Five-Alarm Fudge (7 page)

Dillon pulled on a black-and-white-plaid flannel shirt, and then a red sweatshirt over it. September late afternoons and evenings grew chilly.

Dillon picked up a toolbox. “How was your day?”

I always melted at that question.
How was your day?
So simple, yet it defined “love,” I felt. It showed he cared. We’d promised in our new pact to always ask each other how our day had gone.

When we first met back in college in Madison, he’d talked mostly about his schedule of gigs as a standup comedian. I was in awe of him. We eloped. A month later in Las Vegas I found out he’d dated other women pretty seriously—even married another woman in one of those crazy one-night stands that are supposed to be annulled the next day. After being accused of bigamy, he got the mess cleaned up, even spending a few days in jail rather than having his parents bail him out.

I realized that everything I’d done—including eloping—had been done for him, not me or “us.” Sure, I had
tremendous fun. But that’s all it was. I hadn’t taken responsibility for “us” or “me.” I hadn’t spoken up. Now I was making up for that, though Pauline and the sheriff didn’t much like that sometimes.

In our pact to date the old-fashioned way, Dillon and I said Wednesdays would be our day for “fooling around.” We had to practice impulse control because the lack of restraint had been the bane of our existence when we first married. Today was Saturday. I was regretting our rule.

He checked the tools in his box.

I petted Lucky Harbor. “My day was weird,” I began.

“So was mine, but let me show you the good news first.”

“Meaning there’s bad news?”

“I’m afraid so,” he said. “You, too?”

“I’m afraid so,” I said.

*   *   *

Outside, under the canopy of the towering cedars and maples, the beautiful bones of a new gazebo nestled amid the lawn. It overlooked the Lake Michigan bay and our harbor.

The gazebo’s roof was mere plywood, but it looked ready for shingles. Eight corner posts held up the roof. One cornice was in place, its loveliness lifting a window in my heart. Dillon had cut a pattern into the pine plank depicting a mother duck and her ducklings trailing from one post to the next.

“What do you think?” Dillon asked, putting down his toolbox.

“Enchanting.”

“Hold that thought while I show you the bad news.”

When we went back inside, he surprised me by scooping me up at the bottom of the staircase in the foyer. Somehow he loped up the powder blue carpet of the staircase with ease. He put me down in front of the second room to the left. It was a mess of plaster, piles of old wooden laths—and a huge hole on the outer wall. I could see the cedars outside.

“What happened?” I asked.

“There’s no insulation in this outside wall and some of the lapped boards on the outside are rotted in places. I’m going to have to check the entire upstairs for insulation. And make sure the wiring is up to code.”

“Maybe the bank will let Grandpa and me add a little to our mortgage.”

“It’s not the money I’m worried about. It’s the time. I don’t think the prince and princess can stay here.”

My mouth went dry. “They have to stay here. They expressly said they wanted to. This inn is historic and is now in our family.”

Dillon squatted down near a wall. “Some of this wiring is a fire hazard. I already asked the fire chief to stop by and he concurred.”

Dillon was a trained civil engineer, usually working on things like streets, roads, and bridge construction and repair. His family also ran a construction company. He was expert on construction codes. In addition, he’d recently joined the Fishers’ Harbor Volunteer Fire Department and was in training, along with my young fudge shop helper, Cody.

“Isn’t there any way we can get this done in two weeks?”

Still down on the floor, Dillon shook his head. “It’s meticulous work. You can’t go out and hire just anybody.”

“And I guess I can’t afford them anyway. What if I helped?”

Dillon’s dark eyes took on a knowing look. “You already have too much on your plate.” He got up to give me a hug.

We went back downstairs.

“I’ll just have to make a batch of fudge and conjure a solution.”

Whenever I had troubles, I escaped into fudge making to help me think. Because making fudge required focus, it acted like meditation.

Dillon said, “Let me buy you a burger and fried cheese curds from the Troubled Trout. You brought me lunch yesterday, so I owe you.”

With all the events of the day, I’d forgotten to eat. The fried cheese curds at the Troubled Trout were renowned. The curds came from my parents’ creamery. They were rolled in dough and then deep-fried.

We set off to walk the few blocks to the bar at the other end of Main Street.

With Lucky Harbor on a leash, we sauntered along until I was startled by a sign in the window of our town’s
bookstore, the Wise Owl. It was going out of business and everything was on sale.

“This can’t be. Milton Hendrickson’s retiring? Grandpa never said a thing. We have to go in and find out what’s going on.”

We left Lucky Harbor outside, his leash hooked over a small gateway post that marked the few steps of flower-lined walkway to the bookshop door.

The store was aptly named because Milton looked like an owl. He wore eyeglasses that sported round, dark frames. The only remaining white hair he had stood out in a tuft on each side of his head, much like a horned owl’s feathers.

Milton was in the back shuffling through old maps and documents. His bookstore was filled with a variety of objects in addition to books. He had at least a dozen old globes, and wooden chests on the floor filled with undecipherable old tools. The place smelled of the pleasant musk of an attic and old books.

“Mr. Hendrickson,” I called out. He was hard of hearing and refused to wear a hearing aid. “Are you really retiring?”

“Oh, hello, Ava.” He turned too fast, his shaky hands fumbling and dropping the stack of documents. The papers—all yellowed—skated around us on the dark wood floor. We helped him pick them up.

I handed back my stack. “Is anybody taking over the shop for you?”

“Some gal by the name of Jane Goodland is coming tomorrow afternoon. Driving over from Green Bay.”

“That’s good, then. We need a bookstore.”

“Oh dear. I’m sorry to disappoint you.” He exhaled a withering breath. “She said she was looking for office space. She’s a lawyer.”

“Oh no. This has to stay a bookstore.” Memories were bubbling inside me. “This is where we stopped with Grandma and Grandpa every Christmas to buy books from you. What will I do for Christmas now?”

He gave me a quirky grin. “Maybe reread those old books?”

I had to laugh. “Maybe you’re right. It’s been a while since I dug out my childhood books.” An idea popped into
my head. “Do you still have picture books and early readers?”

“Around the corner, near the floor. All half price.”

I found them and scooped them up, taking them to the register. I explained to Dillon, “For Pauline. She has a baker’s dozen of kindergartners this year and she’s always in search of Christmas gifts. This year they’ll all get a book, and of course my fudge.”

Dillon’s arms were full of what looked like old maps, architectural renderings of the outsides of buildings, and blueprints.

I asked, “Did you find something interesting?”

He laughed. “I’m hoping to find the blueprints for the Blue Heron Inn. It might help us solve the wiring issue.”

I liked the sound of “us.”

We took our bags of purchases, got takeout from the bar, and then ate our burgers and fried cheese curds on the dock in front of Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers & Belgian Fudge & Beer.

Dillon took off later with his dog to go back to the inn. He stayed in the downstairs suite. Since I couldn’t pay him much, I gave him the free room there. By Thanksgiving I’d be moving in and Dillon would find a condo.

I relieved Cody, who went to pick up his girlfriend, Bethany. She was in rehearsals for a play at the American Folklore Theater at the nearby park.

I made fudge until about eight o’clock that night, setting out pink loaves of Cinderella Pink Fudge on the white marble table near the window to cool overnight.

By the time I was done with the loafing, I thought I’d feel restored. But I wasn’t.

My head was in a stew about the knife, Fontana, and Grandma.

I went home to my cabin. It was about thirty feet across the lawn behind the fudge shop. My resident field mouse, Titus, scurried under the couch as usual when I came in. I left a nibble of fried cheese curd on the floor for him and then went to bed.

The next morning at seven thirty, back in my shop, I was
cutting the pink fudge when my phone buzzed in my apron pocket.

My mother was screeching on the other end of the line. I set the fudge cutter aside.

“Mom, calm down. I couldn’t understand a word you said.”

“I said I came over here to clean the church, and, and, and . . .”

“What church?”

“Saint Mary of the Snows.”

“But I just cleaned that yesterday.”

“I know, but you miss stuff whenever you clean. We have a princess coming. She’s going to wear white gloves and touch everything. Oh, this is horrible. I don’t want to be involved! You have to come over here. Then you can call Jordy.”

“Why, Mom? Because you found dirt?”

“No! I fell over it!”

“Mom, you’re not making any sense. You fell over dirt? The dust bunnies that I left behind can’t be that big.”

“I fell over a body!”

Chapter 5

M
y mother wouldn’t stop screaming. Florine hated anything in life being out of order. I’d been “out of order” all my life, according to her standards.

“Mom, get out of the church. Run! I’ll call Sheriff Tollefson.”

Grandpa came in the shop then with a group of fishermen and their sons—maybe six years old—grinning and carrying fishing poles.

All smiles, too, Grandpa said, “We need to find some bobbers for these young fishermen, and fudge. Got any of your Worms-in-Dirt Fudge?”

The little boys yelled their approval about eating worms.

It was one of the flavors in my Fisherman’s Catch line of fudge for men and boys. “Yeah, Gilpa, coming right up.” The dark Belgian fudge was made with wiggly candy worms in the top layer with dirt made from chocolate cookie crumbles.

While my voice sounded strong enough, my hands were shaking. I couldn’t blurt to Grandpa in front of these little boys that my mother had stumbled across a body in a church. I realized, too, that I didn’t even want to tell my grandfather. He was whistling and the happiest I’d seen him in a long time. He liked kids. Last summer he’d had to let go of his beloved but clunky boat he’d been pouring money and hours into for years. Now he hired out to our dock neighbor, Moose Lindstrom, and piloted Moose’s fancy
new, big
Super Catch I
. But Grandpa complained a lot that he didn’t have much to do, seeing as how the boat was new and ran so smoothly.

I hurried through wrapping the fudge for the boys and their fathers.

Then I ducked in the back in my tiny kitchen to call Jordy.

Not surprisingly, he screamed at me, too. “You found a what?”

I had lied and told him I’d been on my way to Mass at Saint Francis and stopped at the church. “I found a body.”

“Whose body?”

Crap, I didn’t know. Mom never said. I hadn’t asked. “I didn’t wait around to look closely.”

“Where is it?”

I’d forgotten to ask that, too. “Just come.”

After we rang off, I called Pauline as I headed out the back door of my shop.

“What time is it?” Her voice sounded muzzy, even sultry.

Jealousy pinged inside me. “Pauline, it’s going on eight o’clock. Get out of bed. I need you. My mother found a body in the church.”

“I’m not in the mood.”

I was getting upset as I walked across the lawn to my cabin. “I need you, Pauline. This is the last favor I’ll ever ask in my entire life.”

“Liar.”

“I know.”

“Okay.”

*   *   *

Pauline and I arrived at the church in my yellow pickup truck at around eight thirty that Sunday. With few cars on the roads, I had sped the whole way to Namur with Pauline covering her eyes. We’d been in a rollover accident last summer and she was still skittish of my driving.

I pulled to the side of County Road DK in front of the church. The small parking lot next to the church and behind the gravestones was taken up by the sheriff’s squad car, another car with MEDICAL
EXAMINER on the door, and an ambulance.

The front door of the church was unlocked. Pauline and I hurried inside. The church was chilly and smelled of smoke.

I hugged my Wisconsin Badger hoodie sweatshirt. Pauline wore a new, navy-and-white-striped cotton sweater over a white turtleneck and new skinny blue jeans that had designer rivets on the pockets. Since meeting John, she seemed to buy new clothes every other week. Her long black-brown hair was as loose and beautiful as a TV commercial, while my hair had been hastily gathered into a ponytail that was already drooping on the back of my neck.

The tart, bitter taste in the air made me roll my tongue around my mouth. “Mom didn’t mention a fire.”

Pauline said, “Up in the loft. Look.”

Feathers of smoke had marred the high ceiling area stretching from the loft and partway into the nave. The smoke had dulled the west wall and one of the stained glass windows.

Yellow crime scene tape crossed the bottom step of the staircase. There was no noise up there. “They must be in the basement.”

“Who do you think was murdered?”

I thought about Fontana trying to sneak back inside the church yesterday morning. “Fontana?”

“That’s wishful thinking.”

Pauline and I walked up the center aisle. With the morning sunlight doing a direct hit on the stained glass windows to our right or toward the east, the nave seemed surreal with the refracted light. The two tall angel statues had light dappling the candles on their heads, as if the candles were lit.

When we reached the kitchen to the west of the altar, we heard voices. The basement door was open.