Hot Fudge Frame-Up: A Fudge Shop Mystery

by Christine DeSmet

  Pauline said, “Where would you move your fudge business? I don’t recall much that’s empty around here.”

  “Except the Blue Heron Inn, which is closed and owned by somebody out east.”

  “There’s that creepy empty mansion over at the other end of Fishers’ Harbor where . . .”

  Pauline purposely didn’t finish that sentence. My shoulders hunched up in a huge shudder. I’d almost been murdered in May in that big old yellow house by the woman who had run the Blue Heron Inn. She’d murdered a visiting actress at the inn, trying to pin it on me with my fudge stuffed down the actress’s throat. Then, after I suspected her treachery, I went in search of Gilpa and Cody, who had both gone missing. They’d been left for dead in an old cistern in the basement of the empty mansion. Isabelle Boone had planned to shove me in that cistern, too, and brick us all into our tomb. By distracting her with a precious Steuben statue of hers that I’d threatened to break, I’d subdued her. The whole episode made me vow never to go back to that empty, three-story mausoleum. Ironically, I’d always thought I wanted to live in a big house, particularly after living in efficiencies in Los Angeles, but I was changing my mind. Big houses brought me bad luck.

  Pauline said, “John wants to go to the fish boil tonight at the Troubled Trout. Are you guys game?”

  That was nicer small talk. “I’m game,” I said, with great cheer in my voice for Laura. “They serve the whitefish with a nice garlic butter and that cherry salsa. I heard they have watermelon tonight, too, with sweet pickle ice cream.”

  Laura rolled down her window, then threw up into the wind.

  Lucky Harbor barked sharply behind me as Pauline thumped the back of my head with a finger in admonishment for making Laura sick.

  Pauline said, “Sometimes, A.M., you forget to engage your brain before you speak.”

  She was right.

  From there on out, I didn’t say a word all the way to Sturgeon Bay.

  * * *

  About an hour later, the nurses had moved Laura from the emergency room into a private room. She wasn’t having the babies yet. The doctor wanted Laura to go her full term. The babies needed all the time inside Mom they could get. Laura’s blood pressure wasn’t normal, so the doc was keeping her overnight to get that regulated.

  Laura was too young for this kind of trouble. She was in her midtwenties, but right now in the bed she looked about fifteen. I’d met her in May when I’d needed some white chocolate to make Cinderella Pink Fudge in a pinch. She had made the best hot cheesy bread and shared it with us that day at her shop, the Luscious Ladle. She’d needed our help carrying the heavy loaves to the nearby Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant. Now, almost two months later, she needed Pauline and me; I felt like we were sisters.

  Minutes later, as Pauline and I walked down a staircase that led to a side door, I said, “I wish her husband could come home.”

  Laura had said he was on a special mission, and messages could be sent through to him, but she’d refused to pursue it. She didn’t want to alarm her husband for just a blood pressure correction and an overnight stay. I ached for her, though, because of how lonely she must be. I was surrounded by family and too many men, and she had none. Her relatives were in other states, too, and she didn’t want them rushing to her side needlessly.

  The echoing slap of our shoes in the quiet stairwell and the antiseptic smell somehow contributed to my sadness for Laura.

  We left the hospital by the side door, then circled around to the E.R. parking area.

  When we got back to my pickup, the dog was gone. “Crap.” I’d left the windows down because of the hot day. “Dillon’s going to kill me.”

  “Stop using that word. Kill. I don’t allow it in my classroom.”

  “Have you forgotten I was almost killed in May, and now there are silly notes that insinuate I might be killed? If I had a perfume named after me, it’d be the ‘Scent of Killing.’”

  “Don’t snap at me, Ava. What silly notes?” Pauline put an arm around my shoulders.

  “Sorry. It’s been a rough morning.” I explained the lighthouse episode and the note.

  Pauline said, “And here I thought those two chefs were merely being arrested for fighting. They could be murderers. Is your fudge contest falling apart?”

  She was likely worried for John and his big dream for a culinary travel show. “I’m sure by now Jordy’s had the two chefs take a look at the window and nothing came of it, so John is safe. The rock was likely thrown by some kid from the campground. Let’s find Dillon’s dog. Is there a grocery store or candy shop nearby? That dog loves to eat and he has a sixth sense for sniffing out sugar.”

  We were climbing into the front seats when Pauline pointed through the windshield toward the emergency room doors. “Look.”

  Lucky Harbor was curled up in the deep shade by a big brown flowerpot, sleeping. We hadn’t seen him at first because he matched the color of the pot.

  Pauline said, “He was waiting for you to come back through that way because that’s the way you went inside, not the other exit. He’s smarter than you.”

  “That’s easy enough,” I said. I got back out of the truck and called, “Want some fudge?”

  The furry brown head popped up; then he bounded to me with his tail wagging. After a Goldfish, I gave him a head scratch. “Let’s go back to the fudge shop.”

  He raced to the truck, going to the back, expecting me to lower the tailgate. Obviously Dillon let him ride often in the open truck bed, but that was around Fishers’ Harbor at twenty miles an hour.

  “No, Lucky Harbor. You get the whole backseat to yourself. Come.”

  After I got in, he slurped the back of my neck as I pulled out of the hospital’s parking area.

  The sun was beginning to move overhead by the time we got near Fishers’ Harbor. It was nearly noon. I trusted Gilpa would be handling the shop just fine, so instead of driving into Fishers’ Harbor, I took a right turn off Highway 42 just before town and went inland.

  “Where we going?” Pauline asked. “I’m supposed to be meeting with my Butterflies’ parents to start making their parade costumes.”

  “Wasn’t Bethany volunteering to help? She can handle it.” Bethany Bjorklund was Cody’s girlfriend—in his eyes, anyway. Whatever the relationship, she was kind, and she signed on to help with the fudge festival and the fudge shop parade floats.

  Pauline fished her phone from her humongous purse, sending paper scraps and notepads and pens flying. “I’ll call her. So, where are we going?”

  “To Lloyd Mueller’s. All this secrecy about the property that affects my grandparents is odd. And him dissing my pink fudge is double-fudge odd. Lloyd acts like he’s scared of something.”

  “You’re reading too much into this.”

  “Pauline, that note said Lloyd should throw the contest, so I don’t win.”

  “It was a prank. You know how your life works. As soon as you have a few good days, you end up with something bad. Right now we’re in the good.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “You’re not dead, for one thing.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Please, can’t we just leave well enough alone?” She was stuffing papers and pens back into her purse. “I don’t think anything good can come of poking a stick at a bear in his cave.”

  “Lloyd is not a bear. He’s my grandfather’s best friend.”

  “You’re walking right into something really bad, Ava.”

  “Pauline, you’re not helping.”

  “Sorry.”

  * * *

  Lloyd lived in a large, late-1800s, two-story white house with black shutters on a wooded hill on the outskirts of Fishers’ Harbor. The land rose just high enough so you could glimpse the boating traffic on Lake Michigan to the north over the tops of the maple trees and village buil
dings. A Swedish fishing fleet captain had built the house the year before he lost his life on the lake in a wintry squall.

  I’d visited Lloyd’s home a few times as a little girl with my grandpa and grandma and remembered it feeling huge and very dark inside. We pulled to a stop a few feet from a cherry red door in the circular brick driveway. Several robins were fighting over the water spraying and cascading from a sizable, but plain, three-tiered concrete fountain that rose above my height in the center of the circle.

  “Lucky birds,” I mumbled to Pauline. “They have water this morning.”

  Pauline and I were barely out of the pickup when the home’s front door popped open. Lloyd came forward with a limp that seemed endemic to being in one’s seventies. Gilpa and Grandma had similar limps, especially in the evenings after a long day. Lloyd was dressed in a teal golf polo shirt bearing a designer shark logo and matching plaid shorts that grazed the wrinkles above his knees. His legs were skinny as cornstalks. He wore sporty white golfing shoes. One hand massaged his salt-and-pepper mustache. Sunlight highlighted the age spots atop his bald head. His eyes penetrated me in a way that chilled.

  Maybe Pauline had been right; we’d made a mistake coming here unannounced.

  “Hello, Lloyd. Listen, I can come back later, but could we set up a time to talk about the fudge contest?”

  “Ava,” he said, his countenance softening as he reached out his hands to clasp mine with priestlike solemnity, “we must talk about your fudge, indeed. Fishers’ Harbor is in trouble. You and I were threatened. Somebody’s gonna die, I heard. And I know who it is.”

  Chapter 4

  Lloyd glanced about the outdoor environs as if he feared somebody were spying on us. He ushered Pauline and me inside. I left Lucky Harbor outside to enjoy the shade trees. Or to run home to Dillon. Dillon’s backhoe was grinding away only three-quarters of a mile away in our downtown.

  Inside the house, the air-conditioning refreshed us with dehumidified air. We followed Lloyd through a breathtaking, open layout filled with Wisconsin wildlife prints on the walls and tasteful sandstone-colored leather furniture as well as a dining room area with a resplendent cherry-wood-and-glass table and matching cherry chairs. A collection of cups and saucers—in vintage floral patterns—filled three wide shelves of a glass-fronted cupboard. The second story had been opened up in the center of the living area to create a rotunda with a stained glass dome skylight. It dripped hues of gold, red, emerald green, and blue onto the dark oak floors.

  Lloyd led us into a library in the back with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a massive rose garden sporting blooms of every color imaginable, from sunny yellow to pale peach, to even a smoky blue. Bees worked the flowers in a choreographed fashion.

  I said, “Did you know flowers give off electricity? The bees detect it. There’s a true attraction between flowers and bees that goes beyond the color or even the perfume.”

  “You’ve always been a science whiz. Your grandpa is so proud of you. And grateful that you’ve come back to stay in Door County.”

  I beamed like a little kid who’d just received an A on her botany project.

  He motioned for me to take a seat in an antique wicker chair filled with floral cushions. He then pointed out one for Pauline, saying, “And you’re keeping up Wisconsin’s proud heritage as the country’s birthplace of kindergarten. We Germans had a hand in that.”

  Our state was founded in 1848 with a constitution guaranteeing an education for every child, starting at the age of four. Wisconsin’s first kindergarten began in 1856. A German invented the “kindergarten” concept and coined the term. I could imagine Pauline’s little Butterflies frolicking amid the aisles of Lloyd’s rosebushes.

  Lloyd took bottles of water from a compact refrigerator under a table behind us that served as a desk. He gave a bottle to me, then Pauline. Lloyd opened a bottle, too, but didn’t sit down with us. He paced with his limp, as if agitated with the malady or something else—like his mention of somebody dying. Pauline blabbered on about her Butterflies decorating little red wagons with Cinderella Pink Fudge fairy-tale designs for the parade a week from tomorrow. I could tell her antennae for trouble were up, too.

  I was eager to get to our serious subject. “Lloyd, I take it you talked with Libby about the rock thrown through her window?”

  “She called me this morning just after she’d unlocked the door at the lighthouse. I advised her to call the sheriff right away.”

  “We think it’s just a kid from the campground.”

  Lloyd flashed me a look that said I was wrong. “There are people around Door County who disagree with how I run my business affairs. I hope that doesn’t include you.”

  Goose bumps popped up on my arms. “I must admit I’ve been wondering why I’d have to be out of my cabin by Sunday. It was sudden.”

  “Has your grandfather questioned it?”

  “No.”

  “Because he understands how these deals work.” Lloyd eased his scarecrow body into a chair to my left. He put his water bottle on the side table between us, then paused, as if to draw sustenance from the floral view. “To make sure this deal went through, I had to guarantee all the cabins I rent would be emptied posthaste. I even paid extra to speed up your boyfriend’s construction company work on the Main Street water mains.”

  “Dillon’s not my boyfriend.”

  Pauline choked.

  I ignored her. “Are you turning Duck Marsh Street into condos and a helipad?”

  He rubbed his head. “Of course not. And I can’t say anything about the project until the deal goes through.”

  “When is that?”

  “We sign the papers tomorrow night over dinner.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  He shook a finger at me but with a smile behind it. “I’m sworn to secrecy. Business deals are like that. But let’s talk about that threatening note. I don’t think you should go through with your fudge contest.”

  “But a lot of people have already entered. And a pie contest is too ordinary.”

  Pauline said, “Belgians are known for pies. And the word ‘Belgian’ is part of your shop’s name.”

  “It’s Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers and Belgian Fudge, Pauline, not Belgian Pies.”

  “Don’t forget you swapped out the apostrophe on that sign to the plural form, then tacked up ‘Beer’ again on the end of the sign. Just tack up the word ‘Pie’ after that and you’re good to go.”

  Belgian stubbornness fits with the feisty personality of everybody who founded Fishers’ Harbor, including those hearty Icelanders, Swedes, Finns, Norwegians, and Germans. In fact, while other towns dropped the apostrophe at the end of their town name long ago—Baileys Harbor, Rowleys Bay, Gills Rock—Fishers’ Harbor had proudly claimed fame over the years for their little apostrophe that set them apart.

  I turned back to Lloyd. “This note and rock event is just a kid’s prank. It’d be silly to stop the fudge contest now. I’m willing to defy whoever’s threatening us.”

  Pauline choked. She did that a lot around me.

  Lloyd’s cheeks pinked with excitement. “Give the contest lots of publicity. See who gets upset about it. When they threaten us again, we nab them.”

  Pauline said, “Both of you are nuts. You’re talking about possibly teasing somebody out to kill one of you.”

  “Pauline, you used the ‘K’ word.”

  “I know, but this is scary and my kindergarteners aren’t around.”

  “John will love the fudge contest if it gets bigger and flashier. You should love this idea, Pauline.”

  Lloyd got up again to limp about. “That note has to be taken seriously. This is not a fictional adventure like your little television show you worked on in L.A.”

  Everybody called the situation comedy I worked at in Los Angeles for about seven years a “little�
� show. That bugged me, and yet I was glad to be away from the miserable, manic bunch of guys who wrote the Topsy-Turvy Girls. They didn’t let me get more than an occasional idea written into the scripts after they bought my first script, which landed me a job. I ended up in charge of things like the cast’s chow, and that’s how I began making fudge. I had needed a creative outlet and more money to live on.

  Lloyd limped over to his bookshelves. They covered three walls, floor to ceiling. A wooden ladder on wheels was mounted on each section for easy access to the top shelves. He bent down and from a lower shelf chose several slender paperback volumes from one spot. With reverence in his motions, he placed the stack in my lap, then sat down.

  “Those are yours to keep. Come back anytime to that section of the shelves and take more.”

  The books were community cookbooks, the kind that churches and clubs put together with their members to sell as a fund-raiser. My parents and grandparents had several tucked away in cupboards and drawers. The covers on some of these were deteriorating. Lignin in wood that’s left unbleached when used in papers like newsprint will turn yellow and brown when exposed to air. I eased a cover open. The copyright was 1906!

  “Oh, Lloyd. These are antiques filled with heirloom recipes.”

  “Those particular ones belonged to my grandmother and mother. A couple are from the Old Country.” He meant Germany. “They’re yours to keep.”

  “Lloyd, I can’t accept these. They belong to your family.”

  “I don’t have much for family, nobody here in the States, anyway. Shirttail relatives back in Germany certainly. And Libby doesn’t want the books. After you asked me to be a fudge judge, it prompted me to look up old recipes for fudge. I knew nothing about the candy confection. Those books might give you ideas for better flavors and colors than that modern pink stuff. Fudge has been around for years and with roots in Europe. I have a chocolate cup in my collection, which you viewed in passing minutes ago. When I was a boy, it was common to enjoy hot chocolate with a confection on a rainy afternoon.”

  I understood now what he was all about. He hadn’t been dissing my fudge; he was dissing my whole approach to the contest. “You think the contest should educate people about our heritage in Door County? I should make the contest bigger than just little old me trying out new flavors? I should create a fervor for fudge?”