Five-Alarm Fudge (36 page)

Jordy’s theory shot my theory to heck. I was thinking that maybe Professor Weaver or somebody in his department had committed the murder.

But poor people? That was most of us, even Mike Prevost, Jonas Coppens, and the Dahlgrens. We were all relatively poor in Door County. I asked, “What about rich people who want to stay rich? What about jealousy? What about revenge or glory?” I was quoting Dotty now. “Those are good motives for murder.”

Jordy opened his car door and stood with his arms resting over the top of it. “So, who’s on your short list?”

“Did you get a chance to talk with the rest of Cherry’s colleagues? Professor Weaver said the whole department was in serious conflict with Cherry.”

“I’ve got interviews lined up for next week.”

Next week. “You might also talk with Mike Prevost and Jonas Coppens about their theories. I get this feeling they’re keeping mum about something significant that could break this wide open.”

After he drove away, I went to find Pauline. She was closing the gate in the barnyard after John had shagged in a couple of cows.

“Pauline, we have an important errand to run.”

We headed toward my truck, wending our way through
smoldering hay, hoses, and around a couple of deputy cars still sitting near our barn.

Pauline said, “I don’t like that look on your face. You’re starting to look like Lucky Harbor. Brown hair, nose to the ground always sniffing for clues.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, P.M.”

“Should I toss you some fudge, A.M.?”

Lucky Harbor woofed at the word “fudge.” I dug in my pocket for the crackers, and to please Pauline I tossed one in the air and caught it in my mouth.

Pauline shook her head as we got into my pickup truck.

Chapter 30

T
he yellow tape was gone at the Namur church. There were no vehicles. It was going on six o’clock, the dinner hour for tourists. I needed to see if I could find more clues.

Maria’s car wasn’t in sight, but I knew she’d be lurking somewhere watching us.

I walked over to the collection of headstones under the tree where Grandma had been working a week ago. There were three ancient stones with the name Coppens on them. I touched the lettering on one, which had weathered to faint, scratchy ripples. Looking beyond to the actual graveyard behind the church, I began to feel certain I knew what had gone on and how Cherry got himself killed.

Pauline said, “You think Jonas murdered him?”

“No. But his history here gives us clues, Pauline. The Coppens family has been here a long time in Door County and they command respect. This murder is about respect.”

I told Pauline my theory of who it might be.

She grabbed a headstone to hang on. “We can’t tell anybody that. That’s, uh, too preposterous, too big. You’ll be in the national news. You better be right.”

I called my grandmother. She and my grandfather were driving down from Fishers’ Harbor. “Grandma, do you or Grandpa remember a man buying a lot of Cinderella fudge and other items in the past week?”

She didn’t, and Grandpa said he’d been in and out of his
shop too much to notice. I called Dotty. She recalled men coming in to buy bait and beer.

Cody, however, gave me a clue when I called him. “I saw a guy standing around who looked fat, but like his arms were holding on to things under his jacket. I’m real sorry. Other customers came in, so I didn’t chase him down.”

“That’s okay, Cody.” I asked him about my perfume theory.

He said, “Alcohol burns clear and is the hardest to detect by a fire department’s sensors.”

“What about alcohol in wine?”

“Nope, Miss Oosterling. If there are by-products of making wine that have concentrated alcohol, then that might work. But wine alone wouldn’t start your fires. If so, heartburn would take on a new meaning.”

“Cody, what have you learned in your classes about timing devices?”

“Pretty easy to do. Alarm clocks, some string, and a candle will do it.”

“But undetected? Wouldn’t remnants of the alarm clock be found in Jonas’s shed, for example? Jordy never found anything.”

“Lots of cheap clocks around, Miss Oosterling. A tiny plastic clock would melt and burn to nothing in a big fire. Cheap clocks are everywhere. Everybody has them. In high school, they bought boxes of them because we kids always broke them throwing things around.”

After I got off the phone, I said to Pauline, “Fontana may have unwittingly supplied candles and perfume to the murderer.”

With my grandmother’s key, I unlocked the church door and we slipped inside.

I went up to the choir loft. I opened the piano bench. It had been cleaned.

We looked about the pews in the loft, and around the old organ. There was no blood. If there ever was a mishap here last Saturday night, either the killer or killers had cleaned it up well or Jordy had. I knew my mother hadn’t been back.

Pauline said, “I doubt the investigators cleaned it up, and
the church ladies haven’t had time to get here. They may not even know yet the yellow tape is gone.”

“Very good. So the killer did the cleanup. Or killers.”

“Two people involved?”

“Or several.”

I went to the railing overlooking the nave. Last Saturday Pauline and I had peered down on Cherry holding court with a crowd. This time, I scrutinized the open floor below us where a few pews had been removed to allow for programs. Behind a pew, a seam in the flooring appeared darker than the rest.

“Come on, Pauline.”

I trundled down the narrow choir loft stairs, hurrying into the nave to look at the seam.

Pauline crouched down with me. “You think it’s blood?”

I looked back up to the loft, which was only a few feet from us in the small church. “Cherry’s head could have been banged against that choir loft railing, with blood shooting down this way. If John and Marc came in right after that, the killer or one of them might have raced down here from the loft to beat John and Marc over the head with anything, even hymnals. The person may have slipped in Cherry’s blood and that’s why John and Marc got away.”

“Then the blood was cleaned up, or almost. But what about the lights being out?”

“Maybe they’d taken Cherry to the basement to kill him, but he escaped at first. They cut the lights from the circuit breaker box so Cherry couldn’t see where he was going. He stumbled to the loft staircase, too late to find his way to the front door. He tried to hide in the loft, and that was his big mistake.”

“They? Who helped? Jonas?”

“Somebody who liked being up late at night perhaps. Cruising the bars.”

“I’m spooked out. Let’s get out of here.”

“Yeah.” I was getting shivers, too.

I gave a glance to the way the setting sun was coming in the west windows. We had maybe an hour of light left.

We went to the old schoolhouse and climbed in again
behind the loose window screen. It was clear to me that if Fontana was upstairs in that bedroom on Saturday night or early Sunday morning, she didn’t see anything, just as she said.

“Go and move my truck for me, P.M.”

“Why, A.M.?”

“To see how an engine sounded when it was backing out versus pulling in. Back out onto the road, then pull into the parking lot. Then pull over here to the schoolhouse. Drive right across the lawn.”

My pickup made quite a bit of noise. Engines in trucks tend to be noisier than in most cars.

I got back into my truck with Pauline, with me behind the driver’s seat. I began steering us back onto Highway DK in front of the church. I turned left, toward Brussels.

Pauline asked, “So, what’d you conclude?”

“If a truck had pulled in, Fontana would have noticed. She said she heard cars.”

“But not all cars sound alike. My car has rocks rattling in it.”

“Good point. I suppose we should consider what everybody’s driving these days.” My head rattled through a list of SUVs owned by Jonas, the Dahlgrens, my parents. The university sent people out in SUVs as well. Nick and Will sometimes drove around in an old clunker with a muffler that rattled, but I made a note to call the university vehicle department to ask if Nick and Will had taken out a company car to drive later on Saturday. The migrant workers used a minivan.

Pauline said, “Fontana probably couldn’t discern between Cherry’s car and the killer’s car when she was in that upstairs back bedroom of the schoolhouse. We’ve already thought that Fontana probably had to drive away the killer’s car. The killer hid Cherry’s car. It’s a circular argument, Poirot.”

“Not really, Hastings. Remember when Fontana said she walked home that night? She might be telling the truth. What if the killer took Cherry’s car and dumped it fairly quickly nearby, then walked back here to get in his car? Or rode a bike back?”

“Jonas’s bike? He murdered Cherry?”

“Or somebody borrowed his bike for the night. Jonas leaves it out. The person rode the bike back to Namur to get his or her car, a car hidden behind Saint Mary of the Snows. It was after midnight, and a lot of people were asleep. Then the killer returned the bike that night, maybe driving without lights.”

“Oh my gosh, you’re saying that maybe Fontana’s still alive because she left before that guy returned to the church for his own car?”

“I think so. She doesn’t realize it.”

“Could she be in danger?”

“I think so. It’s why she’s been sucking up to Jonas and staying where there are a lot of people, like the tours and the winery. She’s savvy enough to keep protection around her.”

“But Mike has to be involved, if your theory is correct.”

“He had the chemicals, though he denies knowing anything. But I don’t think he has the energy needed to travel the countryside at night dumping chemicals on land.”

“Where are we going now?”

“To see about a broken fence. I think I know where the blue car might be, and if I find that, we’ll be able to prove who killed Cherry.” I smiled as I looked in my side mirror. “Maria’s car caught up with us.”

“Thank goodness.”

*   *   *

When I pulled into Jonas’s farmstead, he was busy out in the pasture to the north herding in his flock. I waved to him; he waved back. I felt uneasy.

Maria’s car drove on down the road.

I steered through the sloping field and up to the new fencing.

Beyond the fence, brush and trees obscured a ravine. “I suspect the bears have a nice blue Ford Fusion to hibernate in this winter.”

“Certainly the Fusion wouldn’t have been driven through here. That ravine is pretty steep.”

I got out of the truck for a closer look. Grass and brush had been disturbed, but that was likely Mike on a tractor taking out the gate. Did he know if there was a car down in
the ravine behind him in the deep woods? Maybe. If so, his silence gave me a chill.

I said, “The car was probably driven in through the south end, not here. The terrain levels off behind Mike’s buildings.”

“Where our suspects hid the chemicals in an old chest Mike hadn’t looked in for months.”

“Yes. Mike’s been so busy with his grapes going bust that he probably hasn’t noticed a thing about his acres of woodland back here. And thus, Mike played a role in Cherry’s murder.”

“But is he innocent?”

“I’m not absolutely positive about that.”

“Good thing Maria’s cruising with us. She’s going to make this arrest and solve this murder case handily for Jordy. Big raise for her.”

“You got that right. And we’ll be free of this mess.”

I drove with Pauline back up the slope of Jonas’s field, past his house, then down his lane and onto Highway C. When I turned onto Highway 57, Maria showed up in my mirror again, but at a good distance behind us.

*   *   *

At the Prevost Winery, a tasting was going on inside. Mike wouldn’t know we were snooping. The setting sun was beginning to turn the sky tangerine to the west. I grabbed my flashlight from the glove box and the mosquito spray.

I said to Pauline, “Put those in your purse.”

“Maybe we should let Maria do this part.”

“She’ll be right behind us. She doesn’t know the terrain here like we do. Jonas and I used to walk all the deer paths around here as kids. I’ll find the car, and then we’ll come back and get Maria.”

“What about the bears?”

“Good thinking. If only we had some of Fontana’s perfume.” I dug out my pepper spray and handed it to her.

“Why do I have to carry everything?”

“So that I don’t have to.”

She wrinkled up her face. “That’s not an answer.”

I waved my cell phone in the air. “I need both hands to take pictures of the car when we find it. You fend off any bear that charges us.”

“That’s not funny, Ava.”

Behind the stone winery, Mike had cleared about thirty yards of brush where he kept his equipment and mower. Beyond that lay thick forest of cedars, maples, and an understory filled with wild berry vines and ferns. At first, I wondered if I was wrong about the car driving into the thicket. But after wandering the edge of the forest for a bit, I found bent and mashed berry vines where perhaps a vehicle had pushed its way through. The killer had to know this area well, which only cemented my suspicion as to who murdered Cherry.

Dressed in jeans and sweatshirts, we bullied our way through the briars.

Maybe thirty more yards in, the land began to undulate. The forest opened up into pockets filled with ferns. Sumac leaves had turned red for the season, but in the dimming light had begun to look almost black.

We came over a rise, descended, then trudged along the bottom of the ravine. My heart rate was increasing as we saw more signs of disturbance.

We soon discovered a small cave opening not far ahead of us. I retrieved the flashlight from Pauline’s purse, then headed right for the cave, making sure to skirt poison ivy vines lacing the ground.

Pauline stayed back. “There could be a bear in there.”

“Too early to start hibernating.” I flicked on my flashlight. “Whoa. Pauline, come here. Hold the flashlight.”

She sidled up next to me. “Holy cow.”

A cache of chemical containers sat in the cave. With Pauline steadying the flashlight, I snapped photos with my phone. “Same stuff we found in Mike’s freezer.”