The Secrets of Ice Cream Success (17 page)

Ben nodded whilst holding the
wall for support.

Carlo didn’t see the funny
side. ‘Come on, Ben!’ he shouted. ‘You know I didn’t want you to do
that!’

Ben calmed down a little and
walked back into the study. ‘You nodded to Norton indicating that
you wanted me to fill him in on what was going on, so I did.’ Ben
said, taking a seat.

‘
No, I nodded
to Norton indicting that you should tell him
nothing
! Absolutely nothing!’ Carlo
said, exasperated.

‘
Ah.’ Ben
answered. ‘Perhaps you could have made that a wee bit
clearer?’

Carlo sat down opposite his
friend, his previous enthusiasm now lost beneath the worry about
what Norton might do or say next. ‘He’ll be half way across town by
now.’ he exaggerated. Ben started to laugh again. ‘I don’t know
what you find so amusing. I recall you sat on the floor having lost
the ability to both stand and speak when you saw my Dad!’ Carlo
added, rather more forcefully than he meant to. ‘Where is Dad?’ he
finished, looking around the room.

Ben pointed back to the far
wall that Luigi had shot through earlier upon meeting him.

‘
Dad?’ Carlo
called, shaking his head.’ You can come out now.’

Luigi’s head appeared through
the wall again looking thoroughly fed up. ‘Why must you lot keep
doing that to me?’ he said, marching back into the room. ‘If I
wasn’t already dead I would have died of a heart attack.’ He looked
around the room. ‘Where is the noisy round boy?’

Ben looked at his watch
theatrically and pretended to make a mental calculation.
‘Scotland?’ he offered, breaking down in laughter again.

Carlo ignored him. ‘Right, we
have a few things to sort out.’ he said, reasserting his new found
authority. ‘Firstly…’ he said pointedly towards Ben, ‘you need to
go and find Norton and get him back here before he does or says
something stupid.’ Ben gave him a look that suggested Norton’s
daily routine was doing or saying something stupid, but he got up
anyway and threw Carlo a salute.

‘
Yes,
Sir!’

‘
And do not
tell anyone else about Dad until I say so, alright?’

‘
Yes,
Sir!’

‘
Go on then.’
Carlo said, as Ben stood to attention. ‘Now, please.’

Ben did a passable impression
of an about-turn, grinned back at Carlo and then pelted for the
stairs at full speed.

Carlo turned back to his Father
who had taken Ben’s place at the desk. ‘Well, we’re going to have
our work cut out for us.’ he said. Luigi raised his ghostly
eyebrows in interest, so Carlo carried on to tell his father what
he and Randy had discussed. ‘I got the town fair idea from Vicky’s
Grandfather.’ he finished with a smile. ‘He said there was a
competition one year.’

‘
Yes, I
remember the town fair.’ Luigi said. ‘We won, didn’t
we?’

‘
No.’

‘
Really?’

‘
Apparently
not. But anyway, I’m going to need your help if we’re going to get
everything ready for the Fair in time.’

‘
Are you sure
we didn’t win.’ Luigi asked, refusing to move on.

‘
Not according
to Vicky’s Granddad, no.’ Carlo insisted.

‘
Who’s
Vicky?’

‘
My
Girlfriend.’

‘
You have a
girlfriend?’

‘
Dad, please!’
Carlo shouted. ‘We have work to do.’

‘
Sorry,
son.’

Carlo took a deep breath and
tried to remember what he was saying. ‘Right. It’s a good job we
know how far you can go now. The pencil dropped at the far end of
the factory, about 80 meters or so. I’ll get Ben to mark the exact
distance.’

Luigi shook his head. ‘I’m not
sure that’s the right distance though, Carlo. I didn’t bounce
straight back here.’

‘
Where did you
go, then?’ Carlo asked surprised.

‘
I reappeared
right where you were, but then you started running away from me and
by the time I realised what was going on I bounced again and ended
up back here.’

‘
Norton turned
up and was just about to get in the way.’ Carlo explained. ‘So does
that mean you’re haunting me and not the room?’ he asked
confused.

Luigi shrugged. ‘I’m not
actively haunting anyone or anything that I know of.’ he said, with
a glum look at the floor. ‘But I’m not sure it is you, Carlo,
otherwise why would I have bounced back to the study when you ran
off down the factory?’

Carlo
shrugged, but wasn’t too worried about it. Despite everything he
was beginning to feel like the factory was really under his control
for the first time and the ghost of his father
inexplicably bouncing around seemed like a minor issue. Here,
at his lowest ebb, there seemed the clearest path and Carlo was now
determined to march down it assertively.

‘
So, will you
help me?’ he asked, looking at his father. ‘I’m going to put us
back on the map and doing it with Luigi Leodoni as my adviser just
seems right.’

Luigi smiled. ‘Of course I’ll
help, in whatever way I can. I’m not sure how, but let’s do
it!’

Carlo smiled and felt something
like relief flow through him. They could restart the factory. Now,
possibly for the first time, he was certain of that and he was no
longer riding the wave of other people’s assertions, he was in
charge.

Quickly listing the most
pressing issues to be managed; the stock recall, the increase in
production, the town fair and the suspected security breach, Carlo
and Luigi came up with a plan of action and soon the young man was
calling Randy from the study telephone to arrange a full staff
meeting for later that day. He was going to step up, for the first
time, as Giancarlo Leodoni, of Leodoni’s Ice Cream.

Norton was eventually persuaded
to re-enter the factory just before lunch, which, Ben noted, may
have had more to do with the factory canteen than his willingness
to accept a ghostly colleague. However, after a tense meeting in
which Mr Leodoni apologised for scaring him and then, reluctantly
performed a number of vanishing tricks under instruction, which
eventually took Norton’s mind off the fact he was dead, Norton
agreed not to screech like a girl in Luigi’s presence and, most
importantly, not tell anyone else about his existence until one of
the Leodoni’s expressly allowed it.

Over lunch in the canteen,
Carlo, Ben and Norton met up with Newton and Abi to explain what
had transpired that morning, minus his father’s ghostly
apparitions. Newton’s love of Sherlock Holmes was piqued by the
idea of finding a saboteur within their midst, though his sleuthing
career was cut down before it had begun when Carlo told him that he
wanted Newton to team with Abi to concentrate on plans for the town
fair, starting with a review of Leodoni’s “strategy” for past fairs
using old information, the location of which had been provided by
Luigi earlier.

Ben and Norton were
unsurprisingly over the moon to be made unofficial FBI agents
(Federal Bureau of Ice-cream, as they were dubbed by Norton). They
were to find out when the tainted batch was made from Randy, review
CCTV footage to see if the culprit could be spotted and, if not,
covertly question a few key suspects as defined through the course
of a heated discussion during which Ben had grudgingly agreed not
to name Norton as the lead suspect, but Carlo allowed them to add
Neil, Herbert Fitzherbert and their history teacher, Mr
Short-Bottomley, because none of them liked him very much.

After lunch the entire
workforce gathered on the factory floor as requested and Randy,
Lucy and Carlo climbed halfway up the metal stairs leading to the
offices above to make sure everyone could see them. Carlo stepped
closer to the rail and thanked everyone for coming but it was lost
in the din of dozens of well-fed people continuing their lunch time
chats.

Lucy brought everyone back to
attention with a shrill and impressively loud whistle that had
Norton and Ben applauding in respect.

‘
Everyone, can
we have your attention, please!’ she shouted before nodding to
Carlo to continue.

‘
Thank you for
coming.’ he tried again, ‘And when I say that, I don’t just mean
here… now. But also thank you to those of you who returned when we
re-opened and thank you to those of you who have joined us for the
first time.’

Newton turned to Ben and Abi, a
look of slight surprise on his face, and whispered, ‘That was a
good start.’ Ben winked back having already seen the newly assured
Carlo in action.

Carlo went on to briefly touch
on the issues they had faced over the previous weeks and the
admiration he had for the staff in overcoming those barriers. He
decided to leave out any reference to the tainted stock, but
mentioned that although the launch date would remain, the new focus
would be a special unveiling at the town fair in three weeks which
required everyone to pull together to make sure the event would be
a success.

‘
I know many
of you knew my parents. Their pride at the quality of Leodoni’s
products was only beaten by their pride at the quality of the
Leodoni’s staff who worked with them. If my father were here today
I know he would still be proud. Thank you.’ As Carlo finished he
felt a Ghostly prod in the side that made him laugh as he squirmed
away behind Randy, who had taken over the meeting.

‘
If my Father
was here today? Cheeky bugger!’ Luigi whispered. Ben laughed next
to Carlo and received an invisible poke in the ribs too.

Randy finished the meeting with
some more specific details about the workload facing them over the
following few weeks before Lucy dismissed everyone back to work
before “The Directorship” as Norton liked to call Randy, Lucy and
the gang, returned to the office.

‘
That was
good, Carlo. Well done.’ Randy said sitting behind the desk. Carlo
tried not to beam too much at the praise. ‘Well, as requested, Lucy
and I are almost finished with the new production schedule for the
remaining weeks until the fair. It will be difficult, but the extra
week allows us to make up for much of the lost time. I’ve asked
Lumsden and his crew to oversee the disposal of the tainted stock
once it’s returned and then thoroughly clean the machinery
overnight to avoid disruption in manufacturing. In the meantime
we’ll have some pest control people come and take a look.’ he
continued, still unwilling to believe it was sabotage. ‘Let’s just
hope that whatever happened won’t happen again.’

‘
Don’t worry,
Mr Fox, Sir! We’re on it, Sir!’ Norton said, standing as close as
his waistline would allow to attention and saluting with what he
thought was efficient military grace.

Ben shook his head
despairingly. ‘Come on, idiot.’ he said, gently pushing Norton out
of the room who was still trying to stand to attention until
dismissed.

Carlo caught up with them just
outside the door and pulled them to a stop. ‘Be cool, guys. We just
want to know who might have done this, not go around accusing
people. Right?’

Ben and Norton nodded solemnly
and headed for the exit, but Carlo heard Norton whoop with delight
as he re-entered the office. ‘Damn.’ he said, trying not to think
about what his friends might get up to.

The rest of the afternoon found
Lucy and Randy ensconced in the office doing what Newton described
as “proper work” whilst he and Abi were in the office next door
working out the “battle plan” for the town fair. Carlo had excused
himself with a vague excuse about “walking the floor” and showing
his face to the staff, but had headed straight to the study where
he spent the afternoon taking down advice from his father regarding
the coming weeks, despite Luigi’s wish to go and see what Randy and
Lucy were up to.

‘
Who knows
what mistakes they’re making? I should be up there!’ he mumbled,
staring at the wall as if he could see the offices at the other end
of the factory.

‘
Dad, please…’
Carlo said, pointing back to his notebook where he had just
finished copying down some pointers on something his father called
a supply chain. ‘You shouldn’t get involved, it’s their job now.
Anyway, you can’t even reach the office, you’d just disappear
again.’

‘
They’ll be
getting it wrong.’ Luigi continued to rumble into
afternoon.

‘
Jeez! I wish
you’d stayed in the wall.’ Carlo mumbled back.

By the end of the day, Carlo
was exhausted but happy. Looking back, so much had happened. He had
nearly quit; he had discovered his father’s ghost; he had taken
charge of the factory; held a staff meeting and learnt a great deal
about running the operation. He closed his note book and stuffed it
in his bag.

‘
Will you
still be here tomorrow, Dad?’ he asked, finally raising a question
that had been playing on his mind for the last hour.

‘
I think so.
I’m not at all sure how this haunting business works, but I don’t
see why not. Every time you have come into the study I have been
aware of that and with effort I can, well, manifest myself. Having
you near helps, it makes me more alive.’

‘
But what will
happen when I leave?’

‘
I’m still
here, I think, but less… physically. I sort of drift into
nothingness. Ghosts can’t really daydream it seems. If I stop
concentrating I fade away until the next time.’

Carlo looked horrified. ‘That’s
awful!’