First-Degree Fudge: A Fudge Shop Mystery (18 page)

“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 have 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.”

We galloped down the final twisty turn into the level street below the inn. As we neared the docks, the
Super Catch I
was heading into the expanse of Lake Michigan.

We sagged in defeat. As the fishing rig charged up its engines and rode higher on the water, I noticed the new skiff slung on one side.

“Oh my gosh.” A realization bloomed in me. “I know where Cody is.”

“Where?” Pauline was still breathing hard. That purse she carried weighed too much, or else we were way out of shape. Probably both.

“Come with me.”

I raced down the dock past Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers & Belgian Fudge, rattling the boards underfoot as I clomped in my boots to
Sophie’s Journey
. I climbed in, finding the hidden keys under one of the seat cushions.

Pauline stood on the pier, shaking her head. “This tub is dangerous.”

“I think I know where Cody is. Toss in your purse, Pauline, and untie us.”

The engines sputtered to life, though they coughed like an old man trying in vain to clear himself of phlegm. The boat vibrated against the rubber tires serving as bumpers on the pier.

Pauline untied the ropes. The boat swung wide of the pier as Pauline leaped to come aboard. She missed the boat and splashed into the water up to her waist. I let go of the wheel to help pull her up with one hand. She struggled over the side rail. If Cody had been here, this wouldn’t have happened. He would have rushed out of my shop to help us board.

“I’m freezing! I’m suing you,” Pauline yelled. “Look at my shoes. They’re ruined.”