Hot Fudge Frame-Up: A Fudge Shop Mystery (19 page)

I rushed over and snatched the box of food. “Come on, Gilpa, that’s a really nice offer. And you like his boat. You piloted it that time in May, remember? It was fun. Remember how easily it cruised across the top of the waves? Your boat doesn’t do that.”

“I like my boat.”

“Gilpa, your boat’s not working and probably won’t anymore. Both engines are shot. And your boat’s a mess. It’s all oily. Nobody wants to ride in that thing. And it doesn’t have air-conditioning.”

My grandfather gave me a look that shamed me for being so forward.

I swallowed hard, trying to think of something to help him get over his silly pride. “What would Lloyd want you to do? He liked new things as much as old things.”

“Lloyd? New things?” My grandfather’s face wrinkled in pain. “You think giving me a damn fancy boat to ride around in will get Lloyd back? Or our shop? Or your grandmother? I’m losing everything. Everything. I’m moving back to the farm.”

He stomped off through the back of the shop.

I sank against the minnow tank, dropping the box of food on the floor.

Moose stuffed his hands in his pockets.

Cody had turned white. “He’s mad. Maybe you should call him on his phone. Sam always says when I get mad and can’t handle things because of my autism, I should call him. Maybe Gil should call Sam.”

Cody’s concern touched me. “It’s okay, Cody. He’s going to go talk with Grandma now. They’ll be all right.”

“I don’t think so, Miss Oosterling. He’s going to pack his bags and leave for good. Remember when I ran away? He has that look in his eyes, like nobody understands him. That’s how I feel when people gang up on me.”

My heart fell into my stomach. In May, because of my lack of patience with Cody, he’d stolen a boat and motored out to live on an island. Pauline and I had to rescue him and convince him to come home. “I ganged up on him, didn’t I?”

Moose put a hand on my shoulder. “You did nothing of the kind. I pushed him. Sorry. I thought I could help.”

“Did he really sleep on his boat last night?”

Moose nodded.

“Oh dear.” I bit my lip in thought. I had to find a way to get Grandpa back into proper fighting mode, and back together with Grandma. I was nothing without my grandparents by my side. My grandparents were the ones who’d helped me get my start in the fudge business. My grandfather had even taken down the word “Beer” on the old sign to make room for “Belgian Fudge.” I had added “Beer” back to the building later in May to show my love and respect for all he’d done for me.

I had to put my life in order once and for all. “Moose, have you ever heard of the Riverboat Cruise Corporation? They’re the ones who drew up the plans for the harbor. They proposed moving the bait shop back off the dock and under some new condos.”

“Oh, sure. RCC is big. They run some river cruises down in Chicago and all over the Great Lakes region.”

“So who’s the president of that corporation? The name isn’t listed on the Internet.”

“Damned if I know. You talked with Lloyd’s lawyer? He’d know. He’ll surely be at the funeral today.” Moose bent down near my face, then whispered, “Whoever Lloyd named in his trust is going to get mighty rich. Rumor around town is that Mercy Fogg knocked him off so she and Libby could live the high life together in that mansion.”

A nasty image of Mercy—and Kelsey, two nutty women—sharing that magnificent house with Libby plagued me as I readied to go to the funeral that Tuesday morning. Lloyd wouldn’t want any of that to happen to his estate. Lloyd had entrusted me with a key for the place and I somehow felt protective of the house now.

I called the Riverboat Cruise Corporation and asked for the owner’s name. The phone got forwarded to five different people and some calliope music before I concluded I’d just gotten the royal brush-off.

I went home to dress for the funeral.

Funerals call for a dress. I hated dresses, but I still had a royal blue sheath with pockets that I used to wear to writer gatherings in L.A. It hid the ten pounds I’d gained since opening my fudge shop. I left my hair loose about my shoulders. I slipped on tan high heels. The nick in my leg from the bullet was covered by a small flesh-colored bandage, but there was no pain, just a stiffness. The heels registered loud clicking noises as I walked across my cabin’s floorboards. Titus didn’t recognize me. The poor mouse darted helter-skelter from the kitchen into the living area, then cowered under the couch and stuck his nose out to look at me again. I put one of the Oosterling cheese curds on the floor for him to munch on while I was gone.

I called Pauline to pick me up because I didn’t want to come between my grandparents by asking for a ride with them. I crossed my fingers, hoping those two would drive together to the funeral and patch things up. That reminded me that I’d have to call the auto body shop about the assessment for my yellow truck and then touch base with my insurance company.

Pauline was wearing a cherry red sheath with matching tan shoes. We almost looked like twins. That tended to happen with us, starting in kindergarten.

We were on the highway heading southwest out of Fishers’ Harbor when I asked her to turn around.

“What’s wrong?”

“We forgot the roses. We told everybody we were picking roses for the funeral.”

Pauline circled back down the highway, soon pulling up in front of Lloyd’s house by the fountain. I got out my key.

Pauline said, “We shouldn’t go inside.”

“We need to put the roses in something, unless you’re offering your purse as a vase to sit next to the casket.”

“No. Every time you ask me to stuff anything in my purse, bad things happen to us.”

“Nothing bad happened when you put the architectural plans in your purse.”

“So far. We stole those plans from this house, though.”

When we got inside Lloyd’s historic home, we quickly saw that it’d been ransacked.

D
rawers in the dining area’s side table were left open but not dumped, just pawed through and left messy. Furniture had been moved around. Cushions were tossed. The cups were still intact in their cupboard, save for the couple I still thought had been stolen.

“The guns and the safe,” I said.

We hurried down the cool air-conditioned hallway. A hunting rifle was missing, which didn’t surprise me. We headed to the library.

“Oh my,” we said in unison.

Many sections of Lloyd’s shelves had been emptied. But oddly enough, they hadn’t been tossed about. His precious cookbooks were in small stacks on the floor, as if somebody had been going through them methodically. To look for the safe’s combination.

I rushed to the lower shelf in the middle of the back wall. The safe was still closed and locked. Chinks of plaster were missing around where wooden trim had framed the safe in the wall. The wooden trim sat on a shelf. A steel casing under the trim area connected the safe securely behind the studs in the wall and behind the plaster. Dillon had been right; to get this sucker out you’d need the right tools and lots of muscle.

Pauline gripped her purse tighter still. “Let’s leave. We’re supposed to be going to a funeral, not trying to create our own. Somebody could be hiding upstairs.”

“Or in the rose garden.” I dashed to the windows.

I didn’t see anybody. The door was still secured from the inside. But I knew I couldn’t leave the cookbooks still on the shelves behind now. We’d scared somebody away, perhaps, and they hadn’t yet gotten to the books on the shelves that might contain the safe’s combination. The visitor couldn’t have been Jordy. He definitely wouldn’t have left books lying about on the floor like this. He would have taken them all with him.

“We’ve got to get into this safe,” I said. Two walls of books weren’t cookbooks, I realized. Just the shelves on the back wall with the safe. Whoever was here hadn’t had time to use the rolling ladder to get to the cookbooks near the top. “I need your help carrying these cookbooks to your car.”

“We’ll get dusty and sweaty before the funeral. And we’re in heels.”

We considered our sheath dresses, crisp and fresh, the royal blue and red colors bright and unsullied.

“You’re right,” I said. “As usual.”

“And as usual you’re ignoring me.”

“BFFs. We need to hurry.”

It was around nine thirty and the service started at ten. I grabbed a steak knife for protection, kicked off my flesh-toned pumps, and then went up the stairs. Luggage with wheels on it was in Lloyd’s master bedroom closet, which somebody had also left in disarray. I thought about John Schultz wanting to get in the house, and wondered if he’d finally picked a lock. But so many others had access, too, it seemed. Erik and the professor, and maybe Mercy and Kelsey, maybe Piers because of his association with Erik, and of course Libby. Maybe Libby had been here to get a suit for Lloyd to wear in his casket and had left the closet this way in her rush and she had nothing to do with the mess downstairs. My intuition said I was close to figuring out who murdered Lloyd.

In the library, I climbed the ladder and tossed books down for Pauline to catch. It was just like playing basketball again. We stuffed two large rolling suitcases with cookbooks.

After grabbing rubber gloves and towels from the kitchen to protect us from the thorns, we picked a dozen roses in as many colors and shades, found a vase in the kitchen, locked up the house, then headed for the funeral.

* * *

St. Ann’s Church had been built in the middle of a wildflower prairie a few miles between Fishers’ Harbor and Egg Harbor. It sat amid woodland and apple and cherry orchards dotting rolling hills. In the springtime, this drive was a breathtaking sea of pink and white blossoms with a perfume in the air that made you smile no matter what your troubles were.

As Pauline drove, I was reminded of our farm. “Pauline, we have to find a way to get my grandparents back together.”

“Sophie is a wise woman. She’ll figure this out.”

“Not this time. Gilpa’s moving for real down to Brussels because of me and my big mouth. I’ll have my parents mad at me, too, but worse, I might not see Gilpa at the shop early in the mornings. The morning with just the two of us is our special time.” My heart was cracking like ice on Lake Michigan in winter.

“Maybe Sophie’s church lady friends will know what to do. They’ll be serving the church lunch afterward. We can ask for their help.”

“Good idea. Never thought I’d say that about the church ladies.”

My guilt and shame spun inside me like a tornado. The more I tried to help others, the deeper in trouble I got and the farther I pushed people away. What was wrong with me? Pauline had said that I didn’t trust my own success. Who could blame me? My fudge success had apparently caused all the trouble to happen—perhaps even caused a murder. If I hadn’t picked Lloyd to be a fudge judge, he might still be alive.

I shook off my own sorrows. “How’s Laura? She couldn’t come, you said.”

“She’s not feeling well again.”

“The babies okay?”

“Ava, I think she’s miserable mostly because her husband’s not here.”

I didn’t have a cure for that. “Maybe we should go over there and help her with the refurbishing of that old room in the back of the bakery. Maybe we’ll find secret cavities in her floors or walls filled with a million dollars. That’ll cheer her up.” Another idea struck me. “We need to check Lloyd’s house for secret floorboards. Maybe that fancy inlaid floor in the dining rotunda is really a trapdoor to treasure!”

Pauline slowed down for a corner. “We’re not going in that house again. No way.”

“We have to find out what’s in that safe.”

“Just ask Libby for the combination. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that sooner. I’m starting to think like you—convoluted.”

“I’m creative. I don’t think she has that combination, Pauline. Lloyd didn’t want her gambling his valuables away. In fact, I’m surprised Alex Faust got a key from her that worked. I would’ve thought Lloyd had changed all his locks.”

“Maybe Lloyd’s lawyer gave her permission to have a key to get in to get clothes for the funeral.”

“Likely. But let’s not spook Libby today and tell her what we just saw. She’s going to be especially fragile today.”

“How did she feel about you and Sam getting shot at after you asked her for the keys to the lighthouse?”

“We didn’t tell her about being shot. On the way home, I doused our lights yards away from her house, then slipped the keys under her mat. She needed her sleep for today.”

“But what if that was Kelsey shooting at you? Libby needs to know that woman is certifiably crazy. Lloyd would want us warning Libby. Maybe Kelsey was the one ransacking Lloyd’s house. Everything was rather neat; maybe it was a woman burglar.”

Of course my friend could be right on all counts. I’d had the same thought minutes ago in the house. Our prime suspects, in my opinion, were Erik and Kelsey. “Let’s wait to talk to Libby later. A funeral isn’t a nice place to tell a widow that the person who may have killed her husband might be living with her and wants to kill her, too. After she steals her blind.”

* * *

When we arrived at St. Ann’s, at least a hundred or more people milled about outside under the tent the funeral home had rented. There was a line leading up the sidewalk to the church. With my roses in hand as my excuse, I cut into the line and strutted inside.

I set the vase of roses down on a nearby table filled with pictures of Lloyd. Several easels had been set up to accommodate dozens of photos, from baby pictures to some taken last week by golfing buddies at Peninsula State Park. There was also a photo with my grandfather and other card-playing buddies in the basement of this church, taken maybe only weeks ago.

Lloyd was laid out in a peaceful pose in the open casket. He wore a three-piece navy suit. He should have been holding a golf ball or deck of cards in his hands. Instead, he held nothing. Not even one of his precious cookbooks. That saddened me. Details matter at one’s funeral.
Get it right, folks.
Makeup had been applied on his neck, which confirmed there was some mark there. The mark was thin, unfortunately about the size of the small, slim twine ropes we sold in the shop. But twine was ubiquitous; heck, I now recalled seeing it in Lloyd’s rose garden to help hold up the bountiful blooms.

My gaze connected with Jordy, standing maybe ten feet from me, talking to a very tall man I didn’t know. Jordy was in full uniform, holding his hat in his big hands. He had a look that said he wanted to talk with me.

My phone buzzed in the pocket of my dress. I rushed away from the casket to the unused coatrack corner in the opposite direction of Jordy. Cathy Rivers was calling.

“What is it, Cathy?” I whispered.

“The Riverboat Cruise Corporation owns other companies that have to do with tourism, including a wine tour business.”

“Wine tours?” The neurons in my body waved red flags before my eyes. “John Schultz’s wine tours?”

“Yes.”

“But you can’t possibly believe he’s the one putting in the offer to buy my fudge shop and the cabins on Duck Marsh Street. He doesn’t seem the type.”
He has hairy feet. He wears Hawaiian shirts all the time. He can’t possibly be that rich.
“Is he some corporate spy?”

Cathy laughed. “I don’t know. He might know something about RCC’s offer to buy up the village harbor properties.”

We hung up. Pauline obviously didn’t know she was falling for a rodent, and one that she thought was about to propose to her. I imagined he’d already planned the proposal for the night of my fudge contest adult prom when we would all be in our fancy fairy-tale gowns. John would make sure it was captured on camera for his dratted food channel show he was trying to sell. I realized now that TV show story of his was merely a cover for him to be nosing around our properties. I wasn’t about to let him bamboozle Pauline. I wanted to find a giant piece of sticky rat trap paper and watch John squirm while I grilled him.

But Cathy had said she wasn’t sure; she’d said, “I don’t know.” I had to find John Schultz right now.

He wasn’t in the church, so I glided outside. Pauline was talking with some fellow teachers. She said John was in the church basement, videotaping the church ladies making the lunch. I decided to wait instead of making a scene in front of women who created prayer chains and aprons for me.

“Why do you want John?” Pauline asked.

Hmm. I’d have to lie to my best friend. “I wanted to make sure he was videotaping the food from the best perspective. Funeral food in our neck of the woods is much more than gelatin molds with mayonnaise on the side.”

“I happen to like mayonnaise,” Pauline said.

“So do I, but with Belgian fries, P.M., not with lime gelatin in the shape of a rooster.”

Pauline’s friends started a conversation about collectible gelatin molds or tins, so I excused myself to go find Jordy and ask him about the autopsy report.

In my rush, I almost fell over when my heels poked too far into the lawn. The gentleman who caught me from behind was the stranger Jordy had been talking with. He was probably six feet eight inches tall at least—a giant. And handsome as heck. He was my age or thereabouts, with elegant, wavy short-cropped, brown hair as neat in appearance as his dark three-piece suit.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, looking up at a chiseled chin.

“I’m not,” he said. “Are you okay? You didn’t break a shoe, did you?”

With smooth grace and big hands, he helped me move from the soft lawn to a portion of concrete sidewalk. I was floating on his strong arms. My heels checked out okay. Indicating his attire, I said, “You must be one of the pallbearers.”

“Yes. I’m Parker Balusek.”

“How do you know Lloyd?”

“I’m his attorney.”

“Really?” I smiled big-time at my luck.

Parker laughed. “You expected to meet some old codger in pinstripes reeking of expensive cigars and wearing diamond cuff links.” My mouth barely came open before he added, “That’s my boss. I’m new to the firm but have been working on Lloyd’s business as of late.”

My heart bounced around like a joyful bunny amid rows of carrots in my grandparents’ garden. “Then you’ve been working with him on the plans with the, uh, Riverboat Cruise Corporation.”

“Indeed. I specialize in real estate law and rights involving historic preservations and zoning. You may have heard of the efforts to preserve the church in Stangelville? I was raised there. Recently, I went over the historic preservation status documents for the church.”

People came from across the country to see the St. Lawrence Catholic Church in Stangelville, a Czech-heritage community that was not too far south of us in Kewaunee County. The church was built inside with the detail of a European Czech cathedral.

Parker asked, “You know Professor Faust? He’s been in touch with me about local history.”

“Yes, he’s got quite a cookbook, which includes pictures of some of Lloyd’s older properties, like Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers and Belgian Fudge and Beer. I’m Ava Oosterling, the fudge part of that. My grandfather was Lloyd’s best friend and runs the bait shop. We’re located right in the harbor on the docks.”

“Then I suspect you see the professor a lot, too. He said he’s recently become interested in shipwrecks. It’s interesting that he’s made a connection with John Schultz.” A look of distaste crossed his face.

“Interesting? How so?”

Parker flipped his head about, looking at the crowd. “John’s not here, is he?”

“In the church basement. What’s wrong with John? He’s been hanging around in Fishers’ Harbor since May.”

“That’s when he was asked to, let’s say, take a new position, one that kept him out of the office at RCC. It was that, or else.”

“‘Or else’?” I lowered my voice. “Was he about to be fired?”

“Let’s say he doesn’t present the corporate image that RCC likes, but John has enough seniority that he could cause them legal trouble if he were fired. A man in his fifties might sue for age discrimination.”

This was starting to sound far more serious than mere corporate spying. Could John have possibly sought revenge against his company by messing up their deal here in Fishers’ Harbor? Could he have murdered Lloyd as revenge against his bosses? In May, I’d been suspicious of John killing the actress. Maybe my instincts were dead-on about John being deadly after all. Sam had brought up the possibility, too, and I trusted Sam’s instincts above everybody’s. But John was the man my friend Pauline liked, possibly loved. A wooziness came over me. I needed a piece of fudge to think this through, but all I had in my pockets were Goldfish crackers.