First-Degree Fudge: A Fudge Shop Mystery (29 page)

Unfortunately, things were already going wrong. The guest celebrity chef contestants who had arrived this past Monday for a two-week stay had taken over the six copper kettles in my shop—as in
not sharing
them with me at all. And I couldn’t seem to come up with a new fudge flavor that would knock everybody’s socks off. What’s more, I had to come up with a prom dress—something that wouldn’t reveal how much fudge I’d eaten in the past couple of months. My excited and desperate gal pals Pauline and Laura Rousseau were coming over later this morning with yet another set of fabric swatches and dress patterns.

Rapid-fire knocking on my front door was followed by my young red-haired shop assistant, Cody Fjelstad, yelling through the screen, “Miss Oosterling! Come quick!”

My mother was with him. She hollered from behind Cody, “Ava honey, your shop’s being destroyed!”

“What?” The nonsensical news kept me rooted on the floor for just a second.

Cody opened the screen door, then waved frantically. “Get a move on, Miss Oosterling. Your chefs are chasing each other around the shop with fudge cutters. They keep saying they’re going to kill each other.”

• • •

My fudge shop and all my freshly made fudge were being held hostage by two chefs with circular knives.

When I rushed in through the back door of my shop, Kelsey King, a petite blonde from Portland, Oregon, and Piers Molinsky, a portly giant from Chicago, were wielding fudge cutters from their stances on both ends of my white marble-slab table. My freshly made Cinderella Pink Fudge lay hostage in its pans between them. Kelsey and Piers had fudge cutters poised over the pans.

Fudge cutters look like pizza cutters—round, sharp disks. Kelsey held up the one with one disk, while Piers had one with multiple disks, which could cause a lot of quick damage if tossed at Kelsey.

I stood in shock behind my old-fashioned cash register, thinking I might need it as protection.

My mom muttered behind my back, “I forgot to tell you about the smell, too.”

The grab bag of aromas in the place made me pause. What had the chefs been up to in only a few minutes’ time this morning? I’d left the place just an hour ago, and nobody had been here but my grandpa Gil and a few fishermen. It had smelled of the strong fresh coffee we always had on hand and my new batch of cherry-vanilla pink perfection fudge. Now the bait and fudge shop smelled of bacon, of all things, and a heady, earthy mix of spices such as nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, maybe some anise and orange peel tossed in.

I called out from behind my small fortress, “What’s wrong with you two? Stop!”

Piers, his chubby face red, his furry brown eyebrows pinched together, kept his gaze lasered on his enemy across the marble table as he picked up a pan of my fudge.

My heart rate accelerated. “Put the fudge down, Piers.”

Piers ignored me, growling at Kelsey, “You do not belong in this contest. This is what fudge looks like.” He waved my pan of Cinderella Pink Fudge in the air.

Behind me, my mother whined in panic or disgust or both.

Kelsey snatched up the other pan of my fudge, waving her fudge cutter over it as she glared at Piers. “You see this fudge? This is your face!”

She slashed at my pretty pink fudge.

My mother screamed, nearly turning me deaf. I gasped, stunned for a moment, waiting for my hearing to come back.

Cody, whose dream was to be a law officer or park ranger, grabbed one of my four-foot spatulas from a nearby copper kettle. “I’ll stop ’em, Miss Oosterling.”

“No, Ranger, don’t. Stand back.” Cody liked being called “Ranger,” especially after he’d helped me solve the murder a couple of months ago and our county sheriff awarded him a good citizenship star.

I could’ve used the sheriff’s help at the moment. Ordinarily, my popular pink fudge sat in front of the big bay window to cure and entice tourists. Now, there was nobody outside, just the view of Lake Michigan lapping up against the boats rocking at their moorings. Any customers there to buy fudge or bait had scattered to save their lives. Even if I called Sheriff Tollefson or a deputy, the sheriff’s office was a half hour’s drive away in Sturgeon Bay.

I glanced to the bait shop side of the place. “Gilpa?” The word came out strangled in my tight throat. Since I’d been a little girl, I’d called Grandpa Gil the shortcut name of “Gilpa.”

Ranger said, “He took a fisherman out just as I got here.”

I appealed again to the chefs. “This is silly. It’s going to be a beautiful day. Why start it out with a fight?”

Neither looked at me. Instead, they started a volley of words while shaking the fudge cutters and my fudge all about in the air. The glass in the bay window within inches of them was vibrating from the intensity.

I hesitated going over to the two on my own. Kelsey’s blond cuteness and petite frame rendered her deceivingly harmless-looking. But she was a fitness guru who ran a health spa. She knew karate and ate the bark off trees. I was probably smelling bark cooking in the aromas floating about us. Piers, whose bulk reflected his love of the muffin tops he’d made famous in Chicago, growled like a bear at Kelsey.

Piers used his fudge cutter to gouge out and flick a good-sized portion of my precious pink confection onto the floor. He smashed it with the heel of one boot. “This is your face.”

We all cried out in pain—me, Cody, my mom, and two customers who popped up from behind a shelving unit filled with handmade Cinderella Pink dolls, purses, and teacups. I recognized the ladies from my grandmother’s church group. They rushed out screaming something about “saints and sinners.” The cowbell on the door clanged. A teacup fell to the floor in their wake and broke.

Those ladies would spread the gossip fast, so I had to take action. I used the weapon that always worked. “There could be
TV cameras
on you, for all you know. I think that’s John coming down the docks right now.”

My mother whimpered, “Oh no.”

John Schultz had been videotaping us every spare moment of his time. To keep things manageable for his videotaping, John wanted just three contestants—me and these two trying to kill each other. He’d scoured his universe of contacts in the travel industry and had come up with Piers and Kelsey. I’m sad to say I approved them. Shows my talent for judging people. John had insisted that he tape the fudge contest activities this week and next with the hopes of ending up on a cable channel. He’d get a show of his own, he said, and I’d get fudge fame. But John wasn’t coming down the docks right now; I’d lied.

Fortunately, my lie worked like a hose on two fighting cats. Kelsey broke into tears, dropping her fudge cutter on the marble slab. She looked around for the camera on her. It was pitiful. I almost wished John were here. Piers whipped off his white apron, then used it to swab my ruined pink fudge off the floor. He, too, looked about for the camera, smiling, which galled me.

“Were you two faking? Practicing?” I asked. “You gave my mother a heart attack.”

“I’m so sorry,” Piers said, turning into a teddy bear. “Please forgive me, Ava. You were so kind to invite me, and yet I did this to you. Sorry.”

His words were stilted, obviously an act for the nonexistent camera. At least he was being polite again to me and my fudge.

Kelsey, though, slapped a hand on the marble table. “Sorry? That’s all you’ve got to say for cheating? He was hogging the copper kettles again for his hog that he’s cooking.” Her shoulders hunched up to her earlobes in a shudder. “He’s putting hog bits into the fudge.”

“Hog bits?” I asked.

“Bacon,” Piers said, pulling his shoulders back in pride. “I’m experimenting with bacon fudge.”

Kelsey sniped, “He took over four of the kettles; then he put bacon in one of my kettles of boiling ingredients so I’d have to throw it out. After I did, I looked away for just a moment and he’d tossed more bacon—meat—into my kettle. Yewww.”

My mother touched my arm. “Honey, I have to finish making deliveries. Maybe you should come with me and let them cool down.”

Kelsey said with big fake smile, “That cow truck you drive is just the cutest thing, Florine.”

Mom—Florine, never Flo—drove a black-and-white cow motif minivan around the county delivering our farm’s organic cream, cheeses, milk, and butter to various restaurants and to my fudge shop each day. When I’d contacted Kelsey King weeks ago in Portland, where she had a fledgling TV show featuring organics, she’d been thrilled to hear about our farm’s organic nature. She agreed instantly to the adventure of being a contestant in a fudge contest and arts festival in Door County. I tried to use that modicum of respect to quell the fight now.

“Kelsey, my mother can replace all of your ingredients with fresh ones right now. And maybe the bacon falling into your fudge mix was a mistake.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Her fake smile stiffened.

I turned to look up at Piers. “Why do you need four kettles? You were each assigned two to use. Two for each of you, with two left for me.”

That’s when the smells in the place became a warning along with the odd sounds of audible gulps, lapping, and growls. I looked at the north wall area behind our short counter and glass shelving where the six kettles sat over their open-flame heating units. “Oh my gosh!”

Two copper kettles had bubbled over, oozing sugar and mystery ingredients—and bite-sized bacon pieces—onto the floor. A troublemaking furry brown dog belonging to my ex-husband—the infamous bigamist—leaped about in the middle of canine nirvana, slurping up bacon bits as fast as his long, pink tongue could operate. We were lucky the dog hadn’t knocked over the open flames and caused a fire. Ironically, my ex had named the dog “Lucky” after his gambling prowess—my ex’s prowess, not the dog’s. Since my ex had come back to town for utility construction business in May, the dog seemed to get loose and show up in my shop just about every other day. I glanced toward the door now with my heartbeat racing a bit in nervous trepidation. The dog’s rogue appearances usually brought Dillon Rivers through the door soon after.

Ranger dashed over to turn off the burners. He grabbed the gangly water spaniel who was now rolling in the bacon goop on the floor. “Harbor, no! Come with me.” Cody had dubbed the dog Harbor the first day he had sneaked into our shop because the gregarious animal loved to fling himself in the harbor water outside our front door.

The dog with two names was always a mess unless he was secured with a leash. Lucky Harbor also loved to steal fudge if I didn’t watch him. Chocolate isn’t good for dogs; it can be fatal. I dashed over to Gilpa’s side of the shop for a piece of twine. Lucky Harbor began barking so loudly in protest over having to leave his puddle of bacon that everybody in the shop had their hands clamped over their ears.

“Please take him into the back somewhere for now, Ranger. Tie him to a doorknob or something.”

Piers said, “At least the dog shows good taste.”

Piers found a spoon, then began ladling up the mess on the floor. “You weren’t using your kettles, Ava, so I took them over, thinking I was doing you a favor. You weren’t here when I arrived. You didn’t see Kelsey sabotaging the ingredients.”

Kelsey yelped, “You liar.” She grabbed the fudge cutter again to wave at him. “You’re the one sabotaging me, you sausage hick from Chicago!”

At that moment, the fudge judges arrived, two of them through the front door: my landlord, Lloyd Mueller; and a local cookbook author, Professor Alex Faust.

My grandmother—the third judge—came in through the back door, finally catching up with us. “What’s that smell?”

“Bacon,” I said.

“No, the other smell. Like dirt cooking.”

Kelsey seethed at Piers. “That’s the smell of my ruined fudge.”

Piers snapped, “It’s real dirt. She’s passing off black dirt as chocolate fudge!”

Kelsey flew at Piers with a karate kick, which he caught in his beefy hands, but he slipped on the oozing syrup and bacon fat on the floor. They slid out from behind my glass counter loaded with various fudges, landing on their backs in the goo. I rushed to help, but Kelsey got up fast to push me away so she could go at Piers again. I grabbed her in an armlock to break it up—

Just as Dillon Rivers charged through the door. The cowbell clanged against the wall. “Whoa, are we puttin’ bets down on who wins this wrestling match? I’ve got five bucks on the fudge lady.”

I let go of Kelsey.

My tall, killer-handsome ex swept off his hard hat, combing his chestnut-colored hair with his fingers. His muscular chest was bare and glistening already from morning exertion. Both my heart and my stomach did a flippity-flop.

My mother groaned. She did not like Dillon. She said to me, “I’ll call the sheriff.” She was dialing her phone as she said it.

Grandma said, “I’ll buzz Gil.” She dug in her jeans for her phone.

Professor Faust, a genial, sixtysomething, gray-haired guy in a blue shirt and tan pants, stood wide-eyed. He was carrying a stack of his latest cookbook. “Perhaps this isn’t a good time for a meeting? Where can I leave my books? They’re all signed.”

Everybody ignored Professor Faust because that’s what happens when Dillon is in a room, especially with his shirt off.

“Hey there,” Dillon said, with a look that said he knew exactly what he was doing to me. He slipped on a neon yellow T-shirt with his construction company logo on it, which he’d had shoved in a back pocket. “Anybody see my dog? And what’s this I hear about the fudge shop closing and the contest being canceled?”