Five-Alarm Fudge (26 page)

“I’ll go lighter on the sugar so it doesn’t weigh down the whites. We can work on beating it enough to work the air amid the sugar crystals.”

We let the sugar and water boil longer than called for in the recipe, though I wanted to be careful I didn’t turn the sugar brown with caramelizing.

Soon, my thermometer showed we’d reached a light crack stage at two hundred sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit. Grandma used an electric beater to create a fluffy cloud of the egg whites. I drizzled the hot sugar over the whites, with Grandma beating nonstop. Then I added the almonds, along with a touch of lemon extract.

We poured the frothy white mixture into a buttered pan.

Then we stared at it.

“It looks a little soupy to me,” I said. “I’m not sure this is going to set up. Corn syrup has a different scientific principle in its makeup. We’re missing that element.”

Grandma was wiping her hands on a towel, mostly to think. “Do you have any marshmallows?”

The word made me think of Mercy Fogg’s evil meat loaf that Dillon’s dog had scarfed up, to an unpleasant ending.

Grandma said, “Didn’t you tell me that marshmallows were invented back in Sister Adele’s time?”

“Maybe even in the time of the ancient Egyptians with those marsh plants.”

“Well, then, this is authentic with marshmallows. Let’s pretend the immigrants from Belgium got them from France and brought some on the boat. Maybe they roasted them over fires on deck.”

She was so earnest that I laughed heartily. “I like your style, Grandma.”

We melted marshmallows enough to fluff them up and
add them to the mix in a bowl. We poured the mixture again into the pan.

“Looks stiffer,” Grandma said. “Give it time.”

It looked like a mess to me. “It’ll be cool by morning. We can make frosting out of it if it doesn’t set up.”

“I’ll whip up cinnamon rolls in the morning. We’ll use it on them. Now let’s go home. I need to get to bed early. Got a big to-do tomorrow.”

“Oh? What’s that, Grandma?”

“For some gol-darn reason your boyfriend’s mother wants to treat all the Namur church workers to a breakfast at Al Johnson’s.”

She was referring to Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant in Sister Bay. It was near Laura’s bakery and cooking school, the Luscious Ladle. The food at the restaurant was divine, including Swedish pancakes topped with Swedish lingonberries, and with butter from my parents’ cows, plus Al’s homemade syrups. The green grass roof sported a couple of grazing goats, too, always a draw for tourists and their kids.

“That sounds like a wonderful thing, Grandma.” I wanted to work up to asking her about going to Chicago and finding ghosts. “You could use a minivacation. You’ve been working hard lately.”

We began cleaning up the kitchen.

“I wouldn’t be going, but your mother said she’d be along. I figure she can protect me from Cathy Rivers. She’s acting like your mother-in-law already and I feel that’s premature. Sam thinks so, too.” Grandma slapped a cupboard door extra hard.

She still hadn’t forgiven Dillon for his role in my jilting Sam Peterson eight years ago.

I asked, “What does Sam say?”

“He hasn’t said anything. I can see the words in his eyes.”

“Does he have a PowerPoint presentation about me in his eyes?”

“Bah.” She waved me off with a hand as she tidied my kitchen counter.

I was sloshing the beaters in soapy water. “You worked hard on the churchyard. Why not accept this with grace and enjoy the free food?”

“Instead of partying, we should be cleaning the inside of that church. When is that sheriff ever going to take down that tape?”

“That’s up to him.” I took a deep breath and dove off a cliff. “Grandma, do we have any relatives in Chicago?”

“If we do, I don’t know about them.”

She slammed another cupboard door. I’d have to take a screwdriver to all my hinges tomorrow.

She gave me one of her long Belgian hugs. “Good night, Ava honey.”

She left via the back door. Through the screen, I watched her go. She walked with a slight limp into the dark night. Her image merged into the brackish shadows as she passed under the maple trees by my cabin. Then her silhouette picked up the light coming from outside her house across Duck Marsh Street. Once I could see that she was safely inside her door, I turned back to finish cleaning up.

I hadn’t found out anything, but I had high hopes of her eventually confessing this secret about the ghost in her family to me. It might take making several batches of fudge together, but that was something I could easily commit to.

I didn’t have high hopes for the divinity fudge. Somehow it looked uncomfortable in its pan. The marshmallows were likely mocking me after I’d dissed them.

After locking up, I walked across my lawn, enjoying the peace of Fishers’ Harbor at night. A wet Lucky Harbor caught up to me, poking his nose into my dangling fingers to check for treats.

“Want some fudge?” I asked, already getting the fish-shaped crackers from a pocket. I tossed them ahead of me in the grass.

Crunching sounds followed.

Once inside my cabin, I turned on the light, and within a second Lucky Harbor was chasing Titus, the mouse that had adopted me. “No!” I yelled. “Sit!”

The gray-brown field mouse galloped fast toward the couch. But Lucky Harbor was bigger with longer legs and leaped in front of the mouse. It was a standoff. I knew who would win. One slap by the dog with his big paw and Titus would be in the hereafter.

“Lucky Harbor, sit or you get no fudge.”

The curly brown hunting dog plopped his butt down about a yard short of the back of the couch. Titus sat frozen peering up at the spaniel.

Realizing I was forming a barrier for Titus’s retreat, I walked around from the back of the mouse to grab the dog. As I did, Titus did an about-face and scurried to the kitchen, disappearing through the wedge in the uneven cupboard door under the sink.

I sighed in relief.

When I called Dillon about his dog, he asked me to keep him for the night, since he and Piers were playing pool and Piers was up five dollars over Dillon.

That unsettled me. Gambling had gotten Dillon into trouble years ago. “Don’t both of you have to work tomorrow? At the Blue Heron Inn?”

“Don’t worry. Piers said he’d help. And Al Kvalheim is available.”

Al had been around forever and was expert at the sewer pipes under our streets but not much else, as far as I knew. I was feeling growly. “I was arrested today.”

“That’s nice, Ava. Guess where Piers is going to put his muffin shop?”

I stared at my phone. Dillon wasn’t listening to me. Noise in the background indicated the guys wanted him back to the pool table. “In the bookstore?”

“Nope. But I heard Jane Goodland is coming again tomorrow.”

I heard a bunch of hoots at the mention of the woman’s name. Could it be that she was the exotic dancer I’d seen on the Internet? “This doesn’t seem right to see our bookstore become . . .” A stripper’s place? That’d be one way for an independent bookstore to increase business. “Where’s Piers putting down his stakes?”

“In the old mansion my mother’s fixing up for the spa.”

The faded yellow, rundown mansion was where Grandpa and Cody had almost met their maker last May.

Dillon rattled on. “She plans a nail spa, a massage spa, and a muffin spa on the first floor. I’ll be helping Piers with
the carpentry for his front counter. We haven’t come up with a name yet.”

We?
Dillon sounded way more excited about this than the Blue Heron Inn. Jealousy acted like a torque wrench twisting me. Was I competing for Dillon’s attention now with his mother? And with Piers? With gambling? Having a relationship with Dillon again was taking more emotional strength and work than I had expected.

We said good night as he got pulled back to the pool game.

Within minutes, I climbed into bed, my head spinning about fires, relationships, ghosts, the empty spot at our dock, and Grandpa’s warning not to be alone at Ava’s Autumn Harvest anymore. I felt saddened by it all, and oh so lonely. I had nobody to talk to about it all.

Lucky Harbor must have sensed the ache in my heart. He hopped onto the bed, then crept gently across the covers to come to me and sniff my face. He slurped my cheek, then went to the end of the bed, twirled in several circles near my feet, finally plunking down with a throaty dog groan.

Chapter 22

A
loud rapping at my door woke me at seven on Thursday morning. I’d overslept by two hours. I panicked. I never overslept. The foggy gray autumn morning outside my bedroom window looked as sleepy as I was.

Pulling on a sweatshirt against the chill in the cabin, I headed to the door. Lucky Harbor padded behind me.

Before opening the front door, I peeked out the window next to it. A limousine longer than my cabin was wide was parked between my yellow truck on this side of the street and the other side of Duck Marsh Street in front of my grandparents’ cabin. The limo’s front end was pointed toward the marsh end of the street.

I opened the door to Mercy Fogg standing there in a sharp black uniform with a white shirt and tie. Her curly blond mop poked out from under a billed black cap.

Mercy said, “You’re not dressed yet.”

“Was I supposed to be dressed for something?”

With a thumb, she pointed behind her. “Aren’t you going to breakfast with your mother and grandmother?”

I’d forgotten about the breakfast. “No, I wasn’t invited. I believe it was for the church ladies that regularly take care of the Namur church.”

“So you don’t go to that church? What church do you go to?”

“Mercy, why do you need to know?”

“So I can avoid it.” She laughed.

I was still half-asleep and couldn’t throw a punch. She was safe. “Thanks for asking, but I’m not going with. I have to go to the fudge shop.”

“No, you’re not. I need you to move your truck.”

“Why?”

“I can’t turn around in this narrow street, and when I started backing up with the ladies, my back bumper scraped a tiny part of your truck. But it’s tiny.”

I woke up. “You scratched my truck? Are there dents?”

“Not yet, but there will be if you don’t move your truck.”

After grabbing my keys, I hurried out to pull my truck up onto my lawn. I had no driveway or garage. The limo was filled with chattering ladies. My mother was in back jabbering loudly about the fire at the Coppens place, the goats, and the fire at my roadside market.

Cathy Rivers poked her head out of a back window and winked at me. “We’re having so much fun already, dear. Talk with you later.”

She waved as Mercy backed up the long black limousine until it edged into the end of Main Street.

The front fender on the driver’s side of my yellow truck had a strip of black paint about a foot long above the wheel well. I’d have to take it to the body shop and incur a bill that Mercy wouldn’t pay.

Eager to see how the divinity fudge turned out, I changed into a pink, long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans, and heavy work shoes. I tossed on a zippered hoodie sweatshirt and headed to the shop. Lucky Harbor followed me until I told him to go to Dillon and pointed back toward the cliff where the Blue Heron Inn nestled above us. The dog took off in a furry brown streak.

I entered the fudge shop’s galley kitchen, shedding my sweatshirt and pushing up my sleeves, ready for cutting fudge. It was gone.

I rushed to the front of the shop. No divinity fudge. But Grandpa was there. Had he sold my fudge?

My grandpa was busy with several fishermen, so to kill time I threw dry ingredients for a new batch of Belgian chocolate fudge into a copper kettle.

After the fishermen left, Grandpa began whistling. This
seemed odd; he usually talked or was swearing and grumbling about something.

“Gilpa, I had white fudge in the kitchen. Do you know what happened to it?”

He came over to me with a piece of paper, flapping it in front of my face. “See this?”

It was for a new Savage Bros. stove and kettles. “What’s this about, Gilpa?”

“Your equipment arrived for your new kitchen in the Blue Heron Inn.”

“What equipment? I thought I had everything.”

“You ordered used equipment. But this is new.”

I ripped the paper out of his hands. Indeed, it was a delivery slip for new equipment signed with today’s date in September by my grandfather.

“Gilpa, I thought we agreed to make do with used equipment?”

“I’m the only used equipment you have to deal with.” He was grinning. He liked mischief.

“But we can’t afford this.”

“I have it figured out.”

I couldn’t resist the twinkles in his eyes. That’s the definition of love. “Just as long as you didn’t rob a bank,” I said. I hugged him and gave him a big kiss on both cheeks. He still smelled vaguely of smoke from last night.

Heading over to feed his minnows, he said, “Why don’t you get on up there and check out that stove? I sent the fella up there to the inn in his big truck. Can’t believe you didn’t hear him hauling ass in first gear up that steep hill.”

“I was busy with Mercy. You saw her in the limo?”

“Taking your grandmother to that breakfast thing. Exactly what she needs.”

He didn’t know it was a plot by Cathy Rivers and me to soften up my grandmother. After tossing a towel over the top of my copper kettle to protect the sugar and chocolate pellets, I left.

I ran up the steep hill and was panting by the time I charged through the grand entrance door of the Blue Heron Inn.

The foyer and welcome hall sparkled, which shocked me.
There wasn’t a speck of sawdust anywhere. The chandelier above me threw rainbow prisms into the air. The stairwell’s powder blue carpeting had been vacuumed. The wood floors had been buffed. On a nearby accent table, the cup with AVD on it that had started all our troubles with Grandma but that had given birth to the upcoming visit by the royals sat in an honored spot under a glass dome.

I intended to head straight through the dining room for the kitchen but was stopped by a wondrous sight. On the table—covered with a white Belgian lace tablecloth that belonged to my mother—sat the twelve antique cups and saucers with their pink roses that my mother had been keeping at her house. The precious collection we’d been bequeathed by Grandpa’s friend Lloyd Mueller looked as if it’d finally come home.