First-Degree Fudge: A Fudge Shop Mystery (27 page)

S
hards of glass exploded between Isabelle and me. My back slammed onto the hard dirt floor, my head just missing the doorjamb.

I wriggled up on my elbows in a scramble to run, then paused in shock. Not a yard from me, Isabelle lay bleeding with a big chunk of broken glass unicorn stuck in her neck.

The bullet had evidently hit the unicorn, shattering it, sending parts sailing.

I kicked the dropped pistol out of the room and heard it skitter in circles across the basement’s tiled floor.

I was prepared to have to sit on Isabelle to subdue her, but she was in so much panic waving her arms over the chunk of glass in her neck that all I had to do was say, “If you move, it’ll slice your jugular.”

She whimpered, immobilized.

In the coal bin, Grandpa lay covered in soot, tied up, and gagged. He had a good welt on his forehead, and blood had caked on his face. Cody’s condition was the same. As I was helping them get out of the coal bin and past Isabelle, who was prone on the hard dirt floor, the sheriff and his deputy clomped down the basement steps. The deputy hustled over to Isabelle while Jordy called for an ambulance.

As soon as he ended his call, he hugged me in a fierce way that went way beyond perfunctory, saying, “Ava, are you all right?”

He was squeezing me so much, I couldn’t breathe. “Jordy, let go. I’m alive. And you’re killing my bad wrist. Ow.”

“Sorry.” He let go to help my grandfather to the stairs, where Jordy sat him down. “Wait here for the EMTs.”

Gilpa’s gash had reopened. Blood gushed down his face. He swiped at it with a hand, looking at the red streaks across his fingers. “At least it’s not oil. Your grandmother’s tired of me coming home all oily.”

I gave his shoulder a gingerly squeeze to show him I loved him, then went to help steady Cody. He was woozy, wavering in his stance but insisting he had to go back inside the coal bin.

I ventured in for him, and found a pink gift bag. “What’s this?”

“Cinderella Pink Fudge. I wrapped up several pieces for Bethany.” He reached in and made the cellophane crinkle for me. “I thought I was meeting her here. Do you think I should still try to give these to her?”

I gave him a really big hug so that he was sure to feel the good oxytocin kick in. “I think so. Just not tonight, okay?”

“Okay. How’s Harbor?”

“Just fine. Guarding the fudge and minnows.”

“We should’ve brought him along. Dogs make people calm. Isabelle wasn’t being calm.”

I sighed. “You’re right. As always.”

• • •

This time when we all met with Sheriff Tollefson at the Sturgeon Bay justice building offices, he had to have us meet in an even bigger room. It was the next morning, Friday, at ten o’clock, after the milking was done on the farm. My whole family was there, plus Cody and his parents and Pauline Mertens. My one true friend had called in for a substitute teacher that day in order to be with us. Our clan was represented by Destiny Hubbard. She sat at the end of the table next to me.

Gilpa and I hadn’t even opened our shop that morning because we saw the caravan of news vehicles arriving at the docks at five o’clock. We were actually in our shop because we hadn’t been able to sleep. I was making fudge at four in the morning. Gilpa was restocking shelves after I’d used some of his snacks to make the new fudge flavors I was going to introduce later today.

At first I thought I’d just bring in the fishermen coming for Moose’s tours and let them taste test the new flavor for guys, but with the news media there, I had bigger plans. But they and my new fudge flavors had to wait.

Cody had brought the pink bag of Cinderella Pink Fudge from last night with him. While we waited for the sheriff, Cody announced he was putting a cellophane-wrapped piece of “famous fudge evidence” in front of every chair.

Sheriff Tollefson walked in with a female detective he introduced as Emily Remington. They took their seats at the other end of the table, next to my parents. Emily was a fifty-five-ish retired cop they’d rehired to help with this case, which Jordy said had gotten “complicated.” I liked the sound of that. We were important. My fudge was a star.

Jordy said, “We’re here today so that you folks can help us piece together what happened.”

I said, “Isabelle hasn’t confessed?”

“No. She insists her guests were in a conspiracy to steal her blind.”

“Well, she’s right,” I said. “She wanted them fighting over diamonds so they could be blamed for the murder of Rainetta Johnson and Conrad Webb.”

The detective woman was looking over information on an iPad in front of her. “Are those the diamonds that were thrown in Lake Michigan, or the diamonds that were in your fudge?”

“I’m not sure diamonds were thrown in the lake.”

“Who has the diamonds?” she asked.

“Moose Lindstrom,” I said.

All heads swiveled to look at me.

“Jeremy Stone likely faked throwing them in the water. He probably just tossed a bunch of rocks away. But he’s not the kind of guy who’d want to keep the diamonds on him. He’s a reporter, a really good one. He probably stowed them on the
Super Catch I
.”

Gilpa raised his hand. His face sported a sheepish look. “I took those diamonds. I saw him dumping something in an empty beer can. While everybody was off the boat, I tidied up. I put the diamonds in an empty fudge wrapper. The wrapper is back at the shop, under my cash register.”

I panicked and asked Emily Remington, “Gilpa won’t be arrested again, will he?”

Destiny’s hand snaked out to touch my arm, stopping me from saying anything more. “No, he’s not going to be in trouble.” She appeared calm. She wore a royal blue suit with a shimmery white shell underneath and killer drop earrings in the shape of American flags that flapped with her every move. “We have to get the whole truth out on the table now.”

And we did. My theory about Isabelle’s mother being a maid for the Kruppenmeiers or Alpanelps in New York didn’t pan out entirely, but the detective said that Benton Alpanelp admitted to dating Isabelle Boone for a short time. It was true, though, that the people Isabelle’s mother had worked for all thought highly of her and thus welcomed Isabelle to their parties over the years.

Jordy said, “We think she’s like a black widow, just not marrying them. We’re looking into some deaths of other people of considerable means.”

“Were all the Steubens stolen?” I asked.

The detective said, “We’re not sure about all of them yet. Benton Alpanelp said he’d given her some as gifts, which she requested instead of payments for helping him with parties. She had a shrewd eye, it seems, for investment. Steubens are no longer made, so the collection she has risen in value every day.”

My grandmother asked, “What will happen to the collection?”

“We don’t know,” Emily said. “For now, it has to sit in the Blue Heron Inn under lock and key.”

“Make sure they’re new locks,” I said.

Jordy shot me a burning gaze. “And don’t be taking down my police tape this time. That’s how all your trouble started. You making fudge when you weren’t supposed to.”

I promised him I would never again bust through police tape at a crime scene. Pauline snickered next to me.

We quickly sorted out what had happened, according to our version of the story. Isabelle had received the diamonds in Rainetta’s luggage the moment it arrived. The diamond collection was so vast, though, that it probably surprised even Isabelle. She panicked and wanted it off her property so she wouldn’t get caught. Since she was in and out of my place all the time for our shared deliveries, she thought she could hide the diamonds overnight until Conrad Webb figured out how to make his connection to a boater on Lake Michigan and sell them. Since my shop was right on the docks, they thought this would be easy. And, of course, they thought if I were caught with the diamonds, I’d go to jail but nobody would tumble to Isabelle Boone being the thief.

I told the sheriff and detective I remembered that Isabelle had turned up the music in the inn on Sunday before going up the stairs. Now we could assume she did that because she planned to go up and argue with Rainetta.

“I think they both simultaneously recognized that diamonds were in the fudge. That’s why they hurried up the stairs. To figure out what was going on,” I said.

Cody raised his hand. “I saw them, but not together. Miss Boone went to the bathroom. I was hiding in Miss Chin-Chavez’s room because I wasn’t supposed to be there. And then I saw Sam, but he left. I followed him, then got pushed down the stairs.”

Mild frustration racked me. “Cody, why didn’t you tell us this before about hiding in her room? And seeing Sam leave?” I felt awful about ever thinking Sam might be a party to the murder somehow.

Cody said, “It’s not polite to talk about bathroom stuff. They tell us that at school all the time. Don’t they, Miss Mertens?” He was trying his sarcasm lessons on us again.

Pauline nodded.

“So it was Miss Boone who pushed me down the stairs?” Cody asked, but it was in a perfunctory way that told me Cody was sharp and had figured a lot of this out ahead of most of us.

“Yes,” I said. “And she did the same to me.” I held up my wrapped wrist.

The rest of the details spun out of us. Isabelle had gone up earlier to pull the dresser back away from the door so she’d have access. She was already fearful that Rainetta Johnson was onto her and Conrad Webb. This made it look premeditated, though that was tricky to prove, Destiny told us. But the sheriff confirmed that there were marks on Rainetta’s neck that fit the size of Isabelle Boone’s hands and fingers. She strangled the movie star, stuffed my fudge down her throat as far as it would go, then shoved the woman into the hallway. She went back through Rainetta’s inner doorway to the bathroom so she could come out and look innocent to everybody in the hallway. In our rush to revive Rainetta, none of us noticed when Isabelle sneaked back into the room to move the dresser and mirror back in front of the door. We also hadn’t noticed that Isabelle stole the necklace, which she’d later hidden in the cookie jar in my shop, to be picked up later by her or some contact.

I was curious, though, as to exactly what was at stake for Isabelle. “How much are those diamonds worth?”

Detective Remington punched up a new screen on her iPad. “Altogether, more than ten million.”

Cody whistled, then said to his parents, “See what my fudge was worth? I have a good job. I bet every piece of that fudge was worth a whole million dollars.”

Everybody laughed. But then I remembered my fudge and the newspeople staking out the dock and Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers & Belgian Fudge. Since it was going on noon already, I asked that we be excused. Jordy and the detective agreed. Destiny set up another date for further interviews with Detective Remington.

Destiny said to all of us with a huge smile, “This is going to be a trial that will put y’all in the spotlight for a while. Think you can handle it?”

While everybody else wasn’t sure, I wore a big smile. I muttered to Pauline, “My fudge will end up in the swag bags yet.”

In my yellow truck and on Highway 42 going back to Fishers’ Harbor, Pauline said to me, “I feel sorry for Sam. Everybody’s going to know he had a fling with Rainetta Johnson.”

“Sam will be fine.”

“If he has you as a friend,” Pauline said.

“We can’t be friends. I jilted him. We have a tainted history.”

“Oh please,” she said with polite disdain. “You married Dillon Rivers, who happened to have at least two other wives at the same time in Nantucket and Biloxi, and you didn’t even get a good vacation to those places out of the deal. That was Dillon’s fault, not Sam’s. Sam is the forgiving kind.”

The memory of my running away with Dillon came back to me. It was an August Friday, brilliant sunshine on the cornfields. Sam and my immediate family were inside the Catholic church in the countryside near Brussels in Door County for our wedding rehearsal. My wedding to Sam would actually be the following week on that Saturday. Everybody in Door County, it seemed to me anyway, had been invited to the wedding and reception that would follow. Distant relatives were due to arrive from Belgium, too. On that rehearsal Friday night, Sam had gone inside the church to wait with his groomsmen at the altar. They were getting instructions from the priest. I was waiting outside, watching the sunset, ready to practice my entrance and march down the aisle. Music was playing inside the church.

I’d just graduated college; Sam had graduated two years before and had been part of the Green Bay Packers practice squad for two years, but now he’d just gotten his first job as a social worker. His dream. We were going to settle into the farmhouse with my parents until some refurbishing was finished on the house that Sam had bought. We’d be taking the bedroom where my grandparents used to sleep when they lived there. My mom had already been talking about converting the spare bedroom she used as a sewing room to a nursery so she could babysit her grandchild after he or she was born.

Then Dillon Rivers drove up in a brand-new shiny Porsche convertible.

He was dressed in a tuxedo, of all things. He hopped out of the car, then took me in his arms and kissed me thoroughly, the kind of kiss that makes women lose their minds. All of the good times we’d had together over the years bubbled inside of me, fizzylike, as if I were already sipping champagne and celebrating a special event in my life.