Read First-Degree Fudge: A Fudge Shop Mystery Online
Authors: Christine DeSmet
“Can you pour it for me into that copper kettle to cool?” I pointed to the nearest one.
Sam poured the hot mixture into the huge metal bowl, then meandered in an agitated state around the shop in the white apron. I leaned my butt against my cash register counter.
“Sam, you better just confess to what’s going on.”
With hands poked into his pockets, he came over to stand in front of me with a grimace wrinkling his face. “I think Rainetta was in love with me.”
My butt came away from the counter. “You ‘think’? If she’s giving you diamonds . . . Were you in love with her?”
His hesitation made me feel like a cold, stone statue waiting and hoping for sunlight to warm me. Or a little truth.
Finally, he said, “She was eccentric, okay? She had the diamonds and wanted me to come up to her room later that day. That would have been last Sunday night.”
“After you saw her Saturday night, too.”
“I didn’t stay long Saturday night. I was getting in over my head.”
“That’s what you were arguing about at Sunday’s party, wasn’t it? When I saw her touching you in an intimate way? She wanted more from you?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Yes.” He flushed redder this time, which made him appear honest and boyish and oddly more handsome than normal.
I tried to imagine Sam kissing the sixtysomething Rainetta. It was disconcerting. I slid away from him to grab the metal spatula for whipping the fudge. “So she had diamonds she wanted to give you. You went into her room—”
“No, I didn’t. I was about to go in, but thought how foolish I would be doing that. Believe me, Ava, I didn’t kill her.”
“I believe you, Sam.”
His shoulders heaved in relief. It touched me to know he cared about what I thought of him.
I stuck the spatula into the creamy, pale pink fudge mixture in the copper kettle. With one hand, I couldn’t budge it. “You think Mercy knew about Rainetta’s feelings for you? And the diamond gift?”
“Are you saying Mercy killed her?”
“Mercy always wants the limelight. Maybe she was jealous of you being close to Rainetta. Maybe they got in some fight over you.”
“Pretty ridiculous.”
I shrugged. “I worked in Hollywood. That’s a common crime show plot.”
“Yeah, Hollywood. I’ve said too much.” Sam pulled off the apron, then threw his jacket back on. “I better head out and look for Cody some more.”
The air inside my shop had shifted to frigid. Sam obviously still didn’t completely forgive me for taking off for La-La Land after my marriage ended. But I had to ask Sam before he slipped out the door, “Did you see Mercy go into Rainetta’s room?”
“I saw her at Rainetta’s door, but I was already heading through Jeremy Stone’s room to leave down the back way.”
“Did you see Cody anywhere then?”
“No.”
But Jeremy Stone had seen Cody from the upstairs bathroom window walking across the lawn. That meant Sam left first, and Cody had to be hiding up there somewhere while Mercy Fogg stood at Rainetta’s door or went inside her room. Was Cody who Jeremy had heard in John’s or Taylor’s room? I feared that my earlier hunch was right: Cody had seen more than he should that day and now Mercy was using him—blackmailing him or paying him for information, or paying him to steal things for her.
After Sam left, I locked the door again. I couldn’t wait to call Pauline. The diamonds in her purse had to be the ones Rainetta had tried to give Sam. Mercy found out about them and was jealous. But if Mercy worshipped Rainetta, why would she kill her? I recalled Rainetta’s sudden illness after her nibble on my fudge. Perhaps that was a faked reaction to help please Mercy? The two women were the proverbial two peas in a pod. Or something else? Lovers?
I shuddered. Maybe our former board president was desperate to keep a secret. Had the women been breaking up because of Sam? That was beginning to feel like a motive.
But why had I found more diamonds in my sugar? And Rainetta’s necklace in the cookie jar? The necklace had been removed before she died; I had been too panicked about trying to get her breathing restarted to notice details. Obviously Mercy had taken the necklace. But when and how had she convinced Cody to go in with her? Moreover, how could I possibly prove she was the murderer? That woman was like Teflon, as my mother used to say. Nothing stuck.
I had to talk with Sheriff Tollefson about Mercy Fogg. And find Cody “Ranger” Fjelstad.
A
light drizzle was good for the daffodils and tulips in back of the fudge shop, but not so good for engines or murder suspects.
Gilpa’s swearing made it all the way down the wooden pier to the inside of our shop, where I stood rearranging the pans of pink fudge I’d made last night with Sam’s help.
As promised to my grandfather, I had hurried in just past dawn on Wednesday. Feeling almost giddy with my theories, I had dressed in a fancier, pale pink, long-sleeved blouse. With the sheriff’s announcement today about the ME’s findings, there’d be cameras. My chestnut hair hung loose about my shoulders, and I looked good in pale pink. And innocent. I hoped.
Grandpa came in after seven for hot coffee, grumbling about the rain getting inside his engines where it didn’t belong. By that time I’d spotted Moose Lindstrom’s big behemoth boat at the other end of the docks taking off with six guys who had likely paid him handsomely to fish for trout, bass, and coho salmon on Lake Michigan. It must have irritated Gilpa to no end to watch that sleek, big new
Super Catch I
purr out of its slip, then haul butt into Lake Michigan with those state-of-the-art engines. I wondered how much boat we could buy with the diamonds and amethyst necklace I’d hidden last night in the bowels of Gilpa’s boat. And if we added in what was in Pauline’s purse, maybe we could even include air-conditioning.
The thoughts made my hands shake. I had to do something about that cow cookie jar filled with jewels on his boat, but what? I wasn’t sure yet how to approach Sheriff Jordy Tollefson with everything I knew—and had in my possession.
And would there really be a big announcement today? What had the medical examiner found through the autopsy? They hadn’t found poison here in my shop, but what if somebody had slipped something in the fudge at my shop when Cody and I weren’t looking? Cody and I came and went while we worked. Or what if somebody—like Mercy Fogg—had slipped something vile in it while it was upstairs with Rainetta at the Blue Heron Inn? A part of me couldn’t wait to hear what the sheriff had found out; another part of me knew this wasn’t going to end well.
Why did I know that?
Because the fudge I’d made last night with Sam looked like my best batch yet. Sam had strong arms. But with something good, I always seemed to attract something bad next. And this bad thing was going to be super bad because this batch of fudge was super good. It was the color of cherry blossoms. And the vanilla-cherry fragrance married well with the heavenly coffee perking in the bait shop.
Gilpa’s side of the shop was still discombobulated from the church ladies rearranging things to their liking, so I spent time doing him a favor and cleaning up the displays of bobbers, rubber worms, spinners, and flies. The fishing lures with their beautiful feathers in rainbow colors nudged my inner artistic muse. I’d love to do something with them and my fudge, but the final idea hadn’t yet popped into my head.
It was almost eight o’clock when I turned to cutting pink cellophane into the squares I needed to wrap each piece of fudge. I missed Cody’s help. I hoped he’d finally returned home last night. We could mend our relationship with Sam’s help, and maybe Cody would have an idea about a new Fisherman’s Catch Tall Tale Fudge flavor.
Crescendoing voices grabbed my hearing. My mouth went dry.
I hurried to the front window. A mob was storming up the boardwalk, umbrellas over their heads, their shoes and boots clomping on the damp wood. The parking lot was filling with news vans, and reporters tagged along behind Sheriff Jordy Tollefson and his deputy—heading my way!
The village board president—young Erik Gustafson—was scrambling right behind the sheriff, talking into a microphone shoved in his baby face. And dang, behind him was stout Mercy Fogg with two guys in suits carrying clipboards. Jeremy Stone, sans umbrella, was snapping photos with his phone. In the distance, more townspeople were showing up; more umbrellas burst open like spring flowers.
Armageddon was upon me!
I locked the front door, for whatever good that would do.
Isabelle swept in from behind me, making me leap out of my own skin. She’d come in through the back door, which I’d stupidly left unlocked. “Izzy, you don’t want to be here.”
“I have to be here,” she said, breathing hard. “I’m your friend, and Rainetta was my guest.”
“Do you think Jordy’s taking me to jail?”
“For having diamonds in your fudge? No.” Izzy’s hopeful smile on her gamine face drooped. “I don’t know. Maybe if they found them in her stomach contents and they did horrible things and she bled to death?”
“Izzy! I never thought about her bleeding to death. Well, I did at first, briefly, but not seriously.”
“I’m sorry I said that.” She flung her arms around me.
I flinched from all my bruises. I’d have to fill her in later on what had happened at the mansion. After all, the party at the Blue Heron Inn was supposed to have been a fund-raiser to refurbish the place. The first thing they needed to do was put rubber treads on those old wooden stairs.
Faces and cameras filled my front bay windows. I was a fish in an aquarium being watched. It made me wonder if I was properly dressed. Yup, white bib apron on over my pink, long-sleeved shirt to hide my horrible bruises. My hair hung in loose waves.
Jordy jostled the front door latch so hard that the cowbell gave a plaintive
clang
.
I asked Izzy, “How do I look?”
“Good. Pretty. The usual. Why?”
“Do I look innocent?”
“Of course. The cameras are going to love you. This’ll be good for your fudge.”
Maybe some good could come out of the bad this time instead of the other way around.
“Open up, Ava!” Jordy called, staring hard at me through the glass.
When I flipped the bolt, he burst in, holding back the crowd. “Looking guilty isn’t going to help your case,” he said. Then he blinked several times, sniffing. “Man, it really smells good in here.”
“I’ll wrap up fresh fudge for you right now,” I said, hoping to avoid the real reason for his visit. I grabbed a pan from the nearest glass-fronted display case.
“No time for that.”
“It’s a free sample.”
His countenance darkened. “You’re trying to bribe me?”
“Yes, of course,” I said with bright cheer, though defeat was deflating my insides.
Isabelle pulled me aside to step between me and Jordy. “Sheriff, we just want to hear the autopsy results. My guests would like to leave town if they could. So what’d you find? She died of a heart attack?”
By then, news cameras had shoved in around us, along with what seemed like half the town. Although after the church ladies’ bazaar, I knew that approximately only sixty people could squish into Gilpa’s and my shop.
The guys in suits slithered past me in the wake of Mercy barging her way through, pointing. “The kitchen’s back that way. And the minnow tank is right over there, not but a few yards from where she makes fudge.”
A rain-soaked, already-sweaty cameraman scooted after them.
Just outside my door, which had been propped open, wunderkind Erik Gustafson was saying something into a microphone about my building being historic and “it could be that arsenic was used to treat the wood and the ancient wood rafters could be flaking into the fudge and that’s how Miss Johnson was poisoned.”
Oh Lordy. I was toast. Erik had just graduated from high school last year; what kid his age knew anything about history or what was used to treat wood? But something in my memory said arsenic once was used to treat lumber.
“Izzy,” I whispered, “could he be right? Is this old building an arsenic trap? What has your research shown about the history of the buildings in Fishers’ Harbor?”
She whispered back, “I haven’t done research. I’ve been too busy.”
Fortunately, Mercy was in my kitchen and couldn’t hear Erik or she’d have leaped on the arsenic thing.
Jordy, smashed up against my sales counter now, finally held up his hands to the crush of cameras and people. “Folks, please. I’m afraid we’ve disappointed you if you think we’re going to arrest Miss Oosterling for murder. Yet.”
“You’re not?” I screamed out my relief, then impulsively leaped at Jordy, my arms engulfing his neck as I hugged him cheek to cheek. He smelled clean and manly, like the rain outside mingled with some of that springtime-smelling green soap. “Thank you!”
“Not so fast,” he said, unfastening me from around his neck. “Do you want to hear the autopsy results or not?”
Jeremy Stone called out, “You said ‘yet.’” Does that mean she’s still a suspect?”
Izzy and I clung to each other, waiting. Mercy and her henchmen emerged from the kitchen. Sam’s head jutted up from the back of the crowd near the door. Then, through the windows, I saw my parents in the rain, waving, their faces wrinkled in terror for me. My nerves crackled under my skin like an electrical storm.
The cameras rolled with blazing white lights shining on the sheriff and me and Izzy.
Looking about at the crowd, Jordy said, “Rainetta Johnson, a sixty-five-year-old resident of Chicago—”
Jeremy Stone muttered, “Her manager said she was sixty-two.”
“Was strangled to death.”
Gasps echoed.
Mercy asked, “She wasn’t choked to death by the fudge?”
Jordy said, “The official autopsy shows marks on her neck. She was strangled from behind. The fudge might have been used to make it look like she choked to death. We suspect that two people were involved, one choking her and another silencing her with the fudge.”
Two people? I hadn’t thought of that scenario.
A news reporter asked, “Was there poison in the fudge?”
All of the cameras and lights flipped to my face.
“No,” Jordy answered for me, to my relief. The lights flipped back to Jordy. “We found no poisons. Just diamonds.”
Jeremy Stone asked, “Has a connection to the New York heist been confirmed?”
“We’re working on that.”
Another reporter asked, “So there is a connection between the murder and the diamonds? If two people were involved, are we talking about a ring operating here in Door County?”
“We don’t know.”
Jeremy Stone asked, “What about the missing man, Cody Fjelstad?”
Crap, I thought. That darn Jeremy was determined to blame Cody.
The sheriff said, “We have to put Cody Fjelstad, also known as Ranger, under suspicion now because he’s been missing for two days, according to his parents. Until recently Mr. Fjelstad worked here in the fudge shop with Miss Oosterling, where we assume diamonds were put in a sugar sack.”
Eek. The hot cameras swung my way again. I smiled; then Izzy poked me into a sobering countenance.
“You don’t think he’s been harmed, do you?” the reporter asked the sheriff.
I hadn’t thought of that! My stomach was now churning.
“We can’t know that. We hope not. Now, everybody, that’s all I have today.”
Mercy was miffed. Her henchmen in suits didn’t help her mood. They handed me a clean health inspection report. I waved it around, mostly under Mercy’s nose. “Cinderella Pink Fudge is on special today! Mercy, wanna help wrap?”
The Green Bay woman reporter wedged between us with a microphone. “What’s the origin of this fudge idea?”
“Indeed,” Mercy said, practically spitting at me. “Why does one dream up fudge, of all things, if one wants to be taken seriously?”
“Well,” I huffed, feeling invisible boxing gloves slipping onto my hands, “a college sorority type such as yourself, Mercy, should know that fudge was invented here in the States by the girls at Vassar College in the 1880s as a fund-raiser. And copper kettles have a fine tradition going back to making candies in England and Belgium before that.”
Mercy puffed up, even madder now, turning beet red in the face. “You’re involved with the killing of Rainetta. I know you are.”
“I wasn’t even near her when she died, Mercy. But you, now—”
Her beady eyes went wide with warning—almost as if I’d caught a skunk in my headlights at night. “That’s slander. I’m suing you.” She pivoted away, elbowing past the cameras and bowling everybody out of the way until she burst into the rain, where she almost hit a strike with Erik Gustafson and the reporter. They leaped sideways.
Izzy said, “I’ll wrap the fudge for you.”
“Huh?”
“Everybody’s here. Hurry up. This is your big chance.”
Mercy’s threat had clouded my brain for a moment. “Thanks, Izzy. You’re a good friend.”
After hugging my relieved parents, who both said this would all blow over now, Izzy and I cut, wrapped, and sold pink fudge. Cameras moved in as I demonstrated carving fairy wings out of marzipan and then made them glitter with luster dust.
The Green Bay woman reporter said, “You’re not just a fudge maker. You’re a fudge sculptor.”
I hadn’t ever thought of myself as an artist. I just made fudge. No big deal. Until now.
Because my parents had been thoughtful enough to bring more cream from the farm, along with retail bags of sugar and chocolate bits Mom had been given by a neighbor in Brussels, I began making a new batch of fudge for the crowd. As I was heating the materials in the boiler, Sam charged in, banging the cowbell hard against the wall. “Your grandfather’s just been arrested.”