All Fudged Up (A Candy-Coated Mystery) (7 page)

“Yep, what you got here certainly looks like a crime scene.” Officer Manning had come in about an hour after Frances called. He stood in full starched blues. His expression was serious as stone. I studied the breadth of his shoulders and the muscles in his arms. I bet he could have lifted the entire carpet up and carried it out for me.

Too bad I’d already got it cut into pieces.

Officer Manning took photographs of the floor. He used my crowbar to bring scale to the spots. My puppy wanted in on the pictures. She kept sitting beside the crowbar and looking up at him as if to figure out her best side for photos.

“I need the dog to not be in the crime-scene photos,” he said.

“Right,” I scooped her up and handed her to Frances. The puppy whined when I let her go. “You’ll get a treat when he leaves,” I whispered. She cocked her head, looked at me, rested her head against Frances’ chest as if to say that waiting would mean suffering, but she’d do it if she had to. “Good doggie,” I said.

When I turned back, Officer Manning was bent down, scrapping a bit of each stain and placing them in separate marked baggies. “I’ll send these to the lab to see what they are, but it looks like it might be old blood to me.”

“I’ve got Mike set to come in and refinish the floors tomorrow morning.” I wiped the sweat and dust off my forehead with my sleeve. With Papa’s thick leather gloves in my left hand, I studied the stains. “Will that be okay?”

“Yes.” Officer Manning stood. “I’ve got the pictures and samples. If this stain is as old as you say it is—”

“That carpet was laid in the early fifties,” Frances said. “We’ve got the documentation in the back office.”

“We do?” I asked, although I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Papa Liam documented everything. It was family tradition.

“We do.” Frances tapped her toe, her sturdy shoes making a slap-slap sound on the wood. She gave me an impatient glance as if I should not be questioning her in front of the cops. Perhaps she was right.

Officer Manning wrote in his report book. “Then there’s no reason not to refinish the floors.” He ripped off a piece of paper and handed it to me. “Here’s the case number and my card. Be careful. Feel free to call me if anything else comes up.”

“Right, okay.” I was caught by his baby-blue eyes. They were ringed with black lashes. Why was it when blue-eyed men wore blue it made them even more attractive? My eyes, on the contrary, were hazel, a blah mix of muddied green and brown. There wasn’t really a right color to make anything in them pop.

I must have stared a second too long because he smiled and I swear gave me a tiny wink. The heat of embarrassment rushed up my cheeks and I stepped toward the door. “Thanks for coming out. We wanted to make sure we could continue with the remodel.”

He stepped outside and put on his hat. “The place is looking good. When are you planning on your open house?”

“Excuse me?”

“I understand you’re putting the hotel up for sale.” He shrugged one broad shoulder. “As a local, I’m curious whenever a business changes hands, especially one that’s been in a family this long.”

“I’m not selling,” I stated. “I don’t know where everyone is getting that idea.”

“Huh, really?”

“Really.” I placed my hands on my hips. “We’re opening in three weeks, like always. In fact we plan a grand reopening over Memorial Day weekend. I’ve got a full booking. Isn’t that right, Frances?”

Frances studied the spots on the floor. “It’s true.”

“Well, then, best of luck to you, Ms. McMurphy.” He tipped his hat.

“Thank you.” I felt only slightly mollified. I wondered if he was patronizing me. “If anyone asks, tell them I’m not selling. Okay? The McMurphys are here to stay.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” He said it with that flat cop seriousness. It didn’t make me feel any better.

“Call us with the test results,” Frances demanded. “I’m dying to know what caused those stains.”

“Will do.” He grabbed his bike from the rack and rode off.

“Why does everyone think I’m selling?” I asked as I watched him ride off.

“Maybe because you’re the first girl to inherit the place,” Frances said with a shrug. She held the door for me. “Or maybe because your dad swore to everyone he wasn’t coming back to the island. People have always assumed that meant your granddad would be the last.”

“They assumed wrong.” I stepped into the lobby and listened to the echo of my voice. Hardwood floors were pretty but failed to absorb the sound like wall-to-wall carpet. I glanced at the stains. “Do you really think those stains are blood?”

“It might be to our advantage if they are blood stains.” Frances handed me the pup and pulled her lilac-colored coat off the rack. “Think about it. If it’s blood, we could say the place is haunted.”

I made a face. “Haunted?”

“It sells rooms.” She set her hat on her hair and adjusted it in front of the mirror. “Our reservations are down this year. Everyone’s waiting to see what the new management does. Having the place declared haunted like the Island House might help our business.”

“We are not haunted.” I put the dog down, knelt, and pulled at the last piece of carpet, revealing 150-year-old floors that didn’t need too much refinishing if you ignored the big stains and the trail near the door.

“How do you know?”

“Come on, all those years I spent summers here as a kid, I’d know. Besides, Papa Liam was such a storyteller, if there were ghosts in the hotel he’d have told me . . . happily . . . with scary elaboration and gusto.”

“Hmm, well, I suppose there’s some truth in that. Liam loved to tell a good story.” Frances stopped in the doorway and eyed my growing pile of oddly shaped but manageable rolls of carpet. “What are you going to do with all that?”

“I’ll haul it out to the Dumpster.” I tore up another hunk of carpet and sliced it along the width, then rolled it up. “They have to take it if it fits in the Dumpster, right?”

Frances raised her right eyebrow and twitched her mouth. “I guess you’ll find out.”

It occurred to me suddenly that Frances was a townie and could help me identify people. “Wait!” I said as she turned to leave. I hurried over to pick up my cell phone from the counter. “Before you go, I wanted to know if you can tell me who this is.”

“Who what is?”

“The man in this photo I took.” I thumbed through my phone’s photos and found the one I surreptitiously took at the power office after Susan Goodfoot had gotten up. I had taken it of Pete Thompson and the man wearing the polo shirt. They left the power office together and stood out on the street talking. I figured I needed to start sorting out who belonged on island and who were tourists if I ever hoped to fit in around here.

Frances was my ace in the hole. She could tell me who each and every person on island was. Once I knew everyone’s names, they had to accept me. Right?

“What are you doing taking pictures of strangers?” Both of Frances’s eyebrows rose stiffly over her red glasses.

“I need to get to know the regulars on island.” I stepped toward her and showed her the photo. “Now, I know this is Pete Thompson. Who’s the man he’s talking to?”

Frances took the phone from me and studied the picture through the bifocals in her glasses. “Well, look at that. That’s Emerson Todd. I heard he was back on island.”

“Who’s Emerson Todd?” I ran the name through my mind a few times to try to memorize it for future reference.

“Why, his great-grandma and -granddad owned and ran the Shangri-La Resort. It was one of the biggest attractions here on island. That was back when rich families would come up from Chicago and Detroit to vacation here and get away from the city heat. They made a lot of money, but never really lived on island.” She handed me my phone. “The Todds were RBs from Chicago. They sold the Shangri-La in the early seventies when air-conditioning became popular and family resorts went out. The family still has a cabin here. I heard tell the old lady died and Emerson lost all the family money when the real-estate bubble burst. He must be spending the summer on island.”

I studied the picture as Frances left for the day. “Emerson Todd.” The name sounded familiar. Maybe he’d come to the fudge shop before. I’d have to check Papa’s scrapbooks.

My memories of summers on island didn’t contain too many kids. I’d spent a great deal of time with my grandparents and their friends. Between helping with the McMurphy, our day-trip picnics around island, and evenings playing cards, there wasn’t much time for locals my own age. In fact I’d grown up believing only old people lived here.

I knew now that keeping the island going took a lot of young people. My perceptions had been wrong. I glanced at the stains on the floor. Perhaps it didn’t hurt to know the old people. They remembered things that most people forgot. I decided to schedule a trip to the library. Someone I know might remember what happened all those years ago. At the very least it might be listed in the newspaper.

Maybe Frances was right. Maybe it would help to be not only a historic hotel but a haunted one as well.

Butter an 8” × 8” × 2” pan. Line with wax paper or plastic wrap. Drain pineapple, reserving juice. Combine pineapple juice, rum, and coconut milk—mix well. Using a double boiler fill
of the bottom pan with water and heat on medium high until the water is boiling. Then you can turn the heat down to low and in the top section, melt chocolate, butter, and sweetened condensed milk until smooth. Be careful not to burn. Add liquid 1 tablespoon at a time, stirring after each. (Use more or less to your taste.)

Remove from heat. Add crushed pineapple (I add only half the can) and coconut. Pour into pan. Cool. Tip: let cool outside of the refrigerator for 30 minutes so that no condensation mars the top. Refrigerate overnight. Remove from pan. Cut into pieces. Store in a covered container.

“How can you not know how to use a microfiche?” asked the library volunteer with the cantankerous scowl and the impatient glint in his eyes. “What kind of education are they giving young people today?”

“Well, Mr. Devaney.” I used the name from his name tag. “We use the Internet.”

“And what happens when the Internet fails? Ignorant kids, I tell you.” He was crabby, but it didn’t keep him from rolling up his thick brown cardigan sleeves, revealing competent strong forearms, and threading the machine with the newspaper reel. Mr. Devaney might have been six foot tall when he was young, but now he leaned forward a bit and stood five foot ten. He had a bald head with gray hair around the sides. He wore corduroy pants in a darker brown than his sweater and a nice checkered dress shirt under the sweater. I think it was his shoes that gave him away. They were well-worn brown dress shoes. The kind you slip your feet into. The kind I’d seen a million times where my mom worked.

“If I had to guess, I’d guess you’re a high school teacher. Am I right, Mr. D? English, maybe?”

His mouth made a thin line of disapproval. “History.”

“Ah.”

“And I was a high school teacher. I’m retired now. That’s why I can volunteer here on a Monday afternoon.” He finished fixing the machine and hit the light button. “Now, you move the handle. Note it goes faster when you crank faster and slows down when you go slower.”

“Thanks.”

He grumbled and put his big hands in his pockets. “I’m at the desk if you need me. At least that’s what they tell me I’m supposed to say. Don’t ask me anything about the computers. I’d rather stab myself in the eye with a fork than figure out one of those plagiarism machines.”

“Okay.” I looked at the microfiche, and then something occurred to me. “Excuse me.”

He turned toward me and narrowed his eyes, giving me a look that definitely said why-are-you-bothering-me-again. I tried not to laugh. “Listen, you’ve lived here on island a while.”

“Now how the heck do you know that?” he asked. “I said I was retired. I could have moved here this season.”

“Well, if you lived and taught here on island,” I pressed on, “you wouldn’t happen to know anyone who’s looking for a job, would you?”

“Now that’s a stupid question. In this economy everyone’s looking for a job.”

He had me there. I swallowed and tried again. “I’m looking for a new handyman. You know, someone who’s really good at fixing things.”

“What’d you do, buy one of those fixer-upper cabins? Fool. Sell it back while you still can.”

I did smile then. “No, I’m Allie McMurphy. I’m the new owner of the historic McMurphy Hotel and Fudge Shoppe downtown.”

“Didn’t that place have a handyman?”

“When he decides to come to work, which isn’t often.”

“Then it’s your own fault you don’t have one, now isn’t it?” Mr. Delaney turned away. “Fire him and put up a sign on the library bulletin board.”

“He’s my Papa’s friend.” I had to say it. “Besides, I can’t fire someone I never see.” The old guy kept going. I looked around. One of the other ladies glared at me. I turned back to the microfiche. Putting a sign up was probably a good idea. I’d put one up at the grocery store as well.

Now then, searching the police blotters from the weekly newspaper in the early 1950s for any mention of our family hotel or a murder was a two-hour exercise in futility. The closest I got was a neighborhood column verifying that the hotel installed the newest in wall-to-wall carpeting straight from Georgia. I knew from experience that the cotton carpet fibers didn’t hold up well. Papa had fixed that by tossing a wide variety of rugs on top.

Thank goodness whoever had had the place built had installed good hardwood floors. It wasn’t always the case.

I dug deeper, searching for any news on my family. Up popped a news article about two boys finding some wine bottles washed up on shore. The picture with the story was familiar. It was Papa Liam when he was young. The story was interesting because the find occurred during the Prohibition era. The headline read:
Boys discover French wine bottles.
The article went on to say that the bottles were disposed of per protocol. After that, the trail went cold.

I got up, stretched, and carefully took the microfiche film off the machine and placed it in the box. I dropped the boxes off at the volunteer desk. Mr. Delaney was no longer there. I guess his shift was up. Too bad, I would have liked to know his first name. It would have been one more person I’d know on the street and one step closer to being a true local.

I hitched my purse up on my shoulder and stepped out into the street. It was a nice walk back to the hotel. Today I wore my favorite jeans and a white peasant blouse under my blue spring jacket. I figured Mike and his crew would be done with the refinishing by now. The wind blew cold against my back. The light jacket I wore seemed ridiculous now. I’d forgotten how far north Mackinac was. The surrounding lake tempered the weather, but that didn’t mean there’d be spring flowers in April. The scent of sea and fudge filled the air as I walked downtown.

I had competitors who were open year-round. It was something I considered. Papa had said he was fine with the May-to-September season. It gave him time to be retired. Still, I had to wonder how he could afford it. Then again, he did have a nearly seventy-year-old carpet on the lobby floor and a handyman who showed up so rarely that Papa had done most of the work himself.

I didn’t have time for that. What I wanted to do was make fudge. I glanced in the window of the Hay’s Candy Shoppe. There the baker wore a full white chef’s suit and apron as he chopped up chocolate and nuts for the latest batch. I had to go in. I’d spent the last two years at culinary school during the day and perfecting my candy-making techniques at night, but I’d never worked in front of an audience. This was fudge making as show. I realized I had some things to learn.

Their fudge master chopped and smiled and dished up chocolate as if he were a god and the people inside were drawn to his smile and his flashing green eyes. What did it matter if he was a little chubby? With the smell of heaven around him he was every girl’s dream. How was I going to compete with that?

I watched as he poured the fudge on the marble cooling table and stirred it with a sharp long-handled spatula. “The table cools the fudge and the mixing adds air to it—that way it keeps its creaminess as it cools,” he said. He tossed a ribbon of fudge in the air and the crowd reacted with oohs and aahs sort of like when a pizza man tosses a pizza crust. “This is a crucial step,” he went on. “A good fudge maker knows when the fudge is ready to fold by the color and texture.” He scraped off the long-handled scraper with a short-handled one that was wider. Then he meticulously scraped and folded the candy, creating the long loaf in the middle of the table. It was that loaf that would eventually be sliced into pieces and placed in boxes and on trays.

I bought a pound of this year’s flavor and walked out, thinking hard. I tried to remember Papa Liam as a master fudge maker. It was what he was known for after all. The smell of the candy shop reminded me of being a little girl, wearing a big cotton apron with pink-and-white stripes, a tiny chef’s hat, and watching Papa work his magic on the candy he poured out onto the marble counter. He would tell stories while he shifted it with a silver blade and cooled it down before cutting it and placing the fudge ever so beautifully in the trays in the big glass counter.

Papa made fudge making an event. Could I do the same?

A tear of nostalgia came to my eyes and I blinked it away. I was usually more practical than that. I don’t know what had gotten into me.

“Your grandfather would have a fit seeing you with a Hay’s Candy box in your hand.” Mabel Showorthy power walked by. Today she wore a peacock-blue velour tracksuit and her trademark white shoes. Her hand weights were white to match.

“Hello, Mabel.” I put my chin up. “Papa knew it was good to check out the competition.”

She must have done a quick turn because suddenly she was beside me. “I heard you found blood stains under the carpet in your hotel lobby.”

I knit my eyebrows together. “Where’d you hear that?”

She shrugged. Her tiny legs took two strides to every one of mine. “Word gets around. Are you going to sell the place now?”

“What? No. Why would I?”

“Well.” She shrugged. “There is some implication that perhaps someone in your family murdered someone. That can’t be a good thing to bring in customers.”

I sped up my pace to mess with her. She now took three strides to every one of mine. “No one in my family killed anyone. In fact we don’t even know if the stains are blood until the forensic tests come back.”

“Huh, I heard you brought Mike Proctor and his crew in as soon as possible to refinish the floors and hide the evidence.”

That stopped me. “What?”

She missed me by two strides and had to back up. “Are you saying you didn’t rush to refinish the floors and hide the evidence?”

“I am not covering evidence. I have Officer Manning’s permission to refinish the floors.” I put my hands on my hips. The fudge box dangled in its bag on my wrist. “The season starts in a few weeks.”

She peered at me thoughtfully. “No cover-up?”

“No cover-up.”

“Darn.” Her mouth made a thin line. “I had a hundred dollars on a cover-up. Bill’ll be mad. He had a hundred that Liam killed someone.”

I shook my head and took off. The old folks were betting on a murder? “Weren’t you around the year that carpet was put down?”

“Certainly,” Mabel said with a firm nod. “I remember the big hoopla about the cotton wall-to-wall carpet shipped up from Georgia.”

“Then if someone was murdered around that time—and their murder unsolved—surely you would remember it.”

“Well, now I was only in high school . . .”

“Okay, when was the last murder on island?”

“1973, I believe. Ken Sutton killed his brother Harold over a pretty tourist. Both boys were drinking at the time and Ken swore he didn’t mean to do it. Do you know what the sad part was?”

“No.” I shook my head.

“Neither one of those boys got the girl. She ran off with one of the RBs up from Detroit.”

“RBs?” It was the second time I’d heard that reference.

“You know, Rich Bastar—it doesn’t matter. The important part is she ran off with a tourist.”

“Hmmm, it certainly seems to me if you remember that kind of detail from a murder that happened in 1973, then you would remember, at least vaguely, anyone being murdered the year the carpet was put down.”

Mabel’s fast walk took a small hitch. “You might be right.”

I felt vindicated. “Which means no one in my family is a murderer or you would have figured it out by now.”

Mabel pursed her lips and swung her weight-filled hands. “Maybe no one knows about the murder,” she suggested. “Maybe the victim went missing and was never reported. There were a lot of tourists that season. I’d be hard-pressed to know if they all got off island.”

“I checked the papers from that time period. No one reported anything more than a purse snatching and a dispute over a fence line.”

“Something happened in that lobby.” Mabel pointed at the McMurphy’s door. “And there’s a police report to prove it.”

“Good-bye, Mabel.” I waved my fingers at her. “Enjoy your workout.”

“I always do.” She lifted her chin in the air and power walked off.

I stepped into the lobby and onto a large sheet of brown paper. The room was quiet and smelled of floor finish and new paint. The first floor of the hotel consisted of a large lobby with a brick fireplace against one wall. The wide painted stripes were pale enough to barely be noticed. There was plenty of dark woodwork surrounding the front windows and the ten-foot ceilings, drawing the eye toward the receptionist desk. Behind the desk were the old wood cubbies from when the hotel was first built, one for every room. Even though we now had modern keys, the original skeleton keys still hung by the corresponding cubbies as decoration and a remembrance of simpler times.

The receptionist desk was snug against a staircase. In the center of the lobby stood the double elevators. They were the old-fashioned kind with wire metal accordion doors on the inside. To my right was a half wall that enclosed the fudge shop area, allowing the sights and smells of the shop to flow into the lobby, inviting people to stay. The hope was the longer they stayed, the more candy they would buy. I also installed a coffee bar against the matching stairway on the opposite side of the room from the receptionist desk. There would be free coffee for guests and a barista for fudge shop customers or anyone who wanted a drink.

My idea was to create a space where people would gather for free Wi-Fi, and purchase coffee and fudge. It was the candy and atmosphere that brought people to Mackinac Island. I wanted the McMurphy to become a place that made them want to linger.

The fudge shop itself continued the pale pink-and-white color scheme. Against the wall were the old cabinets and counters where I would work. It had a galley-kitchen feel. Unlike the Hay Candy Shop, where they had two candy makers and a staff to sell the candy, I was the sole candy maker. My kitchen was smaller, my presentation would be less dramatic, but I still had the marble table in full view where I would cool and scrape the fudge and fold in amazing fresh ingredients before my customers’ eyes.

In front of that was the ancient original glass cabinet that held the trays of fudge and on the edge stood the old-time cash register. Papa had spent money to put up-to-date electronics into the gleaming old machine. The outside was for looks, but the inside was pure twenty-first-century magic. We even had a card swipe for debit and credit cards. I paid a hefty fee for the privilege but it kept the customers happy.

The glass walls and front windows held shelves that also contained trays for fresh fudge. These were rotated out when the sun came in the window, and replaced with a sign that said “free smells inside.”