That night, Benny had a dream. He was working in the Ice Cream Shoppe surrounded by cartons and cartons of all different kinds of ice cream — banana, chocolate, raspberry, vanilla, blueberry, and peach.
In his dream, Benny wore a big white chef’s hat. He spooned the creamy chocolate ice cream from its container and put it in a tall glass. Suddenly more and more glasses appeared. Feverishly, Benny tried to put a scoop of ice cream in each one, but he couldn’t keep up. The glasses clicked against one another. Some of them broke and shattered all over the Shoppe. . . .
Suddenly Benny woke up. Something was rattling outside his window. He sat straight up in his bed. Was this part of his dream?
Sleepily, Benny tumbled out of bed and peered out the open window. It was very windy and a tree branch lashed against the house. “That’s probably what I heard,” Benny muttered under his breath.
As he drifted off to sleep, he thought he heard boys’ voices in the distance.
The following day, Benny woke up when Henry playfully tossed a pillow at him.
“Benny, better get up. Don’t you want to come to the Shoppe with us?” Benny opened his eyes and saw Henry, Jessie, and Violet crowded around his door.
“Hello, sleepyhead,” Jessie teased. “Do you know what time it is? Almost nine o’clock.”
Benny turned on his side. “You know, I dreamed about the Shoppe last night.”
He moved his stuffed bear, Stockings, out of the way so his sisters and brother could sit on the bed. “I dreamed I was the chef.”
“Did you wear a big hat?” Violet liked knowing what everybody wore.
“Yes,” Benny murmured. “I was surrounded by all different kinds of ice cream. And some glasses broke. Then I heard a noise outside my window and woke up.”
“Well, Sir Chef,” Jessie said, getting up to give Benny a bow. “You should invent a new ice cream dish at the Shoppe and name it after yourself. That’s what chefs do.”
Benny laughed. “Maybe I will,” he said.
A half hour later, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny were heading quickly down the sidewalk to the Shoppe. As they stopped at the corner to wait for a car to pass, Jessie looked down and stepped out of the way of some broken glass.
“Watch out!” she warned the others.
Benny looked down next to his red sneakers. “Broken glass,” he said. “You know I dreamed about broken glass.”
“Yes, you told us,” Violet said thoughtfully. “You dreamed some glasses in the parlor broke.” She stepped carefully so the glass wouldn’t cut her new lavender sandals.
“You mean the parfait glasses we couldn’t find yesterday?” Jessie suddenly looked very interested. She bent down to examine the glass more carefully. So did Violet.
Just beneath the curb Jessie found a big piece that looked like it could be the rim of one of the missing parfait glasses. Jessie held it up and looked very excited.
“We shouldn’t jump to any conclusions,” Henry cautioned. “Somebody may just have dropped their groceries. For all we know, this could be a jar of peanut butter.”
“If that’s true, how come there’s no peanut butter or food around?” Benny wanted to know.
“Good point,” Jessie said. “Benny did you hear anything else last night?”
Benny looked thoughtful. “I remember waking up for a minute. I think I heard some boys talking but it seemed far away. Then I went right back to sleep.”
“Did they sound like young boys or teenagers?” Violet wanted to know.
Benny scratched his head and shrugged his shoulders. “They were just boys,” he said. “Maybe about Henry’s age.”
Before they left, the Aldens picked up more pieces of glass and carefully put them in Jessie’s handkerchief.
“There,” Jessie said as she tied the handkerchief. “If we do find more parfait glasses in the Shoppe, we can see if the glass looks the same.”
When they arrived at the Shoppe, the Aldens found Brian and Simone hard at work. Brian was helping Mr. Brown make sandwiches in the kitchen. Violet noticed that Brian had dark circles under his eyes, and his clothes were rumpled.
Simone stirred some butterscotch sauce on the stove. She was wearing yet another new American T-shirt. This one had a pink background and pictures of different colored ice cream cones printed on it.
“I wish I had a shirt like that,” Benny said with approval. “I could think about ice cream all day long.” Everyone laughed, except Brian. He mixed mayonnaise into a large bowl of tuna and yawned.
“Brian, you’re looking very tired. Am I overworking you?” Mr. Brown asked. He said it teasingly, but he looked worried.
Brian shook his head. “No, I was just up a little late last night,” he said as he squeezed some lemon juice over the tuna salad.
Mr. Brown nodded. “Well, see how you’re feeling, my boy. Maybe you can leave early.”
Brian shook his head. “No thanks,” he muttered. “I’ll be all right.”
At lunchtime, Jessie, Brian, and Benny worked behind the counter while Violet and Simone waited on tables. Henry made sandwiches in the kitchen.
“Mr. Brown, did you ever find those missing glasses?” Henry asked. He added pickles and potato chips to a plate holding a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich.
Mr. Brown shook his head. He stirred more sugar into the pot of caramel sauce he was cooking. “No, I never did, but I’ve been too busy to look more carefully,” he said.
At the counter, Benny topped a strawberry sundae with whipped cream and a cherry. “Thanks, Benny,” Jessie said as she took the sundae from her brother and placed it in front of a man in a pin-striped suit.
The man took a spoonful and made a face. “Oh, waitress,” he said. “Your whipped cream is sour!” The man pushed the sundae away from him.
“I’m very sorry. I’ll make you another one with fresh cream from the kitchen.”
“No, thank you,” the man answered. He shook his head. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
Several other customers at the counter looked at Jessie and Benny in disgust. A woman in a blue smock dress eyed her chocolate milkshake suspiciously. “I don’t think I want to taste this,” she said. “There’s whipped cream on it.”
Jessie nodded and took the drink from the woman. “Can I make you another one?”
“No, thank you. I’ll just finish my sandwich.”
By then, the customers sitting in the booths had also complained. Simone, Brian, Violet, Jessie, and Benny collected many ice cream dishes from unhappy customers. Only two people decided to reorder.
When Benny went to get more whipped cream from the kitchen, he found the other jars had spoiled as well.
“I don’t understand it,” Mr. Brown said. He frowned. “Those jars were all in the refrigerator.”
“Did the power go off last night?” Henry asked.
“I don’t think so.” Mr. Brown rummaged through the refrigerator. “If it had gone out, these cartons of ice cream would have melted. Everything is frozen solid,” he reported.
Henry frowned. “Someone must have left the cream out for a long time.”
Mr. Brown nodded. “That’s true,” he said. “That’s how it could have spoiled. Oh, Simone,” he called to the waitress as she came in to pick up her order.
“Yes,” Simone looked up. She held two plates of tuna sandwiches.
“Did you refrigerate the cream at the counter yesterday?” Mr. Brown asked.
“Of course.” Simone sounded surprised by the question. “I always do.”
“I know you do,” Mr. Brown said reassuringly. He looked at Henry and shrugged. “We kept all the other jars refrigerated the whole time we worked here yesterday.”
Henry nodded. “Did we have the refrigerator open a long time?” he asked.
“No, I don’t think so. But I’ll ask your sisters. They were in here helping me make the chocolate sauce.”
Jessie and Violet did not remember leaving the refrigerator open. Violet looked very upset. “I hope we didn’t leave the door open by mistake,” she told Mr. Brown.
“It’s possible we could have left it open when we took out the ingredients we needed, and thought it was closed,” Jessie said. She looked unhappy too.
“You have to slam it shut, don’t you?” Violet asked.
“Don’t worry, girls. I don’t think you left it open,” Mr. Brown said kindly. “I check it every so often. Now you’d better get back to your customers.”
Jessie sighed. “We’re not really that busy. A lot of customers left because they were upset about the cream.”
Mr. Brown shook his head. “Well, at least they seem to be eating lots of sandwiches.” Mr. Brown tried to sound cheerful, but Jessie and Violet could tell he was worried.
“I don’t like this,” Mr. Brown continued. “If we have more days like this, the Shoppe will lose its good reputation, and I’ll have to close it up.”
“Is something wrong?” Brian said as he came in the kitchen to refill the salt and pepper shakers. He noticed how sad everyone looked, especially Violet.
“We were just wondering how all the cream spoiled,” Mr. Brown told him.
“Oh,” Brian said. He unscrewed the tops of the salt shakers and concentrated on pouring more salt into them.
“Well, Brian, at least I don’t have to ask you any questions,” Mr. Brown said as he patted Brian on the back. “You weren’t even here yesterday.” Violet thought Brian looked a little uncomfortable.
“Soo Lee! Alice! You came!” Benny called out a few minutes later. He motioned his cousins toward the counter. Soo Lee returned Benny’s smile and climbed up on a stool.
“Well, hello Benny, where are all your customers?” Alice asked as she put her soft leather purse down on the counter. Alice remembered better days when there was a line out the door for the Shoppe’s ice cream.
“We had some trouble with our whipped cream today,” Benny explained. “It spoiled.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Alice said.
“So were we,” said a man at the counter who was reading a newspaper. “I was really looking forward to an old-fashioned hot fudge sundae.”
“Couldn’t you have it without the whipped cream?” Alice suggested.
The man sipped his lemonade and turned a page of his newspaper. “No, it wouldn’t taste the same,” he said without looking up.
Alice raised her eyebrows. “What do you recommend for Soo Lee and me?” she asked Benny.
Before Benny could answer, Jessie and Violet came out of the kitchen. Benny thought they seemed upset, but their frowns faded as soon as they saw Alice and Soo Lee.
“Oh, you came to visit!” Jessie exclaimed as she hugged her cousins in turn.
“Are you hungry?” Violet asked them.
“I was just asking Benny’s advice about what we should order,” Alice answered.
“You know,” Benny said very seriously. “I’d like to make you a sundae I invented. I’ve been thinking about it all day.”
“Oh, Benny, you are becoming a real chef!” Jessie exclaimed. “May we watch?”
“Sure,” Benny said as he wiped his hands on his apron. “The best thing about this sundae is you don’t even need whipped cream.”
The man at the counter stopped reading his paper and looked up. Carefully, Benny spread fresh ripe cherries in the bottom of a sundae dish. He put a generous scoop of vanilla and chocolate ice cream on top. Then he added thick dark chocolate sauce on the vanilla, and marshmallow topping on the chocolate ice cream.
“Could you hand me the jar of chocolate sprinkles please?” Benny asked Jessie.
He sprinkled on nuts and chocolate sprinkles, placed two cherries on each mound of ice cream, and handed the dish to Alice and Soo Lee.
“Oh, Benny, that looks wonderful,” Alice exclaimed. Soo Lee had already picked up her spoon.
“It does look good,” the man with the newspaper admitted grudgingly. “May I have one, too?”
“Benny, you saved some of our lunch business with that sundae,” Mr. Brown said proudly at the end of the day. “I’m going to name it after you and have Violet list it on the menus. We’ll call it the Benny Special.”
Benny flushed with pleasure. |