The Candymakers and the Great Chocolate Chase Read online

  According to Arthur, Fluffernutter was an “amazing” dog, so the name fit perfectly. Miles had yet to see proof of the dog’s amazingness (Miles was a cat person), but Arthur claimed that not only could Fluffernutter roll over on command already, but she’d sniffed out six geocaches on her own!

  Of the ones he and Arthur had found together, Arthur had spotted the first one (a small metal box hanging from a low tree branch), and yesterday Miles had found the second, inside a fallen log, after nearly an hour of searching the wooded area. That one—a large plastic bin—had rewarded his efforts with a small bottle of Hocus Pocus Disappearing Ink.

  Usually the trinkets hidden in the boxes were common objects—pencil toppers, plastic rings, rubber toys, dominoes, dice, key chains, stickers, crayons, that sort of thing. So to find something as exotic and unexpected as disappearing ink, even though the bottle was half-empty, well, it made Miles giddy with excitement. He couldn’t wait to show Logan and then try it out on Philip. Philip hadn’t shown much of a sense of humor and probably hated practical jokes. That would make it even sweeter when a stream of blue ink shot out onto his tie, only to disappear a minute later!

  Arthur finally showed up, out of breath from trying to keep Fluffernutter from pulling away on her leash. He had his three-year-old daughter, Jade, with him, too. She ran up to Miles as soon as she saw him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

  “Um… hello to you, too?” was all he could think to say. Now, Miles was a hugger himself. But he couldn’t recall a time when a young child had hugged him. It was… interesting. But not altogether bad. They’d met only once before, and that had been at the library when Arthur’s wife, Tina, had brought Jade to visit. Miles had been poring over a collection of old candy bar wrappers Arthur had found while cataloging a storage room. Life Is Sweet had donated them to the library twenty years earlier, but they had sat on a shelf since then. Arthur was planning to put together a display, and he let Miles and Jade organize the wrappers by color and shape. Mostly Miles organized and Jade threw them up in the air and laughed, even though you’re supposed to be quiet in a library and she should know that since her dad worked in one and some of the wrappers were really rare and should be handled with respect.

  Miles patted her awkwardly on the head a few times, and she finally let go.

  Arthur grinned. “What can I say? She likes you!”

  They eventually turned to the job at hand and began looking for anything out of the ordinary, like a random stack of branches, or a rock pile too orderly for nature to have built it. Those are easy places to hide a cache. But nothing like that jumped out at them.

  Miles returned to the water’s edge. He bent down to more closely inspect the rocks that formed a natural wall on one side of the stream. He slid his hand along the rocks, feeling for some sort of crevice or gap. If a cache was hidden there, it would have to be a small one. He moved his hand over to the next row, and instead of feeling the dry rock, he got a handful of wet nose!

  CHAPTER TWO

  Arthur laughed. “She beat you to it!”

  Okay, so Fluffernutter really did have a nose for geocaching! If this actually was the cache, the dog had found it only seconds before Miles. After a minute, she yanked her snout out of the hole and ran around happily in circles. Miles peeked in. It was too dark to see much, but he could spot something silver reflecting the sunlight. Yup, Fluffernutter had found the last cache in Verona Park, all right. He tried not to be resentful but couldn’t help thinking that this never would have happened if Fluffernutter had been a cat. Well, unless someone had hidden tuna in the cache!

  “I think Fluffernutter deserves a treat for that display of geocaching skill,” Arthur said, reaching into his pocket.

  “There’s a Pepsicle in my backpack,” Miles offered, proving he could accept defeat with grace. To date, the Pepsicle was the only candy approved for both people and animals. “My friend Daisy’s horse, Magpie, loves them, so maybe Fluffernutter will, too. I brought a few extra if Jade’s old enough for one.”

  “Thanks! Much better than a dog biscuit.” Arthur reached into the small cooler inside Miles’s backpack and pulled out a mostly frozen Pepsicle. Fluffernutter and Jade both immediately sat up at attention when they saw (or, in the dog’s case, smelled) the treat. Arthur grinned. “I think that’s a yes for both.”

  Miles showed Arthur how to pull out the stick before giving it to the dog. Fluffernutter gobbled it down in a few licks and a bite. Jade sniffed at hers, then gave a tentative lick. Miles could tell when the peppermint taste kicked in, because Jade’s eyes opened wide. She beamed and then plopped down on the grass to enjoy it at her leisure.

  While Fluffernutter happily slurped up the juice left behind on the ground and Arthur snapped pictures of Jade with blue ice dripping down her chin, Miles put a glove on and used the discarded Pepsicle stick to root around in the small hole. Daisy would probably have something to say about the fact that he didn’t just reach his hand in, but one never knew what might be lurking in a hole between damp rocks. Worm, spider, bee, snake, pointy nail. Better not to take chances. Certainly Daisy would agree with that. Or maybe not. She didn’t seem the type to look for long before leaping.

  A little more maneuvering with the stick, and the geocache slid out into his hand. It was cylindrical, made of black plastic with a silver lid, and only about two inches high. He rolled it on the ground to loosen the dirt that clung to the sides.

  Arthur chuckled. “That’s an old film canister, from back in the day when you had to get film developed. Imagine having to take pictures with your camera, being careful not to waste a single shot because film wasn’t cheap, waiting till you filled up a whole roll of film, which could take months, sticking it into one of those canisters, and delivering it to a store. Then waiting for the photos to be printed before you could see how they looked and by then you’d forgotten what you took pictures of in the first place.” He shook his head. “In the last two minutes I’ve taken thirty-six shots, deleted nine, cropped three, taken out a shadow in one, and sent them to six relatives with the caption Jade’s First Geocaching Pepsicle. Man, modern technology!”

  Miles had never owned a camera or a photo-taking phone, but all that waiting did sound awful. He flipped the rubber cap off the container and tipped it over in his hand. Two marbles and one rectangular wooden magnet with the words I LOVE GEOCACHING engraved on it fell out. He held up the magnet and admired the craftsmanship involved. Someone had clearly carved it by hand.

  “Cool,” Arthur said, admiring the magnet, too.

  “Do you want it?” Miles asked, offering it up to his friend. “I got the disappearing ink, so it’s your turn.”

  Arthur shook his head. “I’ll take a marble. The magnet will be a good keepsake of your first solo find.” Fluffernutter rolled onto her back and barked as if to say, “Hey, I helped, too!”

  They all laughed, even Jade. “Well, mostly solo,” Arthur corrected. He scratched Fluffernutter’s belly, and the dog’s legs kicked out like she was riding a bike.

  Miles traced his finger along the letters, then happily slipped the magnet into his pocket. “Thanks. Here’s the log.” He pulled out the rolled-up piece of notebook paper from the canister and handed it over. For these first three finds, they’d agreed that Arthur would write his own handle, StormingTheCastle, in the log, along with the date. Miles hadn’t yet chosen his own geocaching handle—the nickname he’d go by as long as he played the game. Even though he found it easy to name everything else, he was stumped trying to pick out a handle for himself. Nothing felt quite right. Apparently Arthur’s handle was based on a line from a famous movie that involved sword fighting, true love, a giant, and a man named Miracle Max. When he first heard that, Miles wondered if Max Pinkus, the head candy scientist at the factory, knew about this other Max, who could make miracles. But then again, Max made miracles himself every day with only a handful of ingredients!

  Miles pulled his swag bag out of his backpack and began r