Hot Fudge Frame-Up: A Fudge Shop Mystery

by Christine DeSmet

  This brouhaha over a prince could be blamed on my grandpa. Finding a divinity fudge recipe from the 1800s for the prince was Grandpa Gil’s idea. So was asking the royals to travel here to tour our famous St. Mary of the Snows Church in Namur, Wisconsin. The tour would occur during our fall harvest festival, called a kermis. Last summer, Pauline’s boyfriend, John Schultz, had found an antique cup during a Lake Michigan diving expedition. The initials on the cup were “AVD,” which Grandpa thought might belong to Grandma Sophie’s ancestor Amandine Van Damme. Grandpa searched Grandma’s ancestry and found, lo and behold, that a few of her shirttail relatives were part of the current noble class in Namur, Belgium!

  Our Namur—pronounced Nah-meur—is a wide spot in the road, a collection of a half dozen buildings amid farm fields about forty miles south of my fudge shop. It’s within a stone’s throw of my parents’ farm, near the neighboring village of Brussels. Some of our towns were named for places in Belgium because the southern half of Door County was settled by Belgian immigrants in the 1850s, including my ancestors.

  We were all shocked that Grandpa had called up the royals on his cell phone as if they were mere contacts. He’d reached some assistant, of course, but it had turned out Prince Arnaud was eager to bring more tourists to his city of Namur. The prince had accepted Grandpa’s proposal to visit to our shock. But the prince saw this as a tourism mission, which could benefit both Namurs.

  Jubilation here over this development was tempered by my reputation. The fishermen and tourists coming in to buy fudge kept saying that “Things happen in threes.” One smiley-faced man asked, “Do ya think that prince is gonna take a powder? Ava, you stay away from him, ya hear?”

  “Taking a powder” meant he’d die in yet another murder involving me and my fudge.

  “I’m not superstitious,” I insisted. “I’m scientifically minded.”

  Fudge making is about the exactness of heat and the precise crystallization stages of sugar. Depending on what type of fudge you were making, that sugar had to bubble and get to the “soft-ball” stage temperature of two hundred thirty-eight degrees. Divinity fudge—what the prince had said he wanted to try—needed two hundred sixty degrees.

  Truth be told, even my scientific side was on tenterhooks. Divinity fudge is notoriously hard to make; you can’t have a speck of humidity, or the egg white meringue will flop. And Door County is a peninsula surrounded by water and humid breezes. In addition, every time a climacteric event had been planned lately in my life, a body showed up, with my relatives wringing their hands over my involvement.

  Ironically, this time my parents and grandparents wanted me involved.

  Why? Because Prince Arnaud Van Damme was thirty-six (only four years older than me) and a bachelor who was going to inherit a castle.

  My relatives aren’t hot about my current boyfriend, Dillon Rivers. They have their reasons. My mother still slips at times and calls Dillon “that bigamist.” A part of me can’t blame them for trying to distract me with a handsome prince.

  Oddly enough, my grandma wasn’t enthused about her royal relatives traveling to Wisconsin. Ever since Grandpa contacted them a month ago, she’d been acting aloof about the visit, as if she didn’t want to own up to being related to them.

  “Grandma, how come you never told me about them before?” I asked her last week while she was making one of her famous cherry pies. We were in her cabin on Duck Marsh Street in Fishers’ Harbor. I live across the street.

  “I guess I forgot. They’re so far back in my family tree, they’re barely a twig.”

  A twig? She forgot royalty?! My scientific mind said something was amiss.

  I asked her, “Are you mad at Grandpa for inviting them? Did he make up the story about the divinity fudge?” I had assumed he had all along. My search today in the church was merely to please him.

  She’d heaved a big sigh as she pulled a fresh, steaming cherry pie from the oven. “He didn’t make up that story about the Virgin Mary.”

  My overzealous, matchmaking grandfather, Gil Oosterling, told the royals the divinity fudge had allegedly been enjoyed by the Blessed Virgin Mother after she’d appeared in front of Sister Adele Brice in 1859 in the nearby woods.

  The Blessed Mother?

  Yes. That Mother.

  Here? In Wisconsin?

  Yes. It’s true. A bishop even sanctioned it as the only such sighting in the entire United States. In December 2010, the New York Times did a big article on it.

  Grandpa says that Adele—from the Belgian province of Brabant, where Prince Arnaud is from, too—hid the original, handwritten divinity fudge recipe within the bricks of St. Mary of the Snows church to protect it from the fire dangers presented by wood structures and stoves in the 1800s. Grandpa had told the prince I would make Sister Adele’s divinity fudge recipe for dessert at the kermis, with the meal being served in the beautiful little church. Not only that, but Grandpa had said we’d present the original recipe document to the royals. Grandpa had learned the prince wanted to build a museum in Namur that would highlight the history and culture of our sister cities. Housing a priceless recipe in the museum would be like the famous Shroud being kept in the church in Turin, Italy. Thousands of people would visit Belgium each year. Grandpa said the recipe would come back to us on a two-year cycle or some such thing, and thus, thousands might visit Door County, too.

  The prince had suggested the divinity fudge I made could be part of a fund-raiser for the church, which is now used as the Belgian Heritage Center. Princess Amandine was enthralled, too. She called divinity fudge “heavenly candy, white and pure as the robes worn by the nun and Blessed Virgin Mary.”

  Princess Amandine had told Grandpa that divinity fudge was a rare treat. She’d eaten it only once, and that was when she had been a little girl. I’d attempted to make it once and given up because all I’d made was goo. Supposedly there was something special about Sister Adele’s recipe that made it foolproof. I was intrigued about this, but Grandpa was obsessed. There was mention that Grandpa and I might receive some special governmental medal of honor for this divinity fudge recipe.

  This royal visit had gotten out of hand quickly.

  But the church lacked a steeple. It had crumbled long ago. Selling tickets to see a prince and eat fudge would give a proper home to the three white crosses perched precariously on the peaked roof.

  Pauline, Laura, and I had volunteered to be on the church-cleaning committee, a handy excuse to spy in every nook. We had just finished going through the beastly hot, stuffy attic bedroom above the kitchen. The bedroom was about eight by ten feet. One small window in the slanted roof let in light. The room had been used by a traveling priest back in the 1860s before a rectory was built. After finding no divinity fudge recipe, we’d hurried down the narrow stairs into the kitchen, panting.

  Pauline glugged from her water bottle. She was red-faced and sweating, her long black braid frizzed from heat and humidity. “I’m done. This is stupid, you know.”

  “We have to look in the basement still,” I insisted. My long auburn ponytail had gone limp, sagging onto the back of my hot neck.

  Laura ran a hand up her sweaty forehead and through her blond bangs and bob. “We need a break before the basement. I like your grandfather, but this isn’t my idea of a fun way to spend a Saturday morning. Besides, I’ve got to go home and bake bread all afternoon.”

  Laura ran the Luscious Ladle bakery. She supplied fresh-baked goods to our five-star restaurants. I sold her mouthwatering cinnamon rolls with gooey icing dripping off them at Ava’s Autumn Harvest on Highway 57.

  I waved a hand in the air, giving in, but only a little. “Take a break. I need to check on Grandma anyway, out in the graveyard. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Then we head for the basement.”

  Pauline said, “All we’ll find will be mummified mice and musty dust motes. At least I hope that’s all we find. T
hings happen in threes, you know.”

  I hurried out without responding, though inside my head a voice reminded me that Pauline was always right.

  * * *

  Grandma Sophie was only a few yards east of the front doors, tidying what always appears to visitors to be an odd graveyard. In a boxy space under the lone giant maple tree, about thirty headstones sat in rows within six inches of one another. A joke around here says the people were buried standing up. What really happened was that in 1970, the priest had moved the headstones from the graveyard located where the lawn is now at the back of the church. Nobody had been buried there for at least a hundred years, by that time. The ground had been resettling, and the stones were sinking or toppling. To save the lichen-etched stones from disappearing altogether, they were moved. Because the collection sits in front of a blacktopped parking lot next to the church, people mistakenly believe the priest paved over the old church graveyard. But it’s a myth that cars park atop Belgians at rest.

  On her knees, squeezed in between the headstones, Grandma was fussing over the placement of potted yellow and orange mums.

  Grandma’s wavy white hair buffeted about her shoulders in the breeze.

  “That looks really nice, Grandma. You look nice, too.” She wore a red long-sleeved T-shirt, black denim jeans, and sturdy walking shoes.

  “Thank you, Ava, honey. Did you find the recipe?”

  “No. Are you sure Grandpa didn’t make that up? Has he had the three of us looking for a nonexistent recipe?” Grandpa liked a good joke, so I was still suspicious.

  Grandma Sophie grunted as she shoved at the ground to get up off her knees. I rushed to help. Last spring she’d broken a leg. She still experienced pain.

  Once we stood together before the headstones, with my arm secured around her waist, she said, “My grandparents used to talk about that fudge recipe. My great-grandparents were there at the time of Sister Adele. They knew her personally. So I believe it’s true, honey.”

  Her great-grandparents Amelie and Thomas Van Damme were buried behind the church. Their headstone sat in front of us—gray and weathered, a couple inches thick, a foot wide and three feet high, with a chipped, arched edge.

  I said, “Maybe what they were really remembering was the Communion wafers. They’re white, just like divinity fudge. Maybe Sister Adele made sweet wafers, and thus people just said they were sweet as fudge. They both melt on the tongue, after all.”

  “No, Ava, my grandparents were pious. They would not have joked about that. They weren’t eating fudge for Communion.”

  A giggle escaped me, despite my trying to be serious for Grandma. “Maybe church enrollments would rise if they served fudge. It would be a whole new market for me.”

  “Honey, please be respectful. Your grandpa believes there’s a recipe hidden here somewhere. People have looked for it off and on for generations now. It’s time we find the darn thing and send it home with those people.”

  Those people. Her disdain for her relatives silenced me. A little research had told me that the prince and princess were active in charities to help the poor. They had assured Grandpa the recipe would travel back to our community to help with fund-raisers to benefit Door County. The royals appeared to be good people. What wasn’t she willing to share with me? Grandma stood as still as the statues before us, her physical being as sturdy as her conviction. I said, “I’ll do my best to find that recipe, I promise.”

  Grandma pushed a pouf of white hair off her face. “Your grandfather will be over the moon.”

  “The moon, wafers, divinity fudge, your hair—all white. Your hair is as divine as divinity fudge, Grandma.”

  That got her to smile, finally. Then she shook her head. “This graveyard is so embarrassing. Your grandfather should never have invited them.”

  “But the prince and princess are related to the people laid to rest here. They’ll want to pay their respects. They’re interested in the early settlers from Belgium and the generations carrying on here now.”

  Many of the other names in front of us were familiar because the families still lived in the area. I recognized Coppens; a high school classmate of mine, Jonas Coppens, owned a small farm up the road from my new market. He was spreading mulch around right now several yards across the lawn at a historic schoolhouse. I growled because I recognized a woman with him, Fontana Dahlgren.

  “Fontana is supposed to be helping us dust and polish the inside of the church.”

  “That floozy? Don’t count on it.” Grandma shuddered next to me, my body absorbing her tiny earthquake. “I suppose she’ll be flirting up a storm with the prince. Maybe that’s good; at least we won’t have to entertain him and his mother.”

  “Grandma? What’s wrong? You haven’t liked this idea of them coming since the moment Grandpa broke the news. But Grandpa and my father—your own son—and my mother would love to marry me off to the prince. Not you?”

  The fine wrinkles around her mouth quirked with a grimace. “The prince and princess are barely related to us. They’re all about fuss and appearances. There’s a reason some of us sawed ourselves off from the branches of the family tree and departed for America. This visit is going to end up in a disaster.”

  She began limping away from me, toward the historic schoolhouse. She’d meet up with her church-lady friends who were on cleaning detail, too.

  My heart held a dull ache, and my stomach felt as if it were a dryer with a bunch of old bolts tumbling in it. I vowed to figure out what was upsetting Grandma about this visit and fix it for her. Certainly a little fuss wasn’t the issue, because Grandma loved our kermises and making her famous pies. Could it be me she was embarrassed about? Or our entire family? We were plain people, just farmers, fishermen, and fudge makers. I thought that was good enough. But Grandma was confounding me, something I confessed to Pauline and Laura when I got back inside the church a minute later.

  * * *

  My girlfriends and I were standing near the bottom of old wooden stairs leading into the dim, dusty cement church basement. This room was about ten by twelve feet. It was empty, save for a row of plumbing pipes lined up in the middle of the floor. A meager bulb lit the area, turning shadows into muddy brown in the corners of the floor and the joists overhead. Cobwebs hung down; they stirred from our sudden appearance.

  Pauline stood directly behind me on the wooden stairs. “I tell my kids all the time not to go into strange places.” She was a kindergarten teacher in Fishers’ Harbor. “This is the dumbest thing you’ve ever gotten me into. No recipe is hidden down here. I think your grandmother’s upset because your grandfather has gone lulu.”

  “It feels like more than that, Pauline. She mentioned something about the royals being about fuss and appearances. Do you think I embarrass her?”

  “Heck, I’m embarrassed by you all the time. Including now. You bought into your grandfather’s fudge story, hook, line, and sinker. He’s a fisherman, and he knows how to reel you in with a tall fish tale. Or fudge tale.”

  Laura, bringing up the rear of our human train on the stairs, said, “Can’t we just say we looked and not do it?” She sneezed.

  I told them, “I can’t lie to my grandfather about looking for the recipe. I owe him a lot.”

  Last spring, Grandpa Gil had resuscitated my life. I’d spent eight years in Los Angeles in a grunt job for a TV show. Then Grandma Sophie broke her leg in April. Grandpa asked me to return while my show was on spring hiatus. He had the idea of moving his minnow tank over in his bait shop to let me turn half of his building into a fudge operation. He’d also moved the singular apostrophe in his sign to make it the plural Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers & Belgian Fudge & Beer. That kind of love couldn’t be ignored. I quit my show and stayed.

  With Grandpa’s kindness resonating in my soul, I stepped onto the cement basement floor. As I walked over to the pipes to inspect them, I held on
to my ponytail while moving to the right to keep away from a cobweb trailing from the joists.

  Laura wasn’t so lucky. “Ick. They’re all over in my hair.”

  She’d somehow missed copying my stealthy move. Her blond bob looked like it was snared in a hairnet. As a baker, she was used to wearing hairnets, so maybe she’d cope with this better than Pauline. She was six feet tall—taller than me by two inches—and too dressed up for cleaning a church and poking around for recipe scripture. She wore her favorite designer sleeveless tangerine top and shorts. Laura and I had on denim shorts. I was in a faded pink T-shirt, while Laura wore a threadbare blue-and-white-striped short-sleeved blouse.

  Pauline shook her black braid to rid it of a cobweb that had broken loose from its mother ship overhead. “I’ve seen enough.”

  “There’s a doorway over there,” I said, pointing toward a passageway, intentionally ignoring Pauline’s whimpering.

  I was enjoying the exploring. Although I’d grown up nearby, I’d never been in the basement or the attic of the church because their doors were located in the kitchen. The kitchen used to be the sacristy, where priests and altar boys would get ready for Mass.

  I also hadn’t been inside this church since I’d jilted my fiancé here the night of our wedding rehearsal eight years ago. That was the same night I’d eloped with another man—Dillon Rivers, whom I divorced a month after that, then didn’t see for eight years, and now was dating again. Memories—bad, embarrassing ones—had been hitting me like darts from the moment I’d promised to look for the recipe in this church. At first, I couldn’t force myself to come back here. My stomach had rolled for days, as if it wanted to purge my mistakes. That would take a long time. But I knew if I were going to fully embrace living in Door County again, I had to do a mea culpa and face what I’d done. Pauline and Laura were gems to volunteer for the kermis cleaning committee with me. Entering the church this morning had caused my breathing to stop for a moment, but the search for the fudge recipe had helped take my mind off past romantic disasters.