Nancy was wondering what was wrong with Josie when Mr. Zuckerman interrupted her thoughts.
“Has anybody found the recipe?” he called. He pulled himself to his feet.
“Not me,” said one of Nancy’s classmates.
“Me either!” called another.
“It’s no use!” Mr. Zuckerman wailed. “My recipe is gone!”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t find it for you, Mr. Zuckerman,” Mrs. Reynolds said.
“Oh, you did your best.” The frazzled factory owner sighed. Sad, he walked the class to the school bus.
Soon after the kids had settled into their bus seats, they began to chatter about the missing recipe.
“Where could it have gone?” George wondered. She twirled one of her dark brown curls around her finger thoughtfully.
Bess opened her blue eyes wide. “You don’t think somebody stole it, do you?” she asked Nancy.
Nancy didn’t answer. She was too busy staring at Josie Blanton. Josie was sitting in the seat in front of hers. She was chewing on a chocolate bar, but she didn’t seem very interested in it. She gazed out the window. And she didn’t talk to anybody about the missing recipe.
“Hmmm,” Nancy said. “I wonder . . .”
But before Nancy could say how suspicious Josie looked, the bus arrived at their school, Carl Sandburg Elementary.
“There’s my mom,” George said. She pointed at Mrs. Fayne’s car parked in front of the school. “Remember, Nancy, she’s giving us a ride to soccer practice. We’d better hurry. We don’t want to be late.”
George and Nancy said goodbye to Bess and ran off the bus.
In a short while Nancy was on the soccer field, practicing her dribbling and punts. She was playing so hard that she forgot all about Josie and the missing recipe.
Before she knew it, Coach Santos called out, “Okay, girls. Good job today. Time to go home.”
“Really?” George said. She bounced a soccer ball on her knee. “I could practice all night.”
“Not me,” Nancy said. She wiped her forehead with her sleeve. “I’m going home for a snack. See you tomorrow, George.”
Nancy was enjoying her walk home when something made her stop. A delicious smell filled the air.
“Mmm,” Nancy whispered. She closed her eyes. “That smell reminds me of Hannah’s pancakes.”
When she opened her eyes, she realized she was standing in front of Josie Blanton’s house. A front window was open. Through the window, Nancy could see Josie’s kitchen. Josie and her mother were standing at the counter, stirring something in a big mixing bowl.
Josie grinned. Then she stuck her finger in the mixing bowl and licked some batter off her finger. She only giggled when her mother scolded her.
Next Josie’s mother took a spoon and began dropping the batter onto a baking sheet. Nancy sniffed the air again. Then her mouth dropped open.
“Now I recognize that smell,” she said. “It’s maple syrup.”
Suddenly Nancy remembered what Mr. Zuckerman had said about his candy recipe: “The trick is in the maple syrup.”
Nancy ran the rest of the way home.
“Hannah!” Nancy called when she burst through the kitchen door.
Hannah was at the counter, cutting up vegetables for supper. “What’s all the commotion, Nancy?” Hannah said. She wiped her hands on a dish towel.
“I have to make a call,” Nancy said breathlessly. “Can you please help me look up a number in the phone book?”
“Of course, dear,” Hannah said. She pulled the telephone book out of one of the kitchen drawers.
“I need the number for Zuckerman’s Zonked Candy Factory,” Nancy said.
Hannah flipped through the Z’s and said, “Here it is—555-ZONK.”
Nancy punched in the number. After three rings a weary voice answered. Nancy recognized it as Mr. Zuckerman’s. “Zuckerman’s Zonked,” he said sadly.
“Hello, Mr. Zuckerman? This is Nancy Drew,” said Nancy. “I was one of the kids on the field trip at your factory today.”
“Oh. Oh, yes, dear,” Mr. Zuckerman said. “What can I do for you, young lady?”
“I wanted to know if you’ve found your secret recipe,” Nancy said.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I haven’t,” Mr. Zuckerman said. He sounded very upset. “I just can’t imagine what’s happened to it. It was stupid of me to keep only one copy of the recipe. And now it’s lost. I’ve looked everywhere, but it’s nowhere to be found.”
“I think that’s because somebody may have taken it,” Nancy said.
“What!” Mr. Zuckerman sputtered. “But who would do a thing like that? And why?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out, Mr. Zuckerman,” Nancy said.
Nancy bit her lip and thought to herself, In fact, I think I already know.
“I promise I’ll call you as soon as I learn something,” Nancy told Mr. Zuckerman. Then she hung up the phone and went to her room.
Nancy opened her backpack and took out the shiny blue notebook where she always wrote down the clues to her mysteries. She turned to a clean page and wrote “The Mystery of the Missing Candy Recipe. Chief suspect: Josie Blanton.”
4
Josie’s Plan
The next morning Nancy ran into her classroom. Bess and George were already there. Nancy hurried over to her best friends.
“Guess what?” Nancy whispered. “I’m not sure if Mr. Zuckerman lost his candy recipe. I think somebody might have taken it.”
Then she told Bess and George all about what she’d seen the day before.
“When I was walking home from soccer practice, I passed Josie’s house,” Nancy whispered. “Josie and her mother were cooking in the kitchen.”
“That doesn’t seem too strange,” Bess said.
“They were baking something that smelled just like maple syrup,” Nancy said.
“What’s the big deal about that?” George asked. “Everybody knows that Josie loves anything sweet.”
“Remember what Mr. Zuckerman said about his recipe, though?” Nancy said. “The secret ingredient was maple syrup!”
Bess looked upset. “Do you really think Josie took the recipe?” she asked. “I mean, Josie does love candy. Yesterday at the candy factory, she ate enough Zuckerman’s Peanut Butter-O’s to feed ten squirrels. She licked so many Zonked Wacky Fruitz, her tongue turned bright purple. But I can’t see Josie stealing.”
“I thought so, too,” Nancy said sadly. “But then I remembered what Josie said on the bus. She said she wants to open her own candy factory someday.”
“Maybe this is how she’ll get her start,” George whispered.
“Girls,” Mrs. Reynolds called. “It’s time to stop talking and get to work. The assignment for the morning is to write a composition about our trip to Zuckerman’s Zonked Candy Factory.”
Nancy, Bess, and George hurried to their desks. Nancy pulled a sharp pencil and a piece of paper out of her desk. She chewed on her eraser for a moment, thinking. Then she began to write.
“Going to Zuckerman’s Zonked was the best field trip ever. I had fun seeing how my favorite treats are made,” she wrote in her neat, straight handwriting. “Mr. Zuckerman seems to love making candy. I think it is sad that his secret recipe was lost. Now we may never get to taste his great new idea.”
Nancy looked up from her paper and glanced at Josie, who sat two rows away. Josie was writing busily. I wonder what Josie’s writing, Nancy thought. Maybe there’s a clue to this mystery in her composition.
Nancy didn’t have a chance to talk to Bess and George again until lunchtime.
As the class walked to the cafeteria, Nancy had an idea. “Let’s sit next to Josie at lunch,” she said to Bess and George. “Maybe she’ll give us some clues.”
When the girls got to the cafeteria, Josie had already sat down. She was unpacking her lunch when Nancy, Bess, and George joined her. Nancy sat next to Josie, and George sat next to Nancy. Bess sat across from them.
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“Hi, guys,” Josie said. She unwrapped a gooey, smushy-looking sandwich. “Look what I brought. It’s made with peanut butter and whipped marshmallow—just like at Zuckerman’s Zonked. Too bad my mom wouldn’t dip the bread in chocolate, though.”
Bess gaped at Josie’s lunch. Josie also had a container of sugar-coated fruity cereal and a pint of chocolate milk.
“I wish my mom let me eat sweets for lunch,” Bess said. She pulled out her own ham sandwich, regular milk, and apple and frowned at them. She sighed a big sigh and took a halfhearted bite of the fruit.
Josie had eaten only a bit of her sticky sandwich when suddenly she grinned and declared, “Time for dessert!” She reached into her lunchbox and pulled out something small and round. It was wrapped in aluminum foil. When Josie pulled the foil off, she was holding a creamy candy. It looked like a chocolate, except it was light brown.
Nancy sniffed. The candy smelled strongly of maple syrup.
“What is that, Josie?” Nancy asked. She tried hard not to sound too suspicious.
“Guess,” Josie responded with a big grin. Then she popped the candy into her mouth. Suddenly her smile disappeared. Josie’s eyes opened wide and started watering. She grabbed her napkin and spit the candy into it.
“Blech!” she cried. Then she folded her arms and frowned.
“Making candy is harder than I thought,” she said.
“What do you mean?” Nancy asked.
“When Mr. Zuckerman lost his recipe, I felt so bad for him,” Josie answered. “I thought I’d try to surprise him by coming up with a candy recipe to replace his. That’s what I wrote about in my essay this morning. My mom and I worked on this candy all afternoon yesterday. We used lots of maple syrup. But Mr. Zuckerman would never make something that tastes as yucky as this.”
Josie turned to Nancy. “I guess I’m not quite ready to be a candy maker,” she said sadly. “Maybe you should try to come up with the recipe, Nancy.”
Nancy patted Josie’s shoulder kindly. Then she whispered in George’s ear. “Did you hear that?” she asked. “Josie was just trying to guess Mr. Zuckerman’s recipe. She didn’t have it at all.”
With her back still turned to Josie, Nancy took her blue clue notebook out of her jeans pocket. She opened it to her Candy Hunt suspect page and crossed out Josie’s name. She was closing her notebook when she heard a commotion at the next cafeteria table.
Bess and George were looking over there, too. “Hmm, what’s up with Stevie Sikes?” George asked.
Stevie had black curly hair that never stayed neat. Not that he cared. He was always too busy with his science experiments to worry about things like messy hair. Stevie wanted to be a chemist when he grew up.
He was talking about his latest science project just then. Or rather, he wasn’t talking about it.
A circle of boys had formed around Stevie. Nancy could hear voices saying, “Hey, Stevie. Tell us! What is it that you’re working on?”
“It’s top secret,” Stevie answered. He folded his arms across his chest and clamped his mouth shut.
“Aw, come on, you can tell us,” David Berger said. “What is that stuff you’re cooking up?”
“No!” Stevie declared. “All the famous scientists say you should never talk about your research until it’s finished. So, no matter how much it bugs all of you, I’ll never tell.”
With that, Stevie slammed his lunch box shut and jumped up from the table. He stalked to the hall monitor at the cafeteria door. When she gave him a hall pass, he rushed through the door.
Nancy glanced at Bess and George. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked.
“Let’s go!” Bess said.
The three girls hopped up from the table and raced to the hall monitor.
“My, so many of Mrs. Reynolds’s students are walking the halls today.” The hall monitor laughed. She gave the girls their hall passes.
“Thank you,” Nancy said as they hurried out of the cafeteria. She peered down the long school hallway.
“There’s Stevie,” she said, pointing to the end of the hallway. She could see Stevie ducking into their own classroom.
The girls walked as fast as they could down the hallway. When they were near their classroom door, Nancy held a finger to her lips. “Shhhh,” she warned.
The friends tiptoed to the door and poked their heads inside. Stevie was at the science station in the back of the room. He held up a plastic beaker. It was filled with pink liquid. He swirled the liquid around and around. He squinted at it. Then he frowned.
Nancy sniffed the air. “Do you smell that?” she whispered.
“It smells sweet,” George hissed.
“Mmm,” Bess said. “It smells just like cotton candy.”
Suddenly Stevie looked up from his experiment. He’d seen them.
“Hey!” he yelled. He scowled and waved his arm at the girls, knocking over a bag at his elbow. White powder spilled out of the bag onto the floor.
“That’s sugar,” Nancy said.
“Get out of here!” Stevie yelled. “This is secret.”
Nancy stuttered, “B-but what are you—”
“Doing here?” A grown-up voice behind Nancy finished her sentence. Nancy whirled around. It was Mrs. Reynolds.
The teacher stepped past Nancy, George, and Bess and joined Stevie at the science station. Then she smiled and said, “Stevie’s working on something very private. Would you girls mind waiting in the cafeteria until the bell rings?”
“Yes, Mrs. Reynolds,” Nancy, Bess, and George said meekly. They left the classroom and trudged back toward the cafeteria. They were speechless. At least, for a moment.
Finally Bess sputtered, “I just don’t get it. Do you think Stevie is working on Mr. Zuckerman’s candy recipe?”
Nancy felt confused and upset. “I don’t know yet,” she said. “But if he is, then that means Mrs. Reynolds is in on his plan!”
5
Some Suspicious Grown-ups
That afternoon Nancy could barely concentrate on her math worksheets. She sneaked glances at Bess and George. They looked as upset as she was.
Finally the bell rang for the end of the school day. The three girls slumped down the hallway.
“What should we do about Stevie and Mrs. Reynolds?” Bess asked. She stopped walking and looked at Nancy and George sadly.
“I don’t know,” Nancy said. “I never thought Mrs. Reynolds would do something dishonest.”
“Yeah, this is big!” George said.
Nancy pulled her blue notebook out of her backpack. She wrote down the new clue: “Stevie and Mrs. Reynolds working on a sugary secret project.”
Nancy pondered the clue for a moment. “This isn’t enough to prove that Mrs. Reynolds and Stevie have Mr. Zuckerman’s recipe,” she said. “But it sure doesn’t look good, does it? I’m going to talk to my father about all this when he gets home from work.”
“But that’s not until dinnertime,” George said. “What should we do until then?”
“I don’t know about you,” Bess said, “but all this upsetting news about Mrs. Reynolds has made me hungry. Let’s stop at the Double Dip for an ice-cream cone.”
“That does sound good,” Nancy said. “Let’s call and ask for permission.”
After they’d called Hannah, Mrs. Marvin, and Mrs. Fayne from the school pay phone, the girls headed for the Double Dip. As they neared the ice-cream parlor, Bess began to cheer up.
“Maybe I’ll get a chocolate sundae with peanut butter and marshmallows,” she said. “It will taste just like one of Mr. Zuckerman’s Teensy-Tiny Nut ’n’ Fluffs.”
“That does sound yummy,” George said.
“Uh-huh!” Nancy agreed. “On to the Double Dip.”
The girls were just across the street from the store when George gasped. She pointed at the Double Dip’s big window.
“What is it, George?” Nancy asked.
She followed George’s gaze to the ice-cream parlor. Hangin
g in the window was a freshly painted sign. It was decorated with pictures of chocolate bars and jelly bears. The sign said, “The Double Dip. Serving ice cream, cookies, and now homemade candy!”
“Candy!” Nancy said.
The girls ran across the street and peeked into the Double Dip’s window.
“Look next to the cash register,” Nancy whispered. She pointed at a glass case filled with creamy chocolates, caramels, and other tasty stuff.
“Do you see anything that looks like it has maple syrup in it?” George asked.
Before Nancy could answer, Bess said, “Hey, look who’s buying ice cream. It’s Andrew Leoni.”
Andrew was standing at the counter. He was talking to the Double Dip’s owner, Cathy Perez. She handed him a waffle cone piled high with three scoops of ice cream. Andrew gave her a big grin. He took a lick off the top scoop and shook Cathy’s hand. Then he started to walk to the door.
“Hey, Andrew didn’t pay for his ice cream,” Bess said.
“Quick, let’s hide,” Nancy said. The girls ran to the corner and ducked behind a mailbox. They hid there until they couldn’t see Andrew anymore.
“Why did you want to hide from Andrew, Nancy?” George asked as they stumbled out from behind the mailbox.
“Why would Cathy give Andrew free ice cream?” Nancy said with a frown. “That seemed sort of fishy.”
“And on the day she starts selling homemade candy,” Bess added.
“Maybe Andrew traded Mr. Zuckerman’s secret recipe for a lifetime supply of free scoops,” Nancy said.
“You know, suddenly I’ve lost my appetite for ice cream,” George said. She looked troubled.
“Me, too,” Nancy said.
“Me, too, I guess,” Bess agreed. But she didn’t sound as if she meant it.
“All I want to do is talk to my dad about all this,” Nancy said as the girls turned toward home. “He’ll know what to do.”