First-Degree Fudge: A Fudge Shop Mystery

by DeSmet, Christine

  I hustled through the dusty hallway, spotting the stairway to the left built into one of the turrets. Just as I started down the circular stairs, my feet were ripped out from under me, pitching me forward. I sailed headlong into the maw of the curving, wood staircase.

  Chapter 8

  My body banged into one wall of the staircase; then I pitched forward with arms flailing into thin air.

  I hit hard into the other wall, a sharp pain radiating up an arm as I spun downward onto the stairs on my belly.

  From there I slid and bumped belly down on the slippery wood steps with arms covering my face as I bobsledded around a final curve to the finish.

  At the bottom, I landed spread-eagle on the flat floor. Shaken to my core, I tried to roll over. I screamed. My vision spun with a person hovering over me with a tree branch.

  “Thank God you’re alive,” Pauline said. She tossed aside the branch and her big purse, then helped me sit up. “Your nose is bleeding. Is anything broken? Don’t move. I’ll call nine-one-one.”

  “No. I’m okay.” But I wasn’t. My left wrist throbbed. The sleeves of my white blouse had been pushed back during the fall and were spotted with blood. My arms were scraped and bleeding on their undersides where I’d used them to brace myself as I slid down the stairs. My belly hurt from the surfing, and one hip bone ached. “And to think we used to surf the stairs at home as kids for the fun of it,” I said. “How did we do that without getting hurt?”

  “We were five. Never mind that. What happened?”

  “Cody must have tripped me from behind and run. Did you see him?”

  “No. I was still outside. I heard the horrible noises and had to bash in the window to get in.”

  She started to help me up, but I yelped. A pain sharper than anything I’d ever known lanced up my arm from my wrist.

  “Is it broken?” Pauline asked.

  I stared at my throbbing left wrist. “I hope not.”

  She switched to the other side to help me up. “This is getting out of hand. We have to call the sheriff.”

  “Not yet. I have to talk with Cody, give him a chance to come clean on his own.”

  “But why? He needs help. He needs Sam. Oh, so that’s it.” Her face got close to mine, and she looked down her nose at me. I hated that and she knew it.

  “It’s not about Sam,” I said.

  “Sam reminds you of your mistakes, so you’re avoiding him, even if it means Cody’s on his own. Someday you’re going to have to face up to what you did and why you chose Dillon over Sam.”

  “Someday. But not now.”

  A cool breeze drifted in from the broken bay window. I hobbled over to see if Cody could be seen running away. The only thing I saw out front was my yellow pickup truck at the curb and the view of Lake Michigan across the street.

  I insisted we look around upstairs for the jewelry and anything else Cody might have stashed. My wrist hurt so much I had to hold my breath every few seconds. But adrenaline helped me push along. I was shocked that the laughing kid I’d known in my shop would do this to me. Which led me to the sudden realization that somebody else might have been here just now instead of Cody. Who knew we might be here, though? Bethany. But that cute cheerleader wouldn’t hurt a fly.

  We found nothing but mouse droppings in most of the empty rooms. The dust was disturbed in the big room along the front of the house, so Cody—or whoever it was—had to have been hiding there before he flipped me and ran to escape via the trellis.

  Pauline insisted on driving my truck. “If you’re not going to call the sheriff, at least get Sam to help you. Sam should have been here. He could’ve talked Cody into surrendering.”

  I got a chill from that. “I don’t need Sam’s help. He already thinks I’m a hopeless, helpless woman who needs his advice on how to live.”

  She tsked at me while we headed back to my quiet, treelined street and rental cottage behind the fudge shop. While Pauline washed up at my kitchen sink, I showered off my blood one-handed. Needlelike pain stabbed my left wrist. Bruises were forming up and down my arms. I still couldn’t believe Cody had done this to me. Could Jeremy Stone have been following us? Or could he have been snooping around in the empty house on a hunch, too, and not wanted to be seen? After all, he clearly suspected Cody of sneaking around the Blue Heron Inn on Sunday.

  With my damp hair left loose over my shoulders to dry, I dressed up in a fresh pair of jeans, flip-flops, and a long-sleeved red T-shirt to hide the stairwell rash and bruises. I wasn’t about to have to explain what had happened to all the guests at Izzy’s barbecue. It was less than an hour away. I switched my brain to fudge.

  By a little after five, Pauline and I were in my fudge shop—or what was left of it. It was practically empty. The church ladies had cleared the tables of all the goods—or sold everything—and had dragged the copper kettles inside the door. The pennies were gone. The cash registers were empty. I checked Grandpa’s, too. He wasn’t around. The place was wide open, the front door unlocked. I wondered if we’d been robbed.

  “Maybe your grandpa took all the cash home with him,” Pauline offered. “The whole thing was your grandma’s idea, after all. And he needs the money to pay for your attorney.”

  “I don’t need an attorney.”

  “He thinks you need one. Though, if Cody did it . . .”

  The sadness tingeing Pauline’s voice made me think, too, about Cody. I wondered how much he missed making my fancy fudge. Could he end up in prison? Maybe Cody wasn’t a murderer, but Jeremy Stone seemed to think he was involved. Do they let you make fudge in prison? Using just one arm mostly, I set marzipan out on the marble slab where we could carve fairy wings. But a yelp escaped me when my left hand bumped too hard against the white marble.

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t take you to the clinic to have that wrist looked at?” Pauline asked.

  “Give it a day. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  But fear as hoary as a spring tornado spun inside me. What if I couldn’t use my wrist by tomorrow? How was I going to make fudge? I shoved the panicked thought aside.

  Pauline helped me carve and place marzipan wings atop individual pieces of the pale pink vanilla fudge with cherries in it. Cody had always loved this part. He imagined the fudge flying to people’s mouths, which wasn’t a bad image. Just after I shook pink luster dust—called fairy glitter by Cody—over a winged piece of fudge, Pauline snapped it into her mouth.

  “Pauline! We need every piece!”

  She was smiling like she’d gone to heaven, which elated me. I asked, “So the flavor’s okay? The texture? I usually let the fudge sit longer.”

  She swooned, licking the ends of her fingers. “Tart with tawdry sweetness, cherry cheekiness becoming all vanilla vampy. Your fudge makes me feel like I’m dancing with a handsome prince at a ball and I’ve just been kissed!”

  “You’re horny.” I handed her pink cellophane and multicolored ribbons. My wrist couldn’t handle wrapping anything. “Let’s hope it charms the newspeople. Camera people can’t resist color. I want to look good on the news at six and ten.”

  “They’re going to be at the party?”

  “I doubt Isabelle invited them, but you can bet they’re going to be there once they find out several shops are closed early for the evening for the barbecue. The aroma alone of that cherry barbecue sauce will draw them in. And they’re going to want to know all about how I put diamonds in the fudge.”

  “Which you didn’t. Maybe we shouldn’t go. Didn’t we get into enough trouble already today? And we have to go back to that house now and repair that window I broke so squirrels and raccoons don’t get inside.”

  “No, Pauline. Our focus now is the party and my fudge.”

  “So this is all about you getting free advertising?”

  I confessed that earlier I had been thinking such selfish thoughts. Now I had something more important on my mind, and it all came about because Pauline and I were making my fudge into bite-sized gifts wit
h glitter and pink wrapping. “If Cody sees the fudge on the news, he might come out of hiding. Cody was really proud of his part in making Cinderella Pink Fudge.”

  “But if he’s run away, doesn’t that mean he doesn’t care about the fudge?”

  “He cares deep down, but I doubt Cody is watching TV at all.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “My pleading for him to give himself up is what matters. The people at the party will think that I believe Cody really killed Rainetta if I put on a good show for the cameras. Jeremy Stone will certainly corroborate my theory; he believes Cody did it. I want to see who’s happiest about Cody being blamed.”

  “But Cody just tried to harm you. He is to blame.”

  But I’d just had several revelations. First, I had this odd feeling now that anytime I wanted to conjure a solution to something I needed only to get near my fudge. Its aromas, texture, and taste helped me think more clearly. And here was my new revelation: Cody wasn’t mad at me. He had to be frustrated, in a deep way, that he couldn’t be helping me make the sparkly Cinderella fudge that he loved to wrap. The only way he’d be kept away from wrapping pink fudge would be if he’d been threatened to stay away. Which meant somebody else was involved. Somebody was using Cody. I told Pauline it was Mercy Fogg.

  Pauline said, “We saw them together in Sister Bay, which is suspicious. She’s certainly angry enough over losing the election to want revenge. And she doesn’t make much money driving the school bus and being a relief driver in the winter for the snowplowing.”

  “And she’s stout and strong enough to have knocked off Rainetta Johnson and stuffed my fudge in her mouth in one swift move.”

  We had just put the bite-sized fudge gifts into a flat cake box when Gilpa walked through the door covered in oil. The oil dripped off one side of his silver hair and down across an ear. His white T-shirt and denim bib overalls were brown and covered in oil. He headed over to his bait shop with a wave of a hand that meant “Don’t ask.”

  “Gilpa, what happened?”

  The rank smell of oil made my nose burn and my eyes water. Pauline coughed. Thank goodness we’d just wrapped the fudge because chocolate tended to soak in surrounding odors.

  Gilpa filched about in a cabinet below a wall of bobbers and lures. After much racket and tossing aside supplies, he came up with a drill, holding it like a gun. “Now that engine’s going to behave. Or else!”

  “Gilpa, have you done anything else today besides work on your boat’s engines?”

  He ran a hand through his hair. I cringed as the oil embedded further. He didn’t appear to care. “I have one engine running. She just seems to be spittin’ too much oil. I’ve got a theory about how to relieve the pressure.”

  “With a drill? Gilpa, you could blow something up. Let’s buy new engines. We’ll use my credit card.”

  “Which you maxed out for this place. No, no, no. A.M. and P.M., you go on about your business. I’ve got it handled.”

  That was what I was afraid of. I suspected the hunt for our lawyer had been put on hold, mostly because he couldn’t afford one and didn’t want to admit it to me. “We’re up at the Blue Heron Inn if you need us,” I said. “And please, Gilpa, it’s almost suppertime. Go home. Grandma must be worried. I’ll be over later to fix dinner.”

  “I’ll get dinner. This’ll take no time at all.” He raised the drill in the air as he hurried out, the cowbell going clinkety-clank in his wake.

  I looked at Pauline. “This isn’t good. A drill? Around all that oil and gasoline?”

  “He’s an experienced fixer-upper, Ava.”

  “No, he’s cheap. He cobbles things together. It’s why he can’t find a lawyer. He’s too cheap to really say yes to hiring one.”

  “Okay, but what could we do right now to help him with the engines besides get covered with oil and make him mad by talking too much?”

  She was right. Neither of us was dressed for engine work. We were dressed for delicious deviousness and making a murderer confess.

  • • •

  Newspeople and cameras peppered the lawn and the front porch of the Blue Heron Inn. The spring day had warmed nicely into the sixties and still hovered there. Many people at the party had shed winter clothing in exchange for summer-weight clothes and sandals, as if they had molted. As we neared, I heard the soft but clear voice of Isabelle Boone explaining the history of Steuben glass coming from inside.

  The babble of a crowd in the backyard drew us along with the aromas of grilled corn, salmon, and steaks slathered in the cherry barbecue sauce I’d bought Izzy at Koepsel’s. This picnic was an even bigger event than Sunday’s fund-raiser. When a party is held outdoors in a backyard in this small town, neighbors and even strangers don’t have to be invited; they just drop by and are welcomed. Clouds moving in, and the threat of rain didn’t seem to bother anybody. Poor Izzy. What she’d hoped to be a small party for her house-bound guests had turned into a county fair. A buffet table overflowed with my favorites, though, including lime green gelatin molds filled with our local apples, three-bean salad with cheese cubes added, and jut—a Belgian dish popular here that was essentially mashed potatoes made with cooked and chopped cabbage and freshly fried bacon.

  A round table sat empty, so Pauline and I commandeered it for my individually wrapped pink perfections. I also scattered pieces as table decorations on the buffet table and the wine and beer bar featuring local ingredients including honey. Some people might hesitate to eat the fudge if they thought it had killed Rainetta, but I wanted to get conversations started about the murder.

  Pauline slowed me down to whisper, “I’m surprised you haven’t tackled a TV cameraperson and stuffed a piece of your fudge in his mouth. This is your chance to be a star.”

  The thrilling hope of being a success sparkled like diamonds inside of me, but it was as fragile as all the glass inside Isabelle’s B and B. “I want my fudge to be the best in the world. Do you think it is?”

  She waved off my self-doubt. “I’m helping myself to that cherry wine. Want a glass?”

  I was about to say “no” when I spotted John Schultz across the lawn with a glass of red wine. The memory of the wine bottle in the photo on Jeremy Stone’s cell phone made me change my mind. “Yeah, I’d love one.”

  With the glass of wine in my good hand and Pauline in tow with a piece of my fudge, I proceeded across the lawn.

  “Hello,” I said, nodding for Pauline to hand John the piece of pink cellophane-wrapped confection. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Ava Oosterling, of Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers and Belgian Fudge just down the hill here at the docks. Please accept a sample of my new Cinderella Pink Fudge.”

  With trepidation, I waited for him to react to the gift in his big palm. He was a man my height and stocky but in athletic shape under the soft edges. He had thinning brown hair graying at the temples and wore a Hawaiian shirt, sturdy sandals, and fashionable tan men’s shorts with several pockets. He had the look of a tour guide.

  To my surprise, his brown eyes lit up at the fudge. He handed his wine to Pauline, then pulled off the ribbon to reveal the pale pink prize inside. The cellophane blossomed like the petals of a flower.

  He chuckled. “This is a downright beautiful presentation. The ladies’ll love this. You say you’re just down the way?”

  “Yes, on the docks. We used to be Oosterling’s Live Bait, Bobbers and Beer, and we still have plenty of beer there, but now we also have fudge.”

  A scowl planted on his face. “You’re related to that Oosterling who got us stranded for a day out at the lighthouse?”

  “I’m so sorry.” My stomach did a flip-flop. “That was my grandfather.”

  Pauline edged forward to touch his arm. “It’s great fudge. The greatest. Don’t blame Ava at all for the broken boat engines. She and her grandfather actually don’t get along.”

  I gave her a look, but it didn’t matter.

  John addressed only her and with a big smile
. “And what do you do there? Just look pretty like you’re doing now?”

  I held back from rolling my eyes at his almost-sleazy behavior. Pauline was still dressed in her school clothes of chinos and black blouse covered with stains from kids, with her jet-black hair in a braid.

  Pauline giggled with an odd twinkle in her eyes and said, “I’m the taste tester. I’m still here, so you know it’s not poison!”

  He leaned forward toward her, lip-lock close. “Is this another lucky batch of fudge? Filled with diamonds?”

  “No,” I interceded between them. “I have no idea how the diamonds got in there. The sheriff is still figuring that out. We assume somebody hid them in some of my ingredients.”

  John looked about. “He’s here somewhere. Let’s ask him what he’s found out.”

  Pauline must have seen me turn white. She said to John, “Try the fudge. The vanilla flavoring creates a villainous vector of vivaciousness on the tongue. Your vote, too?”

  John stuffed the small piece into his mouth, smacking his lips. Pauline handed him his wineglass. He sipped, making an art of savoring the flavor cocktail in his mouth. Then he wiggled his lips, like a bunny sniffing a carrot. Finally, he held up his half-empty wineglass in a toast to me and Pauline. “Cataclysmic creation! The cherry wine cleaves to the cherry-vanilla fudge. Exquisite, exciting, enchanting!”

  Pauline, practically panting over his C’s and E’s, reached out again to tenderly touch his forearm. She smiled in a comely way I hadn’t seen since college when she’d flirted, half-buzzed, in a campus bar.

  She said, “You must add the winery and the Oosterlings’ shop to a tour. You could be paid extra for this tour because there’s a show involved. Ava makes fudge by hand in copper kettles. Nobody else does that in all of Door County. Your tour ladies could stomp grapes with their own feet and then stir the fudge goop with their own hands.”

  Fudge goop? I was offended but kept quiet.

  John chortled. “I love it. You’re in tour sales, right?”

  “I teach kindergarten, which makes me an expert in field trips and tours on a different level. There’s less drinking on my tours.”