Hot Fudge Frame-Up: A Fudge Shop Mystery (20 page)

Parker reached out with a big hand to steady me. “It’s hot out here, isn’t it? Reminds me of the basketball camps I taught in the summers.”

“Basketball? You played?”

“Yeah, for Marquette. Before I went to law school there, but I coached for them in a few of the summer camps while I finished law school.”

“I have somebody I want you to meet.”

It was a no-brainer foisting him off onto Pauline while I went in search of John. Pauline would love reminiscing about her basketball-playing college days with Parker. From a distance, they looked like a perfect couple. I was shocked with my matchmaking abilities. She had to forget about John Schultz.

I ducked into the church’s side door that led to the basement but somehow missed John. The women gave me pause, though.

The church ladies were rushing about setting long tables with plastic tableware and coffee carafes. Each of them wore an apron. Of course. When you volunteered here to help at a wedding, funeral, First Communion celebration, or kermis, you wore an apron. These women looked
angelic
in their aprons and
beautiful
no matter what their build, wrinkles, or reputation. The realization dawning in me felt like a tiny window sliding open inside me with fresh air rushing in.

Back upstairs, the service was about to begin. Organ music had turned into a dirge to get us to our seats. I hurried up the stairs to the vestibule. I was about to go inside the nave when my eyes caught sight of a briefcase that looked familiar. It sat under the coatrack. I looked about. I was alone. The pallbearers were outside getting instructions from the funeral director. Within two seconds I’d tried the briefcase latch and it opened. Erik hadn’t thought to lock it. I blanched at what I found inside—a small pad of ruled paper that kids used to practice their lettering. I was about to reach for the pad when the voices of the pallbearers grew louder. I clicked the briefcase closed, then scurried to join my grandmother Sophie, breathless from my discovery.

Grandma was in the front pew, on the other side of Libby, holding a box of tissues. Libby had the aisle seat. My parents were in the pew in back of us.

My grandfather was one of the six honorary pallbearers. He walked down the aisle beside the casket, along with two members of Lloyd’s card club, plus the attorney Parker Balusek, Professor Faust, and then Erik Gustafson. I flinched. Seeing Erik’s hand on Lloyd’s coffin was maddening. I wanted to scream that he was a murderer.

I wondered who else was involved, who else had learned about the possible bribes Erik had taken from Piers Molinsky. Giving the church nave a perfect gawk, I didn’t spot Piers or Kelsey. That, too, felt odd, because if Cody were right about guilty people showing up at a funeral, those two chefs weren’t guilty of Lloyd’s murder. I searched for John Schultz. He was at the back of the nave, still videotaping.

When the casket was settled into place, I scooted over, closer to Pauline on my right, expecting my grandfather to sit next to my grandmother. Instead, he walked around to the end of our pew and sat on the other side of Pauline—far away from my grandmother.

The emptiness in me continued through the luncheon, when my grandparents said nary a word to each other. I noticed that others left them alone, a sign that their war had gone public.

When I spotted Sheriff Tollefson finishing his second piece of German chocolate cake, I followed him outside the church.

“Jordy! Wait. I need a ride. We need to talk.”

“I’m not a cab service,” he said as he kept on walking into the blacktopped parking lot. He settled his brimmed hat on his head.

“You questioned my grandmother, and that action contributed to my grandparents having troubles. So you’re going to help me get them back together.”

“I’m not a marriage counselor.” He lengthened his stride.

My left calf hurt like heck now, but I hiked faster to catch up. “Jordy, that’s not funny. I bet you want to know what I’ve found out about murder suspects as much as I want to know about the autopsy report. Want to trade information?”

He stopped to wait for me at the parking lot, looking like he was suffering indigestion, but I knew better.

I persisted. “The autopsy report will be released to the public anyway, so tell me now, was Lloyd poisoned?”

His slim runner’s frame went ramrod straight. “The M.E. found something, yes.”

“I think Kelsey poisoned him. But I also think she’s working with somebody else. Two people are responsible for Lloyd’s death, not just one.”

“Who?”

Too many people with prying ears were lingering near their cars and chatting. “Give me a ride and we’ll talk.”

“Get in.”

I
got to sit in the front passenger seat of the sheriff’s cruiser for the first time ever. I pointed out to Jordy he was treating me like an equal.

He growled back as we pulled onto the country road, “If you would stop being such a pain in the ass, somebody might ask you to be his date to the dance.”

His tanned face deepened to the hue of ripe tart cherries.

I had to look out the window to recover. “I just don’t know if we’d work, Jordy.”

“I’m not asking for me.”

“Oh?” To my surprise, disappointment popped into my head. “Who are you asking for?”

“I’m not asking. I’m just checking. To see if you’re amenable to going with somebody who asked me if you’d gotten a date yet.”

“Holy cow. Some grown man asked you to ask me if I was free yet? This sounds like high school. Who’s this mystery man?”

“I can’t tell. Ava Oosterling, are you free or not?”

“Did you stop at the Troubled Trout? Who’s got the odds on me now?” When he hesitated I slapped the dash in disgust. “Jordy Tollefson, you put money down on me and somebody going to the prom on Saturday night, didn’t you?”

“I might have. But the guy still asked me to ask you about it.”

“There’s some chubby fisherman I might say yes to. I don’t even know his name, but I’m starting to think dating a stranger would be a lot better than old boyfriends.” My heart lurched unexpectedly at the prospect. I thought of Sam and Dillon, my whole being feeling the tender and timeworn hold they had on me, like the northern white cedar trees—called the trees of life—whose roots had held fast the Niagara Escarpment cliffs on our Lake Michigan shores for maybe two thousand years.

Jordy growled again. “So, what do you have for info about the fudge smudge?”

“Is that what the murder of a fudge judge is called at your department now?”

“Yup.”

We had to slow down for tourists turning onto roads that took them to a beach or local winery. I asked Jordy again about the autopsy.

He said, “The preliminary report is that Lloyd ingested deadly mushrooms.”

“Any leads?” Kelsey came to mind, shoving aside what I’d just found out about Erik.

“No. It could’ve been an accident. Your grandparents are friends of his. Did he mention to them anything about going mushroom hunting or buying mushrooms from somebody?”

“No.” My brain burned with a yearning to blame Kelsey, but I stuck to the facts. “The last time they were together with Lloyd was at the fish boil. He seemed fine. I saw him arguing with Kelsey King, though.”

“Did you hear what the argument was about?” Jordy was braking for more tourists who had slowed ahead of us to stop at a massive garden and lawn ornament shop hemmed with a white picket fence.

“No. But I’m pretty sure Kelsey was making a play for him, and maybe he rebuffed her. Kelsey’s been staying at Libby’s. She knows Lloyd through my fudge contest, and Pauline and I think Kelsey might be a gold digger who’s befriending Libby to get at Lloyd’s treasures, or now, to get her hands on Libby’s inheritance from Lloyd.”

“I didn’t see the little blonde at the funeral.”

“No. She wasn’t.”

“Did you notice anybody else there you’d consider a suspect?”

I felt so mixed up now. The missing cups and saucers came to mind. John Schultz and the professor had been in the house and both had interest in cups. But I couldn’t betray Pauline and get John in trouble until I had proof that was solid about him. But then there was Erik Gustafson. I explained seeing him at the house with a briefcase, then finding the pad of paper in his briefcase at the church.

Jordy said, “It’s just a pad of paper he could have bought anywhere.”

“I don’t think so. Erik is acting odd. He’s nineteen and carrying a briefcase instead of a backpack. Nobody his age carries a stodgy briefcase. It’s big enough that it could’ve hidden those cups inside it, too.”

“So maybe the professor put him up to it.”

“And risk his reputation and career at the university? I don’t think so. Erik, however, is just starting his career and has nothing much. He needs money.”

Jordy nodded. I could almost hear his brain working. We were at the outskirts of Fishers’ Harbor now.

I asked, “Have you questioned all the renters in the cabins on Duck Marsh Street, in case somebody had some grudge against Lloyd?”

“Yes. None of them know Lloyd really. They’re just vacationers, but I have all their names, and the names of those who left on Sunday, in case we need to question them again.”

He’d just said “we,” as if I were part of his team. “And you checked out the shop owners along Main Street who rented their space from Lloyd?”

I knew the answer to that one already. Jordy would have done his job and questioned them all. People like Travis Klubertanz and his wife who ran the market weren’t murderers. Their worst offense might be that they had a kindergartener who was a klepto. And elderly Milton Hendrickson, who ran The Wise Owl Bookstore, had been friends with Lloyd and was a friend of my grandfather. The artists in the other spaces I’d checked out earlier through Pauline’s association with them; their rent was based on their commissions from the sale of their artwork, and none of them had a beef with Lloyd.

Jordy said, “Everybody had kind things to say about Lloyd, except for Milton Hendrickson.”

“The Wise Owl’s owner.”

“Yes, but his complaint was about a card game they had recently and he was mad because he wouldn’t get a rematch with Lloyd. Milton’s thinking of retiring.”

“That’s too bad. He’s been there on Main Street since I was a kid. Whenever I visited my grandparents they’d send me over to his store with five dollars to buy a book.”

After passing the auto body shop with my crumpled yellow truck still in one bay, it reminded me of Dillon and his dog. “Pauline and I saw Dillon’s dog playing in the park with rope. It could’ve been the rope Kelsey used to tie up Lloyd.”

The squad car lurched to the side of the road with tires squealing and spraying gravel. I hung on to the door handle. Jordy flicked on his red-and-blues, drove straight ahead into a flat grassy ditch to get around a line of cars in front of us, then took a sharp turn onto a route that skirted Fishers’ Harbor. He was obviously headed for Peninsula State Park on the other side of town. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me about this rope in the woods before?”

“It was just a piece of rope. Rope is everywhere.”

Within ten minutes we were careening onto Shore Road. We scattered a couple of cars. Golfers stared at us as we sped by.

We drove to the trailhead that Pauline and I had used to chase after Kelsey.

Still in the car, Jordy said, “You’re in your fancy duds. You stay here.”

“Nothing doing.”

After twenty minutes of fighting brambles off-trail and swatting at mosquitoes in the woods, while I tried not to ruin my sheath dress or get my heels stuck in moss underfoot, we found the rope in the small clearing. Jordy bagged it carefully.

He used a small pocket magnifying glass to take a look at it. “There are some spots. Could be blood. Or it could be bug juice and this is nothing but a piece of rope some camper with a tent left behind. We’ll know later.”

“I never saw blood on Lloyd’s neck when I saw him Saturday morning.”

“There was a raw burn on the back of his neck and a wrist. Apparent struggle.”

Gooseflesh popped up on my bare arms. Lloyd had struggled to free himself.

As we turned to head back, the sun spotlighted white mushrooms around the clearing, which made me stop. “A fairy ring,” I said, “and just what Kelsey might have found.”

“What’s a fairy ring?”

“Basic botany, Jordy.”

“Don’t start drawing me your pictures. I can see the mushrooms.”

This fairy ring was maybe thirty feet in diameter, ringing the small clearing. The grass had been eaten down in spots by the deer, so the mushrooms’ ecru-colored tops showed easily. I leaned down for a closer look at one.

“Chlorophyllum molybdites.”
The tops were shaped like satellite dishes about three inches in diameter, and underneath they had rows of what looked like paper files. “Fairy rings are formed when the spores from mushrooms spread out around them, and then the original plants die off. What’s left is the outer ring.”

“These are poisonous?”

“They’ll make you violently ill. You might have a worse reaction if they’re ingested with alcohol. Somebody who knows about wild plants could possibly use them to subdue a person, maybe try to get him to sign away his life, Jordy.”

“Lloyd had alcohol in his bloodstream.”

“What was the time of death?”

Jordy had knelt down to bag a mushroom. “The medical examiner says around one or so Saturday morning.”

“Kelsey had to have been at Libby’s that night. Lloyd gave Libby a ride home after the fish boil. Maybe he stayed late and Kelsey stirred up something nice as an apology for their skirmish earlier, a dish to soak up their drinks. His dish got mushrooms slipped into it. Did you ask Libby about the night before we found him dead?”

Jordy stood up with the bagged specimen, giving me a tired expression that said he had more work to do because of me. “Yes, I did. But I never asked her about food. I can ask her later today, after the burial and after she’s had a chance to collect herself.”

“You’re a nice person, Jordy, when you want to be. I almost want you to ask me to the prom.”

He grunted in reply as we began our walk back.

“Did you find anything useful with the piece of my Cinderella Fudge I picked up in the parlor of the lighthouse?”

He grunted again. “We picked up the edge of a fingerprint. The DNA analysis will take a while.”

The idea that my fudge could be a key to solving the case tickled me. I had a toothy smile that nobody but the squirrels and mosquitoes could witness.

After we emerged from the woods, Jordy and I peered about the environs of the lighthouse. Behind it, we walked to the rock wall. A regatta of sailboats was floating by on Lake Michigan.

He said, “It wouldn’t take much for an accomplice to help the murderer get away. Any small boat would do. You said somebody else might have been in on this.”

I told him about Professor Faust witnessing Piers trying to pay off Erik Gustafson, another of the fudge judges, but more important, Erik was someone involved in the secrets surrounding Lloyd’s real estate deal.

Jordy asked, “You really think Erik murdered Lloyd?”

“He has a lot to gain if the village controls the real estate. He’d be a nineteen-year-old millionaire of sorts. It’s not really his real estate, but as village president he would feel powerful.”

“Erik would also have too much to lose, though, if he murdered Lloyd. He loves Door County, too. What about John Schultz?”

His mention of John surprised me. “Why consider him, Jordy?”

“The guy is everywhere. And he’s irritating as hell. It’s only a hunch.”

I couldn’t hold back anymore. “John chose Kelsey as a contestant and asked her to come here. He knew her. Maybe they’re buddies in crime.”

“Sounds like I need to have a longer talk with Libby and Kelsey about everything. And then John.”

“I’ve been thinking about John, too, as a suspect, but John may have only put the two of them together so he could get access to Lloyd and his house. John didn’t murder anybody. But he might have the stolen box in his possession. He loves treasures and drama.” Then a huge revelation popped into my head. “What if John ran me off the road? He may have videotaped my accident for his TV show. Kelsey may have told him to tail me.”

Jordy looked confused.

I explained, “I suspect Kelsey’s been watching my every move. She always seems to be one step ahead of me, and out here in the woods, and I think at Lloyd’s house because she can get the key from Libby.”

Oops.

Jordy’s gaze hardened. “When were you at his house?”

I confessed to my house visits but didn’t tell him about the cookbooks in Pauline’s car. I didn’t want to get her in trouble, on top of my turning in her boyfriend. I remembered the gun cabinet then, and told him about a rifle being missing, and then maybe one being returned when the professor and Erik had visited. “You questioned Dillon about the gun found in the back of his truck, but he said Lloyd had shown him his hunting rifles previously and that’s why his prints were on that one. So who put that weapon in his truck? Who do you think is trying to frame Dillon?”

“A frame-up?” Jordy blinked hard; then his face softened. Maybe he was considering my supposition. “Libby verified that rifle was Lloyd’s. Dillon Rivers said he didn’t know how it got there. It also showed fingerprints belonging to Lloyd, Libby, and the professor.”

“But not Erik? The professor?”

“He said he’d started to pick it up, then thought better of it. Libby corroborated that. He said he’d never touched it before then.”

“So how did it get in the truck and why? And do you think it was used to shoot at me and Sam?”

“We’re testing for that.”

Was Erik wily enough to wear gloves when handling those rifles? Probably. The professor was certainly smart enough to wear gloves if he were the guilty person, but his fingerprints were on everything, showing he had nothing to hide. The thought of Erik’s possible involvement in the murder kept flashing in my head. “Maybe all the rifles in Lloyd’s gun cabinet should be given a second look. And that safe needs to be opened, Jordy. It could hold valuable information.”

Jordy said, “Stay out of the house. I’ve hired somebody to come and open the safe.”

“When will that be?”

“Friday. Why?”

This was Tuesday. My life couldn’t wait until Friday, but Jordy wouldn’t appreciate me trying to boss him around. “It doesn’t matter. All we need to do is talk with John and Kelsey and Erik, with maybe some verification from Libby about loose ends, and this will be over.”

Jordy said he’d have a chat with Erik at the bar later. He suggested I call Kelsey to have her meet us. I did. To my surprise, she and Piers were at my fudge shop, which I found frightening since I’d ordered them to stay away. In the car, I told the sheriff, “Step on it.”