All Fudged Up (A Candy-Coated Mystery) (3 page)

You know, it’s tough to pretend like everything is fine when you know that the coroner hauled a dead body out of your second-floor utility closet hours before. But I tried. Really I did. After all, Papa Liam would say, “Buck up, kid. It’s just a little bump in the road.”

After listening to Frances talk for hours about the seasonal pranks Joe would play on Liam, I had to wonder what Papa did in return. In fact, now that I was back home, I was sorely tempted to go into the closet and look for Papa’s trap—the one that may have killed Joe.

The thought had a shiver running down my back. How often can you say someone was killed by a dead guy? My next thought was worse. What if Papa had booby traps hidden all over the McMurphy? How could I protect the subcontractors or, worse, the customers? What was that going to do to my insurance?

I sat at my office desk and dropped my forehead into my hands, then looked into Papa’s smiling portrait. “You would never actually endanger a life, would you?”

Of course I wouldn’t really know anything until the coroner ruled on whether Joe died accidently or if he was murdered. I didn’t want to think about it. Murder wasn’t exactly helpful in getting people to reserve rooms and stay the night, nor was it any good at selling fudge.

I had just dialed the security company’s number when the power flickered and then went out. The window light in my office meant I could see easily. What I didn’t account for was the sudden emergence of an annoying beeping.

“AlertMe Security, this is Kendall, how can I help you?” came the voice on the other side of the phone.

“Hi.” I tried to ignore the incessant beeping noise. “This is Allie at the McMurphy Hotel and Fudge Shoppe. I had called last week about having a new security system installed. I was curious if there was any way I can get someone out here sooner??”

“Let me check.” She tapped on some keys and clicked the mouse twice. Funny how the phone sounds didn’t help me ignore the beeping. I swear it grew louder with every passing minute. “Ms. McMurphy?”

“Yes.” I strummed my fingers on Papa’s big old desk and looked for a source.

“The soonest we can get anyone out there will be Saturday and there will be a five-hundred-dollar overtime fee. Do you still want it installed that early?”

I thought about Joe’s dead body and my strong desire not to spend the next seven nights sleeping on Frances’s guest bed. “Yes, please, let’s have them out on Saturday.”

“Okay.” I heard her tap more keys. “The boys will be out between eight
AM
and noon. Will someone be there to let them in?”

“I’ll be here,” I said. Because I would. I lived here and only a man with a gun could pry me out. I pushed away any thought of the officer with the gorgeous blue eyes.

“Excuse me, is your power out?”

I glanced around, surprised that she knew that. “Yes, how can you tell? Is it out all over?”

“Oh, no, we have power,” she replied. “It sounds like your Wi-Fi system has a battery backup.”

“Is that what the beeping is?” I found the set of shelves with the Wi-Fi modem on it. Sure enough, there was a red light blinking in time with the beeping. “How did you know?”

She giggled. “It happened to my mom when she had Wi-Fi installed and the power went out. It about drove her nuts . . . Oh, and FYI, the beeps will start to get closer together as time goes by, so you might want to get that fixed.”

“Thanks,” I muttered, hung up, and then dialed the power company number. Unfortunately I had to go through the inane computerized menu only to be told to “please hold.”

I don’t know whose idea it was to have a battery backup beep. It was emotional blackmail, torture-camp stuff akin to the “Muzak-on-hold” playing in my ear.

Here I’d thought I’d been clever when I had Wi-Fi installed. At the time I’d envisioned crowds of tourists in the big lobby sitting around the fireplace, drinking specialty coffee and teas, noshing on McMurphy fudge while checking in with their buddies back home.

I hadn’t anticipated the electricity going out. I wondered how often it happened. It was another question to ask Papa—if he were here. The beeping battery backup’s insistent sound reminded me that Papa Liam wasn’t here and if I didn’t get the power problem fixed soon, not only would I lose a day of working on the hotel improvements, but I would be completely insane.

I glared at the flashing light. Beep. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Beep. Was this part of Joe’s prank? If so, I might have had to—

“Thank you for holding. Your call is important to us. A customer service representative will be with you shortly.”

The man was already dead. No use in wishing bad things on him. For all I knew the power outage was due to a tree limb or something. I leaned my elbows on Papa Liam’s old pine desk and thought that when it was my time to go, I hoped it wasn’t in a powerless room listening to the maddening beep of a battery backup system.

“I’m buying a generator,” I muttered and with my free hand added that task to my insanely huge to-do list. It was April 7 and, instead of being on spring break, I had three weeks to finish Papa’s renovations, hire seasonal help, and make a go of the place on my own. That is, if the blue-eyed police officer let me back onto the second floor.

It took some fancy negotiation on the part of Frances’s cousin William, but Officer Manning finally allowed me to continue with my renovations on the first floor as long as we kept them to the first floor. Which was fine as it meant I wouldn’t lose my subcontractors to their next job.

“This is Island Electric. My name is Steve. How can I help you?”

Finally! “Hi Steve, this is Allie McMurphy. I’m at the McMurphy Hotel and Fudge Shoppe and I have no power . . . again.”

“Let me look that up for you.”

I could hear his fingers clacking on his keyboard as he breathed into my ear. “It looks like your power was shut off due to the certified death of Liam McMurphy. Are you saying you’re the new owner?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I’m the new owner. I’m Allie McMurphy. I’m the one who came down to the office, showed you guys the death certificate, and had the account moved over into my name.”

“Huh.” There was more clacking. “When did you come down?”

“Monday. I spoke to Heather. She said there would be no disruption in service.”

“Did she give you a new account number?”

Scowling, I dug through the papers in the “done” section of my in-box. “I’m not sure. She did give me a copy of a paper I signed.”

“There isn’t anything I can do without an account number,” Steve warned me.

“I realize that. I have the paperwork here. Hold on.” I put down my cell phone and dug through the big pile of papers, with the annoying beep in the background pushing me. “Darn it,” I muttered. It was right here. I know I put it here. I picked up my phone. “I’ll have to get back to you as soon as I find it.”

“That’s fine. Our office hours are nine
AM
to five
PM
.”

“Right.” I glanced at the time on my laptop. It was 3:30
PM
. I pressed the OFF button, grabbed the big pile of papers, and left the incessant reminder of the battery backup. The office was on the same floor as Papa Liam’s apartment. I hadn’t gone in the apartment yet for fear Officer Manning would see it as an opening to search the room. It’s not that I had anything to hide, but I didn’t know for sure if Papa did.

I took the stairs down to the lobby. The front door was currently wide-open even though it was all of forty-five degrees outside. Mackinac Island sat in the middle of Lake Huron on the northern edge of the Lower Peninsula of the state of Michigan, accessible by boat from either the Upper or Lower Peninsula. April, while lovely, wasn’t exactly steamy.

The door was open because I had a painting crew working on the inside lobby walls and the exterior false front of the hotel. Papa’d left me money for repairs and general maintenance, along with scheduled subcontractors so I wasn’t entirely without a plan. But even with reservations from long-standing clients, I wasn’t rich by any means. If I didn’t make a go of things this season, there would be precious little leftover money for next season’s start-up.

Which is why I couldn’t let anything—not even a dead man—stop me from opening on time. Not that I wasn’t sorry for Joe and his family. It’s hard when you lose a loved one. I’d gone through it last month with Papa.

I paused for a moment on the stairs. Wait, had Joe been trying to prevent me from opening? The thought crossed my mind for a second time. The idea that Joe Jessop, or anyone for that matter, might want to see me fail made me realize I would do whatever it took not to let that happen.

The lobby, where Benny Rodriquez and his crew of three worked painting fat pink-and-white stripes on the walls, was oddly quiet.

“The power’s out,” Benny said when he saw me come down the stairs.

“I know. I’m working on it.” I took the papers over to the fudge shop area and placed them on the long stainless-steel countertop.

“My guys don’t work as fast without music,” Benny called over.

“I get it.” I waved my hand at him in a dismissing fashion. “I’m working on it.” I carefully sorted through the papers on the wide-open counter. Water account. Phone account. Cable account. Elevator inspection . . . wait. Was the inspector still coming? I would need to check into that. I made a note on the palm of my hand, then continued through the paperwork to find the hotel inspection report. Fire inspection. Health inspector for the fudge shop. Huh, that would probably have to be redone now that they found a dead body in the building.

I made a face of disgust at the thought as I flipped through papers. There was the proof the boiler was replaced and the water was at a safe temperature for showers. Papers showing the down payment I had made on the new lobby carpet.

Let’s face it. The McMurphy Hotel and Fudge Shoppe was a money pit. But it’d been in my family for one hundred and twenty years. It was important to me, as the only child of an only child, to keep the business going. If Papa Liam’s father could keep the place open through the Great Depression, then I could keep it open now. I pulled over a stainless-steel stool on rollers and sat down.

It was too bad my dad didn’t want anything to do with the old place. He’d moved us to Detroit and become an architect. Growing up with Dad designing buildings and Mom teaching English at the local high school meant that the only time I’d seen my grandparents was in the summer. My parents would bring me up to play on the island and help around the shop.

It was the influence of those long-ago summers and the stories Papa Liam would tell of the people he would meet from around the world that made me decide early on that I would see that the McMurphy Hotel and Fudge Shoppe stayed in the family.

I loved the tradition of a family-owned place and the quaint elegance of the island. I loved the gentle lake breezes, the sounds of summer children laughing, the clomp of the carriage horses drawing their guests, the ring of bicycle bells. I loved the whole Victorian feel of the island, from the colorful painted ladies that passed as cottages to the old fort with its limestone surface.

Mackinac Island didn’t allow cars. The locals were proud of the back-in-time feel. Tourists came for the day or to stay a while in one of the hotels and enjoy the ambience. They’d come to bike around the island or take the carriage rides. They’d come to visit the fort, but mostly they’d come for the fudge—Mackinac’s number one souvenir.

On Mackinac, the locals were proud of their fudge, and each shop had its own private recipes. The McMurphy recipe had been created in the tiny cook’s house of the hotel. It was a closely guarded secret that was learned by rote memorization as no one would write it down for fear of it being stolen. Did I mention that the fudge business was highly competitive?

The fudge shops on island had seasonal recipes as well as their longtime favorites. It was why I went to school to learn candy making. So that I could develop new recipes that could compete on a national, if not world, level. My hope had been to make Papa proud and to create an enduring name for the McMurphy.

The hotel itself was smaller than the large hotels like the Grand and the Island House Hotel. It also didn’t have the painted-lady architecture of some of the other bed-and-breakfasts. The appeal of the McMurphy was the fact that it sat right smack in the heart of historic downtown. People liked the charm of a small, old-fashioned hotel with a view of the harbor and the smell of fresh, homemade fudge from the shop below. My hope was that the newly remodeled lobby and the additions I planned would make the McMurphy even more appealing.

It was my love of the old building that made me vow to keep the place going, even if it meant taking another job during the winter. It was why I received degrees in both hotel management and culinary arts. I’m a planner and I planned to succeed. I also planned to spend the rest of my life on island. I wanted to raise my children here. Where they could watch the ferry boats come and go and they could play hopscotch on the sidewalk.

It was a grand plan. Unfortunately some things can’t ever be planned for . . . things like Joe Jessop expiring in my closet.

Papa used to say if you wanted something, really wanted something, you’d never stop until you got it. “No matter what you do, you can’t avoid the unexpected or it wouldn’t be . . .”

“Unexpected,” I’d say, and he’d smile at me and wink.

“You might as well problem solve toward the things you want.”

And that was what I planned to do, but first I had to get the power turned on. Then I could figure out how to get everyone in town to forget that Joe Jessop died here. Not an easy thing to do if Frances was to be believed. And one thing I figured out early on—Frances was definitely a person in the know when it came to the island and the people who lived on it.