Candy Factory Mystery (7 page)

Jessie quickly ran ahead to find her sweater. When she came out, the other Aldens were waiting in front of a small building. It looked a lot newer than the rest of the warehouse.

The children breathed in the sweet, sugary air.

“Somebody was definitely cooking candy or something sweet in there,” Violet said.

Benny and Soo Lee crept up to the building first. A window was opened slightly, but they weren't tall enough to see in.

Henry was. “Hey, guys. Take a look inside!”

Violet and Jessie stood behind Henry. He picked up Benny, and Jessie picked up Soo Lee. Now the two younger Aldens could see a gleaming candy kitchen. It was newer and smaller than Mrs. Winkles's kitchen, but equipped with the same kinds of pots and candy molds.

“So Mr. Boxer is a candy maker, not just a shipper,” Jessie said. “Now that's pretty fishy. I don't think Mrs. Winkles knows about this. She might not want to use a shipper who's competing with her.”

Violet looked worried. “If Mr. Boxer is making candy, too, that would explain why he's not careful about Mrs. Winkles's candy. Maybe we should come back with Mrs. Winkles when Mr. Boxer doesn't expect us. That way she can see for herself what is going on.”

“Good idea,” Henry agreed. “Maybe we'll catch him in the act.”

“Let's bring Tom and Meg, too,” Jessie suggested. “We need to find out once and for all if they've been making trouble — and candy — with Mr. Boxer.”

The children headed to the loading dock.

“Hi,” Jessie said to the two workmen. “Would you give Mr. Boxer a message that we'll be back in a couple of days?”

“Okay,” one of the men said.

Henry was confused. “Why did you tell them when we're coming? Wouldn't it be better to just show up and surprise them?”

A smile spread across Jessie's face. “We're not going to come by in a couple of days — we'll come back tomorrow morning. Mr. Boxer won't have a chance to hide anything suspicious.”

“Now it looks as if Mr. Boxer might be causing problems for Mrs. Winkles,” Violet said. “Thank goodness it's not Tom.”

“I wouldn't be so sure about Tom yet,” Jessie said. “We still have to find out why he tried to make Mrs. Winkles think we had something to do with the broken machine. Don't forget that. Plus, he said he wasn't in the factory the other morning when we saw him with our own eyes.”

Violet bit her lip. “I know there must be a good reason for the way Tom acted. I hope we can find out about him and about Meg, too. After all, she's the one who always seems to be talking with Mr. Boxer, not Tom.”

When the Aldens returned to the candy factory, they noticed Tom's and Meg's cars in the parking lot.

“We need to get everybody over to Mr. Boxer's, that's for sure,” Henry said. “Mrs. Winkles and Grandfather are coming back tonight. We could tell Mrs. Winkles that we saw some problems at Mr. Boxer's warehouse.”

“Good idea, Henry,” Jessie agreed. “We'll ask her if she can go there to have him show us how the candy gets shipped out.”

As the children walked closer to Mrs. Winkles's office, they heard angry voices.

“We'd better wait a bit,” Jessie whispered. “Sounds as if Meg and Tom are having another one of their disagreements. I don't want to get caught in the middle.”

“If you gave me the right directions in the first place, Tom,” Meg was saying, “I wouldn't have put vanilla in the chocolate batch too early. You never said to add it at the end. I couldn't find Mrs. Winkles's recipe book anywhere to help me out.”

“You've been here long enough to know the steps by now,” Tom said.

Henry knocked on the office door.

When Tom turned around, the Aldens crowded into the office. “We were wondering when you were coming back,” Tom said. “Not that it matters. The last batch of chocolate's no good. We have to mix up more. Where did you go?”

“To Mr. Boxer's warehouse,” Henry said slowly. “Before Mrs. Winkles left, she told us we could take a look at how Mr. Boxer sends out her candy shipments.”

The children were disappointed. Neither Tom nor Meg seemed to care a bit that the Aldens had visited Mr. Boxer's.

Meg seemed more interested in arguing with Tom than talking with the Aldens. “All I need is Mrs. Winkles's recipe notebook again. If you had put it back after you borrowed it the other day, I wouldn't have made the mistake about the vanilla.”

“You shouldn't need the recipe to know that the vanilla goes in last,” Tom said.

At that moment, Meg happened to look down at Tom's open briefcase. “Why is the recipe notebook in your briefcase anyway, Tom? It's supposed to stay in Mrs. Winkles's office when we're not using it.” Meg reached down and pulled out the bright red notebook. Several pages fluttered to the floor.

Tom scrambled to pick them up, but Meg got to them first.

“What are all these copies doing here, Tom?” Meg asked. “You just finished telling me I shouldn't need to read the recipes anymore. Why do you need so many copies?”

Tom looked away from Meg only to find the Aldens staring at him. They were wondering the same thing.

“I … uh … well, I wanted to make sure the Aldens here had some copies …” Tom said, “in case they needed to make up some candy batches.”

Meg put her hands on her hips. “I don't think Mrs. Winkles would have them do that without one of us here. You'd better give me those. Everything is supposed to stay in the factory when we're not using the recipes.”

Tom tried to get hold of the papers, but Meg was too quick for him. “I guess the pages got mixed up with other stuff in my briefcase,” he said in a quiet voice.

Benny noticed something odd on Tom's briefcase. “Hey, somebody made a mistake on the tag. It says
T.W.
I know my letters now. Shouldn't it be
T.C
. for
Tom Chipley?”

Tom flipped over the leather tag with the gold initials Benny had been reading. “This belonged to my grandfather. Tom … um … White.”

By this time, Meg had gathered up all the recipe copies. She stuffed them into Mrs. Winkles's notebook and put it safely in the file cabinet. “Okay, everybody out. I'm locking up.”

Meg waved Tom and the Aldens out the door. She pulled it firmly behind her.

Tom snapped his briefcase shut and locked it with a small key.

The Aldens weren't sure why. His briefcase was completely empty.

CHAPTER 10

2 Good 2 B True

T
he day after they returned from the food show, Grandfather and Mrs. Winkles joined the children for breakfast up in the loft.

“I have a surprise,” Mrs. Winkles announced as soon as the children cleared the breakfast dishes. She spread out all kinds of candy on the table. “You children are in for a treat—in fact, you're in for a lot of them. I brought back wonderful, old-fashioned candies that other candy makers have been making in this area for a long time. Help yourselves, now that you've had a good breakfast.”

“Some of these candies have been around since I was a boy,” Grandfather told his grandchildren. “Peanut butter buckeyes, chocolate jelly sticks — those are a hundred years old.”

“Is it still okay to eat them?” Soo Lee asked.

James Alden laughed. “Well, only the candy brands have been around for over a hundred years. The candies themselves are all freshly made.”

As the children enjoyed their treats, they took turns helping Mrs. Winkles catch up on the news around the factory.

“What about the strange candy hearts that wound up in my shipment?” Mrs. Winkles asked.

Benny hated to set aside his chocolate jelly stick, but he was bursting with news. “We have lots of clues. Not just about hearts, either. You know those little candy ghosts that go in those chocolate pumpkins you send us on Halloween? Some of them got mixed in with the little candy chicks. But don't worry. We found all of them.”

Mrs. Winkles put down her cup. She felt too upset to enjoy her morning coffee. “Oh, my. Thank goodness for that.”

“We haven't quite figured out who mixed up the candies or messed up the mice,” Jessie said. “We have a feeling Mr. Boxer has something to do with it — and that Meg or Tom might be working with him.”

Jessie paused. She didn't really want to give Mrs. Winkles any more bad news. “We think Mr. Boxer might be making candy, also. The inspector went there and—”

“Mr. Boxer making candy?” Mrs. Winkles asked. “My goodness, perhaps that's why he never allows me past his office and always tells me to call ahead before I visit.”

“If it's okay with you,” Henry said, “we want to go over there with Meg and Tom but not tell them why.”

Violet could see that hearing Tom's name upset Mrs. Winkles. “I don't think Tom's done anything wrong. He just gets upset sometimes.”

Mrs. Winkles was grateful to Violet. “Oh, I do know what you mean. He's usually so friendly and helpful. Other times … well, if we get talking about personal matters, he just clams right up. I'll just tell him and Meg I need them to come on some errands with me — that I have some business to do and it can't wait.”

When everyone arrived at Boxer's Shipping Company, the air was filled with the smell of chocolate.

The Aldens watched Meg and Tom closely. Did they know what was going on?

“Why did you bring us here?” Meg asked Mrs. Winkles. “I need to get back to the candy factory. I don't want to fall behind.”

“We'll go back soon,” Mrs. Winkles told Meg. “Right now, I'd like to find Mr. Boxer.”

The Aldens hurried over to Mr. Boxer's candy-making building.

“I want to catch him making candy,” Henry whispered.

Jessie crept up to the window of the candy kitchen first. She stood on her tiptoes. “Mr. Boxer has the chocolate sprayers going. Look.”

That was enough for Henry. He walked to the door, knocked on it, and pushed it open.

Mr. Boxer rushed over. “You kids again?” he shouted. “You can't come in here. I'm busy right now.” When he started to push the door shut, Mr. Boxer spotted Mrs. Winkles. “Oh, excuse me, Mrs. Winkles. I didn't know you were coming.”

Mr. Boxer didn't scare off Jessie. She stepped into the candy kitchen right after Henry. “You're making candy.” She looked around at the dozens of metal egg molds slowly moving along a conveyor belt.

Benny picked up an egg carton that was already filled with chocolate eggs. “These are just like Mrs. Winkles's chocolate eggs, too.”

“Well, they're not. They're Boxer's chocolate eggs,” Mr. Boxer blurted out.

Meg pushed her way past the Aldens. She took a closer look at the chocolate egg carton Benny was holding. “I gave you the name of the place that makes those cartons.”

“Meg!” Mrs. Winkles cried. “How could you do that?”

Meg leaned against the counter. Her face was pale. “Mr. Boxer said he sometimes needed extra cartons in case yours got dented or there were other problems with them. I didn't know he would put his own name on the cartons!”

Mr. Boxer exploded. “Problems, Meg? My only problem was hiring someone who never had a real job before, who kept giving my men the wrong directions, mixing up orders, taking down the wrong phone messages. There was no end to the problems. Getting you to spill information about Mrs. Winkles's factory was easy — like taking candy from a baby.”

Meg swallowed hard. She went from being pale to red-faced. “You planted me at Winkles Candy Factory to spy for you?” she said, her voice rising. “That's why you were always asking me questions and bothering me about how Mrs. Winkles did things? So you could start your own business?”

Mr. Boxer put his hands up as if to push away Meg and her words. “Out of here, everyone. This is nobody's business but mine. And there's plenty of candy business for everyone. Selling candy to schools, for example. There's enough room for me and my candy.”

“As long as you do it fair and square,” Mrs. Winkles said. “Sending a young person out to spy for you isn't the way to do good business, Mr. Boxer.”

For the first time, Mr. Boxer looked a little ashamed. But only a little.

“I don't care what you think of me,” he said angrily. “And I don't care what a bunch of kids have to say.” And with that, he turned away from them.

Realizing they weren't getting anywhere with Mr. Boxer, the Aldens turned their attention back to Meg. They weren't done with her, either. “You gave us the wrong key and wrong information about things — like you didn't want us to see what you were up to,” Jessie said.

“And what about not wearing your gloves when the inspector came?” Henry added.

“And letting a cat in while he was there?” Benny pointed out. “Don't forget that.”

Meg looked at the Aldens, then at Mrs. Winkles. “I didn't do any of those things on purpose. Sometimes, when I try too hard, I make mistakes,” Meg confessed. “I was afraid to ask questions or ask for help, so I kept messing up. It got worse after all the Aldens showed up. They watched every single thing I did and asked a million questions.”