Five-Alarm Fudge (17 page)

“Sorry, Marc, I’m not writing at the moment. I operate a fudge shop north of here and a roadside market south of here near Brussels.” With a forced smile, I added, “I told you about the fudge shop last spring.”

Marc adjusted his glasses. “I don’t understand what you could possibly write about a fudge shop, but I admire you for the research. It’ll play well in interviews.”

“Marc, you’re not listening. I’m not writing anything about a fudge shop.”

“That’s good, because scripts, books, plays—anything that pays—about a fudge shop won’t sell, babe. So this fudge shop thing is temporary between gigs?” He winked.

This was the same old Marc, kidding with me, but underneath it all he liked to nudge me. I said, “Did the sheriff ask you about Saturday night?”

“You bet, babe. Great questions, too. You should write a script about this.”

“What were the questions?”

“Why did I go to the church? Did I see some guy named Tristan Hardy? Why was I there so late? Late? I just get started after midnight back in L.A.”

By now Pauline and John were sitting nearby on chairs, oblivious of us. I led Marc to the other side of the room, where we sat under portraits of officers.

I asked, “So, why did you go to the church?”

“To get a look at it by night when nobody was around. You know how it is in production. We do a lot of our indoor filming at night. I wanted to see what the setup would be for the prince’s visit. Figured we’d get a head start on storyboarding.”

Storyboarding was essentially creating a comic-strip version on paper or computer of a movie or TV show before it was committed to filming.

I asked, “Did you see who hit John in the back of the head?”

“No. It was dark in there and the light switch didn’t work. I brought out my penlight. As soon as I clicked it on, John got hit and I heard somebody running. I half dragged, half walked John out of there. My college days came back to me. Buddies and I got bounced out of L.A. clubs at four in the morning now and then.”

Marc was slim compared to pudgy John, and Marc was in excellent shape.

“Did you tell the sheriff about the light switch not working?”

“Of course. Hey, hon, are you a detective? We could package a Belgian detective as a series.”

“That might have been done. Poirot. And I’m not a detective. I’m a fudge confectioner. You don’t listen, Marc. I care because these are my friends who are involved. And my family. Evidently, the knife they found in the organ bench allegedly belongs to my father.”

Marc leaned into my personal space. “Do you know who did it?”

“No.”

“Why not? You used to be pretty good in the writers’ staff room at
The Topsy-Turvy Girls
show.”

That confused me. I sat back. “No, I wasn’t. If you recall, they usually ignored my ideas. I fetched their food. That’s how I started making fudge.”

“Yeah. I did like that batch of pink perfection my assistant ordered recently online. Served it at a party.”

“You did?” I was feeling better about Marc instantly.

“Everybody swooned over your fudge.”

“Thank you.”

“You always were talented, had darn good ideas. Maybe we should create something like a staff room here and you could brainstorm the solution to this murder case. We’ll film it all, of course.”

I smiled knowingly. Marc’s agenda to make money off my family and friends didn’t interest me. I left Marc to go find Jordy.

When I found out that Jordy was busy still, I corralled Pauline in the bathroom. I told her we had to go over to the church. John could ride home with Marc Hayward.

Pauline gave me her teacher look, tossing her hair off her shoulders and looking down her nose at me. “I’m going with John.”

“No. He’s fine with Marc. They’ll yuk it up with talk about filming the prince. You and I are going to the church in Namur.”

“You heard it had more yellow tape around it, didn’t you?”

She knew I was drawn to yellow police tape. It called to me with subliminal language that dared me to break through it. “There’s something I don’t get about the church. Tristan’s body was found in the basement, but somebody was in the nave or choir loft when John and Marc came inside. And yet the light switch didn’t work, which meant somebody had shut down the circuit. The blood on the music appears to be from John, but the knife is my father’s and that was apparently stolen. I don’t know about you, but I think there was a heck of a lot of people involved with this.”

“You think it was more than one person responsible for killing Cherry?”

“My manager said something that sparked the idea. Plots for TV shows usually take input from several people. Why not a murder plot?”

Pauline shivered. “So you think Kjersta and Daniel are guilty? Add Fontana and you’ve got three people involved.”

“The sheriff wouldn’t arrest Kjersta and Daniel without good cause. He likely has more on them than just those perfume smells I heard about.”

“So, what brilliant plan do you have that I will need to refuse to have anything to do with?”

“We need to talk again with the individuals whose names keep popping up, including Michael Prevost, Jonas Coppens, and Fontana Dahlgren, as well as Professor Wesley Weaver and his teaching assistants.”

Pauline finished washing and drying her hands in the restroom. “Your folks know Weaver and those teaching assistants. Do you really think . . . ?”

“Not Weaver or Nick or Will. They and Cherry traveled around together, and Will and Nick were working on the research project with Cherry. But I wonder about other colleagues. Jealousy among colleagues is one of the oldest motives for murder, Pauline.”

We walked out of the restroom at the Justice Center, then told the guys a lie about stopping by Ava’s Autumn Harvest before heading back to Fishers’ Harbor. They took off north in John’s car, and Pauline drove south of Sturgeon Bay, heading to Namur.

*   *   *

Pauline drove like a schoolteacher—lawfully.

I said, “Can’t you step on it a little?”

“There’s a squad car following us.”

I turned in the passenger seat to look behind us. “It’s Maria again.”

“So now what do I do? We can’t drive to the church. She won’t let us break in.”

“Keep driving. I’ll think of something. We have to get into that church.”

After we’d turned off Highway 42 onto County Road C,
we stopped at Ava’s Autumn Harvest to see how my mother was doing. The deputy pulled her car to the side of the road, which my mother noticed right away. She looked up from rearranging pumpkins on the flatbed wagon.

“We’re under surveillance, aren’t we?” my mother asked, panic scoring her tanned face. Her long, dark hair was frizzed from the humidity.

“Mom, the deputy is only protecting us.”

“Do you think they’re working on any theories involving me? They’re wondering about that knife.”

“Mom, they don’t know anything. They think I was there, not you. And he wasn’t stabbed with the knife. He was hit on the head or he hit the wall.”

“But I was . . . there. Honey, I’m going through menopause. What if I forgot something strange that I did in a panic?” She restacked a pumpkin into a new position. “I need to sweep.”

Mom hurried back inside the barn. My heart went out to her, recharging my vow to protect her and figure out what had happened in that church.

It was around four thirty, so Pauline and I pitched in to close the market. I brought in the few pumpkins that hadn’t sold. My fudge had sold out, as had the Dahlgrens’ potatoes and cabbage heads.

Their large garden had plenty of bounty in it, but we’d never keep up with picking everything. I hoofed it over to the two acres of garden. Tomato plants were loaded with red fruit hanging down onto straw mulch.

Pauline joined me. “Fontana never did anything like this when she was married to Daniel. All she did for work was her nails.”

Her words made me think about the act of murder. “It takes a lot of work to kill somebody. As much as I’d like to blame her for Cherry’s death, I don’t see her busting a nail over such a thing.”

“Though if there were a crowd in the church that night, she could still be involved. She was a cheerleader and pretty strong. Remember the flips she used to do? And the way she could walk across the gym on her hands?”

“True.” I turned around to the
ker-thunk, ker-thunk
of a
baling machine punching out bales of third-crop hay not far away, including across the road in my family’s field. Hired help was driving the tractor.

I sagged from the thought of the dozens of workers who might have stolen a knife from my dad, then entered that church and killed Cherry. Yet I knew Jordy was smart. He was looking for perpetrators with a strong motive. He had likely questioned a lot of workers already. I wondered whether any temporary farm help were on the suspect list. My father hired such strangers all the time. A chill fizzed like frost across the fine hairs on my arms.

I did an about-face and then marched for the squad car out on the road.

Pauline ran to catch up. “Now what are you doing?”

“Asking Maria who they’ve questioned.”

But Maria wouldn’t talk about the case. I didn’t even have any fudge left to bribe her. So I slammed myself in behind the wheel of Pauline’s car and then we headed down the road.

“Slow down!” Pauline yelled, buckling up.

“Maria’s following us again.”

“I don’t care. This car needs TLC.”

“Tender loving care? It’s not human.”

“It has over a hundred thousand miles. It needs a rest after we were speeding earlier.”

“It’s a car, Pauline, a machine. Machines don’t need rests. You need a new car anyway. This thing is boring.”

In a last-minute decision, I yanked the wheel into a sharp right turn into Jonas Coppens’s driveway. To my dismay, Pauline’s small sedan slid on the gravel, then fishtailed into a doughnut spin.

Chapter 14

T
he car landed in the stubble of a chopped cornfield a few yards off Highway C on Jonas’s land. We were facing the highway, staring at Maria’s squad car hood. She’d driven in with us. We got out of our vehicles.

Maria waved dust away from her face, then removed her aviator sunglasses. “What the hell were you trying to prove?”

Pauline echoed, “Yeah, what the heck?” She slapped at her black slacks and red blouse.

I said to Pauline, “You need new tires. Those have no tread left.”

Maria peered up at me with brown eyes evoking the ferocity of a bear. “The last time you did this sort of thing, you rolled your truck.”

“I’m sorry. Really. I won’t do it again. But I am on private land, Deputy.”

Maria put on her aviator sunglasses in clear disgust. Then she got in her car and drove it onto the road, heading toward Ava’s Autumn Harvest. She was obviously keeping an eye on me from a distance, but at least she wasn’t at my elbows.

“I turned in here to get rid of her. My plan worked.”

Pauline choked on the dust still whirling in the wind. “You had no plan. You were driving like an idiot. If you wrecked anything on my car, you’re going to pay for it.”

“Nothing is wrecked. But you need new tires.” I wanted
to tell her that her gray sedan was a dusty, forlorn heap of metal.

Jonas came roaring down the driveway on a tractor. He pulled to a stop and shut off his motor. “Are you all right? Need a tow?”

He alighted from the tractor and the first thing he did was head to Pauline’s car to inspect the tires. Then he peered at me. “No flats. You didn’t rip anything on the undercarriage?”

I said, “The car’s undercarriage is fine.”

Pauline huffed. “We’ll see.”

Jonas said, “Why don’t you start it up and drive it back onto the lane and we’ll see if it’s okay?”

Pauline pushed around me to get to the driver’s seat. While I stood next to Jonas, she started the car, then drove the gray car slowly from the cornfield back onto the gravel lane. A rattle that sounded like
clunkety-clunk-clink, clunkety-clunk-clink
made me wince.

After she got out of the car, Pauline whipped her hair back, firing at me, “You wrecked my car, Ava Mathilde Oosterling.”

I held up my hands because she looked as though she wanted to wrestle me to the ground for a pounding. Her face was redder than a tomato. I felt awful. “I’ll get it fixed. There are probably rocks in your muffler.”

“My muffler is new. It doesn’t have holes in it.”

“You bought a new muffler for this old thing?”

“I love this car. You didn’t throw away your grandma, did you, when she broke her leg?”

Jonas laughed. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Do you want to come up to the house for a beer?”

Pauline said, “No, thanks.”

I said, “Sure. We need to talk about helping the Dahlgrens with their harvesting.”

Jonas flinched. His gaze flitted toward the Dahlgren house to our south and across the fence.

I said, “You don’t really believe they killed Tristan Hardy?”

“With the shovel covered with Tristan’s blood? What else am I supposed to believe?”

“What shovel?”

“The garden shovel. I was working on the fence near their place early this morning after Kjersta was arrested when the sheriff came back with some help, some expert on blood and evidence of that sort. They rousted Daniel from the house. I guess to get keys. They entered your market, then the Dahlgrens’ garden shed, and then the sheriff came out with a shovel. I heard Daniel yelling something like ‘that’s not his blood.’ They obviously didn’t believe him. They hauled him off in handcuffs.”

A chilly breeze rattled around my ribs. “So that’s what they have on him. They think Daniel used a shovel to kill Tristan.”

Pauline said, “There’s not much use for us to go over to the church now.”

But I thought otherwise. We got in Pauline’s car, with her driving, and went
clunkety-clunk
back onto Highway C. I asked Pauline to turn right toward Brussels and Namur.

Pauline grumbled, “I hope this means we’re stopping at the station so a mechanic can look at my car while you pay the bill.”

I ignored her. “Jordy has a shovel as evidence, and even if it’s got blood on it that belongs to Tristan, why would Daniel and Kjersta be dumb enough not to wash it off by now? Something’s not jibing with this.”