Five-Alarm Fudge (23 page)

I hopped up the steps. “I need to get into the house.”

“Why?”

“Because Mike must be lying about Kjersta and Jonas. Kjersta loves Daniel. There would not be kissing going on with Jonas. There must be some reason Mike would lie. And
Fontana was definitely covering up for Mike, too. I want to look through Kjersta’s papers and notes, to see if there’s anything about the feud with the neighbors.”

“You’re assuming the sheriff left behind something.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think you need to get into this house. Start with Jonas. Ask him what he knows.”

My instincts said something was about to explode with all this subterfuge by my friends here in my old neighborhood. I explained to Dillon that my former teacher hadn’t been trustworthy. He’d cooked our math grades a couple of times. “That’s why I think he’s lying.”

“He gave you an A when you didn’t deserve it?”

“I deserved the A. But some kids hadn’t made the grade, and if they hadn’t, they would have lost scholarships to college.”

“That sounds half-bad and half-good.”

“But he cheated, and that’s what bothers me. He could be lying about Kjersta and Jonas for some reason. Maybe to protect Fontana. And why the heck isn’t Fontana in jail yet?”

“Obviously, the sheriff hasn’t found a solid connection between her and the murder.”

“Yet.”

Dillon went back down the front steps, his heavy work shoes clomping against the wood. “So you think Mike and Fontana killed Cherry in his car, Mike dragged him to the basement, and then Fontana and Mike drove off with Mike hiding the car somewhere.”

“That’s about right.” But it still bothered me that Fontana could hop in bed with Mike so soon after Cherry’s death. At least, I assumed they were sleeping together. I came down the steps, defeated.

Dillon put an arm around me. “What’d you find out from Fontana?”

“Not much. All I can assume is that she’s looking for the divinity fudge recipe. She thought it might be hidden in Jonas’s roadside chapel.”

“That’s not a bad idea to inspect all the chapels. How many are there around here?”

“Dozens. And many are part of old garages or in the back rooms of houses built in the 1800s. Every Belgian immigrant back then maintained a private chapel.”

“It seems impossible to find a recipe that Adele scribbled on a piece of paper.”

“But my grandfather insists it’s in the church. Gilpa is always right when it counts.” I kissed Dillon on the cheek. “Thanks for helping me. It’s fun working together and being together.”

He hauled me into his arms and kissed me soundly until my toes itched.

When we got back into my truck, Lucky Harbor’s gaze was piercing and steady, as if he were asking me to do something. The eerie feeling that he wanted me to go back to the winery brushed across my brain. I shook it off, giving the Dahlgren house one last look. The yellow tape was calling to me, just as something was calling to Lucky Harbor.

Chapter 19

D
illon and I returned to Fishers’ Harbor to get back to work. Several customers in my shop enjoyed watching me stir Belgian chocolate in my copper kettles. When it spun in the air just so, I poured the batch onto the white marble table and gave several customers loafing tools. For a time, I forgot my worries.

But the fudge making got me to thinking about the possible lies and cover-ups going on among Jonas, Mike, Fontana, and perhaps Kjersta.

At five o’clock, I begged Pauline to drive me down to the Dahlgren place in her clunker nondescript gray car so we wouldn’t be detected. Laura was along. The plan was that we would pick vegetables for Kjersta and Daniel, but I would find a way to sneak into the house.

Cody’s girlfriend, Bethany, was babysitting Clara Ava and Spencer Paul.

During the entire journey, the
clinkety-clunk
rattle in the undercarriage or hubcaps of Pauline’s sedan continued.

Pauline said, “Why don’t you drive this car from now on since you wrecked it anyway, and I’ll take your yellow truck? Fair exchange.”

“No, thanks. I like my truck. It has sentimental value.”

“You crashed your other truck with me in it. Yeah, that’s sentimental, all right.”

“Dillon found this truck on the Internet for me. Pauline,
you forget that John is involved in all this. I’m doing this to help prove his innocence.”

Pauline growled, “You always know when to pull that card.”

“Is he remembering anything more about late Saturday night or early Sunday morning?”

“I haven’t seen him much.”

I exchanged a look with Laura in the backseat, then said to Pauline, “He’s not sleeping at your house?” He hadn’t stayed with Dillon last night.

“No.”

“Mercy Fogg’s?”

Laura burst out laughing in the back. But I saw that I’d gone too far. Tears were shimmering in Pauline’s eyes as she drove.

I offered her, “He’s going to be fine, Pauline. John wants to prove himself worthy of you. Let him and Marc chase this TV show idea for a while. Everything will turn out okay. You’ll see.”

“They’re lawless, just like you. Nothing’s going to be fine. Your manager trashed the church kitchen to create a scene they could film. Nothing’s going to be all right when they pull stunts like that.”

Laura and I shut up. The car felt mighty chilly the rest of the drive.

*   *   *

We parked the car behind the stone barn so it couldn’t be seen from County Trunk C. Trees blocked it mostly from view from Highway 57.

The redbrick Dahlgren house was an old farmhouse, the kind with a storm cellar entrance outside in back and low to the ground. I guessed there’d be no yellow tape across it, and I was right. I used the jack from Pauline’s car to bust the lock. We descended the concrete steps, lowering the door above our heads.

The basement was dry and pleasant smelling, a larder filled with canned vegetables, jars, Christmas decorations in plastic boxes, and other things that didn’t interest us.

Upstairs on the first floor I went to the desk in the living room alcove. I riffled through the drawers while Pauline
and Laura walked through the house looking for notes, file cabinets, and anything having to do with the neighbors or the university’s research.

Laura reported back first. “There’s not even a laptop or computer tablet left anywhere.”

I said, “Jordy’s thorough.” As I said that, the desk yielded papers from the university extension service in Green Bay from Professor Wesley Weaver. They were under a stack of sales slips for apples and vegetables to local restaurants.

The papers were correspondence revealing that Professor and Dean Wesley Weaver wasn’t pleased with Professor Hardy’s research, which was having a negative impact on the entire department as well as their two teaching assistants—Nick and Will—who were working on their doctorates. But Weaver informed the Dahlgrens that the research project would end by September 30.

Laura said, “The papers show that Professor Weaver was upset, not that the Dahlgrens were upset with Cherry.”

“And it’s fairly common that research projects would end by October, because that’s the month when federal budgets end or renew. I remember that from college. Professors were always worrying about federal grants running out in the fall.”

Pauline sat down in a nearby olive green leather chair. “What irony. The project is about to end, and he gets murdered. The person murdering him maybe didn’t know it was over.”

With elation, I got up and went over to hug Pauline. “You’re right. This proves the Dahlgrens didn’t kill him. There’s no motive. We can take this evidence to Jordy and they’re freed.”

Laura sat on the arm of the Dahlgrens’ green leather couch. “But that letter is dated a couple of weeks ago.” She tucked a wisp of her blond bob behind an ear. “Cherry knew his project was about to end but didn’t tell anybody.”

“Out of pride,” I said, defending him.

Pauline asked, “But why didn’t Kjersta and Daniel tell your neighbors? Including your parents? Why did they let Jonas stay mad at them? And Mike?”

Her question made me twist my ponytail around in my
fingers. “Obviously, something else transpired in the past two weeks. And if what Mike said is true, Kjersta was at Jonas’s the night of the murder. She saw cars on the road, she says, but she said that sighting was from her house.”

Laura let her lithe body slide off the couch arm and down onto a cushion. “So she’s wide-awake that night. Where was Daniel during all this?”

Pauline tapped her hands on the leather chair arms. “Sleeping like the rest of us? It certainly was one busy little country road that night.”

I walked back to the papers on the desk. “We need to talk with Kjersta and Daniel and that professor. What about tomorrow? We need to pick vegetables anyway.”

Pauline said, “That was supposed to be our cover tonight. And you forget I’m teaching thirteen kindergartners. Tomorrow we’re painting a mural about Snow White and the Seven Little People. I have to keep track of twenty-six hands filled with finger paints making pictures of Grumpy and Sneezy.”

“Now it sounds like we’re talking about Fontana’s perfume and soaps.”

Laura said, “She gave me a bag of that stuff after my twins were born. I had to double-bag it before putting it in the trash can behind the Luscious Ladle. But it kept the raccoons away.”

*   *   *

On Wednesday midafternoon, Lucky Harbor showed up at my shop with a note in the orange floatable key holder secured to his collar.
Piers helping me with claw-foot tub. Progress being made for the prince and princess. XOXO.

The letters meant hugs and kisses. I glowed.

Dillon inspired me. If he’d commandeered Piers to help him refurbish the inn, perhaps there was hope it’d be completed in time for the visit by my royal relatives. When there was a lull in the afternoon, I took the time to do more research online for divinity fudge information. I also remembered I wanted to look up Jane Goodland.

On the Internet, none of the images and references said anything about any Jane Goodland being a lawyer. One photo was a mug shot of a dark-haired woman who’d been
arrested for bank robbery a few years ago. Another photo depicted another dark-haired woman in England who wrote children’s picture books. She seemed like a possibility for buying our bookstore, yet she was in England. The final image was of a blond exotic dancer. Because there’d been hints around town of the lawyer being a bombshell, I wondered if the dancer was also a lawyer. I refused to believe an exotic dancer was taking over the Wise Owl bookstore.

After school was out for the kindergartners at two thirty, I decided that I could satisfy my curiosities about Kjersta by talking to her directly in jail. I also wanted to talk with Professor Weaver in Green Bay. He could shed light on what was going on among his colleagues and Cherry.

Lois and Dotty had come by with new fairy-tale-fudge-themed aprons they’d made for sale and agreed to work in the store until Cody could drop by later. Dotty said, “We’re working on new fudge flavor ideas for you. We think we have a good one. But it’s a secret for now.”

Everybody had secrets lately.

I hopped into my truck, then picked up Pauline. Laura had driven down from Sister Bay with her twins, whom Bethany was babysitting at Pauline’s house.

Pauline said, “The only reason I’m going with you is that you promised this would be the end of you getting into trouble.”

“What possibly could happen at the Justice Center?” I said.

Laura laughed in back.

*   *   *

Sheriff Jordy Tollefson arrested me on the spot at the Justice Center.

Jordy didn’t see matters the way I did.

He recited my Miranda rights, which I waived. I had to turn my pockets inside out, leave him my wallet, cell phone, and shoelaces, and succumb to fingerprinting. Maria Vasquez was with us the whole time. Jordy was performing my arrest by the book.

After I was stripped of anything that could harm him or me, he took me to his interrogation room, a room I was unfortunately too familiar with. This time we were alone at
his six-foot brown table. We sat in the maroon plastic chairs. The only decoration was the clock behind him above his head.

“What did you do with Pauline and Laura?” I asked.

“They’re in the dungeon.” He kept his face fixed on the papers he was filling out in front of him. He handed me the papers.

My eyes scanned words like “broke in” and “defied police order” and “illegal entry.”

“I’m not signing this,” I said.

“Why not? You did all those things.”

“I need a lawyer. Is Parker Balusek here? I heard he’s repping Kjersta and Daniel.”

“Why do you keep breaking into property?”

“Because I’m doing your work for you, Jordy.”

“Address me, please, as Sheriff, while we’re inside the jail.”

“Sheriff, did you know that somebody camped out at the schoolhouse? Probably the suspects after they killed Cherry. We’ve concluded there are two suspects.”

“We?”

“Dillon and me. Or me and Pauline and Laura. Or you and me. Take your pick.”

Jordy tapped his pen on a pad of paper he’d brought along. “You broke into the schoolhouse as well?” He pulled the arrest record back from me, then added “entered locked schoolhouse.” He shoved it back again. “What else have you broken into?”

“That’s not important. I need to ask Kjersta if she’s having an affair with Jonas Coppens.”

“Why?” He eased his lean frame back in his chair, his holster scraping against the plastic seat.

“Because Michael Prevost, the neighbor behind her place with the vineyard, says he saw her with Jonas the night of the murder. She might have been out in her car and may have seen more than she’s told you. I still think she’s innocent of Cherry’s murder, but she may be scared of somebody. That might be why she ran over to Jonas’s house the night of the murder.”

He sat forward, interested now, a keen look lacing his brown eyes. “Shouldn’t she be scared of Jonas?”

“They don’t always see eye to eye, but why should she be scared of him?”

“The guy keeps to himself. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway.”

“He lives by himself. There’s a difference.” I clasped my hands together in front of me on the table. “You think he’s a killer because he lives by himself?”