First-Degree Fudge: A Fudge Shop Mystery (3 page)

R
ainetta’s lips were indeed smudged pink from my fudge, but before I could pry her mouth open to clear the passageway, the local volunteer paramedics were there, with Sheriff Jordy Tollefson right behind. He’d likely been just blocks away from here directing the traffic coming through town because of the party.

“Get back, folks,” Jordy said. “What do we have here?”

I was huffing and puffing from the palpitations, relieved to have the paramedics rush in. “She’s not breathing,” I screeched in panic. “I started CPR immediately.”

Jordy was a thin, tall guy, a runner in his forties with a boy-next-door face, brown eyes, and shorn hair showing from under his official hat. He got down on the floor with the paramedics—Nancy and Ronny Jenks, a middle-aged married couple who ran a bar on the edge of town.

Nancy and Ronny slapped on the defibrillator, making us all gasp when nothing happened except Rainetta bouncing. To my horror, the pink fudge fell out of her mouth; it appeared that in death she spit out my fudge in disdain.

“What happened?” Jordy asked, his eyes probing all of us, but landing back on me for some reason.

Isabelle said, “Ms. Johnson said she fell ill after taking a bite of the fudge; then she came up here. I found her coming out her door choking and then she collapsed.”

I wanted to fall dead myself on the spot. I feared what was coming.

“Where’s the fudge?” Jordy asked.

“Downstairs,” Isabelle replied.

“Nobody touch it. Where’d it come from?”

Everybody looked my way.

The reporter, Jeremy Stone, snapped a cell phone picture of me, saying, “A fudge fatality.”

Headline speak. Kindergarten-level alliteration. Which could ruin me. I cleared my throat, my mind racing for fancy answers, but all that came out was “It’s just fudge.”

Jeremy noted, “Not ‘just.’ It’s pink. Whoever heard of pink fudge? What flavor is it?”

“Cherry and vanilla,” I stammered, not sure why I felt compelled to tell him anything.

Jordy cut in. “Ava, you’ll have to come with me.”

“Why?”

“Because a woman has expired with your pink fudge in her mouth.”

Isabelle said, “It’s called Cinderella Pink Fudge.”

Jeremy Stone wrote that down.

Jordy had a grip on my elbow that made my arm ache.

“Jordy, come on,” I said. “You know my family. You know me.”

“Not really. You ran away eight years ago. That was a mess, too, created by you.”

“The poor woman may have just had a heart attack. It’s nothing more than that.”

Somebody behind me coughed; it sounded like they were stifling a nervous chuckle. Jeremy Stone had a small recorder in his hand, which he held up. A door opened next to us and a young couple stared out, looking like frightened possums, their dark eyes darting about in fear.

The paramedics weren’t having any success in resuscitating Rainetta. My Cinderella Pink Fudge lay in an unhealthy wad looking more like spent bubble gum than the artwork I’d created earlier. It’d taken me approximately four hours to make that fudge. As a murder weapon, it had needed only about ten minutes.

Jordy made everybody go downstairs so the paramedics could remove the body.

Isabelle scooted fast in front of everybody to lead them down. I suspected she was concerned about the figurines being knocked off her tables in the hubbub. She turned off the jazz music she’d put on minutes before the horror began.

Jordy escorted me down the stairs, his hand manacling my elbow.

For some reason, I tried to act normal, as if this weren’t real, as if it were only one of Rainetta’s movies, though it’d be called
Fatal Fudge
and badly reviewed by Jeremy Stone. As we descended the long staircase, I said, “Did you hear anything about my grandfather? I probably should get back to the shop right away.”

“I don’t think you’re going anywhere,” Jordy said.

We were back on the oak floors of the grand foyer area and Jordy wasn’t letting go of me.

He asked, “Where’s the fudge?”

I led him to my Cinderella Pink Fudge with its marzipan fairy wings and slippers atop the pieces.

Isabelle lifted the Steuben unicorn off the table. The sheriff shook a quart-sized Baggie out of his pocket, then chucked several pieces of pink fudge into it, squishing them down, ruining the wings and slippers so that he could zipper the bag shut. My fudge looked like a mass of pink mud.

He nodded to the table with the rest of the pieces. “They’ll need to come with me, too.”

“Why?” I asked.

Erik Gustafson said, “You think there’s poison in the fudge?”

“Poison?” shrieked the woman who was half of the honeymoon couple who’d peeked out at us upstairs. “Oh my God. Get me out of here. We should never have come to this backwoods place.”

Jeremy Stone pushed forward to snap pictures of the fudge with one hand, his other hand stuffing his recorder in our faces. He was my height, had dark brown hair, like most of the populace, but he had a crooked nose that looked like it’d been broken a couple of times. I was tempted to give it a punch, too.

When I moved toward the table to box up the fudge, the sheriff threw an arm down in front of me. “Not you,” he said.

The marrow inside my bones went liquid with the realization that Jordy considered me a serious suspect. “You can’t really think that my fudge is a murder weapon?”

Isabelle handed me the unicorn to hold while she boxed up the rest of my pink cellophane–covered treats. I trembled, afraid I’d drop the precious glass. My luck had run out today.

Jordy announced in a loud voice, “All of you should stay available until I’ve had a chance to talk with each you.”

A great howl went up, but the locals cleared out fast, leaving me alone with Isabelle, Jeremy Stone, and the honeymooners from New York. They introduced themselves reluctantly to the sheriff as Hannah and Will Reed. They were in their early twenties, both with dark hair chopped into the latest oddball hairstyles I’d seen in magazines at the store. They wore expensive-looking, city-chic black attire mostly; Hannah shivered under a red shawl draped just so around her shoulders.

“We’re not under arrest, are we?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” Jordy said. “But if you leave town now, I might have to consider issuing a warrant for your arrest. Are you in a hurry to leave?”

Will said, “That’s bullshit. Come on, Hannah.”

They fled back up the stairs. I almost felt sorry for Jordy. Almost. He said to me, “You’re coming with me.”

“I’m under arrest? For real? Officially?”

“No,” he said, “I need somebody to help carry the fudge to the car.” He grinned, but I didn’t find his little joke funny. He added, “I’d rather take your statement in private at the office.”

Isabelle relieved me of her precious Steuben statue.

Feeling battered and scared, I went with Sheriff Tollefson for a ride down to Sturgeon Bay. We passed fields being plowed and planted even on a Sunday, Holstein cows grazing in grass pastures, sturdy redbrick houses built by Belgians back in the 1870s, and cherry orchards flaring with pink buds. Everything appeared innocent and normal. I still didn’t see how poor Rainetta could’ve choked on or been poisoned by my fudge. I was sure they’d discover she’d died of a sudden, massive heart attack after all that pressure on her for money for playground slides, stoplights, and storm sewers.

A flash came to me then. She’d been arguing with Sam. He’d run upstairs, and then poof, he’d disappeared. Isabelle had been the only one to come out of the restroom. But Sam couldn’t have done in Rainetta; I couldn’t believe a social worker would do such a thing. Maybe he thought he caused the heart attack and hid because of his shock.

Shock was what slammed through me once I got to the sheriff’s department in Sturgeon Bay and was told that Ranger had been hauled in by a deputy for questioning, too.

“You can’t do that,” I railed at Jordy. “Ranger can’t handle being told he did anything wrong.” I itched all over with worry for Ranger.

“Cody Fjelstad helped you make the fudge. We have to question him.”

“About what? He’s not capable of being questioned.”

“He’s quite capable. You’re not suggesting I discriminate because he has certain challenges?”

We were sitting in an interrogation office on blue plastic chairs with metal legs, with just a coffee-stained table between us. The walls were beige with maroon trim around the door. I let my head sink momentarily into my hands and lap in disbelief and despair. “You don’t understand. Cody is sensitive, and he prides himself on doing a perfect job. He’s very, very proud of his ability to wrap fudge. This is going to upset him in ways that aren’t good at all, Sheriff.”

“We have skilled people with him.”

“But you’re asking Ranger questions about things like poison getting into the fudge, and he won’t understand that. He’ll think he killed that woman. Holy cow, what a mess.” Tears stung my eyes in my frustration.

Jordy handed over a box of tissues.

I got off the chair to snatch a tissue, then headed to the door. Earlier in the squad car I’d called Pauline to come pick me up. I figured she had to be waiting outside by now. “I’ll take Ranger home.”

“We’ll handle that.” The sheriff came around the table to hand me a clipboard with a blank piece of paper on it.

“Now what?” I asked, not caring that I sounded belligerent.

He showed me to my chair. “Write down the ingredients you put in the fudge.”

“I’m not revealing my recipe.”

“Are you saying you’re refusing to cooperate?” He leaned over his knuckles and got right in my face. I could smell his coffee breath.

“No, I’m just saying I’m not telling you my trade secrets. Food artists don’t reveal their recipes.” I suspected he wanted me to break down in sobs about the poison.

Jordy sat down on his side of the table, nodding toward the clipboard in my hands. “Write down what you recall putting in the fudge.”

“Fairy glitter? Wings of spun sugar? Is that what you want me to write?”

“Whatever you claim is in the fudge, I want to know about it.”

Darned if I was going to give him any trade secrets. Nobody but Ranger knew what I put in my Cinderella Pink Fudge. I thought for a moment, then wrote.

I handed the clipboard across the table.

Jordy squinted at it. “What’s this gibberish?”

“The chemical formula for the reaction of sugar boiled in milk. It’s boiled at two hundred thirty-eight degrees, which is above the normal boiling point of two-hundred twelve degrees for water. This high temperature boils off enough water to bring the sucrose and fructose into alignment for proper crystallization of the fudge. If there was poison present, it would have interfered with the crystallization, and I would have noticed.”

“Poison can be added to anything after it’s done boiling,” he said in a deadpan way. “This silliness just makes you look guilty, Ava.”

I signed my statement and sketches of chemical formulas with a shaky hand.

He said, “You can go now, Miss Oosterling, but you’ll have to stay out of your fudge shop until I say it’s okay.”

“You can’t do that. For what reason? I haven’t been arrested.”

“Do you want to be?”

“Cut it out, Jordy. My grandfather’s bait shop needs to stay open for the fishermen. It’s fishing season. This affects my grandfather, too.”

Jordy shrugged. “I’m sorry. I’m sure the deputy will take only a couple of days to swab down that tiny bait and bonbon shop.”

He was making me mad. Fortunately he let me go at that point.

• • •

Pauline and I got back to Fishers’ Harbor a little after four that afternoon. And sure enough, there was yellow tape unspooled around Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers & Belgian Fudge. The graying wood building looked pitiful, as if it wore a prison uniform now. I sank into my own miasma rising from the sudden decay of my life.

I must have said that out loud because Pauline said, “Quit being so dramatic. You didn’t kill anybody.”

The snow had stopped, but a cold wind flapped the tape against the weathered wood and the windowpanes. My stomach juices surged with disgust. I walked right up to the tape and ripped it down. “You’re right, Pauline.”

Pauline charged up to me, whipping her black hair over a shoulder like she meant business. With her height and that hair she can be intimidating when she looks down at me. “You can’t do that,” she said. “That’s real tape, not the fake Halloween type of tape.”

“I don’t care.”

“You’ll get in trouble. Arrested or something.”

“Or something. I can’t let Ranger or Gilpa see this.”

We went inside to a mess. The only thing on Grandpa’s side not out of place was the minnow tank bubbling away.

My side? I started with the two center aisles in my half of the building and groaned. The deputy had confiscated the just-delivered pink fairy tale items for girls, including locally hand-crafted Cinderella-at-the-ball dolls and fairy godmothers with wings in pink that matched my fudge. The deputy had probably assumed I hid poison in their bodies.