My whole being seized with failure.
But my old-fashioned cash register handle was pumping up and down steadily. Soon the ladies had to move over to use Gilpa’s cash register, too. Unfortunately, my grandpa didn’t return, which worried me. He’d lost his boat and now his shop, the latter because of me. My only saving grace in all this was that maybe I’d made enough in sales this Tuesday to pay for a couple hours’ time of the lawyer he was scaring up for me.
Then Pauline called me to say she had a flat tire at school. Kids liked putting nails under tires or just letting the air out. So instead of driving incognito in her gray car, we ended up in my dandelion yellow Chevy pickup. As we headed south of Fishers’ Harbor on Highway 42, I told her about my theory of who had killed Rainetta Johnson.
• • •
“You can’t be right about Cody killing that woman,” Pauline said, filching about in her big black purse the size of a heifer calf while we hurried down the highway. She came up with her phone.
I panicked. “What’re you doing with that? We can’t call the sheriff. It had to be an accident. I didn’t say Cody killed her. I said he had a part in it, unwittingly set up by the likes of Hannah Reed or her husband.”
“I’m calling Sam Peterson. He’ll know what to do.”
“Sam might be involved in it.”
Her phone spurted out of her hand, hit the dashboard, then landed on the floor under my feet. Pauline scooped it up, then put it away. She was shaking. “I could lose my job. We’re covering up evidence and protecting murderers.”
“Not us. But the person we’re going to see is likely doing just that,” I said.
Neither one of us wanted to say the name. If you say a name, it makes things real. Could the sweetest people in the world really have a hand in murdering somebody? For sparkly diamonds?
My hands held on to the steering wheel so tightly they were numb already.
We continued south on Highway 42 about five miles, heading to doom, though it would resolve the mystery behind Rainetta’s death. I made a left turn onto a narrow, winding, two-lane blacktop road and sped up. My yellow truck pinged and bucked on its springs. I felt a kinship with the tension of being dangerous.
“We’re going to end up in the ditch if you don’t slow down,” Pauline said.
“I just want to be sure we’re not being followed.”
“Why do we care if anybody follows us? If we solve this, won’t that be something to shout to the world?”
“I don’t want Jeremy Stone or any other of the reporters who are sneaking into town plastering Cody’s picture across newspapers and computer screens. He’s a kid.”
“He’s eighteen. An adult. You can’t pretend he’s not.”
“I don’t know everything about him. What if this sets him back in his development? I can’t let him go to prison. I doubt they offer free mental health plans there.” I could still hear Cody’s angry voice excoriating me on the docks near Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers & Belgian Fudge. He hated me for all the wrong reasons. He thought I was a bad person.
“What does Sam say about Cody’s current progress and condition?” Pauline asked. “Sam’s been his social worker all through school.”
“Sam’s acting strange toward me, like everything’s my fault, so he won’t reveal much about Cody’s condition.”
The road flattened out again as we sped under the dark overhang of oak branches.
“Well, Sam Peterson has a right to think things are your fault,” Pauline said. “He wanted to marry you once, after all, and you left him standing at the altar while you hitched a ride with Dillon Rivers to scratch an itch you had.”
A shiver went up my spine at the name “Dillon Rivers.” Not even the spring sunshine coming through the windshield could warm me. Dillon Rivers had been everything a woman could possibly want. But now I would definitely go out of my way to run him down. As a manner of speaking only.
Pauline screamed.
Brown cattail stalks hit one side of the truck. I’d veered too close to the ditch.
Pauline said, “So this is how it is? You’re not over him? After eight years?”
“Oh, I’m over him. He probably made new friends in prison, anyway.”
“I heard they let him out early for good behavior.”
My shoulders flinched. “He was a comedian and a good talker. Figures he’d find a way to charm them out of Waupun.” That was the state correctional facility in Waupun, Wisconsin, a community maybe halfway between Door County and the capital of Madison. Despite myself, I wondered what he was up to these days.
Dillon Rivers had been a civil engineering student when I met him at the university in Madison. Or at least he said he was. I had never verified that, come to think of it. He’d said he was my age when I first met him; he turned out to be six years older, something I found out when he had to tell the truth in front of a judge who was different from the one who’d married us. I had met him one night at a local comedy club on State Street. He was good. I laughed hard. I fell hard for him, too. I was tall, and he was taller. He had thick, wavy chestnut hair and wore a black cowboy hat. That color should’ve been a clue. But it wasn’t. He nurtured the cowboy mystique. He even walked with a swagger. His eyes were so brown they were almost black to match his hat. When he smiled, his eyes glittered like, well, diamonds tossed across a freshly plowed field.
I flung the steering wheel fast toward the left.
Pauline screamed again. “Stop the truck. I’m driving.”
“I’m fine.” I’d just missed putting us into a pond that ran close to the road.
“You’re not fine. You’re worried that Dillon will come looking for you, now that you’re back.”
“He won’t.”
“He might. That’s what Isabelle thinks.”
This shook me. “You told Izzy about Dillon?” We were almost to our destination. I slowed down.
“Sorry, but I thought you’d told her. She asked who you were dating, and we just got into a little of your history. Gosh, we’re all friends. Don’t be so prickly.”
I didn’t know anything about Isabelle’s dating habits, though we’d become friends in the past couple of weeks, which was natural with us running businesses so close to each other and being about the same age. She’d moved into the Blue Heron Inn last fall and had spent the winter sprucing it up before moving in her Steuben collection. I’d met her during the Christmas break when I was home, but that had been in passing on the street when I’d come up from Brussels with my parents to go with my grandparents to a party at the senior center. She had mentioned coming from Arkansas, where it was a lot warmer than Wisconsin in the winter, but neither of us had time for long conversations then, or even now, for that matter; setting up businesses and getting ready for the summer tourist season in Door County had consumed us.
“I’m sorry for biting your head off,” I said. “What is it about love that twists us all up? Poor Cody. Look what he did for love.”
We fell into silence. Could Cody have really been a party to killing Rainetta? I feared so.
Pauline said, “Maybe Bethany will have a different story. Maybe we’re connecting the wrong dots.”
“I hope you’re right.”
As we swung into the Bjorklunds’ gravel driveway, my body tensed. If Bethany had that stolen necklace in her possession, I didn’t know what I was going to do next.
The Bjorklunds lived on a hobby farm. Their big white farmhouse had a welcoming verandah with rockers on it. The house was flanked with pastures holding horses and alpacas, with a big red barn to the right and an animal shed on the left. The Bjorklunds’ dog, a white Great Pyrenees the size of a polar bear, wagged his tail as it walked up to sniff our legs. Cody loved animals. I imagined him gladly hiding here.
Bethany’s father, Hans, came out the front door, letting the screen door slap on its hinges as he met us at the verandah steps. My tongue pasted itself to the roof of my mouth. I hadn’t thought this far ahead.
I wasn’t ready to get Bethany involved in Cody’s or my troubles. I hugged my arms, rubbing up and down the sleeves of my white blouse.
Pauline knew Hans from school events. “Hi, Hans. Listen, we’re here to talk to Bethany about the senior prom activities. Is she around?”
“Oh sure.” He turned back to open the inner door, then yelled, “Beth! Prom stuff!”
A faint “I’m coming” echoed from inside the house. Hans excused himself to do chores in the barn. Did he have a role in hiding Cody out here?
While we waited in the front yard for a moment, I whispered to Pauline, “Thanks. I wasn’t sure what to say.”
“I lied for you. So you owe me one. How about tickets to a Packers game together?”
The Green Bay Packers were just about the only football team in America that sold out their stadium for years to come. Needless to say, any available tickets would cost me plenty.
When Bethany joined us, I teared up because I knew what she meant to Cody. She was sweet, all girlie-girl, petite, and short enough to do acrobatic cheerleader tricks. She had long blond hair that hung loose past her shoulders and eyes the color of bluebird feathers. She was everything I wasn’t. She was the young woman Cody wanted to go to prom with. And more. Had he asked her? Did she know?
“Bethany, this isn’t about the prom. It’s about Cody.”
She bit the corner of her lower lip while her eyes dulled to a wary gray.
I pressed on. “You know something, don’t you? Is he here?”
She shook her head.
“But you saw him recently. When?”
She shrugged, her eyes downcast.
“This is serious, Bethany.” I took a fortifying breath. “He didn’t go home last night. He’s run away. Did he give you a necklace?”
Bethany tossed her hair back, a look of confusion on her face. “No.”
“Did he give you diamonds?”
“Huh? Like you mean, like, we were getting engaged or something?”
Pauline intervened. “Honey, that can’t be a surprise to you. I see the way he hangs around you in the school halls whenever he can.” We had a consolidated school, with kindergarten through twelfth grades under one roof, so Pauline knew everybody’s business.
“He’s always following me, but that’s okay. I know he doesn’t mean anything weird by it. He’s got problems.”
I said, “He likes shiny things. We’re wondering if he’s been stealing jewelry to give to you.”
Bethany winced, then sat on the verandah’s steps. “Oh wow. You think maybe he stole diamonds from that actress who got killed? You think maybe he had something to do with . . .”
She was tearing up, and so was I again. I nodded, then swiped away my tears for the last time. I had to stay strong. “It was probably an accident. We have to find him. He doesn’t understand that we can help him. He doesn’t have to go to prison. Are you sure he’s not here somewhere?”
“He’s probably at the house.”
“What house?”
“In town. Where he wants to live. After . . .” She rolled her eyes. “After we get married.”
“So he’s asked you?”
“Not in those words. But he told me in the hallway we have to go to prom together because that’s where he wants to ask me something. I knew what he meant right away.”
Pauline and I took off for Fishers’ Harbor. The house Bethany had referred to was the old, abandoned historical one that Sam and others hoped would become the group home for people like Cody. The fateful party at Isabelle’s last Sunday should have raised a few thousand dollars, if not ten thousand or more from Rainetta Johnson. The fate of the abandoned house was up in the air now, right up there with the fates of my fudge shop and Cody.
I wished Jeremy Stone hadn’t said he’d seen Cody racing from the Blue Heron Inn. That had been the missing piece to the puzzle—which reminded me that Pauline and I would be attending a cookout at the inn later. My truck’s clock said it was four o’clock already; I had two hours before Isabelle would fire up the grill for the backyard barbecue. What was I going to tell those guests in order to draw out the truth? Could I shame somebody into a confession by talking about how low it was to use somebody like Cody to steal jewels or diamonds? Or blame him for the murder? I wondered what would happen, though, if I pretended that I thought Cody did it. Who among those at the party might look the most relieved? The Reeds from New York? Jeremy Stone? Sam would be hoppin’ mad at me, but I wondered if that would help him think about anybody he’d seen slip into Jeremy’s room and use the staircase. Maybe we’d all blanked out on somebody’s presence. This party was sounding like work for me.
As we inched along Main Street in Fishers’ Harbor toward the house, I noticed several news vans from Green Bay, Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago. A tickle zipped through my belly, making me laugh with glee.
Pauline asked, “Now what?”
“Pauline, this is my chance!”
“Chance for what? To marry a reporter? We’re crawling with them. Sheesh.”
“No, silly. My chance to make Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers and Belgian Fudge famous. And you’re going to help.”
“I don’t like the sound of this.”
“After we find Cody, we’re going back to my shop. I’m sure the church ladies have gone home by now to make supper.” Supper around here—and it was called “supper” more often than “dinner”—was five o’clock for the farmers and older people who went to bed at eight to get up at five. I was headed in that direction; being a businesswoman demanded I start the day with the chirping robins and fishers—both looking for worms early in the morning. I said to Pauline, “I have a plan for my fudge sitting in those pans, the stuff that the church ladies didn’t give away or feed to the fish.”
Pauline groaned. But we had no time to talk about that plan. I stopped the truck in front of the grand old historical home on the north end of town. This was where Cody had to be hiding out with his stash of lavender gemstones, maybe diamonds, a diamond watch, and maybe—in a sudden flash of memory—Isabelle’s missing Steuben glass unicorn.
The old mansion with peeling yellow paint sat back on a large, shabby lawn across from the bay and just before the road curved before going out of town. The house had matching, three-story turrets at both front corners, with their lower windows covered by plywood. One of the bay windows flanking a double front door also sported plywood. During my childhood, the place had been lived in by some family with kids, but somewhere lost in time they’d left, probably incapable of paying the heating bills. The mansion had been built by a Great Lakes shipping captain in the late 1800s. That was all I knew.
I wanted to shout at the haggard, one-eyed mansion for Cody to come out. But I didn’t want to attract any more attention than my yellow truck probably did already. The news crews were only a few blocks away, casing Isabelle’s inn and my shop.
As we ventured up the uneven stone sidewalk, Pauline said, “Maybe we should ask Sheriff Tollefson to join us. Breaking and entering will get me fired.”
“You can stay out here. I’ll go in.”
The front door was locked, as I’d expected. But I’d also expected to bully the rusted doorknob and handle and bust my way in. Nothing doing. I knocked on the door and waited. I called softly, “Cody?”
Nothing. We walked around one side of the house. Overgrown bushes hid basement windows, most of them boarded up. The one window not boarded was filmy and showed no sign of disturbance.
Pauline suggested we leave. “People might see us. Let’s go.”
I glanced toward the back, where I spotted thick pyramidal evergreens and ratty lilac bushes about to burst into bloom.
Once behind the house, we were well hidden and I saw how Cody was getting into the mansion. An old trellis led from the ground up to a second-floor balcony over a porch. It looked like a window up there had been busted.
“Come on,” I said to Pauline.
“That trellis won’t hold us.”
“It held Cody.”
“I weigh more than him. How much do you weigh?”
After two weeks of eating cheese curds with wild abandon, I would have to buy a swimsuit with a tummy hider. “Just boost me up. I’ll grab the floor of that balcony. Come on. Pretend I’m a basketball. Throw me up to the hoop.”
“This is stupid. You’re going to get hurt and I’m going to throw out my back and not be able to finish the school year.”
Stubborn Belgian. I sighed. “P.M., please, less yack and more action.”
She crouched down, laced her hands, I stuck in my booted foot, and then in a flash was standing on the balcony.
I didn’t want to crawl through the broken window with its jagged glass. My white blouse wasn’t about to protect me. Fortunately, the door was unlocked. I told Pauline to meet me at the front door.
The door from the balcony opened onto a wide, dark oak plank floor and yellow wallpapered hallway. I stood for a moment, listening. I could see a far door on the other end, which likely opened into a large room between the turrets.
“Cody?” I called, staying rooted to my spot for the moment. There were several doors along the hallway. “It’s me, Miss Oosterling. Miss Mertens is outside. But that’s all.”
I got no response. The breeze whistled through the broken window next to me, but that was all I could hear besides the occasional car or truck lumbering by on Main Street.
A shuffling jerked my instincts awake. “Cody?” I braced myself, ready to run after him if he burst from one of the doors.
The far-off rattle of the front door handle let me relax my shoulders. Pauline was trying to get in.
As I crept along. I noticed footprints in the dust. They had to be recent. They led straight down the hallway to the big room at the front of the house. Pauline rattled the downstairs door handle again. I figured I’d better hurry and let her in; then both of us could coax Cody out. Pauline would have more sway with him than I would anyway, since Cody didn’t like me at the moment.
First-Degree Fudge: A Fudge Shop Mystery Page 10