Five-Alarm Fudge (21 page)

Dillon was playing hardball. I sighed. “You’re right. We need more time for us, don’t we?”

“But do you need me?”

His question slayed me. “Yes.” My heart rate was
bouncing about like a tadpole struggling to go upstream in a current. “I need you. I need your help, Dillon. I really do. And thank you. I had no idea I was getting so out of hand.”

“I bet Pauline was noticing it.”

I laughed. “Come to think of it, I think you’re right.”

Dillon kissed me on the lips. “What can I do?”

“Find Tristan Hardy’s missing car. It’s a new blue Ford Fusion.”

Dillon laughed so hard I thought that he had rocked the yacht. “Is that all?”

“No. Maybe you could hang out at the local bars more to see what the gossip is?”

“Tough job, but I’ll do my best. What are you going to be up to?”

“Since I’ve met Professor Weaver in the past and know him—”

“You’re going to wheedle words from Weaver?”

“Pauline would be proud of your alliteration. I have to visit Michael Prevost, too, and ask him the real reason he was so happy Cherry died, and then ask why Michael got my grandmother drunk. I doubt, as Mercy told me, that Grandma was drinking heavily because people asked her about Prince Arnaud and Princess Amandine coming.”

“But they could be the simple reason.”

“You’re right.” Working with Dillon was already feeling good. “But my grandma would’ve merely walked away from that conversation. I suspect my grandmother was asking him too many questions about Cherry and he wanted to shut her up, so he kept asking her to taste-test new bottles and somehow fooled her. Maybe he drugged her—”

“There you go again.” Dillon engulfed me in his arms as he planted a more sensual kiss on my lips. “Ava, sweetheart, my Belgian belle, we should try to do something
together
, but not this discussion. Not now. I realize it’s not Wednesday. This is only Monday, but . . .”

Some things inside me had not changed and I hoped they wouldn’t. Like my yearning for him. I purred, “You’re a pirate?”

“If you’re a maiden who needs capturing.”

We hurried belowdecks to the privacy of our stateroom.

Chapter 17

R
efreshed after the best date ever on the yacht, I was at Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers & Belgian Fudge & Beer by five thirty Tuesday morning making fudge.

I vowed to be a new woman. I would simplify my life, relax, and try not to do the sheriff’s job plus a half dozen other things.

My grandfather had taken fishermen out and had returned early, fussing about how cold the air-conditioning was on the
Super Catch I
. He also complained that it was too hot and dry outside. He was complaining a lot lately about insignificant things. The opposite of me, he didn’t have enough to do anymore. It felt awkward being out of sync with Gilpa.

By ten I’d whipped up two batches of Rose Garden Fudge from petals in the roses behind Lloyd’s empty house, plus Cinderella Pink Fudge and Rapunzel Raspberry Rapture Fudge. I tried to think about what my next flavor should be in my signature Fairy Tale line. Goldilocks? Dillon and I had mentioned that tale last night. What flavor would fit Goldilocks and her three bears? I also had many other tales to choose from.

Customers streamed in and out and I enjoyed chatting with them about possible new flavors. Some wanted Snow White. One little girl wanted that to be peppermint.

I couldn’t decide. But I knew I had to create divinity fudge for the prince.

Because of the low humidity, at around noon I began whipping egg whites for a divinity fudge recipe I found in a 1930s cookbook put together by a farm family from the Maplewood area of our county and the Ahnapee Trail. The trail was a favorite for those who hiked, biked, or rode horses. The colors in the autumn there made you feel as if you walked inside a rainbow.

My mother called, yelling over my phone, “There’s a fire!”

I almost dropped my bowl of egg whites. “Where?”

“Outside Harvest.”

She hung up. I called her back, but she didn’t answer.

Cody was stocking my shelves with new pink doll clothing the church ladies had made for us when he got the message about the fire on his phone.

“Miss Oosterling, it’s a grass fire.” He was reading his phone screen. “BUG is arriving already. They’ll knock it down.”

Cody was referring to the Brussels-Union-Gardner Fire Department—known as BUG. Three townships shared the department that relied on volunteers.

“I should go down there,” I said, removing a pink apron with sparkly glass slippers on it.

“It says no buildings were involved, but the fire came up to the back of Ava’s Autumn Harvest.”

“And if my mother hadn’t been there, it might have burned through the wooden doors on either end.” My heart was racing.

“Call your mom again,” Cody said.

His coolness amazed me. This time when I called her, Mom answered. She said a few cedar trees and wooden field posts had been destroyed. Cinders in the air had landed on the wooden shingles of Ava’s Autumn Harvest. Mom had hosed it down before the fire department got there. I was sick thinking about what might have happened if some of the wooden rafters had caught fire and the roof had collapsed. Dillon had spent considerable time repairing that roof and laying a new wooden floor. All of his efforts would have been in cinders, as well as my new business.

My mother was talking in the background to a volunteer
firefighter. She came back on the phone. “Ava, they were asking me if I knew of any reason somebody might want to set a fire here.”

“They think arson?” We were close enough to roadsides that I assumed it had been caused by a cigarette tossed from a vehicle into the dry weeds and grasses.

“I don’t like this,” my mother said, whispering into the phone. I could barely hear her. “This could be somebody warning you to stop asking questions about Cherry’s death. What if they ask me about the body?”

“Mom, slow down.” Hmm. Dillon’s words to me last night were still resonating. Mom was charging mighty fast into the murder case. Just as I’d been doing. “Don’t say anything to anybody. Let the firefighters make their conclusions. They’re not going to find a clue that scientifically proves a relationship between you, I mean me, finding a body and a grass fire.”

When I got off the phone, Cody was staring at me. “Your mother found that body?”

I sank into my steel-toed shoes. “Don’t tell anybody.”

“You got mad at me once for keeping secrets.” He was referring to last May. He’d learned a lot about people who might have been involved with the diamonds in my fudge ingredients, but my lack of trust caused him to run away to Chambers Island out in the bay.

After we sent a few customers on their way with big boxes of fresh fudge, I said to Cody, “You’re right. But you know my mother.”

“Florine likes to clean a lot. What if she has Asperger’s, too?” He was already preparing shiny ribbons for fudge boxes. He enjoyed shiny, sparkly things, which I’d learned could be common with Asperger’s. Cody used this to his advantage; he was part artist.

“I doubt she has Asperger’s, but I don’t think she’d survive a night in a jail cell.”

“It’d be a clean jail cell.”

His hooting laugh made me smile. I helped fold and ready a few fudge boxes. “Will you keep the secret, Cody? It means a lot to me and my mother.”

“Sure, Miss Oosterling. Can I help find the murderer?”

I almost said, “No, thanks, I’ll do it myself,” but instead said, “If I think of a way, I’ll let you know. Thanks for offering.”

Within the half hour, as I was getting ready to leave to drive down to Brussels, my grandpa came stomping in through the back hallway. He was covered in black soot.

“Did you hear, A.M.? Somebody tried to torch you.”

Although in his seventies, he was still a member of the BUG Volunteer Fire Department. In rural areas, we accepted all the volunteers we could get.

I rushed into the kitchen to get a wet rag and came back. “What’re you talking about, Gilpa?”

I handed Gilpa the rag to wipe his hands and face, but he set it aside on his sales counter as he shuffled about in his junk drawer where he kept tools.

“The other volunteers think it was a cigarette, but I saw a spot of scorched earth that looked like somebody tossed a can of gasoline or something. One of those molly drinks.” He meant Molotov cocktail. “It was intentional. Lucky your mother was there to put out the damn thing.”

Tools—screwdrivers, needle-nose pliers, stubby pencils with erasers long gone—flew out of the drawer and onto his counter while more swearwords flew out of his mouth.

Standing the heck out of the way, I said, “You must have broken all speed records to get back here so fast.”

“Yeah, because somebody’s trying to scare you and I’m putting a stop to it.” He held up a knife in a leather sheath. It was his old Buck knife. “Aha! Found it!”

An edgy feeling tromped through my stomach. “What are you doing with that, Gilpa?”

“That darn Sheriff Tollefson showed up.”

“That’s good.”

“No. He said you’d been in the church and had made a mess.”

Before I could explain about Marc tossing the kitchen for some film shoot, Grandpa whipped the knife out, flashing the blade under the overhead light. “I’m going to show this around to people and see who gets scared and who looks guilty. If they look guilty, they usually are.”

“Isn’t the knife a bit of overkill?”

“Somebody left my son’s Buck knife in that church, and then Cherry turns up dead. Now they’re messing with you—my granddaughter. I’m gonna solve this murder case just like that.” He snapped the fingers of one hand. “Then Jordy Tollefson won’t be bothering my family. He’s got you and my son—your daddy—under his thumb. I’ll cut off his thumb if I have to.”

My stomach was doing tricks that would put the Cirque du Soleil trapeze act in Las Vegas to shame. “You can’t go around threatening people with a knife, Gilpa. And what’s brought this on? You’re never like this.”

He stood tall and proud—a skinny man with a sooty face and looking like a raccoon, with the knife held out in front of him. His black-streaked white hair stood out every which way like Einstein’s. “Ava honey, you’ve got to understand I’m defending my family. The word is out that a prince and princess are coming. People might be treating us differently now, for good or bad reasons, including offering too many free drinks and getting Sophie drunk.”

“So this is about Mike Prevost letting Grandma drink too much. You think he started the fire?” I wasn’t tracking on my grandpa’s thought process.

He gulped in a big breath while handily sheathing the knife. “Did you find the recipe while you were in the church?”

“No. Maybe we should talk about that—”

“No time for talking. Time for doing. The recipe is there. I feel it in these old bones. You find the recipe and I’ll defend us.”

With that, he grabbed one of the cardboard beer six-pack carriers we used for the Fisherman’s Catch Tall Tale Fudge flavors for men and filled the six-pack with fudge. He then stomped out the front door, pulling it so hard behind him that the cowbell clanked only once before it dropped off the door. I rushed over to pick it up.

Cody said, “I’ll fix it.”

Grandpa’s SUV roared outside. He left the parking lot.

I called Pauline before I realized she was still in school. I felt lost without her. A peek up at our clock told me Laura was probably nursing her babies for their noon feeding. I
certainly couldn’t call on Grandma to stop Grandpa. Dillon was up the hill hammering away, and he and Grandpa still weren’t buddies.

When Moose sauntered down the docks from the
Super Catch I
, I raced outside. “Moose, my grandfather is getting weird. What’s going on with him?”

“Beats me. He handles the fishing tours with no problem.”

“Never any trouble?”

“No trouble. Nothing goes wrong with my new engines. He doesn’t even sweat on hot days, because my boat has air-conditioning.”

The sudden weight of the world rested on my shoulders. “Do you think he’s bored?”

“Didn’t occur to me. Why?”

“He took a knife and some fudge just now and I think he’s going to attack Mike Prevost down at his winery.”

“Want me to head on down there?”

“No, you’ve got customers.” Fishermen were collecting near the
Super Catch I
at the other end of the dock.

After Moose went into the shop, I called Dillon. “I need your help.”

Within two minutes, Lucky Harbor, Dillon, and I converged at my yellow truck parked in front of my cabin on Duck Marsh Street.

The brown water spaniel woofed as I broke speed limits passing cars with tourists gawking at the gorgeous lake scenery and art shops.

My hands crimped around the steering wheel.

Dillon said, “Your grandfather wouldn’t use the knife, would he?”

“Grandpa is a tad feisty when it comes to defending Grandma and his family. And he needs something to do.”

“Maybe this fire is only some kid thinking he’s messing with the family that has royalty in it. Kids do that sort of thing. They get jealous.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Not everybody appreciates royalty. Some people think they suck from the public trough and sit around eating bonbons.”

“Right there’s the trouble. They should be eating fudge.”

Lucky Harbor pushed his nose in the back of my neck and licked me. I couldn’t take my hands off the wheel, so he’d have to wait to get his “fudge.”

Dillon reached over to tug at my ponytail in a gesture that never failed to send a tickle down my middle. “Maybe it’s not you that somebody wants to scare. It could be the Dahlgrens.”

“Because they’re murder suspects?”

“Sure. Somebody’s upset over Cherry’s death.”

I thought about Fontana. She had some kind of affection for the man. But would she bother setting a fire? That seemed improbable. A chill did a sidewinder track up the back of my neck, because I wondered if my mother was right. Dillon had said last night I’d been way too active asking questions in the past two days. Could it be true that somebody didn’t like me doing that? Had the person started this fire to keep me preoccupied? It was conjecture, but I couldn’t help myself.