Five-Alarm Fudge (12 page)

The crowd shouted, “Walnuts” and “wild blackberries” and “blueberries.”

Josh added, “Fish.”

Laughter resounded.

I invited him up to stir the Rapunzel Raspberry Rapture Fairy Tale Fudge.

I told the crowd, “Josh is doing a great job with that four-foot maple paddle. While he’s stirring, I’m going to add the organic butter. We add the butter at the end—often frozen butter—to regulate the temperature a bit.”

I showed the crowd the thermometer dangling off a hook nearby, which I could use if needed. I was experienced enough now that I rarely tested officially for the temperature. I could tell by the look of the concoction in the kettle how it was doing. “The colder and drier the air in the shop and outside, the lower the temperature it takes for fudge. However, if I were making my Cinderella Pink Fudge, I’d want a slightly warmer temperature. Vanilla fudge requires about four degrees more than dark chocolate. Okay, Josh, that looks good. Let me take over again. Thank you for your fine help.”

The crowd applauded him as he raced back to be with his mom.

The fudge was soon ready for loafing. I poured it on the marble table. The glistening, rich, dark chocolate flowed like sweet lava, steaming.

I exchanged my heat-proof gloves for sanitary plastic gloves, then grabbed my loafing tool—a large flat knife made of wood—to massage the molten chocolate.

“Josh, would you like to help?”

He nodded. I slipped plastic gloves over his hands. The gloves were oversized for him, but he was smiling proudly. I picked him up to set him on the stool I kept near the table. Outside, the rain had stopped. The sunshine was causing steam to rise off the docks.

“The marble table pulls the heat out of the fudge. By loafing—or massaging—the fudge, we coat all the crystals with the fat that comes in the butter and cream, which makes the fudge smoother. After loafing about four batches of fudge in a row, I have to let the marble table cool down again or the fudge won’t set up properly.”

Josh massaged the goopy mass of raspberry fudge, sending a wonderful aroma into the room. To appease the crowd, I brought out a batch of fudge made yesterday and showed them how to eat it with a dollop of whipped cream on the side and fresh berries or some homemade raspberry jam to dip the fudge pieces in.

Everybody flocked to my glass cabinet to buy several flavors of fudge to take home. I gave Josh a free bobber from Grandpa’s side of the shop.

About an hour later I drove down to Ava’s Autumn Harvest. It was going on three o’clock. Dillon had texted twice but had no news yet about John Schultz’s condition.

How had John lost his memory? How had he gotten the goose egg on the back of his head?

Daniel was helping Kjersta load pumpkins in the back of a customer’s car along with a box of pickling cucumbers. He called over, “Your fudge sold out.”

“I brought some.”

I put out pumpkin fudge I’d made yesterday, maple fudge, and my unique Rose Garden Fudge. This rose fudge was white with what looked like confetti in it made from yellow, pink, and red roses I plucked from Lloyd Mueller’s backyard organic garden. I also brought along small bags of crystallized rose petals. The fragrant, delicate chips the size and texture of cornflakes always sold well alongside the rose petal fudge. I froze them, too, for making rose-flavored fudge later in winter.

The wine stock seemed low on one outdoor table. “Didn’t Michael bring us more bottles?”

Kjersta shrugged as she placed a bucketful of her freshly dug potatoes on a corner of the flatbed wagon that held cucumbers, cabbages, and green and yellow peppers. “Mike is practically having a party over at his winery. I called him, but he said he was too busy pouring free wine.”

“Why the party?”

“Michael said he’s celebrating that Tristan is gone.”

Stunned, I said, “He’s celebrating Cherry’s death? And telling people that? That’s foolish.”

We began walking together back to the stone barn.

Kjersta swung her empty bucket. “I can’t blame Michael.” She paused at the door of the barn, her big brown eyes showing weariness. “Cherry was causing the huge rift between Jonas and Michael. Jonas was fed up with Cherry. I know that Jonas complained to the university about Cherry. He told me he wrote to his dean.”

“When was this?”

“A couple of weeks ago. Start of the university’s semester.”

“Did you tell this to the sheriff when he stopped by earlier?”

“No. He only asked about cars going by last night.”

We went inside. The barn smelled of something sweet, like clover hay. “What’s that?” I sniffed Kjersta. “A new perfume?”

Kjersta laughed. “My new soaps. I figured I could best Fontana at her own game.” She led me to a small stack of soap cakes wrapped in clear cellophane on a shelf across from the cash register.

Giving her a sly smile, I said, “You’re not jealous of your husband’s ex-wife, are you?”

“Ha, she’s jealous of me. Now she’ll be even more jealous. These soaps are far better than what she sells.”

She showed me the soap bars. They were a pale pink, the hue of clover when it first blooms after a rain.

I said, “They match the color of my Cinderella Pink Fairy Tale Fudge. Women will love buying these as gifts.”

Kjersta said, “I use the milk from sheep and goats. Fontana uses cow’s milk.”

“You use Jonas’s goats and sheep?”

“Yeah.”

“But you seem to think he could have murdered Tristan Hardy.”

The pained look on Kjersta’s face showed me she was conflicted. “No. It must have been a bad accident. They must have argued in the church basement and shoved each other and Cherry fell.”

“But you’ve no proof.”

She shook her head. “I just have this bad feeling about Jonas sending that letter to the dean. Cherry would have found out, I’m sure. It could’ve been Cherry planning to harm Jonas, but it turned out the other way.”

That chilled me. My family respected both men. “Are you still using Jonas’s animals to mow in your orchard?”

Daniel Dahlgren and Michael Prevost had used Jonas’s goat herd and flock of sheep for a few years to eat or “vacuum” dead leaves and weeds. The goats were turned into the Dahlgrens’ orchard, but not the vineyard because they would eat the grapevines in addition to anything else except for the wire fencing. The sheep ignored the grapevines, though, and thus were used in the vineyard to eat the ground cover there. Eating the fallen leaves prevented molds from forming and growing.

Kjersta said, “Daniel is suggesting it’d be best if we cut ties with Jonas entirely. Especially now.”

The sweet smells inside my little barn took on a sour note. I remembered that Sam had told me Kjersta had said Fontana had something to do with the murder.

After swallowing hard to drum up courage, I said, “Fontana says you blamed her for Cherry’s death.”

Kjersta didn’t even blink. “She had some role in the death, if you ask me. Don’t you agree that she loved having two men fight over her?”

My friend returned to her own gardening chores with her husband while I finished the afternoon working at my roadside market wondering what had really happened in that church basement. Was there a lovers’ triangle? Could Fontana and Jonas be harboring a horrible secret?

Thankfully, a steady stream of customers saved me from my maudlin thoughts.

As I was heading to my truck at six o’clock, the sheriff’s squad car pulled into the grassy flat next to the empty wagon where pumpkins had sat earlier. Jordy got out, shutting the door with a solid
ker-thunk
.

I sighed. “Hello, Jordy.”

He touched the brim of his hat in salutation, then removed his sunglasses. The sun was lower now and behind his broad shoulders. “Just talked with your friend.”

“Which one? I have more than one.”

“The one without a memory.”

“John Schultz? How is he?”

“Something called transient global amnesia. Can’t remember where he’s been in the last day. Seems mighty convenient.” He took a deep breath, expanding his already-broad chest. “And connected to you.”

My goose bumps were back. “Why do you say that?”

“He can’t remember where he’s been. He can’t remember where his car is. And I can’t seem to find Tristan Hardy’s car. Two cars are missing, a man is dead, and you found the body. Want to tell me the truth now?”

I fingered the keys in my right hand. “You forgot the knife. How is all that connected to the Buck knife in the choir loft and the blood on the music sheets? And the fire? What burned anyway?”

“I can’t tell you. I’d like to hear the perpetrator tell me.”

“Sorry, Jordy, but you’re messing with me. I found the body and the knife. I’ll give you that much, but you know I didn’t kill anybody. Or set a fire. In the organ bench.” I was guessing, but it worked.

A hiss escaped across his lips. “Are you holding back information about your friends?”

My blood pressure was surging. “Do I need a lawyer?”

“Wouldn’t hurt. Probably wouldn’t hurt for whomever you’re protecting, too. You willing to come down to my office tomorrow for a chat?”

“No, Sheriff Tollefson, sir. Because I don’t know anything.”

After a long moment in which he glared at me, he got in his car, then drove away.

All of a sudden the breeze sweeping across the treetops
and farmland from the Lake Michigan bay felt frosty. I ran for the barn to grab my sweatshirt I had left there, sucking the air to catch my breath. I couldn’t let my mother be questioned by Jordy. His ability to thrust a laser stare through a person would wilt Florine. She would confess without even realizing it, then end up vacuuming a jail cell.

Chapter 10

B
y seven that Sunday night, I was alone with Lucky Harbor in my cabin. The dog had thrown up on my kitchen floor. I wondered what he’d eaten at Mercy Fogg’s house. It appeared to be raw meat loaf, replete with chopped onions, but I could swear there were also colored marshmallows in it, of all things.

I called Dillon. Dillon said, “He’s eaten and regurgitated worse. As long as he’s breathing okay and wagging his tail, I wouldn’t worry about it. Want me to come clean it up?”

The water spaniel had lain down already in a corner of the kitchen next to the refrigerator, his head between his front paws. His contrite eyes followed my every move.

“No, I can handle it. You keep an eye on John.” He’d volunteered to keep John with him at the Blue Heron Inn for the night.

“Pauline’s here.”

“Tell her hi.”

I turned my attention to the vintage cookbooks that filled boxes in my cabin. Like panning for gold, I kept flipping pages for anything about divinity fudge or history related to my family.

A knock on my door startled me.

It was Mercy Fogg, of all people. She had never graced my door in all the months I’d known her. She still wore her bus uniform. I got the feeling she was proud to wear any kind of uniform that took her a notch above her usual
coveralls worn when driving our county’s road-grading equipment or the snowplows in winter. She’d prefer a crown and an ermine robe, I felt sure, with a scepter in one hand.

“Something wrong, Mercy?”

“Why do you assume that something’s wrong?”

“Because you don’t like me much, for starters. Why is that, anyway?” I knew it was jealousy, disappointment, and a general mad-on against most of Fishers’ Harbor, but I loved pimping her anyway. “Why don’t we put all the cards on the table, as we say, and be done with it?”

“Life is more than a game of cards.” She practically shoved me out of the way as she tromped into my small rental cabin.

She sniffed the air, flipping her head about, her blond bouffant curls bouncing. “What is that putrid smell?”

“The dog upchucked whatever it was you had in that pan at your house.”

“My venison meat loaf,” she growled. “And that was the last of my stash, too. Now I have to wait for the deer hunting seasons to start to replenish my larder.”

“So you hunt?”

“Bow and gun. Since a little girl. With my dad.”

“You still hunt with him?”

“He’s . . .” Her voice caught. “He’s in a nursing home. I made the meat loaf for him and his friends there. I was going to bake it after I drove the bus.”

I didn’t feel as tall as usual. We were both looking at Lucky Harbor lying in the kitchen. His tail thumped once.

I said, “You make your meat loaf with marshmallows. I’ve never heard of that.”

“I ran out of eggs to bind it together. I figured they’d do.”

“If it helps, Lucky Harbor loved it going down.”

Mercy gave me a sideways glance. Her eyes were watery. “Thanks, Ava.”

Then she perused my small cabin. “Quaint. These cabins almost belonged to me, you know.”

“Almost. You would have had to buy this property from Lloyd Mueller. It’s the fudge shop you ‘almost’ owned.”

“One piece of real estate begets the next.”

When Mercy was village president, she’d swung a deal several years ago that could have made her the owner of
the bait-and-fudge shop if my grandfather missed paying his taxes for too many years. She had also wanted the village to buy up the cabins on Duck Marsh Street to tear them down and expand the harbor with fancy condos and shops. She was all for Lloyd Mueller selling out to a Milwaukee tour and travel company to plow us asunder. That was the same company that had fired John Schultz. All of Mercy’s fancy plans, however misplaced, were nixed when John threatened the corporate vultures with a hefty lawsuit over age discrimination.

Everything turned out well for Grandpa and me because Lloyd had left a will that put Cody Fjelstad in charge of Lloyd’s estate. Cody could take over when he turned twenty-five. He had just turned nineteen, which rankled Mercy because another nineteen-year-old, Erik Gustafson, had ended up as mayor. Mercy was turning sixty soon, but she was increasingly hemmed in by youngsters. Based on my own angst about turning thirty-two I guessed the dreaded feeling of getting older was pressuring her, too. Despite our differences, I understood Mercy sometimes.

Mercy was inspecting the living room area’s stone fireplace. Then she picked up the cookbooks on the couch and sat down. The springs popped.