Five-Alarm Fudge

by Christine DeSmet

  “Not like you at all, so therefore you must keep this secret.” I smiled at her. “You’re the most sensible person in this family. What if what you heard your relatives talking about long ago was merely a rumor? Gossip, like Pauline said? What if it’s not true? There’s a fifty-fifty chance that Prince Arnaud and Princess Amandine are our blood relatives.”

  Pauline said, “There’s a ninety-nine percent chance that as a little girl you heard things wrong.”

  Another thought struck me. Grandma’s worry about this past rumor wasn’t usually her way. This thing about the adopted baby was pretty darn insignificant in our lives. But I wondered if last summer was weighing on her. In July she’d found out Grandpa had kept a big secret from her about not paying the taxes on the bait shop for a few years. He could have lost the shop and maybe their house in order to pay the taxes. Grandma had been madder than an old wet hornet, as we say.

  “Are you embarrassed that you haven’t confessed this secret to Grandpa? I know how important it is that you both share everything. You love each other so much that the sun and moon smile on you both.”

  Grandma’s mouth and nose twitched. Her gaze cast away, then came back to me again. “It’s just that he’s so excited about this royal visit and you being related to royalty. I should have told him about this long ago.”

  Pauline said, “I think it’s a one hundred percent thing that even if Gil knew about this rumor he’d laugh and ignore it and still believe Ava was a princess.”

  Grandma laughed. “Those are good odds.”

  She came over to tug lovingly on my ponytail. “You’re a gift. I love you, you little stinker.”

  Grandma pulled Pauline’s hair, too. “I love both of you. How’d you get so smart? Oh, that’s right. I used to feed you my booyah when you were tykes.”

  I said, “And I hope to eat a ton of it at the kermis next weekend. I’ll help stir it.”

  The voices of Grandpa, John, and Marc came through the kitchen window.

  I got up and took Grandma by the shoulders and pointed her out of the kitchen. “Grandma, your suitcases. Hurry and unpack. I’ll stall Grandpa. He’ll never know a thing about any of this. It’s our little secret.”

  Grandma’s hands flew to her cloud of white hair. “Bah on me. You’re right.”

  She raced off while Pauline and I lured the men to the kitchen with the chocolate truffles. It made me think of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale. But what would Gretel’s fudge flavor be?

  * * *

  I was ready to stay and help Grandma finish her pies, but Grandpa told me there was a wild party over on the docks in front of the fudge shop. I headed over straightaway.

  Pauline, John, and Marc took off for the Troubled Trout for dinner.

  In my fudge shop all my fudge was gone from the glass cases and Dotty Klubertanz and five other women in red hats were stirring batches in all six of my copper kettles. They were talking loudly and laughing. Beers and glasses of wine sat on the floor next to their feet or on nearby shelves.

  “What’s going on?” I felt as if I’d landed on another planet.

  Dotty tossed gold glitter into the air. “It’s ‘Fudge Fairy Tale and Saints Night.’”

  “What’s that? I hope that’s edible glitter.” I tasted some of the gold flecks that had landed on top of my empty glass fudge case. It was edible. “How much have you all had to drink?”

  Laughter from outside bubbled up within earshot. I rushed to the big bay window on my side of the shop. Outside on the docks the picnic tables were filled with other women in red hats playing cards. Extra strings of lights hung over their heads. Card tables were also set up along the docks all the way down to the Super Catch I. I thought I saw piles of money on a few tables. Panic set in.

  I turned back to Dotty and her troupe of red-hatted fudge stirrers. The shop smelled of chocolate, cherries, and red velvet cake. My mouth was watering. “Why are you all making fudge, Dotty?”

  “We ate all your fudge, so we’re making new fudge. Don’t worry. Everybody paid.”

  “What type of cards are they playing out there?” The hoots and cheers were rattling the windows.

  “Go see for yourself.”

  Outside, the women waved at me. “The new princess among us.” There were a few cheers. The locals were enjoying kidding me. “Come sit by me for good luck. Over here, Cinderella.”

  There must have been fifty women. I glimpsed a bus in the parking lot. Mercy Fogg sat about five tables away from where I stood. I shimmied among the tables. Feather-festooned finery tickled me on the chin and nose.

  Mercy was wearing a bus driver’s hat covered in red wrapping paper with a big red bow on top. She held a glittery gold star taped to the end of a foot-long toy fishing rod, obviously purloined from Grandpa’s shop. Her other hand showed sparkly cards. Glitter was falling everywhere.

  “What’re you playing, Mercy?”

  She waved her cards. “A new card game Lois and Dotty invented. We’re trying it out. If it works, we’re rich. You are, too. These are saints, the women tell me.” She pointed to her cards. “I’m not Catholic or Lutheran or much of anything but ornery, so I wouldn’t know about saints, but they tell me there’s a saint for each day of the year. Dotty and Lois created this new card game out of prayer cards. They put glitter on them to fancy them up.”

  “Why are you here?”

  Mercy never liked being around the fudge shop.

  “Dotty invited the Red Hats over to try out the game. I bus them around every Thursday night. How do you feel about all this filthy lucre in the middle of the table?”

  A mountain of cash sat in the middle of the table. “This is gambling and illegal. Right out in the open. This could close down our shop. Oh, damn you, Mercy, that’s what you want!”

  The other women at her table raised their beers and wineglasses and with sloppy grins, chorused, “Have Mercy on Mercy!”

  They were all beyond reasoning.

  Mercy said, “Don’t get your undies in a bunch. Nobody’s shutting you down. That sheriff of ours is tracking a killer and an arsonist after your arse. He’s not going to come all the way up here tonight to bust a bunch of ladies. Besides, the fudge shop gets a cut of everything under the table.”

  “A cut?” I groaned. “That’s so illegal.”

  “That was the law Dotty set down. And I’m a very law-abiding citizen. I used to be village president, you know.”

  I picked up the beer in front of her. It was empty. “You’re cut off.”

  But women were fetching more drinks from coolers on the dock overflowing with ice. The night was getting chilly, but the women had on light jackets, sweatshirts, or sweaters and didn’t seem ready to quit any time soon.

  I retreated. I’d lost control of my own fudge shop again.

  I suspected Marc and John had shot video of this party. I cringed. This was not how I wanted my shop depicted on TV. Drunken women dealing saints? Eek.

  When I stumbled back inside, exhaustion overwhelmed me. I decided to follow Grandpa’s lead on this and walk on through and out the back door. “You’ll lock up for me, Dotty? You can put the fudge on the marble table by the window to cool and cure.”

  “Oh, sure. But you better take the money in the till and get that to the night deposit at the bank. I’ll go outside right now and collect your cut.”

  The cash register drawer was hanging open because it was so overstuffed with cash. There were no credit card slips. Nothing to trace back to illegal activity. Dotty knew what she was doing.

  Dotty came back in from outside with fists filled with greenbacks. “Here’s your take on this round.” She helped me stuff the cash in the bank envelope. The zipper barely closed.

  I said, “I don’t feel right about this. This is a fudge shop, not a gambling hall.”

  “Honey, I was only trying to help. You weren’t here, after all.” Dotty pursed her bright pink lips in a hurt expression. “I like working here. I found those old saint prayer cards
in an attic we cleaned out a couple of days ago for a family after the woman had passed on, and you know how I am with a glue gun. Pretty soon Lois was helping me and we had them all decorated. We made up rules like Go Fish for the game and here we are.”

  I felt bad for hurting her feelings, so I asked her, “How does the game work?”

  “This game uses the September saints. Each month we meet will have that month’s set of saints. You have to get five saints from five days in a row. A Monday saint from September’s first week, for example, can’t be next to a Tuesday saint from a second week of September, but if you have saints from Monday and Tuesday of the same week, you get bonus points and a free piece of fudge. Losers in the round are called sinners and they have to put more money in the pot in the middle of the table to pay off the saint who wins the next time.”

  “What about the stars on the toy fishing poles?”

  “We call them wands. Those are awarded to the woman at the table who’s won the last hand. But the wand has to keep moving around the table. When I whistle at any moment in time, sort of like in musical chairs, whoever has the star gets to take extra cards off the pile.”

  She was so earnest, and looked so cute in her little red hat, that I relented. “It’s wonderful what you did for me tonight. Your heart was in the right place, and you’re right—I should’ve been here. If it weren’t for you and your friends making fudge right now, I’d have nothing to sell in my shop in the morning. Thank you, Dotty. Did you pay yourself?”

  I handed her a few bills.

  She handed them back. “Honey, I’ve been friends of your family a long time. I enjoy thinking up goofy stuff. Letting me do this once in a while is payment enough. Besides, if this game catches on, it’ll change the card nights at St. Ann’s in a big way. We can donate a lot more to local causes. Treat this as research. Is that okay?”

  I wasn’t a fan of research lately, but Dotty was sly as a fox. But what harm could come from a bit of craziness now and then? And for good causes? I nodded. “But I’m the boss of my fudge store, right?”

  “Of course you are, dear. Whatever you say.” She laughed on her way back to her copper kettle to finish the fudge.

  “What’re you making?” I wandered after her to peek in the kettle. Her fudge was red.

  “Red velvet cake fudge. We thought it would have to be that because we all wear red hats. And with royalty coming, we were thinking about royal red carpets and capes.”

  “Does it have a fairy-tale name yet?”

  “Why, no. We do want to leave you something to do when we barge in like this and take over your shop.” She winked at me.

  I laughed. “Capes, hats, and keeping the wolf from my door?”

  Dotty said, “Little Red Riding Hood Fairy Tale Fudge.”

  The ladies at the kettles gave it a thumbs-up. Dotty said, “We can sew red capes for the dolls and red aprons for moms. And of course you’ll want mini picnic baskets made from local willow twigs and grapevines.”

  The grapevines reminded me of today’s events. “Do you know Michael Prevost?”

  “The girls and I have been to his winery many times for wine-and-cheese pairings.”

  “Do you think he’s capable of murder?”

  She left the copper kettle to steer me over behind the minnow tank across the way. “He’s a nice enough man, but he doesn’t have friends.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because one of the gals in the group told me. She stops by Chris and Jack’s bar often enough with friends and Michael is there evenings. Alone.”

  I made a mental note of that. The bar was next to the Namur church. “What’s wrong with going alone?”

  Dotty nodded. “That’s unusual in Door County where everybody’s so friendly.”

  “Maybe he’s pining. He told me he loves Fontana Dahlgren.”

  “Pffft. That trollop? Before you returned to Door County, she was dating one of Cherry Hardy’s colleagues.”

  That surprised me. “Who was that?”

  “Wesley Weaver.”

  My insides clenched in surprise. “I spoke with him yesterday. He didn’t say anything about her.”

  “Why would he? Anything he’d say would implicate him in the murder. Remember when I told you this was about revenge? Cherry may have had something over on Professor Weaver that would destroy him.”

  * * *

  After I took the gobs of cash to the bank, I was glad to get home to my quiet cabin. But it was too quiet. As I lay on the couch, I could hear Titus tiptoeing across my kitchen floor.

  I thought about the issue of being alone. What if I were alone for life? I thought about Mike, in love with Fontana, but it was evidently unrequited love. He hung out at the local bar for companionship. What would I do? Pauline was lonely, too, wanting more from John. And Grandma was lonely with her secret. My mother had her secret of discovering the body. My grandpa had the secret of the prince being here and he hadn’t told Grandma. And what about Cherry Hardy, dead now but a loner in his university department where they didn’t much like him evidently because he put my fudge in test tubes? Research has shown we can die of loneliness. Humans need friends; we need to be touched and cared about.

  It struck me as odd that the only people not lonely at all were people like Mercy Fogg and Dotty and Lois and women in red feather boas playing a made-up, silly card game and eating all my fudge. They lived for fun.

  What if that was all Cherry had been doing? Living for fun? I recalled that his colleagues didn’t appreciate him having fun or testing fudge. Would the very serious Professor Weaver kill the silly, fun-loving Cherry? Nothing made sense to me.

  I called Kjersta Dahlgren, but the call went to voice mail. I left her a message, telling her about the gang coming to her place on Saturday to clean up the garden for her and Daniel. I also informed her that the sheriff had been looking through everything again, even her compost pile. I didn’t know what he was looking for, though. What was left to find? They had the shovel as the possible murder weapon.

  The sheriff also had my father’s Buck knife, which had ended up in the organ bench, obviously stolen somehow from our farm. The knife wasn’t used to commit the murder, though I wondered if it had been used to scare Cherry. Did Cherry know about the knife? Cherry was so not himself during that tour, I wondered now if he’d come on the tour as a means to retrieve the knife.

  The crimes were all a muddle in my head, but I felt close to putting the jigsaw puzzle together.

  A soft knock came at my door. Regrettably, I had to move off my couch.

  I flicked on the outside light. When I opened the door, Lucky Harbor dashed in.

  On the porch, Dillon was holding a huge picnic basket and wearing a grin. The basket had the distinct, delicious aroma of the fried cheese curds and cheeseburgers from the Troubled Trout. My mouth watered.

  A tickle settled into the empty spot in my stomach. “How did you know I forgot to eat today?”

  “Because I love you and you’re in my heart all day even if you’re not beside me.”

  I was ravenous. For food. For company. For everything Dillon had to offer.

  Chapter 28

  On Friday morning the sheriff returned my father’s Buck knife. The only blood and fingerprints on it were Cherry’s. John’s blood was on the music sheets, but not the knife.

  I called my father. “Did he borrow your knife? Then forget to leave it when he left the farm?”

  “Could be. He could have used it to cut some plants to take in for testing and hadn’t taken the time yet to return it. I leave it sitting around in the haymow to cut twine off the bales. He’d split open bales and take samples from the middle of the bale.”

  “Like Nick yesterday. But that still doesn’t explain why it was at the church with Cherry’s blood on it the morning before his death.”

  My father sighed. “Ava, be careful with all this. Stick to your fudge. It’s safe.”

  I recalled the line from “Ave Maria” w
ith the blood smeared beneath it. Safe may we sleep beneath thy care. “I’ll stay safe, Dad, don’t worry.” He grunted at me but I went on. “Was Professor Weaver out there recently?”

  “Yeah. He was here with a few colleagues maybe a week ago to look at our third-crop hay.”

  That gave me the chills. “Was your knife missing since that day?”

  “I never thought about it because I didn’t need it. We only started the baling a few days ago and that’s when I missed my knife.”

  “Who were the colleagues with Professor Weaver?”

  “Oh gosh, I don’t remember all of them. The usual guys from the lab, like Nick Stensrud and Will Lucchesi. You know the bunch.”

  “Yeah. Working on their doctorates.” By examining my fudge. “Was Mike Prevost at the farm recently?”

  “Ava, he comes here all the time to pick up cheese. You know that.”

  I was only making my father more worried about me, so I said good-bye and hung up.

  I needed a normal Friday in order to sort through my twisted thoughts. The weather cooperated with low humidity, so I tested a different divinity fudge recipe, this time with no marshmallows. I let it sit in the kitchen to set up while I came back out to the front to cut up all the fudge Dotty and her five friends had left on the white marble slab at the front window.

  Edible gold glitter still festooned spots on counters and floors. I was vacuuming when Grandpa charged in from the front door at around seven o’clock that morning. He went straight for his pot of aromatic chocolate-laced coffee behind his register counter.

  “What’s up, Gilpa?” I wondered if Grandma had confessed her secret.

  He slurped his coffee. “My hands are a problem. I can’t take this.”

  Confused, but patient, I kept cutting the red velvet fudge Dotty had made. Its cakelike, sweet chocolate aroma tickled my nostrils. I carved a slice and walked it over for Grandpa to try.

  He said, “You didn’t make that fudge.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Your fudge is always extra creamy.”

  “Because I stir it fast and long. See my muscles?” I showed off my arms, then went back to cutting fudge. “Don’t worry about the fudge. I’m going to reheat this and give it a workout with my arm muscles, and if it doesn’t meet my standards, then Laura or Piers can use it to moisten some cupcakes or muffins. So, what’s your point about your hands?”