Hot Fudge Murder

by Cynthia Baxter

  By the time I’d put the freshly made tub of Pear with Blue Cheese into the display case in the front of the shop, Emma came shuffling in.

  While I was still energized by the great night’s sleep I’d had, my niece didn’t seem to have had a particularly pleasant night at all.

  Emma’s strong sense of responsibility includes near-compulsiveness about being on time. In fact, she considers it a personal failing if she’s late for anything at all. So when she showed up twenty minutes later than usual, I was more surprised than annoyed.

  I also suspected there was a good reason.

  The expression on her face told me I was right.

  Her blue-streaked hair, which she usually wore styled a certain way to make it look calculatedly disheveled, was mussed up way more than it was supposed to be. And her clothes, which were often mismatched but still gave off an air of having been chosen with the utmost care, looked like an afterthought. Jeans and a plain T-shirt simply weren’t her style.

  Her entire demeanor broadcasted the fact that something was wrong.

  My hunch was that one of two things was behind her distress. One possibility was that she’d had another one of her ongoing arguments with her parents about her future—more specifically, her decision to postpone making any concrete plans about said future anytime soon. But I suspected that by now her father had gotten used to the idea of his only offspring taking a year off. As for her mother, my sister Julie, I expected that veering off the straightest and narrowest path imaginable was something she’d never get used to.

  The other likely reason for Emma’s distressed state was something related to Ethan.

  I was betting on that one.

  “Everything okay, Em?” I asked breezily as she came in, her shoulders slumped in a way that brought to mind the heaviness of the Abominable Snowman.

  I half-expected her to brush me off, insisting that everything was fine. Instead, she dropped into one of the pink chairs at the small marble table closest to the front of the shop, tossed her backpack onto the floor beside her, and moaned, “I need ice cream. Now. I was up until three last night. In fact, you’d better make that a double.”

  Even though I was startled, I did my best to act matter-of-fact. “Coming right up. Would I be correct in assuming that Cappuccino Crunch is the order of the day?”

  “What else?” she replied.

  There’s good reason why I consider Cappuccino Crunch the breakfast of champions. After all, it contains real espresso—meaning real caffeine. The presence of that wonder drug, combined with a hefty dose of sugar, makes it enough to give Red Bull a run for its money when it comes to jump-starting a person’s day.

  Emma, being a blood relative, clearly felt the same way.

  I scooped up an extra-large portion for my niece. Then, deciding that I might need some help myself to prepare for the conversation we were apparently about to have, I scooped myself a smaller portion. Then I added a little Heavenly Hot Fudge Sauce to each. It just felt like the right thing to do.

  I sat down next to my niece and focused on my delectable dish of ice cream. I didn’t press her. Instead, I waited for her to volunteer to talk about whatever was causing her distress. I watched silently as she shoveled spoonful after spoonful of ice cream into her mouth, moving so fast I doubted she was truly appreciating its meltaway creaminess, its perfect level of sweetness, the smooth taste of the Italian coffee I brew to make it, and the barely perceptible hint of cinnamon that I consider to be the true secret of its irresistible lusciousness.

  “Men,” Emma finally muttered.

  Ah. So I’d been right.

  “By ‘men,’ ” I said, keeping my tone casual and my eyes on my spoon, “I assume you mean Ethan.”

  “That’s the one I’m referring to.” With a deep sigh, Emma said, “Why do they always have to complicate things?”

  A question women have been asking each other ever since Eve offered Adam a bite of her apple—and he said, “That looks like a Macintosh. Don’t you have any Granny Smiths?”

  I decided it was safe for me to be a little more proactive. “What, exactly, is Ethan complicating?” I asked.

  “The rest of the summer,” she spat back, keeping her eyes fixed on her dish of ice cream. Or what was left of it. Which I was impressed to see was very little.

  “What about the rest of the summer?” I prompted.

  “I’ve been assuming that the end part would be just like the beginning,” Emma replied. “Which meant me working here, helping you out and saving some money and basically giving me some structure in my life. And Ethan working at the dairy. And in between, the two of us spending as much time together as we could.”

  I remained silent. I had a feeling I was about to find out the specifics of whatever complication Ethan had thrown into this idyllic-sounding plan.

  “And then, completely out of nowhere, Ethan decided he wants to spend the rest of the summer bumming around Europe,” Emma announced.

  “Whoa!” I exclaimed. “That’s a pretty ambitious plan. Not to mention an extremely expensive one.”

  Emma didn’t seem to have heard me.

  “He brought it up for the first time a few nights ago,” she said, still speaking to her ice cream dish. “He said it was only an idea he was thinking about. He told me that travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.”

  “Ethan said that?” I asked, surprised.

  “Actually, it was Seneca who said that,” she replied.

  “Seneca?” I repeated.

  “You know, the Roman philosopher?” Emma said. “Ethan quotes people like that all the time.”

  “Ah, yes. That Seneca.” I was thinking that maybe the lad deserved more credit than I’d been giving him.

  “But Ethan is always coming up with nutty schemes,” she went on. “I figured this was going to turn out to be nothing more than one more of those.”

  “What nutty schemes are those?” I asked, trying to sound only minimally interested.

  “Oh, you know,” she replied with a wave of her hand. “Opening a store that specializes in tie-dyed products. Going to acupuncture school. Creating an app for people who share a passion for reptiles.”

  Of course, I thought. Those ideas.

  “What’s the story with Ethan, anyway?” I asked casually. “Is he going back to school in the fall? Or does he plan to work at the dairy for a while . . . ?” In other words, I thought, what are your gentleman caller’s long-term prospects?

  “He’s doing the same thing I’m doing,” Emma replied. “He started working for Jake part-time last winter, during his senior year of high school. But now that he’s graduated, he wants to take some time off to figure out who he is. He’s really into reading. And thinking. Yeah, he spends a lot of time just thinking. But he also wants to experience life, which is how this travel thing came up in the first place.”

  “Got it,” I said. Despite the two young lovers’ conflict, I was finding that the more I learned about Ethan, the better I liked him.

  “Anyway, last night, right after I get into bed, Ethan starts texting me,” Emma said. “He says he’s all excited about some web site he just found out about that helps people find really cheap flights at the last minute. And he announces that he’s got a friend who’s spending the summer in Amsterdam and has a floor he can sleep on for free. He says that for all the other places he’s been thinking about going to—Prague, Paris, Berlin, Hvar—there’s Airbnb. He figures somebody is bound to have a couch he can crash on for, like, hardly any money at all.”

  That didn’t exactly sound like my idea of a European tour, especially the part about Hvar, since I had no idea where Hvar was. Or why anyone would want to visit a place with a name that has an H and a V right next to each other. But I could see that for someone with an extremely limited budget, a back that’s less demanding than mine, and enough imagination to think up the idea of an app for reptile lovers, it could hold a certain appeal.

  “It sounds as if Et
han has given this trip some serious thought,” I interjected, trying to sound noncommittal.

  “But that’s not even the most complicated part!” Emma wailed. “He wants me to go with him!”

  My mouth dropped open. That, I had to admit, I hadn’t seen coming.

  I was shocked.

  And the idea of losing my number-one employee was the least of it. The thought of Emma traveling around Europe without a plan, scrounging around for a couch to sleep on in a city whose residents spoke Dutch or Czech or one of the many other languages my niece didn’t speak a word of, not to mention whatever language was spoken in Hvar, was nothing short of terrifying.

  It’s not that I didn’t love the idea of travel. I’d traveled quite a bit during the time I worked in public relations and had the luxury of a steady income. But I was one of those stuffy people who liked to have a detailed itinerary, hotel reservations, and at least two credit cards before I got on a plane that would whisk me a few thousand miles away.

  “Of course, the trip Ethan wants to take sounds amazing,” Emma went on. My horror over the idea of sleeping on a floor instantly made me feel like an old-timer. “I’d love to visit all of those cities. Or even one of them. I mean, seeing Amsterdam in August? How great would that be?

  “But the timing is terrible!” she wailed. “I’m just not sure I want to drop everything and follow Ethan to Europe.” Using her spoon to make little circles in the bottom of her ice cream dish, she continued, “It’s so sudden, for one thing. He’s talking about going soon. Like this weekend. But I’ve been totally enjoying myself all summer, and I don’t want to give all that up. Working at the shop is really fun. I like everything about it: chatting with the customers, being around all this lovely ice cream, thinking up crazy new flavors and then watching people try them and actually like them . . .

  “Besides,” Emma added, “me taking off like that for a couple of weeks wouldn’t be fair to you! I made a commitment to help you in the shop. How would you find someone to fill in for me with only a few days’ notice? And, of course, it’s summer, your busiest time of the year . . .”

  I glanced around my empty shop. Okay, so there wasn’t a soul in sight. But that didn’t mean things wouldn’t pick up again as soon as Omar DeVane’smurder was solved. I was clinging to the hope that once the story became old news, visitors would flock back to Wolfert’s Roost again.

  And I was still hopeful that would happen soon.

  Emma let out another loud sigh, this one even more soulful. “Anyway, Ethan and I were up late, having a huge fight about this.”

  “Really?” I said. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “That’s because we were texting the whole time,” she said glumly.

  That was a much better way of fighting, I thought, than yelling angry words at each other. Having arguments using only the written word was clearly one of the greatest advantages of living in the digital age.

  “So now Ethan is acting as if the fact that I’m not ready to just jump up and follow him to Europe means I don’t really care about him,” Emma said. “He’s taking it so personally. And it actually has very little to do with our relationship. It’s more about being practical.”

  Then came the moment I’d been dreading. Emma fixed her mournful eyes on me and cried, “Aunt Kate, tell me what I should do!”

  I was suddenly reminded that my strong, independent, funny niece was, in fact, only eighteen years old. Barely out of childhood. Still technically a teenager. And a long way from feeling able to make important decisions without the input of someone she trusted.

  Not to say that I didn’t feel the same way myself, at least some of the time.

  Even so, I got the feeling this was one she had to handle on her own.

  “Emma,” I told her, “I can’t make this decision for you. This is something you have to figure out yourself.”

  “Really?” Emma said woefully. “I was kind of hoping you’d say, ‘Emma, you can’t possibly leave me in the lurch! You promised you’d work for me, and I desperately need you in the shop!’ Or else, ‘Go for it, Emma! How could you possibly turn down a fabulous trip like that?’ ”

  “Which one of those things did you wish I’d say?” I asked gently, trying to be helpful.

  She frowned. “I’m not sure. But either way, I was hoping you’d make the decision for me.” Brightening, she added, “And if you insisted that I stay, that would help keep Ethan from blaming me.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not going to do that, Emma. You’re on your own with this.”

  To emphasize my point, I stood up and said, “I’ve got to get busy. I haven’t given up hope that a few brave day-trippers will find their way to Wolfert’s Roost today. And I want to be able to offer them my usual array of fabulous flavors. Speaking of which, I was thinking about soaking raspberries in raspberry-flavored balsamic vinegar and then combining them with lemon ice cream. I think the combination of the tartness of the vinegar and the lemons would be a lovely complement to the sweetness of the ice cream. The raspberries, too, of course. Tart and sweet, two qualities that kind of bounce off each other in a surprising yet pleasing way . . . How does that strike you?”

  Emma’s eyes grew as big as the aforementioned lemons.

  “In that case,” I said, “why don’t you run out to the organic farm stand right now and pick up some lemons and raspberries?”

  “I’m on it,” she replied, already jumping up and heading toward the door.

  I had a feeling she wasn’t simply being a cooperative employee. I figured that just like me, she couldn’t wait to taste this new concoction.

  Besides, there are few substances better suited to drowning one’s miseries than ice cream.

  * * *

  Long before the grand opening of Lickety Splits, I’d developed what some people might call a business plan. Me, I liked to think of it as a philosophy. I wanted my shop to offer three basic types of ice cream flavors.

  The first was the classics. These were the flavors people expected, like vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. But my goal was to make each one the absolutely finest version anyone had ever tasted. My strawberry ice cream would be chock-full of fresh strawberries, my vanilla would use only the best-quality vanilla from Tahiti, and my chocolate would be made with the richest, most flavorful chocolate I could fine.

  The second type would be more adventurous. This was where my Hawaiian Coconut fit in. Peanut Butter on the Playground was another example. I wanted anyone who tasted my peanut butter and jelly ice cream, made with freshly ground peanuts and just-sweet-enough grape jelly, to be transported back to the most idyllic moments of their childhood.

  The third type was the most fun—and the most creative. I was excited by the ice cream revolution that was erupting all around me. Suddenly it seemed as if there was no limit to the ingredients that could be combined with cream and sugar to invent new, never-seen-before flavors. Pear with Blue Cheese, Banana Walnut Bread Pudding, the lemon ice cream with raspberry balsamic vinegar concoction that I’d just suggested to Emma . . . I literally lay awake nights, dreaming up new ways to tickle the palate. If only there were more hours in the day, more room in the display case, and more customers to gobble up my tasty offerings!

  In fact, as I stood behind the counter of my once-again-empty shop later that morning, I was still thinking about that last one, the combination of tart lemon and equally tart raspberry. I was so lost in thought that I jumped when the door opened.

  A customer had finally come in.

  I realized immediately that it wasn’t just any customer. Or maybe it wasn’t a customer at all.

  It was Pippa Somers.

  “Good morning,” she greeted me regally, her elegant British accent making it sound as if she was reciting Shakespeare.

  Even though it was still early, Pippa looked ready to be photographed for the cover of her international fashion magazine. As always, her bronze-colored hair was styled into the perfect flip that had become her signature
. While on most women the retro style would have seemed dated, somehow she elevated it to new heights of sophistication. She was wearing a simple yet elegantly styled cream-colored sleeveless top with a pair of meticulously tailored pants made from the same fabric. Silk, I guessed, given the flattering way it draped along the minimal curves of her slender frame.

  On her feet was a pair of brown suede sandals with a million straps, the style that wraps around the ankle and up the calf, bringing to mind Roman gladiators. Fashionably dressed Roman gladiators. And her jewelry positively screamed minimalism: shimmering pearl earrings and a fine gold chain necklace dotted with more pearls.

  She was also wearing an oversized pair of sunglasses. I’d seen her wear similar sunglasses in hundreds of photos. Whether she made that a habit to try to keep people from recognizing her or to make sure they recognized her, I couldn’t say.

  “Good morning, Ms. Somers,” I replied without thinking.

  She reacted with surprise. “Do we know each other?” she asked, sliding her sunglasses upward and letting them rest on top of her head.

  I could feel my cheeks turning red. “I know who you are because of . . . who you are,” I stuttered. “And I was at Omar DeVane’s party Saturday night. I was the caterer who supplied the ice cream.”

  “Of course,” Pippa replied. “I thought you looked familiar.”

  I doubted that someone like her ever bothered to notice someone like a caterer. But I appreciated her politeness.

  “The ice cream was fabulous,” she remarked. “Which is why I made a point of remembering the name of your shop.”

  “I suppose that’s why you’re here,” I joked. “You obviously want more.”

  “Yes and no,” she replied. She pulled her sunglasses down and chewed the end of one earpiece, meanwhile glancing around the store appraisingly. “I actually stopped by to see if you’d be interested in catering another event. Something I’m planning for this coming weekend. Sunday afternoon, starting at around four o’clock.”