Read Online Poison Frog Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner - Free Book Online

didn’t sound familiar. He asked me if I wanted to make some good money doing work with animals. Of course I was interested. He sort of laughed and said, ‘I figured you would be.’ The funny thing is, I hadn’t had a job in almost two months and I was getting low on cash, so he called at just the right time. I was falling behind on my bills. I think I would’ve done just about any work at that point, but when this guy mentioned animals, I thought it was a dream come true.”
    “So ...”

    “So then he started talking about the breeding program, said he’d been following it in the newspapers. He said he knew I used to work here, but that I’d been ... well, fired. I don’t know how he knew. I guess he must’ve visited a few times and seen me here, then visited again and realized I was gone.”
    “So what else did he say?” Henry asked.
    “He wanted to know if I could still get into the zoo. You know, with the keys. I said no, I had to give my set back when I left. He asked if I’d made any copies, and I told him I hadn’t. By this point I was getting a little nervous. His questions were kind of ... I don’t know, weird.”
    “But you kept talking to him anyway,” Jessie pointed out.
    Brian nodded and looked down shamefully. “Yeah. Like I said, I was in a tight spot for money.”
    “What happened next?”
    “Well, he didn’t seem to be too bothered by the fact that I didn’t have keys. He said, ‘Oh, I was just wondering.’ Then he finally got to the point—he wanted to know if I’d be willing to take some of the animals from the zoo. I said, ‘You mean steal them?’ I was shocked, really. I just couldn’t believe it. But he said, ‘Yes, steal them. Would you do that?’ I told him no, I wouldn’t. And I meant it, too. But then he said, ‘Not even for five hundred dollars per animal?’ ”
    Brian looked back up helplessly. “I still didn’t want to do it, but ... five hundred bucks is a lot to me. It would help me out a great deal. So I agreed.”
    “How was everything arranged?” Henry cut in.
    “The guy said I should go out to that little park on the other side of town. You know the one? Over by Gallagher’s Pond?”
    Benny said, “Sure, we bring Watch over there all the time. He’s our dog.”
    Brian smiled a little. “The guy said I should look for a large rock underneath a fir tree about a hundred feet from the pond’s footbridge. Behind it there would be a plastic bag containing some keys and a note. It wasn’t hard to find. There’s only about ten fir trees in the whole park, and only one has a big boulder at the base.”
    “What did the note say?” Lindsey asked.
    “It told me which animals I was supposed to take, and which building they were in.”
    Jessie said, “And what about the keys?”
    “They were copies,” Brian told her. “I’m sure of it. Each one was brand-new; the teeth were real sharp.”
    “Did the note say anything else?”
    Brian nodded. “It said that once I opened one of the cage locks, I should—”
    “Beat it up to make it look as though you’d broken it open?” Jessie asked.
    “How did you know that?” Brian wondered.
    “We figured it out on our own,” Henry replied.
    “I told you, they’re great detectives,” Lindsey reminded him.
    Brian nodded. “Wow, I guess so. Well, the note said to do that, and that I had to return the keys, along with the animals, each time. I was supposed to leave the animals behind the same rock, always at some time during the night. The note said I should then leave immediately, and that if I hung around to see who’d pick them up, I’d be very sorry.” He shivered. “I didn’t like the sound of that.”
    “When you left the animals, was the money waiting for you?” Jessie asked.
    “Yes. I just took it and ran. I really wasn’t interested in finding out who would come to take the animals. I know this sounds hard to believe, but I wanted nothing more to do with that person.”
    “And that was