The Chocolate Spy

by Shannon L. Brown

  “Yes. It helps me get to the scene more quickly.”

  Part of the mystery was solved. Then, without a word, they headed for the arch that would lead them out of the cemetery.

  Once they’d left the cemetery, Sophie looked around very carefully one more time. Jessica suspected she was making sure no one was watching them. Then Sophie said to Jessica, “You were a spy, and he’s a spy. A spy stole the recipe. How many spies can there be in one chocolate factory?”

  “We may never know because we’re officially out of this mystery. Tomorrow, we’re back to being normal kids taking a chocolate-making class.”

  WHILE THEY WERE IN bed reading that night, a knock sounded on the bedroom door.

  “Come in.”

  Mr. Sandoval opened the door. “Mandy Valeska called. You need to have an adult with you at all times until she wraps this up. Understood?”

  “Yes, Dad. We understand.”

  “Another call came right after that one. Erma Clayton at Sweet Bites said a piece of equipment needs to be repaired, so your class will begin tomorrow afternoon at 1:00.”

  Sophie excitedly asked, “We don’t have to get up early?”

  He grinned. “I thought that might disappoint you.”

  Sophie glanced over at Jessica. “We’ll survive sleeping late, won’t we, Jessica?”

  Jessica sighed. “The morning’s sounding better all the time.”

  When he’d closed the door, Sophie said, “Maybe we should try to figure out—”

  “No, Sophie. The sheriff said we were off the mystery. We know that someone’s overheard us speaking, and it doesn’t look like it’s the good guys. It’s time for her to take over.”

  “I guess you’re right. But it’s hard to let go. I’ll probably lie here trying to figure it out for the next hour.”

  “Instead of that, dream about chocolate.”

  Sticky Situation

  THE MORNING BEGAN BETTER than the day before. With them out of the mystery and able to sleep in, today perfectly suited Jessica. She planned for it to be calm and fun.

  Mrs. Sandoval decided to use some of their extra time by having them vacuum the living room, but after that, they went to the beach and stretched out on the sand. Around noon, they ate sandwiches they’d brought, then put their regular clothes back on and went to Sweet Bites.

  When everyone had arrived, Uncle Sal took them one by one into the chocolate room, where each person got to choose a piece of chocolate. Jessica picked one of the milk chocolate caramels rather than her usual dark chocolate. She’d been thinking about the mystery—the one they were supposed to stay out of—so much that that’s the kind of chocolate she had on her mind.

  They used the enrober again in class today, covering three different flavors of Sweet Bites Chocolates with thick layers of dark chocolate. No jewelry came close to being a sweet treat.

  After class, Sophie and Jessica carried the trays of chocolates into the chocolate room. As they used tongs to pick up each piece and set it on the right pile, Jessica noticed that the stack of the candy she’d had that morning was much smaller. She was certain there had been a lot of it when Uncle Sal had selected her piece off the top earlier. Someone must have wanted a whole box of that flavor. Interesting, but probably not important, especially since they weren’t working on the mystery anymore. No thinking about clues was allowed.

  Sophie was studying the same kind of chocolates. “Jessica, we put white chocolate over one of these. We’ve been trying to find the exact same piece of chocolate the gemstone was in. Maybe there is no piece of candy like that.”

  Jessica nodded vigorously. “Yes! What if, just as we did, they insert the stone into one of these caramels, then add white chocolate lines?”

  “That’s genius.” Sophie paused for a minute or two. “This mystery may be coming to an end. If they’re concerned that someone is onto them, they may be planning to prepare all of their gemstones for their fence.”

  “Fence?”

  “That’s the person who sells stolen things for a thief.”

  “You have learned a lot from books and movies, Sophie. We better get out of here. People are going to start wondering what’s taking so long.”

  When they stepped out of the room, they found Uncle Sal coming toward them. “Is everything okay? You didn’t drop all of the chocolates, did you?”

  Sophie answered. “No. Everything’s fine.” They needed an answer that would throw everyone off in case the criminal was one of the people nearby.

  Jessica said, “It smelled so good in there that it was hard to leave.”

  Everyone around them laughed.

  Emily said, “I feel that way every time I step in there. I make myself leave, but if you gave me a cup of hot chocolate and asked me to sit in there and guard the room, I’d be happy to do it.” Turning toward Uncle Sal, she said, “I hope you didn’t have a large repair bill today for your equipment, Mr. Donadio.”

  He shook his head. “No. One of my employees opened up the enrober, examined it, and found it was very easy to repair. Two things had come undone and simply had to be reconnected.”

  “That’s good news,” Dylan said. “But why did it break in the first place?”

  Uncle Sal shook his head again. “That is a mystery.”

  Jessica and Sophie looked at each other. His mystery probably had something to do with the one they had been investigating.

  “No matter. I will see all of you tomorrow for our last class. I must do some paperwork in my office now.” He walked away and down the hall.

  As everyone went to gather their things on their way out, the missing chocolates kept coming to Jessica’s mind. She tugged on Sophie’s arm as she reached for her backpack and whispered, “I should have said something earlier, but I knew we shouldn’t talk about this. I might have a clue for the mystery we aren’t in anymore.”

  Sophie raised one eyebrow, then she walked over to the side of the room.

  Jessica followed her, wondering if she should ignore her thoughts on the mystery. Making a fast decision to tell Sophie, she added, “A lot of those milk chocolates with caramel are gone from the chocolate room.”

  Sophie took a fast breath. “Wow. If they’re used for the jewels, maybe they’re getting ready to—”

  One of the employees walked by at that moment, so Sophie stopped talking and pretended to be interested in one of the old photographs on the wall.

  When they were alone again, Sophie said, “No one’s paying attention to us right now, Jessica. Follow me. If anyone asks where we’re going, tell them we’re going to the restroom or to stop and visit Uncle Sal. We can do either of those things after that, so it isn’t a lie.”

  It made all the sense in the world. But it also meant that this mystery had gone from “stay away” to what might be a full-blown crisis in two seconds. Trying to be casual, something that Jessica wasn’t always very good at, she walked down the hall with Sophie. No one stopped them. She wasn’t even sure that anyone saw them as they walked away, but she did take a deep breath and calmed down when they turned the corner at the end of the hall, and no one else was in sight.

  Sophie put her hand on Jessica’s arm and whispered, “Don’t say anything.”

  When they arrived at the storeroom, Jessica became even more curious. The door was slightly open, but Uncle Sal had had to unlock it last week. They pushed it open, didn’t find anyone inside, so they entered, and Sophie closed the door behind them.

  “Sophie, it may not be safe for us to be here. I think someone’s working on something here and will be back soon.”

  “I know. But let’s look around. My guess is that the missing chocolates could be somewhere in here. Maybe someone bought them as you said, but I have a feeling about this. I’d hide them if I were the criminal.”

  They moved several stacks of empty chocolate boxes.

  “There wouldn’t be a more perfect place to hide a box of chocolates than in a stack of chocolate boxes, would there?” Jess
ica said.

  They lifted box after empty box. All were light as air, so they were clearly empty. When they had gone through most of the storeroom, Sophie said, “I may have made a mistake. The box of chocolates we took wasn’t in here. It was on Mrs. Clayton’s desk.”

  The two of them stared at each other.

  Jessica felt like someone had poured a bucket of cold water on her. Mrs. Clayton seemed so very nice. “Do you think it could be her? A new box might be on her desk.” The door to the storage area opened, and they heard voices outside.

  A man’s deep voice said, “I thought I’d left this door open.”

  Panicked, the girls looked for somewhere to hide, but the room was filled with shelves and not much else.

  The same voice, louder this time, said, “You!”

  As they whirled around, the door closed again. Sophie and Jessica ran over to it. Jessica turned the knob, rattling it, but it was as she’d thought: locked.

  “Jessica, I think we’re in trouble. We don’t even know who that voice belonged to. But whoever he was, he knows we’ve been snooping in a place we shouldn’t be.”

  “What now, Sophie?”

  “I don’t see any tools to help us pry the door open. We do need to find a way to protect ourselves when he comes back. He may bring someone else too.”

  Fear rushed through Jessica. She had to fight to keep breathing normally. “He will be back, won’t he?”

  “I think so. We gave ourselves away by coming in here. I’m sorry, Jessica.”

  “It’s okay, Sophie. I always knew that there was possible danger with a mystery.”

  “And if our class hadn’t been moved to the afternoon because of the equipment breaking down—” Sophie’s eyes widened. “That’s it! They needed time this morning, when no one was here, to make the special chocolates.”

  “But why does it matter if those chocolates are exactly that way? If they needed to get out of here in a hurry, why take the time to do that? Why not just put them in any piece of chocolate?”

  Sophie was quiet for a few minutes. “It must be because it’s a code to the person the chocolates are going to. Maybe they don’t even talk to them, but when chocolates come that have the right pattern on them, the person who receives them knows those pieces are important. That must be the code they always use.”

  “It all makes sense.” She just hoped they’d get to tell the sheriff about it. She walked around the room. “We need a way to protect ourselves since we can’t find a way out. We know there isn’t a hidden passage in here. We have empty boxes. I guess we could throw a bunch of boxes at somebody and hope it catches them off guard. Maybe we could dart around them and out of here.”

  “I don’t know. That might help. But I don’t think it would buy us enough time to actually get away. The front door is going to be locked because Uncle Sal will have left by now.”

  “And he doesn’t know we’re here.”

  “No. The only ones who know we’re here are the bad guys. Mom and Dad aren’t even expecting us at home for a while.” Then Sophie stood up straight and tall, shoulders back. “Let’s not be defeated. We can figure a way out of this.”

  Jessica suspected that Sophie was trying to cheer herself up, but there was nothing wrong in that. “Okay, let’s go around the room. There are office supplies, paper and pens. I don’t think those will help us.”

  “Agreed. We’ve ruled out the boxes. There’s gift wrap. And then there are the things left here from Uncle Sal’s bad ideas for chocolates. There’s bubblegum.”

  Boxes of bubblegum were neatly stacked on the shelves, enough to make many, many pieces of chocolate-covered bubblegum. Jessica still shuddered at the thought, but this gave her an idea. “Sophie, I don’t like spiderwebs, but what if we chewed this gum and made a giant web out of it?”

  “Oh my goodness! That’s brilliant. If we can make this work, when they step into a web of gum, they’ll get stuck. Then, if we move really fast, we can get out of here. Start chewing.”

  Each of the girls reached for a piece of gum. Then Sophie said, “If you can chew two or three at a time, do it. We have to move quickly because we don’t know when they’ll be back.”

  Jessica grabbed a second piece and shoved it into her mouth, chewing slowly on the big wad until it became soft. Around the wad of gum, she said, “This is a little harder to do with braces, but I’m working on it. Sophie, I just realized there’s a flaw in my plan.”

  “What flaw?” Sophie’s words could barely be understood around the gum.

  “I have to spit this out and handle just-chewed gum.”

  Sophie sucked in air, then suddenly spit her gum out into her hand. “Please don’t make me laugh again with gum stuffed into my mouth.” With her fingers, she worked the gooey gum, pulling it into a thin string.

  “We need to make sure the door can open so the criminal’s whole body comes into the room, not just his feet.” She stuck one end of her gum on the shelf at one side of the door and the other end to the shelf at the other, then she stopped. “Jessica, we’re going to need something to stand on, so we can get this all the way up to the top shelf. That box of office paper should be sturdy. Can you push it over here by yourself?”

  Jessica, still chewing slowly on her giant wad of gum, went over to the box of paper and pushed on the box. It was so heavy that it only moved about a quarter of an inch. She pushed harder the second time, and it went a little bit farther. When she shoved at it with all her might, it moved about a foot. Sophie would probably do better because she was stronger from all the outdoorsy things she did. Pushing it over and over again, Jessica marched it over to Sophie and in front of the beginning of what she hoped would be their lifesaving web of gum.

  Sophie stepped onto the box gingerly at first to test it, then stood on it with both feet and stretched the gum up to the corner she’d been trying to reach. She jumped back to the floor and eyed her work. “It’s a beginning, but we’re going to have to chew a lot of gum for this to work.”

  Disgusted by the idea of spit-covered gum, Jessica grimaced as she opened her mouth and dropped hers into her hand. Then she continued the web, stretching it right above Sophie’s, but from the other side across and then up, so now the web crossed in the middle. She fastened it, after stepping onto their box step stool, to the opposite corner, making an X of sticky gum at the entrance to the room.

  Each of the girls popped more gum into her mouth and started chewing as fast as she could. The web grew and grew until it looked like a big pink spiderweb.

  “I hope we’re done, Sophie, because I don’t think I want to chew another piece of gum, especially bubblegum, for the rest of my life.”

  “Me neither. I’m ready for some real food now.”

  “You know, at first I thought that box might help trip someone, but—”

  “We want them to get stuck in the gum, and that box might stop them before they do that.”

  The girls pulled the box back away from the door, something that was harder than pushing it had been.

  They soon heard voices in the hall.

  Sophie whispered, “Let’s both crouch over here on the side where the door opens, so when he gets stuck, we can run out behind him more easily.”

  They did that. And waited. The voices seemed to be arguing outside their door. Jessica picked up a word here and there. Snoopers. Dangerous. None of what she heard sounded good for their future. When she heard the key in the lock, her heart beat faster, faster than she’d realized was even possible. She stayed crouched, hoping to be in a position where she could spring out of the room.

  Finally, the voices stopped arguing. She hoped that meant that one of the people had gone away. Maybe they would only have one person to stick to the web.

  The Escape

  WHEN THE DOOR OPENED and someone stepped inside, a man said, “What?” Then, in the half-light from the hallway, Sophie saw arms flailing.

  She leapt behind the man, into the hall, and Jessica was right b
ehind her. They raced out the door, down the hall, and around the corner toward Mrs. Clayton’s desk. A box of chocolates was sitting on it as Jessica had thought it might be.

  Jessica picked it up and ran toward the outside door, pushing on it at a full run, but it didn’t open. “Sophie, what do we do?”

  Sophie grabbed her arm and pulled her along. “The hidden passage. It’s our only way out of here now.” They ran down the hall past the storeroom, where they saw a man shouting as he struggled to get up. It wouldn’t be long before someone came to help him. When they rounded the next corner, Sophie heard people speaking. She hoped they weren’t going to meet anyone on their way to their escape hatch.

  The door to the office with the secret panel in it stood open. They rushed inside, closed it, and Sophie hurried over to the wall to unlock the escape hatch.

  Jessica opened the box of chocolates she’d tucked under her arm earlier. “This box isn’t wrapped yet. Otherwise, it’s exactly what we thought, Sophie. These are the caramels with white chocolate lines on top. This box of candy is probably worth a fortune.”

  The panel flipped in.

  “Hurry! Let’s get out of here!” Jessica said.

  Sophie said, “No. If we take the chocolates with us, we take the evidence, and the sheriff can’t arrest anyone.”

  Jessica stared down at the box of chocolates in her hand. “We almost left with the only evidence that would put these bad guys in prison.” She started to set the box down.

  “Wipe off your fingerprints, Jessica. They always do that in the movies. That way when the bad guys pick it up, it will only have their fingerprints.”

  “Check.” Jessica wiped off the box of chocolates with her T-shirt. Then she set it on the desk, using the edge of her shirt as a glove. “There’s a phone here. Maybe we should call the sheriff and let her know what’s going on. This may be the last day these criminals are even in Pine Hill.”

  Sophie ran across the room to a chair and dragged it over toward the door, tucking the back of the chair under the doorknob. “I saw this done in a movie. It makes it so that the chair braces against the door, the doorknob can’t turn very easily, and the door is hard to push open. Now hurry and call the sheriff. And pray that she is in the office.”