First-Degree Fudge: A Fudge Shop Mystery Read online

  He nodded to the table with the rest of the pieces. “They’ll need to come with me, too.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  Erik Gustafson said, “You think there’s poison in the fudge?”

  “Poison?” shrieked the woman who was half of the honeymoon couple who’d peeked out at us upstairs. “Oh my God. Get me out of here. We should never have come to this backwoods place.”

  Jeremy Stone pushed forward to snap pictures of the fudge with one hand, his other hand stuffing his recorder in our faces. He was my height, had dark brown hair, like most of the populace, but he had a crooked nose that looked like it’d been broken a couple of times. I was tempted to give it a punch, too.

  When I moved toward the table to box up the fudge, the sheriff threw an arm down in front of me. “Not you,” he said.

  The marrow inside my bones went liquid with the realization that Jordy considered me a serious suspect. “You can’t really think that my fudge is a murder weapon?”

  Isabelle handed me the unicorn to hold while she boxed up the rest of my pink cellophane–covered treats. I trembled, afraid I’d drop the precious glass. My luck had run out today.

  Jordy announced in a loud voice, “All of you should stay available until I’ve had a chance to talk with each you.”

  A great howl went up, but the locals cleared out fast, leaving me alone with Isabelle, Jeremy Stone, and the honeymooners from New York. They introduced themselves reluctantly to the sheriff as Hannah and Will Reed. They were in their early twenties, both with dark hair chopped into the latest oddball hairstyles I’d seen in magazines at the store. They wore expensive-looking, city-chic black attire mostly; Hannah shivered under a red shawl draped just so around her shoulders.

  “We’re not under arrest, are we?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am,” Jordy said. “But if you leave town now, I might have to consider issuing a warrant for your arrest. Are you in a hurry to leave?”

  Will said, “That’s bullshit. Come on, Hannah.”

  They fled back up the stairs. I almost felt sorry for Jordy. Almost. He said to me, “You’re coming with me.”

  “I’m under arrest? For real? Officially?”

  “No,” he said, “I need somebody to help carry the fudge to the car.” He grinned, but I didn’t find his little joke funny. He added, “I’d rather take your statement in private at the office.”

  Isabelle relieved me of her precious Steuben statue.

  Feeling battered and scared, I went with Sheriff Tollefson for a ride down to Sturgeon Bay. We passed fields being plowed and planted even on a Sunday, Holstein cows grazing in grass pastures, sturdy redbrick houses built by Belgians back in the 1870s, and cherry orchards flaring with pink buds. Everything appeared innocent and normal. I still didn’t see how poor Rainetta could’ve choked on or been poisoned by my fudge. I was sure they’d discover she’d died of a sudden, massive heart attack after all that pressure on her for money for playground slides, stoplights, and storm sewers.

  A flash came to me then. She’d been arguing with Sam. He’d run upstairs, and then poof, he’d disappeared. Isabelle had been the only one to come out of the restroom. But Sam couldn’t have done in Rainetta; I couldn’t believe a social worker would do such a thing. Maybe he thought he caused the heart attack and hid because of his shock.

  Shock was what slammed through me once I got to the sheriff’s department in Sturgeon Bay and was told that Ranger had been hauled in by a deputy for questioning, too.

  “You can’t do that,” I railed at Jordy. “Ranger can’t handle being told he did anything wrong.” I itched all over with worry for Ranger.

  “Cody Fjelstad helped you make the fudge. We have to question him.”

  “About what? He’s not capable of being questioned.”

  “He’s quite capable. You’re not suggesting I discriminate because he has certain challenges?”

  We were sitting in an interrogation office on blue plastic chairs with metal legs, with just a coffee-stained table between us. The walls were beige with maroon trim around the door. I let my head sink momentarily into my hands and lap in disbelief and despair. “You don’t understand. Cody is sensitive, and he prides himself on doing a perfect job. He’s very, very proud of his ability to wrap fudge. This is going to upset him in ways that aren’t good at all, Sheriff.”

  “We have skilled people with him.”

  “But you’re asking Ranger questions about things like poison getting into the fudge, and he won’t understand that. He’ll think he killed that woman. Holy cow, what a mess.” Tears stung my eyes in my frustration.

  Jordy handed over a box of tissues.

  I got off the chair to snatch a tissue, then headed to the door. Earlier in the squad car I’d called Pauline to come pick me up. I figured she had to be waiting outside by now. “I’ll take Ranger home.”

  “We’ll handle that.” The sheriff came around the table to hand me a clipboard with a blank piece of paper on it.

  “Now what?” I asked, not caring that I sounded belligerent.

  He showed me to my chair. “Write down the ingredients you put in the fudge.”

  “I’m not revealing my recipe.”

  “Are you saying you’re refusing to cooperate?” He leaned over his knuckles and got right in my face. I could smell his coffee breath.

  “No, I’m just saying I’m not telling you my trade secrets. Food artists don’t reveal their recipes.” I suspected he wanted me to break down in sobs about the poison.

  Jordy sat down on his side of the table, nodding toward the clipboard in my hands. “Write down what you recall putting in the fudge.”

  “Fairy glitter? Wings of spun sugar? Is that what you want me to write?”

  “Whatever you claim is in the fudge, I want to know about it.”

  Darned if I was going to give him any trade secrets. Nobody but Ranger knew what I put in my Cinderella Pink Fudge. I thought for a moment, then wrote.

  I handed the clipboard across the table.

  Jordy squinted at it. “What’s this gibberish?”

  “The chemical formula for the reaction of sugar boiled in milk. It’s boiled at two hundred thirty-eight degrees, which is above the normal boiling point of two-hundred twelve degrees for water. This high temperature boils off enough water to bring the sucrose and fructose into alignment for proper crystallization of the fudge. If there was poison present, it would have interfered with the crystallization, and I would have noticed.”

  “Poison can be added to anything after it’s done boiling,” he said in a deadpan way. “This silliness just makes you look guilty, Ava.”

  I signed my statement and sketches of chemical formulas with a shaky hand.

  He said, “You can go now, Miss Oosterling, but you’ll have to stay out of your fudge shop until I say it’s okay.”

  “You can’t do that. For what reason? I haven’t been arrested.”

  “Do you want to be?”

  “Cut it out, Jordy. My grandfather’s bait shop needs to stay open for the fishermen. It’s fishing season. This affects my grandfather, too.”

  Jordy shrugged. “I’m sorry. I’m sure the deputy will take only a couple of days to swab down that tiny bait and bonbon shop.”

  He was making me mad. Fortunately he let me go at that point.

  • • •

  Pauline and I got back to Fishers’ Harbor a little after four that afternoon. And sure enough, there was yellow tape unspooled around Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers & Belgian Fudge. The graying wood building looked pitiful, as if it wore a prison uniform now. I sank into my own miasma rising from the sudden decay of my life.

  I must have said that out loud because Pauline said, “Quit being so dramatic. You didn’t kill anybody.”

  The snow had stopped, but a cold wind flapped the tape against the weathered wood and the windowpanes. My stomach juices surged with disgust. I walked right up to the tape and ripped it down. “You’re right, Pauline.�
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  Pauline charged up to me, whipping her black hair over a shoulder like she meant business. With her height and that hair she can be intimidating when she looks down at me. “You can’t do that,” she said. “That’s real tape, not the fake Halloween type of tape.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You’ll get in trouble. Arrested or something.”

  “Or something. I can’t let Ranger or Gilpa see this.”

  We went inside to a mess. The only thing on Grandpa’s side not out of place was the minnow tank bubbling away.

  My side? I started with the two center aisles in my half of the building and groaned. The deputy had confiscated the just-delivered pink fairy tale items for girls, including locally hand-crafted Cinderella-at-the-ball dolls and fairy godmothers with wings in pink that matched my fudge. The deputy had probably assumed I hid poison in their bodies.

  With a sigh I also noticed that the loaf of pink fudge had disappeared off my marble table. I rushed to my copper kettles; all the dry fudge ingredients there were gone. The wall shelves were empty. On them I featured the standard fudges to just give me a reason to open my business—double chocolate, caramel, peanut butter, butterscotch, maple, and cookies and cream. I had also made a couple of male varieties. The deputy had cleaned me out.

  He’d also rubbed some chemical on my marble slab and in the copper pans I used to make my fudge. A whiff of something akin to nose-burning solvents ruined the air and obliterating the smells of chocolate and vanilla. Everything would have to be cleaned and sterilized.

  I pushed up my sleeves. I still wore my cherry-stained apron that I’d had on all day. I untied it and balled it up, tossing it aside. I grabbed a fresh apron from a closet behind the cash register.

  Pauline said, “What are you doing?”

  “Making more fudge. Wanna help?”

  “I don’t want to be arrested, so no. Besides, I’m tired.”

  She’d missed the party because it took her three hours to hang book titles and character names from the ceilings of her classroom.

  “How could teaching reading be more important than the debut of my Cinderella Pink Fudge and Cinderella being under suspicion for murder?”

  “Stop it, Ava. There’s no need to take my head off.”

  “All right. Sorry, but . . .” Belgians are stubborn. We hate losing. Pauline was Belgian, too, so our squabbles could go on for days just on principle.

  I finished tying on the fresh apron. “Sorry, Pauline, but this always happens to me. You know it does. As soon as something good comes to me in my life, I’m guaranteed to have something bad happen.”

  “Nothing bad happened to you. The only ‘bad’ thing is the bad heart that woman evidently had.”

  “No, my fudge is gone. That’s very bad. I’m making fudge this instant to bring back good karma. Eating fudge is all about having good karma. Besides, I can’t let Gilpa see these empty shelves and copper kettles. He’ll lose all faith in me and plunk fishing lures in the space.”

  “Tell him you sold all the fudge.”

  “Lies are mortal sins. I don’t have time to go to confession.”

  Pauline muttered something that wasn’t fit for kindergarteners, but she followed me to the back room.

  My cleaning and cooking supplies had been pawed through. Plus, to my chagrin, whoever had been poking around for poison had taken my bottles of vanilla extract. “Crap. That was the expensive stuff.”

  A quick glance in the refrigerator revealed they’d taken my milk, sour cream, and buttermilk—ingredients for my fudge and all fresh from my parents’ farm down near Brussels in the county. I checked my chocolate bins; the imported Belgian bulk dark chocolate was gone, too. That cost a fortune.

  “Why would they take that? Do they believe I sent all the way to Belgium for poison?”

  “They were likely hungry. Better for their hearts than doughnuts.”

  “I can’t make my fudge until I reorder supplies and my Belgian chocolate. The sign outside says ‘Belgian’ fudge, not ‘ordinary’! I’m ruined, done for, cut down in my prime!”

  Pauline grabbed me, flipping me around to face her. I expected her to slap me, but she didn’t. She said in a soothing voice, “Hey, let it go for tonight. Let’s go to your place to regroup. I’ll make you hot cocoa. We’ll wait there to hear from your grandfather.”

  For a startling moment I realized that in my selfish need to rail at the world I’d forgotten about Gilpa’s plight. I forced myself to breathe. “Wow. Sorry. That’s why I needed to move back here from Los Angeles. I just sounded like the producer I worked for on that crappy TV show.”

  My dream of becoming a writer had become one of my infamous spontaneous combustions, like my marriage. The experience of working in TV production was still too raw to talk about, and a wish that I’d done better lingered inside of me; nobody but Pauline knew I was basically licking my wounds. When my grandmother Sophie Oosterling had broken her leg three weeks ago, my dad had called me to say she and Gilpa needed somebody to help them and would I consider coming home?

  Of course I leaped at the chance to help my beloved grandparents, but only Pauline knew I was probably going to be fired from the half-hour TV comedy The Topsy-Turvy Girls after this season’s low ratings. The show starred two young women like me and Pauline, trying to find love and success. The script that got me on the show was based on my very odd divorce circumstances. By the fifth year working for the show, I was beginning to run out of ideas based on my experiences or lack thereof in the realms of romance and success. The only good thing about the TV experience was that as my writing assignments decreased, the executive producer had put me in charge of buying the treats for the cast table. They thought I got the stuff from fancy chefs. I pocketed the cash and made what made me hunger for home—homemade fudge. At least the fudge was a hit.

  Then, last Christmas, when I was home and making fudge from my grandma Sophie’s recipe, she and Gilpa offhandedly said that I should start my own business making candy. When I came home two weeks ago, I was surprised to find out that my grandparents and my parents had been scouring the county and beyond for secondhand equipment for my business—should I ever end up moving back to the Midwest. Between the time I’d said yes to coming back and my arrival in Fishers’ Harbor just days later, my grandfather and dad had remade the bait shop.

  Pauline and I went to my rental place in the small enclave of fishers’ cottages behind the bait shop to share my misery over cocoa. Gilpa and Grandma Sophie owned one of the cottages across the narrow street and west from me. My rental sat right behind my fudge shop. The cottages were log cabins that had been built in the 1800s by the Belgians, Finns, and Swedes who came to Wisconsin for a new life based on fishing and lumbering.

  “Have you called your parents?” Pauline asked.

  “No way. This will blow over like that storm outside.”

  My parents, Pete and Florine, were dairy farmers down in Brussels, a town in the southern area of the county. My parents supplied all the dairy products that made my Belgian fudge unique and tasty. Mom and Dad were salt-of-the-earth folks, expert farmers and proud of what they did. They had not liked me running off to Vegas and then to Los Angeles after the divorce. They’d felt I was abandoning them and my heritage. They had expected me to join them to milk cows, raise calves and my own kids. And here I was, back for only two weeks—working alongside Grandpa and helping Grandma, which was all good—then bam, something bad happens and I’m accused of murder. My same old pattern. Good, then bad.

  “I doubt a murder will blow over,” Pauline said. “Jeremy Stone will issue his ‘Fatal Fudge Flames out Forgotten Film Star’ front-page headline tomorrow all over the Web.”

  “Thanks for making me feel even worse.” I set my cup of cocoa down in disgust on the table by my chair. We were in the living room area with the fireplace roaring.

  Pauline said, “You should call or e-mail Stone. Give him your side to the story right away. Tell him how sorry you
are she died of a heart attack.”

  “We don’t know yet how she died,” I said, tapping my fingers on the chair arms, feeling increasingly on edge.

  “Tomorrow’s Monday. The medical examiner will be back in the office then, and he’ll have it all solved. However, Stone will have already run his ‘FFFFF’ story in the morning paper, which will be too late for you if you wait to talk with him. You’ll be drowning in your ‘miasma.’ You always do things spontaneously, so talk to him now.”

  That brightened my mood a smidgen. “You’re right. I can remind him to wait for the medical examiner’s report. My family’s name will be saved from the muck.”

  “I just said that.”

  “You said ‘miasma,’ not ‘muck.’” Stubborn Belgian.

  I dragged my laptop onto my lap, punched myself online, found his e-mail address at the newspaper Web site, then shot off an e-mail to Mr. Stone. I could almost visualize him in the Blue Heron Inn, just above us on the bluff, reading my message. I felt better already.

  But he shot back a message instantly that said, “Some years ago arsenic was found in well water in an area of Door County. You were here at that time. What area was that?”

  I almost threw my laptop into the fire. But instead I snapped it shut, then set it aside.

  Pauline asked, “What’s wrong? What’d he say?”

  “Damn man thinks I used arsenic in my fudge!”

  “So maybe we should go up to the inn and talk to him in person.”

  “No, Pauline. Everything I touch right now turns out unlucky. He had a crooked nose that looked as if he’d been a boxer. He’s used to fighting. He’ll punch out my lights.” I got up, though, and said, “The person we need to see is Ranger. I need to go apologize and make sure he’s all right.”

  “And maybe find out if he accidentally put something in the fudge?” Pauline shot me a plaintive look.

  My heart ached. If Ranger was responsible for Rainetta Johnson’s death, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Ranger, or Cody Fjelstad, had been hanging around the bait shop off and on for a couple of winters, anytime he and his dad came in for bait for ice fishing. I’d met him a couple of times when I’d come home for holidays. Ranger liked the bait shop. And like me, he liked a little sparkle in life and fun. We’d become fast friends almost the instant Sam Peterson fixed him up with the job working for me.