First-Degree Fudge: A Fudge Shop Mystery

by DeSmet, Christine

  “Corning?” I’d heard of Corning glass, of course.

  “There are summer homes of the rich in the area, many at local vineyards or wineries. One of those homes belongs to a man by the name of Kruppenmeier. The diamonds were stolen from the safe in his home.”

  “These are the same diamonds that were found here?”

  “It looks like it,” he said. “My colleagues out there tell me the Kruppenmeiers were in a feud over the rocks with a cousin’s son by the name of Benton Alpanelp. Benton had purchased the raw diamonds from a blood-mine situation in an African country.”

  “You’re talking about a dictatorship, slavery, that sort of thing?”

  “Yeah. But it seems Benton bought the diamonds with the intent of giving them back to the workers of the mine. He’s a philanthropist and an activist.”

  I moved to the edge of my seat, fascinated. “And the Kruppenmeiers didn’t like that? They wanted the diamonds, I bet, because many are colored diamonds, worth much more than usual.”

  “How did you know that?” He smiled sheepishly. “You saw them, of course.”

  “So the Kruppenmeiers had them stolen from Benton Alpanelp?”

  “No,” Jeremy said, to my surprise. “It seems a third party was aware of the flap and hired a professional to steal them, and I suspect they thought that the feud between the families might help cover up who really did it.”

  “And you know who did it?”

  Jeremy flopped back on the sofa in defeat. “No.”

  “Could it be the Reeds? They’re from New York.”

  “I’m looking into that possibility, of course. But because of the diamonds showing up here at the same time as Rainetta Johnson, I paid a genealogist to see if there was a connection between Rainetta and these families. And there was.”

  I leaned forward in my seat with glee. “There is? Oh my gosh. Jeremy, why haven’t you told us this before?”

  “I just found it out today. These things take time. But she’s only a shirttail relation, way off the grid really. But I did find out her last name used to be Kruppenmeier.”

  My brain went into overdrive with possibilities. “Had Rainetta visited them recently?”

  “No. I’ve traced her steps, and she was in Chicago until she came here on late Saturday afternoon to stay over for the fund-raiser party on Sunday. I spoke with Isabelle already, thinking maybe security people had come ahead of time to check out the place and maybe be the connection to the thieves, but that didn’t happen either.”

  “But it’s weird that Rainetta is a relation and the diamonds end up here. She likely knew about the feud between the families.”

  “I have an idea,” Pauline said, making Jeremy and me jerk. I’d forgotten she was in the room. She stood behind the kitchenette counter. “What if somebody knew either the Alpanelps or Kruppenmeiers intimately and was sick of their feuding, so decided to teach them a lesson?”

  Pauline sounded like a teacher. Everything in life was about learning lessons.

  Jeremy sat forward, worrying his hands. His nose wiggled. “I’m pretty sure that by now all the maids, mechanics, gardeners, vineyard workers, and whoever else they employ have been questioned.”

  Pauline looked slapped down by Jeremy’s dismissal. I felt sorry for her, so I said, “But maybe there are former employees of those estates who should be questioned. Were they, Jeremy?”

  “Hmm.” He made notes in his notepad. “I’ll see what I can dig up.”

  “That still leaves us with this question: Why me? Why hide the diamonds in my sugar? Why was Rainetta’s necklace in my cookie jar?”

  Jeremy wrote down those questions, too, which felt good because I felt validated, as if he took me seriously now.

  Then he looked me square in the eyes. “It has to mean that someone around here knew the diamonds were coming to town but was smart enough not to keep them at their place.”

  “Jeremy, they were smart enough not to keep them here at the Blue Heron. Have you noticed that none of the doors have locks? Izzy has kept the place historically accurate. So that has to mean the thief is somebody staying here. At least that’s my theory.”

  “I like it.” He made another note. “And the nearest place that seemed innocent enough for a cover would be a bait and fudge shop. Nobody would suspect an all-American, true-blue establishment like Oosterlings’.”

  “I appreciate the compliment, Jeremy, about our shop, but maybe we’ve been an easy target because the shop is hidden behind Main Street and the bustle there, not to mention the lights at night. It’s pretty dark on the docks at night and after we shut off our shop’s lights.”

  “And so the guilty person or persons also had somewhat easy access in and out of your shop and knew they could pick up the jewels anytime.”

  “Except Ranger and I made fudge with the wrong sack and the diamond thief didn’t expect that.”

  Pauline said, “We’ve known that all along. What we don’t know is who was expecting the diamonds.” She helped herself to a glass of water at Jeremy’s sink.

  The lighting in the room caught Pauline’s water glass just right and reminded me of Isabelle’s party and how disgusted she’d been with Rainetta’s cheap offer for the unicorn figurine. If Rainetta was loaded—or was about to become filthy rich from the sale of stolen diamonds—I didn’t think she’d want to bother with a mere glass unicorn. Or would she? Just as I’d been about to let Rainetta off the hook, I wondered if she were casing Isabelle’s collection, trying to buy—or steal—pieces and then sell them for profit? I’d had that thought previously concerning somebody after Isabelle’s collection. What about Rainetta’s manager?

  “Rainetta’s career was definitely on the wane. Would her manager be behind this?”

  Jeremy said, “I don’t know the guy. Refuses to talk with reporters.”

  But the manager had talked with Isabelle about collecting Rainetta’s luggage and clothes, Izzy had said. Which meant we had to check on those things before the luggage and clothes disappeared.

  I hurried from Jeremy’s room.

  Pauline caught up with me halfway down the staircase. “What’s the rush?”

  “Rainetta’s manager has to be the key. He might even have murdered her.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “I’m betting he came to town sometime over the years that Rainetta has been visiting Door County and vacationing here. Egads, this place is known worldwide for its nice spas and the cruises from here on the Great Lakes. I haven’t met him yet, but others in town, including Isabelle, probably have. And thus the guy comes and goes unnoticed by now.”

  “So he wears denims and something with a Green Bay Packer logo on it and everybody just waves hi to him like he’s a local or a normal tourist. You think he snuck into your shop?”

  “Easy enough. Gilpa would’ve just called out ‘Can I get ya a beer?’ and accepted him, maybe even thought he was a delivery guy.”

  “Oh my. You might be right. This manager had to have known the New York family flap. Managers know everything about their clients. What does yours know about you that’s a secret he keeps from the tabloids?”

  My manager, Marc Hayward, was nice, an eager guy who worked hard to encourage me to stay on the show. I’d also had an agent, but we’d parted ways when she learned I was heading back to Wisconsin. Agents specialized in doing your contracts, so if no contract was in the offing, they moved on. My manager, on the other hand, still hung in there. He sent me text messages and e-mail messages about possible shows I should think about writing spec scripts for. I thought a moment as we looked about at the Steuben glassware scattering light like fairy glitter into the air. With odd disappointment, I said, “What does my manager know that’s juicy about me? Not a darn thing. Am I really that dull, Pauline?”

  “No, my friend, you are not dull. Just Belgian. You can build on that, though.”

  “Thanks.” The glow was back inside me. “What we have to do next is show the diamonds to Isabelle
and see what she says about Rainetta’s manager.”

  “I don’t think we can do that.”

  “Why not—? Oh no. You didn’t leave the diamonds behind in Jeremy Stone’s room, did you?”

  Pauline whipped her dark hair off a shoulder. “You told me to.”

  “But Jeremy turned out to be friendlier than I thought.”

  “You’re going back to his room to get those diamonds, not me.”

  “Okay. After we find Izzy.” We headed through the dining room for the kitchen.

  She wasn’t there, nor in the backyard, so we came back through the foyer and headed through the other half of the old boarding house to her private suite.

  When Izzy let us in, I was mesmerized by how beautiful her suite was. She’d done it all in creams with black accents and touches of peacock blue. The furnishings were antiques, but comfortable and of the lived-in variety. Two creamy striped couches with dark walnut claw-footed legs flanked a fireplace, its bricks painted white. And now I knew where her unicorn had gone. It sat on the mantel, next to a gorgeous bouquet of pink carnations.

  The carnations rang a bell in my head. “Are those—?”

  “Yes,” Izzy said, “from Rainetta’s room. I couldn’t let them go to waste. Do you think I should’ve left them there?”

  I laughed. “No. I almost took them myself.” Then I flushed, admitting, “When I was snooping in the room.”

  “That’s okay. All my guests have taken their turn, I’m sure. I was just about to make some hot cocoa. It’s cold out again today.”

  I hadn’t noticed the weather because of my horrid morning. There had been rain, I recalled, and the usual fog and mist that Door County got in May, but I hadn’t even bothered with my rain jacket. It was cloudy again, though, and the temperature was probably around sixty now, not cold for locals. But it would likely dip later, and we’d have frosty streets tonight, not uncommon at this time of year. “Thanks, Izzy. Cocoa sounds wonderful.”

  We made cocoa together, me finding her marshmallows in her cupboard and Pauline the cups and saucers.

  “Izzy, I hate to ask you this, but Jeremy Stone told us things that make us think that Rainetta’s manager might be somebody of interest in her murder.”

  “You’re kidding?” Her diminutive size appeared to shrink even more where she stood stirring cocoa over her stovetop.

  “Did the manager come and pick up Rainetta’s things yet?”

  “Yes. This morning.”

  Disappointment at not getting to meet him made me ask, “Did you watch him? I mean, was he acting suspicious?”

  Her stirring slowed as she pondered. “How do you mean?”

  “You weren’t watching him when he gathered up her things? You have valuable things here, Izzy. He could’ve stolen something.”

  “I—I—oh crap. Okay, I confess. I didn’t watch him because I didn’t want him seeing my guilty face. I kept some of Rainetta’s things.”

  Pauline said, “That could get you in trouble.”

  I fluttered a hand at her. “Not unless it’s something really valuable. What did you take, Izzy?”

  She sheepishly eyeballed her long, lavender shirt. “It’s hers. And this.” She went to an antique dresser that served as a cabinet for her television set next to the fireplace and then came back with a scarf covered with pink flowers, very much like carnations. “I admired it the afternoon she arrived.” Izzy began to puddle up. “My mother had one very similar. I couldn’t help myself. It was just stupid to take the shirt and the scarf, I know, but for some reason having Rainetta here was like having my mother around. And my mother liked these colors, too.” She let out a sob. “I feel so stupid now, telling you this. Excuse me. I’ll change clothes and make sure I send these things to her manager tomorrow.”

  She was heading off toward her bedroom, but Pauline and I looked at each other and then we both said, “Stop.”

  I said, “Izzy, it’s just a scarf and a blouse. Rainetta would have loved giving those to you if you’d told her about missing your mother.” I recalled Rainetta’s lovely laughter in the foyer that day and the way my grandmother later swooned about Rainetta’s movies. Rainetta had been a popular actress in her day, and frankly, in looking her up on the Internet, I had only found interviews that showed her to be gracious, though direct, in her opinions about her male costars. I shook off a brief thought of Sam’s involvement with her.

  Pauline said, “Many of my kindergarten kids sneak something from Mom with them to school, like Mom’s necklace or her lipstick. It’s soothing for them. And we never outgrow it. The teenage girls in school who get along with their moms are always wearing their clothes these days. It’s like they’re sisters. If you feel a sisterhood with Rainetta, so be it. It’s nobody’s business. It’s not like you found diamonds that you’re keeping.”

  I flashed Pauline a warning to keep quiet about our stash of hot ice. I added, “I doubt that manager cares about a scarf and blouse, even if they’re from some fancy designer. He’s probably more concerned about what became of all the diamonds and why he doesn’t have them in his hot hands.”

  Isabelle gave us the manager’s name, Conrad Webb. I didn’t know him, but I could call my own manager and likely get something on him. The only problem was I didn’t want to call Marc Hayward because he’d ask me yet again what I was writing. He got paid only if I wrote something that sold. I also didn’t want to hear that I was fired from my show. Staff changes usually came in May, at the end of the spring television season. I hadn’t formally quit the show yet when I had left Los Angeles this spring. But why did it matter to me? Wasn’t I ready to stay in Door County? It was funny how I needed safety nets in my life. In a way, I was already planning my failure here and was counting on keeping my job in Los Angeles. My own life had gone topsy-turvy, just like the lives of the girls on the show. But then Sam’s chiding words about me being a twelve-year-old echoed in my head. I had to prove I was worthy to somebody. Like my grandfather.

  We were finishing our cocoa and standing around the counter when I asked Isabelle about Cody. “Did you ever see him sneaking into your inn?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Jeremy Stone saw him running from the back door the day of the murder. Jeremy was in the bathroom upstairs and looked out the window.”

  Isabelle gasped. “Was Cody up there? Maybe he saw the murder? And that’s why he’s run away?”

  For some odd reason I hadn’t thought of that. I thought he’d run away because of me. How stupid I felt now. “It all happened so fast. Maybe he saw all sorts of things. You ran up to see about Rainetta. What did you see?” She’d told me once, but I needed to hear it again.

  Isabelle set down the cocoa cup she’d been holding aloft in front of her lips. “Her door was closed. I went into the restroom at the end of the hall to use it; then I heard her door open and close. I washed my hands and came out. I knocked on her door. She came out and fell over.”

  “Did you notice that her necklace was gone?”

  Isabelle held a hand over her chest, as if she couldn’t breathe. “Oh my gosh, no.”

  “Meaning you saw it? Or not?”

  “I don’t remember it. If it was gone, does that mean somebody was in her room hiding while we were in the hallway?”

  “The sheriff looked in the room, but . . .”

  Isabelle tapped her fingers to her cup in thought. “Her clothes were still there. Maybe they hid behind the clothes.”

  “Like Cody did.” I told her about finding him hiding in the closet. “Did Rainetta have a shiny, expensive man’s watch?”

  “I never saw anything like that when she arrived. But it’s not like she would show me her jewelry.”

  Pauline asked, “Maybe the watch was a gift for her manager?”

  Or a gift for Sam, I was thinking. But Cody stole it from the room and showed it to Mercy at the restaurant. Pauline and I filled in Izzy on the restaurant visit.

  Izzy said, “Do you think that Conrad might ha
ve engaged Cody and Mercy in the diamond scheme?”

  “Hard to say. Mercy went upstairs, too. Then seemed to disappear. Did you see her?”

  “No, but maybe she slipped into John’s room. He was likely sleeping pretty soundly and didn’t notice.”

  Pauline plunked down her cup with a clink. “Wait a minute. He was out in Gil’s boat, stranded on Chambers Island, I thought.”

  “No,” Izzy said. “I found out from Taylor that he’d gotten seasick after they started out, so they had to bring him back in. He slipped into his room to sleep off the seasickness.”

  My shoulders sank with a new realization. “So that’s why they got caught in the bad weather and the engines couldn’t handle it. Grandpa would have known about the storm clouds brewing, but with the hubbub of bringing John back in, Gilpa got flustered and just kept going.” I shared a look of surprise with Pauline. I asked Izzy, “So John Schultz was actually upstairs when Rainetta was murdered and he lied about it?”

  Pauline groaned. Her face had a sickly hue.

  Isabelle nodded.

  “Where’s John now? We need to talk with him.”

  “He chartered a fishing trip with Moose Lindstrom for this afternoon. He’s probably down at the docks.”

  • • •

  Pauline and I raced out of the Blue Heron Inn, then down the steep street. As we tried not to fall forward on our faces in the steep pitch, Pauline said, “What about the diamonds in Jeremy’s room?”

  “They’re safe for now. If we call him and tell him about them, that’ll just cause us trouble with Jordy Tollefson because Jeremy’s got his journalism code of honor and he’ll have to tell the truth about the diamonds.”

  “And you’ll be arrested and fixed up with a jail cell next to your grandpa,” Pauline said, puffing.

  “Exactly. With you,” I puffed back.

  “I could lose my teaching license because of you.”

  “Be grateful I helped you find out what a sneaky, lying guy John Schultz is before it was too late.”