Hot Fudge Frame-Up: A Fudge Shop Mystery

by Christine DeSmet

  I was stunned. Yet she knew me better than I knew myself. “Of course I’m afraid, Pauline. Every time something good comes my way, it turns sour. And I don’t know how to get out of that cycle.”

  “Stop thrashing about like one of those frogs in the lake that Lucky Harbor chases after. Do something worthy in your life and you might get out of that cycle. Sure, you messed up in the past pretty badly and embarrassed yourself. You feel unworthy of being loved. But eight years has passed since the Dillon debacle. It’s time to take action. I tell my students all the time that old saying—excuses are the poetry of failure. You should heed it, too.”

  She was right. With fire in my belly I ripped off the apron and slung it toward the stack of the others still sitting on my counter. I grabbed her big purse off her shoulder. “Let’s look at those architectural plans. Did you look at them again?”

  “No. I’ve been busy calling around Door County for more red wagons for the Butterflies fudge parade on Saturday. Little Cheyenne crashed hers into a tree.”

  “She okay?”

  “Oh yes. Verona let her help decorate her wagon, and then Cheyenne helped Paris, Madison, and Savannah.”

  “So it’s all the rage to name girls after cities.”

  “But that’s so yesterday. Some reality TV star just named her kid North. Within five years my kindergarten class will be like a compass filled with North, South, East, and West.”

  We laid out the architectural paper on the white marble table.

  Notations called for rustic wood and rock from Door County, and Milwaukee Cream City brick to match our new shops with the older buildings in our village. A walkway with lovely new benches meandered by the expanded harbor that would stretch into the area where the cove was now.

  On the back of the paper, we found a tiny, penciled RCC.

  Pauline muttered, “Rivers Construction Company.”

  “It can’t be. Dillon would have told me if his mother and father were behind this. RCC can mean anything and anybody.”

  We refolded the architectural plans. We left through the back door, then walked through the darkness and the dewy grass. When I flicked on the lights in my cabin, Titus scurried across the living room floor.

  Pauline said, “Want me to catch him? I’m faster than you.”

  “Are not. And no, leave Titus alone. I’m trying to live-trap him. I bought one of those sticky papers for him to step on.”

  “Then what? When he’s sitting there having his tiny little heart attack looking up at you while he’s stuck on the sticky paper, how are you going to feel? And what does one do next with a live mouse glued to a piece of paper?”

  She had a point. I felt stupid again today. “I haven’t gotten that far with my plan for Titus. I certainly don’t have the heart to poison him.” The mouse’s fate gave me a thought. “Jordy said my grandmother thought Lloyd was drugged to slow him down. Who would do that? And why? Why not just kill him fast?”

  “If he were drugged, somebody could make him do something or admit to something against his will before they killed him.”

  “Or make him sign something.”

  “Or they just wanted him to cooperate as they lugged him up the lighthouse steps to the top of the tower. It seems like we know a lot of people who could gain by his demise.”

  Pauline flounced down with her purse on my couch, across from the fireplace. Cardboard boxes were all around her. Cody had hauled my stuff back earlier. Knowing Sam would be here any minute, I went to my bedroom to throw on a sweatshirt. I stuffed a small flashlight in my sweatshirt pocket. My phone was charged and in my denim shorts. I put on lightweight sneakers in case I needed to run fast.

  Pauline was watching me scurry about. “Maybe I should go along, Poirot.”

  “No, Hastings. I don’t want to be responsible for you.”

  “But I have to do something.”

  “Check on Laura.”

  “I called her before I came to the shop. She said Piers had volunteered to strip wallpaper in that old room in the back of her shop. She can’t be in any fumes, of course.”

  “Piers sure is trying to make us believe he’s Mr. Nice Guy all of a sudden. We have to talk with Erik about that bribe he offered him last Tuesday. I have a lot of things to ask Erik about.”

  “Ask him tomorrow at the funeral. I’m sure Erik will be there. Maybe Piers, too.”

  That gave me a new notion. “Piers could’ve hauled Lloyd up the lighthouse tower stairs. They’re a tight fit for a guy his size, but that climb is relatively short and Piers is agile. He’s also good with concocting recipes.”

  “Like those red velvet cupcakes with your Cinderella Pink Fudge bits inside. Better than any French pastry.” Pauline swooned. “Do you have any? And milk?”

  “No, Pauline. Stay on topic.” I sat on the arm of the couch, looking down on her—a rarity for me. “Piers could’ve drugged Lloyd. Lloyd was tasting things made by the contestants last week, getting to know them.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, then maybe Piers and Erik were plotting to get Lloyd out of the way so Erik could take over the real estate holdings. Maybe Piers wants the Blue Heron Inn and Erik agreed to help him.”

  I nodded down at Pauline. “But we still need to prove that one of those two ran us off the road. And murdered Lloyd.”

  Pauline got up. “The notes with the orange crayon referenced the fudge contest. This scheme had to have come about after Piers came to town and then met Erik. You left the shop several times while your guest confectioners were there making fudge. It certainly wouldn’t have taken but a few minutes for Piers to snoop around and discover the box. Maybe he had decided to steal it but saw you put it in your truck on Saturday and then he came after us, waiting for us at the intersection to run us off the road.”

  “It’s plausible. But wouldn’t Piers have just stolen the ring and left the box? The ring would give him a down payment on the Blue Heron Inn.”

  “Are you sure your grandfather doesn’t know more about all this? He lied about the land contract and lied about owning his building, Ava. And your grandmother’s under suspicion now.”

  “Though she tried to save herself by saying Dillon was involved in the murder.”

  Rapping at my door sent Titus skittering into the kitchen. Sam was here. Pauline hiked off in the dark toward her car in the harbor parking lot.

  I got in Sam’s sports utility vehicle.

  The night was chilly, but clear, with a three-quarter moon outlining buildings and making the painted lines on our Main Street and Highway 42 shimmer with an opal glow. Our windows were cracked open. I loved the fresh air here. It was crisp and clean, unlike anything I’d experienced elsewhere. The pleasant scents of cedars and fresh-mown golf course grass greeted us as we drove into Peninsula State Park. Sam had picked up the lighthouse key earlier from Libby. He reported that he hadn’t seen Kelsey there.

  We stopped a quarter mile from the lighthouse, parking behind bushes at a trailhead. We got out. His SUV was a dark gray, like my grandmother’s. There were a lot of gray vehicles around. I would have to check on Piers Molinsky’s rental car. But then I recalled that Erik Gustafson drove a tiny burnt orange hybrid car.

  “Do you think Erik might have written the orange crayon notes?” I asked, folding my sweatshirt-covered arms against the chilly night. “If he likes orange, maybe that’s a clue. Pauline and I think Erik and Piers have to be in this together. We could check to see if Piers drives a dark rental car.”

  “Later. Let’s find that box. I asked Libby about it and she suggested we look in the old privy and oil house.”

  “You told her about the box? I thought we were going after my forgotten purse.”

  He shrugged. It was hard for Sam to lie about anything.

  Lighthouses and homes used to have separate oil houses back in the late 1800s and early 1900s becau
se the kerosene oil was too dangerous to keep inside a house. Kerosene replaced the more stable lard that was burned in the earliest lamps. These days, a solar panel kept the Fresnel light shining.

  Sam and I stayed close to the woods as we walked along the park road toward the lighthouse. Once close to the lawn, we crouched down amid the lilacs flanking the clearing. Mosquitoes buzzed in my ears.

  The beacon light shone brightly into the inky expanse of Lake Michigan. Pronounced “fruh-nel,” the French Fresnel light’s crystals and prisms could allow the beam to be seen forever—until the bend of the earth itself hid it from view. Looking up at the four-story tower with the light on top was hypnotic. My very own ancestors had come here by ship through the Port of New York and then on steamers through the Great Lakes. They’d left crowded Belgium when times were lean with only hope in their pockets. Belgium was a small country, one-fifth the size of Wisconsin, but was still overcrowded with almost twice our state’s population of approximately six million.

  I whispered, “John Schultz thinks he’s going to get rich by bringing up cups brought here by our poor ancestors.”

  “There are plenty of wrecks, and many valuable things down there for John to find.” Sam’s eyes twinkled in the moonlight. “I’ll take up scuba diving and find pirate’s gold for you.”

  “You’d wear a rubber suit and flippers for me?”

  “If you don’t stop talking like that, Ava, we won’t make it to the lighthouse.”

  “Get real, Sam. It’s too buggy out here.” I slapped a mosquito on my cheek. “Did you bring spray?”

  “It’s back in my vehicle.”

  “Then we’ve got to move. I’m going to be weak from blood loss soon.”

  We hurried to the oil house and privy, but discovered the keys Libby had given us didn’t work.

  “Libby knows her own keys,” I said. “This is odd.”

  “Maybe in all her nervous excitement over us looking for this box, she gave me the wrong ones. We’ll have to go back to her house.”

  “We’re here, so let’s try the lighthouse before we go.”

  Sam slipped the key into the gift shop door’s padlock easy as pie. He popped the latch off. We entered, closing the outer door and inner screen door quietly behind us. I couldn’t see much at first, but I could smell the old wood, papers, and musty, rusty antiques.

  The moonlight came through the single window and limned objects, so it didn’t take us long to look through the small gift shop. We went down five wooden steps into the basement next, using our flashlights. We didn’t find the wooden box amid the jumble of supplies kept on boards laid across sawhorses for tables. There were two rooms, and one was empty.

  Next, we went up a set of four steps to the second floor, where the family had lived. Ambient light from outside came in through two windows of the dining room, but we had to resort to my small flashlight to poke into murky corners. Protective rubber runners crisscrossed the wooden floors, softening the sounds of our footfalls.

  The building was filled with original furnishings, including the rosewood Chickering piano of the William Duclon family. William had been the lighthouse keeper from 1883 to 1918, and he was buried near our town and not far from the lighthouse. I hadn’t been here for a tour since grade school, but I was still impressed by the thought of living in a place with an old wood-burning stove in almost every room. The dining room had tables and chairs, and blue-and-white china hung on the walls, but no box with rusty hinges. We didn’t find it in the master bedroom with the old rope bed.

  The parlor next door had a painting of kittens on the wall and another with a child with baby chicks—innocent fare that belied what might have happened here. We found the small hole in the wooden floor made by the rifle bullet, just past the ropes to keep tourists at bay and behind the right side of the small settee. Had Lloyd sat here talking innocently to his captors before going to the top? Or had he been pleading for his life? Had the rifle been shot as a warning to Lloyd? I almost couldn’t stomach being in this room. As I was edging backward, a sparkle glinted under the sweep of our flashlight.

  I stepped over the rope to get to the settee. “Oh my gosh, Sam, it’s fudge!” The sparkle came from the edible luster dust on top of my Cinderella fudge. A half-eaten piece nestled at the far end of the settee, as if somebody had taken a bite, then had to leave the rest behind. I’d brought small plastic bags in case we’d found something. I never imagined we’d find fudge.

  “What’re you doing?” Sam asked.

  “Bagging this.” I was using a tissue to carefully pick up the piece of fudge. “Nobody eats only a portion of my fudge. And that’s not bragging. It’s just a fact. Somebody was eating this and had to leave it behind in a hurry. Maybe Lloyd’s killer.”

  “Why didn’t the sheriff find it?”

  “Well, it is just fudge. Both times they were here they were looking for more nefarious things like weapons, so maybe this was overlooked.”

  “But I still don’t know why you’d want to take that to the sheriff.”

  “Hard evidence,” I said, with some satisfaction. “My fudge is very creamy and smooth and hardens just enough to retain fingerprints. Maybe the sheriff can match those to somebody. The bite marks, too, might help. Or Jordy can get saliva off the fudge for DNA.”

  “You are so television—did you know that? And smart.”

  “Thanks, Sam.”

  We left the parlor. I kept my eyes peeled for any other telltale fudge. As we made our way up the black, cast-iron circular staircase to the second floor, a window overlooking the lake revealed dots of lights from ships in the distance.

  The children’s room held two regular small beds and a trundle bed where the family’s seven boys had slept. It also had a woodstove and desk. The guest bedroom to the north had beautiful blue-and-white crockery that could hide things, but they were empty. There was no box. No fudge.

  On the wall before the final steps would take us up to the platform was a framed needlepoint on the wall with a saying: Travel East/Travel West/after all/Home’s Best.

  The saying could have pertained to me. With a catch in my throat, I said, “Perhaps that’s the last thing Lloyd saw before he died.”

  We continued up the dark metal stairs, taking our time because of the steepness. The stairs were sturdy iron in a cutout design; they didn’t move a bit. Hauling a body up would have taken plenty of time and strength, though I imagined Mercy Fogg could accomplish it alone, as well as Piers or Erik.

  When we got to the top, we had to use one of the keys to unlock the padlock on the Plexiglas hatch above our heads. Once that was done, we stepped outside onto the high platform but had very little maneuvering room. Not wanting to look down quite yet, I focused on the beacon sprinkling fairy-tale sparkles on the water. Waves lapped and sucked against the barely visible rocks. It was a dangerous drop-off behind the wall, though once upon a time there had been a steep, ladderlike stairway down to a dock. The remains of a concrete pier still sat in the water. Had someone in a boat committed the crime and left by water, thus not being seen by anybody leaving the park at an odd hour?

  As my gaze drew back from the moonlit rock wall and then came closer still to the tower, I shivered. Lloyd had been thrown to his death from where I stood. Had he been conscious? Had he seen the view of the lake over the tops of the trees that we all loved? In my imagination now, he was looking back up at me from below, repeating what he’d told me in his library, “You have to help people believe that the fudge shop is fine where it is, and so are the cabins on Duck Marsh Street.” And from the stitchery on the wall, his voice feathered to me: “Home’s best. Home’s best.”

  Lloyd’s ethereal voice startled me. I grabbed at the railing.

  Sam pulled me back into his arms, sucking us up against the steel panels below the Fresnel prisms. “Whoa, what’s wrong?”

  “Lloyd’s voice w
as in my head plain as day as if he were still alive.” My skin rippled with a shudder. Had Sam just saved me from falling over the railing?

  I turned and wrapped my arms around his neck in my relief. “Thanks, Sam.”

  He kissed me on the forehead—at the same time something bit me on the side of one cheek as a crack echoed from below.

  Sam crumpled at my feet on the platform.

  “Sam!”

  A dark spot bloomed on his shirt.

  Another crack split the air. My body pitched across Sam’s chest.

  Chapter 18

  A bullet had grazed the top of Sam’s left shoulder after spraying a chunk of paint off the metal housing under the Fresnel light and onto my cheek.

  A second bullet had ricocheted, too, Deputy Maria Vasquez surmised, off the tower’s railing post behind me, and then had hit me in the back of the left leg. It had barely penetrated my flesh, fortunately. Sam, however, needed a doctor to pull a tendon and flaps of skin back together.

  Maria held out two plastic bags—one with my piece of fudge with the tissue still clinging to it, and another bag with a bullet. “We’ll analyze the pink fudge later.” Her cocoa-colored eyes were penetrating me, though not mocking. She held the other bag higher. “Looks like a slug for a thirty-ought-six hunting rifle. Pretty common for deer hunting. Except it’s not deer-hunting season.”

  It was ten thirty at night. We sat in the blaring lights of the E.R. in Sturgeon Bay still in shock. After being shot at, I had looked up in time to glimpse somebody dressed in dark clothing including a hoodie sweatshirt slip into the woods.

  Maria wasn’t pleased with my observation abilities. “Everybody committing a crime wears a dark hoodie. Which direction did the person go in?”

  “Toward the east. Maybe one of the hiking trails? It might be the trail Pauline and I chased somebody down yesterday morning. Tramper’s Delight.”

  “Who were you chasing?”