To Fudge or Not to Fudge (A Candy-Coated Mystery with Recipes)

by Nancy CoCo

  “What was all the business about Transcendental Meditation?”

  Rex shrugged. “Mrs. Finch is part of a group of old hippies. I guess back in the late sixties they had an entire cult up here for a while, communing with nature in the state park. Most of them have moved on. Mrs. Finch is one of a handful of people left. She’s harmless.”

  “Except for Daisy.” I chuckled at him.

  “Except for Daisy,” he replied.

  “All right, I’m heading back to the McMurphy. You’ve got twenty-four hours to find your killer. Don’t blow it.”

  His grin grew cocky. “I always get my man.”

  “Just like Dudley Do-Right.”

  That made him laugh harder. I shook my head and left the building, warmed by his laughter following me out.

  The sun was bright, and I blinked as I stepped out onto Market Street. It was a busy, bustling day as many of the stores were running specials for the Lilac Festival. There was art displayed on the sidewalk and busy crowds in shorts and flip-flops roaming the streets and sidewalks, only parting when a group of bicycles or a horse and carriage came through.

  I scanned the crowd, looking for the easiest way to navigate it and get back to the McMurphy, when I caught Mrs. Finch out of the corner of my eye. What was she doing going in the opposite direction of her home? I thought she was going to get Daisy’s leash. As if a 120-pound Saint Bernard could be controlled by an 80-pound elderly woman with a leash.

  Out of instinct more than common sense, I followed Mrs. Finch down the street. She never even bothered to look around as she focused on wherever she was going. Luckily, there were large crowds and I was able to remain unseen as I tracked her down Market Street.

  The street ended at the opening to the wide picnic lawn below the bluff that held the fort. She walked with purpose through the park and passed the art museum, the marina, and the Island House Hotel.

  Main Street flowed around the southern end of the island. She hurried past a church and into a neighborhood filled with apartments and condos where the summer help lived or the regulars stayed.

  Where was she going?

  I followed her up away from the lake and into the state park. The crowds thinned out so that it was only me and her weaving through the streets. My heartbeat sped up, and I became more and more certain she would catch me at any moment.

  At one point she stopped and glanced around. I managed to hide near the front porch of a painted-lady cottage. She moved on after that, even more laser focused. She hurried right by the Jessop Compost and Mulch Service to a patch of woods where she melted into the shadows.

  I chewed my bottom lip. Should I go in and try to keep following? I’d come so far, I simply had to see where she was going. Should I take a detour that could possibly get me arrested for no reason because I was so far from my ankle bracelet’s home?

  Sucking up my fear, I stepped into the dark shade of thick woods. Mrs. Finch was not difficult to see. Her short white hair gleamed in the shadows. She moved through the woods as if she had been there so much she could traverse it in her sleep.

  “Hey, Allie. What are you doing so far from the McMurphy?”

  I clamped a hand over my mouth to keep from squealing in surprise. I whipped around to see Trent Jessop striding toward me. He wore jeans and a black T-shirt that did nothing to hide the breadth of his shoulders. He had rubber boots on that covered his lower legs. “Oh, hi, you startled me,” I said, trying to sound normal and failing.

  I had a tree between me and Mrs. Finch at the moment. Would she hear Trent and figure out I’d been following her?

  “What are you doing skulking around in the woods?” He put his hands on his hips, his legs spread wide. He was either intimidating or attractive or maybe both. Should I come clean and say I was following a wacky old woman?

  “I heard that the tests came back positive on your equipment for human blood and tissue.” I hugged myself.

  He frowned. “We have safeguards in place when it comes to working around such dangerous equipment. I have no idea how or when it happened.” He ran his hand through his hair. “There’s a six-foot fence enclosing the equipment. We keep the gate locked. None of it makes sense. But I’ve got a stop-work order on my entire crew.”

  “Oh, ouch.” I cringed. “Spring is prime time for gardening.”

  “Gooseworthy is rubbing his hands in glee.” Trent shook his head. “I’ve got to bury the entire pile of mulch and compost. People won’t buy it if there is even a hint that body parts will be found in it. Not to mention Heather’s family’s grief. It’s a mess.”

  “Wow, I hadn’t thought of that. Do you have any idea how it happened?”

  “That’s what I’m doing now, walking the property and trying to figure out if the threat came from the outside or if one of my crew is a murderer.” He scanned the woods behind me. “Speaking of murder, I thought you were supposed to be under house arrest over the death of the fudge maker.”

  The heat of embarrassment crawled up my neck and into my cheeks. “Um, right. I sort of got off track.”

  He tilted his head and studied me. “You came out to see if you could find clues to Heather’s death, didn’t you?”

  “Okay, sure.”

  “The only reason you would be out here is if you think your fudge maker and Heather’s deaths are related.”

  “Wouldn’t that be awful?”

  “And wildly convenient.” Trent crossed his arms. “Did you find anything?”

  “No.” I let my shoulders slump. By now Mrs. Finch either realized I was following her or hadn’t heard Trent and had continued on to wherever she was going. Either way, the jig was up. “I thought perhaps Tammy Gooseworthy was involved, but there is no proof. In fact, there is even less proof because your equipment was the murder weapon and Gooseworthy’s wasn’t.”

  Trent rubbed his chin. “Why did you suspect Tammy?”

  “She and Heather were both up for the pastry chef position at the Grander Hotel.” I walked back toward town. “Plus she’s been hounding Peter and the producers to get on the reality show they’re filming at the Grand Hotel.”

  Trent walked with me. “So she could possibly be the link for both murders.”

  “Right?”

  “You might still have something to look into,” he said as we walked back to the road that leads to town and was the edge of the Jessop property.

  “How so?”

  “Gooseworthy stands to profit hugely from Heather’s death. I’ve lost an entire year of profits.”

  “So Heather’s disposal might have been intentionally done on your property.”

  “I’d hate to think anyone would be motivated enough to put a person—dead or, worse, alive—through one of our shredders. Turns my stomach to even contemplate it.”

  “I agree. Whoever did this needs to be found and found fast before anyone else gets hurt.”

  CHAPTER 30

  “So,” Jenn said, disgust on her face. “Tammy Gooseworthy is still our best suspect.”

  I stood in the hallway of my apartment in my white fluffy bathrobe and towel dried my hair. “Weird, right? Who has the kind of mind that would put a body through a shredder in the first place? But to think further and put it in your competitor’s shredder? That’s just creepier than I want to contemplate. It’s why I had to come home and shower. The mere thought of that act had me feeling dirty all over.”

  “Are you sure that’s what it is?” Jenn raised her right eyebrow and smiled knowingly. “Or did you and hunky Trent Jessop get a little too close in the woods?”

  “Oh, stop it!” I shook my head.

  “What? You’re both healthy adults. He’s hot and you’ve been celibate what . . . four months? Five? Shoot, if I were you, I would have seized the moment.”

  “Oh, right, I’m so sexy in my work clothes with an ankle bracelet marking me as a convict.”

  Jenn shrugged. “It marks you as a wild child—even more attractive and . . .”

  �
�And what?”

  “And”—she wiggled her eyebrows—“the idea that Rex Manning could come looking for you at any moment adds to the excitement.”

  “Oh, my goodness.” I walked into my bedroom. “You read far too many novels.”

  “Well, did he at least ask you out?”

  “No.” I picked up a wide-toothed comb from my dresser top and ran it through my wet locks. “We were talking about the murder and mutilation of a young woman. Not exactly a time to be romantic.”

  Jenn plopped down on the edge of my bed, her long legs stretched out in front of her. She wore a pair of blue shorts and a white see-through blouse with small blue flowers printed on it. Under that she wore a blue tank top. Her skin was a lovely early tan color. Mine, in contrast, was still northern winter pale. “You are going to have to get up the nerve to ask someone out. These island guys are a bit slow. At this rate you could be dateless for a year before one of them worked up the nerve.”

  “What if it’s not nerve they need to work up?” I grabbed a clean pair of black slacks out of my closet, slipped them on, and hung up my robe so that I stood in my bra. “What if they’re seriously not interested?”

  “What do you mean ‘not interested’?” Jenn frowned at me. “I happen to know Trent and you . . .”

  “That was for show.” I grabbed a clean polo out of my dresser drawer and pulled it over my head. “Besides, my priority right now is the McMurphy.”

  “Right, that’s why you’re wearing an ankle bracelet and wandering through the Jessops’ woods.” She sat up straight. “Which, by the way, you never did tell me how you ended up out there.”

  “I was following Mrs. Finch.”

  “The old lady with the Saint Bernard?”

  “Daisy, yes.” I squeezed the ends of my hair with the towel one last time. “Mrs. Finch told Rex she was going to go home and get Daisy’s leash and come back and rescue her baby.”

  “Okay.” Jenn shrugged. “So how did you end up all the way on the other side of the island?”

  “When I left the administration building I noticed that Mrs. Finch was walking in the opposite direction from her house.”

  “So you followed her.”

  I shrugged. “She was acting weird. Do you know she was part of a cult group that met on the island back in the early seventies?”

  “What? Really? Like Scientology or something?”

  “Something,” I said and twisted my damp hair into a bun at the back of my neck. Then I sat down to put on makeup. It was three PM in the afternoon, and I had two fudge demonstrations scheduled for four and five PM, respectively. “She said that she doesn’t need a leash to control Daisy. She commands her by her thoughts while in Transcendental Meditation.”

  “What? That’s so weird. So she goes into a trance and orders Daisy home.”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, now that is really bizarre. Does she wear like flowy clothes and mood rings and such?” Jenn’s eyes lit up.

  “No. She had on brown trousers and a white printed T-shirt.”

  “Oh, sad, then she’s not outwardly like a Wiccan or psychic or any of that?”

  “I don’t know. Why—do Wiccans dress in a certain way?”

  Jenn shrugged. “Some do. Some are just regular people who believe in the earth and the seasons and cycles of nature.”

  “Papa Liam used to love to tell ghost stories when we would sit around a bonfire. Did you know about the drowning pool?”

  “No, what is that?”

  “It’s between Mission Point and downtown . . .” I paused in putting on foundation. “I hadn’t thought of it in years but now that I mention it I realize that Mrs. Finch was headed in that direction.”

  “What direction? What drowning pool? You’ve been holding out on me.”

  I shook my head. “Back in the late 1700s, early 1800s, there was a hysteria movement on Mackinac and something like seven women were accused of being witches.”

  “No!”

  “Right? Yep. Rocks were tied around their ankles and they were tossed into the drowning pool. Supposedly, if they sank they were innocent—if they floated they were witches and were to be hanged.”

  “Gruesome.” Jenn shook her head.

  “Right? Either way you were a dead person.” I leaned into my mirror and put on mascara.

  “Why were they accused?”

  “Supposedly they were enticing unsuspecting soldiers, fur traders, and—get this—husbands into their houses.”

  “Oh my gosh.” Jenn rolled her eyes. “So they killed off prostitutes by drowning them?”

  “If they were even prostitutes,” I said and put on a touch of lip gloss. “They might have simply been single women in a time when single women were not tolerated. Like you said, unless you take a vow of celibacy, you aren’t going to abstain from sex.”

  “Okay, that’s crazy.”

  I stood. “I can see it. Can’t you? The so-called respectable women of the island had to get rid of this threat to their families. Or worse, one of the girls might have spurned an important member of the community and they cried witch.”

  “Creepy.” Jenn stood with me. “So glad we live in the twenty-first century.”

  “Yeah, we only murder our rivals and shove their bodies in a chipper-shredder.”

  “Well, okay, if you put it that way, we really haven’t advanced all that much, have we?”

  “It’s crazy.” I shook my head. “What’s on your plate? How are the plans for the second tea?”

  “Plans are great,” Jenn said and followed me out to the kitchen. “I’ve billed it as exclusive seating and now we could be double booked if we wanted.”

  “Great! How’s Sandy doing with her sculptures?”

  “She has created these wonderful horse-and-carriage pieces and is giving each table its own float design with samples of fudge inside.”

  “I’m glad she decided to work here,” I said as we moved down the stairs. “I have no idea how good a chef Tammy Gooseworthy is, but my guess would be she can’t beat the raw talent Sandy has.”

  “I’m glad you hired her, she’s a real asset. What do you think about my going into business with Sandy? Between my party-planning skills, your hotel, and Sandy’s chocolate sculptures, we could corner the wedding market.”

  “That may help our niche,” I said. “What about the reality-television show?”

  “Oh, I didn’t get in.” She waved her hand as if it was no big deal. “Which is fine, I don’t want to have to pretend I can make fudge and worse, I didn’t want to become a persona.”

  “Right?” I reached the bottom of the stairs. “What if we added another floor to the McMurphy? We could make it a ballroom here and we could host receptions, etc.”

  “It could really expand the business,” Jenn said. “Can you afford it and will the historical society allow you to build it?”

  “I could ask Mom and Dad if they want to invest in the McMurphy.”

  “Where is your mom?” Jenn asked. “I keep missing her today.”

  “She went to visit her old friends. She told me not to worry or wait up.”

  “Don’t wait up—that sounds as if she has more than meeting friends in mind.”

  “What? No, this is my mother we’re talking about.” I shook my head. “She would never cheat on my father.”

  “Hmmm,” Jenn said.

  “What?”

  “Why come all the way up here if she didn’t have an agenda in mind?”

  “That’s what I asked her.”

  “What was her reply?” Jenn leaned in closer, and I lowered my voice.

  “She thinks we’re doing an okay job but she also thinks the McMurphy is simply a money pit.”

  “What? No!”

  “Yes.” I nodded.

  “Well, then I wouldn’t spring your new plans on her.”

  “What new plans?” My mom came in through the back door of the McMurphy. She had Mal on her leash. Mal ran to me.

  I pick
ed her up and gave her pets, then removed her halter and leash and hung them on the hall coat-tree. “Hi, Mom. Did you have a good time?”

  “Yes.”

  “How were your friends?” Jenn asked.

  “They were good,” Mom said. “Now tell me what these plans are?”

  “I don’t have a full-fledged plan yet,” I said. “I’ll let you know when I decide I’m going to do it.”

  “Do what?”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s not important.”

  “How can you say that? I thought you loved the McMurphy.”

  “I do love the McMurphy.” I shook my head. “That’s why I’m looking at all the options before I make my decision.”

  “Am I one of your options?” Mom asked. Today she wore old blue jeans and a soft striped blouse with the front ends tucked into her jeans.

  “We’re holding another tea the last day of the Lilac Festival,” Jenn said. “Do you want to come? We can save you a seat. It’s a dressy occasion and Sandy is making sculpted chocolate centerpieces. These works of candy art will be for sale the night of the event.”

  “Frances is making lilac-infused tea and I’ll serve cucumber sandwiches and my lilac fudge.”

  “Sounds cute,” Mom said. “Where are you holding this tea?”

  “We’ve reserved space on the lawn at the base of the fort,” I said.

  “That seems a little awkward,” Mom said and put her hands on her hips. “It’s too bad the McMurphy doesn’t have a ballroom or meeting rooms.”

  Jenn turned to me and gestured with her eyes for me to tell Mom. I shook my head no. “Yes, Mrs. McMurphy, it is a shame. There are a lot of events I could plan in a ballroom.”

  “Allie”—my mom touched my arm—“you should really consider adding on to the McMurphy. Perhaps after this first season.”

  “Mom, I already remodeled. I need to be in the black before I spend any more money.”

  “I can get your dad to pay for any additions you might want.”

  “No,” I said and realized my tone was a tad sharp. “I already owe you and Dad for the remodel fees.”