The Great Circus Train Robbery Read Online Free PDF Page B

and started across the yard. A shade zipped up, then the window, and there was Boomer, glaring out. “Hey!” he yelled.
    “We were just picking up the pie basket,” Zoe hollered. “Backyards are safer than the road.  Mother makes us.”
    “Not in my yard you don’t.  You’ll have to go in front. Now get out of here.  Get, I said!”  Boomer’s face was mad. The dimple was winking in his chin like a traffic light.  They ran through the thicket between the houses.  Zoe dropped the book and Spence picked it up.
    “Good spies don’t get caught.” It was Butch Spinelli in Spence’s gazebo, a circus car in his hands. “You missed another meeting. Kelby’s pissed you weren’t there.”
    “Then what are you doing here with my rail car?” Spence asked.
    “The chief sent me to find Zoe. Says he’s not getting any information. If you want to stay a dumb sergeant,” he warned, glaring at her. He glanced at the bulldozer car in his hands and put it down. “Just lookin’. I never had a train like this.”
    “We got chased off Boomer’s property,” Zoe said, blinking at him. “I don’t think we’ll learn much there. He has a cat—a big one—lion cub, I think. We saw it in the window.”
    “Yeah?” Butch said.
    “Put the car back,” Spence said. Then hearing his mother call, “Come in, Spence—you didn’t make your bed,” he started toward the house.
    “How come Spence was with you at Boomer’s?” Butch asked Zoe. “He’s not a club member. Kelby won’t like that.”
    “He happened to come by is all.”
    “He see the lion cub?”
    “Um, yeah, it was in a cage, I think.”
    “Better bring him to the hut then.  You’ll need a backup. Kelby’ll never believe a lion cub.” Butch hooked the bulldozer back on and slouched off.
    Zoe caught up with Spence at his back door. “You have to come to the hut with me. To tell about that lion cub.”
    “What lion cub? I didn’t see any lion.”
    “Sure, you did. We saw it on the window sill. That big cat? You have to back me up to Kelby.”
    “Jeezum. Do I have to?”
    “Some great train wrecks in my notes, Spence.”
    “Train wrecks? Really?”
    “I’ll be right in,” he called to his mother, and followed Zoe through the west orchard and down to the club hut that sat in front of a row of Northern Spy apple trees. The late afternoon sun was polishing the apples a shiny red. Zoe saw her father on a ladder, reaching high; the buttons of his blue overalls flashed silver. Mr. Elwood had built the hut to “get the kids of my hair—and out of my apples.” He said that because the boys were using apples as weapons. They liked the apples when they were hard and green, and could give a sizable bump on the body part they happened to hit.
    They arrived just as Chief Kelby was barking out assignments to the assembled crew. “Lieutenants Butch and Jake,” the chief shouted. “Over to the Bagley sisters. Bring back a sample of everything in that garden.” He said that, Zoe knew, because the sisters grew strange herbs and plants; they’d been suspects in the pea soup demise of Granny Fairweather.
    “Even the weeds,” the chief said, pointing a finger at the two lieutenants who were lounging on an old mattress with feed caps pulled down over their foreheads.
    “You wanted to see us?” Zoe stood in the doorway. Spence hung back behind her.
    “Don’t interrupt,” Kelby snapped. “Corporal Jimmy. The old blacksmith shop. There’s a suspicious guy in there. See what he’s doing. Why he locks the door when it’s supposed to be open to the public. Take recruits Punk and Bobo with you. Take the dog.” He shooed off the spies with a quick jerk of the thumb.
    “You’ll get it for being late,” Butch said as he ran past with the dog at his heels. Zoe thumbed her nose at him.
    “Okay. So what do you want?” Kelby said. He pushed out his chest and patted the painted stars.
    “What do you want?” Zoe said.
    “What do you want, Chief,” he