First-Degree Fudge: A Fudge Shop Mystery (28 page)

And then he said to me, “Is this how you want your life to end?”

To end?
He said it in such a way that it made me look around at the dry leaves of late summer coming down off the trees. Instead of the vibrant fields and the sunset splashing a pink tinge around us, I noticed all the dead, dull brown leaves on the ground—a harbinger of fall and winter to come. I felt dead and dull in that moment. Suddenly, marrying Sam was all wrong. The prospect of living on the farm with him and under my parents’ roof, then moving to the little cottage later, felt like a backward step in life. I panicked. Immature, yes, but that was how you were in your early twenties. At least I was. I got in Dillon’s car.

We eloped. Yup, we went to Las Vegas, where Dillon had a comedy gig nights at an aging resort hotel just off the Strip. I knew it couldn’t be long before such a funny, talented heartthrob would be a headliner at the Mirage or Bellagio. Instead, weeks later, in late September, a woman from out East called me. Then a woman from down South. I had loved Dillon for his partying ways, but it was too much for me to handle if he’d somehow ended up getting married and didn’t even remember it. Later I found out that he’d been defrauded by at least one of the women who claimed he’d promised her a good life and lots of money. These things happen to people in show business now and then, but I got my divorce and hightailed it in humiliating fashion to Los Angeles. It took me a year to get over being mad. It helped to write it into a script for
The Topsy-Turvy Girls.

Now, driving along familiar old Highway 42 in my preowned yellow Chevy truck, I harrumphed at Pauline. “Maybe I do need a vacation to places like Nantucket and Biloxi, but it’s hard to leave Door County. You know, it’s pretty fun driving my truck around our hilly, winding roads.”

“I’ll call up John Schultz and ask him to set up a winery tour here, and you and I will go on it. It’ll be a nice break.”

“I’m not sure I want to go with him if drinking’s involved.”

“Don’t be hard on John. You were wrong about him, too. You’re not a very good judge of men when it comes down to it.”

“You remember what Dillon was like. Do you blame me?”

“Yeah. I remember. I stood up for you when you eloped with that tall drink of water who made us laugh all the time. Chestnut hair like an Adonis stallion, chocolate-fudge-colored eyes, a killer smile.” Her voice had grown lusty soft. “He had a cute butt and walked with a swagger.”

We went silent for a few moments. Because we were hot just thinking about the guy. Now, there was a man who would put my new fudge flavor to the test.

The news media fell in love with the new flavors for the guys. The reporters crowded into my crappy little shop that I loved, and this time I asked Gilpa and Grandma to help me show off the brand-spankin’-new Belgian Beer Fudge for guys and a flavor for boys that Cody assured me they’d love called Worms-in-Dirt Fudge made with gummy worms in Oreo cookie “dirt” on top and layered in the middle of the chocolate fudge.

For the men, we packaged and sold the beer fudge in six-pack beer cartons. The fudge had two layers: dark on the bottom and a white fudge on top to look like beer foam.

Using beer in fudge reduced the shelf life to only two days at most because the yeast in the beer grew and bacteria could form, but I figured with this flavor, and with it looking manly in the six-packs, the men would buy it almost blindly and scarf it down fast anyway.

And they did. I let Cody explain the recipe for Belgian Beer Fudge; he made it sound like a geology class lesson about sedimentary layers. My scientifically bent self swelled with pride.

After about two hours, the news media left. I used my phone to text Jeremy Stone to get his take on it all. He texted back, “Belgian Beer Fudge all over Internet. Same for Worms-in-Dirt. You ready for monster orders?”

My reflex reaction was to say, “No.” I realized, though, that the person I hadn’t learned to trust most of all was myself. I texted back instead: “In Hollywood, stars have their own groups and ‘peeps.’ But I have church ladies. We’re ready for fame and fortune Door County style.”

We shared an LOL.

As the day wore on, it was just me, Pauline, Cody, and Harbor in the shop. I was exhausted. It was around five in the afternoon. I slumped against my white marble table near the window in time to see Jordy coming up the dock.

The bell clanged on the door as he sauntered in, his badge glinting at us. “I almost forgot to collect those diamonds.”

I headed for Gilpa’s cash register counter. But I didn’t find anything underneath.

“Cody, did you put the diamonds somewhere? They were in a pink wrapper with a pink ribbon.”

He rushed over from wrapping pieces of Cinderella Pink Fudge. He took a wrapper out of his pocket. “I found this on the floor.”

“Where on the floor?”

“Back by Harbor’s bed, by the beer cooler.”

Pauline and I looked at each other. I rushed back to Harbor. The cinnamon-bear-like puppy peered up at me from his sleep with soulful eyes.

Pauline shrugged at me. “Just like pop beads or pearls. They’ll eventually come out.”

Cody said, “Holy cow. That’s one expensive dog right now. What’s he worth? About two million?”

I laughed. “Yup. Something like that.”

“Wait until I tell Bethany.”

Jordy shook his head in derision at us. But on his way out the door, he winked at me and said, “I guess we have a date in the morning to walk a dog together.”

• • •

That weekend Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers & Belgian Fudge was the center of the universe and a huge success. The church ladies came on Mother’s Day, but the men didn’t seem to mind all the frilly stuff they had for sale. We sold the Belgian Beer Fudge in its beer six-packs on Gilpa’s side as part of our new line of Fisherman’s Catch Tall Tale Fudge. Kids were loving their gummy worms in fudge, too. Gilpa was racking up huge sales of everything, especially after he told the fishermen that his minnows smelled extra good to big fish because the minnows had been fed a steady diet of my fudge. Fishermen believed any tall tale if they thought it would catch a big coho salmon or trout.

On Sunday night my manager called, to my shock. I realized I hadn’t even thought much of my old job in Los Angeles for several days. .

“Didn’t think you’d make something of yourself back there,” he said, joking with me. He continued. “Just talked with the producers over at
The Topsy-Turvy Girls
. They want you back.”

“I find that hard to believe. They were doing just fine without me mostly.”

“Actually, the two stars on the show heard you weren’t coming back possibly and they balked at resigning for next season. Seems they want more of a woman’s voice in the storylines. And they liked your fudge.”

A smile curved my lips up fast. I had never thought the actresses on the show might notice me. Or care.

“They want me back?” Something akin to a warm, spring breeze blew through me.

“How soon can you get here? I called your agent, and she’s got your new contract ready for signing.” He went on to explain some pretty generous terms—everything I’d ever wanted.

With the phone in my hand and my manager still jabbering his gibberish, I wandered through my shop, past the copper kettles, past the white marble table at the window. If I truly wanted to, I was sure I could keep the fudge shop going in my absence with Cody’s help and that of the church ladies.

I stepped outside, taking in the chilly, dank and damp air coming off Lake Michigan. It’d be down in the forties tonight; in Los Angeles it would be in the seventies or eighties probably and perfectly sublime for May. I stared at the phone. With the salary my manager had scored for me, I could fly back and forth. Maybe I could have both worlds at once.

But when I turned to go back inside, I noticed the sign above the door. The sign that my grandpa had redone two weeks ago—going on three weeks now. He’d moved the apostrophe over. Instead of “his” shop, Oosterling’s, it was now “our” shop, Oosterlings’. He’d taken down the word “Beer” in Oosterling’s Live Bait, Bobbers & Beer and had put up Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers & Belgian Fudge. I realized I wasn’t done yet with the sign.

I said to my manager, whom I’d kept waiting on the phone, “Marc, thanks, but I pass.”

“You can’t pass.”

“I just did. Tell them I’m working on a screenplay about pink fudge and a dog pooping out diamonds. And it’s going to be worth millions.”

“Are you nuts?”

“Yes. And very happy.”

We said good-bye.

I smiled up at the sign. Then I went inside, hunting up the missing piece to the sign, the part that Gilpa and I had taken down. I got the tall stool, the hammer and a nail from Gilpa’s toolbox, then brought them outside. With a little nailing and a little paint to help things along, we now had Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers & Belgian Fudge & Beer.

I had a feeling that my Gilpa and I were going to be very, very busy from now on.

• • •

And we were. The next week tested me. Sales went crazy, like dandelions turning park lawns, medians in highways, and sidewalk cracks yellow all at once. I made fudge day and night with the help of my church-lady “peeps,” whom I was training now with the four-foot wood paddles and spatulas and the copper kettle cooking—the only major copper kettle operation in all of Door County.

We had a lot of pink fudge to make—both for the upcoming prom on Saturday and for the Sunday Booyah Bash, where my fudge would be raffled off to help pay for restorations for the historic Saint Mary of the Snows church in Namur, near Brussels.

More than making fudge occupied my mind that week. My future was filled with puzzles to solve. I wondered what would become of the places where the murders had taken place—the Blue Heron Inn above me on the steep hill and the abandoned mansion on Main Street where my grandfather could have been killed, too. I thought it was time Gilpa got the new boat he deserved, but how could we possibly afford such a thing? We needed more dogs pooping out diamonds to make that happen.

I suspected Fishers’ Harbor would now pop for a new stoplight, what with all the traffic. Mercy Fogg would be happy. For a while. I had a feeling she would find something else to fuss over in the future. Maybe me. My heart said I needed to apologize to her for my nasty comments toward her and my misconceptions about her; my head said trying to get close to Mercy would bring on more trouble from her somehow.

Finally, I wondered what would become of Sam and me. And Jordy seemed to stop by a lot now, too, always with some excuse about needing details for the “case” that felt lame to me. Could I possibly trust my heart enough to just let nature take its course with Jordy and Sam?

Somehow, despite interruptions by the press, the church ladies and I made it to prom night with loads of Cinderella Pink Fudge. With Pauline’s help, we turned the entire Fishers’ Harbor docks into the prom location. We tied pink and Green Bay Packer green balloons on all the tire bumpers on all the piers. The Packer stuff was Sam’s idea. I’d learned my lesson; too much pink didn’t work for men. But anything belonging to the Packers did, Sam reminded me.

Since Gilpa’s boat wasn’t working, we used that for taking photos of the couples. Bethany decided to be Cody’s date after all. He had become something of a hero. He looked like a hero, too, with his buzz-cut red hair and tuxedo.

Jordy came as a chaperone, but he had another agenda. In front of the entire crowd dancing on the docks, he gave Cody a special badge—a star for his chest that said, “Star Citizen.” It was a good citizenship award that the sheriff’s department bestowed rarely enough to make it special. Jordy thanked Cody for his bravery and role in solving the murder case. The crowd went wild. It was pretty sweet. I even saw tears roll from Mercy Fogg’s eyes. Cody’s parents apologized to me and even thanked me for the role I played in Cody’s changes.

Most everybody had gone home by midnight. I returned to my shop to tidy up.

Cody, with Bethany in tow, popped his head in. “There’s some guy down the docks looking for Oosterlings’. He says he’s lookin’ for his dog.” Cody bit his lower lip, clearly worried.

I must have had the same look because Cody added, “We could take Harbor and make a run for it out your back door.”

At the mention of his name, Harbor bounced up from his sleep, then slammed into my legs, wagging his big brush of a tail. He sat his butt on my feet, then stared up at me with big brown eyes, his shaggy, cinnamon-colored ears like inverted V’s, questioning me. A lump lodged in my throat. Surely my feelings were about Gilpa and Cody growing to like the dog. I couldn’t possibly want this dog.

Cody said, “Do we have to give him up? I like telling people we have a dog that poops diamonds.”

I had to sigh. “Life isn’t all as sweet and satisfying as our fudge recipes, Cody.”

“But we can make our life what we want it to be. We can have a ‘homemade’ life. Isn’t that why you’re staying in Door County? It’s a homemade place to live.”

“Homemade?”

“Yeah, Miss Oosterling. It’s filled with homemade goodness here.” He swung Bethany’s hand, which he’d been holding. They smiled at each other.

Rainbows bloomed in my heart for them. I said, “Time for you and Bethany to go home now, and for Harbor, too, I’m afraid.”