Five-Alarm Fudge

by Christine DeSmet

  I stared at my phone, then sagged in my seat. “You’re right.”

  “Hearing you say that is music to my ears.”

  “Thanks, Pauline. And thanks to your boyfriend for deflecting trouble.”

  “I’m hungry. Did you and your grandpa bring along any of your Rose Garden Fudge that won your contest last July? Chocolate with rose petals tastes heavenly with a cabernet.”

  As she rattled on, I watched with great trepidation as the church ladies, including my grandmother, toddled out of the old schoolhouse with their brooms and mops. Over at the church, Fontana seemed to be leading Jonas toward the church’s side door near the parking lot. She probably thought she was hidden behind the vehicles still parked there.

  “My grandmother is responsible for locking up the church today. Fontana’s going to cause Grandma Sophie trouble if I don’t do something.”

  Pauline gave me a cross-eyed look. “I give up. Call the sheriff, but then let’s leave so you don’t end up blamed for this trouble.”

  An hour later Sheriff Jordy Tollefson showed up during the postluncheon presentation by Cherry at Ava’s Autumn Harvest on Highway 57 to tell me the bad news.

  Chapter 3

  It was a good thing Sheriff Jordy Tollefson showed up when he did at my roadside market. The neighbors were arguing—not good for selling pumpkins and fudge to tourists.

  Everybody was gathered on the large grassy area outside the stone barn. Ava’s Autumn Harvest was located on property belonging to Daniel and Kjersta Dahlgren. My barn was about forty yards from their house, large garden, and garden pole shed. Their apple and cherry orchards lay beyond behind the house. Highway C ran by in front. Vehicles were parked up and down the blacktopped road as well as on the grassy land between the driveway and my stone barn.

  Cherry’s presentation about the harm done to our local orchards and vineyards by drought, bugs, and chemical drift from neighboring farms exacerbated a months-long, simmering disagreement among my friends who lived in the area.

  Grape grower Michael Prevost was the most vocal, accusing Jonas Coppens of using too many chemicals on his cornfields north of Michael’s property. The cornfield bumped up against both the Coppens and Dahlgren properties where their properties intersected in a triangle about forty yards behind the Dahlgrens’ brick house.

  Jonas had shown up without Fontana, which pleased and worried me. I wondered if Grandma had tangled with her in the church. Calls to my grandmother had gone unanswered.

  John’s group of thirty people seemed embarrassed by the heated discussion. Cherry, Michael, Jonas, and Daniel Dahlgren were debating “proof versus no proof” that chemicals had entered the local groundwater and grapes.

  I plied the busload of tourists with plastic cups of wine. Michael had provided several Prevost Winery wines, from crisp whites that tasted like sweet morning air, to luscious purple-red pinots that reminded one of watching the strip of sunset on the horizon when light leaked out of our autumn evenings.

  As the sheriff strode from his car, Pauline escaped to be with John.

  I went inside the barn to warn Grandpa Gil that the sheriff was here. “Gilpa, you didn’t tell Fontana about the recipe, did you?”

  “Surely not, A.M. Why?”

  I told him what had transpired over in Namur.

  “You’re sure that was a Buck knife?” Grandpa Gil ran a hand over his wavy silver hair. I still hadn’t gotten used to Grandpa not having engine oil or grease all up and down his person and in his hair. Since he’d junked his beloved but decrepit fishing trawler this past summer, he’d turned into a dapper guy I didn’t recognize. Today he wore a clean red plaid shirt and tan pants.

  He said, “Your grandmother gave me a new Buck knife for Christmas last year, but mine is back at the house. Had to be kids. You know how it is at a certain age they all want to play with knives.”

  “I suppose, but maybe you should go see what’s keeping Grandma.”

  “Sophie will be fine. You better scoot. Those people out there tasting your fudge want to know all about the ingredients. Point across the road to your daddy’s farm and tell them the cows they see are making that cream you use to create a slice of Heaven with Belgian chocolate.”

  “I’m not so sure they’re going to care unless Cherry stops talking about chemicals floating all over in the air. Pretty soon nobody will want to eat my fudge.”

  “What’s gotten into that guy? Never seen him be such a zealot about his research.”

  I hurried outside. I paused to breathe in the sun-drenched air. In the far distance, maples that limned the horizon meeting the Green Bay of Lake Michigan showed spots of orange and red. The bay shimmered beyond the treetops.

  The beauty should have calmed me. Instead I saw the sheriff in his squad car talking on his phone. Something was up.

  I joined Pauline behind a flatbed wagon loaded with pumpkins. We helped a few kids pick out the best ones for carving.

  Nodding toward the fray not far from us, I asked, “What’s going on now?”

  “He’s talking about finding dead bugs in the Dahlgrens’ cherry orchard.”

  “Dangerous bugs?”

  “I don’t know. He moved on quickly to talking about some rot and cancer diseases that could hit the cherry trees. I couldn’t hear over Kjersta’s agonizing complaints about their business being ruined.”

  “I’d scream, too, if my business were about to tank.” My fudge shop almost did just that last May when it’d been found tainted with hidden diamonds, of all things. I’d had to close down for a couple of days until the sheriff and I figured out I was being set up in a murder case. “How’s the pairing event going?”

  “So far the favorite pair is Cinderella Pink Fudge with Mike’s new sweet white wine made from the grapes introduced to the Prevost vineyard by Cherry about eight years ago. Cherry explained it all, hogging the microphone. Poor Mike couldn’t even talk about his own grapes.”

  It took grapevines several years to establish themselves and bear fruit. This should have been a celebratory year for Michael Prevost. However, it was not because of the crop problems he and the Dahlgrens were experiencing.

  Kjersta was arguing with Cherry again. Daniel had married the opposite of Fontana when he wed Kjersta. She was a farm girl like me, shapely and tall. Unlike me, she kept her wavy brown hair in a pixie cut. She had big brown eyes with eyelashes so lush they looked fake, which I knew bothered Fontana.

  Kjersta and I had attended twelve grades together. Her husband, Daniel, was forty—eight years older, and proud of his family’s role in our county’s history. His ancestors had been planting cherry trees in Door County since Professor E. S. Goff planted the first trees in Door County in 1896 not far from us near Sturgeon Bay.

  The Dahlgren cherry orchard’s yield had dropped by half in the past two years, which was what Cherry Hardy was studying. To compensate for the loss of income, Kjersta had planted a vegetable garden that covered two acres. I’d helped earlier today with digging up the potatoes. Kjersta got to sell anything she wanted at my stand in exchange for no rent and use of the small barn.

  Dillon had replaced rotted beams and a rusted tin roof for me with fresh Shaker-style wooden shingles. The shingles were of the kind the early Belgians, Swedes, Finns, and Norwegians might have made when they sent millions of shingles south to repair Chicago after its famous fire that happened the same October days as ours. Back then, the stone barn’s space probably sheltered up to a dozen cows in winter, a team of Belgian horses for logging, and maybe a barn cat and some chickens. Today, it held islands of fudge, jellies, and jams, and a dozen Belgian pies in as many flavors made by my grandmother.

  Pauline and I jerked our attention to the presentation when Daniel’s voice rose. With his height of well over six feet and shoulder-length, wavy blond hair, Daniel stood out.

  Cherry was holding up both arms as if he were stopping traffic. “We’re not sure what’s really causing the orchard damage. I’m buying more fudge, cheese,
and wine today from this market to see what we might detect in the food chain.”

  I yelped to Pauline, “He’s going to test my fudge for chemicals?”

  “Your fudge contains cream from your cows that feed off the land nearby. Cherry wants to see what’s getting into our food chain.”

  I stood up straighter behind the pumpkin wagon. “That’s nonsense. Jonas has always been careful because my family’s farm is across the road. He knows we’re a certified organic dairy.”

  But Michael Prevost, my retired high school math teacher who operated the vineyard to the east of the Dahlgrens’ orchard and Jonas’s farm, wasn’t so generous with Jonas. Mike was in his late fifties, robust and muscular, with a big round head like a basketball on his shoulders. He maintained a rather tall but thinning crew cut that was almost a Mohawk in the front. The robust sienna color of his hair looked dyed.

  He held up a piece of naked grapevine. “Jonas, you’re lying. Your crops are perfect, not a weed in sight, not a bug in sight. What’s it going to take to stop you from ruining the rest of us?” He shook the vine. “This is all that’s left of several of my grapevines planted within fifty feet of your property.”

  I found Mike’s accusation about lying interesting, because when he was a high school teacher, or “Mr.” Prevost, he had a habit of feeding answers for tests to some of the so-called slower kids to help them get a D or C grade instead of an F. We students noticed, too, that his briefcase held an unusual bounty of pens and notepads that were likely purloined from the supply room. The other teachers always complained about not being given enough supplies, but not Mr. Prevost.

  Jonas looked like a copper pot ready to boil over. He had a deep tan, as most farmers did, and the tan garnered respect because it represented hard work. His dark auburn hair was streaked from summer sun, and his gray-blue eyes looked like sleepy moons in his face.

  “I believe ‘ruining’ is a strong word,” he said in his even but stern voice. “Let Cherry work on the tests back at the university and report back.”

  “Where’s Fontana?” I asked Pauline. “And my grandmother? She and the church ladies never miss free fudge, cheese curds, and wine.”

  The sheriff was still in his car talking on the phone, which I found curious.

  Pauline wound her long, dark hair around a hand in worry, too. “Why don’t you go back to the church to find out what’s going on?”

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I took a peek. “A text from the sheriff. He probably wants my help solving the case of the bloody knife in the church loft.”

  Pauline tossed her hair back off her shoulders. “I’m going home. John’s picking me up by five o’clock.”

  “Another date? Where?” I was envious because Dillon Rivers and I didn’t go on dates nearly as much as John and Pauline. Dillon and I had vowed to take our relationship slow this time. Eight years ago, we’d ended up like a doomed Bonnie-and-Clyde pair careening through life doing what we wanted on impulse. Now at age thirty-two, I wanted the experience of true, old-fashioned courting. Dillon had agreed. Now we were like archaeologists, sifting carefully through our hearts one cupful of attention at a time to see if we might unearth the secret to our future. But sometimes the sifting felt mighty slow and boring.

  Pauline tossed into her big purse a sack of fudge, a bag of cheese curds, and a bottle of wine. “We’re catching a new play at the American Folklore Theater in the park.”

  “Did you pay for those, Pauline?”

  She went bug-eyed. “These are payment for you ruining this outfit in the church. You should buy yourself some new clothes sometime. See how it feels. Go on a date.”

  My dates entailed me taking sandwiches to the inn for Dillon, where he’d been smashing down old plaster as of late. We would eat amid the dust. Then I’d go back to my fudge shop on the harbor to set up for the next day. I’d retire to bed early so I could get up at five in the morning to start making fudge. After Cody Fjelstad or some of the church ladies stopped in to take over the cash register, I’d bring fudge down here to my lower Door County market. It was a routine that I should have loved, but I found myself jealous of Pauline. Once her school day was done, she was free as an eagle to soar.

  My father arrived behind the pumpkin wagon as Pauline took off in her car. Peter was tall, like all of us Oosterlings. His sported our family’s lush head of wavy chestnut brown hair and the Belgian nose. The nose was slightly aquiline with a tiny ridge in the middle. My dad said the Belgian nose was specially made for use in creating the best in beer, booyah, chocolate, and fudge.

  “What’re you doing here, Dad?”

  Noontime was one of the milking times for his big herd. Mom must have taken over for him, which meant this trip over here was serious. He had cleaned up in a pair of black church slacks and a blue chambray shirt, the cuffs rolled up on the sunny fall day. “Thought I better see what Cherry had to say about the chemical drift issue and support Jonas.”

  Dad and Mom had known Jonas’s parents for years before they’d perished in the car accident.

  Cherry was saying, “The early test results should be coming back by Monday, and the test samples that we’re taking today will further prove or not what’s really going on.”

  The professor’s teaching and lab assistants, Nick Stensrud and Will Lucchesi, had just driven in. They were familiar guys, and from a distance they looked like brothers with their short brown hair and slim builds. They’d been to our farm several times in the past couple of years with Cherry, as well as his colleague and dean, Professor Wesley Weaver. As early adopters of organic farming, we Oosterlings had given ourselves over to research projects for the university. Nick and Will usually did the “dirty work” of gathering samples for Cherry.

  A woman in the crowd asked, “But can we still eat the fudge?” She held a piece of my Cinderella Pink Fairy Tale Fudge in front of her.

  I held my breath.

  Cherry said, “We all live with chemicals. It’s hard to escape them in our world. It’s my job to moderate the effects as best I can by teaching good practices in farming, or grape growing, or fudge making for that matter.”

  I gulped. I looked at my dad, whispering, “I guess I’ve arrived if the university extension service is taking note of my fudge.”

  Kjersta asked Cherry, “But we have rights, don’t we, to make Jonas cough up his chemicals? He’s using illegal chemicals.”

  “I’m not using anything illegal.”

  Dad muttered under his breath, “That’s the spirit.”

  A car door slammed. The sheriff had gotten out of his squad car. I’d forgotten his text. He stalked toward where Dad and I stood behind the pumpkin-filled wagon.

  Three other vehicles pulled into the grassy parking area, including my grandmother in her sports utility vehicle. From a car, Fontana bolted out of the backseat, heading straight for Jonas.

  “You left me back there. How could you leave me like that?” Fontana said, her shrill voice mocking the twittering of a flock of sparrows sitting on the eaves of the barn behind us.

  Fontana was like a fox heading into a flock of chickens. The crowd split up or backed off. She trotted from Jonas over to Cherry, talking loudly about seeing him later and how she’d explain everything. I wondered what.

  Kjersta hurried to Jonas with a cup of wine, asking if he’d like to try some, which I thought was a neighborly gesture considering how they weren’t getting along. But I saw the wisdom in breaking up this unfortunate scene. I grabbed wine cups and followed Kjersta’s lead.

  Fontana then headed toward her ex-husband, Daniel, but he escaped by grabbing a bottle of pink wine right out of Mike’s hands. He began pouring a new round to anybody noshing on my pink fudge.

  Dad disappeared inside the barn to help Grandpa.

  John told his tour it was time to get on the bus so they could go down the road and around the corner to the Prevost Winery.

  Sheriff Jordy Tollefson followed me back to where I took up sentry again at the pu
mpkin wagon. Customers scattered, to my chagrin.

  My grandmother limped up behind him but spoke to me. “The sheriff badgered us about some knife being found in the organ bench. Maria Vasquez was there, too.”

  Maria was a deputy sheriff. Guilt rattled me. I’d called the sheriff.

  The sheriff looked through his aviator sunglasses at me. “Your grandfather around?”

  “In the barn.”

  Jordy sauntered to the stone barn.

  Horrified, I asked Grandma, “Was that Grandpa’s knife in that bench?”

  Grandma grabbed her white hair to keep it from whipping in the breeze across her face. Her dark eyes looked like blisters of pain. “This whole mess is Gil’s fault.”

  “What do you mean?”

  By now, only a few feet from us, the church ladies were buzzing with the tourists about “blood” and “Ave Maria” and “organ bench” and “knife.”

  Grandma said, “Maria kept asking about the prince and princess, and who might want to do them harm.”

  Grandma was shaking all over.

  Over her shoulder I spotted Fontana heading to a car with Cherry. Cherry had his arms full of the fudge and other goods he’d bought to take for testing. Fontana seemed to be arguing with him. Cherry was shaking his head vigorously.

  John was herding his group into the bus.

  My grandfather and father had emerged from the stone barn, walking on either side of the sheriff. While my father was always reserved, my grandfather was gesticulating wildly in the air at the sheriff.

  As they approached, I asked, “What’s going on?”

  The sheriff, tall and menacing in his brown and tan uniform, gun at his hip, with his hat brim set straight over his sunglasses, said, “I’m going to have to cancel the royal visit. I’ll be contacting the prince and princess.”

  Chapter 4

  Grandpa scooped Grandma next to his side with a long arm around her waist. “Prince Arnaud and his mother are my wife’s relatives and I invited them. Sheriff, I can do what I darn well please with family.”