”
The words gave Jupe and Pete a chill.
“And that’s not all,” Kelly continued. “She keeps saying, ‘He’s poisoning the chicken. It’s wrong. It’s wrong.’ And she sounds like she means it. I mean, it doesn’t sound like a dream.”
Pete let out a low whistle. “Heavy duty.”
“I told you I had a feeling!” Jupe said.
“Yeah,” said Pete. “But who knew it meant the Chicken King was poisoning my favorite food!”
“Hello?” Kelly Madigan’s puzzled voice came out of the speaker phone in Jupe’s workshop. “Are you guys still there?”
They were there, but their tongues were in shock. How many times had they eaten at a Chicken Coop restaurant in their lives? Hundreds? Thousands? Probably more for Jupe. How many times had they seen Big Barney Coop’s friendly face on TV and heard his crazy but sincere voice telling them, “I’ve built my reputation selling legs and not pulling yours.”
“Big Barney Coop. poisoning his food.?” Pete said, shaking his head. His voice trailed off and his face got serious. “I can’t believe it.”
“And there’s no reason why we should,” Jupe said, having given the matter some thought. “As Aunt Mathilda frequently reminds me, the trouble with jumping to conclusions is you don’t know what you’re going to land in.”
“What’s that mean?” Pete said.
“It means,” said Jupe, “we can’t accuse Big Barney Coop of anything. For one thing, there’s no reason to think that Big Barney is the person Juliet was talking about in her sleep. It could be anyone who’s poisoning the chicken. And for all we know, Juliet Coop is having a bad reaction to her medication or to the shock of her accident, or maybe she’s just having bad dreams.”
“Hey, guys,” Kelly said, talking into her hospital phone. “I’d love to put Juliet on the line so you could talk to her personally, but the phone cord’s not long enough to reach her in dreamland. Oh, listen. did you hear that?”
Pete shook his head. Jupe answered out loud, since Kelly couldn’t see through the telephone. “No. What?” Jupe asked.
“She said it again,” Kelly reported. “She said, ‘No — people will die. Don’t do it!’ ”
“Okay,” Jupe said to Kelly. “We’ll be there at eleven a.m. tomorrow to talk to Juliet. That’s when visiting hours start. I’m certain she can tell us whether this was just a bad dream or not.”
“Fine,” Kelly said. “But I’m telling you there’s a mystery here.”
“See you in the morning, babe,” Pete said, and hung up the phone.
Nobody got much sleep that night. For one thing, Jupe stayed up trying to figure out who would want to poison millions of people, and why. Was it Big Barney? Or was Juliet Coop mixed up with some kind of crazy political terrorist group? Or was there someone else who would want to poison the Chicken Coop’s prime fillets?
Then at two in the morning Jupe called Bob Andrews to fill him in and to make sure he’d be at the hospital early too.
After the phone call, Bob had trouble falling back to sleep because he knew that when Jupe got into one of his agitated moods, he called frequently.
Kelly didn’t sleep, either. She stayed awake in her hospital bed most of the night, waiting for Juliet Coop to say something more. Every time Juliet moaned in her bed, Kelly would ask her softly, “Who, Juliet? Who’s poisoning the chicken?” But Juliet didn’t answer.
Pete slept like a rock.
The next day bright sunlight filled Kelly’s hospital room when Pete and Jupe arrived.
The first thing Jupe noticed — besides the fact that Kelly looked very tired, and that the number of vases of flowers in the room had quadrupled during the night, and that a large stuffed chicken wearing a golden crown now occupied the guest chair by Juliet’s bed — was that the curtains had been drawn around Juliet Coop, sealing her off.
“Who’s in there?” Jupe asked, pointing to the curtained area. He wanted to talk to Juliet right away and settle this mystery.
“Shhh.” Kelly hushed Jupe and then spoke in a whisper. “No one’s in there except Juliet. I think she’s asleep.”
Just then Bob Andrews walked in.
“Sorry I’m late guys. Car trouble,” the tall, lanky teen said, taking off the cotton sweater that was tied around his neck.
Bob had always been a thin kid with glasses who was good at school but usually got lost in the background. Maybe it was because he worked for so many years in the dark, hidden stacks of the town library.
But all of that was changed now. Contact lenses, brighter clothes, a job with Sax Sendler’s talent agency, a car of his own, karate lessons, and a lot of self-confidence had transformed The Three Investigators’ researcher into one of the most popular guys at Rocky Beach High School.
“Where’s our case? Or did the Chicken Princess fly the coop?” Bob asked.
“The case is behind the curtains,” Pete said, motioning with a jerk of his head. “She’s asleep. We can’t talk to her.”
“I’m sure that Jupe would be the first to point out that logically we could talk to her all we wanted,” Bob said with a smile. “She just won’t answer.”
“At least she’s quiet now,” Kelly said softly. “You should have heard her moaning all night. And she had some interesting visitors.”
“In the middle of the night?” Jupe said, surprised. “How’d they get past the nurse with the red hair and hot temper?”
Kelly shrugged. “Very mysterious, isn’t it?”
“Who were they?” Jupe asked skeptically.
“Well, Big Barney was in here every hour. He even gave me a couple of free coupons,” Kelly said.
“Who else?” asked Jupe.
“A good-looking guy named Sean Fellows,” Kelly said.
“How do you know his name?” Pete asked, suddenly frowning.
“Because I asked him — and don’t be so jealous,” Kelly said. “He’s Juliet’s ex-boyfriend. He came at about four a.m. and just sat there watching her. Then early this morning there was another visitor, Maria Gonzales. She said she was Juliet’s college roommate.”
“We can forget about her,” Jupe said.
“Why?” Bob asked.
“Because Juliet said, ‘
“Not even for revenge?” Pete asked. Jupe gave a “maybe” shrug.
