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The restaurant was so busy that the Piccolos and the Aldens soon forgot their troubles with Laurie. Everyone worked side by side in the kitchen and dining room now. Benny taught Laurie his way of smacking¹ down the dough² nice and flat. Mrs. Piccolo helped her start some herb seedlings³ to take to her parents’ restaurant.

Mr. Piccolo came huffing and puffing⁴ into the kitchen after one busy lunch hour ended. It was tiring for him to go back and forth⁵ between the kitchen and dining room. “If only Nick were back, then my pizza family would be complete,” he said. “We could use his strong arms to carry these trays. Ah, well, I suppose even young fellows can get sick.”

“Young fellows can get sick,” Jessie whispered to Henry after Mr. Piccolo went back to the dining room, “but that’s not what’s wrong with Nick.”

Henry took off his coat now that the lunch deliveries were over. “I just saw Nick again going in the factory gate, but he pretended not to see me.”

“Maybe Nick isn’t sick the way Mr. Piccolo thinks,” Violet said. “I’m just sure something’s wrong that he can’t tell us about right now.”

“Like what happened to you, Laurie,” Benny said as he grated piles of cheese. “What if he wants to open a restaurant, too?”

Henry patted Benny’s head. “Not likely. What I can’t understand is why he just doesn’t come straight out and tell us he’s working at the factory. The Piccolos would be disappointed, but they’d understand.”

“He’s probably all caught up in his own troubles,” Laurie said. “I saw him, too, when I left work last night, but he went right by. He’s always wrapped up in a hat and scarf so we won’t recognize him. I still wonder if he’s the man I saw around the restaurant the first few weeks I started coming here.”

The children spent a quiet afternoon starting to pack. Grandfather Alden was picking them up in just a few days.

“I want to see Grandfather and Watch,” Jessie said as she folded some of her clothes, “but I wish things would go better here before we drive back to Greenfield.”

“I know what you mean,” Henry said quietly. “I was counting on Nick to be here next week when Tom’s son starts delivering pizzas. He’s going to need someone to supervise him for a while. Everyone else is so busy.”

“If Nick would only let us talk to him,” Violet said. “Maybe he’ll come by this afternoon before the restaurant opens for dinner.”

But Nick did not return that afternoon. When the children came down to the restaurant at four-thirty, the Piccolos looked upset.

“Nick, he just called in sick again,” Mrs. Piccolo said. “I’m getting so worried about him. He never really got better. These young people don’t always take good care of themselves.”

Laurie and the Aldens looked at each other then looked away. The Piccolos were always so trusting.

When Mr. Piccolo brought over the lunch checks and money from the cash register, everyone was relieved. Each afternoon the children sat with the Piccolos to match the lunch money and lunch checks before dinner. This job took a lot of careful attention. There wasn’t any time to talk about Nick.

Mr. Piccolo put down the drawer of money at the center of one of the big restaurant tables. “Here, Benny. You and Violet can wrap the coins in wrappers for the bank.”

Jessie and Henry, who were both good in math, got busy adding up all the check totals. Then everyone compared the lunch checks with the lunch money. Every day the numbers came out even.

They had finished counting just before five when the front door bell jingled⁶, then jingled again and again. This surprised everyone since most dinner customers arrived after five-thirty. In just a few minutes, five or six children stood in the dining room. All of them were waving bright yellow coupons⁸.

“We came for the free sodas¹⁰,” a boy about Violet’s age said when he came over to the table. “And pizza, of course. We’ve got our own money for that!”

The Piccolos, the Aldens, and Laurie had no idea what this boy was talking about.

Henry took the boy’s coupon⁷ and read it out loud: “BUY A SLICE OF PIZZA, GET A SODA⁹ FREE. THIS COUPON GOOD BETWEEN 5:00 AND 7:00 ONLY. FOR CHILDREN, AGES TWELVE AND UNDER.”

Mr. Piccolo looked over Henry’s shoulder then took the coupon. “Is this one of the coupons you handed out today?” he asked the Aldens in an alarmed voice. “I can make pizza, but free sodas would cost us all the profit we made at lunch. And to give away something during the dinner hour—there won’t be room for our regular customers who pay for a whole meal.”

Jessie studied the yellow coupon too. “This isn’t the coupon we handed out. Ours was for a ten percent discount on lunch pizza.”

The boy looked upset. “Somebody left a stack of these on a table in the gym lobby. That’s where I got it.” The boy held up some coins. “See, I do have money for the pizza.”

By this time, a man in a sweatsuit had come over to find out what was going on. “Is there a problem here? I’m the director of the day program at the Silver Falls middle school. We have a sports program there during the winter vacation. These kids here have been playing hard all day, so your coupons seemed like a great idea.”

The man had barely finished talking when another crowd of children came into the restaurant. Each of them had a free soda coupon, too!

“I’ll seat them,” Laurie said, “then we’ll figure out what to do.”

“There’s nothing to do but feed these hungry children,” Mrs. Piccolo said.

In the kitchen, the Piccolos pulled out more sauce from the deep freezer. Benny got busy grating more cheese. Henry and Jessie headed down to the cellar to bring up cases of soda.

“This is going to cost the Piccolos a fortune, Henry,” Jessie said.

Henry looked upset. “I can’t believe someone would go to all this trouble to make up coupons. They look like the ones we gave out, but they say something totally different. If a lot of kids keep coming in with these coupons, the Piccolos could lose their business.”

Henry’s worse fears came true when he and Jessie came upstairs and checked the dining room. “Oh, no! Every table is filled with kids. Do they all have coupons?”

Mr. Piccolo sighed. “Every one, I’m afraid. Another bunch came in and said there was a stack of coupons at the ice-skating rink too. Every child in Silver Falls who wasn’t at the gym was at the skating rink!”

Violet went over to some regular customers who were talking to Mrs. Piccolo.

“Sorry, Mrs. Piccolo,” one woman was saying. “Thanks for the offer of take-out pizza. But my husband and I were planning on eating out. We’ll come back another night when it’s not so busy.”

“Wait, wait!” Mrs. Piccolo said. “Here. Take one of our discount coupons. I’ll cross out ‘lunch’ and write in ‘dinner’ on it. You get a discount on any pizza you order the next time you come in for dinner. Okay?”

Violet couldn’t even hear what the couple answered. The restaurant was noisy with the laughter and shouts of children. During the next two hours, the Piccolos turned away dozens of customers while Silver Falls kids of all ages enjoyed pizza slices and free sodas during the busiest night of the week.

As Violet headed into the kitchen with some orders, she saw a familiar face in the front window of the restaurant. It was Nick, peeking¹¹ in. Violet waved for him to come in. She went to the door. If Nick was feeling better, Piccolos’ Pizza could sure use him right then. But by the time Violet got to the door, Nick had disappeared.

Violet didn’t tell anyone about Nick. When she came into the kitchen, she could see how tired the Piccolos were. They had enough trouble already. They didn’t need to find out that Nick wasn’t really sick.

Mrs. Piccolo put on her glasses and read the order Violet handed her. “Another pizza. I’ll get this one ready.” While she worked, Mrs. Piccolo wondered whether someone really was trying to hurt their business. “Why? Why would anyone do such a thing? And to get children involved! I can’t believe this could happen,” she muttered.

By the time the last child left after seven o’clock, the restaurant had gone through six cases of soda. The Aldens rinsed¹² all the cans and put them in the recycling barrel.

After everything was cleaned up, Laurie and the Aldens shooed the Piccolos out the door. “Time to go home and rest,” Laurie told them. “We can take care of things and close up.”

Jessie turned off the neon sign in the window and locked the front door. “Come on, Henry. I want to go over to the factory and see if they had anything to do with this. Do you want to come too, Violet?” she asked her sister.

Violet stared out at the front porch of the restaurant. It almost seemed as if she could see Nick’s face still looking in.

“What’s the matter, Violet?” Henry asked when he saw her standing¹³ so still. “You look as if you just saw a ghost.”

Violet shook her head sadly. “Not a ghost, Henry. About an hour ago when I was taking an order, I saw Nick looking through the window. But when I went out to talk to him, he was gone.”

Jessie didn’t want to believe this. “Are you sure, Violet? There were so many people going in and out. We had to turn some old customers away. Maybe one of them looked inside and decided¹⁴ not to come in.”

Violet wanted to believe this too, but she couldn’t. The face in the window was Nick’s. Had he been the one to hand out the coupons? Had he come by to see if this terrible plan had worked? Violet shivered. Then she put on her jacket. She wanted to go to the factory with Henry and Jessie. Maybe they would find out something that would explain what was going on with Nick.

“We’ll be back in a while,” Jessie told Laurie and Benny as they stacked up dishes next to the sink.

When Jessie, Violet, and Henry reached the front gate of the factory, Henry said: “It’s almost time for the night shift to come in. Maybe we can blend in with the crowd then look around for Nick.”

But Henry didn’t need to go inside the factory to find Nick. Just as the children reached the front gate, they spotted¹⁵ the young man. He wasn’t alone. He was walking out of the building with a young woman and someone else. As they got closer, the children recognized the third person—Mr. Irons, the factory manager.

The Aldens stepped away from the streetlight into the shadows of the parking lot so they wouldn’t be spotted. Mr. Irons, Nick, and the young woman headed toward Mr. Irons’ fancy car.

“I have to go out and check on a few things,” Mr. Irons told Nick and the woman. “I’ll drop you both off. Don’t keep my secretary out too late. She has to be at work first thing tomorrow morning.”

Even in the dark, the Aldens could see that Nick and the young woman didn’t look too happy when they heard this. But they got in the car with Mr. Irons anyway.

The children didn’t say anything. After Mr. Irons drove off, they walked back to the restaurant slowly. Seeing Nick with Mr. Irons upset them more than anything else that had happened.

Finally Violet spoke¹⁶ up. “I guess I was wrong about Nick. Maybe Nick isn’t just working on mufflers. Maybe Mr. Irons hired him because he knows all about Piccolos’ Pizza.”

“There’s one thing about Piccolos’ Pizza he doesn’t know,” said Jessie. “But I have an idea about how we can fix that.”