Hot Fudge Frame-Up: A Fudge Shop Mystery (2 page)

Fortunately, my lie worked like a hose on two fighting cats. Kelsey broke into tears, dropping her fudge cutter on the marble slab. She looked around for the camera on her. It was pitiful. I almost wished John were here. Piers whipped off his white apron, then used it to swab my ruined pink fudge off the floor. He, too, looked about for the camera, smiling, which galled me.

“Were you two faking? Practicing?” I asked. “You gave my mother a heart attack.”

“I’m so sorry,” Piers said, turning into a teddy bear. “Please forgive me, Ava. You were so kind to invite me, and yet I did this to you. Sorry.”

His words were stilted, obviously an act for the nonexistent camera. At least he was being polite again to me and my fudge.

Kelsey, though, slapped a hand on the marble table. “Sorry? That’s all you’ve got to say for cheating? He was hogging the copper kettles again for his hog that he’s cooking.” Her shoulders hunched up to her earlobes in a shudder. “He’s putting hog bits into the fudge.”

“Hog bits?” I asked.

“Bacon,” Piers said, pulling his shoulders back in pride. “I’m experimenting with bacon fudge.”

Kelsey sniped, “He took over four of the kettles. Then he put bacon in one of my kettles of boiling ingredients so I’d have to throw it out. After I did, I looked away for just a moment, and he’d tossed more bacon—meat—into my kettle. Yewww.”

My mother touched my arm. “Honey, I have to finish making deliveries. Maybe you should come with me and let them cool down.”

Kelsey said with a big fake smile, “That cow truck you drive is just the cutest thing, Florine.”

Mom—Florine, never Flo—drove a black-and-white-cow-motif minivan around the county, delivering our farm’s organic cream, cheeses, milk, and butter to various restaurants and to my fudge shop each day. When I’d contacted Kelsey King weeks ago in Portland, where she had a fledgling TV show featuring organics, she’d been thrilled to hear about our farm’s organic nature. She agreed instantly to the adventure of being a contestant in a fudge contest in Door County. I tried to use that modicum of respect to quell the fight now.

“Kelsey, my mother can replace all of your ingredients with fresh ones right now. And maybe the bacon falling into your fudge mix was a mistake.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Her fake smile stiffened.

I turned to look up at Piers. “Why do you need four kettles? You were each assigned two to use. Two for each of you, with two left for me.”

That’s when the smells in the place became a warning along with the odd sounds of audible gulps, lapping, and growls. I looked at the north wall area behind our short counter and glass shelving where the six kettles sat over their open-flame heating units. “Oh my gosh!”

Two copper kettles had bubbled over, oozing sugar and mystery ingredients—and bite-sized bacon pieces—onto the floor. A troublemaking furry brown dog belonging to my ex-husband—the infamous bigamist—leaped about in the middle of canine nirvana, slurping up bacon bits as fast as his long pink tongue could operate. We were lucky the dog hadn’t knocked over the open flames and caused a fire. Ironically, my ex had named the dog “Lucky” after his gambling prowess—my ex’s prowess and not the dog’s. Since my ex had come back to town for utility construction business in May, the dog seemed to get loose and show up just about every other day in my shop. I glanced toward the door now with my heartbeat racing a bit in nervous trepidation. The dog’s rogue appearances usually brought my ex, Dillon Rivers, through the door soon after.

Cody the “Ranger” dashed over to turn off the burners. He grabbed the gangly water spaniel, who was now rolling in the bacon goop on the floor. “Harbor, no! Come with me.” Cody had dubbed the dog Harbor the first day the dog sneaked into our shop because the gregarious animal loved to fling himself into the harbor water outside our front door.

The dog with two names was always a mess unless he was secured with a leash. Lucky Harbor also loved to steal fudge if I didn’t watch him. Chocolate isn’t good for dogs; it can be fatal. I dashed over to Gilpa’s side of the shop for a piece of twine. Lucky Harbor began barking so loudly in protest over leaving his puddle of bacon that everybody in the shop had their hands clamped over their ears.

“Please take him into the back somewhere for now, Ranger. Tie him to a doorknob or something.”

Piers said, “At least the dog shows good taste.”

Piers found a spoon, then began ladling up the mess on the floor. “You weren’t using your kettles, Ava, so I took them over, thinking I was doing you a favor. You weren’t here when I arrived. You didn’t see Kelsey sabotaging the ingredients.”

Kelsey yelped, “You liar.” She grabbed the fudge cutter again to wave at him. “You’re the one sabotaging me, you sausage hick from Chicago!”

At that moment, two of the four fudge judges arrived through the front door: my landlord, Lloyd Mueller; and a local cookbook author, Professor Alex Faust. One of the people ducking and running earlier had looked like my third judge—Dotty Klubertanz, the unofficial head of the church ladies in Door County. Dotty knew her sweets. The fourth judge was Erik Gustafson, our new village president.

My grandmother—who desperately wanted to be a fudge judge so she could vote for me—came in through the back door, finally catching up with us. “What’s that smell?”

“Bacon,” I said.

“No, the other smell. Like dirt cooking.”

Kelsey seethed at Piers. “That’s the smell of my ruined fudge.”

Piers snapped, “It’s real dirt. She’s putting black dirt in chocolate fudge! Says they cook with dirt in Japan.”

Kelsey flew at Piers with a karate kick, which he caught in his beefy hands, but he slipped on the oozing syrup and bacon fat on the floor. They slid out from behind my glass counter loaded with various fudges, landing on their backs in the goo. I rushed to help, but Kelsey got up fast to push me away so she could go at Piers again. I grabbed her in an armlock to break it up—

Just as Dillon Rivers charged through the door. The cowbell clanged against the wall. “Whoa, are we puttin’ bets down on who wins this wrestling match? I’ve got five bucks on the fudge lady.”

I let go of Kelsey.

My tall, killer-handsome ex swept off his hard hat, combing his chestnut-colored hair with his fingers. His muscular chest was bare and glistening already from morning exertion. Both my heart and my stomach did a flippity-flop.

My mother groaned. She did not like Dillon. She said to me, “I’ll call the sheriff.” She was thumb-dialing her phone as she said it.

Grandma said, “I’ll buzz Gil.” She dug in her jeans for her phone.

Professor Faust, a genial, sixtysomething, gray-haired guy in a blue shirt and tan pants, stood wide-eyed. He was carrying a stack of his latest cookbook. “Perhaps this isn’t a good time for a meeting of the judges? Where can I leave my books? They’re all signed.”

Everybody ignored Professor Faust because that’s what happened when Dillon was in a room, especially with his shirt off.

“Hey there,” Dillon said, with a look that said he knew exactly what he was doing to me. He slipped on a neon yellow T-shirt with his construction company logo on it that he’d had shoved in a back pocket. “Anybody see my dog? And what’s this I hear about the fudge shop closing and the contest being canceled?”

Ugh, Grandma’s gossipy church-lady friends must have met him on the docks.

I said to Dillon, “We’re in the middle of something. Your dog’s in the back. You’ll need to take him for a swim before you let him in your truck.”

Dillon chuckled as he looked me up and down. “Maybe you’d like to go for a swim, too.” He sniffed at me. “You smell like bacon. I’d better ask you to the prom before other guys get a whiff of you.”

“Very funny,” I said.

My mother rushed between us, clicking off her phone. “Honey, come with me to the lighthouse. Now.”

At first, her urgency was lost on me. Kelsey and Piers were arguing again while cleaning up the slippery floor, and the dog was barking from the back. Cody had come back into the main shop to boss Kelsey and Piers; Cody obsessed about germs and cleanliness in the fudge shop.

Lloyd had just arrived. With his salt-and-pepper mustache wiggling, he rubbed his bald head in confusion. His gaze fixed on Kelsey for a long moment. He looked as if he were about to admonish the petite thing for bad behavior, but then he blinked and let it pass. He held up an envelope in the other hand. It had to be my rent reimbursement. “Should I hang on to this check and come back another time? This doesn’t look like a good time for a meeting.”

Grandma was on him like flies on fish left too long in the sun. Shaking a finger under his nose, almost touching his mustache, she said, “This is your fault, Lloyd. You’re ruining my granddaughter’s life. Why?”

Dillon said, “Hold on there, Sophie. The man’s an upstanding citizen.”

My grandmother muttered Belgian words under her breath as she advanced on Dillon.

My mother and I hustled Grandma Sophie out the door before another fight started. I felt bad that my ex was such an object of scorn, because he was a decent enough guy. But Florine and Sophie blamed Dillon for whisking me away to Las Vegas eight years ago to marry him in one of those youthful, stupid indiscretions that not even I can believe I did after looking back on it.

I put thoughts of Dillon aside as Mom was erratically driving ten miles an hour over the speed limit through the back streets of Fishers’ Harbor and then even faster on Highway 42 barely outside the village. We were heading northerly, with glimpses of Lake Michigan going by like flipped pages in a book.

“Mom, slow down. There are tourists all over the place.” Tourists often stopped their vehicles at the oddest times to gawk at our spectacular scenery of the lake or to find the quaint art shops tucked away in the woodlands.

Grandma gasped when Mom hit the horn and swerved around a slowing car ahead of us on the two-lane highway. “Florine, what the hell—?”

Mom veered into the entrance to Peninsula State Park. We went through the park gates, then headed down Shore Road, which went to the Eagle Bluff Lighthouse.

I told Mom, “I forgot Libby’s fudge.”

Mom barely missed a hen turkey and her poults that were strutting across the blacktop. Before I could complain again, I noticed the sheriff’s car with its red-and-blue lights swirling in front of the lighthouse.

The lighthouse was made of Cream City brick with a red roof on top of its main house and atop the cupola tower. In the morning sun, the four-story tower had a yellow glow but with red-and-blue striations.

“What’s going on, Mom?”

Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “The sheriff said Libby found something that he wants you to look at.”

“Me? Why didn’t you tell me?” I knew why. My mother did not handle stress or my adventurous life very well.

We parked next to the cruiser. Before we got out, my mother had a shaky hand on my arm. “Honey, are you in some kind of trouble again?”

“No,” I said, though I always seemed to be in trouble and not know it. I searched my brain for something that would require a sheriff but came up with nothing. The fighting confectioner chefs were the only issue that came close to needing law enforcement interference of late. “Is Libby all right?”

She paled. “I forgot to ask. When I called the sheriff he just said something had happened out here, and he needed you.”

By then Sheriff Jordy Tollefson came out to greet us. He was about six feet four inches tall; he had six inches on me. Jordy was in his early forties, lean, a runner, with the demeanor of a marine—perfection and precision. He escorted us inside, into the small room that served as the gift shop. A window had been busted.

Libby was sitting on a stool by the register counter, sniffling into a tissue. When she saw us, she rushed over to hug Grandma.

“Oh, Sophie, I’m so glad you’re here. And I’m so sorry it has to involve your granddaughter.”

A tiny bomb went off inside my stomach. I looked up at Jordy’s stern face and steady brown eyes and said, “What happened?”

Jordy picked up a Baggie off the counter. It held a rock. “Somebody sent this through the window.”

Then he picked up another Baggie with a piece of paper in it. It was ruled paper, the kind that kids use to learn to print letters. In perfect orange crayon, the note said
Somebody will die if you don’t convince Lloyd to throw the contest. Miss Oosterling must not win.

Blood drained from my head. I looked at Libby wrapped in my grandmother’s arms and said, “Who would do such a thing? It’s a silly fudge contest. I’m so sorry, Libby. Somebody’s threatening you and Lloyd?”

My mother said to me, “Honey, you don’t seem to get it. Somebody’s threatening
you
.”

I
wasn’t allowed to touch the orange-crayon note that said I must not win. My mother assumed the “somebody will die” part of the note meant me. Sheriff Tollefson let me read the printed letters on ruled paper through the plastic bag that sat on Libby’s register counter. The walls of the small gift shop closed in on me. The space used to be the winter kitchen for the lighthouse keeper and his family back in 1898 when it was built. I’m sure they made lovely meals here back then, but right now I felt like I was chewing on tacks.

“This has to be a kid’s prank,” I said. “Did you question the campers in the park, Jordy?”

“Yes, and the parents still around this morning verified their kids were in their tents and campers all night. But I have to catch up with one family that a witness said left around six this morning.”

“There ya go. They left early because their child is the guilty party.”

My mother’s long exhalation of breath wasn’t a sigh of relief. That was her signal that I was misreading the cues again. Jordy’s stern demeanor confirmed it.

He picked up the plastic bag. “I doubt some kid would even care about a fudge contest.”

“I beg to differ,” I said, fluffing my ponytail to accentuate my indignation, but fear pricked down my spine a vertebra at a time. My fudge contest could be ruined with my shop suffering great embarrassment—again. The May murder involving my fudge stuck with me like gum under my flip-flops. Clearly somebody wanted to distract me again. Already I imagined Pauline’s boyfriend, John Schultz, interviewing me about death threats and then showing the video of the “fatal fudge confectioner” to TV food or travel channel executives.

As Jordy poked around the gift store’s postcards, photos, and books, I was thunderstruck with a realization. I had crayons in my shop that kids used when they visited. I often grabbed them to make window signs, as did Gilpa . . . and my guest confectioners. Could the confectioners have tossed this rock? I wasn’t about to offer them up to Jordy without proof, though I was tempted. But my contest would be ruined and that darn Kelsey would sue me for defamation of her character, such as it was.

Grandma saved me from Jordy’s piercing gaze. “Jordy, I have my suspicions about who might have done this.”

“Who?”

“Lloyd Mueller.”

Libby coughed. “My ex? Oh no, Sophie, we get along fine. Just yesterday I made homemade lingonberry pancakes for him and dropped those off at his house. He sent me home with wonderful chocolate-cherry coffee beans he’d found at the Chocolate Chicken.”

The Chocolate Chicken was a coffee shop about six miles south of Fishers’ Harbor in Egg Harbor. It also carried my Cinderella Pink Fudge. Eat cherry-vanilla fudge with a dark-roasted coffee laced with a hint of chocolate and Door County cherries, and well, now you know how to find Heaven.

Jordy asked my grandmother, “Why would you think Lloyd Mueller would do this?”

“He’s tossing my granddaughter out on her butt. He’s gone senile. And all this secrecy about buying the Blue Heron Inn and selling his properties—”

Jordy flipped his gaze to Libby. “Does Lloyd have any reason to threaten you? Anything about the real estate?”

“Why, no. I’m not involved. We’ve been divorced a decade. He doesn’t tell me anything about his financial affairs, which is fine with me.”

The sheriff picked up his clipboard, perched on a nearby bookshelf, then gave me his full attention. “Who would want you to lose the contest?”

My mother’s withering sigh nudged me. With trepidation, I confessed, “My rivals. My mom just called your department about them fighting at the fudge shop this morning.”

Jordy consulted his smartphone. “Am I reading this right? Fudge cutters as weapons? What the heck—?”

“You know how chefs can be. Very competitive.”

“But how is that connected to throwing a rock through the lighthouse window out here in the park?”

“One of my guest confectioners, Kelsey King, comes out to the park regularly looking for edible plants. And she hates me.”

Libby perked up. “Oh my stars, I remember something from last night. As I was closing, a skinny woman and a big man were near the wall out back with some chubby guy with a camera. The cameraman was telling them to throw stuff at each other, and they started tossing twigs, and then chased each other over the wall. I heard some mighty bad words. They must have tumbled down that steep hill to the water’s edge.”

Jordy’s pen picked up speed. “So this cameraman likes to stir up trouble?”

Ugh. Pauline would hate me if her boyfriend got questioned about the broken window and threat.

“Jordy, the guy is taping the chefs for a possible TV series. On TV all the chefs act mad and yell. It’s a put-on. Television likes conflict,” I said.

Jordy jotted that down. “So, Ava, Kelsey King tossed this rock through the window for the TV show?”

“She or the other chef, Piers Molinsky.” Another theory came to mind that could keep Jordy from blaming John. “Piers doesn’t like Kelsey. He may have done it on his own because he knows she’s out here a lot, too, and she’d get blamed. He said this morning she was cooking with dirt, and some of the best dirt in Door County is right here in Peninsula State Park.”

His pen hung in the air. “Cooking with dirt?”

My mom said, “With hog bits. That’s what she called Piers’s bacon that spilled into her copper kettle.”

Grandma Sophie said, “Those two are fake chefs, if you ask me. I’d do a background check on them, Jordy.”

“And,” I said, “I have orange crayons at my shop. Have you seen the new tea table that Verona Klubertanz’s dad made, Jordy? It’s made from Wisconsin black cherry trees and is quite lovely, and there could be a connection to the perpetrator with the rock.”

I grabbed a notepad and pen from Libby’s counter to sketch a couple of hexagons connected by a line. “That’s the chemical formula for wood. Paper is a step away from that.” I added another sketch. “Wood is essentially cellulose, which is a carbohydrate, but of course we can’t eat this form of carbs. Cows and termites have microorganisms in their intestines that can convert the cellulose of wood to glucose. Do you see the connection to fudge now? And this crime?”

Jordy blinked several times. I’d learned in May that he hated chemical formulas and thus I could distract him and probably sell him swampland if I wished. However, this time he sighed heavily and smiled. “Enough of your tricks. We’ll be looking at the paper thoroughly. I’ll want to take a look at the paper in your shop to see if it matches somehow.”

My mom’s head was bobbing rapidly. “Good idea.”

I told Jordy he was welcome to look around my shop.

He asked, “Where’s this guy with the TV camera? I’d like to question him.”

Oh, fudge.
Jordy wasn’t buying my theory that the rock might have been thrown by Piers or Kelsey. But as much as I thought John Schultz was an oaf and didn’t deserve Pauline, I’d never betray my BFF—Best Friend Forever—since kindergarten. “John likely showed up at the shop just as we were leaving. Maybe your deputy is talking with him now and has cleared him?”

Jordy pulled out his phone again. His thumb scrolled through screens. “Yeah, your camera guy’s there with a crowd on the docks. My new deputy is handling this one, so I’d better go help her out. She’s from the city. I’m sure she’s seen her share of crazies, but not people trying to kill each other with fudge cutters and crayons.”

After the sheriff left, Mom, Grandma, and I helped Libby clean up. I taped cellophane over the broken window so birds and chipmunks wouldn’t be inclined to visit. Libby seemed relieved to know the whole incident might have been part of an argument between my miserable guest chefs. I promised her it wouldn’t happen again. Libby thanked us all for the help because she had a tour coming at ten and a book-signing event with an author after that.

“Professor Faust?” I asked.

“Indeed. His book about Wisconsin’s food heritage is so wonderful. You’ve read it?”

“I haven’t had time. He dropped off copies at my shop, though, so I’ll take a look soon.” As part of the warm-up to the fudge festival next weekend, all Door County shopkeepers were sharing their sales space with fellow businesspeople and artists to help publicize one another. Fudge was the draw, but I was hoping the entire county would benefit from the festival.

Libby said, “Take a look at the book, dear, because he mentions the bait shop in it.”

Grandma perked up. “Gil never mentioned that.”

“Grandma, Gilpa’s too cheap to buy a new book. Even if I wrote it, he’d wait for it to be remaindered in a sale bin.”

“You’re right, Ava honey. He’s a darn old cheap Belgian. I’ll come back later, Libby, for the signing, and buy several copies.”

As we went out the door, Libby yelled after us, “Better make his favorite dinner first before you show him all those expensive books and your empty wallet.”

We laughed.

* * *

Our smiles evaporated when we arrived at the crowded harbor. My mother had intended to drop us off and drive onward to Sister Bay to make a cheese delivery to Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant, but she changed her mind when she saw the sheriff’s cruiser with the red-and-blues on. Another smaller department car sat next to it.

“What do you suppose is going on now?” my mom asked as she got out.

Grandma said, “Florine, why don’t you go on and make your deliveries before that cheese in this van gets moldy from neglect? You know how you get when you’re worried.”

Mom’s sighing usually turned into babbling when she became stressed. Babbling often descended into cleaning everything in sight, which was handy when I was a teenager because while she was yelling at me to clean my room she’d actually be cleaning my room. Since the fudge shop now needed a thorough scrubbing, I was inclined to let Mom foment more stress.

Mom said to Grandma, “You should be worried, too, because that’s my father-in-law—also known as your husband—in the middle of the fuss.”

Sure enough, Grandpa Gil—with his distinctive silver hair—was waving his hands between the sheriff and his female deputy on one side of him, with my two chef combatants on the other side. They were near the door of our bait-and-fudge shop, a little way from the wooden pier where Gilpa had docked his fishing trawler,
Sophie’s Journey
.

I helped Grandma Sophie out of the van. Wind gusts off Lake Michigan caught her long, thick wavy white hair that hung past her shoulders, whipping it into the look of a swirling cloud. The breeze tugged at my ponytail and buffeted my pink blouse.

The pungent smells of bacon and overheated chocolate mingled with the sweet aroma of cherry-vanilla fudge. Seagulls screeched and sparrows chattered as they landed amid the crowd’s feet and on the dock’s picnic tables, looking for scraps.

As I headed into the fray, I spotted Dillon Rivers coming out of our shop. My heart skipped a beat. I tucked a strand of loose hair behind an ear. If Mom saw him she’d turn into a babbling bulldog trying to protect me from him. I whipped back toward the cow minivan. “Grandma, you stay here with Mom. I can handle this.”

After I pushed through the throng of tourists and a few locals, I found my chefs with their hands handcuffed in front of them. The woman deputy was holding her ground against my grandfather, who was demanding the cuffs come off.

I gave my grandpa a hug and asked, “What’s going on?” He smelled of the clean spray that spat from Lake Michigan’s freshwater waves.

He broke into a big smile. “Look at this ruckus. We’re going to sell out of all my live bait, bobbers and beer, and your Belgian fudge. All because of this dandy new lady county cop.”

The deputy looked maybe twenty-five. She was Hispanic with large mesmerizingly beautiful cocoa-colored eyes that matched her regulation shirt. Her black hair was in a thick braid twisted into a knot at the nape of her neck. She wore tan pants and a tan department ball cap. She had each of her hands on an arm of both chefs.

Jordy wore a pissed look. “I’ve already spent way too much time on this. Get in the cars. One in each.”

Kelsey rattled her handcuffs. “I’m innocent. But you can take this fry cook.”

Piers growled, “I’m not a cook. I’m a bakery chef.”

“You’re half-baked.” Kelsey flipped her long blond tresses around as if she were an indignant filly. “I’ll sue all of you, and you’re first, Half-Baked.”

So the fight was still raging. Cameras and cell phones clicked. I saw Lloyd Mueller shaking his head in disgust. The fudge contest was melting away faster than fancy Belgian chocolate left on a dashboard under the July sun.

Dillon barged into the fray. Women adjusted their hair and licked their lips. Even the young deputy gave Dillon the once-over.

He was looking at me with concern on his chiseled face. “Al and I are almost done fixing a leak in the pipes out under Main Street. You should have your water back within a half hour. I’ll send Al back to check on the water pressure later. You want to join us for coffee now or lunch later?”

Al Kvalheim had been the street and water guy in town since before I was born, my grandpa had told me. Al loved getting dirty and greasy, just like Grandpa. He was portly, short, bald, and heavily wrinkled. He was one of the few people around who still smoked. Al was the opposite of Dillon, so I couldn’t imagine how they got along so well. Dillon’s invitation to join them for coffee was a lifeline being thrown my way, but I had to pass.

I edged closer and whispered, “My mother’s over there. It’d be best if you left now before she blows up at you in front of the crowd.”

He whispered back, “You’re sure you’re okay?”

I nodded. Dillon left, but in his stead my landlord stepped forward, rubbing his bald head in a thoughtful gesture. Lloyd indicated Kelsey and Piers with a nod. “It might do these two good to sit in our fine county jail. We can always replace them with local cooks or bakers. The fudge contest could be a pie contest.”

“Lloyd!” I screeched. “You can’t suggest such a thing. I already have a new fudge flavor in development.”
Liar.

“Another pink flavor? I’m a businessman. I’m starting to feel foolish about pink fudge for a festival.”