Five-Alarm Fudge

by Christine DeSmet

  After breakfast and a shower, Pauline left for Fishers’ Harbor. Maria Vasquez gave her a ride; Maria wanted to get more details about what had happened in the woods.

  Despite my scratched face, I went to church in Brussels with Mom and Dad. I hadn’t been to church in a long time, but I’d been telling a lot of lies and Dad needed some healing prayers. Mom needed me to fend off people asking questions about the murder. We stuck to our story that I’d found the body, but neighbors knew about Mom’s penchant for cleaning, so they knew the vacuum cleaner I’d allegedly used was hers. Mom was a hero by association; I knew she’d really solved the case. Jordy would eventually figure out some of those hairs belonged to Nick Stensrud.

  After the service and outside the church, Dillon was waiting for me. I barely recognized him in a blue shirt and dark tie. An involuntary smile pushed creases into my itchy cheeks.

  Sun blessed everything and us with a glow. The smell of fresh-mown hayfields for that final crop of hay before winter arrived was one of the best perfumes I’d inhaled in several days.

  From the front seat of Dillon’s white construction truck, Lucky Harbor woofed at me out the window.

  It gave me déjà vu to see Dillon waiting for me outside a church. The last time he’d waited for me like this, we eloped. That hadn’t ended well, though.

  With most of the congregation talking with Mom and Dad and offering them help rebuilding the barn, I was able to take Dillon aside for a private talk.

  His hair had grown over the summer. He had it groomed neatly now into a short ponytail at the nape of his neck. It gave him rakish appeal and injected my libido with a touch of wanton excitement.

  Feeling awkward, I touched my hair. It hung loose and felt good after my ordeal. It had taken Pauline and me an hour last night to get the burs out. I was wearing Mom’s red jersey knit dress with long sleeves to cover my scratches. Black tights covered my legs. No amount of makeup could cover up the bug bites and scratches on my face, though. I supposed I probably didn’t look too kissable, though I would have loved one of Dillon’s dip-and-kiss routines right now.

  I asked, “Were you sitting in back during Mass? Did I miss seeing you?”

  “No. I checked Mass times on the Internet, then calculated when you’d be coming out.” He took a deep breath.

  “You’re dressed up. Is there an occasion?”

  “I got to thinking about things.”

  “This sounds ominous, Dillon.”

  “I was thinking how I selfishly suggested you slow down and ditch a few things to simplify your life. That wasn’t fair of me. In fact, it was pretty darn obnoxious, egotistical, as if I know everything. I don’t. If we’re going to start over, we need to start at the beginning, at Saint Mary of the Snows. Together. I haven’t been inside the Namur church yet.”

  “I understand. I had trepidations, too. I had to force myself into the church a week ago.”

  “That’s nice to hear, I mean, not nice exactly, but nice that we think alike.”

  The man was trying hard to please me. “You look nice. I like you in a tie.”

  “This old thing?” He flipped his tie offhandedly. “I’d like you to come with me to Saint Mary of the Snows, Miss Oosterling.”

  “Cody is rubbing off on you.”

  “It’s those EMT and firefighter classes we’re in together. We’re learning procedures for resuscitating hearts.”

  I felt like a baby bird he was feeding and he was feeding me all the right things that made me want to take flight with him.

  I agreed to meet him in Namur after I drove my parents home.

  We met outside the church. Lucky Harbor loped about the grounds, tongue lolling out. I unlocked the church. The three of us went inside.

  Dillon chose a pew in the middle. It was neutral territory, not too close or too far from the holy business at the front of the room.

  For a few moments, we appreciated the beauty and quiet.

  There wasn’t a sound. Not a horn or a whoosh of tires outside. A crow cawed in the trees outside. Dillon’s breathing then feathered to me. I listened to my own breathing. I remembered Pauline talking about mindfulness.

  Dillon and I were sharing a certain serenity. A rare thing in our hurly-burly world.

  I was amazed in the moment. Dillon had made me stop the world. He’d performed magic.

  I gave him a glance. He was looking straight ahead at the altar and angel statues. The side of his face was tanned, freshly shaven. I wanted to touch him but didn’t want to interrupt him. I curled my fingers into my palms in my lap.

  The church had that churchlike smell of polished wood. A hint of Fontana’s awful pickling spice perfume lingered, though, along with the faint tincture of smoke.

  The breeze outside was tossing the trees about enough to play with the light inside the church. Fractured colors flitted in flight. Like angels. My grandfather’s angels.

  I took Dillon’s hand next to me. His knuckles were roughened and his hand was warm. “We’ve never sat together in a church.”

  “Feels strange, and new . . . and nice,” he said, his dark eyes searching me in a way I’d never seen or felt before.

  “I know.”

  We chuckled.

  Dillon asked, “Do you ever regret not marrying Sam?”

  I squeezed his hand. “No, Dillon. Sam needs somebody far more sensible than me.”

  “You’re the most sensible person I know.” He lifted my hand, then kissed it. “But sometimes you scare the hell out of me.”

  “But you’ve always liked gambling.”

  His laughter was a raucous reverberation in the cavernous church.

  Lucky Harbor chose that moment to leap in the air on the altar’s steps, probably to snap at a fly that had come in with us. His body twisted and then hit one of the tall angel statues with the candles on top, knocking it over.

  Dillon raced from the pew. “Lucky, shame on you. Sit.”

  I headed over to pick up the tall angel statue.

  Dillon said, “Stop, Ava. Look.”

  Crouching on the floor, he reached inside the bottom of the statue. He pulled out several yellowed pieces of paper.

  At the top of one in cursive script were the words “Divine Confection.”

  * * *

  I called Jordy.

  He yelled back, “You want me to . . . try to establish the fingerprints today of a revered nun who died in 1896?”

  “This recipe is at the center of the murder case, Jordy. You have to help us find out if this recipe is authentic. You’ll be famous if you find the fingerprints or DNA belonging to Sister Adele Brise. Think about the Shroud of Turin, Jordy. This will be the Fudge of Namur.”

  Jordy cursed, then hung up.

  Dillon drove the two of us, Lucky Harbor, and the papers to the Justice Center. I was pleased to see Jordy’s evidence in the murder case included the test tube with my pink fudge.

  When we left Jordy’s office, Dillon said, “Your fudge is going to end up on front pages everywhere.”

  The thought made me buoyant. “We better make sure the Blue Heron Inn is ready for guests. I think we’re about to be busy.”

  * * *

  During the next few days, fudge flew off my shop shelves and the wagons at Ava’s Autumn Harvest.

  Door County was abuzz with tourists, press people, history buffs, and church officials.

  I’d copied the recipe before we handed it over to Jordy. I was still amazed at the secret ingredient. It was lavender. When I mentioned this to Dotty, she said, “Of course!”

  “Why?” I’d asked her.

  “Lavender comes from the Latin word lavare, which means ‘to wash.’”

  “Washing a confection?”

  Dotty had looked at me as if I were blasphemous. “My dear, the story comes from religious stories, not your fairy tales. The Virgin Mary hung her child’s washed clothing on a lavender bush. They dried smelling crisp and clean, pleasing the Christ child. Lavender is a calming scent. Isn�
��t it bountiful in fields in France and Belgium and used in chocolates? Perhaps the sisters were homesick and used it in their cooking, too.” Dotty leaned close to me with a big grin on her face. “Maybe the Holy Mother of God traveled all the way to Door County just to deliver lovely sprigs of lavender to Sister Adele. Her life had to have been very hard. She would have deserved a gift of lavender.”

  True or not, the story enchanted me, and it also planted a wry smile on my face when I considered all the times I’d maligned Fontana’s affection for lavender. My childhood mentor deserved more respect from me. I immediately called Laura, who had a little of everything on her shelves because she taught baking classes. She had plenty of lavender to give me for making fudge.

  Fog rolled in during the mornings, but dry days were helping me hone my divinity fudge skills. I packaged every last morsel for the kermis fund-raiser.

  By Wednesday, Jordy was happily retelling the press about the murder case and “his” call for trying to find fingerprints after all these years as well as analyzing the recipe.

  We found out Nick Stensrud had been fudging on his research about my fudge. He’d spread bugs and chemicals everywhere, and even inserted some into the test tubes. Professor Weaver had been lax in overseeing him. Cherry had found out about both of them. Weaver wouldn’t be prosecuted for the murder, of course, but he lost his job.

  Parker Balusek was representing Nick’s buddy Will Lucchesi. Parker told me Will had asked Nick to change his ways. Will had also been convinced by Nick that Michael Prevost and Fontana had murdered Tristan Hardy. Many of us had almost fallen for that theory.

  Maria Vasquez got overtime hours. She showed up several times at the harbor parking lot to direct traffic. The entire populace wanted to meet the prince and they’d begun to camp out at the harbor waiting for him.

  By Thursday, Prince Arnaud revealed himself as the prince. It was Dillon’s idea to have Mercy Fogg drive him from the farm to Fishers’ Harbor in her limousine. We pretended he’d arrived at the Green Bay Airport that day. His mother would arrive on Saturday.

  At my invitation, Piers took over cooking at the Blue Heron Inn. He became the prince’s private chef.

  The prince insisted we not reserve the entire inn for only him and his mother. He wanted to experience a real inn, with people who were there to fish and vacation. That Thursday afternoon, after I had inspected the beautiful new rooms upstairs, I raced down the blue-carpeted staircase and ran smack dab into a tall, curvy blond woman. She was out of breath and appeared in distress. She was covered in splotches of apple green paint.

  She said, “Have you seen Barkly?”

  “There’s no guest here by that name.”

  “He’s a Bernese mountain dog. Size of a bear. Hard to miss. About one hundred twenty pounds, black with a white stripe on his face and fawn-colored eyebrows. He was chasing a curly brown dog and they came this way.”

  “That’s my dog, Lucky Harbor.”

  “I’m sorry about this. Your dog poked his head in my door. I was painting the store. I spilled a can of paint and said, ‘Oh, fudge’ and your dog took off and my dog tailed after him.”

  I laughed. “No need to be sorry. They’re probably at my fudge shop or swimming in the harbor together by now. I’m Ava Oosterling.”

  “I’m Jane Goodland.”

  “The stripper?” It came out before I could stop myself.

  She laughed. “Yeah. That’s a long story. I’m the new owner of the Wise Owl. Come over soon and I’ll show you the new stripper pole in the back of the store. Gotta go find my dog now.”

  I had no idea whether that stripper pole thing was a joke or not. I put it out of my mind for another time. I had my relatives to worry about.

  Grandma Sophie was charmed by the prince, but not so charmed by Grandpa’s keeping his presence a secret.

  Grandma also confessed to me that it saddened her to think all this could be for naught. She worried that the savvy national reporters in town might look into the past and find out the prince came from a baby adopted in Chicago in the late 1800s.

  Pauline, too, was out of sorts. Neither Jordy and his crew nor we had found her purse in the woods. I’d given her a sparkly Cinderella Pink Fairy Tale Fudge cloth bag from my shop that Dotty had made, but still Pauline fussed.

  Worse yet, John left town with my manager, Marc Hayward, on that Thursday.

  Pauline bolted into the shop late that afternoon. “He’s gone, Ava. Gone for good.” Tears of fury steeped in her eyes.

  My insides twisted. I didn’t dare say, “I told you so.” I called Marc on the spot but only got his voice mail.

  I was loafing a batch of my new Red Riding Hood Fairy Tale Fudge, but abandoned it to take Pauline out back. We stood next to the burning bush that was scarlet with autumn leaves.

  “You confirmed he left?”

  She nodded. “I called. He’s in Los Angeles. Working on his TV deal. He said he didn’t know how long it would take.”

  That disturbed me. He’d been so excited about surprising Pauline by singing “Ave Maria” this coming Sunday. But I blamed my manager for John’s taking off.

  Pauline sat down on the grass. “I’m so dumb. You were right about him all along.”

  “You’re not dumb.” I sat beside her.

  “I am dumb. My purse that’s lost? It had my diamond ring in it.”

  I screeched, “John gave you a ring?”

  “Shh. No, I bought it myself.”

  “He asked you to marry him?”

  “Not exactly. He said he wanted to get married sometime. He said I deserved a ring the size of a baseball. I thought he meant I should go ahead and shop for one.”

  I looked at her cross-eyed.

  “I was excited, and stupid. Eager. I found a ring I loved at one of the artists’ shops here. One of a kind. I was sure John would sell his TV series idea and he’d pay me back.”

  “Pauline, this isn’t how an engagement is supposed to unfold.”

  “I know, I know.” She sniffled. “He’s not the type to have time to shop for a ring, which he of course proved by leaving me.”

  Pauline flipped her long hair off her shoulders. She seemed small now sitting next to me, not the tall friend who always looked down her nose at me.

  She said, “Him leaving me is only part of the bad news. I might have to sell my house to pay off the loan for the ring.”

  “You took out a mortgage on your house?” Her house was a tiny ranch house, but still . . . “That’s some ring.”

  She was trembling. “I love him. Loved. Past tense.”

  “No insurance?”

  “I hadn’t added the ring to the policy yet.”

  I got to my feet, pulling her up. I shook her shoulders. “Don’t give up. On the diamond or John.”

  She sniffled. “Do you think I’m a complete fool?”

  “Of course. But who am I to judge? I was once married to a bigamist. And I’m dating him again!”

  “You say the sweetest things.” She flung her arms around me.

  * * *

  Pauline’s diamond debacle wasn’t my only problem. Grandpa wasn’t himself the rest of that Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

  Sure, he was busy with customers and lines of people asking him to pilot the snazzy Super Catch I, but Grandpa seemed to be going through the motions. I remembered his wish to have dirty hands again, but I didn’t know how to fix that. About the only way we’d gotten dirty lately was with fires, and I certainly wanted to douse even the thought of another five-alarm fire.

  Grandpa wasn’t at the center of the murder investigation, either, and I could tell he was out of sorts because of that, too. He and I were used to working together on such adventures. I believed Gilpa was thinking we’d drifted apart. I, too, was missing the closeness we’d had in the summertime.

  My only hope was that the recipe in Jordy’s hands would turn out to be authentic from Sister Adele Brise. That would please my grandfather.

  Chapter 3
4

  On Sunday, the kermis in Namur was an incredible festival with a polka band, a beer tent, and Belgian pies that stretched down picnic tables all the way between the church and the old school. The school and Saint Mary of the Snows had been cleaned to a sheen by my mother and the church ladies, including my grandmother.

  Over five thousand people showed up in the tiny burg to tour the church and school. Cars lined the country roads for miles.

  My mother had two thousand of the fudge buttons made with the logo “Ava’s Fudge—Fit for Royalty.” All were sold after she told visitors how rubbing the buttons had helped us solve the murder. She took orders for a couple thousand more at least.

  The visitors also went on a tour of the many roadside chapels in our county. Mercy ferried the visitors in the yellow school bus. She wore her snazzy uniform and one of Mom’s buttons, which I found a generous gesture by Mercy.

  Princess Amandine Van Damme, who had arrived yesterday and stayed at the Blue Heron Inn, was a vivacious, beautiful woman of my mother’s generation with white blond hair and exquisite, milky skin. Upon spotting the cup with AVD on it in the foyer of the inn, she said she was certain it belonged to the Van Damme ancestors. She’d brought a similar piece with her for comparison.

  I was very excited to tell Pauline and John but realized John was gone. Despite my concerns about the guy, I was sad.

  The princess and Dillon’s mother, Cathy, got along famously in an instant, which meant that my mother and Cathy were put into a proximity of each other that they’d never before experienced. The princess had a way of making everybody laugh and enjoy camaraderie, so I thought there might be hope for Dillon’s family and mine eventually getting along.

  At the farm, the princess toured everything with my grandmother on one arm and my father on the other. She encouraged the press to take pictures of her stirring the cream and tasting fresh cheese curds.

  “They squeak,” she said, laughing.