Free Stalk, Don't Run by Carolyn Keene

opened the heavy door.
    George took a package of something off the shelf to prop open the door and give us some light.
    We walked in slowly, where it was cold and pretty dark. Mr. Safer had been meaning to change the lightbulb but never had.
    “Anybody in here?” George called.
    “Mandy, Mallory?” I called. “Mia?”
    I was able to see enough to know there was no one in the fridge but us. I was disappointed not to have found the sisters, but also relieved.
    “Wait a minute, you guys,” George said, pointing to a shelf in the back of the fridge. “Isn’t that raw meat? Mr. Safer doesn’t sell meat. What’s it doing in here?”
    Before we could figure it out— SLAM!
    I gasped. We were in total darkness. The heavy door had just slammed shut!
    George pressed her phone, and it lit up. “I knew this flashlight app would come in handy one of these days,” she said.
    “The door is locked,” Bess said, struggling with the door handle.
    “The fridge doesn’t lock by itself,” I said. “Someone has to do it from outside.”
    Pressing my ear to the door, I heard something—or someone—running away. I felt myself shiver—not so much from fear, but from cold.
    “I hate to tell you this,” I said, my teeth starting to chatter. “Not only did someone lock us in, he or she turned down the thermostat.”
    “You mean this fridge is going to be a freezer?” George said.
    Desperate, we tried calling out on our phones but couldn’t get signals. We shouted and pounded on the door—until we couldn’t feel our freezing, tingling hands.
    “No one’s going to hear us,” Bess said, her teeth clicking from the cold. “I bet whoever locked us in here shut the front door too.”
    I was just about to wonder what would be worse, suffocating or freezing to death, when the door swung open. In the doorway was the shadow of a tall, hulking man, clutching a giant cleaver !

 

MEAN AT THE BEAN
    B ess shrieked at the sight of the looming figure. I was too frozen with fear to scream or to move.
    From the corner of my eye I saw George grab a huge wheel of cheese from the shelf. Lifting it over her head, she was about to hurl it when—
    “Nancy? Bess? George?”
    I blinked at the familiar voice. The figure stepped out of the shadows, and I almost started to cry: It wasn’t a murderer, it was just Hal—the butcher on Main Street.
    “Coming through, Hal!” I said as the three of us bolted past him out of the walk-in fridge. I almost slipped on a fresh bloody footprint—courtesy of Hal’s butcher shop.
    “S-s-sorry, Hal,” Bess said, her teeth chattering. “But it was a bit ch-ch-chilly in there.”
    “I’ll say!” Hal said as we jumped up and down to get warm. “What on earth were you doing in Mr. Safer’s cheese fridge?”
    “Someone locked us in,” George said. “The rest is a long story.”
    “Did you hear us calling for help?” I asked.
    Hal shook his head. “The fridge in my butcher shop is on the blink,” he said. “Mr. Safer told me I could store some of my cuts in his fridge until I got it fixed.”
    “So that’s where all that meat came from,” I said, blowing into my hands for warmth.
    George pointed to the floor and said, “The bloody footprints, too? Did you make those, Hal?”
    Hal’s face blushed red. “Afraid so, George,” he said. “I accidentally tracked those in while I was carrying in the meat earlier. I felt so lousy about messing up Mr. Safer’s impeccably clean floor that I came back to clean them up.”
    “Does Mr. Safer know?” I asked.
    Hal shook his head and said, “Mr. Safer had an important meeting tonight at the theater.”
    “What about?” I asked.
    “Not sure,” Hal said with a shrug. “All he told me was that he had to take care of the three sisters.”
    Take care of the three sisters? Uh-oh. Had Mr. Safer meant the play The Three Sisters by Chekhov—or the three Casabian sisters?
    “So!” Hal said, raising his cleaver and making us jump back. “You’re