The Aldens weren’t at all careless when it came to work. They lined themselves up in a row to make sure that if one person missed an egg, someone else filled it.
“Okay, everybody. Ready?” Henry asked.
A soft hum filled the spotless white room. Slowly the conveyor belt began to move a row of chocolate eggs through an opening in the wall, toward the Aldens.
“Here goes.” Henry reached into the metal container of candy chicks and took one out. “I’ll start.”
Filling the eggs was simple, but Henry did miss a few at first. Jessie and Violet caught them all.
“Do Soo Lee and I get a turn?” Benny asked.
“Sure,” Henry said. “Now that we’ve got a good system going, you and Soo Lee scoot in front of me and you fill them, okay?”
This worked so well that the children were ahead of the machine every few minutes.
Then Benny’s sharp eyes spotted something different when he reached into the container. Instead of a sugar chick, he saw a ghost instead! “Look at this. It’s a candy ghost, not a chick!”
Violet recognized the little white ghosts. “Those are the ghosts Mrs. Winkles puts in her chocolate Halloween pumpkins. How did they get mixed up with the chicks?”
Henry saw that a couple empty eggs were about to pass by Benny. “I don’t know, but I’m glad Benny has a good eye for candy. Set it aside for now. I’ll fill these two eggs.”
“Let’s not talk until the conveyor belt stops,” Jessie said. “The last thing we need is to get distracted. It’s bad enough that Meg doesn’t pay attention to her job half the time. Now this. I don’t think customers would like seeing a ghost inside a chocolate egg when it isn’t Halloween.”
“Hey, everything is slowing down,” Soo Lee noticed a few minutes later. “See, it stopped.”
“Before Meg comes in here or calls us, let’s check these containers real fast,” Jessie suggested. “We’d better find out if any other candy ghosts got mixed in.”
The children sorted through the containers. They found a dozen or so candy ghosts in each one.
“Should we tell Meg?” Violet asked.
Henry and Jessie looked at each other.
“Not yet,” Henry said. “First, we need to find out who did this. Don’t forget, when she gave us these containers, they were already opened. Let’s just keep an eye on her for now.”
Violet didn’t like to think that people they knew would make any trouble. “Maybe Meg opened the containers but didn’t know what was inside.”
“I hate to say this, but what about Tom?” Henry asked. “He said he wasn’t anywhere near the factory this morning, but we saw him. He’s also the one who gave Meg the candy chick containers.”
Benny looked a little upset. “He didn’t wave at us the other morning.”
Jessie put her arm around Benny and smiled. “Well, it’s not a crime not to wave at people, Benny.”
“I know,” Benny said. “But first he was nice and gave everybody candy and showed us stuff. Then he stopped being so nice.”
A ringing phone interrupted the children.
“Meg said the inspector just drove up,” Jessie told the others after she picked up the phone. “She needs us to come to the candy kitchen. Hurry!”
“I wonder why Meg couldn’t just let the inspector in to see us working,” Henry said as the children rushed to see what Meg was so upset about. “Isn’t the whole idea of a surprise visit to check that the candy factory is okay no matter when somebody shows up? Uh-oh.”
When the Aldens stepped into the candy kitchen, it was not okay, not at all. Meg was racing from one end of the room to the other with paper wipes and sponges.
“What happened?” Jessie asked when she saw a pool of chocolate spreading over the conveyor belt.
Meg pointed to the controls on the chocolate sprayers. “Turn them off! Hurry! I have to let the inspector in. He just rang the bell. You clean up the mess. I’ll see if I can keep him from coming in here until we get this under control. I’ll slow him down while he’s getting dressed to come in here.”
After Meg left, the Aldens raced into action. Jessie and Henry found the clean paper wipes Tom had told them to use for any spills. Jessie mixed up a pan of warm, soapy water for the final cleanup.
Violet was the one who noticed what had caused the chocolate sprays to miss the molds. “They weren’t lined up right. When the chocolate sprayed, it missed part of the last few molds. See?”
After Henry and Jessie had completely wiped down the conveyor belt, the other children lined up clean molds exactly under the sprayers.
“There,” Jessie said. She did a quick check of the area to make sure that no chocolate had spilled off the belt onto the floor.
But before she finished, the inspector stepped into the room. “So this is where you make the candy?” The man stood in the doorway looking over the candy kitchen as if he were inspecting a hospital.
That’s when Jessie noticed something terrible. Meg wasn’t wearing her gloves! She tried to get Meg’s attention by holding up her hands when the inspector was checking behind boxes of cooking chocolate.
Meg didn’t seem to know what Jessie was trying to tell her. Instead, she moved around the candy kitchen like a nervous mouse in a cage. “Here are the pots of warm chocolate,” Meg told the man. “This is where we pour the chocolate into the molds.”
“You don’t have to explain the process,” the inspector said. “It’s my job to know these things. I just have to make sure everything is completely …” The inspector froze in place, then pointed to Meg’s hands. “Where are your gloves, Miss?”
Meg stared down at her hands, then quickly put them behind her back. “Uh, I took them off when I let you in. I did wash my hands while you were dressing,” she said finally.
The inspector didn’t say anything. He simply wrote something down in his notebook.
The Aldens couldn’t believe Meg had left off her gloves again — with the inspector there, too! Was she trying to fail the inspection?
Meg didn’t say a word as she led the inspector to the other areas of the factory. She was so nervous, she dropped her key ring in the packing room. When she picked up her keys, she bumped into a stack of egg cartons. “Don’t worry, I won’t send those out,” she told the inspector after he wrote something down again.
“This is a disaster. I don’t see how Mrs. Winkles will pass inspection with all these mistakes,” Henry whispered to Jessie when Meg and the inspector went off to the packing room by themselves.
Jessie sighed. “Sometimes she just works too fast and doesn’t pay attention.” Jessie pointed to a door Meg had left open. “See? She went out without closing that door.”
Benny scooted over so the inspector wouldn’t see the open door.
In a few minutes, Meg and the inspector rejoined the Aldens.
As everyone walked back to the candy kitchen, the inspector finally put his pen away. “I’ll be making my report in a few days. I’ll come back for another visit so you have a chance to fix some of the problems that came up today.” As he was about to leave, the inspector froze dead in the doorway. “What is that cat doing in the candy kitchen?”
The Aldens crowded behind the man to see what he was talking about. Under the mixing counter, a cat the children had seen around the factory was enjoying a speck of chocolate the children hadn’t noticed.
“Why, I never!” the inspector sputtered. “Children in the kitchen is one thing in these family businesses, but a cat?” Out came the man’s pen once again.
Meg ran over to the spilled chocolate. She tried to clean it up. “Shoo! Shoo!” she yelled at the cat.
“Yeow!” the cat answered before he licked himself and strolled out the door that Meg had left open.
CHAPTER 8
Something’s Cooking
When the Aldens returned to the loft, Henry made a decision. “You know,” he began, “it seems as if Meg is so careless, she’s hurting Mrs. Winkles’s business
even if she’s not doing it on purpose. We’ve got to find out what is going on with her and with Mr. Boxer.”
Jessie agreed. “She even let him into Mrs. Winkles’s office. Something’s going on with those two.”
“Tom’s the one who brought over the containers of sugar chicks with the candy ghosts mixed in,” Henry reminded everyone. “Maybe he mixed up the candies before he gave them to Meg.”
“I don’t like to think anything bad about Tom,” Violet said in her quiet way. “Tom might not have known anything about the mix-up.”
Benny tapped Jessie’s elbow. “Know what? All the candy came from Mr. Boxer’s warehouse — the candy ghosts, the candy hearts with the scary messages, even the mice.”
Henry put his hand up for a high five. “You’re right! Here’s what I’m thinking. Mrs. Winkles said we could visit the warehouse to see how they ship the candy. Let’s go now. Maybe we’ll clear up a few mysteries there.”
The Aldens were soon on their way to Boxer’s Shipping Company, which was about a mile from Winkles Candy Factory. When they arrived, the children found more than a mystery to clear up.
“Mrs. Winkles’s egg cartons — the ones we packed. Look!” Jessie pointed to the loading platform. “Somebody just left them sitting out in the sun. I know it’s cold out, but the chocolate eggs will be ruined if they stay there too long. They should be in the shade or in a cooler place.”
“Why would Mr. Boxer let all of Mrs. Winkles’s candy get ruined?” asked Benny.
“I don’t know,” said Violet, “but we better do something before this chocolate melts!”
The children noticed two men loading a truck.
“Hey, hey!” Henry yelled out when the men shoved the boxes into the truck any which way. “We’re working for Mrs. Winkles. Those are her candy shipments. See, the shipping boxes say, Handle With Care. And there’s a pile of her chocolate egg cartons just sitting in the sun. They’re going to melt if someone doesn’t move them to someplace cooler.”
The two men looked at each other. Who was the teenage boy telling them how to do their job?
“The boss says we have to get this truck loaded in a hurry,” one of the men told the Aldens. “He told us to leave those boxes over there. He must know what he’s doing.”
“That’s what we’re afraid of,” Jessie whispered to Henry. She looked up at the men. “Could we at least get them out of the sun? We’ll move them for you if that’s okay.”
“You kids are from Winkles?” one of the men said, looking over the Aldens. “Well, check with the boss. He’s inside. If he says it’s okay, then it’s okay.”
The children climbed the steps to the loading platform. As soon as Henry pushed the door that led inside, the children all sniffed the air at the same time.
“Chocolate!” Soo Lee said. “It smells just like Winkles Candy Factory.”
“The smell seems to be coming from over there.” Henry pointed to a door at the far end of the warehouse.
The children began to make their way to the back, then stopped. They heard a door slam behind them. The sound of heavy footsteps came closer.
Mr. Boxer stood directly behind them. “Stay right there,” he ordered. He stepped around the children, then marched to the back of the warehouse. He shut the door and cut off the sweet candy smells flowing through the warehouse.
The Aldens didn’t move.
“Who let you in here?” Mr. Boxer’s question boomed through the warehouse. “You’re those kids I saw the other day. What are you doing here?”
Henry was about to answer when Mr. Boxer’s phone rang.
Mr. Boxer waved away the children. “Go back outside. I’ll be out in a few minutes. I need to answer this.”
The Aldens obeyed Mr. Boxer. On their way out, they caught a few snatches of Mr. Boxer’s conversation. “Did you send those kids here …?” The words trailed off before the children could tell who was at the other end of the phone.
“Was that Mrs. Winkles?” Jessie asked in a friendly voice when Mr. Boxer returned a few minutes later. “Or Meg?”
Mr. Boxer stared at Jessie. “That was … um … just a business call. And speaking of that, what business do you kids have coming into my warehouse? I can’t have people just roaming around inside or even out here. You could fall off the loading dock. Then where would you be?”
“On the ground?” Soo Lee looked up at Mr. Boxer.
Mr. Boxer didn’t find this fanny. “If Rose Winkles sent you here, go back and tell her I can’t get her candy shipped out with a bunch of kids underfoot.”
“But the candy was in the sun,” Benny said. “It could melt and get squished like Mrs. Winkles’s —”
Henry nudged Benny so he wouldn’t say anything else.
“Look here,” Mr. Boxer broke in. “I ship candy for a lot of companies. I don’t need to be told how to do my job. Now you kids can just get out of here.” Mr. Boxer suddenly looked over the Aldens’ heads.
The children turned around to look behind them. They saw a car drive around the side of the warehouse.
“Get going now,” Mr. Boxer told the Aldens, this time more firmly than before. “I have an important visitor.”
“I know one thing,” Henry muttered after Mr. Boxer left. “He sure doesn’t want us snooping around.”
“And I know one other thing,” Jessie added. “When somebody doesn’t want us snooping around, there’s usually a reason.”
“Can Soo Lee and I run in back of the warehouse to see who just drove in?” Benny asked.
Jessie nodded. “Well, okay, Benny, but just for a minute. Take a quick peek, then catch up with us right away. I don’t want to hear any more of Mr. Boxer’s orders.”
Benny grabbed Soo Lee’s hand and disappeared around the side of the warehouse. The older children strolled slowly toward the street. A couple of minutes later, the younger children returned.
Benny was out of breath. He took a few gulps of air. “Guess what. The man …” Benny could hardly get the words out. “The man who came to Mrs. Winkles’s factory and checked everything, that’s who’s visiting Mr. Boxer. They went into a little building that’s part of the warehouse. That’s where the candy smells are coming from. We could smell candy, but we couldn’t see it.”
“You mean the inspector?” Violet asked. “Why would he be here?”
“Oh, I suppose that’s not so strange,” Jessie said. “He probably has to make sure the candy doesn’t get spoiled or anything before it gets shipped.”
“Then why did they meet in back?” Henry pointed out. “All the shipments are in front on the loading dock and in the truck.”
“From what Benny and Soo Lee saw, it sounds as if Mr. Boxer is making candy,” Violet said. “He could be trying to get the school candy business for himself.”
“You know what else?” Jessie asked. “I think Mr. Boxer planted his own spy at Mrs. Winkles’s factory — either Meg or Tom. After all, Meg used to work for him. As for Tom, well, even Mrs. Winkles said he practically dropped out of the sky. Let’s tell the two of them that we saw Mr. Boxer’s place and see what they have to say.”
“Or not say,” Henry added.
CHAPTER 9
Something Sweet, Something Fishy
The children had a lot to talk about. As they crossed the parking lot to return to the loft, the inspector’s car passed by and drove away.
“I guess he’s all done here,” Henry said. “I’d sure like to know why he stopped by. Look, Mr. Boxer is leaving, too.”
The Aldens waved at Mr. Boxer when his van went by, but he didn’t wave back.
“What are you smiling about, Jessie?” Violet asked when she noticed a grin on her sister’s face, “Mr. Boxer didn’t look very friendly just now.”
Jessie went on grinning. “I left my sweater in the warehouse.”
Now the other children looked just as confused as Violet.
“That’s nothing to smile about,” Henry said.
“Yes, it is,” J
essie replied. “I left it behind on purpose. Now that Mr. Boxer is gone, we have an excuse to go back inside to get it. Only let’s go the back way where Benny and Soo Lee were.”
“Good plan, Jessie,” Henry said. “What are we waiting for?”
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?”
The Candy Factory Mystery Page 4