The Candymakers and the Great Chocolate Chase Page 7

  The Marshmallow Room was empty. With everyone outside still celebrating, it was a little spooky having the factory so quiet during the middle of a workday. Miles ran into Henry’s small office. After a minute or two Logan called out to him. “We should keep looking.”

  When Miles rejoined him, he had a strange expression on his face. Before Logan could ask if everything was okay, Miles said, “We must have missed him outside.” Back out they went.

  They grabbed Philip away from his adoring fans and started searching the grounds in a big loop. They finally spotted Henry near the marshy side of the pond, where the mallow roots grew. He was walking in the tall grass, clearly deep in thought. The boys were almost upon him before he noticed them. And when he did, he immediately turned the other way and bumped right into a tree.

  “Seriously?” Philip said, marching toward him. “You’re trying to ditch us?”

  Henry turned to face them, rubbing his nose and fixing his glasses. “Saw that, eh?”

  Philip said something else to Henry in a low voice, but Logan didn’t hear. He doubted it was very nice.

  “Are you okay?” Logan asked. He noticed that the bottoms of Henry’s pants were wet. He’d gotten too close to the marsh and wasn’t wearing his tall wading boots. “Where have you been? What’s going on?”

  Henry sighed. “I wish I knew.”

  “But you agree something’s wrong with the Harmonicandy?”

  Henry stuck his hands in his pockets and nodded. Logan had held out a shred of hope that maybe only his Harmonicandy had been off, or that he’d misinterpreted Henry’s reaction while he was eating. That last shred was now gone.

  Philip threw up his arms. “This is crazy. There’s nothing wrong with it. It was delicious!”

  “I agree with you,” Henry said. “It tasted wonderful. But it was not the same as the one you submitted to the contest. I… I should have told you then. I should have stopped you.…”

  “Stopped us from what?” Miles asked.

  “From using the wrong chocolate.”

  “The wrong chocolate?” the boys repeated in unison.

  Henry nodded. “I sampled some of the chocolate Philip was using while I was helping him work on the recipe. I knew right away that I’d tasted it before—only once, and it was a long time ago. But you don’t forget a thing like that. Never expected to taste it again.”

  A worried feeling had started to settle in Logan’s stomach. Henry wasn’t making any sense. Why would the chocolate they used have been from some old batch? “What are you talking about, Henry?”

  Henry gave a sad little shrug. “I don’t know how else to explain it. Wherever Philip got that batch from, he wasn’t supposed to use it. I didn’t tell him because I wanted to give the Harmonicandy the best chance to win. I wanted to save the factory. Not for myself. I’m old, and I’ve been here perhaps too long. It didn’t occur to me that of course Philip wouldn’t be able to use the same chocolate again if he won. I didn’t know about the clause in the contest rules that says the exact recipe has to be followed. Not until that other contestant got disqualified, anyway. And by then it was too late, of course. All I could do was hope that when the time came—when today came—no one would notice the difference.”

  “And no one did,” Philip said firmly. “I mean, no one but the two of you. So let’s keep it that way.”

  Ignoring Philip’s remark, Logan asked instead, “Do you remember where you got the chocolate from?”

  Philip threw up his hands again. “Of course I don’t. Some shelf in the back of Max’s lab, probably, with all the other ingredients.”

  Logan turned to Henry. “Can’t we just find more of this chocolate? Steve and Lenny should know where all the different batches are, right?”

  Henry shook his head. “There is no more. I am certain of it.”

  “We’ll just need to look again,” Philip said, already turning back toward the factory.

  “There is NO more,” Henry repeated firmly. Philip hesitated, then nodded.

  No one spoke for a minute. “So what do we do?” Logan asked. “Production of the Harmonicandy is scheduled to start in two weeks.” He looked at Miles, who had been very quiet since they’d left Henry’s office. “What do you think, Miles?”

  “I don’t think we should say anything to anyone,” Miles said softly.

  “Exactly!” Philip said.

  “We’ll wait until we get back from the trip,” Miles continued. “And then if it’s still a problem, we’ll tell them what’s going on.”

  “I agree,” Henry said. “While normally I would never suggest hiding anything from your father, he has enough going on right now with the rush to get the Mmm Mmm Good product line up and running. I’ll work on it here, you work on it on the road, and hopefully we can sort it out before production starts.”

  Logan couldn’t imagine how they could change anything from the backseat of a van, but it hardly mattered. He had to break the bad news. “We’re not going on the trip.”

  “What?” Philip shouted. “That’s crazy. We’ll figure this out. We are going on that trip!”

  “It’s not because of this,” Logan insisted. “Like Henry said, it’s going to be crazy around here for the next few weeks. My parents have to be here to deal with all the new equipment and supplies coming in. But listen, it’s a good thing to put off going to the stores. This will give us time to figure out what’s going on, and—”

  “No,” Miles said in a loud voice. He cleared his throat and repeated it. “No. Philip’s right, and you know I don’t say that easily. We need to go on the road trip. Not later, now.”

  Logan had rarely heard Miles sound so forceful. “Why?” he asked.

  Miles hesitated, then looked Logan right in the eye. “Tsurt em. Esaelp. I tnac llet uoy ereh.”

  Logan stared at him. He knew how to decipher Miles’s backward talk by now. What could Miles have to tell him that he couldn’t say in front of the others? He glanced at Philip and Henry. Henry looked at Miles blankly. Philip was scowling. He’d once said that learning Miles’s backward talk would encourage him to use it more, and they should break him of the habit. Logan was pretty sure it annoyed Philip so much because he couldn’t understand it.

  “Even if we could still go,” Logan said, “I told you, my parents can’t take us. Neither can the suits who were going to drive the other van.”

  “Henry can drive us,” Miles said, looking at him pleadingly. “Will you do it, Henry?”

  “Of course he can’t do it,” Philip snapped. “You heard Big Billy. He’s giving the Marsh-Wiggle to the factory. That thing’s, like, half marshmallow. Henry needs to be here to get it up and running. Obviously.”

  Logan and Miles stared at Philip. “How do you know what’s in the Marsh-Wiggle?” Miles asked angrily. Miles almost never got angry at anything. Whatever he knew that Logan didn’t was clearly getting him worked up.

  Philip shrugged. “I make it my business to know the top sellers at each factory. Plus the name kind of gives it away.”

  “He’s right. I can’t go,” Henry said. “I’m sorry. But don’t worry. I found—”

  “What I still don’t understand,” Philip said, interrupting him, “is what you meant when you said you tasted the same chocolate a long time ago. When?”

  “I don’t recall,” Henry said, rubbing his head as if it hurt. “I just know that it was a very special batch of chocolate, and you used up the rest of it.”

  Out of the side of his mouth, Miles said to Logan, “Eh si gniyl.”

  Logan’s eyes widened. He sure hoped Henry hadn’t figured out that one! Logan leaned close to Miles. “Lying about what?” Logan whispered.

  “I’m not sure,” Miles whispered back. “But about some of it.”

  “You know that’s rude, right?” Philip said loudly.

  “Sorry,” Miles muttered. Then he said, “Hey, maybe Reggie could take us?”

  Philip shook his head. “My dad’s coming home in a few days.
No way would he part with Reggie. Being driven all over town is a status thing for him.”

  “Figured that was a long shot,” Miles admitted. “And I know my parents can’t leave their jobs.”

  Henry shook his head at them. “As I was saying before, I’m sorry I cannot drive you. But I know someone who can.”

  “Who?” Philip demanded.

  “Let’s go find out,” Henry replied. “He’s waiting out front right now.”

  PART TWO

  MILES

  CHAPTER ONE

  Monday

  Miles tied up his bike and ran over to the wooden bench at the entrance to the park. In the four months since he’d helped create the Harmonicandy, Miles rarely did anything slowly. He had so much living to catch up on!

  He tossed his backpack onto the bench, then ran his hand along the underside, being extra careful not to get a splinter in the process. He soon felt the paper scroll and carefully pried it loose from the tape.

  Miles smiled to himself. Being friends with a real-life spy had taught him a thing or two. One of those things was that a real secret mission would be scary, but a make-believe one was fun!

  He looked around to make sure he was alone—a totally unnecessary step in this case, since he wasn’t actually on a spy mission, but Miles liked following directions. He was decidedly not alone, as it was a breezy summer day and school was out and this was the best park in town, with its hiking trails and lake and merry-go-round and vendors selling hot dogs and ice cream and pretzels.

  He unrolled the scroll anyway.

  The first thing he noticed was his name written in Norse runes. Last time it had been in Sanskrit. The time before that it was Egyptian hieroglyphs. A chill of delight ran up his spine. He loved ancient languages almost as much as he loved candy and maps. And he loved candy and maps a lot.

  WHO:

  WHEN: SECOND MONDAY IN JULY, 10 A.M.

  WHERE: VERONA PARK

  WHY: TO LOCATE THE LAST REMAINING GEOCACHE IN THE PARK

  HOW: WITH THE COORDINATES SENT TO YOUR GPS AND YOUR OWN GEO-SENSES

  NECESSARY SUPPLIES: GPS, RUBBER GLOVES, PEN, SNACKS, SWAG TO LEAVE IN THE CACHE, WATER BOTTLE

  Being well trained and a fast learner, Miles had brought all the correct supplies. He tucked the scroll into his sock, slipped his backpack over his shoulders, and picked up the GPS attached to the strap around his neck. As promised, Arthur Wu, Spring Haven’s new reference librarian and second-to-none geocaching tour guide, had loaded the coordinates into the device. Arthur was the reason Miles was at the park today instead of at the candy factory. During Arthur’s first week on the job, he’d convinced the library to purchase five GPS devices that patrons could check out for free, just like a book. He then posted a sign-up list for a geocaching expedition where he would teach the game of geocaching.

  Geocaching. Miles loved that word. Geo, meaning of the earth and ground. And cache, with its soft sh sound, meant a hidden collection of items that might one day prove useful. Pirates hid them to return to when safe from pursuit; soldiers hid them in preparation to hunker down in one spot; and now regular people hid them for sport, and other regular people found them. People like Arthur, and now people like him! Hurrah!

  Miles’s mom did not hide that she was anxious for him to do something other than go to the candy factory after school every day. She’d made it clear that running through the factory with Logan for hours on end wasn’t exactly an educational pursuit. The minute Arthur had posted the sign-up list, she wrote Miles’s name in bold letters on the first line.

  Miles could admit it was possible he had become a bit obsessed with the candy factory and the upcoming release of the Harmonicandy, and he might talk about it a little too much, but the last four months had been the most amazing of his life. At least his father was always happy to take him to the factory. Every time Miles went to spend time with Logan or use the library or learn more about making candy from Max, he brought home enough free samples and NQPs to satisfy his dad’s sweet tooth for a few days. If his mom had a sweet tooth, she probably wouldn’t complain so much.

  As someone who loved words and their histories and meanings, Miles knew that Arthur’s last name meant he was Chinese, and that fact likely had something to do with why his mom wanted them to spend time together. Before Arthur moved to Spring Haven, Miles and his family were the only Chinese people in town besides Mrs. Chen, the librarian for the children’s room who’d encouraged him to enter the candymaking contest last year. His own last name—O’Leary—definitely wasn’t a typical name for a Chinese family. His mom’s last name had been Yang, which Miles knew from his research was the seventh most common Chinese last name.

  He knew that O’Leary was an Irish name (he had made a really excellent family tree in fourth grade, with real leaves attached to it, that went all the way back to Simon O’Leary, born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1842!), but he didn’t know much about that side of his family besides their names.

  His father’s parents had passed away when Miles was only a few years old, and he didn’t really remember them. When he was first designing his afterlife for the-girl-who-drowned, Miles had added a house for his grandparents, complete with a huge garden because his dad said they’d loved growing their own vegetables. Old pictures of them showed a smiling, blond-haired, blue-eyed couple. When he was younger, he’d asked why his grandparents looked so different from the rest of them, but his dad had always changed the subject. Eventually Miles gave up asking.

  When the day of the first geocaching hike arrived, Miles turned out to be the only one on the list! He didn’t mind at all. He could ask more questions, which he loved to do. Providing answers brought reference librarians great joy, and Arthur was no exception. They hit it off right away.

  Miles’s dad had tagged along that first time as Arthur explained that geocaching involved using GPS coordinates to find small treasures that other players hid in public outdoor areas around the world. At first Arthur seemed a bit shy around them, but he quickly warmed up. As they hiked the park’s long trail system, Mr. O’Leary started lagging farther and farther behind while Miles and Arthur chatted enthusiastically about longitude and latitude, the various types of caches (large, regular, micro, and the tiny nano), common and tricky hiding places, and the proper way of recording your discovery in the cache’s logbook. The conversation turned from treasure hunting to ancient maps and languages. Eventually Mr. O’Leary stuck in his earbuds and switched on his music, no longer even bothering to pretend that he was engaged in their conversation.

  Over the last few weeks, Miles had become Arthur’s best patron at the reference desk. Most people asked for basic information, like how to find a newspaper article published in the Spring Haven Herald five years back. Either that or they asked for directions to the bathroom. But not Miles. With all the tools of the library at his fingertips, Arthur was able to find nearly anything Miles asked for, and he was always up for a challenge. Miles was just the guy to give it to him. A map showing the topography of ancient ruins in Rome? Certainly, I have that right here. An aerial view of the Mississippi River basin in 1850? No problem! I’ll bring that up from storage. The latest Ultra Deep Field image from the Hubble Space Telescope? Let me print that out for you in high-definition color. And when Miles told him he’d read that real “X marks the spot” treasure maps had never actually existed, Arthur found him a true-to-size replica of the two-thousand-year-old Copper Scroll from Israel that supposedly gave instructions on where to find more than sixty buried caches of real silver and gold.

  Neither Miles nor Arthur expected to find real treasure in a plastic box in the middle of Verona Park, but anything was possible. That’s what made it fun.

  “Fifty more feet!” Miles shouted as his handheld GPS counted down the distance to where the last geocache on their list was hidden. He practically skipped along the hiking trail as he followed the arrow of the built-in compass. After a few more feet, the arrow swung to the west and Miles found himself v
eering off the dirt path and into a clearing. Even though he hadn’t seen Arthur since he’d arrived at the park, he knew the librarian wasn’t far behind. For this last one, they’d agreed that Miles would try to get to the location on his own. Next time he wanted to program the coordinates in himself, too. “Nineteen feet!” he called out. “Six!”

  When the GPS told him he had one foot to go to reach the correct coordinates, he stopped, proud of himself for having found the spot on his own. He looked up to see that his feet were at the edge of a brook he’d never noticed before, even though his family had been coming to this park his whole life. Good thing he’d stopped when he did, or he would have wound up in the water!

  “Almost there,” Arthur called out from the end of the dirt path. “Just trying to get Fluffernutter to stop sniffing at every single pebble!”

  When Arthur found out that Miles had named the Harmonicandy, he’d asked him to name something else—his family’s brand-new puppy! Miles had literally bounded upstairs to his desk to work on it. Miles loved naming things. Dad said his afterlife map was as beautiful and detailed as any in the front of the fantasy novels they both loved to read.

  Miles had never named a dog before, though, and he must have considered a hundred names before he landed on the perfect one. Not only was Fluffernutter a cool word (all those double letters!), but also it was one of his favorite sandwiches to eat at the Life Is Sweet cafeteria. It’s always more fun to eat something you’ve had a hand in making, and Henry sometimes let him and Philip help pull out the mallow roots. Or, more accurately, Miles and Henry did the pulling (it required wading into the middle of the swamp, and Philip said once was enough for him) and then tossed the thick, slippery roots to Philip on the shore, where he blotted them dry with thick towels. Henry worked his magic and turned the roots into marshmallow cream. Ah… mazing!