Hot Fudge Frame-Up: A Fudge Shop Mystery (4 page)

The echoing slap of our shoes in the quiet stairwell and the antiseptic smell somehow contributed to my sadness for Laura.

We left the hospital by the side door, then circled around to the E.R. parking area.

When we got back to my pickup, the dog was gone. “Crap.” I’d left the windows down because of the hot day. “Dillon’s going to kill me.”

“Stop using that word.
Kill
. I don’t allow it in my classroom.”

“Have you forgotten I was almost killed in May, and now there are silly notes that insinuate I might be killed? If I had a perfume named after me, it’d be the ‘Scent of Killing.’”

“Don’t snap at me, Ava. What silly notes?” Pauline put an arm around my shoulders.

“Sorry. It’s been a rough morning.” I explained the lighthouse episode and the note.

Pauline said, “And here I thought those two chefs were merely being arrested for fighting. They could be murderers. Is your fudge contest falling apart?”

She was likely worried for John and his big dream for a culinary travel show. “I’m sure by now Jordy’s had the two chefs take a look at the window and nothing came of it, so John is safe. The rock was likely thrown by some kid from the campground. Let’s find Dillon’s dog. Is there a grocery store or candy shop nearby? That dog loves to eat and he has a sixth sense for sniffing out sugar.”

We were climbing into the front seats when Pauline pointed through the windshield toward the emergency room doors. “Look.”

Lucky Harbor was curled up in the deep shade by a big brown flowerpot, sleeping. We hadn’t seen him at first because he matched the color of the pot.

Pauline said, “He was waiting for you to come back through that way because that’s the way you went inside, not the other exit. He’s smarter than you.”

“That’s easy enough,” I said. I got back out of the truck and called, “Want some fudge?”

The furry brown head popped up; then he bounded to me with his tail wagging. After a Goldfish, I gave him a head scratch. “Let’s go back to the fudge shop.”

He raced to the truck, going to the back, expecting me to lower the tailgate. Obviously Dillon let him ride often in the open truck bed, but that was around Fishers’ Harbor at twenty miles an hour.

“No, Lucky Harbor. You get the whole backseat to yourself. Come.”

After I got in, he slurped the back of my neck as I pulled out of the hospital’s parking area.

The sun was beginning to move overhead by the time we got near Fishers’ Harbor. It was nearly noon. I trusted Gilpa would be handling the shop just fine, so instead of driving into Fishers’ Harbor, I took a right turn off Highway 42 just before town and went inland.

“Where we going?” Pauline asked. “I’m supposed to be meeting with my Butterflies’ parents to start making their parade costumes.”

“Wasn’t Bethany volunteering to help? She can handle it.” Bethany Bjorklund was Cody’s girlfriend—in his eyes, anyway. Whatever the relationship, she was kind, and she signed on to help with the fudge festival and the fudge shop parade floats.

Pauline fished her phone from her humongous purse, sending paper scraps and notepads and pens flying. “I’ll call her. So, where are we going?”

“To Lloyd Mueller’s. All this secrecy about the property that affects my grandparents is odd. And him dissing my pink fudge is double-fudge odd. Lloyd acts like he’s scared of something.”

“You’re reading too much into this.”

“Pauline, that note said Lloyd should throw the contest, so I don’t win.”

“It was a prank. You know how your life works. As soon as you have a few good days, you end up with something bad. Right now we’re in the good.”

“How do you know that?”

“You’re not dead, for one thing.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Please, can’t we just leave well enough alone?” She was stuffing papers and pens back into her purse. “I don’t think anything good can come of poking a stick at a bear in his cave.”

“Lloyd is not a bear. He’s my grandfather’s best friend.”

“You’re walking right into something really bad, Ava.”

“Pauline, you’re not helping.”

“Sorry.”

* * *

Lloyd lived in a large, late-1800s, two-story white house with black shutters on a wooded hill on the outskirts of Fishers’ Harbor. The land rose just high enough so you could glimpse the boating traffic on Lake Michigan to the north over the tops of the maple trees and village buildings. A Swedish fishing fleet captain had built the house the year before he lost his life on the lake in a wintry squall.

I’d visited Lloyd’s home a few times as a little girl with my grandpa and grandma and remembered it feeling huge and very dark inside. We pulled to a stop a few feet from a cherry red door in the circular brick driveway. Several robins were fighting over the water spraying and cascading from a sizable, but plain, three-tiered concrete fountain that rose above my height in the center of the circle.

“Lucky birds,” I mumbled to Pauline. “They have water this morning.”

Pauline and I were barely out of the pickup when the home’s front door popped open. Lloyd came forward with a limp that seemed endemic to being in one’s seventies. Gilpa and Grandma had similar limps, especially in the evenings after a long day. Lloyd was dressed in a teal golf polo shirt bearing a designer shark logo and matching plaid shorts that grazed the wrinkles above his knees. His legs were skinny as cornstalks. He wore sporty white golfing shoes. One hand massaged his salt-and-pepper mustache. Sunlight highlighted the age spots atop his bald head. His eyes penetrated me in a way that chilled.

Maybe Pauline had been right; we’d made a mistake coming here unannounced.

“Hello, Lloyd. Listen, I can come back later, but could we set up a time to talk about the fudge contest?”

“Ava,” he said, his countenance softening as he reached out his hands to clasp mine with priestlike solemnity, “we must talk about your fudge, indeed. Fishers’ Harbor is in trouble. You and I were threatened. Somebody’s gonna die, I heard. And I know who it is.”

L
loyd glanced about the outdoor environs as if he feared somebody were spying on us. He ushered Pauline and me inside. I left Lucky Harbor outside to enjoy the shade trees. Or to run home to Dillon. Dillon’s backhoe was grinding away only three-quarters of a mile away in our downtown.

Inside the house, the air-conditioning refreshed us with dehumidified air. We followed Lloyd through a breathtaking, open layout filled with Wisconsin wildlife prints on the walls and tasteful sandstone-colored leather furniture as well as a dining room area with a resplendent cherry-wood-and-glass table and matching cherry chairs. A collection of cups and saucers—in vintage floral patterns—filled three wide shelves of a glass-fronted cupboard. The second story had been opened up in the center of the living area to create a rotunda with a stained glass dome skylight. It dripped hues of gold, red, emerald green, and blue onto the dark oak floors.

Lloyd led us into a library in the back with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a massive rose garden sporting blooms of every color imaginable, from sunny yellow to pale peach, to even a smoky blue. Bees worked the flowers in a choreographed fashion.

I said, “Did you know flowers give off electricity? The bees detect it. There’s a true attraction between flowers and bees that goes beyond the color or even the perfume.”

“You’ve always been a science whiz. Your grandpa is so proud of you. And grateful that you’ve come back to stay in Door County.”

I beamed like a little kid who’d just received an A on her botany project.

He motioned for me to take a seat in an antique wicker chair filled with floral cushions. He then pointed out one for Pauline, saying, “And you’re keeping up Wisconsin’s proud heritage as the country’s birthplace of kindergarten. We Germans had a hand in that.”

Our state was founded in 1848 with a constitution guaranteeing an education for every child, starting at the age of four. Wisconsin’s first kindergarten began in 1856. A German invented the “kindergarten” concept and coined the term. I could imagine Pauline’s little Butterflies frolicking amid the aisles of Lloyd’s rosebushes.

Lloyd took bottles of water from a compact refrigerator under a table behind us that served as a desk. He gave a bottle to me, then Pauline. Lloyd opened a bottle, too, but didn’t sit down with us. He paced with his limp, as if agitated with the malady or something else—like his mention of somebody dying. Pauline blabbered on about her Butterflies decorating little red wagons with Cinderella Pink Fudge fairy-tale designs for the parade a week from tomorrow. I could tell her antennae for trouble were up, too.

I was eager to get to our serious subject. “Lloyd, I take it you talked with Libby about the rock thrown through her window?”

“She called me this morning just after she’d unlocked the door at the lighthouse. I advised her to call the sheriff right away.”

“We think it’s just a kid from the campground.”

Lloyd flashed me a look that said I was wrong. “There are people around Door County who disagree with how I run my business affairs. I hope that doesn’t include you.”

Goose bumps popped up on my arms. “I must admit I’ve been wondering why I’d have to be out of my cabin by Sunday. It was sudden.”

“Has your grandfather questioned it?”

“No.”

“Because he understands how these deals work.” Lloyd eased his scarecrow body into a chair to my left. He put his water bottle on the side table between us, then paused, as if to draw sustenance from the floral view. “To make sure this deal went through, I had to guarantee all the cabins I rent would be emptied posthaste. I even paid extra to speed up your boyfriend’s construction company work on the Main Street water mains.”

“Dillon’s not my boyfriend.”

Pauline choked.

I ignored her. “Are you turning Duck Marsh Street into condos and a helipad?”

He rubbed his head. “Of course not. And I can’t say anything about the project until the deal goes through.”

“When is that?”

“We sign the papers tomorrow night over dinner.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

He shook a finger at me but with a smile behind it. “I’m sworn to secrecy. Business deals are like that. But let’s talk about that threatening note. I don’t think you should go through with your fudge contest.”

“But a lot of people have already entered. And a pie contest is too ordinary.”

Pauline said, “Belgians are known for pies. And the word ‘Belgian’ is part of your shop’s name.”

“It’s Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers and Belgian
Fudge
, Pauline, not Belgian
Pies
.”

“Don’t forget you swapped out the apostrophe on that sign to the plural form, then tacked up ‘Beer’ again on the end of the sign. Just tack up the word ‘Pie’ after that and you’re good to go.”

Belgian stubbornness fits with the feisty personality of everybody who founded Fishers’ Harbor, including those hearty Icelanders, Swedes, Finns, Norwegians, and Germans. In fact, while other towns dropped the apostrophe at the end of their town name long ago—Baileys Harbor, Rowleys Bay, Gills Rock—Fishers’ Harbor had proudly claimed fame over the years for their little apostrophe that set them apart.

I turned back to Lloyd. “This note and rock event is just a kid’s prank. It’d be silly to stop the fudge contest now. I’m willing to defy whoever’s threatening us.”

Pauline choked. She did that a lot around me.

Lloyd’s cheeks pinked with excitement. “Give the contest lots of publicity. See who gets upset about it. When they threaten us again, we nab them.”

Pauline said, “Both of you are nuts. You’re talking about possibly teasing somebody out to kill one of you.”

“Pauline, you used the ‘K’ word.”

“I know, but this is scary and my kindergarteners aren’t around.”

“John will love the fudge contest if it gets bigger and flashier. You should love this idea, Pauline.”

Lloyd got up again to limp about. “That note has to be taken seriously. This is not a fictional adventure like your little television show you worked on in L.A.”

Everybody called the situation comedy I worked at in Los Angeles for about seven years a “little” show. That bugged me, and yet I was glad to be away from the miserable, manic bunch of guys who wrote the
Topsy-Turvy Girls
. They didn’t let me get more than an occasional idea written into the scripts after they bought my first script, which landed me a job. I ended up in charge of things like the cast’s chow, and that’s how I began making fudge. I had needed a creative outlet and more money to live on.

Lloyd limped over to his bookshelves. They covered three walls, floor to ceiling. A wooden ladder on wheels was mounted on each section for easy access to the top shelves. He bent down and from a lower shelf chose several slender paperback volumes from one spot. With reverence in his motions, he placed the stack in my lap, then sat down.

“Those are yours to keep. Come back anytime to that section of the shelves and take more.”

The books were community cookbooks, the kind that churches and clubs put together with their members to sell as a fund-raiser. My parents and grandparents had several tucked away in cupboards and drawers. The covers on some of these were deteriorating. Lignin in wood that’s left unbleached when used in papers like newsprint will turn yellow and brown when exposed to air. I eased a cover open. The copyright was 1906!

“Oh, Lloyd. These are antiques filled with heirloom recipes.”

“Those particular ones belonged to my grandmother and mother. A couple are from the Old Country.” He meant Germany. “They’re yours to keep.”

“Lloyd, I can’t accept these. They belong to your family.”

“I don’t have much for family, nobody here in the States, anyway. Shirttail relatives back in Germany certainly. And Libby doesn’t want the books. After you asked me to be a fudge judge, it prompted me to look up old recipes for fudge. I knew nothing about the candy confection. Those books might give you ideas for better flavors and colors than that modern pink stuff. Fudge has been around for years and with roots in Europe. I have a chocolate cup in my collection, which you viewed in passing minutes ago. When I was a boy, it was common to enjoy hot chocolate with a confection on a rainy afternoon.”

I understood now what he was all about. He hadn’t been dissing my fudge; he was dissing my whole approach to the contest. “You think the contest should educate people about our heritage in Door County? I should make the contest bigger than just little old me trying out new flavors? I should create a fervor for fudge?”

Pauline rolled her eyes at my Fs.

“Smart woman,” he said. “But you have to act fast. After I sell off my properties, the new owner may eventually build those ugly condos and that chopper pad unless you get the people around here excited about your fudge in a deep way. You have to help people believe the fudge shop is fine where it is, and so are the cabins on Duck Marsh Street.”

“Somebody wants me to fail, though, if that note is to be believed. Some person with an orange crayon wants you to convince the fudge judges to make me lose.” It struck me that perhaps a kid wouldn’t care enough about a fudge contest to write such a note. A shiver zipped up my back and neck and into my hair.

Lloyd got up again, slower this time. “The bigger you get, the harder it is to fail. Fishers’ Harbor has never had a fudge festival. Mostly, people around here sell clay pots and covered ceramic pie plates with cherries on top. And the woodworkers?
Ach du lieber
. They trot out painted birdhouses and garden gnomes.”

“But that’s what tourists like to buy. And Door County is actually filled with loads of lovely artists of fine art, including artists renting out your buildings in our downtown. The great art here probably graces many a home in Chicago.”

“Ah yes, we are Chicago’s playground. Now you’re thinking big. Being a fudge judge got me thinking, too. You Belgians have what you call your kermis
festivals.”

“Harvest festivals.” In the Belgian areas of Door County below Sturgeon Bay, every hamlet held a harvest festival August through early October. But there was nothing in July. And nothing like a kermis in the top half of Door County, though the Swedes, Finns, and Norwegians had their share of wonderful festivals. A kermis was bawdy fun, with plenty of music and Belgian beer flowing, booyah and other hearty foods, the unique Belgian pies, and games like bocce ball as well as card games. But putting on a kermis was a daunting thought. “You want me to start a kermis for Fishers’ Harbor?”

“Your doubting tone troubles me. Like your pink fudge.” He took a few rocking, bowlegged steps again, as if walking off a kink.

I peered again at the gifts in my lap. A sudden, horrid thought came to me. “You’re not suffering from something terminal, are you?”

“I’m fine. But I want you to do something about this threat that Libby found this morning. I must warn you that I believe our young village president and the past president would like nothing more than seeing you and your fudge put on a ship and floated out of here, preferably in a storm.”

That made me sit up straight. “Erik Gustafson and Mercy Fogg want me ruined, or worse?”

Pauline said to me, “I thought you and Mercy had patched up your differences.”

“Not since she reported the dog in my shop and got me that demerit on my last health inspection. Then she crowed about it online, which Lois saw and told my grandmother.”

Mercy Fogg was fifty-nine—in my parents’ age group—and a know-it-all. She was bitter about losing the spring election to nineteen-year-old Erik after she’d served as president of the village for twenty years. She now felt it her business to root out any shopkeeper who mistakenly forgot some regulation or got behind on taxes. She’d dinged some of Lloyd’s renters, including the quaint Klubertanz Market on Main Street, the coffee shop, and even The Wise Owl—our little bookstore where tourists browsed for old maps and used and new books to read on a deck overlooking Lake Michigan.

“Erik’s always been nice to me, so he’s not our culprit.”

Looking down on me in my chair, Lloyd said, “Erik told me the other day Piers Molinsky slipped him some cash. A bribe to throw the contest, I assumed.”

“When was this?”

“This past Tuesday.”

It sounded like the “Confectioner’s Conflict” had started earlier than I knew. If bribes were cooking by Tuesday, the chefs had likely been cooking up trouble since the time they arrived on Sunday. I had met them the first time on Monday. Erik might consider a bribe, because he was practically a kid and as poor as the rest of us. Now I imagined that Erik had thrown the rock, thinking the silly trick would be blamed on a little kid, which it almost had been.

“Did Erik keep the cash?”

“Erik clammed up. I don’t believe he wanted me to know about the cash, but it slipped out when we were discussing the tax bills on my properties and how hard it is to make a living here. We essentially feed off tourist money June through the end of October, and then the county shuts down for winter and we go batty from boredom. It’s a wonder I haven’t killed myself before now.”

Pauline and I exchanged a look of concern. I reminded Lloyd that winters here now included a lot of activities like snowshoeing and snowmobiling as well as ice-skating and ice-fishing. And nothing could beat Christmas in Door County with all the old-fashioned downtowns festooned with lights.

But Lloyd’s agitation and pacing again signaled something deeper worrying him.

I suggested, “Perhaps you should tell these things to Sheriff Tollefson.”

“I’d rather you talk with him.” Lloyd slumped into his chair again.

“Jordy gets miffed at me for trying to do his job.”

Pauline said, “The real reason Jordy gets miffed is that he’s here to protect the citizens and you almost got yourself killed on his watch. You should have waited for him before going into that creepy mansion basement back in May.”

Lloyd laughed out loud. He turned to view his roses. Bees scored the air outside.

I said to Lloyd, “But if Piers is bribing Erik, this means I need to tell Piers to leave town and get a new contestant.”