The Case of the Wilted Broccoli

by William Hertling

  The restaurant had candles on the table (a good sign) and it was quiet (potentially troubling since Linden and Elon frequently weren't), but after one glance from mom and dad, they decided to behave. The kids sat at one end of the table so the adults could talk.

  Somehow Willow ended up sandwiched between the boys, and of course got kicked. In the legs. Like ten times. But the food was worth it. The adults raved over salad greens (were they rabbits?) and local fish. Willow ordered salmon and broccoli, Elon got gnocchi with truffle sauce, and Linden -- somehow -- managed to get plain spaghetti and butter, which wasn't even on the menu.

  Willow speared one stalk of broccoli with her fork and stared at it before taking a bite. It was crisp, bright green, and tasted good. The menu made a big deal about how all the food was local and fresh. This was puzzling, because their school lunches were also supposed to be local and fresh, but didn't look or taste at all similar. What was going on?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WILLOW PICKED OVER her lunch on Monday. Unfortunately, she'd chosen hot lunch today, some kind of mystery meat. Why, oh why, hadn't she brought lunch from home? The school lunch tasted and smelled funny in addition to the odd gray color.

  Atlanta bit into hers, then got a funny look on her face. She dug around with her fingers, and pulled out a small metal ball. "A BB!" she said.

  Willow threw down her fork and pushed the plate away. "I'm done with this. My broccoli looks like it was sitting out on the counter all week. My apple is more bruises than not."

  "I don't understand," Atlanta said. "Is this the food we donated extra money to get?"

  Willow eyed her milk, suddenly suspicious, but it looked like the same milk they got every day.

  Basil sat down next to them with his usual peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He slid the apple over to Willow.

  She pushed it towards Atlanta, who pushed it back to Basil.

  He ignored it.

  "What's with the bandaids?" Willow asked. Nearly every finger on his hand had one or more bandages.

  "Grrr. Arrgh."

  "Articulate as usual. What gives?" she asked, turning to Atlanta.

  "On Friday he got in trouble for cutting hair at school," Atlanta said.

  "I still say there's no rule against cutting hair at school." Basil bit furiously into his sandwich.

  "And on Saturday I was still sick," Atlanta said, "so Basil went to the high school track meet, and told the cheerleaders he was collecting hair to donate to charity --"

  "Which we will!" he interrupted.

  "And so he got all the hair we needed." Atlanta started to break down in giggles.

  "What the what!" Basil said. "I've never braided hair before."

  "On Sunday, he started braiding. I was still sick. How long did you braid for?"

  "I braided hair, by myself, for ten hours. Ten hours!" He wiggled his hands at me. "These are blisters. Apparently I can rock-climb with no problem, but I can't braid hair."

  Willow was fascinated. She couldn't imagine Basil working that hard on a school project. "How much rope do you have?"

  "We don't have rope yet," Basil said. "We just have yarn."

  Willow was puzzled. "Now you're making yarn?" she said. "Did you turn this into a crochet project?"

  "No," Atlanta answered between bites of her mystery meat. "It takes several stages. Small bundles of hair have to be twisted together to make plies or singles. It's like thread or string. Then we take those singles and twisted them together to make three-ply rope."

  "Yeah, it's really fun," Basil said, with a fake smile planted on his face. "You want to work on it with us?" He made puppy-eyes at Willow.

  "No thanks, I'm good with our drone."

  His face sagged and he turned to Atlanta. "You're going to help with the next part, right?"

  "Of course," she said. "I don't want to be sick, you know."

  But later that day, a bunch of kids, including Atlanta, asked to be excused to the office and didn't come back to class. By the end of the school day, the rumor was that thirty kids had gone home sick.

  Willow called her that night and her dad picked up. "Is Atlanta home?" she asked.

  "She's at the hospital with her mom," he said.

  "Hospital?" Willow's stomach dropped and her heart beat faster.

  "Yes, Willow. I don't know what's going on with this stomach flu she has, but every time we think she's better, she gets sick again."

  Willow panicked. If Atlanta went to the hospital, it was serious. She didn't remember hanging up, but the next thing she knew, she was in her brothers' room, sitting on Elon's bed, crying.

  "What's the matter?" Linden asked.

  "It's the food."

  Linden looked puzzled.

  "The food at school. It's why kids keep getting sick, I'm sure of it."

  Linden, who only ate spaghetti or rice from home, didn't know what Willow was talking about.

  "Come on, Elon, you've seen it, right?"

  Elon nodded. "The vegetables are soggy and the meat tastes funny."

  "But not all the time," Willow said. "Some days it's normal, and some days it's not." She looked them both in the eyes. "I need your help. We have to solve this mystery."

  Linden stared back at her. "Shouldn't we let adults handle this?"

  "Adults are clueless. They're always looking at their phones, reading email, or going on Facebook. They don't pay attention."

  "That's true," Elon said.

  Willow remember the lesson in Mrs. Dozen's class, the way the food came from farms, was received by distributors in one area, who then shipped the food to distributors in other areas. Their cafeteria food could be coming from anywhere! "We need to talk to Miss Berry in the cafeteria, and find out where the food is coming from. We need to trace the food step by step back to its source."

  "How are we going to do that?" Elon asked.

  "I don't know, but we have to figure out a way. Otherwise kids might start to die."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  TUESDAY MORNING, THEY got to school early, shaking the water off their raincoats as they entered the cafeteria. Even in this rain, they passed Kazuki playing soccer outside.

  "I want to play with Kazuki and Bobby!" Linden said.

  "Yeah, me too," Elon said. He could just imagine Bobby doing a drop-kick the length of the schoolyard.

  "We have to do this together," Willow said, her voice tight. "Besides, Bobby isn't --"

  "But why?" Elon interrupted. "You could talk to Miss Berry by yourself."

  Willow shook her head.

  Elon guessed she was nervous, and it was easier to do stuff that makes you nervous when you're with a friend. Well, Willow was helping them with the drone, so he'd help her with this. "No problem. We'll come with you."

  They walked together into the kitchen. Normally they only came in for lunch. At this early hour, Miss Berry looked even busier than she did at lunchtime, rushing between unloading food, selling breakfast items, and reloading lunch cards for parents.

  They waited for a gap, then Willow called out, "Miss Berry."

  Miss Berry rushed over from unloading buns.

  "Yes?"

  Willow cleared her throat. "Where does our food come from?"

  Miss Berry, already frantic, looked back towards the buns, and then toward the cash register. She didn't seem like she had much time, but she took a deep breath, and visibly slowed down a bit. "Do you mean how does it get here, or where is it grown?"

  Willow looked at Elon to take over.

  Elon swallowed deeply. "We want to know the whole thing," he said "Where is it grown? How did it get here?" He spontaneously pointed at a pile of hamburger patties. "Who made the meat into the hamburger?"

  Miss Berry sighed. "I don't know, kids." She stopped and looked around the kitchen. "I probably have fifty different foods around here, from the breakfast items that are out now, the three different lunch choices for today, all the condiments. I don't know where it all comes from."

  "What abo
ut the local foods we paid extra money for?" Linden asked.

  "Oh, don't get me started about that program," Miss Berry said, turning to check out a kid getting cereal and a muffin for breakfast. "They said local and fresh. I haven't seen anything show up that's been local and fresh. More like wilted and old. Mondays and Fridays are the so-called local and fresh days. But it's garbage. I don't understand it."

  "But where does it come from?" Willow asked again.

  "I'm sorry," Miss Berry said, shaking her head. "I just don't know. Everything is dropped off twice a week. We get a delivery early Monday morning, and another one early Thursday morning. Bannon Foods is the company that delivers."

  "They deliver everything?" Elon asked.

  "Yes, they're a food distributor. They gather together everything, and deliver it to us."

  "So they'll know where everything comes from?" Linden said.

  "I suppose so," Miss Berry said. "Now I really gotta go, kids."

  She rushed back to unload juice boxes, and they turned to each other.

  "This is perfect," Willow said.

  "How is it perfect?" Elon asked. "We didn't learn anything."

  "We learned that everything comes from Bannon Foods," Willow said. "Now we can visit them and ask them where the food comes from."

  "Why would they tell us?" Linden asked. "Why would they talk to a bunch of kids at all?"

  Willow tapped her foot for the moment. "I got it! We'll tell them we're doing a report on the school food supply chain, and find out where everything comes from."

  "Good idea, but what's all this 'we' business?" Elon said. "We need to work on the science-fair project. Can't this wait?"

  "With people getting sick?" Willow said. "No way. This is important."

  The bell rung for them to go to class. Screams almost drown out the pounding of hundreds of running students as everyone ran for class. None of the three made a move.

  Elon looked down at his black and red sneakers. He didn't want to visit Bannon Foods, but he also didn't know how to explain this to Willow.

  "We can do both," Linden said. "Let's do some research about them tonight on the Internet, and then visit them after school tomorrow."

  "Right," Willow said. "Visiting them will just take one afternoon. We can work on the drone this weekend."

  "Fine," Elon said, nervous about the distraction, and thinking about the wires he needed to solder to connect the motors. It was his first time soldering, and he needed to get it perfect. "But promise me we'll work on the drone too. We need a test flight on Sunday."

  Linden and Willow nodded, and Willow gave him a hug. "We'll get it done. Besides, we have to beat Atlanta and Basil's hair-braiding project, right?"

  Then they streamed along with the last of the people going to class.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THAT NIGHT THEY gathered around dad's big-screen computer. Willow took the mouse with Linden and Elon on either side. They found the Bannon Foods website to be a series of boring company web pages, pretty much less useful than even the most basic blog.

  The home page showed a photo of smiling workers loading pineapples into a truck in front of palm trees. There wasn't a palm tree within a thousand miles of Portland.

  "It's not even Bannon Foods," Willow said. "It's just a stock photo the company bought to look good."

  "Click there," Linden said, pointing to the Products page. The page loaded, displaying a long list of meats, vegetables, and canned goods. Willow scrolled through several pages. Everything any kind of restaurant might want, from prepared foods to raw ingredients, was there.

  Willow clicked on the Contact Us web page. The address was in Southeast Portland, just a couple of miles from their school.

  "Google Maps," Linden said.

  Willow nodded, cut and pasted the address into Google Maps, and they stared at it.

  "We could walk there after school, then take the bus home," she mused. She clicked on street view, and they saw a photo of the building from the road. It was just a plain building behind a chain-link fence with a lot of trucks in the parking lot. "Looks harmless enough."

  "Search Google again," Linden said.

  Willow put Bannon Foods back into the search engine and a list of websites popped up.

  "Add 'complaints' to the search term," Linden said.

  Willow searched again, so that it looked like "Bannon Foods" complaints.

  The top link was to a website called BBB.

  "The Better Business Bureau," Linden said. "They keep track of businesses."

  Linden, as usual, was a fount of arcane wisdom regarding everything on the Internet.

  Visiting the site, they found that Bannon Foods had a C rating from the Better Business Bureau, with eight complaints listed, all from the last year. One of them looked like this:

  "We've been using Bannon for more than ten years with no problems. But in the last two months, we received several shipments of vegetables, which when we unboxed were noticeably wilted with brown spots. The company denied that the food was shipped in that condition, and refused to offer a refund, despite the fact that we were unable to use the vegetables."

  And another one:

  "Received shipment of poor quality meats. Bannon Foods was very good for many years, but we will be switching to a different food distributor now."

  "All these complaints are from this year," Elon said, pointing to the dates on the screen.

  "Yeah. Well, are we up for visiting them after school tomorrow?"

  "Let's do it," Linden said.

  "We'll say we're doing a report for school," Willow said, "which is true enough, since it is what I'm studying."

  "I'll bring my camera," Elon said, "and get pictures."

  They checked out bus schedules, and found they could walk to Bannon Foods, spend an hour there, and still get home in time for dinner.

  CHAPTER TEN

  LINDEN SHOVED HIS backpack higher onto his shoulders, and ran over to Elon and Willow. They had a two-and-a-half mile walk ahead of them. Luckily, the light drizzle stopped after a few minutes. Linden jumped into a puddle.

  "Stay clean!" Willow yelled. "We have to look presentable."

  Linden and Elon looked sadly at each puddle they passed after that.

  They strolled down Hawthorne Avenue, gazing in store windows at first, and then trudging slower and slower as the journey went on.

  "Ice cream!" Elon called out, when they were about halfway there.

  All three gazed into the window of the scoop shop.

  "Chocolate," Elon mused. "With sprinkles."

  "Vanilla," Linden said. "In a cone. Mmmm."

  "Buy us ice cream, please, Willow." Elon looked up at her with puppy eyes.

  Willow pulled out her wallet from her backpack and counted the money. "I think I have enough, if we each get a small cone."

  "Thank you!" Linden hugged her.

  They went inside and came out a few minutes later with ice cream and walked the rest of the way with renewed energy and happy smiles.

  Forty minutes after school ended, they caught the first glimpses of the Willamette River between buildings. Shortly afterwards, they came to a big empty lot, with an unused warehouse.

  "Is this it?" Linden asked, checking the address.

  "No," Willow said. "It's the next one." She pointed farther down the block. From a slight rise they could see a giant light blue building like a long barn, with a dozen trucks backed up to it at one side. Connected to one end was a much smaller building, also blue. While they watched, they saw a few people enter the smaller building. A parking lot held more small trucks with the Bannon name on the side, and a bunch of cars. The whole area was wrapped in a barbed-wire topped fence.

  They glanced at each other.

  "Notebook?" Willow asked.

  "Check," Linden said.

  "Camera?" Willow asked.

  "Check," Elon said, taking it out of his backpack, and holding it tight in both hands.

  "Well, I've got the ques
tions, so let's go."

  Inside the yard, a small black-and-white sign above one doorway declared it to be the "Office", so they headed there.

  Pulling open the door, they stepped into adult land: white walls, brown desks, and paper. Paper everywhere. Piles of receipts, folders, food brochures. Their mom and dad complained that they used too much paper, but it wasn't even a hundredth of what was here.

  A man looked up from a desk, appearing surprised to see kids. He checked behind them, like he was expecting someone else, probably a grownup. When no one else appeared, his gaze settled back on them.

  As a group, they shuffled closer. After heated discussion and seven rounds of rock, paper, scissors, they'd agreed Linden would introduce everyone, and then Willow would take over the questioning.

  "Hello?" the grownup asked, his mustache wiggling.

  Linden swallowed deep and blurted out as quickly: "Hi, I'm Linden, and this is Willow and Elon. We're doing a school report on the food supply chain, and we found out you deliver the food for our school. We'd like to find out where it comes from." He managed to deliver this without taking a breath, and then held out his hand for a handshake. Apparently, when you did this, grownups had to respond with their name.

  The grownup smiled. "How nice," he said, with a placating smile, as he reached out to shake Linden's hand. "I'm Brett. I have some brochures about what we do."

  Linden reached out to take the brochures as all data was useful. But they'd expected the grownups would try to brush them off without really answering any questions and planned ahead.

  "Thank you, Brett," Elon said. "But our teacher says we have to do our research in the form of an interview. Is there someone we can talk to? We just have a few questions."

  Brett looked back to his desk. For some reason adults always wanted to get back to their paperwork and computers. "Why don't I see if our company president is available?"

  Brett stood and disappeared through a doorway.