Claudia and the Recipe for Danger Read online

  Fortunately, everybody else was running late, too. And when I tell you why, you’ll know why Grace was glaring at me.

  It had happened soon after we started baking that day. Grace and Mari must have whipped up their recipe in no time flat, and shoved it right into the oven. I nudged Mary Anne when I noticed Grace setting the timer. “They’re in a hurry, aren’t they?” I whispered. “I think Mari rushes things, know what I mean?”

  Mary Anne nodded, then we turned back to measuring and sifting. We had arrived at our station early that day, although we hadn’t beaten Marty, Julie, Rachel, or Anne to the gym. (They must have shown up super early.) We set up our ingredients carefully again, and agreed that we would do our best not to leave our workstation unwatched. Nobody was going to sabotage our recipe that day. We needed to make a good impression on the judges, and time was running out.

  Anyway, there we were, following each step carefully. Shea had just turned on the oven to preheat it, when I first smelled smoke. “Shea!” I said, “is that our oven smoking?”

  He opened the oven door, bent down, and gave a big sniff. “Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “At least, I don’t think so.”

  “Well, something’s burning!” said Mary Anne. She put down the eggbeater she had been using and looked around. A few other heads popped up over nearby dividers, and I heard people asking each other what was burning. We were all sniffing and peering around, when suddenly I heard Grace shriek.

  “Fire!” she screamed. “Oh! Oh! Oh! Fire!” She was hopping around, waving her hands frantically. “Help!” she yelled.

  Mari looked calmer, at least until black smoke began to trickle out of the oven. “My cake!” she said, when she saw that. She bent to open the oven door, but slammed it shut immediately when billows of smoke poured out. Then she joined Grace’s cries of “Fire! Fire!”

  I saw Marty run toward them, looking around frantically as if he were trying to locate somebody — or something.

  One of the people in the gym (I don’t know who) finally had the presence of mind to pull the fire alarm, and hearing its loud clanging made us all move fast. Within minutes, the gym was empty (except for the firefighters, who had shown up almost immediately), and the contestants, contest organizers, and judges were standing in the parking lot outside.

  The firefighters had the situation under control in no time, and soon they let us return to the gym. We clustered around Grace’s and Mari’s workstation to hear what the fire marshall had to say.

  “Is my cake all right?” asked Mari, pushing her way to the front of the crowd.

  “Afraid not, miss,” he said. “Looks like you put a little too much of something in there. That batter bubbled up all over the place, and poured out of its pan. When it hit the burners, it ignited.”

  “Too much baking powder,” somebody muttered.

  Mari whirled around. “There wasn’t any baking powder!” she said. “The recipe doesn’t call for any.”

  “Guess some went in there by mistake,” said the fire marshall, with a shrug. “You’ll be able to use your oven again now, but I don’t think that cake’ll taste too good.”

  Mari looked at Grace. “Did you put any baking powder in the batter?” she asked.

  Grace turned bright red and shook her head. “No,” she said.

  “Baking soda?” asked Mari.

  “No!” said Grace, turning even redder. “I only did what you told me to do.”

  I almost felt bad for her. It couldn’t have been fun to be interrogated in front of that crowd of people. (Nobody had gone back to their stations yet.) “Practically all I did was sift the flour and mix that cornstarch with a little orange juice, just like you said,” said Grace, pointing to a box of cornstarch on their counter.

  Mari looked puzzled for a second. Then, as if a lightbulb had gone on over her head, she grabbed the cornstarch box, stuck two fingers into its opening, and took out a pinch. She tasted it. “Ha!” she shouted. “That’s not cornstarch. That’s baking soda. Somebody switched it on us!” She looked triumphant, and Grace looked relieved.

  “I knew it wasn’t my fault,” she whispered.

  “Now, now,” said one of the judges, a skinny man who writes a restaurant review column for the Stoneybrook News. “Of course it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. Just a little mistake, that’s all. Let’s not go jumping to conclusions.”

  “That’s right,” said another judge, a woman who manages a fancy restaurant in Stamford, called Maria’s. “After all, why would anyone ruin your recipe on purpose?”

  Mari looked as if she were about to answer that question, but Marty Nisson jumped in and cut her off. “Right!” he said enthusiastically. “We’re all friends here. We should just be happy that nobody was hurt. And I’m sure the judges will agree to give you an extension on your baking time today, since you’ve had a problem. I know the Mrs. Goode’s Cookware Company would want it that way.”

  The judges all agreed, and after Mari and Grace thanked them, everybody went back to work. That’s when I noticed Mari and Grace whispering to each other and then glaring at Mary Anne and me. Just because we’ve never exactly been friends with their friend, Cokie, they thought we would sabotage their cake. Can you believe it?

  (Of course, I had suspected them — or Cokie — the day before. But that was different.)

  I decided to ignore their stares and go on with my baking. After all, I had a contest to win. But the fire wasn’t the only distraction that afternoon.

  First of all, Stacey popped up at our workstation while Mary Anne and I were trying to transfer three beaten eggs and a half cup of milk from one bowl into another. “Did you see Jackie in here a while ago?” she asked.

  “I didn’t,” said Shea, who was standing by with some paper towels.

  “Me, neither,” said Mary Anne and I.

  “Well, he left the day-care room again,” Stacey said. “And when he came back, he had flour — or something white and powdery — all over his shirt. Again!”

  Mary Anne and I exchanged glances, raised our eyebrows, and then shook our heads. Something white and powdery, such as baking soda? Why would Jackie want to mess up Grace’s and Mari’s cake? But there was no time to tell Stacey what had happened, or to talk about what else Jackie might have been up to. If we didn’t put our cake into the oven within about two minutes, we’d never finish on time.

  Soon after Stacey left, and right after I did finally put the cake into the oven, I saw Kristy escorting Rachel’s father to the door of the gym. She stopped by our workstation on her way back. “He was hanging around talking to Rachel and Anna,” she explained. “Checking up on their ingredients and stuff. I had to ask him to leave.” She shrugged. “Just another day in the life of a Cake Cop,” she added, grinning.

  Just then we both heard angry voices from the station across the way. “Don’t you care?” asked a woman. “Where’s your enthusiasm?”

  “Forget about enthusiasm,” said a man. “Where’s your creativity? Your sense of design?”

  Kristy and I looked up to see a man and a woman standing on either side of Julie Liu. They looked angry, and Julie looked as if she’d rather be anywhere else but between the two of them. Kristy looked back at me, mouthed “see you!” and took off in their direction.

  Later, I found out that the couple are Julie’s parents. (Kristy needed Marty’s help to escort them out.) They are instructors at a cooking school in Stamford, and they have very high expectations for Julie. Kristy had the feeling that they wanted her to win the Battle of the Bakers because they’d gain publicity for their business. Can you imagine? Poor Julie. Watching her that day, I could tell she was under a lot of pressure — and that she wasn’t having any fun. Her teammates, Sinai and Celeste, kept trying to cheer her up, but she seemed unhappy and distracted.

  Distracted, like me. I’ll admit it. With all that was going on in the gym, I was having a hard time paying attention to my baking that day. But the good news was that by looki
ng at the cake my team came up with at the end of the afternoon, you never would have known. It was beautiful, and all the judges said so.

  But there was also bad news.

  The cake tasted unbelievably awful. Sort of like rubber. With glue icing.

  I saw one of the judges run for the locker room after she took a bite.

  Mary Anne and Shea tried to cheer me up. “It really was pretty,” said Shea loyally.

  “You mixed that pink color just right,” Mary Anne added.

  Meanwhile, we watched as the judges checked out the other contestants’ efforts. Rachel’s and Anna’s apricot upside-down cake looked great, and so did Julie’s team’s chocolate angel-food cake, although I heard one of the judges say it was “a bit too simple.” Mari and Grace never did finish their entry, even with the extension they were given.

  But guess who won the day’s prize? Logan, Kerry, and Austin! They had come up with a new variation on a fruitcake recipe, adding pecans and dried currants, and the judges went crazy for it.

  I was happy for them, but also a little jealous, and disappointed that my own cake hadn’t turned out well. I knew Shea and Mary Anne felt the same way. But at least, I told myself, there hadn’t been any more sabotage after the fire. Maybe the Battle of the Bakers would be a fair fight from now on.

  “Mary Anne! Hi! Can you hear me?” It was Tuesday evening, and I was standing on the patio in my backyard.

  “Of course I can,” said Mary Anne. “Why?”

  “I’m trying out this cool new cordless phone my dad just brought home,” I said. “Wait a second.” I walked farther away from the house. “Can you hear me now?” I asked. I loved the feeling of being able to roam around while I was on the phone. I get tired of staring at the same old stuff while I talk.

  “I can hear you,” said Mary Anne, “but you’re a little fuzzy.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said. “I must be moving out of range.” By that time I was so far away from the house that I was practically in our neighbor’s yard. I walked back toward the house. “Better?”

  “Much.”

  “Cool,” I said. By then I was near the barbecue grill. “I could be out here flipping burgers, talking on the phone at the same time.” I grabbed a barbecue tool and pretended to turn over a few hamburgers.

  “That’s great, Claud,” said Mary Anne. “But listen —”

  “I could even go back into the kitchen for a package of hot dogs,” I interrupted her, talking as I walked to the sliding door, opened it, and entered the kitchen, “and then go back out and toss them on the grill.” I was on the patio again. The cordless phone was going to change my life. I could see it already.

  “Claudia,” said Mary Anne, “I’m glad you like your new phone, but — but we really have to talk.”

  “We are talking,” I said, confused.

  “I mean about the Battle of the Bakers,” said Mary Anne.

  “About the sabotage and everything? We talked about that at yesterday’s BSC meeting, and I thought we agreed that we’d do our best to figure out who was behind it.”

  “Right,” said Mary Anne. “We did. But there’s — there’s something else we need to discuss.”

  “So we’ll talk about it at tomorrow’s meeting. Kristy the Cake Cop won’t mind. Or are you saying that we need to have an emergency meeting?” I didn’t understand what she was hinting at.

  “No,” said Mary Anne, sounding a little exasperated. I heard her sigh. “What I’m saying is that there’s something you and I need to discuss. Just the two of us.”

  “Oh! Why didn’t you say so?”

  “I’ve been trying to,” she answered. “It’s just that, well, I really wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings, Claud, but — but —”

  “But my recipes aren’t cutting it, and if we don’t do something, we’re never going to make the finals. Right?” I was smiling. I stood up and started to stroll around the outside of the house, still enjoying that cordless feeling.

  Mary Anne was speechless for a second.

  “It’s okay,” I reassured her. “I’m an artist, not a chef. I know my cakes have been awful.” I giggled. “Wait. I take it back. They haven’t been awful, they’ve been disgusting. Inedible. Mondo-horrendous. Barf-o-rama. Puke-tacular.”

  “But beautiful,” Mary Anne added, in a timid voice. “They really have been gorgeous cakes, Claud.” Then she started to laugh. “Puke-tacular?” she asked. “What kind of word is that?”

  “I made it up,” I said, proudly. “It’s, like, puke plus spectacular. Like it?”

  “I love it,” she said. “And I would love your cakes, too, if they only tasted as good as they looked.”

  “But they don’t,” I said.

  “No, they don’t. I’m sorry, Claud, but they just don’t. Shea agrees, but he’s too shy to say so.”

  “I know,” I said. “So what do we do?” By that time, I had walked around the outside of the house twice, and I was ready to sit down. I headed back inside and made myself comfortable on the couch.

  “I want to try again to find that recipe my mother used to make,” Mary Anne was saying, “and I could use your help.”

  “No problem,” I said. “But why this certain recipe?”

  “Remember back when my dad would hardly ever talk about my mom?” Mary Anne asked. “Well, even then, the one thing he did talk about was her chocolate-cherry cake. He raved about it. He’d tell me how she used to make it for his birthday every year, and also on special occasions, or if he asked her nicely. Supposedly, it was the best cake in the world. Moist, chocolate-y, delicious.”

  “Not puke-tacular at all, I guess,” I said.

  “Not a bit puke-tacular, according to my dad. I can’t tell you more than that, though, since I never tasted it.”

  “So how are we going to find the recipe?” I asked.

  “I thought we could start by rummaging around in the attic,” she answered. “When Dad and I moved in with Sharon and Dawn, we brought all the boxes that used to be in our attic. Maybe there’s an old recipe book in one of them.”

  “Let’s do it first thing tomorrow!” I said. I was excited. For one thing, I love mysteries, and this was beginning to sound like one. For another, I also happen to love poking around in old attics. You never know what you’ll find.

  And that’s how Mary Anne and I ended up inside a dusty, hot attic on one of the most beautiful days of the summer. We had invited Shea, but he had a piano lesson. It was just me, Mary Anne, and about three tons of boxes. No cordless phone. No junk food. We went right to work, since there was nothing else to do.

  We opened box after box. Some of them were filled with winter clothes, and seeing those mittens and scarves made me feel even hotter. Others were stuffed with canceled checks and tax records. Boring! And one was full of Mary Anne’s old little-girl dresses — not the ones from when she was really little, but the ones from seventh grade, when her dad was still treating her as if she were eight years old.

  “Look at this one!” I said, holding up a plaid jumper. “This is actually almost fashionable again, now that the schoolgirl look is in.” I laughed, expecting Mary Anne to join me, but she was silent. “Mary Anne?” I asked. “What’s the matter? I didn’t mean to make fun of your dress.”

  She sniffed. “I know,” she said. “It’s not the dress. It’s these letters.” She showed me the box she was looking through, which was marked “correspondence.” “These are the letters between my dad and my grandmother. The ones that upset me so much when I first discovered them.”

  I winced, remembering. “That was awful,” I said. “You thought your dad had given you away when you were a baby.”

  “He didn’t, though,” said Mary Anne. “He just sent me to my grandparents for a little while, after my mom died. He was having trouble coping with his grief and a baby.”

  “But then your grandparents wanted to keep you, right?”

  “Uh-huh. So my dad had to argue with them a little. Finally they agreed to
let me come back, but then they didn’t want to see me again because they thought it would be too painful. That’s why I didn’t even know I had grandparents until after my grandfather died and my grandmother made contact again.”

  “You’re pretty close to her now, aren’t you?” I asked, reaching out to give Mary Anne a hug. She was still sniffling a little.

  She nodded. “That first trip out to Iowa was scary,” she said. “But now I love her, and we talk pretty often. She tells me lots of stuff about my mom. You know, how her name was Alma, but her pet name was Sweetie-Pie, and how she looked just like me as a girl, and what kinds of things she used to do….”

  “That’s it!” I said. “I bet she knows the recipe. Maybe your grandmother’s even the one who taught your mom how to make that cake. Come on, let’s leave this stuffy attic and make a phone call.”

  We thumped down the stairs.

  Mary Anne found her grandmother’s number and dialed it without wasting another second. I watched as she stood listening to the phone on the other end ring and ring. She started to look disappointed as she realized that nobody was home. Then, suddenly, her eyes lit up, but just for a second. She covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “I thought it was her,” she said. “But it’s just her answering machine.”

  “Leave a message!” I said.

  Mary Anne listened for the beep. “Hi, Grandma,” she said, when she’d heard it. “It’s me, Mary Anne. How are you? I’m fine.”

  I rolled my hands in that “move it along” motion.

  Mary Anne started to talk faster. “I’m calling because I need your help. I’m trying to find this recipe of my mother’s, and I thought you might know something about it. It’s for a baking contest, and I need it this weekend. So please, please call me if you hear this message, okay? ’Bye! I love you!”