The Candymakers and the Great Chocolate Chase Read online

  “Wow,” Miles said, carefully lifting the bean from Logan’s palm as though it were the most precious item in the world. “That’s powerful stuff.”

  Logan nodded. “I know.”

  “What does this mean for us now?” Philip asked. No use pretending that the Harmonicandy wasn’t his first priority. “Even if this was the same chocolate used for the contest, we don’t know where to get more beans. I’m pretty sure we can’t make thousands of Harmonicandies out of that one.” He pointed to the small bean Miles was rolling around in his hand.

  “It was definitely made from the same chocolate,” Logan said. “But even if we found the beans, we couldn’t use them.”

  “Why not?” Philip demanded.

  Logan knew his explanation wouldn’t be good enough, but he had to try. “Because the beans themselves are too… special. It’s like they’re almost not supposed to be in a chocolate bar. I think I didn’t pick up on it in the original Harmonicandy because there were so many other ingredients, and some of our own dark chocolate went in there, too.”

  Philip scoffed. “We can’t use it because it’s too good?”

  Logan knew he wasn’t making much sense. But how could he explain the feeling he got when he ate it? He looked to Daisy for help. She’d been very quiet through all this.

  “Let’s wait to see what the results are from the test,” she said. “For all we know, the beans came from Timbuktu, and there’s no way we’d find the source anyway.”

  Philip scoffed again and crossed his arms. “That’s not even a real place.”

  “Sure it is,” Miles replied. “It’s in West Africa at the southern edge of the Sahara desert.”

  “No cocoa trees in the desert,” Logan reminded them. “To grow properly, cocoa trees need to be within ten degrees of the equator in a humid, tropical environment.”

  “People say Timbuktu when they just mean a really faraway place,” Miles explained. “Nothing to do now but wait, I guess.”

  Logan patted down his pockets, wishing he’d brought some poems to stock in there. He could use some inspiration right then. Miles saw him frown. “Everything okay?” he asked.

  He’d long ago told Miles about his tradition of keeping a poem in his pocket. “You wouldn’t happen to have a poem lying around, would you?”

  Miles placed the bean back in its bowl on the counter and retrieved the card Jade had made him. He tore out a piece of paper from his notebook and quickly copied down the poem Arthur had written. He handed Logan the paper. “This is sort of poem-ish.”

  “It’s perfect,” Logan said. He read it over twice and then stuck it in his pocket. He actually felt a little calmer.

  The RV pulled into the parking lot of a giant superstore, and AJ took up eight spots along the edge of the lot. As soon as the engine cut off, the four of them jumped up and raced over to the lab.

  “Hold on,” AJ said, popping up and stepping in front of it. “We have fifteen minutes until we’re due at the candy store. Before you do anything else, you need to change into your clothes, and it wouldn’t kill anyone to brush their hair.” When no one moved from the counter, he said, “Seriously. You’re still wearing your pajamas. And I think Miles has honey on his chin that’s two days old.” AJ peered more closely at Miles. “With cat hair stuck to it.”

  Miles covered his chin. The rest grumbled but followed AJ’s orders. Five minutes later they were back, dressed in their finest, hair quickly brushed or combed. Then they had to wait another three minutes because Philip had put on his suit and tie, and they told him he was way overdressed and made him change. He insisted on keeping the tie. He didn’t expect them to understand.

  With only seven minutes left, they had to work fast. Daisy pulled out a drawer beneath the bookshelf that the others had assumed was just storage. They should have known better. The “drawer” contained ten slots of various sizes along with a keypad. Daisy had already sliced off a piece of the Magic Bar, and now she placed it inside one of the slots. She dropped the bean into the next one. She relayed the commands to the computer to both analyze and compare the two objects’ chemical compositions and to trace their origins. Plastic covers slid over the slots, and the objects disappeared from view.

  “And now we wait,” she said, sliding the drawer carefully back into place.

  “For how long?” Miles asked. All this waiting for answers did not come naturally to him.

  “For about two hours,” she said, looking at her watch. “That gives us exactly one minute and sixteen seconds for you to tell us how you knew the combination to the safe.”

  Miles puffed up his cheeks and blew out the air. The others waited expectantly. Rats. Of course they hadn’t forgotten.

  “One minute, nine seconds,” Philip noted.

  “All right, all right,” Miles said. He stepped over to a small drawer in the wall next to the laundry machine. Since this drawer was an actual drawer and not a high-tech laboratory in disguise, he’d been using it to hide the materials he’d taken from Samuel Sweet’s box. He returned to the group with the map.

  “Thirty-eight seconds,” AJ warned.

  “Hold your horses,” Miles said. “This is delicate work.” He carefully unfolded the map and laid it down on the counter. The others gathered around. “There,” he said, pointing to the rock. “Look at these lines. They’re not cracks in the rock. They’re really numbers.”

  “I don’t understand,” Logan said to Miles. “It’s really cool, but why would you have painted numbers on a rock, and then how could you possibly know they’d open the safe?”

  Miles shook his head. “I didn’t make the map. It was in your grandfather’s box. I don’t know why he had it, but he must have decided to use the numbers hidden in the rock when he chose a combination for the safe. I’m sorry I didn’t just show it to you sooner. I don’t know what to think about any of this.”

  “It’s okay,” Logan replied. “None of us know what to think.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Philip said. “I think plenty of things, like that this Map of Awe doesn’t look all that awe-inspiring… a little water, a few trees, a couple of rocks? And there’s no X.”

  “No X?” Logan asked.

  “You know, X marks the spot, like where you’d dig for treasure. There’s no X.”

  “Not all maps are treasure maps,” Miles said as patiently as possible. “Most just show you where you are, or how to get there.”

  Philip shrugged. “This one doesn’t seem to do either of those things.”

  Miles felt himself getting angry and started to silently count backward from ten, the way his mom had taught him when he was younger and frustrated at not understanding a word in one of the books he was reading. Why was he defending Sam’s map? It’s not like he knew any more about it than Philip did.

  “Hey, I realize not much is cooler than a mysterious map,” Daisy said to AJ, who had been leaning over their shoulders. “But don’t we have to go?”

  AJ forced himself to stop studying the map on the counter and turned around. He frowned. “Not with you looking like that.”

  The boys didn’t see anything wrong with the way Daisy looked, even though they were still getting used to seeing her with her normal brown hair. Daisy rolled her eyes, but she marched to the back room and closed the door. They heard her open the disguise closet. When she emerged five minutes later, she wore a soccer uniform, complete with cleats and a ball under one arm. The raised letters on her shirt spelled out CHESTERFIELD CHEETAHS.

  The boys all opened their mouths, but Daisy held up a hand. “Before you ask, this way I’ll look like a normal kid from”—she looked down at her shirt—“Chesterfield, who came to the store before her soccer match. This is a publicity tour, after all, and there’s nothing a spy hates more than having people take their picture and publish it.”

  “Why does AJ still get to look like AJ, then?” Logan asked.

  In response, AJ pulled a baseball cap out of his back pocket and stuck it on his head.