Jessica asked, “Where are you taking us, Tony?”
“I know from experience that all of these turns lead to an office right beside the one we were just in.”
When they entered the room, they found three desks inside, but more importantly, decorative panels on all the walls. Sophie said, “This wall has secret panel potential.”
“I think it’s close to what it was when it was built. My uncle once showed a photo of this room to Nezzy Grant. You know old lady Grant.”
Both girls nodded because they knew her very well.
“She remembered that this room was a place for the ladies to rest between dances when they had events here in the boathouse. She said it was very pretty and elegant with chandeliers and velvet chairs.”
“It sure doesn’t fit that description anymore. But the factory area itself has a little bit of old elegance left. I noticed pretty details on the ceiling. Things like that remind me of older buildings in some of the countries I’ve lived in.”
“Maybe we’ll find our secret passage here. I’ve spent time in this building to know that there’s only one other room where it could be.”
Each of them took a wall, and they began pushing and tapping.
After a while, Sophie thought she’d found something. “Jessica, listen to this.” She rapped on her wall with her knuckles. “Doesn’t this sound like it did in that closet?”
Jessica and Tony both hurried over. Sophie tapped along that edge, and then beside it. The sound was very different.
“You’re right, Sophie! It’s like the closet.”
The three of them pushed on and tested the area around the spot with the hollow sound. Suddenly, the panel on the wall popped inward. Sophie grabbed the edge of the opening so she wouldn’t fall.
“Who found it?” Sophie turned to Jessica and Tony.
“I think I did,” Tony answered. “This area”—he tapped the corner of the rectangle—“moved when I pushed it.”
“Good going, Tony.” Sophie pushed the panel completely open.
Jessica leaned over to see into the passage. “It’s like the other one.”
“Except that we don’t know where this one goes,” Tony added.
Sophie pictured the boat dock with its new wood. “I think we do.” She waited to see if Jessica or Tony thought the same thing.
Tony shrugged.
Jessica bounced on her feet. “I know! The dock with the boat! Nothing else makes sense.”
“Yes. I don’t know why, but the builder decided to create a way out of this room to the boat dock. Maybe he thought secret passages were fun.”
Jessica nodded. “I know I do. I’d never seen one before I came to Pine Hill.”
Sophie retrieved the flashlight from her backpack, turned it on, and shined it down in the hole.
Spiderwebs on the sides reflected back the light, and Jessica shuddered.
Tony noticed. “You don’t like dark, unknown places?”
“That isn’t it. I don’t like spiderwebs. Sophie’s secret staircase was full of webs.”
Tony surprised Jessica by not laughing at her. Instead, he said, “I’ll go get a broom out of the janitor’s closet.”
“Thank you, Tony. That’s what we did at Sophie’s house.”
Tony left and was back in a few minutes. Then, broom in hand, he went ahead of them down the stairs, Sophie shining the light from behind him and Jessica following her.
“Don’t worry, Jessica. Webs are on some of the side areas, but the passage itself is clean.”
Jessica continued down the steps. “That’s good and bad. I’m glad there aren’t spiderwebs, but that shows us that someone’s used this recently.”
“Very recently,” Tony added.
At the bottom of the circular stone staircase, there was a level area.
Sophie held the flashlight near her watch. “We’ve been at the factory awhile, so we’d better hurry. Our knowledge of this has to stay a secret. If we don’t get out of here soon, someone who comes to work early may see what we’re doing.”
Tony moved faster. “Uncle Sal will be so surprised when he sees the staircase and this pathway!”
It felt to Jessica like they’d walked forever, but she knew they hadn’t walked farther than the building was long. The brick path ended at a wooden wall.
Sophie said, “Step to the side, Tony. Let me shine the light on this wall so we can figure out how this opens because it must open.”
“We know it opened a long time ago, but we don’t know if it still does. What if someone found the opening, came down here, but couldn’t find any way out?” Jessica said, “Or does Sophie the Detective say that it will open?”
“I still think that the rowboat out there in the boathouse is the same one that you and I saw on the lake, Jessica. It came from and returned this direction.”
“Wait! There.” Tony moved the flashlight in Sophie’s hand back where it had just been. “This area with the small piece of wood on it appears worn, as if it’s had more use than the rest of the boards.” He pushed the small piece of wood to the side, but nothing happened. Sophie pushed it the other direction. Still nothing happened.
Jessica said, “Let me try. This must be the lever that opens it.” Jessica stepped up and studied the piece of wood for a moment. “Sophie, shine the light in front of me. There are scratches that make a circle around here.” When she had, Jessica reached up, took hold of the piece of wood, and slowly spun it. At the halfway mark, the door swung out. The boat dock lay in front of them and the rowboat beyond.
The three of them stared in silence.
Jessica spoke first. “The door is the wall under the stairs that had the cracked paint.”
Sophie said, “Yes. They didn’t use the stairs because they had this door.”
Jessica turned to Sophie. “So you didn’t need to climb them.”
“Or fall through them,” Tony added.
She rubbed her elbow and winced. “I sometimes wish I hadn’t tried.”
Jessica stepped outside and examined the lock. “I think I understand how this works. Close the door, and I’ll try to open it.”
Tony pushed it shut and waited. Scratching and scraping sounds made Sophie wonder if Jessica had really figured it out. Then the door creaked open.
“I did it. That didn’t take long.”
Sophie checked her watch and said, “No, but all of this took quite a while. Hurry. We need to get all the way up and out of this building before anyone arrives.”
They raced back up the stairs and out through the maze of hallways to the main entrance. The factory area was still silent, and all the lights were off in the offices they passed. They went out the door and sat down on the bench in front of the building. They hadn’t been there long when Mrs. Clayton drove up to Sweet Bites and parked.
She got out of her car, gave them her usual smile, and said, “Good morning! You’re here early. What’s the special occasion?”
When Sophie was working on a mystery, she never gave out any extra information to people, in case they later became suspects. Keeping to her method, she simply said, “We wanted to be here early this morning.” As Sophie entered the building, she realized that Mrs. Clayton was too nice to be part of their mystery. She should take her off their list of suspects.
The Second Suspect
LATER THAT MORNING, Jessica looked up from the chocolate-making demonstration and saw a woman walk by. She seemed nervous, so Jessica asked Sophie, “Who’s that?”
“Kelsey Newman,” Sophie replied. “She grew up in Pine Hill, went away to college, and came home to take over her parents’ flower shop, Buds & Blooms.”
Jessica watched as the woman went down the hall and around the corner. It seemed odd that the owner of a flower shop would be in a chocolate factory, but it was a small town. Maybe she had a friend or someone in her family who worked here. But the way Kelsey had glanced over her shoulder as she walked, almost as if she wanted to see if anyone was watching
her, made Jessica wonder if something was wrong.
Sophie must have thought the same thing because she whispered in Jessica’s ear, “I’m going to follow her.”
“I’m coming with you.”
To not interrupt their class, Jessica whispered to Emily that they were going to the restroom. She could let Uncle Sal know if he asked. Then they walked away, heading down the hall in the direction Kelsey had gone. When they went around the corner, they found a hallway with closed doors. Continuing down the hallway, she heard raised voices through a closed door, so she and Sophie stopped.
A man’s voice said, “Please help,” then some other words she couldn’t clearly hear.
A woman’s voice said, “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you ten times, a hundred times, Kirk, you’ve gotten yourself mixed up in something serious. Get out.”
Sophie whispered, “I’m pretty sure that voice belongs to Kelsey. She has a younger brother named Kirk.”
Kirk said several words that were too quiet for Jessica to understand. Then there were scraping sounds, like a chair sliding across the floor.
Sophie hurried down the hall with Jessica behind her. As Sophie pushed on the door to the women’s restroom, the office door opened and Kelsey stepped out. The girls quickly darted into the restroom.
Inside the empty room, Jessica asked, “What do you think that was about?”
“It didn’t sound good for Kirk.”
A couple of minutes later, they went back in class. While they’d been gone, the class had moved back to the enrober to make more chocolate-covered marshmallows. The good news was that it was milk chocolate again, so Sophie stood at the end and waited for the finished marshmallows to come out of the cooling section, eating one she was given with a smile on her face. Jessica might make a chocolate lover out of her yet.
They helped stack all of the new chocolates onto two trays. Uncle Sal gave Jessica one tray and old Mr. Pleckenpoll the other one. It seemed wise to break them up so one person couldn’t trip and spill them all on the way to the chocolate storage room, but the old man had so much trouble walking that it appeared like he might fling his half of them on the floor any second. What happened the other day must have been a moment when he felt young. They delivered the trays with no incidents though.
After class, Sophie carefully took off her gloves and dropped them in the trash. Jessica did the same, but not until she’d licked the tip of one finger to get the chocolate off.
“Aren’t you getting tired of chocolate yet?”
“I’m a little surprised, but I’m still having fun with it. On the flipside, are you enjoying chocolate more?”
Sophie turned to stare at the chocolate factory’s floor. “Yes. I wouldn’t mind having a piece or two of chocolate this weekend. I hope that Uncle Sal sends us home with some again.”
As they walked toward the front of the building, Uncle Sal stopped them. “I understand that your mother loves chocolate, Sophie.”
“I was surprised to find that out because she doesn’t let us have dessert very often.”
Jessica said, “She wants us to eat healthy.”
Uncle Sal smiled widely. “Chocolate can be part of a healthy diet.”
Jessica laughed. “I’ve always thought so.”
“She does so much for our town that I’d like to do something for her. I’ve asked that a box of candy be left at the front desk for your mom. I hope she enjoys every bite. It’s an assortment of milk and dark chocolate in different flavors.”
“Thank you very much.”
He walked on toward the factory floor, calling out to one of his workers, so Sophie and Jessica went on their way.
When they arrived at the front desk, no one was there. “Uncle Sal said that the box of candy would be here, but I don’t see anything.” Jessica stepped around the corner of the desk and turned in a full circle. “No, wait.” A box of chocolates was pushed to the corner of the desk and had been wrapped in what they knew from their tour the first day was the factory’s wrapping paper. Sophie joined her behind the desk.
“It was nice of him to wrap it for Mom.” Sophie picked up the box.
“What if that box wasn’t for her?”
“One box of chocolate would be the same as another. And he said it would be here at the front. We can wait a minute or two and see if anyone comes with another box, or if Mrs. Clayton returns. Maybe she went home early because it’s Saturday.”
Sophie sat down in Mrs. Clayton’s chair and leaned back in it. “We’ve already followed Emily, so that leaves Dylan, his mother, and Mr. P. I doubt an old man is our thief. Dylan’s mother talks all the time, and that wouldn’t be a good quality for a thief, would it?”
They both laughed.
When Jessica turned toward the hallway, she saw someone moving away, another shadowy figure that shouldn’t be there. No one had walked across the entry area from the factory or the hall, so this someone had been listening to them. This wouldn’t be a good place to discuss the mystery.
Sophie leaned forward. “I probably shouldn’t read something on Mrs. Clayton’s desk, but this was sitting on top and caught my attention. It might be important. ‘Erma, do you know if someone needed something from my desk? I noticed that things weren’t the way I left them.’ It’s signed ‘Shelley.’”
Sophie grimaced. “Jessica, I think there was a name sign on the desk I sat at with the factory’s drawing this morning. I also think it said ‘Shelley.’ I’d like to get rid of this note, but that would make what happened even more suspicious if Shelley asked Erma about it later.”
Jessica glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one was there. “I hope Erma and Shelley don’t tell others. The criminals could start to wonder if someone’s after them.”
Sophie nodded. When two minutes had passed, Sophie stood, took the box of candy in her hands, and said, “I’d like to get out of here. This must be Mom’s box.”
Jessica shrugged. “Even if it isn’t, they can easily make this box again for whoever was supposed to get it. It’s on Mrs. Clayton’s desk. If it’s her box of chocolates, I don’t think she’d mind. She always seems so happy and friendly. Let’s go, Sophie.”
When they stepped out the doors, no one was in sight except for a gardener working on the flowers in front of the building.
“That delay for the candy cost us time. I guess we’re not learning anything more about a class member today,” Jessica said. “But Soph, I saw another shadowy figure. I think someone was listening to us.”
“It’s hard to know who’s a friend and who isn’t in this mystery.”
“I agree.”
As they walked, Sophie said, “We might have to start watching the factory when everyone leaves for the day and follow one of them. If we find one who didn’t drive to work, that is.”
“Soph, I’ve been thinking about the secret passages. I know you don’t like to tell people what we’ve learned until a mystery is solved, but you should tell your parents what we discovered.”
Sophie was silent for a couple of minutes. “Let’s keep it a secret for now. The staircase was hidden for a long time, so a few more days won’t matter. The two hidden places are so much alike that the bad guys might pick up on a connection to us if Mom or Dad told people about it, and the story got back to them.”
“That’s a good point, Sophie. Who could resist telling everyone about a secret staircase?” When they could see the resort, Jessica looked up toward the roof. “I wonder if the helicopter is tied into this mystery at all.”
“I don’t know why it would be, Jessica. Tony’s dad said it was a guest arriving. I know better than to ignore anything though. I guess it’s possible.”
Jessica said, “That day, when we were talking to people in the group of bystanders, I saw someone come out of the side door and go toward the back of the building, walking at a fast pace. He was wearing a suit and had on sunglasses. I thought he might be Agent Dallas of the F.B.I. I even asked the sheriff about him. And
that’s when she asked me to keep my eyes open at the factory.”
Sophie stopped. “And you didn’t think this was important to tell me?”
“We didn’t have a mystery. All we had was a man in a helicopter.”
Sophie groaned. “Are there any other clues that I should know about?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I would have investigated. His trail may have gone cold.”
Jessica rolled her eyes. “You’ve been reading detective books again, haven’t you?”
“Not my usual kind. This one’s all about codes and spies. How spies hide things.”
“And you’re going to use that information how?”
“I may need to know how to write something in a code.” Sophie gave Jessica a look that said she shouldn’t argue with her.
“I never thought I would solve a mystery, so I won’t say we’ll never need a code.”
Sophie gave a single nod. “Thank you. I like to have all the skills I can, so I’m ready for anything. I learned that the best code seems to be a simple one, at least it would be for our uses. A good one was used by someone almost two thousand years ago in Rome. All he did was move the letter down one, so if I wanted to write the letter a, I would use the letter b. If I wanted to write the letter m, I would use the letter n, and so on.”
“That does sound fun. Are there any others?”
“See? I told you this was interesting. There are so many codes that it’s hard for me to even remember them. But I’m working on it. The section about spies might be helpful in a mystery too. When a spy wants to leave something and let another spy know it’s there so he or she can pick it up, they call it a ‘dead drop.’”
Jessica shivered. “I don’t like the word dead in there.”
“I think they use that because it’s not like you handed it to a living person. I’ve been thinking about places in Pine Hill that I could use for dead drops.”
The Chocolate Spy Page 8