The Pizza Mystery

  “Ah,” Mr. Piccolo answered, when he came back and overheard Henry’s question. “I knew your family would see how things are. Today, well, today is another bad day. So many like this one. So many,” he sighed. “This week it’s the gas line to my oven not working. You know my oven. My father built that oven brick by brick when he came from Italy years ago. Not once did that oven quit. But now? No more gas in it. The builders digging at the factory, they cracked the gas line last week. You think we can make our pizza in a tiny apartment oven upstairs? No! No! No!”

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Benny cried. “Hi, Mrs. Piccolo.” He smiled at the woman who walked toward them with a tray of pizza.

  She set the pizza in front of Benny. “For you,” she said to Benny. After Henry cut the pizza into sections, Mrs. Piccolo frowned. “This pizza—it’s not what you came for. But it’s all we could manage with what I have. Go on. Take a bite.”

  The Aldens ate politely. None of them had the heart to tell the truth. This was not Piccolos’ famous hot, crispy pizza. This pizza from the apartment oven upstairs was lukewarm and rubbery. Still, this didn’t matter to the Aldens. Their dear friends had made this food, so they ate every bite.

  Mr. Alden put down his napkin. “Tell us, why aren’t you busy as all get out with that big new factory next door? Those workers must get hungry at lunch.”

  Mr. Piccolo pulled on his mustache and shook his head. “They are hungry, too hungry for our little place. At first they all came, full of good appetites.”

  Mrs. Piccolo fiddled with a thread on her apron. “Then someone put up that gate. It was too far away for people to walk to Piccolos’. When the factory got busier, the owners cut back the workers’ lunch hours. No time for something like pizza. You know our pizza, it takes a long time. No rushing Piccolos’ Pizza!”

  Mr. Piccolo stood up and pointed out the front window. “You see all those delivery trucks from the factory? They took all my parking spaces away. Most of our old customers, they don’t have a place to park now. They don’t come so much. Then when Nick got sick and my other waiter left, well, we couldn’t keep up.”

  Nick had worked for the Piccolos for many years, and the children were sad to hear he was sick. Especially Violet, who, on their trip through Silver Falls the year before, had helped Nick design new covers for the menus.

  “Nick got sick?” Violet asked. “Will he be all right?”

  Mr. Piccolo shrugged his shoulders. “We don’t know. He moved out of the apartment upstairs, and after that he called in sick.”

  “He was like a son to us,” Mrs. Piccolo said sadly. “And all of a sudden—he just picks up and leaves. And he won’t tell us when he’s coming back.”

  Mr. Piccolo began talking. “Things are so slow, maybe Nick, he doesn’t want to come back.”

  The Aldens felt sad too. How everything had changed since their last visit! What could they do? How could they help? Even Benny didn’t know what to say. He just stared out the window.

  “Hey, who’s that?” Benny cried out. He pointed to the small window that overlooked the kitchen area in back. “There’s somebody looking inside the kitchen! Someone with a red hat.”

  Everyone looked up at the same time and saw a red blur. Henry and Jessie rushed out to the back garden where Watch was tied up. The dog was straining at his leash and panting.

  “Look!” Jessie pointed to fresh footprints in the snow that led right to the window overlooking the kitchen. “Somebody was looking in.”

  “That’s the other thing,” Mr. Piccolo said when everyone calmed down. “This is not the first time we’ve seen someone outside, sneaking around the restaurant. I just don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Maybe it’s time to retire,” Mrs. Piccolo said sadly. “Just when we should be so busy.”

  The Aldens looked around the restaurant.

  They remembered happier days and happier meals there.

  Jessie said what the other Aldens were thinking. “We’re on vacation for a couple of weeks. Maybe we can help you get busy again, at least until Nick returns.”

  “Maybe,” Violet began, “if people can’t come here, we can go to where they are!”

  “That’s a great idea!” Henry said. “I could fix up that old bike you used to keep in the shed out back, and once the oven’s fixed, we could deliver pizzas right to your customers!”

  “What do you think, Mr. Piccolo?” Grandfather asked. “Could my grandchildren give you a hand?”

  “That would be wonderful!”

  Grandfather stood up and headed for the door.

  “Mr. Alden, Mr. Alden. Where are you going?” Mr. Piccolo asked.

  Mr. Alden winked at the Piccolos. “Well, Watch and I are going home. That is, after my grandchildren unload their suitcases. I guess the rest of their vacation isn’t going to be so quiet after all.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Jessie’s Pizza Plan

  The apartment above Piccolos’ Pizza wasn’t empty for long. Mr. Alden and Watch left for Greenfield just as soon as the children got their luggage from the car. Grandfather promised to return in a couple of weeks. And they promised him a large Pizza Supreme when he came back.

  Mr. Piccolo helped the children bring their belongings to the little apartment above the restaurant. “It will be good to hear footsteps overhead when I’m working,” Mr. Piccolo told the Aldens. “It’s been too quiet since Nick moved out.”

  “I like this cozy apartment,” Violet said when she looked around the sunlit rooms. “But I liked it better when Nick lived here.”

  “Remember all those wonderful stories he told us?” Benny asked.

  “And the time he helped us build a snowman,” Henry added.

  “I miss Nick, too,” Jessie said. “Where did he move?”

  Mrs. Piccolo sighed. “He didn’t tell us. He just left. Now that he’s gone, I hope you children will fill these rooms with noise!”

  “We will!” Benny yelled, and everyone laughed.

  “Please get anything you want from the restaurant kitchen, anything at all,” Mrs. Piccolo said.

  After the Piccolos went to their own house a few blocks away, the children settled in. They dusted and scrubbed. They laid out their sleeping bags on the beds and the sofa. They covered the kitchen table with a cheery red-and-white tablecloth.

  When they were finished, Henry put on his jacket. “I’m going to get the bike and take a ride over to the gas company. I know Mr. Piccolo said that someone from Mighty Mufflers called the gas company to get the broken line fixed. But what if they forgot? You know what Grandfather always says. Double check to make double sure.”

  “Well, come back hungry,” Jessie told Henry as he zipped up his jacket. “Hungry for pizza!”

  “I wouldn’t count on it, Jessie,” he said quietly. “Not today anyway. I don’t think the gas company could fix the broken gas line so fast. But I’ll do my best.”

  “And I’ll do mine,” Jessie said. She gave her brother a big smile. She had a plan, and when Jessie Alden had a plan, nothing could stop her.

  “All this talk about pizza makes me hungry,” Benny said. “I didn’t eat very much before. The pizza just wasn’t the same.”

  Jessie didn’t seem to hear Benny. She was staring at the small electric stove in the kitchen. She was thinking about pizza, too. “Violet,” she said, “you and Benny go downstairs. Mrs. Piccolo said we could help ourselves to anything. Bring up two bags of pizza dough, some of her homemade sauce, and two blocks of mozzarella cheese. Then come right back up.”

  Violet and Benny got going, but they weren’t too hopeful. They knew that the Piccolos’ big, hot brick oven was one of the secrets of their delicious pizza. The small apartment stove was good only for boiling eggs or making hot chocolate, not crispy pizza.

  But Jessie had thoughts of her own. She turned the oven dial. “There. Four hundred degrees should be hot enough.”

  By the time Benny and Violet came back with all the pizza fixings, Jessie had new jobs f
or both of them. First she showed Violet how to work cornmeal into Mrs. Piccolo’s dough. This would help it get crispy, even if it was baked in a small oven. Then she got Benny busy grating the soft mozzarella cheese into small piles. He gave Jessie a hungry look.

  “Okay, okay, Benny. Save a small pile of cheese for yourself,” Jessie told him. “Save the rest for our pizzas, all right?”

  “Oh, goody!” Benny cried. “You just said ‘pizzas’ not ‘pizza.’ I could eat two big ones all by myself.”

  Jessie broke into a big smile. “Guess what, Benny? You might get to eat three or four pizzas! But not big ones—small ones. I figured out that the only thing wrong with the pizza Mrs. Piccolo made was that it was too big to bake in this oven.”

  Violet’s face lit up, too. “I get it! Small pizzas for a small oven. Then they should get hot and crispy enough! I guess the Piccolos have been too upset to think of that.”

  In no time, the children had set up an assembly line. Benny got the best job of all. He took small balls of pizza dough then smacked them as flat as he could. Smack! Smack! Smack! Violet placed the rounds of dough onto heated baking sheets. Finally, Jessie spooned Mrs. Piccolo’s good tomato sauce over them, along with curls of grated cheese. The pizzas were ready to be baked.

  Violet got a good idea, too. She ran downstairs and came back up holding a big white pizza box.

  “I don’t think we need such a big box for such little pizzas,” Benny said. He tried hard not to think about the huge pizzas that usually went into a box that size.

  “Oh, yes, we do.” Violet disappeared into the bedroom and shut the door.

  A few minutes later, wonderful smells began to fill the apartment. The pizzas were nearly ready when the children heard Henry’s footsteps on the back stairs. “Mmm,” Henry hummed when he came in. “I caught a whiff all the way out at the shed when I put the bike away.”

  Jessie opened the oven to give Henry—and Benny, of course—a look at the rows of small pizzas just starting to brown at the edges. Henry’s mouth watered.

  “I just hope those little pizzas work out better than my trip to the gas company,” Henry told everyone. “We might need to keep this small oven going a lot longer.”

  Violet, who had rejoined the others, looked worried. It wasn’t often that her brother set out to fix a problem and failed. “Aren’t the repair people coming soon to fix the gas line, Henry? Mr. Piccolo told us that someone had reported the broken gas line a while ago.”

  Henry shook his head. “That’s just it. The gas company said no one had ever called to report it. It’s a good thing I checked.”

  Jessie took a final peek in the oven. The pizzas looked good. But even if they were good, the children couldn’t turn out enough of them to get Piccolos’ Pizza busy again. They needed that big brick oven in a hurry.

  “How soon can the repair people come out, Henry?” Jessie asked.

  “They wouldn’t say,” Henry answered. “We’re on the list, but there are several people ahead of us.”

  “Oh, no!” Violet cried.

  “Unless . . . ” Henry paused. “Unless I can get someone at Mighty Mufflers to call the gas company right now. After all, the factory is an important business in Silver Falls. Maybe if the owner calls and says it’s an emergency, the repair people will come sooner.”

  Ding! Ding! The timer on the stove sounded. Jessie’s pizzas were ready. Everyone gathered around the stove as Jessie carefully slid out two baking trays of small pizzas.

  “Oooh, they’re nice and hot!” Jessie said. She set down the steaming trays on the enamel kitchen counter.

  The pizza plan had worked! While the other children watched, Jessie slid each pizza onto a separate plate. “See? One for each person. I know it’s not dinnertime, but let’s sample them anyway. If they’re good, maybe we can bake another batch for the dinner hour at the restaurant tonight. What do you think?” Jessie asked everyone with a proud smile.

  Before Violet sat down at her place she ran to the bedroom again. When she came back she was holding up a big sign she had drawn on the pizza-box cardboard. She held it up for everyone to read:

  PICCOLOS’ PERSONAL PIZZAS

  BIG TASTE IN A LITTLE SIZE

  PERFECT FOR DIETERS AND SNACKERS

  BUY ONE, GET ONE FREE

  FOR A COMPLETE MEAL

  “It’s fantastic!” Jessie said. “If people could only get a taste of these pizzas, I just know they would start coming back to the restaurant. After we eat, let’s ask the Piccolos if we can make up some coupons that say the same thing as the sign. Maybe Henry could go around on the bike and hand them out while we stay here and make more pizzas.”

  “More pizzas!” Benny called out between bites.

  “We may only have a little oven—” Jessie said with a laugh.

  “But we have BIG appetites!” Benny cried.

  Only Jessie and Violet laughed with Benny. Henry’s mind was on something else. How did the gas line get broken, and why couldn’t they get it fixed? Well, that was something he was going to find out.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Table in the Corner

  In a short time, the back stairs that connected the apartment to the restaurant were busy all day long. Small, unbaked pizzas went upstairs, and hot, steaming ones came back down. Several days after Jessie’s Personal Pizza Plan got going, everyone prepared for the lunch hour.

  “Try this one,” Mrs. Piccolo urged Benny when she set a small pizza in front of him. She knew Benny liked this important job best of all!

  The special of the day was Zucchini Pizza, but Benny looked suspicious. “What are those green things?” he asked Mrs. Piccolo. “They don’t look like sausage.”

  Mrs. Piccolo laughed. “Ah, Benny, some people, they like vegetables better.”

  “All right.” Benny took a tiny bite. “It’s pretty good,” he said, surprised.

  “I thought you’d like it,” Mrs. Piccolo said.

  Henry came into the restaurant and stamped the snow off his boots. He sniffed the air. “Mmm, nothing like it. I’m out of coupons, so I came back. Boy, it’s too bad we’re still waiting for the gas line to be fixed. I’d hand out lots more coupons if we could just make more pizzas.”

  Mr. Piccolo pulled out a chair for Henry and patted him on the shoulder. “Everything’s just fine, my boy. We’ve had more customers in the last few days than in the whole month before you Aldens showed up.”

  “Have you asked Mighty Mufflers to call the gas company?” Violet wanted to know.

  Henry shook his head. “I’ve tried. But the owner, Mrs. Sturgis, is always away or busy.”

  Mr. Piccolo smiled proudly at the Aldens. “Now, now. You children eat. Eat this good food. We start in little steps then we take bigger ones. The gas company will come in a few days. Now everybody, dig in.”

  And so they did. The Aldens and Piccolos tried out several kinds of Personal Pizzas. They each had a special flavor they thought was the best. That’s what gave Violet the idea for a pizza contest.

  She pulled down the blackboard the Piccolos used to post the menus every day. Across the top, she wrote: Vote for your Favorite Personal Pizza. Then she listed all the flavors that Piccolo’s offered that day.

  “Good for you, Violet,” Mrs. Piccolo beamed. “This way we find out which ones our customers like. Then we can make more of them.”

  The bell on the door jingled. Everyone got up from the table. The Aldens and Piccolos had plenty to do. The lunch hour was about to begin.

  For the next two hours, orders were taken. Tables were cleared and reset. The cash register rang over and over again. Benny kept an eye on every table to make sure each customer had plenty of breadsticks.

  “Mr. Piccolo,” he whispered, when he came back into the kitchen area for more breadsticks, “that lady is here again, the one who’s here every day.”

  Mr. Piccolo peeked through the window on the door between the kitchen and the dining room. “Ah, she was my best customer before thing
s slowed down. But as soon as business picked up, she came right back. She never says too much, but she’s a steady one. Always sits at the table closest to the kitchen.”

  Benny peeked out again. “I think she’s doing a crossword puzzle. She eats, then she writes things down. Do you know her name?”

  Mr. Piccolo dusted his hands with flour then pushed and pulled on the pizza dough before he answered Benny. “I call her The Lady in the Red Hat.”

  Now Benny liked this name very much, much better than if the young woman’s name were Susan, or Mary, or Ann. “And there’s The Man with the Walking Stick.”

  “And The Woman with the Earmuffs,” Mrs. Piccolo joined in. “You see, Benny, some of our customers, they like to talk, and we know their names. But some of the other ones like to come into Piccolos’ and just enjoy a quiet meal and read the paper.”

  “Or do a crossword puzzle,” Benny added.

  Henry disagreed. “Not a crossword puzzle, Benny. I think she’s writing down notes for her job. What’s funny, though, is that whenever I go by, she turns the paper over. I guess she doesn’t want anyone to see what she’s writing.”

  Soon everyone was much too busy to give any more thought to The Lady in the Red Hat. The lunch hour was nearly over. It was time to clean up then reset the dining room for dinner.

  “We’ll get the last two checks, Mr. Piccolo,” Jessie said. “Then we can get started on tonight’s pizzas.”

  Jessie went over to The Lady in the Red Hat. “Would you like anything else?”

  The woman jumped when she heard Jessie’s voice. “Uh . . . uh, no, no. Just the bill.” The young woman quickly put her notepad and pen into her purse. Then she placed a five-dollar bill on the table without even waiting for her check.

  Before Jessie could tell her that five dollars was too much, the woman left. Jessie pushed in the empty chair then gathered up the dishes, crumpled napkin, and the paper placemat.

  As she did so, she noticed writing on the placemat: ZUCCHINI PIZZA, 4 VOTES. PEPPERONI, 3 VOTES. PIZZA SUPREME, 5 VOTES.