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, and 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?” “I can,” she said, the words thick in her throat. “I can walk that beam.” 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.
What do You think about The Pea Soup Poisonings (2006)?
