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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 suspicious¹. “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 sniffed² the air. “Mmm, nothing like it. I’m out of coupons³, so I came back. Boy, it’s too bad we’re still waiting for the gas line to be fixed⁴. 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 Mighty⁵ 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 jingled⁶. 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 reset⁷. 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 peeked⁸ through the window on the door between the kitchen and the dining room. “Ah, she was my best customer before things 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 crossword⁹ 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 dough¹⁰ 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, crumpled¹¹ napkin, and the paper placemat.

As she did so, she noticed writing on the placemat: ZUCCHINI PIZZA, 4 VOTES. PEPPERONI, 3 VOTES. PIZZA SUPREME¹², 5 VOTES.

“What is this?” Jessie asked, puzzled.

“What’s what?” Violet wanted to know when she saw Jessie looking closely at the placemat.

Jessie handed the placemat to Violet. “Look at what that customer scribbled¹³ down! She copied the votes the customers wrote on the blackboard for their favorite pizzas. Now why would anyone do that?”

Violet was just as puzzled. “Let’s show the Piccolos, Jessie. Maybe they can figure it out.”

Mr. Piccolo’s full attention was on the pizza dough, not placemats. “A message on a placemat?” he laughed without once taking his eyes or hands off his dough. “Well, that’s for you children to figure out. Why last year, a young man wrote a love letter on the back of one of our placemats.”

Mrs. Piccolo smiled. “Ah, yes. It was such a beautiful poem.”

The children smiled with the Piccolos about the love-letter placemat. But this wasn’t a love letter. What was it? The Aldens meant to find out. Jessie carefully folded the placemat and put it in the pocket of her apron¹⁴.

The children went back to their jobs in the dining room. Benny checked the tables to see that each one had a menu and a full breadstick supply. He stopped at the table right by the kitchen. “Violet,” he called out, “there’s a menu missing at this table.”

Violet came over. “I’m sure it’s here somewhere,” she told Benny. “The young woman who ate here read her order right off the menu. I’m sure I put it back in the holder¹⁵. It’s got to be there.”

Violet and Benny searched under the table and chairs for the missing menu, but it wasn’t there.

“Come on, Benny. Let’s count up all the menus,” Violet suggested. “Maybe the missing one got mixed in with the others. You count half the tables, and I’ll count the other half. There should be twenty menus altogether.”

“. . . six, seven, eight, nine, ten,” Benny counted.

“. . . six, seven, eight, nine,” Violet counted at her tables. “They don’t add up to twenty. I wonder where that menu went.”

The Piccolos told Violet not to worry about the missing menu. But she couldn’t help wondering where it had gone. Why would anyone steal a menu?