First-Degree Fudge: A Fudge Shop Mystery Read online

  “Come on,” I said to Pauline, grabbing my red jacket. “I’ll need your support.”

  • • •

  The clouds parted as we wended our way in my recently acquired, used, yellow Chevy pickup truck through the back streets to get to the Fjelstads. I’d loved the cheery, bright color of the truck when I’d bought it; now I was self-conscious about its flashiness. I expected people to line the streets to point fingers. Look at the fudge murderer! But it was five o’clock, dinner hour for a lot of people around here, so the streets were nearly empty.

  Arlene Fjelstad met us at the door. She had puffy eyelids and shiny wet cheeks. I smelled hamburgers frying on a stove.

  “Hi, Arlene,” I managed. “Is Ranger here? I’d like to talk with him.”

  “No, he’s not.” She swiped at her tears.

  “He’ll be at work tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know. My husband had to pick him up at the sheriff’s department and then pick up some new medications for him.”

  I felt ill. Evidently Ranger’s time at the jail didn’t go well. Pauline just stood there beside me, looking down at us, no help at all.

  I said, “I’m sorry. Ranger makes good fudge. He’s a great wrapper, too. Everything will be okay tomorrow when he gets back to work.” That sounded lame. Nothing would be okay. I had no idea what to do, though, to make things better. “He can take a day off. He doesn’t have to come by in the morning. He can just sleep in and go to school instead. I don’t have any supplies, and it’ll take me a day to go get those or have them delivered.”

  “He won’t want to go to school to be laughed at.” Her entire face wrinkled up like cracked glass that would break into a thousand pieces at any second. “He was doing so well.”

  My anger with the sheriff rushed back into me with the force of a Lake Michigan storm tide. “Everything will be normal tomorrow. They’ll find out that there’s nothing wrong with the fudge. It was a horrible thing, but sometimes people . . . expire. And the sheriff made a mistake taking Ranger down to Sturgeon Bay. A simple mistake. Ranger will come to understand.”

  “Understand what?” Arlene cried out. “That he can’t trust anybody? He trusted you. I trusted you because you’re an Oosterling. That was my mistake.” Arlene closed the door.

  Pauline was biting her lower lip, looking as lost as I felt.

  I said, “Ranger hates his medications, Pauline. Says he’s not normal when he has to take pills. He was thinking he could get off his meds.”

  “But the medications help him.”

  “He wants to be normal.” A whimper drifted off my lips. “I have to fix this.”

  “Everything will be back to normal tomorrow. You said so. Believe in that.”

  But it wasn’t. Ranger didn’t show up in the shop on Monday. Pauline called me during her kindergarten class’s nap break to report that Ranger hadn’t shown up at school, as predicted by his mother.

  I snuck into my shop to clean up things, defying the sheriff’s orders to stay out. I started on Gilpa’s side, putting packaged snacks back on their hooks. Gilpa and the four guests had been rescued by the Coast Guard in the wee early-morning hours. They’d drifted over to the protection of the Chambers Island Lighthouse, which was the good part.

  A ruddy-faced Gilpa, with his uncombed silver thatch of hair making him look like he had horns, passed through the shop growling about it being closed, growling over getting no sleep, growling at the poor fishing weather. He didn’t even look at me. That sucked something out of my soul. I suspected he was totally embarrassed and his pride hurt from his old boat’s engines giving out on him, but most of all he was disappointed in me.

  My parents found out about everything, too, and they ragged at me over the phone as if I were one of Pauline’s kindergarten kids. I hadn’t yet talked with Grandma Sophie but would have to face her judgment later when I went over to tidy up and wash dishes for her.

  Gilpa hurried outside and down the dock with a cup of the strong, black coffee I’d made. He was on a mission to find a mechanic. What he really needed was a new boat and engines, but there was no way he could afford such things. And I doubted a banker would loan the “Fatal Fudge Family” any money.

  Then the sheriff showed up at nine. He rudely left his red and blue bubble lights on to strafe me and the walls through the fudge shop’s big bay windows. Jordy walked in with the yellow tape that I’d taken off the fudge shop in his fist.

  I managed a fake hearty, “Good morning.”

  Jordy set the ball of tape on the cash register counter, where I was cutting cellophane into pieces as if all were normal. I wanted them ready for Ranger when he came back tomorrow; I was trying to stay positive about that. I was determined to be making more flavors of Fairy Tale Fudge by then, maybe Snow White Fudge since I now had experience with killing people off with morsels in their mouths.

  Jordy said, “I’m afraid I have to put you under arrest.”

  I almost wet my pants. “What for?” Had they found poison after all? Had Ranger somehow done something like find rat poison and think it was flour?

  Jordy’s deputy walked in behind Jordy then. Now I knew this was serious.

  Jordy waved the deputy to come forward as he said, “The medical examiner says in his preliminary exam that the woman died choking on your fudge.”

  “That can’t be.” I gulped. I could almost feel the lump of fudge.

  “You were standing right there when you saw it pop out of her mouth.”

  “But if she choked, that’s not my fault. It’s awful, but I didn’t force it down her throat. I have witnesses.”

  “And do they know about your diamond smuggling?”

  “What diamonds?”

  “The ones you put in your fudge. Your fudge was filled with hot diamonds. It was hot fudge. I’d like you to explain why you’re putting diamonds in your fudge.”

  Chapter 3

  “Hot diamonds?” My screech was so loud it made the cowbell on the door vibrate. Or maybe that was from the wind. When the dull bell clank made the sheriff and his deputy turn around, I ran for my life the other way through the doorway to the back hall, past my kitchen, and was at the back door when Jordy’s deputy caught up with me. He yanked me to a stop, then parked himself at the back door and smiled back at me.

  I hauled my butt back into the fudge and bait shop customer area to face Jordy.

  “Jordy, you’re not going to arrest me, are you?”

  “It depends. I seem to keep collecting evidence that points to you.”

  “This is nonsense. I know nothing about diamonds. Just chocolate. And I’d like to know what you did with all my supplies.” I took my cell phone out of my pocket.

  “Who’re you calling?” Jordy asked.

  “My mother. I need chocolate.”

  Mom’s voice on the phone calmed me. She was a sane, rational woman at all times. I wasn’t going to tell her I was in the process of being questioned for stealing diamonds and hiding them in my fudge. Even I couldn’t believe it. I’d be able to get rid of Jordy just by stalling. But my voice was quavering while Sheriff Jordy Tollefson stood across from me in front of my cash register, his hands resting on his holster and a pair of steel handcuffs.

  “Uh, hi, Mom. I was, uh, wondering if you had ideas for finding Belgian-grade bulk chocolate. I really don’t want to wait a week for a shipment.”

  “Honey, are you all right?”

  “I’m, uh, fine.”

  Jordy rolled his eyes at me.

  Mom said, “That woman’s death is awful, but probably more awful for your friend Isabelle. The poor thing. Imagine holding a party for the spring opening of your business and somebody dies from your food.”

  “Mom, I can imagine. That was my fudge, remember?”

  Jordy twirled a hand at me to indicate I needed to wrap things up with Mom. But that might mean I could be wearing those handcuffs, so I kept talking to her.

  “Does that lady in Namur still get those bulk chocolates from
Belgium?”

  “I don’t think so,” Mom said, “but we deliver to that small country store in Brussels. Do you want me to drive up to your shop today with some of our new cheddar? At least you’d have something to sell.”

  My parents had started making their own brand of cheddar and other cheeses right on the farm just a couple of years ago. They’d worked several years to get to the point of selling their own Oosterling organic brand dairy products—a very good reason not to have a daughter besmirching their name by going to jail for heists and murder. “Buy Your Fatal Fudge and Fromage from the Oosterlings” likely wouldn’t make Mom’s list of billboard slogans.

  Jordy ripped my cell out of my hand to speak to my mother. “Florine, this is Sheriff Tollefson. Your daughter will need to talk with you later.” He hit the disconnect button.

  “That was rude,” I said, keeping the counter between me and Jordy. I imagined us having a game of tag around the counter, with me winning and running out the door.

  But as soon as I reached forward to put my phone down on the counter, Jordy grabbed my outstretched arm and dangled the shiny bracelets. “Where’d you come up with the diamonds, Ava?” he practically barked.

  “You can’t be serious. I know nothing about diamonds except their chemical formula.”

  “Don’t start with that mumbo jumbo again.”

  “They’re not made from coal. Let me draw you a picture.”

  “Dammit, no more pictures.”

  “Eruptions in the earth a hundred miles down in the mantle bring them up in xenoliths. Those are rocks to you.”

  “I don’t want to hear about rocks.”

  “But you should. An asteroid could’ve plopped those diamonds here. This could solve your case somehow. When asteroids crashed into the earth with the force of a hundred thousand atomic bombs millions of years ago, that impact created diamonds that got shoved down into the earth.”

  “Like they got shoved down Rainetta Johnson’s throat?”

  I shuddered. “Not quite like that. Sooner or later the continental plate coughed up rocks with the diamonds inside them. Maybe the person you’re looking for is a geologist.”

  Jordy came around the counter, ready to hustle me out. “An asteroid? A geologist did it?”

  I nodded, totally believing my own story, but also moving my feet backward a couple of steps, getting ready to run. “Maybe one of Isabelle’s guests is a geologist. Have you checked?”

  Jordy’s brown eyes were like asteroids themselves—fiery orbs of glassy rock. In one lurching motion, he planted a firm hand on my back, then began marching me toward the door. “We’re going to have to shut down this shop. I have to ask you to leave, Ava. And if you give me grief about this, I’ll have to arrest you.”

  “I really have to go to the bathroom.” I stiffened my legs to dig my work boots into the wood floor.

  “No, you don’t.” Jordy pulled me along now by the arm, my feet sliding in protest. The feet routine made him change his tactic. He slung an arm around my shoulders, smashing me up against his lean body to haul me out.

  The door flapped open, startling us. The cowbell slammed with a clunkedy-clunk against the wall. Isabelle Boone and Pauline Mertens stood there aghast, out of breath and windblown.

  Isabelle, her gamine face white and short dark hair sticking up all over, said, “I saw the squad car lights and called Pauline at school.”

  Pauline flipped her long black hair over a shoulder as she stared at me and Jordy and my potential shiny wrist accessories. “What now?”

  Pauline said that as if I’d gotten into a whole string of trouble in my life, and that’s true. But her words still stung.

  “My fudge sparkled for a good reason yesterday—it had diamonds in it.”

  Isabelle shrieked, “Diamonds? How did diamonds get in your fudge?”

  “Did Rainetta swallow diamonds? Is that why she died?” Pauline asked. “Ick. Maybe diamonds don’t pass through like pop beads? My kids at school are always swallowing beads or crayons or something. One mom wanted me to save her little boy’s poop because the beads were actually real pearls. His poop was worth two hundred dollars, she said.”

  We were saved from more of Pauline’s story when Grandpa Gil shoved in the doorway covered head to toe with black grease from working on his engines. He even had a black swipe up his forehead that ran into his thick silver hair. A skunk in reverse. The sharp, nauseating smell of gasoline and oil flooded the air. “What in the double-H-E-L-L is going on here?”

  Pauline and Isabelle stepped aside—way to the side—to let Gilpa through. He took one look at me in Jordy’s armlock before stomping in his boots into his bait shop, where he grabbed a foot-long metal tool from behind the counter and then came back over to my fudge shop.

  Jordy said, “You threatening a law officer, Gil? Let’s not get silly.”

  Gilpa said, “If you try anything fancy like cuffing her, I’ll be ready.” Gilpa’s hands held out his wire cutters.

  Jordy stepped between us. “She’s not under arrest, Gil. I was just asking her to leave. You can’t interfere with the law.”

  “The double hockey sticks, you say.”

  Not quite as tall as Jordy but as wiry, my grandpa faked to the left, which tricked the sheriff into stepping that way to block him; then Gilpa popped back to the right, reached around Jordy, and snatched me, whirling again to stand protectively in front of me. Slick as a whistle. I beamed with pride. At seventy-three, Gilpa had outmaneuvered the sheriff with the kind of moves Pauline and I used to perform on the basketball courts in high school and college.

  Clapping erupted in the doorway and from outside. Five fishermen and two boys of maybe ten years old were cheering for our team as they came in. Right behind them but not cheering were Mercy Fogg and a few other curious fishermen. Through the big shop windows on either side of the door, I could also see other townspeople and strangers gathering on the dock, obviously drawn by the squad car’s red and blue strobes. I wished like all get-out that I were whipping fudge in my copper pots right now. Surely I’d sell it all with a crowd like this. I almost wished the crooked-nose reporter were here snapping pictures of me to post on the Web.

  The stout, roly-poly Mercy Fogg huffed about, taking in the shambles of my fudge shop with its empty shelves as well as Gilpa’s bait, bobbers, and beer. “Did I hear something about shutting this down? Good idea. None of this is code. You can’t be selling fudge next to open-water tanks of minnows. It’s not sanitary.”

  I groaned. Mercy, her blond hair poufed around her face with too much hair spray, needed something to do since she’d lost the recent election. It looked like shutting me down was on her to-do list.

  My grandpa marched over to his side of our messy, mutual store to return his wire cutters to the shelf under his register counter. He waved the customers in. “Welcome to Oosterlings’. We have a special on everything today. Buy two bobbers or baits, get the third item of your choice for half price. Minnows at half price. Beer, too. And buy some of my real worms and I’ll toss in the gummy worm candies for free.”

  The little boys squealed, instantly grabbing for the gummy worms, then swarming the minnow tanks over in the corner by the coolers that held soda pop, beer, and some cartons of worms in dirt. A couple of the guys were on their phones, obviously calling buddies to tell them about the beer deals. My grandpa was amazing when it came to money. And me. He’d ignored Mercy and now squared off with the sheriff, pointing him toward the door.

  “Nobody’s being arrested here. Get those cuffs off my granddaughter.”

  Jordy stood his ground. “We found loose diamonds, Gil. The quantity and type fit a description from a heist in New York last week.”

  “Who cares about a robbery in New York? This is the Midwest, son.”

  “Gil, the authorities out there have been following a paper trail on them. They think there’s a possibility of diamonds being shipped to Chicago. I’m on the lookout up here because Door County is Chicago�
�s playground.”

  My grandpa stretched his wiry frame up to meet Jordy’s wiry frame. Jordy was half a head taller, but he backed off a smidge to avoid getting grease on his tan uniform.

  My grandpa said, “Did you test these diamonds? What if they’re fake? It’s spring, and the high school kids are always playing pranks in spring. They could have snuck in the back door and dumped a bunch of baubles in the cocoa or somethin’ for the heck of it.”

  Pauline spoke up. “Just like my kids eating those pearls. For the fun of it. My little girls come to school with fake sparkles stuck in their hair all the time. Maybe that’s what was in the fudge.”

  Isabelle offered, “The jeweler would be able to tell you if they’re fake or not.”

  “Great idea,” I said.

  Gilpa poked a finger at Jordy. “See? Listen to A.M. and P.M. plus I.B.”

  My grandpa had affectionately nicknamed Pauline Mertens “P.M.” and me “A.M.” for my first and middle names, Ava Mathilde, when we were kids, saying, “You two are a bunch of trouble and sunshine all day long, a.m. and p.m.” It was nice of him to include Isabelle Boone, or “I.B.,” in the club. I added, “But the jewelry store isn’t open until tomorrow. Maybe we can talk about this then.” Many shops were shuttered on Mondays until the tourist season started full force after Memorial Day.

  Jordy said through gritted teeth, “I’ll take the gems to Green Bay today if I have to. The mall stores are open. And your store needs to be closed. Now.”

  My grandpa waved a hand around. “Give us a few minutes to serve the customers. What is it you have to do anyway?”

  “Search the place again.”

  “Search what?” my grandpa asked, true to his stubborn Belgian ways.

  “Anyplace that could hide diamonds.”

  “But you did a search already. Are you saying your deputy wasn’t doing his job?”

  Jordy’s countenance darkened. I intervened before my grandfather got arrested for obstructing justice or something. “Listen, Jordy, go ahead. Look around. And if you want us to close after you’re done doing that, we’ll close.”