Claudia and the Recipe for Danger Read online

  “I’m sorry, too,” said Grace. “I thought you sabotaged us.”

  “I had my suspicions, too,” admitted Logan. “Like, when both my team and Mary Anne’s were sabotaged, I thought maybe Cokie was behind it. But then you guys were sabotaged, too.” He nodded at Grace and Mari.

  “Cokie wouldn’t do that,” Grace murmured.

  “I wonder if the order of people sabotaged means anything,” Austin said. “Like, who was first, and who was second.”

  We all took sips of soda and thought for a moment. My mind was a blank.

  “I know!” said Shea. He sat up straight in his chair. “I was just thinking about how everybody’s workstations looked that first day. Ours was really, really neat. So was Logan’s team’s. But Mari’s and Grace’s was a mess.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Mari. “I mean, I can’t deny that our station was messy, but that’s just how I cook. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Well,” said Shea, “just by looking at those three workstations, anybody would have thought that our team and Logan’s team really had it together — that we’d probably be better cooks. So they’d target us first.”

  “Yes!” I said suddenly. “It fits! It’s a pattern. Whoever is behind this is out to mess up the best cooks. See?”

  “No,” said Mari, shaking her head. “I’m not sure I do.”

  “Well, who won at the end of that first day?” I asked her.

  “We did,” she said. “With our sticky buns.”

  “Right,” I said. “And whose oven was on fire first thing the next day?”

  “Whoa!” said Mari.

  “Are you saying we were targeted because we won?” Grace asked.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “So the troublemakers must be paying close attention to the judge’s scores,” Logan said thoughtfully.

  “Not only that,” added Mary Anne, “they’re paying close attention to what kind of supplies we’re using. I mean, that sugar bag today? The one somebody filled with salt? It looked exactly like the sugar we were using.”

  “Which means,” Austin said slowly, “that the person who does these things plans them carefully beforehand.”

  Logan was nodding. “Definitely premeditated,” he said. “You know, like in one of those courtroom shows. If a person planned a crime, they’d be in more trouble for it than if they did it on the spur of the moment.”

  Just then, our waitress stopped by to ask if there was anything else she could bring us. I ordered another soda, and so did Mari and Logan. I sipped the last drops of my first soda while I waited for my second. “Doesn’t it seem strange, in a way, that we were the only ones sabotaged?” I asked. “I mean, other people there were definitely good bakers. Even people who didn’t make the finals.”

  “Like Mickey and Joey?” Mary Anne asked, teasing.

  I could feel myself blushing. “Well, they were good bakers,” I said. I didn’t add that they were cute, too. I’d exchanged phone numbers with Mickey, and I was hoping I’d see him again someday. “Remember those peanut-butter chocolate bars they made? Mmmm!”

  “You’re right,” said Mary Anne. “There were a lot of good bakers in the contest. And you know what? I bet some of them were sabotaged, but they didn’t even realize it.”

  “Wow!” said Logan. “I bet that’s true. Like with Mickey and Joey. The day after they made those peanut butter things, they made a chocolate truffle cake. It looked great, but I saw the judges’ faces when they tasted it. And, now that I think of it, I heard one of them comment on how bitter it was.”

  “I bet you anything somebody switched unsweetened chocolate for the semi-sweet kind,” I said. “I used the stuff in a brownie recipe once, by mistake, and the brownies were terrible.” Thinking about it, I could almost taste these brownies. Ew. I took a sip of my new soda, which the waitress had just brought.

  “And what about Sara Hill’s team?” asked Kerry. “I tried their muffins last Sunday, and they were great. But I tasted the cake they made today, and it was awful. It had way too much salt in it.”

  “Maybe somebody messed with their recipe,” said Austin. “You know, like if somebody changed a little ‘t’ to a big ‘T,’ they might have put in a tablespoon of salt instead of a teaspoon. They’re all pretty young, and they probably aren’t experienced bakers, so they wouldn’t realize that a tablespoon was a lot of salt for that recipe.”

  “We’re dealing with a devious criminal mind,” I said dramatically.

  “We sure are,” Logan said with a sigh. “I just wish the finals could go smoothly tomorrow, with everything fair and square.”

  We nodded. “But what can we do about it?” I asked.

  “All we can do is keep watching everything that happens,” said Grace.

  “And I think we should arrive really early tomorrow,” Austin added. “When people first come by to drop off their supplies. That way, maybe we can prevent some precontest sneaking around.”

  “Good idea,” I said. Everybody agreed. Shea, who’s good at that sort of thing, divided up our check. Then we took our last sips of soda and left Pizza Express. I think we all felt a little more hopeful. Maybe, just maybe, we’d have a chance at catching the person responsible for the sabotage, now that we were working as a team. We wished each other luck as we said good-bye, and I realized that now I almost hated the thought of competing against them. Almost.

  Wham!

  Slam!

  “What was that?” Logan asked.

  “Don’t know,” I said, rubbing my eyes. I was still sleepy. We had arrived at the high school super early. “We better go see, though,” I added. After all, we’d come to do detective work.

  Mary Anne was there, too, and so were Shea, Austin, and Kerry. Grace and Mari hadn’t arrived yet, but I expected them any minute. We were standing around near the side entrance to the gym, the one most people had been using during the Battle of the Bakers.

  “It sounded like it came from the back parking lot. I think it was car doors slamming,” said Shea. “Let’s go look.” He headed off at a trot, and we followed him.

  Just as I was rounding the corner of the building, Shea stopped short and backed up, holding up his hand. “Wait!” he hissed. “Don’t let them see you.”

  I heard Mary Anne, who was in front of me, gasp when she saw what Shea was looking at. She exchanged surprised glances with Logan.

  I peeked over her shouder. “Oh, my lord,” I whispered. “This is interesting.”

  “What?” asked Kerry, jumping up and down as she tried to see over my shoulder.

  I let her slip in front of me. Austin was standing beside me, so I knew he could see. We watched as the little scene in front of us played itself out. The characters? Julie Liu and Marty Nisson. The setting? A small red car. (They had apparently just climbed out of it, and they were now standing in front of it.) The action? Julie was tucking a set of keys into her pocketbook while Marty waited for her.

  I know what you’re thinking. So far, this isn’t the most exciting scene. But wait. What happened next made Mary Anne give another, much louder, gasp.

  Marty and Julie kissed. And when I say that, I mean they really kissed. There was, like, major lip contact. And it lasted for what seemed like minutes. It was a kiss from the movies.

  “Wow,” breathed Mary Anne, after we’d watched Julie and Marty finish their kiss and head for the back door of the gym. “I guess they’re in love.”

  I could tell she was caught up in the romance of it, but I had other things on my mind. “This puts a whole new light on things,” I said, frowning. “Don’t forget that our pal Marty is one of the people running the contest. And now we find out that he’s involved with one of the contestants. Isn’t that a little suspicious?”

  “You mean you think Marty is the one who’s been sabotaging everyone?” said Austin. “But he’s such a nice guy.”

  I shrugged. “I agree,” I said. “I’d hate to think he was the
one. But didn’t you see the way he looked at her?”

  “Sure,” said Logan. “I saw it. So what?”

  “He looked like a prince in a fairy tale.” Mary Anne sighed.

  “Exactly,” I said. “He looked like a prince in love. A prince so in love that he might do anything to make sure his princess gets her heart’s desire — which is to win this contest!”

  “Marty wouldn’t do that!” Logan said. Then he frowned and thought for a second. “I mean, he just wouldn’t.” A pause. “Would he?”

  “I hope not,” said Kerry. “I like Marty.”

  “We all like Marty,” I said. “But we’re going to have to treat him as a suspect from now on. That means keeping an eye on him at all times.” I was wishing I could think of something else to do besides keeping an eye on him, or on any other suspect we might find. We needed a plan. A way to catch the person who’d been trying to mess up our chances of winning the contest. I had been up half the night before, thinking and thinking (and wishing I hadn’t eaten quite so much pizza), but I hadn’t come up with a single idea. At one point, I had even turned on my light and dug out some Nancy Drews to comb through for ideas. But Nancy hadn’t been able to help.

  “Hey, what’s that?” Shea said, interrupting my train of thought. “I think I just heard another car drive up, back by the side entrance. Let’s check out who else is here.” Once again, he set off at a trot and the rest of us followed behind.

  This time, there were no big surprises. The latest arrivals were Rachel and Anna, plus Mr. Kleinman, who had driven them. He pulled up to the curb, parked, and followed them as they walked toward the door, talking all the way. From what I could hear, he was giving the girls last-minute tips and directions. He seemed nervous, but his tension was nothing compared to his daughter’s. She looked totally stressed-out.

  “I don’t know, Dad,” she kept saying. But he seemed to be reassuring her, over and over again.

  As they passed the spot where we were standing (we were doing our best to act naturally), I smiled at Rachel and said hi. She gave me a timid little smile in return, but didn’t say anything. She was too busy listening to her father, who was still lecturing as they headed for the entrance.

  The last thing I heard her say to him was this: “I’m sure I won’t win.”

  And the last thing I heard him say was this: “I’m sure you will, honey. I’m absolutely sure.”

  Hmm. I turned to Mary Anne to see if she’d heard what I’d heard. Her eyes were big and round, so I figured she had.

  “He sounds like he knows what he’s talking about,” said Logan. So he’d heard it, too.

  “He sure does,” I replied. “He sounds like he knows something the rest of us don’t know.”

  “Like, how his daughter is going to be the only possible winner today?” asked Austin.

  “Could be,” I said. “I guess we have two major suspects now.”

  Just then, Grace’s dad dropped Grace and Mari off. Everybody started talking to them at once, filling them in on what we’d seen. Me? I let the others explain. I wanted one more chance to come up with a plan. I started to think again about the Nancy Drew books I’ve read. All these detective terms popped into my head, such as “stakeout” (we’d already done that, by arriving early), and “eavesdrop” (we’d done that, too, when Rachel and her dad walked by). Finally, I thought of one that fit: “scene of the crime.” Detectives talk about how criminals return to the scene of the crime. And, in this case, if the criminal wanted to do his job, he’d have to return to the scene of the crime.

  In other words, if somebody wanted to knock me and my team out of the contest, they were going to have to do it by sabotaging our recipe. And to do that, they would have to visit our workstation. All we had to do was catch them in the act. “Hey!” I said out loud. Actually, I guess I shouted it, because everybody turned to look at me, and they all wore very surprised expressions.

  “What is it, Claud?” asked Mary Anne.

  “I have it! A plan!” I could hardly wait to tell them. “Everybody come close,” I said, waving them toward me. When we had formed a huddle, I started talking. “Here’s what we’ll do….”

  * * *

  As soon as I arrived in the faculty lounge, I told the other BSC members our plan. We would need everybody’s help. After that, the morning sped by. The kids were wildly busy, preparing for their restaurant, but I didn’t get involved. Once again, I volunteered to watch the babies, and once again, the babies napped. That gave me plenty of time to fine-tune my plan. By the time the adult division finished up and we headed into the gym for our final day of the Battle of the Bakers, I was ready.

  The place looked a little different, since only five teams were still involved. Some of the workstations had been taken apart, for example. And it was quieter. There was a serious feeling in the air.

  I headed for a workstation on one end of the row, and just as I claimed it I saw Grace claiming the one across from it. I gave her the thumbs-up sign. So far, our plan was right on target.

  Dawn, who had followed me in, pretending to help me carry groceries, raised her eyebrows at me. I tilted my head toward the back of the gym. She followed my glance, then looked at me and nodded. Casually, she wove her way over to where Mr. Kleinman was standing. I knew she would carry out her part of the plan perfectly.

  What she was supposed to do was start talking with Mr. Kleinman, and “accidentally” let it drop that my team had a “foolproof” recipe for the finals. (The idea was that this would push him into sabotaging us, if he really were the criminal.)

  Meanwhile, Kristy, who was still on Cake Cop duty, was doing the same thing with Marty. We were all set.

  Mary Anne, Shea, and I went ahead and mixed our batter as quickly as possible. (We were making the chocolate-cherry cake again, since it had been so successful.) When the batter was ready, Mary Anne poured it into the cake pans.

  Now it was Jessi’s turn to do her part. She ran into the gym, found Mr. Kleinman, and told him that there was a phone call for him in the principal’s office. At the same time, Dawn ran in, grabbed Marty, and told him there was a “crisis” in the day-care center.

  Once our two prime suspects were temporarily out of the way, we swung into action. Mary Anne grabbed our cake pans and ran them to Grace’s and Mari’s station, where she shoved them into the oven. (Shea had arranged this, after checking to see if they were using the same oven temperature for their recipe.)

  When she returned to our station, she and Shea and I set to work quickly. We carefully shook out two five-pound bags of flour, covering every surface with a nearly invisible layer of fine white powder. (Since the counters and appliances were white, it hardly showed up.)

  “Excuse me,” somebody said from behind me, just as we’d finished doing the job. I whirled around and saw one of the judges. She had a peculiar look on her face. “Would you mind telling me what’s going on?”

  “I’d love to,” I said. “But first, I wonder if you could come with me to the station across from us. I think you’ll understand soon enough, if you’ll just step over there.”

  Meanwhile, back in the faculty lounge, Kidz Kitchen was in full swing, and Dawn was in the thick of it. All the work the kids had done was paying off. The day-care center had turned into a real, true, operating restaurant! (Well, with a few differences. For example, the patrons were paying for their meals with play money. The parents had already pitched in to pay for ingredients, so we didn’t think it was fair to make them pay again for their meals.)

  The “restaurant” was packed. Just about all of the adults who had been in the contest stopped in, and Dawn said she thought this helped to distract some of the contestants who hadn’t done too well. (Their finals had ended with a surprising win by a grandmother from Brooklyn.) Many of the contestants were hanging around to watch the under-sixteen finals, so they were happy to have a place to grab a bite to eat, whether or not they had kids involved in the project.

  The kids were
divided up into the same teams Kristy had come up with the day before. The managers — Kerry, Archie, Big Tyler, Joseph, Julie, Taylor, and Little Tyler — were greeting customers, seating them, and making sure they had menus. Even the youngest kids were doing their jobs with real sophistication and seriousness. Dawn made sure to save one of the menus. Here’s what it looked like:

  There was something for everyone. In case you’re wondering, the “bug salad” was made from half a canned pear, with carrot curls for legs and raisins for eyes. It was adorable, and lots of people ordered it (out of curiosity, probably).

  The peanut butter sandwiches were the other big hit. The chefs — Emily, Morgan, Marilyn, Charlotte, Kyle, Jamie, and Jackie — went through about five family-sized jars of super chunky. There were no temperamental chefs in Kidz Kitchen, fortunately. Everyone had a great time. And Jackie didn’t have a single major accident. (He did have a few minor ones, but nothing a good washing machine couldn’t handle.)

  And the waiter and waitresses — Megan, Linny, Hannie, and Carolyn — did a terrific job. They were very professional about taking down orders carefully and bringing them to the chefs as quickly as possible. The trickiest part, Dawn told me, was when they had to deliver drinks. There were a few spills, but the customers didn’t seem to mind.

  Dawn, Stacey, Jessi, and Mal supervised the event, since Mary Anne, Logan, and I were still baking and Kristy was on Cake Cop duty. Dawn and Jessi helped out in the “dining area,” where the customers were seated, while Mal and Stacey worked with the chefs, in the “kitchen,” which was really just a few tables plus some counter space, with a sink nearby. The scene was total chaos. “Fortunately, Mrs. Newton and Ms. Singer were both on hand to take care of their own babies,” Dawn said. “Otherwise, I don’t know how we could have done it.”