The Case of the Mystery Meat Loaf

by David Lewman

Hannah spoke up. “Last Monday, did you take a call from Jack, the manager at Stan’s, about a woman who wanted to buy tofu?”

  Jim nodded slowly. “Last Monday? Let’s see . . . yes. Yes, I believe I did. I was working in the meat department when Jack called.”

  “And you helped the woman with the tofu?” Ben said.

  “Yeah,” Jim said. “They told me how much she needed, so I went straight to the bulk tofu and got it out, so it’d be ready for her.”

  “So you took it out of the refrigerated case?” Hannah asked.

  “Yeah,” Jim confirmed.

  “And where’d you leave it?”

  “Up front,” he said.

  With each of Jim’s answers, Bill and Laura were looking more and more dismayed.

  “How long did it take the woman to get here to buy the tofu?” Corey asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jim said, shrugging. “Maybe half an hour. Maybe more. I think she had some errand to run in-between or something.”

  “And sorry for asking this,” Ben said, “but after you left the meat department to get the tofu, did you wash your hands?”

  “I really don’t remember,” Jim said. “Probably not. I was in a hurry.”

  “Probably not?” Bill said.

  “Jim,” Laura said, growing more upset by the second. “Don’t you remember us telling you how careful you had to be with the tofu?”

  Jim shook his head defiantly. “No, I don’t remember that. All I ever remember was you telling me to move faster, because time is money.” He turned to the kids. “Making money seems to be the only thing they’re interested in.”

  Bill and Laura looked shocked. “That is not true!” Bill insisted. “We have stressed cleanliness, safety, and customer service every day since we opened this store!”

  “Okay, fine,” Jim said. “Have it your way.”

  “This is unbelievable!” Laura said. “Jim, we need to talk with you in the office. Right away.” She pointed to the office door and then turned back to Ben, Corey, and Hannah. “I assure you, this is not the way we run our business. If our tofu made anyone sick because of this employee’s negligence, we are truly sorry. And we will make things right.”

  “Now if you’ll excuse us,” Bill said, “we need to have a talk with Jim.”

  Outside the store, Club CSI wasn’t sure who to believe, the owners or Jim. But they knew they felt really proud.

  “We did it!” Corey said. “We tracked down the bad tofu! Assuming, of course, that there’s such a thing as good tofu. Which I still kind of doubt.”

  “We’ve got to tell the principal first thing in the morning,” Hannah said excitedly. “This clears Miss Hodges completely.”

  “Agreed,” Ben said quietly. He seemed to be thinking about something.

  “What’s up with you?” Corey asked. “Aren’t you excited?”

  “Yeah, of course,” Ben said. “I was just trying to remember where I’d seen that guy before.”

  “Which guy?” Hannah asked.

  “Jim,” he said.

  Principal Inverno sighed. He usually enjoyed his job, but today was one of those days when he was going to have to criticize someone for making a big mistake. In fact, he was probably going to have to fire someone. He was not looking forward to that.

  He had called Miss Hodges and Mrs. Collins into his office first thing that morning. With something you didn’t like doing, it was better to get it over with as soon as possible. That way, you didn’t have to spend the whole day dreading it.

  Mrs. Collins arrived first. Her jaw was clenched tight, and her eyes were narrowed. “Good morning,” she managed to say. “Welcome back.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You’re feeling better?” she asked.

  “Much better, thank you,” he said. “Please sit down.”

  Mrs. Collins sat. They waited for Miss Hodges, who arrived a couple of minutes later. She and Mrs. Collins exchanged a look. Mrs. Collins looked mad. Miss Hodges’s expression was harder to read. Maybe a little angry. Or maybe apologetic.

  Miss Hodges also asked how Principal Inverno was feeling. Once that was out of the way, they had to get down to business.

  “Well,” the principal began, “I think you both know the reason why I called you in here. I want to—”

  The door swung open and Ricky burst into the office wearing his hooded sweatshirt and knitted cap. “You can’t fire my mom! She didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “Ricky,” the principal said, trying to be patient, “this is a private meeting. I know you’re concerned about your mother, but you were not invited.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like for my son to be here,” Mrs. Collins said.

  “That’s fine with me,” Miss Hodges interjected. Surprised, Mrs. Collins gave her a quick, grateful look.

  Principal Inverno puffed his cheeks and then blew out air. “Okay,” he said. “You can stay. But no outbursts.”

  Ricky slid into a chair next to his mom.

  “What happened last week is a serious matter,” the principal said. “Several students became quite ill, and their parents are very upset. They want answers. So I need to find out exactly what went wrong on So Good You Won’t Even Miss the Meat, Meat Loaf Day.”

  “I just followed the recipe,” Mrs. Collins said. She tilted her head toward Miss Hodges. “Her recipe.”

  “That’s right!” Ricky said, leaning forward in his seat.

  “Ricky,” the principal said with a warning tone. Ricky sat back. The principal then addressed Mrs. Collins. “And you’re confident that you followed the recipe exactly, with fresh ingredients?”

  Mrs. Collins nodded. “I went shopping for them that morning.”

  The principal turned to Miss Hodges. “I have a lot of confidence in Mrs. Collins. She’s been working here for sixteen years, and no student has ever gotten sick from her cooking before. Her kitchen is inspected regularly, and it always passes with flying colors.”

  “It’s obvious she takes her job very seriously,” Miss Hodges said sincerely.

  “Yes, she does,” the principal agreed. “And I think you do too. But you are a science teacher. When you decided to take on the food that was being served in the cafeteria, I think you stepped out of your area of expertise. I should have seen that from the beginning, but your argument about the food was very compelling.”

  Miss Hodges didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t sure where the principal was going with this.

  But Ricky felt sure. To him, it looked as though his mom was off the hook. And Miss Hodges was going to get fired!

  The principal sighed again. “Miss Hodges, a lot of parents are very upset with you. My phone has been ringing off the hook since this incident happened. So as much as I hate to do this, I’m afraid I’m going to have to—”

  The door burst open. “STOP!” Corey yelled. Hannah and Ben were right behind him.

  The principal stood up. “What in the world are you doing? Have we gotten to the point where the principal of this school can’t hold a private meeting without students barging in?”

  Hannah stepped forward. “We’re really sorry, Principal Inverno, but Club CSI has important information about this case that you need to hear before you make any decisions about what you’re going to do.”

  Ricky jumped to his feet. “Don’t listen to them! They’re crazy!” He pointed at Corey. “He stole my hat!”

  “How could I steal your hat?” Corey countered. “You’re wearing your hat!”

  “Only because I chased you down the hall and got it back,” Ricky retorted.

  Principal Inverno spoke firmly in his best principal’s voice. “Everyone be quiet!” They all stopped talking. “I’m away for a few days, and this is what happens? Students stealing hats? Running through the halls? Interrupting meetings?”

  Ricky sat down. Corey, Hannah, and Ben stood there quietly, looking at the floor and waiting to hear what the principal would say. Was he about to kick them out and
fire Miss Hodges? That would be terrible!

  “All right,” the principal said, sitting back down. “Let me share with you what I’m thinking. On the one hand, this business of barging in and interrupting meetings has got to stop. I’m happy to talk to students, but I have a schedule to follow, so you’ve got to make appointments if you want to talk to me. Or at least knock before you come in.”

  “Okay,” Ben said.

  “Sorry about that,” Corey added.

  “On the other hand,” the principal continued, “I’m impressed that you’ve worked on investigating this problem. Miss Hodges clearly has a way with her students, which makes me really want to put an end to this meat loaf nonsense and get back to what’s important: education! But the matter with the meat loaf must be addressed. . . .” The principal seemed to be thinking aloud. “And, of course, I’d like to have all the available information before I make a decision.”

  He pursed his lips, thinking for a moment.

  “All right, Club CSI, tell me what you’ve discovered. And I want the facts, not your opinions.”

  Ricky snorted, shaking his head with disgust. His mother shot him a stern look.

  Ben spoke first. “The first important thing we learned is that Mrs. Collins prepared two batches of meatless meat loaf.”

  “Two batches?” the principal repeated. He looked slightly panicked. “You didn’t serve it again after I went to the hospital, did you?”

  “No, of course not!” Mrs. Collins said.

  “Two batches on that same day,” Corey explained. “It was the second batch that made you and the swim team sick.”

  “And Dirk Brown,” Hannah added.

  “Right, and Dirk Brown,” Corey concurred.

  The principal shook his head. “I should never have had that second helping. But it was delicious. Go on.”

  “Based on my research on food poisoning,” Hannah continued, “and what we’d heard about the symptoms of the people who got sick, we decided that the meat loaf had somehow been contaminated with Salmonella.”

  The principal nodded. “That’s what my doctor said it was too. Great job researching! I’m impressed.”

  Hannah smiled, pleased.

  “The question then was, where had the Salmonella come from?” Ben said. “We checked the cafeteria’s kitchen, but everything seemed clean and organized, so cross-contamination there seemed highly unlikely.”

  “Of course it did,” Mrs. Collins said gruffly. “I keep a very clean kitchen.”

  “At home, too,” Ricky said. “She cleans the kitchen like someone’s going to do surgery in there.”

  “We decided that one of the ingredients must have been contaminated with the bacteria,” Ben went on. “And the most likely candidate for bacterial contamination was the tofu.”

  “Tofu?” the principal said. He turned to Miss Hodges. “Your recipe had tofu in it?” She nodded. “Huh,” he said. “I didn’t think I liked tofu.”

  “Neither did I,” Corey said. “I mean, I didn’t think I liked it. Not that I didn’t think you liked it. I didn’t know if you liked it or not.”

  Corey noticed his fellow investigators looking at him. “I’ll just be quiet now,” he said sheepishly.

  “So we went to the store where Mrs. Collins bought the tofu,” Ben continued.

  “How did you know where she bought it?” the principal asked.

  “When we checked the kitchen, we took a picture of the grocery receipt,” Hannah explained. Miss Hodges smiled. Even though her job still seemed to be in jeopardy, she couldn’t help but be proud of her students. Taking pictures had been good thinking on their part.

  “The receipt was from Stan’s, but the tofu seemed to have been handled correctly there,” Ben said. “Contamination seemed unlikely.”

  “But then we found out that Mrs. Collins had needed more tofu, so she went to the new health food store,” Corey said. He turned to Mrs. Collins. “Right?”

  She nodded. “Yes, they didn’t have enough tofu at Stan’s to make meatless meat loaf for all the students.”

  “And that’s where we made our biggest discovery,” Hannah said proudly. “It turns out that a new employee there completely mishandled the bulk tofu.”

  “He didn’t wash his hands after handling meat,” Ben said.

  “And he let the tofu sit out to get warm before Mrs. Collins picked it up,” Corey piped up.

  The adults all reacted to this news. So the tofu had been bad! That’s why people got sick!

  “So you see?” Hannah concluded. “The attack of the meat loaf wasn’t Miss Hodges’s fault at all. And it wasn’t Mrs. Collins’s fault either. It was the health food store employee’s fault!”

  The principal was impressed. He stood up to shake the hands of the three young investigators. “All right!” he said. “Mystery solved! I’m very happy to hear that none of our staff members here at Woodlands Junior High School is to blame for this incident.”

  “But the mystery isn’t solved,” Mrs. Collins said firmly. “Their explanation has big holes in it.”

  Everyone looked confused. Except for Miss Hodges, who nodded wearily with agreement.

  “I’m afraid she’s right,” she said.

  What do you mean ‘big holes’?” the principal asked, sitting back down.

  “I used the bulk tofu from the health food store in both batches,” Mrs. Collins said. “And, anyway, I baked it in the meat loaf.”

  “Baked it?” Ben asked.

  Miss Hodges explained. “The recipe calls for baking the meat loaf in a three-hundred-and-fifty-degree oven for one hour. The cooking at a high temperature would kill any Salmonella in the tofu.”

  Everyone was baffled. Miss Hodges turned to Mrs. Collins. “Did you follow the recipe exactly?”

  Mrs. Collins looked insulted. “Of course I did. The first time I make something from a new recipe, I always follow the instructions to the letter. Then the second time I make it, I improve it.”

  “Something tells me with this recipe, there’ll be no second time,” Ricky muttered.

  No one was sure what to say. If the hot oven killed the bacteria, what made the principal and the swim team and Dirk Brown sick?

  Ben got an idea. “Hannah,” he asked, “do you have your phone with you?”

  “Of course she does,” Corey answered. “You might as well ask if she’s got her head attached to her body.”

  Hannah ignored Corey’s comment. “Yeah, I’ve got it. Why?”

  “May I see the pictures of the cafeteria’s kitchen, please?”

  Hannah brought up the pictures she’d taken in the cafeteria’s kitchen and then handed her phone to Ben. He scrolled through the photos until he found one of the recipes. Then he zoomed in until he could read the recipe.

  “‘Bake in a three-hundred-and-fifty-degree oven for one hour,’” he read.

  “Yes, and that’s exactly what I did,” Mrs. Collins said. “I told you.”

  Ben looked up from the phone. “But the recipe doesn’t say anything about making gravy. Didn’t the meat loaf come with gravy?”

  Miss Hodges raised her eyebrows. “That’s right. You did serve the meat loaf with gravy. My recipe didn’t include gravy.”

  Mrs. Collins looked uncomfortable. “Meat loaf needs gravy. Especially meatless meat loaf. I was sure it would be dry without it. Even if it wasn’t my recipe, I wanted it to taste good. I have a reputation to maintain.”

  “So just to be clear, the gravy was your idea,” Principal Inverno stated.

  Mrs. Collins nodded grudgingly.

  “Did you happen to use tofu in the gravy?” Miss Hodges asked.

  Mrs. Collins looked a little uncomfortable. “Yes,” she said. “I found a recipe on the Internet. I know how to make regular gravy, of course, but it’s not vegetarian. I wanted to make vegetarian gravy, so I looked online. As it turns out, tofu is often used in sauces and dressings.”

  Miss Hodges was surprised. She’d knew that Mrs. Collins was completel
y against the idea of the meatless meat loaf, and yet she’d gone to some trouble to improve the recipe—with a vegetarian addition. She couldn’t help but be impressed.

  “From what I read about Salmonella, you’d have to boil the gravy to kill the bacteria,” recalled Hannah.

  A look of doubt passed over Mrs. Collins’s face. It was quick, but Ben caught it.

  “Mrs. Collins, would you mind showing us how you made the gravy?” he asked.

  Club CSI, Ricky, and Principal Inverno stood in the kitchen, watching Mrs. Collins tying her apron. Miss Hodges hurried in carrying a small bag. “I got the tofu,” she said.

  She set the bag on the counter. Mrs. Collins took the tofu out of the bag and then set it in the refrigerator.

  She turned back to the group of people watching her. “I don’t like having all these people in my kitchen while I’m cooking. And students are not allowed in here,” she complained.

  “I understand that this is highly irregular, Mrs. Collins,” Principal Inverno said sympathetically. “But if you’ll just indulge us, then we can put this whole meat loaf mess behind us.”

  Mrs. Collins sighed. She stood up straight and started to gather the ingredients she’d need to make the gravy. Flour, seasonings, vegetable oil . . .

  Ricky complained, “I don’t really get the point of this. So my mom made gravy. So what?”

  The others ignored him as they watched Mrs. Collins pull a large pan out of a storage cabinet. She combined ingredients in a bowl and then turned on the stove.

  As she heated the ingredients in the pan, everyone watched carefully. She added the tofu and used a whisk to make the gravy smooth as it heated up.

  Soon the gravy was bubbling.

  “I’m no chef, but don’t those bubbles mean the gravy’s boiling?” Corey asked.

  Miss Hodges nodded, frowning. If Mrs. Collins brought the gravy to a boil, she would have killed the Salmonella.

  “And that’s how I made the gravy,” Mrs. Collins said, smiling a little satisfied smile.

  “You’re sure you brought the gravy to a boil?” the principal asked.

  “Positive,” Mrs. Collins said. “Now that I’ve done it again, I even remember the look of the bubbles.”