All You Need Is Fudge

by Nancy CoCo

  “Thanks.” I felt the heat of a blush rush over my cheeks. “Oh . . . go see your doctor. You might still have a tiny amount of drug in you to prove you were slipped something.”

  “It’s a long shot, but I’ll go.” He walked back toward the bar and I headed into the crowd on Main Street.

  I pulled out my phone and texted Trent. I miss you. At least let me know you and Paige are okay. ~Allie

  All my sleuthing hadn’t gotten me very far. Maybe I should go see Liz and find out what the press knew about Carin’s last day on earth. I was missing something.

  I was stubborn enough to keep looking until I found it. I don’t know if that was considered a good trait or not, but it was all I had.

  Chocolate Chip Pecan Bread Pudding

  Ingredients

  8 cups cubed bread (Choose French bread or

  premium white bread.)

  6 eggs

  1 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk

  ¾ cup dark corn syrup

  ½ cup brown sugar, packed

  ½ cup butter, melted

  2 teaspoons vanilla

  1 cup coarsely chopped pecans

  1 cup chocolate chips

  Directions

  In a large bowl, beat eggs until fluffy. Blend in the sweetened condensed milk, corn syrup, brown sugar, butter, and vanilla until well combined.

  Fold in bread cubes, pecans, and chocolate chips. Pour into a greased 13- x 9-inch baking pan and allow to sit for 30 minutes so that the bread absorbs the egg mixture.

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

  Bake 40-45 minutes until golden brown. Remove from oven. Cool for 5 minutes.

  You can serve this warm or refrigerate and serve cold. Enjoy!

  Chapter 13

  “Bringing me fudge as a bribe does not mean I’m going to tell you anything important,” Angus McElroy said as he dove into the sampler box I brought by the Town Crier office.

  “I didn’t expect you to spill any beans,” I said casually. “I’m just glad you haven’t gotten out the rabbit’s foot.” He had a habit of taking out a lucky rabbit’s foot whenever I was nearby. He claimed I had a penchant for finding old men dead. Since he wanted to stay alive for a while longer, he kept the rabbit’s foot to counter my bad juju.

  “Oh, I don’t need the foot anymore. I’ve got a rope of garlic around my neck.” He pulled out a necklace made of tiny garlic bulbs.

  “Well, that will come in handy should we run across any vampires,” I said.

  “It works for bad juju, too. I read it on the Internet. We all know that anything on the Internet is gospel.”

  I rolled my eyes and he chuckled. Angus reminded me of my Papa Liam—all bluster and teasing. I liked him and I swear he liked me even if he did pretend to be superstitious about the bodies I found.

  “Carin Moore was neither old nor a man,” I said. “So you can just put away your theory that I am responsible for the deaths of men your age.”

  “That poor girl had a viper’s tongue and not a lot of friends, but that didn’t mean she should have ended up dead.”

  “I know,” I said, leaning against the counter. “I think we all think it would be cool if mean girls got bumped off, but when it happens in real life it’s not so great.”

  “She was only twenty-eight”—he took another piece of fudge—“way too young to lose her life.”

  “I don’t really know that much about her. I thought I’d see what, if anything, the newspaper had on her. I mean, I hear she was homecoming queen her senior year of high school. There must be more such write-ups in the newspaper archives.”

  “Oh, probably a thing or two,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. He wore a white dress shirt with red suspenders holding up black slacks. His short sleeves were rolled up revealing large forearms and big hands. “Most of the information will be in the obituary that comes out in tonight’s paper.”

  “Who wrote the obit?”

  “We ask the family to do that. It’s really personal.”

  “Oh, that’s right. My father wrote Papa Liam’s obituary.” I frowned. “Who in Carin’s family wrote hers?”

  “Her mother passed, you know, so the job went to her oldest sister.”

  “Wait. Carin had siblings?”

  “Sure, an older sister and a younger brother.” Angus shook his head. “Those three were trouble, but Carin was the worst of them. That girl was always too big for her britches.”

  “Do they live on the island?”

  “No, her sister lives in Detroit and her brother in Flint. He gave me a sideways look. “You really need to Google the girl.” He pointed to the computer in the corner. “We scanned in our archives in the 1990s. Everything is available on the Internet. We like to think we have some control of our data if we keep it in-house. Don’t know if that’s true or not, but that’s our story and we’re sticking to it.”

  I went over to the computer monitor and keyboard and pulled up a chair. A wiggle of the mouse brought up the screen search bar. I typed in CARIN MOORE. There wasn’t a whole lot—two pages at best of links that started with her birth announcement to a first grade play to fifth grade Girl Scouts to high school and homecoming and college. In between was a debutant ball, but nothing criminal. It ended of course with the report of me pulling her body from the water and her obituary. All in all, a sad thought that someone so young left so quickly.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see Liz standing beside me. Her curly, dark hair was pulled back into a low ponytail. She wore a striped camp shirt, navy Bermuda shorts, and black Keds. “We’re getting ready to close.”

  “Okay.” I closed out of the computer. “There wasn’t that much to read anyway.”

  “Who are you researching? Paige or Carin?”

  “Carin. I did everything I could think of for Paige so I thought maybe if I tried to figure out who would hurt Carin, I could do a better job.”

  Liz frowned. “What makes you want to solve this puzzle?”

  “You mean besides trying to prove to Trent and his family that I’m one of them?” I asked as I stood. “I suppose I feel compelled to know who would do this to Carin.”

  “I could name a dozen people who would have liked to,” Liz said with a shrug. “Carin wasn’t nice to anyone. I swear she had to feel really bad to put so many people down. It didn’t matter who it was, she had to be better than them every time.”

  “Usually a middle child is the one to calm the waters and be a good negotiator . . . if you believe in birth order theory. So why was Carin such an exception to the norm?”

  “Probably because her older sister was prettier and was the honor student, the homecoming queen, the lilac queen, valedictorian of her class, went to Harvard, and married into a very wealthy family. Her younger brother was the son of the house. He got all the joy of being the boy, the heir, and the baby of the family.”

  “So Carin never got enough self-esteem at home,” I surmised as we stepped out of the newspaper office and Liz locked the front door. “That had to be tough.”

  “Carin made up for it by being demanding and petty and downright mean. I hated her in school, but then again, so did many others.”

  “Did you hate her enough to kill her?” I asked.

  Liz laughed out loud at the idea. “Ha! Sometimes I wanted to punch her in the face and knock her teeth out, but no, I never really wanted her dead. I tried very hard to understand her. She was pathetically lonely.”

  “Until Eleanor showed up,” I pointed out. “From what I understand, they were inseparable.”

  “Eleanor.” Liz shook her head. “That poor creature. I don’t know why she put up with Carin’s abuse, but she did. She let Carin push her around all through high school and then followed her to college. It’s crazy. I swear she got the job as manager of yacht club operations to be close to Carin.”

  “What did Carin have that Eleanor wanted? I mean why else would she be so loyal?”

  “Maybe Carin blackmailed E
leanor,” Liz said with a tad too much glee in her voice. “Like that movie, I Know What You Did Last Summer.”

  “Oh, stop.” I shook my head. “Just because a relationship doesn’t make sense to you doesn’t mean it is blackmail or murder.”

  “I know. I was just joking,” Liz said as she walked with me toward Main Street. “Did you go see Eleanor?”

  “I did, but I didn’t get why you sent me to her. She really didn’t have anything to offer me.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “She said that she thought Paige was guilty, that Paige and Carin got into a fight at the yacht club, and that Janet Biggs could corroborate the story.”

  “Yes,” Liz said. “She told me that, too, but I didn’t see enough motive in that for Rex to arrest Paige. What have the Jessops told you? Why was Paige charged for the murder?”

  “I don’t know,” I said with a disgusted shrug. “Trent hasn’t talked to me since Paige was arrested.”

  “Ouch. I’m sorry.”

  “I know. I feel as if they are blaming me so I got ahold of Paige’s boyfriend Reggie Owens.”

  “What does he say about it?”

  “They shut him out, too.” I shoved my hands into the pockets of my black slacks. “It seems it’s not personal.”

  “I bet it feels personal,” Liz said.

  I nodded my agreement. “Yes, it feels very personal. I would have hoped that Trent would come to me for support and comfort. Instead, all I get are messages that say, ‘Stay out of it.’”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yes, I know. It only makes me want to help more.”

  “What if Paige did it?” Liz asked.

  I stopped in my tracks and stared at her. “What? Of course Paige didn’t do it. Not even accidently. I’m certain this wasn’t an accident. I’m certain that Paige is being framed.”

  “What makes you so certain?”

  “I know Paige. She’s no more capable of hurting someone than I am.”

  “That’s saying a lot since you have been known to defend yourself,” Liz said.

  “I’ve never killed anyone,” I protested. “Nor would I.”

  Liz shrugged. “If it were me against someone, I’d certainly ensure it wasn’t me.”

  I shook my head. “Someone pinched that oar from the Scoundrel, ensured that Paige’s prints were on it, and then snuck up behind Carin and clocked her on the base of the skull. That is premeditated if you ask me and means it wasn’t self-defense. There is no way Paige would do that. Besides, who puts the oar back in the boat right on the top deck to be easily found by the police? No, this was not a crime of passion.”

  “Someone had to have a lot of hate for Carin to go to all that trouble,” Liz said thoughtfully.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  We headed toward the McMurphy. The streets were clearing a bit as families were headed off the island and boaters were headed toward their parties.

  “That’s why you were looking up information on Carin,” Liz said. “There wasn’t much published.”

  “Yeah.” I frowned. “Nothing that would cause someone to plan and execute her murder. I’m really stuck on the motive. I don’t understand what Rex has decided is motive. When I was looking into Paige’s actions that last day I didn’t see anything that would suggest she wanted or needed to kill Carin.”

  “Eleanor suggested that Paige and Carin fought over Reggie,” Liz said.

  I looked at Liz. “You know better than that.”

  “Yes.” She sighed. “My research didn’t turn up anything on that end but rumor and conjecture. In fact, Reggie denied the entire thing.”

  “So if it wasn’t Reggie, who was it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sometimes it’s easier to tell a lie if you stick close to the truth,” I said. “Someone wants us all to think Carin was killed over a dispute about a man. If it wasn’t Reggie, who was it?”

  “Well, that’s a good question.” Liz gave me a long look. “You are very good at this. You should be a reporter.”

  “I’m a fudge maker. I’m not as good a writer as you are.”

  “But you are a good investigator. You have skills, girl.” She pushed me and we both laughed.

  I stopped short as I came face-to-face with Rex. He was in full uniform and a formidable figure of a man.

  “Allie. Liz.”

  “Hi Rex.” I swallowed hard. “I haven’t seen you in a few days. How’s the murder investigation going?”

  He tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  For some reason the look in his blue, blue eyes made me feel a flash of guilt.

  “She thinks you arrested the wrong person,” Liz said, crossing her arms in front of her.

  “Oh, she does, does she?” Rex looked from her to me. “Why would you think that, Allie?”

  “Because Paige doesn’t have a motive. Whoever did this thought it through enough to have hit Carin from behind with an oar that had Paige’s fingerprints on it. An oar that should not have been on the pier that night because the Scoundrel was out on the lake.”

  “How do you know Paige doesn’t have a motive?” He crossed his arms and spread his legs wide, intimidating me a little.

  I lifted my chin in response. “Because Reggie wasn’t messing around with Carin. He told me so himself.”

  “Maybe he lied,” Rex said softly.

  “Why would he lie to me?” I asked and drew my eyebrows together.

  “To save Paige,” Rex continued. “You’d be surprised what people will say to protect the woman they love.”

  Why did I blush at that statement? I was dating Trent for goodness sakes. Still, there was something about Rex that could turn a girl’s head if she wasn’t careful.

  “What if Reggie wasn’t lying?” Liz asked. “What does that do to Paige’s motive?”

  “Motive or not, how can Paige be guilty if she was out on the lake with her friends at the time Carin was killed? We both know the Scoundrel wasn’t docked when I found Carin. That means they either left very early or didn’t come back until late.”

  “I can’t talk about the case,” Rex said. “All I can do is advise you not to get involved.”

  “How can I not get involved?” I asked. “Paige is a good friend.”

  “She’s practically Allie’s sister,” Liz added. “Isn’t that right, Allie?”

  “Sure,” I said, although it sounded lame. I didn’t look at Rex. I didn’t want to see if he’d flinched.

  “I’m going to advise you both to leave this to the proper authorities.” His gaze was on Liz.

  She didn’t seem as easily flustered as I was. “The public has a right to know what is going on with this case.”

  “That’s what press conferences are for. And Allie, if you want details of the case, you should ask the Jessops.”

  “They won’t tell me anything,” I blurted.

  “They might have a good reason why,” Rex said, his tone suddenly soft. “Have a good day, ladies.” With that, he walked between us and down the street.

  We both stared for a moment at his toned backside.

  “Well, that wasn’t helpful,” Liz said.

  “I agree. If he knows Paige was out on the lake, how can he say she is a suspect in Carin’s murder?”

  “Maybe he thinks that she got into the lifeboat and rowed to the pier where she confronted Carin, hit her with the oar, then got back in the boat and rowed back to the Scoundrel.” Liz hypothesized.

  “That’s ridiculous. Wouldn’t using the oar destroy the blood evidence?”

  “Maybe that’s what the killer hoped, but if there were any cracks or splinters from the blow, blood or even hair could have gotten caught. Maybe that’s what they found in the lab.”

  I frowned. “I’m going to see what Shane will tell me.”

  “I already tried, but he won’t talk to me,” Liz said.

  “Yes, well, I have an insider who might be able to
get some information out of him.”

  “Oh, can I use her as a source?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Isn’t secondhand information not useful?”

  “Only in a court of law,” Liz said with a grin. “Come on. Let’s buy Jenn a cup of coffee and see if she’s learned anything new.”

  Chapter 14

  Early the next morning when the first batches of fudge were done, I took Mal out for her walk . . . away from the marina. Most of the yachts had arrived and the marina was filled with people coming and going at all hours. It was good for the coffee shop, but not so good for me.

  The sun was slowly rising in the east and the sky was deep blue in the west as we walked down Main Street. Jenn hadn’t been able to help us any further. It seemed that Shane was tight-lipped on the evidence in the case. So far, my biggest leads had come from the senior center. Perhaps I’d go back with more fudge and see what new rumors might have popped up.

  I remembered that one woman had said Ronald, not Reggie as Paige’s boyfriend, and everyone had corrected her. What if the man involved in Carin’s murder was Ronald and not Paige’s Reggie? If so, who was Ronald? And why would he kill Carin . . . or worse, cause someone else to kill her?

  We turned the corner and I saw Mrs. Tunisian and Mrs. Albert power walking toward us. They wore pastel jogging suits with white stripes that looked as if they had been purchased in the eighties, but the shoes they wore were bright white and brand new walkers. Both women walked with purpose and huffed and puffed in the early morning air.

  “Allie, good to see you,” Mrs. Tunisian said. “Is this your little dog?”

  “Yes, this is Mal—short for Marshmallow.”

  Mal stood up and did a little pirouette for them as a means of introduction.

  “Oh so cute,” Mrs. Albert said. “What a smart little girl you are, too.” The older woman reached down and patted Mal’s head.

  “So, Allie, how goes the investigation?” Mrs. Tunisian asked. “Do you know who did it yet?”