All Fudged Up (A Candy-Coated Mystery) (10 page)

Getting rid of Papa’s stuff meant there was more room for Mal’s crate upstairs. Two days ago, I had promised to crate train the puppy. It seems that bichons were difficult to house train even with a crate, but the crate helped. From what I read, crate-trained puppies loved their crates. It became their safe place. I liked the idea of a safe haven for Mal.

Before too long there would be strangers coming and going in the hotel. Mal would need a place she knew would be hers and hers alone.

I had stuffed a soft blanket in the back of the crate and added a water bottle that hung to the side. I squatted down and let her in and out of the crate. “Good baby,” I cooed.

Mal answered by wagging her tail and licking my face. I picked her up. “Let’s go get your halter. You’ll need to go out and go potty.”

I picked her up and got her halter and leash from the hall tree where it hung. I liked walking her with a halter. It seemed so cruel to walk her by the neck when she had such a sturdy chest. Besides, if trouble flared I could pick her up quickly with the halter.

Maybe after we went for our walk it would be a good night to take some time off and play with a fudge recipe in my own kitchen.

My keys rested in the small bowl that sat on the antique hall table beside the door. The bowl was dark, with hand-painted roses on the border. Above it an oval mirror hung from the wall. Beside it was a carved coat rack and a small umbrella holder.

It had taken me nearly two days but I had sorted the boxes of Papa’s collections in the living room. Half had gone to the Goodwill in St. Ignace. The other half currently sat at the Island Antique and Curio Shop on Market Street. Joy Gelger ran the shop and had been excited to look through Papa’s stuff. If she sold anything she got 30 percent of the price. I wasn’t here to make money on Papa’s treasures, only to find them good homes.

Mal licked my hand as I pulled her halter and leash off the coat tree where they hung. The newly cleared floor of the apartment was covered in forty-year-old wall-to-wall carpet. It was green and textured with a pattern that must have resembled leaves at some point. Currently it was worn to nubbins and smelled of old people.

I kind of liked that the place still smelled like Papa. I imagined the wallpaper carried the lingering scent of his “fine” cigars.

“I miss you, Papa,” I whispered. “This would be so much easier if you were here. I bet you could tell me about the stains under the carpet and who, if anyone, might have died there.”

I suppose I was being silly and morose. It was probably something silly like Papa and his friends butchering a deer in the lobby before Grammy came home and asked them what they thought they were doing. I smiled at that thought and put Mal’s halter on her.

“So, little pup . . . back door or front?” I asked her. She blinked up at me with her black button eyes, her tail wagging. “You’re right, we did close up the front . . . Back door it is.”

The problem with the fire escape is that I imagined the metal flooring was difficult for her to walk on. Not to mention climbing the bottom ladder with a puppy in my hand. It worked for now, but what happened when she got a little bigger? Maybe I should have someone come out and bid on putting stairs to the back.

It was for certain that the ladder wasn’t keeping anyone out.

The walk didn’t take long as a chill had whipped up off the lake and the sun had grown low on the horizon. I walked her down the alley and around the block for good measure. What I discovered was that walking a dog gave people an excuse to talk to you. I met three other dog walkers and only two of them wore Jessop purple. The third was a tourist and had no idea who I was or who Joe Jessop was. It made me look forward to the start of the season.

We got back inside and I took off Mal’s harness and leash. I poured her some kibble.

I had taken seven boxes to the antique store, but I knew Papa had a bunch of things stored in the basement, too. I hadn’t had the courage to go down there yet. It was dark and made of stone and mortar and had never been my favorite place to go. So far I’d only gone down there with the furnace and air-conditioning guy for the season checkup. It was then that I noted the place needed to be cleaned out as well.

Maybe I should consider maintaining the May-to-September season like Papa. It would give me time to set the rest of the hotel to rights. A handful of the more successful hotels were open year-round and certainly so were the fudge shops. I had hoped to do the same to boost revenue. Still, it was a lot for one person—especially a person who had yet to work an entire season.

I imagined the off-season clientele were different. The ferries didn’t run and the only way on and off island was by plane—unless Lake Huron froze. Then for a few days the locals would build an ice bridge and the brave would snowmobile back and forth to the mainland.

Mal followed me back and forth as I went from the kitchen to my bedroom and back into the tiny kitchen. She stumbled over her own feet on the wood floor in the kitchen. I plucked a white apron from the bar of hooks I’d attached to the wall. The box of fudge sat near the sink. Today’s flavor was orange walnut. I’d spent months perfecting my chocolate varieties. Today I was going to try my hand at making a more exotic fudge. Maybe white chocolate as a base and butter pecan flavor.

That was my intent anyway until a terrible noise came from downstairs. It sounded like someone tried to break down the house. Mal jumped and barked at the front door to the apartment. The sound was surprising as she had been such a quiet dog up until now. Her barking didn’t stop the downstairs sounds. I grabbed the puppy in one hand and my phone in the other. I snagged Rex’s card from where I’d attached it to the fridge with two magnets and dialed his number.

“Manning.” his voice sounded comforting on the phone.

In the meantime, I’d grabbed the large metal bar that I used to keep hot fudge from running off the marble table. After all, I needed a bigger weapon than a six-pound puppy. I could feel her growl and cry in my hand. “Um, Rex, this is Allie McMurphy. I’m in my apartment and it sounds like someone’s breaking in downstairs. Could you come over or send someone?”

“Didn’t you install a security system?”

“Yes.” Another loud crash sounded from below. “It hasn’t gone off yet.” I gripped the metal bar hard. “Can you hurry?”

“I’ll be right over.” I heard him rustle about as if grabbing his coat and hopefully his firearm. “Why don’t you stay on the phone with me?”

“Sounds like a plan.” I tiptoed to my door and put my ear to it. I didn’t hear anything but the whimpers Mal made as she sniffed the door. “Are there a lot of break-ins on island?” I asked. I certainly didn’t remember there being any when I was a kid.

“Not many,” he admitted. “None around unopened fudge shops. You don’t have any cash on the premises, do you?”

“No, nothing more than what I keep in my wallet.”

“Hmm, are you sure you heard something?”

That got my chin up. “Of course I heard something. I’ve heard it again since we’ve been on the phone.”

“Okay, don’t get defensive. I had to check. With all the talk about town regarding the crime scene you uncovered, I wanted to make sure your imagination wasn’t running away from you.”

“Gee thanks,” I muttered. “My imagination is pretty darn loud. Listen, I’m going to put you on speaker and go down and unlock the door for you.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’m on my way over. Take the dog with you. I should get there by the time you get down.”

I hit the speaker button on my cell phone. I had thought about getting a land line, but it was an expense I didn’t think I needed. My cell phone generally got good reception and thank goodness. Right now a land line would have been useless. “Can you hear me?” I asked.

“Sure can.”

“Good.” I unlocked my door and checked the foyer. Whoever broke in had not made their way up to the office yet. Either they were looking for something specific or they didn’t know the office was on the third floor. And, if they didn’t know that, then they weren’t local.

I twisted the handle on the office door to make sure Mal and I were alone. It was locked. “No one’s in the office,” I told Rex. “The door’s still locked. I’m going down.”

“Don’t try to search the place without me,” he warned. “Make your way slowly down the stairs.”

“Okay.” I tucked Mal into the large pocket at the base of my apron, then used my cell phone as a lamp and held it out in front of me. I gripped the steel rod like a baseball bat and made it down to the second floor before I heard another crash in the distance.

“I heard that,” Officer Manning said over my phone speaker. “Don’t follow it. Let’s get you out of there. Okay?”

“Sure.” The last thing I wanted was to be one of those silly horror flick girls who goes into the basement alone when everyone knows the killer is down there.

My heartbeat sped up. It pounded in my ears. My hands shook a little as I hurried down the stairs. When I reached the first floor I hit the light switches at the bottom of the stairs. The lobby and fudge shop leapt into full light. It took me a moment to focus. Whoever was in the house must have frozen when the lights came on. I held my breath but couldn’t hear anything other than the beating of my heart. “Officer Manning is on his way over,” I shouted. “Whoever you are, I’d get the heck out now.”

“Here I thought we’d catch them in the act,” Rex groused from my cell phone.

“Yes, well, it’s all good and well for you to catch them in the act. Not quite as good if I run into them on the way to letting you inside. It’s not like Mal is big enough to deter them.”

At the sound of her name, the puppy popped her head up out of the apron pocket. I hurried to the front door and felt a jolt of surprise when a large, dark shadow-figure loomed at the door. “Holy crap!” I pressed my hand against my chest.

“It’s me.” Rex waved his hands. He leaned into the light, exposing his face. “Open the door.”

“Yeah, okay.” Right, I wasn’t spooked. Ha! My body felt like it had been hit with a live wire. It took careful thought and coordination to put down the metal rod and unlock the front door.

Rex stepped inside. He wore a long duster coat, and no hat. His tough-guy shaved head gleamed in the lamplight.

“Are you all right?” He stepped over the threshold.

“Yes.” I maneuvered Mal and myself between him and the door. That way if someone were to run out they’d get him first. What can I say, he was the big policeman. I was only a candy maker from Chicago. “You’re not in uniform.”

“My shift was over for the day.” He pulled out his flashlight and checked the fudge shop.

I stood in the open doorway and watched. “I’m sorry. I suppose I should have called 9-1-1 instead.”

“It’s all right. They would have called me anyway.” He glanced at me with his piercing blue eyes. “I’m on call tonight.”

“Oh, good . . . well, good for me anyway.” I noticed that his duster was unbuttoned. He had on jeans and a tight-fitting dark T-shirt that showed off his chest. He wore his gun belt on his hips along with a nice-sized pistol.

I followed him like a scared puppy as he checked all the corners of the lobby, testing the windows to ensure they were locked. I clutched the metal rod in my hand. Mal rode in my pocket like a baby joey.

“Are you here by yourself?”

“Yes,” I said as I followed him to the back bathrooms and walk-in utility closet. “I’m advertising for help and my friend Jennifer is coming up for the summer. But for now it’s only me and the puppy.”

He glanced at Mal and back at me. “The dog has some growing up to do before she counts as protection.”

“I know,” I muttered. “The whole staff needs growing up. I need a housekeeper, a day clerk, a handyman, and a couple of kids to work the coffee bar and cash register.”

“A handyman? What happened to Colin?”

I swallowed at the curiosity in his eyes. “I fired him. He hasn’t shown up to work in weeks.” I stopped short. “You don’t think Colin’s dead, do you?”

Rex shrugged. “If he knows you’ve fired him, it’s more likely he might be the one trying to vandalize you.”

The thought made me shiver. Colin seemed like a nice guy who was down on his luck. Not the kind of psycho who might come in with a gun and kill you.

A loud screeching metal sound followed by a bang came from behind the basement door. I might have screamed a little. I’m not sure, but what I was sure of was that I had my hands full of the back of Officer Manning’s duster as I was quick to leap and put him between me and the basement.

His gun was out of the belt and in his hand in the blink of an eye. “Stay here,” he ordered and slashed his free hand through the air as if commanding a dog.

“I intend to.” I pretended it was Mal he had barked out an order to as I worked to uncurl my fingers from his coat. Rex waited for me to take a step back and out of the line of sight from the door. Then he opened it, flipped on the light switch, and disappeared down the steep steps into the musty scent of danger below.

Okay, it gets kind of scary being upstairs alone while the big strong man with the gun disappears downstairs into the darkness. I counted to thirty. Nothing.

“Hello?” I said to the darkness. To be clear, there was a lightbulb near the stairs, but the hotel was built before electricity. The basement was little more than a couple-room cellar with lightbulbs strung along the rafters. “Rex?”

I bit my bottom lip and listened intently. “Don’t make me come down there.”

“I said stay,” echoed up the stairs in a stage whisper. The lights came on and I heard footfalls and then nothing.

Rex popped into my line of view, startling me. “It’s clear.”

“Now I don’t believe that,” I said and to prove it I went down the stairs. “I heard something and so did you.”

“No one’s here,” he said and pointed his flashlight into the dark corners. “It might just be rats.”

“I do not have rats,” I insisted. I tucked Mal under my left arm and held my metal bar in my right hand. The basement was damp and smelled of age and mildew. The walls were made of stone and mortar. The floor was packed dirt. If I remembered correctly there were two rooms and a tiny coal bin. Next to the coal bin was the old oil tank that Papa had replaced with a modern boiler system that ran heat through pipes.

“How do you know you don’t have rats?” Rex asked. He poked his head into the back room.

“I would know if the McMurphy had rats,” I said. “They leave their droppings. Besides, it’s been fifty years since we stored food down here. There’s nothing for them to eat.”

“Except wiring and insulation and floorboards,” Rex said.

“They better not eat my wiring.” I marched into the second room and yanked the light fixture pull cord, throwing the room into shadow.

“I thought you didn’t have rats,” he teased me. He crossed his arms over his chest and studied me.

I felt a little silly with a puppy tucked under my arm and a metal fudge turner in my hand. “I don’t.”

“How can you tell?” he asked as he waved his light over the stacks and rows of boxes and shelves filled with parts and gadgets.

“The same way you can tell no one is down here but us,” I said.

There was a terrible scraping noise coming from the coal bin and I might have squealed a little. All I know is that I somehow flew across the room because one minute I was under the dangling light and the next I practically climbed up on Officer Manning’s shoulders.

He had his arm around my waist and his gun pointed at the coal bin. “Who’s there?” he shouted. “Come out with your hands up.”

“Did you really say that?” I asked. It was a feat the way my hands clutched him and the puppy and the weapon without dropping anything.

“Of course, I said that.” He frowned at me. “I meant it,” he said to the coal bin. “Come out now or I’m coming in.”

“You can’t go in,” I whispered.

“Why the hell not?”

“Because then I have to go in and I’m not going in there.”

“Then stay out here.”

“Oh, no, I’m not staying out here, either.”

There was another long loud scraping sound of metal against metal or rock. Rex leapt forward, tossed the door open with his gun drawn and his flashlight filling the room. “I said, show yourself with your hands in the air.”

My heart pounded in my throat. His tone was so authoritative that I found myself raising my hands. Luckily I stopped before he saw me.

Rex hit the middle of the tiny walk-in space and turned on the light. The room had been built to hold enough coal to fuel the furnace. It had a twelve-by-twelve-inch opening in the wall where the coal wagon would pull up and slide coal down inside. That chute had been boarded up by Papa sometime in the fifties.

Now the tiny room was populated with a series of metal shelves. There was a faint aroma of grapes and yeast. Papa had been into making his own wine. The old bottles rested on their sides, dust covering the handmade labels.

“Someone was in here,” Rex said. His flashlight showed where two shelves had been moved from the wall that butted up against the Old Tyme Photography shop next door.

The idea made my skin crawl. “Do you think it was Joe’s killer?” I asked and peered over Rex’s shoulder at the heavy shelving. “Whoever it was had to be pretty big. Those shelves look like they weigh a ton.”

“It could have been more than one,” Rex said as he tried to move the shelves, but they didn’t budge.

Mal sniffed the air from her vantage point under my arm, and then she growled. The sound was so unexpected it had the hair on the back of my neck standing up. “Mal!”

She barked. It was a loud, ear-piercing sound that had Rex staring at her. I put my hand over her mouth to stop her. She growled.

“What is it, girl?” Rex asked.

“I think she feels my fear,” I said. “There’s no one here. There’s no room for them behind those shelves.” There was only six inches of air between the shelves and the rock wall that was the basement.

Rex shone his flashlight behind the shelves, throwing the shadows into the light. “I don’t like it,” he said.

“One thing’s for sure,” I said. “Rats did not move those shelves.”

“True,” he said and holstered his gun. “Did your grandfather ever tell you about a secret passage down here?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I’m sure he would have, too. He loved to tell ghost stories and such. I can’t imagine he’d keep something as cool as a secret passage from me. But I tell you what, I can call my dad and see if he knows of any.”

“That would be a good idea,” Rex said. “In the meantime, I suggest we board up this door for tonight and check it out in the morning.”

“Papa Liam kept his nails and tools near the stairs. I have no idea where I’d find boards.”

“Maybe you should spend the night with Frances,” he suggested.

I stopped short and sighed. “No.”

“Seriously, Allie.” He tugged me by the elbow until I faced him. “Someone was in your house.”

“I know,” I said. “But it’s a hotel. I’m sort of used to someone being in the house. I’ll lock my doors. Besides, I’m the murder suspect, right? So shouldn’t they be afraid of me?”

“How do you know it isn’t someone looking for revenge?”

“Then I’ll need police protection,” I quipped. “But I know, there’s little you can do if there’s no evidence of a crime.”

“Allie—”

“I’ll keep my phone handy,” I promised. “As long as you help me board up the coal bin, I’ll be fine.”

“Fine.”

“Good,” I said. “By the way, you wouldn’t happen to know when Joe’s memorial is, do you?”

“We released the body yesterday.” He moved some boxes. “Trent said the funeral is set for tomorrow at noon. Why did you want to know?”

“I wanted to go, you know, to show my community support.”

“If I were you, I’d stick to watching over your remodel.” He pulled two heavy boards out from behind a stack of boxes. “The Jessops have enough grief without you there to cause a scene. Where are the nails and tools?”

“Here.” I handed him a small glass jar full of nails from Papa’s workbench. “I would not cause any trouble,” I said and dug a hammer out of the workbench drawer. “Like I said, I don’t have anything against the Jessops. What happened between Papa Liam and Joe was between them. If I go to the funeral, then my actions speak louder than my words. No one believes my protests anyway.”

“Don’t do it, Allie,” he said as he set the board up against the door and nailed it shut. “Trust me. You at Joe’s funeral is bad news.”

“Let’s just agree to disagree,” I said and hugged Mal to my chest. “I for one think it’s important that I go. Besides, I have a handful of purple ribbons. It will be nice to have a place to wear them.”

Rex hammered the boards across the door, ensuring that no one could get in or out. “Why don’t you take a casserole over there while you’re at it,” he muttered.

“Great idea,” I said. “I may do just that.”