The Candymakers and the Great Chocolate Chase

  Philip shook his head. “I’m just not interested.”

  “Is there prize money if you win?” Andrew asked.

  Philip nodded.

  “And fame?”

  “I guess.”

  “What’s not to like? It’s been a while since you’ve won anything.”

  “The candy contest was only four months ago,” Philip reminded him. “That one had fame and money, too.” He hoped Andrew wouldn’t ask him about his plans for the prize money or his share of the future profits. He’d already written down his lies for the day and didn’t want to add any more.

  But Andrew’s only question was “What candy contest?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Philip waited before answering his brother, certain that Andrew would say he was kidding and that of course he knew about the candy contest. But Andrew’s expectant expression hadn’t changed. He really didn’t know!

  “You mean Dad didn’t tell you I won the Confectionary Association’s annual New Candy Contest?” he asked, his voice rising more than he’d intended. “That my name was in newspapers across the country? Well, candy industry newsletters mostly, but still!”

  Andrew grinned. “Seriously? That happened?”

  “Yes, that happened! I can’t believe Dad didn’t tell you!” Philip didn’t know whether to be more disappointed or angry that his dad cared so little about his victory. He knew that once his father found out what he planned to do with the profits from the candy sales, he would be furious, but for now, at least, he should have been proud that his son won.

  “You could have told me yourself,” Andrew said.

  Philip frowned. “You’ve called me once since you left for college, and that was to ask me to send you a shirt from your closet.” Truth be told, the silence from his brother hadn’t bothered him. The two of them were very similar, but the six-year age gap between them meant they had never been particularly close.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry,” Andrew said. “College has been… busy.”

  “It’s okay,” Philip said. “I’ve been busy, too.”

  “Clearly you have! So how did it work? You just sent in some candy you made, and it won?”

  Philip shook his head. “I actually spent three days at the Life Is Sweet candy factory working with—”

  Andrew held up his hand. “Wait, the place where Dad took us on a tour and you got kicked out and banned for life? You were devastated. You never ate candy again after that day!”

  Philip looked down at his feet. He dreaded having to tell Andrew this part of the story. It was so humiliating. “Yeah, well, it turned out they never actually kicked me out.”

  “What?” Andrew shouted.

  “Shh!” Philip said. “You’ll wake him!” He looked up at the ceiling, hoping not to hear Dad’s footsteps above.

  “What do you mean, they never kicked you out?” Andrew asked, his voice a little softer, but not much.

  “Dad made it up, if you must know,” Philip said. “He was planning on trying to take over the factory and didn’t want me to be friends with the Candymaker’s son, Logan. I guess it was easier for him to make the Candymaker seem like the bad guy by telling me I’d been banned from the place.”

  Andrew shook his head in disbelief, then burst out laughing. He laughed so hard he had to hold his sides.

  Philip glared. “What part of that story could you possibly find funny?”

  Andrew gasped for air. “Seven years!” he managed to get out. “For seven years you hated those people and swore revenge. I used to hear you muttering about it. And it never really happened!” The laughter started all over again. Andrew’s reaction reminded him of another reason why they weren’t very close. His brother was even more obnoxious than he was.

  “Thank you for laughing at my pain,” Philip said, slipping on his suit jacket. He turned his back and tucked Daisy’s device into the inside pocket. “Very brotherly of you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Andrew said, not sounding very sorry at all. “It’s just classic Dad. Tell me the rest of the story. How’d you win? Obviously you cheated. Was it the bait ’n’ switch? The distract ’n’ conquer? Did you sabotage the other contestants’ entries? I bet it was the last one, am I right? You switched out their sugar with salt! Or maybe the chocolate chips with raisins?”

  Philip stopped buttoning his jacket midbutton. “Why are you so sure I cheated?”

  “Come on, Philip. That’s what we do. You’re not going to try to tell me that out of nowhere, you suddenly became the best candymaker in the country all by yourself. I’ve never even seen you butter a frozen waffle!”

  Philip suddenly felt very tired. Obviously he couldn’t have won by himself. But there was no way he was going to tell Andrew about Logan with his scars, or Miles with his head always somewhere else, and definitely not about Daisy the spy. He couldn’t really blame Andrew for suspecting him. He would have done the same had the situation been reversed.

  “It’s late,” Philip said. “I’m going to bed. Just so you know, there was teamwork involved, but I won fair and square. I didn’t cheat.”

  Andrew stood up and patted Philip on the shoulder. “Doesn’t matter to me if you did or didn’t. You came out on top, and that’s the Ransford way.”

  A few months ago Philip would have nodded in agreement, but now it felt wrong. Hearing his brother imply that their family was special, that they didn’t have to follow the rules as long as they came out on top, made Philip realize how much he didn’t want to be like that anymore. “What if I don’t always want it to be the ‘Ransford way’?” he heard himself ask. “People can change, right? Like Dad changed after Mom died. For the worse, I mean.”

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wished he could take them back. Andrew knew Dad’s faults, but he still worshipped him. As soon as college was over, Andrew would be joining the family business. And anyway, they never talked about their mom. Not ever.

  “Never mind,” Philip said quickly. “C’mon, let’s get out of this room.” He tried to step around Andrew, but his brother held up his hand.

  “Wait, we should talk about this,” he said. “What do you mean, Dad changed?”

  Philip was too tired to think of a way out of the conversation, so he just said, “Reggie told me that Dad wasn’t always so obsessed with work. That he was… nicer.”

  Andrew rubbed his chin again. “I suppose that’s true,” he said. “Probably because Mom was so nice.”

  Philip felt a lump form in his throat. “I… I don’t really remember her that much.”

  Andrew looked away, letting his eyes stray around the room filled with their mom’s old stuff. “You were only three. But she was great. She was funny and smart, and she used to play games with us for hours in the backyard.”

  Vague images flitted through Philip’s mind. A swing set, a laugh, the smell of chocolate and mint. It wasn’t enough, but it was something. “Did you know she grew up in an apartment in the old section of Spring Haven?”

  Andrew nodded. “Reggie took me there before I left for college.”

  “Really? He took me, too,” Philip said, stepping again toward the door. “I think he’s afraid we’re going to turn out too much like Dad.”

  His brother looked up at him sharply. “Would that be such a bad thing? Dad’s rich and he’s powerful. He doesn’t let anyone walk all over him. He’s a winner, Philip. We would be lucky to turn out like him.”

  The last thing Philip wanted to do right now was fight about their dad. “Sorry, you’re right. I’m going to bed.” This time Andrew stepped aside for him. As Philip slid by, his leg knocked into one of the knitting needles, and the ball of yarn fell off the shelf and landed on his foot. He bent to untangle himself from it. Andrew reached down to help.

  “Purple’s a good color for you,” Andrew said, tossing it to him. “I didn’t take you for a knitter.” As it sailed through the air, the ball unwound a bit, and Philip could see that the yarn wasn’t simply tangled, as he’d
thought. He was now holding a half-completed scarf. It didn’t get very cold in Spring Haven. No one wore scarves. Had his mom started it before she knew she was sick, or after? It felt like someone was physically squeezing his heart. He’d never know who she had been making it for.

  “Very funny,” he said, trying to keep his voice from breaking. “It’s not mine. Obviously it was Mom’s. Like everything else in here.” He stuck the ball of yarn under his arm.

  Andrew shook his head. “Mom didn’t knit. That was Grandma’s.”

  Philip stopped short. He’d never seen his dad’s mom do anything remotely grandmotherly, like knitting. Their father had learned his “Work hard and win at all costs” way of life from his own parents, who still worked sixty-hour weeks managing three different international businesses. When they weren’t on a cruise around the world.

  “No way,” Philip said. “Grandma would hire a team of people to knit for her. And then she’d stick the scarves in one of her walk-in closets and never wear them.” He continued out the door.

  “No, not Dad’s mom,” Andrew said, closing the door behind them. “Mom’s mom.”

  Philip stopped again, this time right outside their father’s locked office door. He’d never thought about his mom having a mom. Or a dad. Whoever they were, they must have died before he was born, since he’d certainly never met them. “Well, I guess there’s no way to know if Mom’s mother knitted or not.” He hurried down the rest of the hall, anxious to be alone.

  “Sure there is,” Andrew said, bounding up the stairs ahead of Philip. Over his shoulder he said, “Just call her up and ask.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Monday

  Are you awake?” Reggie called through Philip’s bedroom door. It had been six hours since Andrew’s offhand comment about a mysterious grandmother. Philip had grilled him as they headed back to their wing of the house, but Andrew said he had only been kidding.

  He hadn’t sounded like he was kidding.

  “I never went to sleep,” Philip mumbled. “Go away.”

  Reggie pushed the door open. “I’ve got a special delivery for you.”

  Philip felt the bottom of the bed sag as Reggie dropped something with a plop. A few seconds later, a second plop. Philip knew what they were. They’d been arriving for months.

  “You should really think about opening them this time,” Reggie said, pulling up the blinds on the window. “Your adoring fans want to hear from you.”

  Philip winced at the onslaught of sunlight and buried his face in his pillow. “You open them,” he said into the pillow, only it sounded like, “Oo ooen em.” Fortunately, Reggie was used to being muttered at and knew what Philip was trying to say.

  “Sorry, not in my job description,” Reggie replied. “And before you suggest I ask your father to add it to my job description, don’t bother. He doesn’t want anything to do with this. I have the post office hold your mail, and I pick it up once a week.”

  Reggie sat down on the edge of the bed. Philip could hear him undoing the metal latch on one of the large mail pouches. A rustling, and then a minute later came the sound of an envelope being ripped open. “Would you like to hear one?” Reggie asked. Philip grunted. “I’ll take that as a yes,” Reggie said. “So this is from Dylan, age ten. It says, ‘Dear Philip Ransford, you are…’” Reggie paused and looked up. “Good choice for the Confectionary Association to drop that ‘the Third’ business when you won, by the way. Makes you more relatable to the public, less pretentious.”

  Philip only grunted again.

  “You’d probably get a lot less mail if your fans knew how charming you are in the morning.”

  Philip finally turned over. “They’re not my fans. They just like candy.”

  Reggie waved the card in his hand. “Let’s see what young Dylan here has to say.” He continued reading. “‘Dear Philip Ransford, you are my idol. I read what you wrote in your application essay, and I just want to say I went through the same thing, and your family must be very proud. Next year I’m going to enter the contest, too. I hope I do as well as you! Long live the Harmonicandy! Your friend, Dylan Williams.’”

  Reggie tossed the card to Philip, who was now sitting straight up, fully alert. “My application essay? How did he get a copy of that?” The application had been submitted electronically. You couldn’t even print it out, as he recalled.

  Philip reached over and grabbed the open mailbag. He dumped the contents onto the bed. Letters and card-sized envelopes fell all over, many sliding to the floor. “Are these all about my essay?” He tore one open, skimmed the contents, then tossed it aside and moved on to the next. The first three he opened were about the Harmonicandy, like the others he’d read when they first started coming. They basically asked one of three things—how did he come up with it, did it really play, and when would they be able to buy it? He reached for the next one.

  Reggie placed his hand on Philip’s arm. “Breathe,” he said. “You’re getting yourself all worked up.”

  “You don’t understand,” Philip said, pulling away and tearing open a large purple envelope. “That essay was private. It was meant to get me into the contest and that’s it.”

  Envelope number four contained only a crayon drawing of the Harmonicandy. The rectangular blob of chocolate had been drawn in different shades of brown. Musical notes of various colors drifted in the air around it. Pretty cute, actually, but Philip didn’t have time for cute. He tossed it onto the floor. Reggie stood up and retrieved it, placing it gently on Philip’s night table.

  “I have to admit,” Reggie said, “I always wondered how you got in. Not that I doubted you could do it. You’ve proved over and over you can do anything you set your mind to, and you always want to improve yourself. Even back in preschool you got excused from recess by claiming that your time would be better spent learning how to read. And yet… for someone who hadn’t eaten candy in seven years, to convince the Confectionary Association that you deserved to be chosen over so many others—well, that may have been a bigger accomplishment than actually winning!”

  Philip flung off his blanket, sending the letters flying, and began to pace the length of his room. How could this have happened? He’d written that essay almost a year ago and hadn’t allowed himself to give it a second thought since then. It had one purpose—to get him into the contest at all costs. It was never meant for anyone other than the judges to see. It was private and personal, and it was full of lies.

  He continued to pace while Reggie picked up the letters and put them back in the bag. He slung both bags over his shoulders. “Out of the goodness of my heart I’ll open these for you. If any others mention your essay, I’ll let you know.”

  “Thank you,” Philip said, only half hearing him. His mind was too busy going through the possibilities. Had his essay been published in a candy industry newsletter? Had the boy hacked into the Confectionary Association’s computer system? What if he’d hacked into Philip’s computer? He couldn’t imagine the last one being possible. His dad had all sorts of firewalls on their computer network to protect his top-secret business deals.

  Philip’s attention flipped back to Reggie, who now resembled Santa Claus, carrying the two large satchels over his shoulders. “I know you’re freaking out,” Reggie said, “but try to see the positive. Whatever you wrote obviously made an impression on this kid, so maybe it’s not a bad thing that it’s out there for others to read.”

  Philip considered that for about one second before shaking his head. “Trust me—it’s a bad thing.”

  Reggie shrugged. “Try not to worry. You have exciting things coming up.” He headed out the door, leaving Philip to pace alone.

  “Wait!” Philip said, running into the hall. He’d been so blindsided by the boy’s letter that he’d completely forgotten what had kept him up all night.

  Reggie stopped a few feet away from Andrew’s bedroom door. “What? Did I miss some letters?”

  Philip shook his head. “No. I mean, may
be. I really don’t know.” He motioned for Reggie to come back to the room.

  Reggie sighed. “I know I look strong with these broad shoulders. Who knew a bunch of letters could weigh so much?” But he came back to the room anyway.

  “Sorry,” Philip said, closing the door. “I just didn’t want to wake up Andrew. He’s home, you know.”

  “Actually, he’s not. He left the house hours ago.” Reggie adjusted one of the bags, which had started to slip. “I dropped him at the country club to find a tennis match.”

  “Figures,” Philip muttered. Sure didn’t sound like Andrew had any trouble sleeping.

  “Is that it, then?” Reggie asked. “Heavy bags, and these old bones aren’t as strong as they used to be.”

  “No,” Philip replied. “I wanted to ask you…” He took a deep breath. “Do you know where my grandmother is?”

  “Hmm,” Reggie said, tilting his head in thought. “It’s Monday today, so… pulling into port in Santorini?”

  “Huh?”

  “Greece,” Reggie explained. “Their next stop on the cruise. Do you need to reach them? I’m sure they’ll be checking their messages.”

  “No, no, I don’t mean them,” Philip said quickly. “I mean… my mother’s mother. Andrew said something last night like maybe she’s still alive.”

  Reggie blinked a few times, then shook his head. “He must have been messing with you, kiddo. Sorry. And you know, if this essay thing has you all worked up, why don’t you just track down the kid who wrote to you?” Reggie hiked up the bags again and left the room.

  Philip knew Reggie’s suggestion was a good one. He would indeed track down the boy. But the thought crowding out all others in his mind was this: Reggie had never—in nearly thirteen years together—called him kiddo.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Dylan Williams must have been absent the day his teacher taught proper letter-writing skills. He hadn’t put his return address on the upper left corner of the envelope, nor did he write it in the letter itself. The only clue Philip had to go on was the postmark. Assuming the letter had been mailed from the city Dylan lived in, at least it was a place to start.