wait when she went to the fridge for a glass of Kickapoo juice. Her father made gallons of Kickapoo (lemonade and iced tea) to cool off his apple pickers as well as his own kids, and everyone liked it.

“So what is it you’re ‘planning to find out, huh, Zoe? This is a job for the spy club, you know. You’ve forgotten our mission statement, right?” Kelby pulled a slip of paper from his back pocket and read:
We members of the Northern Spy Club, Branbury, Vermont, do hereby obey the following rules: 1. The club comes first over the club member. 2, All information obtained by club members must come to the attenshun of first the general and then the whole club. 3
—

“Enough,” Zoe said. “I’ve got it memorized you made me read it so many times. And I remember you misspelled ‘attention.’ It’s spelled a-t-t-e—”

“I know how to spell it.  It was Butch typed up the rules. Now what was that phone call about?”

“Nothing to do with the robbery. I’m going to meet Ms. Delores’s niece, that’s all.”

“And who is Ms. Delores?” Kelby sounded suspicious.

“If you’d go to the library, you’d find out.”

“Oh. That Delores,” he said. Though she knew he didn’t know. “Anyhow, I mostly use the school library.”

“Well, school’s out. And there’s a summer reading program going on. And I’ve read sixteen books already. I’ve read
Coraline
and
Huckleberry Finn
…”

“We’re not talking about books,” said Kelby, who mostly read
Sports Illustrated
and the comics. We’re talking about suspects.” He was looking serious now, he was puckering his lips. He heaved himself up onto the counter and squeezed a dozen dried apricots into his mouth. His scraggy legs hung down in jeans he’d carefully ripped at the knees. He’d recently run a razor over his hair to make a raggedy buzz cut that made him look like a horned owl.

“So there’s Boomer,” he went on. “Prime Suspect Number One. If you don’t think so, then who?” Since she’d found the pea soup poisoners, Kelby was interested in her sleuthing talents.

“Vandals. Like Butch’s brother who torched the Portapotties. Butch was over there watching the trains, he could have told his brother about them.”

“Wa-ait a minute here. Let’s not do any profiling,” Kelby said, holding up a hand. “Just ’cause Butch’s brother got caught one time? The brother’s a big football player, you know? Made that winning touchdown in the Rutland game last fall?”

“Testosterone did it,” Zoe said. She’d heard her mother use that word about football players. She wasn’t exactly sure what it meant, but whatever it was, Kelby would soon have it bad, if he didn’t already have it.

Kelby thought that was very funny. He laughed and laughed, gripping his holey knees; he rocked back and forth on the counter. “Who else?” he said, his tone of voice saying there wasn’t anyone else but Boomer.

To tell the truth, she couldn’t think who else might have stolen it. She just wanted the thief to be someone other than Boomer so that Kelby could be proved wrong.

“He stole it ’cause it’s a collectible.” Kelby said. (Kelby preferred statements to questions.) “Stole it so he could resell it.”

“Wrong! He’d keep it, not sell it.” She bit her lip, she’d almost told about the photo of the boy watching the train.

Kelby narrowed his eyes. “If you’re keeping something back—you know the penalty.”

She did. Out of the club and no one would speak to her for sixty days. Did she want that? After all she’d done to get in? But, no, she couldn’t tell him about the photo.  Anyway, it wasn’t right to put the club before the individual.  She didn’t like that.

“I don’t know any more than you do,” she fibbed. After all, the police held back facts from the public, her dad said, so the criminal wouldn’t know what they were doing. She finished her Kickapoo juice and started out the door. “I’ll ask Spence who he suspects.  I’ll let you know what he says. She blew him a kiss.

And heard him gag.

Spence had just finished packing up his rail cars when she arrived shortly before supper. Already the gazebo looked bare without the colorful circus cars. “Dad’s orders,” he said. “Anyway, it’s starting to rain.”

Zoe looked up, and to her surprise, it was. It was raining leaves from the locust trees, too. Each spring and early summer the locust trees wept fragrant white blossoms, but those were mostly gone now.

“Gramp says it’s worth over a thousand dollars for the set—maybe more. He was lucky to get it for six hundred, it’s so rare.”

“Wow. So who do you think did it, Spence? Kelby says it’s Boomer. But that’s only because he wants to think Boomer did it.”

“He could of done it, I suppose.”

“But why would he single out the baggage car? Why not the whole train? You said you left it out overnight.” She lifted her chin and a yellow leaf fell on her nose—autumn was on its way. “Did you ask if anyone saw a prowler? I mean, somebody who knew the train was in your gazebo?”

Spence sat down on a flat rock and dropped his chin in his hands. “Well, most of the spy club. Like Butch and Jake and Jimmy and Bobo. They’ve all been over asking to run the train. At least they didn’t throw any green apples.”

“You let them run it?” She dropped down on the rock beside him.

“Yeah, why not?” It made Spence feel good to let them run it, she could sense that. He had something they wanted. It stopped them from teasing about his cello playing. About his habit of tum-tumming, like he was always carrying the music around with him in his head.

“They pay any special interest to the baggage car?”

“Not that I saw. You think one of them took it?”

“Just asking. Nobody else came by?”

Spence scratched his head. His hair, she noticed, was down to his shoulders. His mother wanted him to cut it and his musician dad liked it long. Zoe wanted her own father to grow a ponytail, but he said it would get caught in the apple branches.

“Just the UPS man,” Spence said. “He came around back ’cause he needed something signed and no one answered the front door. The plumber saw them—we had a leak and Dad doesn’t do leaks. Let’s see, who else...”

“The Bagley Sisters.”

“They wouldn’t want my train!”

“No, but here they come. With a pot of soup.” Spence got up to take the steaming pot from the old ladies. The sisters took homemade soup and muffins around the neighborhood once or twice a month. And daily if you were sick in bed.

“Pea soup?” said Spence, making a face.

“No, dear,” said Miss Maud, the shorter and older of the two. She was wearing a purple sundress, the hem was dragging a little on the ground. “It’s cream of spinach with a touch of basil and thyme.”

“And a squiggle of petunia,” said Miss Gertie, trotting up in her saggy dungarees with the red plaid suspenders. “We crush it into the soup and it gives a nice tangy flavor. Can you take this pot in to your mom, Spence? I can hear the piano. Is it Mozart?”

“Bing bang
boing”
echoed through the back window where Mrs. Riley was giving a music lesson. Zoe could see a small girl sitting on the piano stool with her tongue lolling out.

“We came to see the train, too.” Miss Maud said. “We always took the train when we wanted to go to Rutland or Burlington, didn’t we, Gertie? It was called the Rutland Rocket in those days, just like your shirt says, Spence. We’d get on where the Auto Parts building is now. Such a shame everybody drives cars these days. We don’t get out much since Gertie ran into the back of Officer Plouffe’s car.”

Zoe told the sisters about the missing baggage car and they cried out: “Who would do such a terrible thing!” (Miss Maud) “Steal a boy’s birthday train!” (Miss Gertie)

“That’s what we want to find out,” Zoe said. “Have you seen any strangers coming over here? I mean, while you were sitting on your front porch?” Miss Maud’s vision, at least, was still quite sharp. And Miss Gertie had a nose for strange men and dogs. She liked to know what was going on in the neighborhood.

“Wee-ll,” said Miss Maud, “there
is
that man who bought the Shady Sisters’ house.  We tried to bring him soup and he wouldn’t even answer the door. And he was in there, oh yes. We didn’t see him go out.”

“We know about him,” said Zoe. “Anybody else you’ve seen? Any cars stopping at night? Like last night maybe?”

“We’re in bed by ten,” said Miss Gertie, sticking her fingers under her suspenders. “But I get up at least once in the night for—well, you know. Sometimes twice even. And last night I was up, oh, midnight maybe, or later, and yes, there was something. It was, um, what was it I told you about, Maud?”

“A light,” said Maud. “Somebody moving about with a light. That’s what you said. You woke me up to tell me. And I said ‘Go back to sleep.’“

“And so I did,” said Gertie. “But I couldn’t sleep. So I got up to drink a glass of milk. Milk helps you sleep, you know.”

“Mmm,” said Zoe, feeling a tremor of excitement in her chest. “So where was the light? Could you see who was carrying it?”

“Let me finish, please, Zoe.” Miss Gertie gave her the stern look she’d used when Zoe was in second grade. “So I drank the milk and for some reason I went back to the window. I like to look out in the dark—sometimes I hear a wild animal running across the lawn. I majored in zoology in college, you know.”

“Uh-huh. And you saw the light again?’

“Yes, it was moving away from your house, Spence. Oh dear, he must have had your baggage car! If I’d only thought—”

“But you didn’t know,” Zoe said.   “About any thief, I mean.”

“So where did the person with the light go?” Spence was so anxious he was quivering.  Some of the soup spilled out into the damp grass. Miss Maud squealed and took the pot from him.

“That’s just it,” said Miss Gertie. “All at once the light went out. And I couldn’t see where the person went. The last I saw the light it was on the edge of your front lawn.”

“Which edge?” Spence asked. “North or south?” “Um,  well,  south,  I think—yes.  Downstreet.  He was headed downstreet.”

“Toward Mr. Boomer’s house,” Miss Maud explained. “Oh I knew it, Gertie! That man’s up to no good over there. Any man who won’t open the door to a couple of old ladies with a pot of soup!” She shook her head at the thought and more soup spilled into the grass.

“There was one more thing,” Miss Gertie said.

“Yes?” They all turned to her.

“Gertie? Maud? Come on in. I’m just finishing up.” It was Mrs. Riley, calling through the open window. “More soup? How nice.” Her pupil was stuffing her piano book into a backpack and a lollypop into her mouth. Mrs. Riley always gave her pupils colored lollies when they left. Red for excellent, yellow for good, green for fair, purple for poor. The little girl was sucking on a green. From what she heard through the window, Zoe would’ve given her a purple.

“What was it, Miss Gertie?   What was that one more thing?” Spence asked.

But Miss Gertie just shook her head. “It’s gone clean out of my head. I’ll let you know if it comes back in.” She trotted into the Rileys’ house behind Maud.

Zoe looked at her watch with horror. It was six-thirty and she had to gobble supper and then change her clothes to go with Ms. Delores. “You want to come with me to meet the circus lady?” she asked Spence. “I’m sure Ms. Delores won’t mind.”

“Maybe,” said Spence. “But right now I’m gonna make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I don’t want any of that petunia soup!”

10

A PLUMP CLOWN AND A PUG IN A TUTU

The adoptive niece couldn’t be a tightrope walker, Zoe observed, because no rope could hold her weight. But she had the most intriguing face Zoe had ever seen: wide-set, shiny eyes the color of fresh green peas, a broad pink nose, and white-painted cheeks with a plump dimple in the middle of each. Her hands were light brown, her fingernails and toenails a shade of purple. Her hair was dyed to match the nails; it flowed over her shoulders and ended in thick loopy curls. She wore a glittery emerald-green tutu over black tights laced with sequins.

Zoe was enchanted.

They were sitting in the cramped living room of the Airstream RV that the niece Tulip shared with her pug Lulu, who was wearing a matching green tutu. She kept the dog leashed until he calmed down and stopped jumping into the visitors’ laps.

“This girl wants to help with the circus,” Ms. Delores said after she’d introduced the two children—for Spence came too, at the last minute, needing to get his mind off the missing baggage car. “She already knows how to juggle, don’t you, dear,” Ms. Delores said, patting Zoe’s head.