Hot Fudge Frame-Up: A Fudge Shop Mystery (6 page)

It dawned on me to look for Piers to see what he was up to. He’d wended his way through the crowd a little from the other direction, but he’d planted himself behind a couple of people, as if he were hiding. He was staring hard and cold at the group that now included the professor, Lloyd, Libby, and my grandparents.

A chill swept over me. What was going on? Common sense kicked in then. Piers was in a direct line to Kelsey. His hard look had to be for her. I didn’t blame him for trying to admonish her trampy behavior.

Pauline had found John in the crowd, so I was alone. And out of sorts, reeling from witnessing the obvious flirting between Kelsey and Lloyd, while I was still thinking about Sam’s wanting a meeting before we could even date.

Feeling dull, I wended my way alone toward the outdoor bar near the building for a glass of wine. Before I could get there, Dillon grabbed me for a barefoot dance in the sand. He had a way of sensing my moods. He knew when I needed laughter. Or a dog. By now, the town was used to seeing the “runaway couple” and didn’t pay us much heed. When we finished dancing, Dillon escorted me closer to the water’s edge where it was more private. A skein of pink across the water advertised the impending sunset.

“I can’t stay long,” he said. “I’m training Lucky on scent-trailing this evening over at the park.”

“How’s he doing?”

“He flushed a possum and a pheasant the other day like a pro.” Dillon dipped a bare foot into the lake, splashing my feet with the cool, clear water. The shadows creeping in with the sunset gave Dillon’s face a seriousness that was uncharacteristic of him. “I was wondering if you’d like to join me and my mother for dinner some night when she’s here. She’s coming for a visit.”

I hadn’t seen Cathy Rivers in years, and I’d always liked her. But joining them for dinner might give her the wrong impression. I said so.

Dillon laughed. “She always liked you better than me. She still reminds me about how stupid I was to let you go.”

“We were young. We moved on.”

“You inspired me when you dumped me.”

“Inspired you? How?”

“A year after we parted, I saw your name in the credits on your TV show. You were making something of yourself, while I wasn’t. So I went back to college and finished up my engineering degree. This humor guy got serious.” He kicked water at me again. “I gotta get Lucky and head to the park before it gets too dark on us.”

While watching him disappear into the crowd, I hugged my arms, feeling raw and unstable. Dillon had always been a nice guy—until the bigamy charge. But I reminded myself that was long ago. This May, when he showed up at my fudge shop after I hadn’t seen him for eight years, it’d been the night of Cody’s senior prom, held on the harbor dock by the shop. Cody had finally got the guts to ask Bethany to the prom. It was a magical night of lights and dancing, a Cinderella fairy-tale atmosphere. Days before the prom, Cody and I had found a stray dog. I’d called the shelter about him. To my shock, Dillon came to my door the night of the big dance to collect his dog.

I had reeled with emotions at the sight of Dillon. I’d loved him, then hated him. There had been no in-between. But there he stood, filling the doorway, his chestnut hair flying wild in the breezes off the harbor, the glint in his chocolate-colored eyes shining down on me like the moon that night. Magical.

After we married in Las Vegas, there’d been that same magic for a while. We honeymooned at the Grand Canyon, then drove Route 66 all the way through Santa Monica to the ocean. But then a month later, Chloe from Nantucket and Sharee Ann from Biloxi and their lawyers contacted me, telling me they were also married to Dillon. I got my annulment and headed to Los Angeles and the ocean. I couldn’t go home, but I needed to be near water. I’d grown up in Door County amid the wonderful hug of Lake Michigan that surrounded the land, and I needed to be hugged in a big way after being betrayed by Dillon and making a fool of myself with my family and with Sam. To purge myself of my mistake of marrying so fast, I leaped into writing about my experiences, teaching myself to write TV scripts while waitressing at Jerry’s Famous Deli in Burbank.

When I finally returned home, Pauline had said she heard that Dillon had been put away for five years. That wasn’t true. She’d just lied to make me feel good.

Dillon told me in May, “The initial sentence could have been for five years, because it was a Class D felony for bigamy and another couple of years for financial fraud. But none of it but being stupid was my fault.”

While he had indeed married Chloe in some youthful exuberance a couple of years after one of our college breakups, Dillon had quickly divorced her. He’d thought their paperwork had been filed correctly. He apologized to me for the Chloe thing.

Sharee Ann was another mistake and another matter. She was a groupie who followed Dillon on his comedy club route. But the groupie who didn’t also want to be a devoted wife spent her time forging Dillon’s signature on a lot of credit card purchases and using aliases.

At one point, the lawyers thought it appeared Dillon had been married to three women at once, including me in the mix, because of all the delayed filing of various paperwork, including divorce papers. But the dates were sorted out and Sharee Ann finally got her own trial. The rest of us were free.

Dillon had spent a couple of months in jail before the bigamy charge was finally cleared. I found out the only reason he spent time in jail instead of getting out on bail was that he refused to let his rich parents fork over the money. So underneath it all, he had his principles intact.

On that night of his return in May, I kept him standing at first in the doorway and didn’t let him in. I still wasn’t sure what to do with him or how to act. My foot itched to kick him in the you-know-whats. I let him do the talking, letting him squirm, grovel, apologize, and beg my forgiveness.

He finished with “I’ve quit the comedy circuit. I don’t party much. I finished college and went to work for my dad’s construction company. I’m a bona fide civil engineer. I build streets, roads, and bridges, and I’m civil while doing my engineering.”

He had smiled at his little play on words. I relented and smiled back. It was hard to stay mad at Dillon.

The trouble now? I ached to get in a fast car with the guy and zip down the road with the tunes on loud. Dillon had loved freedom and a fast life. It made me wonder if having his construction job and a dog were enough for him. When would he get tired of the ordinary life and have to do something wild to stoke his inner fire?

On that starry Cinderella night in May, with the music and laughter outside, Dillon had taken me in his arms and waltzed me one-two-three around the fudge shop. His dog followed us, making me giggle. Dillon laughed, too, his deep voice filling the aisles as we danced amid the perfumes of fudge flavors and bygone memories. I’m sure some of the high school couples must have seen us, but nobody had ever said a word to me about that night. It was as if that dance in the fudge shop was my and Dillon’s little sacred secret.

Pauline joined me now at the shoreline. “That’s a wistful smile if I ever saw one. Dillon?”

“No,” I lied a little bit. “I was thinking about how much I like it here in Door County, and how much I want to do right by the people here, especially my family. I want to prove myself.”

Everybody was dancing and singing along to old cover tunes from the eighties and nineties. The sunset was strafing the harbor with a fiery collection of colors. Sailboats were coming in for the day. As the sun lowered into the horizon in an orange glow behind the buildings and high bluff where the empty Blue Heron Inn sat, I thought about the orange crayon and the threat to me, and Lloyd’s stern talk when we’d met at his house. Just as the day was turning to night and growing chillier, I, too, felt a dark force descending on Fishers’ Harbor. The day had been filled with fights, threats, and secrets. Lloyd seemed to think the safety of Fishers’ Harbor had been splintered.

In the distance we finally saw the Chambers Island Lighthouse beacon, a speck glowing in the dark seven miles away in Lake Michigan. Strings of lights came on behind the Troubled Trout. Pauline and I stayed late, drinking wine and talking about boyfriends and how wonderful basketball had been for us, starting with our grade school years near Brussels, Wisconsin, in lower Door County.

Satiated with nostalgia, I went home and crawled into bed in my cabin. But melancholy seeped in like a wisp of wind through the screens. What would it be like to roll over and see . . . who? Dillon? Sam? Or was there someone else lurking out there that I hadn’t noticed? Someone writing notes about me with an orange crayon? I got up amid a shiver to close and lock my windows, something I never imagined doing in Fishers’ Harbor.

* * *

By Saturday morning, I’d decided that making fudge was better than worrying about men or orange crayon messages likely made by bored kids. Lloyd had to be off his rocker. There was no way Erik Gustafson—a star football player only a year ago for our little consolidated school—would ever accept a bribe or participate in shenanigans with Piers.

Gilpa’s fishing trawler,
Sophie’s Journey
, was easing into the harbor, so I hurried to make a fresh pot of his strong black coffee. Cody had discovered the secret to Gilpa’s coffee back in May—extra scoops of fresh grounds with pinches of cocoa and sugar out of my kitchen to jazz it up. Our coffee was almost as good as what you could get at the Chocolate Chicken or with the hearty pancake breakfast that came with eggs, meatballs, and lingonberries at Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant.

Libby called me around eight thirty. I was mortified. I’d forgotten to run the fudge out to her last night. I couldn’t have driven anyway, not after enjoying that second glass of Door County cherry-moscato blend wine with Pauline.

When I got to the Eagle Bluff Lighthouse at nine, before the place would open for tourists, I encountered Lucky Harbor racing about in the clearing that was flanked by lilac bushes and an old cream brick outhouse to the east, and yards away to the west, a fuel storage building with a red-brown metal hip roof. The woodland lay beyond to the east and west. The dog circled the brush-flanked outbuildings, making rustling noises, as if looking for something. When the dog spotted me, he raced for me. I ducked into the shop and closed the door, handing off my fudge to Libby.

“Dillon’s dog is out there,” I said. “He’s a little nuts and he loves fudge. Keep your door closed.”

“He’s a pretty dog, though. Dillon brings him around a lot. The kids love him. I saw them last night out here but didn’t expect them back on a Saturday morning.”

“The dog probably ran away on his own. He does that a lot. I’ll collect him and take him back. Bye, Libby. And again, I apologize for not coming out last night.”

“Pshaw, you deserved a night of fun after yesterday. No harm done at all.”

When I left, I closed the screen door quickly behind me, making sure it was latched solidly so Lucky Harbor couldn’t slip in. Sure enough, the dog was at my feet, his tongue dripping from his exertion.

“Lucky Harbor, slow down.”

He raced away behind the lighthouse this time, circling it and coming back to me again. He did that a second and third time. I still didn’t see Dillon. Maybe, I thought, the dog knew Dillon was behind the tower, resting from his hike and taking in the view of Lake Michigan.

As I headed for the corner of the lighthouse, Lucky Harbor startled me when he reversed course to come back to me. He jumped up on me, barking. When he raced away again, I scooted faster. The gravel around the tower’s base crunched underfoot.

Just past the squared-off corner of the four-story tower, hidden from view of the parking lot, a figure was sprawled across the gravel and grass. My stomach dropped to my feet. “Dillon!”

I rushed over amid the dog’s shrill barks.

I
t wasn’t Dillon. The pants and shoes I’d spotted first had only looked like Dillon’s from a distance. At the base of the cream brick tower lay Lloyd Mueller, dead.

My screams brought Libby charging around the brick building. She fainted at the sight, crumpling onto the green lawn. I called nine-one-one while trying to stop Lucky Harbor from licking Libby’s face. The dog meant well; he was whining.

Libby came to by the time I talked with a dispatcher. I helped Libby up. Her short, lithe body was shaking. She was around ten years younger than Lloyd, and had always seemed to defy aging—until now. With her tears flowing, she ran her hands into her dyed black bob—scrunching her hair as if to pull it out—then fell to her knees in the gravel by Lloyd’s body. “Lloyd! Lloyd!”

Lucky Harbor plunked his muddy, dirty front paws on my white blouse as he implored me to do something. I pushed him gently back to the ground, then squatted next to Libby and put an arm around her slender quaking shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Libby.”

A siren erupted in the near distance. The volunteer emergency medical technicians were on their way. We were only a few minutes from the firehouse on the outskirts of Fishers’ Harbor.

Lloyd lay on his back, his bald head at a cockeyed angle, his eyes open, his mouth slightly agape under his mustache. He looked stunned by his own demise. An arm was crumpled awkwardly under him, the elbow poking out toward us. His shirt and pants looked impeccable, as usual. There were no bushes to break his fall or tear his clothing. He’d landed squarely on gravel, just missing a small concrete pad on the ground as well as iron pipe railings on a staircase leading to the back door of the lighthouse. I didn’t see any blood, but I suspected there might be plenty underneath his head, seeping into the gravel. I wasn’t about to move him or look.

Amid her sobs, Libby touched Lloyd’s face a couple of times, her hand shrinking back each time.

Tears welled up in my eyes. My throat clogged again.

Soon, our EMTs—Ronny and Nancy Jenks—hustled up behind us. I helped Libby back away.

Jordy’s deputy, Maria Vasquez, showed up. Maria had been on her way to check in with me at the fudge shop about yesterday’s transgressions when she heard this call come in from the lighthouse. Maria and I took Libby to a nearby picnic table while the EMTs assessed Lloyd.

We sat down, with me across from Libby and the deputy. They had their backs to the goings-on with Lloyd’s body, but I had a clear view if I wanted it. I focused on Maria and Libby instead. Lucky Harbor settled on the grass next to me, panting and looking about, on alert. I wondered where Dillon was.

Maria looked at me with dark eyes hooded with concern. “Did you . . . ?”

She wanted to know if one of us had seen him fall. “No,” I said. “The dog was carrying on and I followed him around to the lake side of the lighthouse and that’s how I found Lloyd.”

“Lloyd had been working on the tower?” Deputy Vasquez handed a tissue to Libby next to her.

Libby said, “No. Or at least I don’t think so. I hadn’t seen him since last night right after the fish boil. He dropped me off at my house.” She pointed off in the direction of the road into the park. “I just live across Highway 42.”

“You stay here for now, please.” The deputy patted Libby’s shoulder, then left. She returned with a camera and proceeded to take photos. She also used a measuring tape, making notes or diagrams as she went.

Nancy and Ronny stood to the side, looking glum. While the deputy couldn’t presume anything, the thought of suicide rose inside me, and I believed in the EMTs as well.

The surroundings were incongruous to the awful event. Lake Michigan rippled and sparkled just yards from us. The breezes were balmier today, the humidity not so oppressive as yesterday. My short-sleeved white blouse didn’t stick to me. The temperature was around eighty degrees. Kids’ laughter came from far off in the park’s campgrounds somewhere.

As the gusty winds off the lake buffeted us, yesterday’s conversation with Lloyd bounced in my head. He’d been seriously concerned about his land deal and my fudge contest. He also said he knew who had written the threatening note, insinuating it had been Erik and Piers. He’d mentioned Kelsey being “friendly,” which I’d witnessed later. On top of that, he wanted me to move into the Blue Heron Inn. This mishmash of things made me uneasy now. It felt like Lloyd had some hidden agenda or secret, and that he had been pushing me toward helping him with something. But what? And why? Was he afraid of somebody? Or just under too much pressure? In addition, I couldn’t ignore his health problem; he had been uncomfortable yesterday. He’d also started giving away his things—his cookbook collection. Had that been a plea for help, too? Had he seen in me something of a daughter he could trust? Because he trusted my grandfather?

With my heart heavy as stone, I called my grandmother to tell her the news. She went silent for a long moment. Grandpa would take this news about his best friend’s death even harder.

After I got off the phone, Libby muttered, “I don’t understand. Why would he do this?”

She obviously thought he’d committed suicide, too.

I said, “It had to be an accident. Maybe he was up there taking a look from the tower to envision the changes his real estate sale would bring to Fishers’ Harbor. I heard he was signing the contract tonight, Libby.”

“Tonight?”

I was a little surprised she didn’t know, but I let it pass. They were a divorced couple, and sharing lingonberry pancakes now and then didn’t mean they shared everything. “Maybe he was having second thoughts and came here to think. Or to talk with you about tonight. It was probably dewy and slippery up there on the iron walkway. And it’s so narrow up there.” I imagined him stretching out a kink in his hip or legs as I’d seen him do yesterday at his house, then tipping off-kilter. “My grandmother will be here any minute, Libby.”

She nodded. The whites around her big, dark brown eyes were red from crying. I got up and came around the picnic bench to give her another hug.

The memory of the note startled me again.
Somebody will die if you don’t convince Lloyd to throw the contest. Miss Oosterling must not win.

I had the good sense not to say anything that might exacerbate Libby’s pain.

When Sheriff Tollefson arrived a half hour later, he shot across the grass straight for me where I stood holding on to the dog. My grandma was with Libby. The sheriff repeated questions I’d already been asked by Deputy Vasquez. Then he got to the note. “Did you talk with Lloyd about throwing the contest? Did Lloyd feel threatened by anybody?”

Fear swept through me at the realization the sheriff thought this might have been a murder. I told Jordy about visiting Lloyd yesterday around the lunch hour with Pauline. “He seemed mixed up emotionally, Jordy.” I told Jordy about the cookbooks, the key to the house, Lloyd’s wish for my career, and the proposed move into the Blue Heron Inn. “You should check with his doctor. Maybe he knew he was dying and was trying to get everything in order before he passed away.”

Jordy made a note. “Do you think he was capable of suicide?”

The lump in my throat enlarged. I recalled all the pressures Lloyd must have been under from the townspeople. “Maybe.”

“Somebody wrote Lloyd’s name in that note, but not the other judges of your contest. Those would be . . . ?”

“Our village president, Erik Gustafson, Professor Alex Faust from the University of Wisconsin in Green Bay, and Dotty Klubertanz.”

“What about your testy contestants? They seem capable of harming people they don’t like.”

“With fudge cutters? You don’t think Piers or Kelsey murdered him, do you?”

“Could they have driven him . . . over the edge, literally? Any pressure on Lloyd from them?”

I had to tell Jordy about Kelsey’s unwanted “friendliness” toward Lloyd, and that Lloyd said Piers had bribed Erik last Tuesday. “But I have no proof of that bribe, Jordy. Piers may have offered money to Erik, but maybe Erik didn’t accept it or he returned the money. Lloyd didn’t elaborate and I didn’t ask.”

“If there was a bribe, maybe Erik was embarrassed or fearful after saying something to Lloyd.”

“You’re speculating, Jordy.”

“True, but I’m trying to jog your memory. Piers is a beefy, big guy. And Erik was a football player. You can bet I’ll ask them some questions later, too.”

The insinuation was clear: Piers or Erik could have muscled Lloyd up the circular staircase and thrown him off the tower.

“Jordy, Lloyd said he was signing a contract tonight over dinner with somebody. He didn’t mention who or where, but maybe that’s a lead to track down. And he gave me old cookbooks, with a speech about doing grand things for the town. It all seems odd now that I look back on it. Maybe there was something else going on.”

The EMTs passed us with Lloyd’s body bagged on a stretcher.

Deputy Vasquez walked up to us with her camera and tape measure. “I haven’t found anything in the perimeter. We haven’t had rain in a while, so no obvious footprints. I’ll secure the lighthouse and take a look inside and at the top. The EMTs said it looks like he broke his neck in the fall. There’s rigor mortis in the body and lividity.”

“Thanks, Maria,” Jordy said.

Maria followed the EMTs.

I said, “She seems really good.”

“Fresh out of Madison College.”

That was a tech school in Madison, the state’s capital. “Why’d she take a job up here?”

“Her parents work in the orchards and dairy farms right here in Door County. The County Board of Supervisors approved her position because they want us to write more speeding tickets to feed the county’s coffers. The only real law enforcement work we get is pretty much with you.”

Jordy had on his usual stone face, but I considered it a backhanded compliment. Then Jordy said, “The note said Lloyd should throw the contest and make sure you lost. Who wants to harm
you
? And why, Ava?”

My brain sputtered like a boat motor trying to back up. “I make fudge; what’s not to love about me?” But a seed of concern had sprouted in me. “What does ‘lividity’ mean?”

“When his heart stopped the blood began to settle and pool. Gravity pulls it down. The skin looks bruised. Lividity will help us pinpoint the time of death.”

“When will you know that?”

He scowled at me. “Let me handle this, especially since it may involve serious threats to you. I don’t want to find you fighting with a murderer in a basement again.”

“You sound like you care.” I let a grin slide across my lips. “Maybe I should ask you to the dance next weekend, just for my own protection.”

He scoffed. “You’ll most likely get plenty of close protection from Sam and Dillon.”

He walked away before I could respond. I found it interesting that Jordy had a sense of humor. And concern for my safety.

* * *

Lucky Harbor sat in the front shotgun seat, his nose out the window, sniffing the breeze, as I drove into town. When the brown spaniel spotted Dillon on Main Street, the dog’s tail began slapping the seat. He barked. It was only a little after ten, and few tourists were about, so I easily found a parking spot.

I left the dog inside because I didn’t have a leash. I crossed the street where Dillon stood in his neon yellow hard hat and T-shirt beside a pile of gravel and a pit along a curb in front of The Wise Owl. Workmen were lowering a pipe into the pit. When I told Dillon the news, he gathered me in his arms in front of everybody. He felt solid, warm, and just what I needed. Tears filled my eyes, which ordinarily I hated. But the image of my grandpa’s best friend’s crooked form lying on the gravel overwhelmed me.

Dillon murmured into my ear, “I’m so sorry, for everybody. Your poor grandparents. Poor Libby. And you. Do you want to step over to the coffee shop? I’ll buy.”

“No, but thanks. I’d better get to the fudge shop. Grandma said Gilpa was just coming in from a fishing tour when I called her earlier.”

“I could come with you.”

“No, you have to work.” While I felt in need of his support, I was wary of rekindling a deeper dependence on him.

He said, “Take the dog if you want. Lucky is a pretty good listener.”

I pointed out my shirt. “He’s good about getting me dirty. Why was he over in the park by himself?”

“Because last night he treed a possum before we left the park, and so he ran away on me earlier this morning to find that possum again. I figured either he’d come back on his own or I’d go fetch him during my break this morning.”

Dillon and I crossed the street to get to my truck and his dog.

He ruffled the dog’s neck and ears, then took a leash from a pocket. “Hey, boy. What did you see over there at the lighthouse?” Dillon handed me the leash. “Take him. A dog is a good buddy in times of stress. A car crash taught me the value of a dog.”

“When was this?”

“Remember my Porsche?”

Red, loud, and fast. Like a magic carpet, the roadster ferried us to Las Vegas and then to Route 66 to the ocean. A thread of the thrilling memory dangled inside me like a rope teasing me to climb it. “What happened?”

“Crashed it the year after you left me. Going too fast and missed a corner. I ended up in the hospital with a broken leg and wrist and depression over my sorry state. A hospital volunteer brought in a dog for me to commune with.”

“Let me guess. An American water spaniel?”

He grinned. “No, a golden retriever. But then I got interested in dogs and found out Wisconsin had its very own official breed of dog, the American water spaniel. I held off on getting one until I finished my degrees and got situated in Dad’s construction company, but thinking about what a dog had meant to me kept me going and pushing forward. Sound silly?”

My heart was melting, damn him. “No, not silly at all.”

“You’ll take him for a little while today, then? Your grandpa might need him, too.”

He had me with the mention of Gilpa. “Okay.” The fudge-colored dog panted up at me and wagged his tail as if he knew human language. “Come on, Lucky Harbor.”

Dillon gave me a thumbs-up. “I’ll pick him up by lunchtime. Want me to bring a sandwich over for you?”