Hot Fudge Frame-Up: A Fudge Shop Mystery Read online

  I hesitated going over to the two on my own. Kelsey’s blond cuteness and petite frame rendered her deceivingly harmless-looking. But she was a fitness guru who ran a health spa. She knew karate and ate the bark off trees. I was probably smelling bark cooking in the aromas floating about us. Piers, whose bulk reflected his love of the muffin tops he’d made famous in Chicago, growled like a bear at Kelsey.

  Piers used his fudge cutter to gouge out and flick a good-sized portion of my precious pink confection onto the floor. He smashed it with the heel of one boot. “This is your face.”

  We all cried out in pain—me, Cody, my mom, and two customers who popped up from behind a shelving unit filled with handmade Cinderella Pink dolls, purses, and teacups. I recognized the ladies from my grandmother’s church group. They rushed out, screaming something about “saints and sinners.” The cowbell on the door clanged. A teacup fell to the floor in their wake and broke.

  Those ladies would spread the gossip fast, so I had to take action. I used the weapon that always worked. “There could be TV cameras on you right now for all you know. I think that’s John coming down the docks right now.”

  My mother whimpered, “Oh no.”

  John Schultz had been videotaping us every spare moment of his time. To keep things manageable for his videotaping, John wanted just three celebrity contestants—me and these two trying to kill one another. He’d scoured his universe of contacts in the travel industry and come up with Piers and Kelsey. I’m sad to say I approved them. Shows my talent for judging people. John had insisted that he tape the fudge contest activities this week and the next, with the hopes of ending up on a cable channel. He’d get a show of his own, he said, and I’d get fudge fame. But John wasn’t coming down the docks right now; I’d lied.

  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 thi
s 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.”

  Chapter 2

  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?”