Five-Alarm Fudge

by Christine DeSmet

  I stopped inspecting the organ for secret doors, then plopped my butt on the bench, giving in to frustration. “I was really starting to like the idea that the recipe might exist.”

  “What about the bench you’re sitting on?” Laura asked.

  With gleeful, silly hope, I launched myself up, opened the bench lid, then screamed as I jumped back, letting the lid drop with a loud clap.

  Pauline came closer. “What—?”

  I pointed at the bench. “A bloody knife.”

  We three huddled around the closed bench, staring at the lid. I said, “Open it, Pauline.”

  “No way. Maybe it was just your imagination.”

  We gave Laura an imploring look. She shook her head. “I faint at the sight of blood.”

  I lifted the lid. Slowly.

  We stared down at a hunting knife—about seven inches long and smudged with red on its blade and white bone handle.

  I said, “I work with cherries in my Cinderella Pink Fudge. That’s not cherry juice.”

  The smeary knife lay across sheets of music. Dried blood droplets mimicked musical notes on the five-lined staff of “Ave Maria.”

  I leaned closer.

  “Don’t touch it,” Pauline said.

  “I’ll call the sheriff.” I had my phone out already.

  She snatched it from me. “You’re not getting involved. You know you have bad luck. We’re walking away from this and letting somebody else find it.”

  Laura had paled. “That’s a good idea. I need to get back to my babies.”

  Pauline shut the lid of the bench with a bang.

  A sudden corresponding loud thud from below made us jump. We stared wide-eyed into one another’s eyes. My heart was racing.

  Voices—chattering—drifted up to the loft. The loud noise had been a door likely slamming against the wall after being caught by the breeze.

  We scrambled to look over the railing. It was John’s tour.

  I whispered, “Crap. They’re not supposed to be here. This is cleaning day.”

  Pauline plastered on a smile, then waved at John below. She whispered back to me, “I don’t want John involved in whatever your bloody knife means. The last time he tried helping you, he almost ended up dead.”

  “It’s not my knife.”

  “You found it. And I know how you are. Criminally curious.” She looked down her nose at me with her sternest teacherlike demeanor. “I’ll make sure they don’t come up here. Forget the knife. Promise me.”

  But she hurried down the stairs to the nave before I could actually promise.

  Chapter 2

  I eased up the bench lid.

  Some of the blood splatter on the sheet music for “Ave Maria” had underscored the lyrics Safe may we sleep beneath thy care. The irony hit me. Somebody had not been playing it safe with the Buck knife.

  Then someone was calling my name.

  I lowered the bench lid quickly, stepping away and into the choir pews.

  Fontana Dahlgren stood on the top step of the stairs to the choir loft. Her red, wavy hair cascading past her shoulders hailed me like a warning flag. As always, her petite, cheerleader persona caused me to stare out of envy and curiosity.

  In fifth grade I’d thought that if I stuck close to her I might acquire her looks. In science class we’d been introduced to the concept of living cells absorbing other cells or their qualities. Fontana possessed startling minty green eyes set in a face with enough freckles to keep her from looking too porcelain. A short-sleeved yellow cotton sweater showed off movie-star breasts that were all her own. Knee-length shorts floated silkily about her toned legs. She carried two big designer bags hooked on one arm—a purse and one filled with the homemade soaps, perfumes, and makeup she was always hawking.

  “Well, hello, Ava Mathilde Oosterling.” Her melon-colored lipstick shimmered. “Practicing a song for the prince? I guess since your family invited him, you get to sing something despite not making it into the choir. Let me coach you. Perhaps we could sing a solo during the kermis.”

  “A solo means one person alone, Fontana. Not two.” She knew I had what my mother called a tin ear. Grandma said I couldn’t carry a tune in a bushel basket. Fontana didn’t want to coach me; she wanted to make me over—yet again—and use me to flirt with the prince.

  She stepped into the loft. “Why don’t you go on down to join your friends while I dig around in the music for us? I’ll pick something simple for you.”

  The last thing I needed was for her to find the bloody knife. After her scream, John’s tour would be ruined and Pauline would disown me as a friend.

  A lie was in order. “Fontana, go back down. We just waxed everything. It’s slippery and you’ll fall.” Her ankles looked spindly atop sandals with tall, wedge heels.

  In faked stealth, I crept across the floor in my sooty sneakers. As I came within a yard of Fontana, her spicy perfume pricked my nostrils.

  Instead of turning around to descend the stairs, Fontana stayed in place, her teeth chewing off a portion of the dewy melon-colored lipstick on her lips while she strained to look behind me in the loft. I was focusing on wiggling my nose to avoid sneezing when a premonition hit me—one accompanied by a chill.

  “What’s the matter, Fontana? Did you leave something behind after the choir tryouts?” Like a knife? Tryouts had occurred over the past week, but I recalled my grandmother telling me that a few singers had returned early this morning with the organist to decide on some songs. They’d left before Pauline, Laura, and I arrived to clean the church.

  After a dramatic sigh, Fontana said, “I suppose I can come back for it later.”

  “What is it you left behind?”

  “You certainly are nosy. I’ll return after taking the tour group to my roadside market.”

  Now her competitiveness was making me grind my molars. “The tour is supposed to go to my market, not yours. We’re doing a wine-and-fudge-pairing event for their lunch treat. And a grape stomp.”

  “I spoke with Mike about that. He doesn’t have enough grapes.”

  She referred to Michael Prevost, the winegrower and vintner. His vineyard was located on the property behind the farm where I had set up my roadside market.

  I stepped closer into her perfume cloud. “Fontana, can we please go down the stairs and join the discussion below in the nave?”

  John and a university specialist were talking about the church’s history and rocks.

  “Oh, sure. Sorry. I’ll come back after lunch.”

  “No,” I said. “The floors and benches need to be left alone for a full day so the wax sets properly.”

  After a sigh, she said, “I can come back tomorrow.”

  “You’ll have to ask me for the key. You’ll need to come all the way up to Fishers’ Harbor to pick it up at my fudge shop.” Another lie. And inside a church. “You’ve forgotten that my family is the keeper of the church key.”

  Since my parents lived nearby, they kept the key and also kept a log of who went in and out of the church. The sheriff had requested they do that to help with security precautions before the royal visit. At the moment, my grandmother had the church key.

  Fontana gave me a pointed look with her phosphorescent eyes. She knew I knew something. She flashed her engaging, cheerleader smile. “Let’s hurry before Cherry and John leave us behind on the tour.”

  Before I descended the stairs behind her, I scanned the crowd from my perch in the loft. Pauline’s boyfriend had a bandaged hand. His guest expert, Tristan “Cherry” Hardy, sported a bandaged arm and hand. What had happened to them?

  I had a bad feeling about today.

  * * *

  I eased down the staircase quietly, glad that its entrance was in the vestibule and didn’t spill me out directly into the crowded nave. The more I looked at the busload of people gathered inside the church, the more bandages I saw, and the less suspicious I became about them. The tourists had the usual scuffed knees, blisters from new sandals, bug bites, a
nd sunburn. Maybe Pauline was right. The knife wasn’t anything to worry about. Maybe some kid had stolen the knife from a parent, nicked himself, then raced up here after the choir tryouts unnoticed to hide the knife. That had to be the answer.

  I tried to pay attention to the speaker, but my gaze kept drifting to his forearm with its approximately three-inch white gauzy bandage.

  Tristan “Cherry” Hardy was a good friend to many of us. The tour group hung on his every word. Tall, boyishly handsome in his forties, with short brown hair, Tristan hailed from the University of Wisconsin at the Green Bay campus. He was conducting research on cherry orchard and vineyard improvements for the local extension office. He wore a royal blue polo shirt with the UWEX logo on it. Our area was a leading producer of Montmorency tart cherries. Tourists flocked here to pick and buy cherry everything, from cherry salsa to pies to my fudge.

  Tristan stood in the nave’s aisle, his back to the altar. Not far from him were the angel statues, as tall as fifth graders with candle wreaths on their heads. The tourists filled the open area at the back where pews had been removed for occasions like this. Laura was inching toward the door to head home. Pauline was on the opposite side of the crowd with John listening to Tristan go on about the history of the local forests and the Belgians who flooded into Door County in the 1850s to fish in the Lake Michigan bay called Green Bay.

  “Door County is about stone and water,” he said. “Because of the Niagara escarpment created by the glaciers long ago, we’re built on stone. The stone formations here continue all the way out to Niagara Falls. Our topsoil is thin and precious. Building a basement for a church would have taken a lot of work—and probably some dynamite. Any stone removed from here was used to help build foundations or even stone barns like the one Ava Oosterling uses for her new roadside market.”

  Cherry waved his arm my way. I waved back to the crowd.

  Cherry continued. “Being built on stone means we can dry out fast, leaving our orchards and vineyards susceptible to pests, fires, and the harm done by drifting chemicals in the air, perhaps even the exhaust of so many tourist vehicles and supply trucks going by on Highway 57.”

  John almost leaped out of his Hawaiian shirt in shock. The crowd was muttering about themselves being blamed for pollution.

  John jumped to the front alongside Cherry. “That didn’t come out the way he meant it.”

  “Anything we put into the air has an effect,” Cherry assured us in a calm voice. “Can food be organic, if the organic food stand is next to a busy city street choking with fumes?”

  Oh, egads, this day was getting even worse. Who would want to eat fudge if they believed the cars whooshing by polluted it?

  John leaped in with facts on the water quality of the bay, where he explained he’d been diving. He didn’t say, but I assumed he’d cut his hand on the expedition. John was in his fifties, with brown hair graying at the temples and a joking manner that tourists enjoyed. Today he wore his usual tour-guide outfit: baggy tan shorts and billowy Hawaiian shirt—this one festooned with purple grapes and red wineglasses.

  John encouraged everybody to snap pictures of Saint Mary of the Snows. He raised a small camera to videotape everybody. Ordinarily, I found John a bother. He was hoping to mount his own food and travel show on a cable channel. He often videotaped me stirring fudge in my copper kettles. But right now I would almost kiss his hairy feet in a thank-you for distracting Cherry from his ill-advised presentation.

  “Cherry,” John said, “we need to move on now for lunch at Ava’s Autumn Harvest. Your talk was originally scheduled for after the lunch, so why don’t we continue this after we all imbibe in Ava’s wonderful fudge and Michael’s wines?”

  A lot of wine might be needed to help people forget about pollution on their food.

  To my shock, Fontana stepped in front of Cherry and John to address the crowd. “The tour is stopping first at Fontana’s Fresh Fare, Cherry.”

  John tried to speak up about his tour—it wasn’t Cherry’s tour, after all—but Fontana went on about free natural lip balm made from local beeswax and perfumes made with thistle flowers and dill seeds. The women outvoted the few men in the crowd, which meant they were not coming to my outdoor market.

  My grandpa and I needed all the sales we could get. We had a prince and princess coming and we wanted them to enjoy a freshly refurbished Blue Heron Inn.

  In a loud voice, I said, “There’s fresh Rapunzel Raspberry Rapture Fudge today at Ava’s. Served with whipped cream from my parents’ farm. And Mom brought cheddar curds. They squeak in your teeth.”

  The curds announcement got heads nodding. Tourists loved Wisconsin’s famous squeaky cheese curds.

  Hands shot up.

  But then Fontana got in my face. Her homemade perfume polluted my lungs. It smelled like a combination of mincemeat pie spices and rosewater.

  Fontana pulled a huge bar of pink soap from her bag of products to wave around. “Look at you, Ava. What is that black stuff all over you? My new cherry-infused goat milk soap is just the thing to take care of grime.”

  I ground out, “Some of us were cleaning the church as we’d promised to do. This is only a little soot and dust.”

  An older woman called out, “Working amid the cinders. You’re Cinderella.”

  A man said, “Ava, are you the one the prince is coming to see?”

  A woman my mom’s age said, “Wash your feet, honey! You want clean feet in those glass slippers!”

  Laughter galloped through the throng.

  Fontana waved her soap again. “Let’s take her down to Fontana’s Fresh Fare for a makeover. In an hour she won’t look like an ugly stepsister at all. Did I tell you that all my makeup and lotions are half off today? Let’s get back on the bus and head on down there.”

  Cherry raised his bandaged arm with a brochure in his hand. “Sorry, Fontana, but John was right. I’m hungry.” He chuckled. “We’re having lunch at Ava’s Autumn Harvest. Then we have the rest of my presentation at one o’clock. Folks, we expect several area farmers to be there, so it should be interesting. After that, we’re visiting the Prevost Winery where you can participate in a grape stomp.”

  Fontana pouted petulantly, then addressed the crowd. “I can show you where Sister Adele saw the Virgin Mary walk right up to her in the woods. My vegetables and plants for your face are grown with the blessed dirt touched by the Virgin Mary and Sister Adele Brise. And of course, we might return to the church to find Sister Adele’s divinity fudge recipe hidden somewhere in this holy edifice.”

  The crowd gasped.

  So did I. I exchanged a look of horror with Pauline, who stood a few feet away.

  How did Fontana learn about the recipe? That was my grandfather’s secret. Only my family, my girlfriends, and the prince and princess knew about it. We wanted to announce it at the kermis in two weeks.

  Even John—who could never keep a secret about anything—appeared shocked, though he was smiling. He was probably dreaming up a new tour that would follow the trail of Sister Adele between Namur and southwest of us to Champion in Kewaunee County where her shrine resided.

  The tourists were flipping their heads every which way as they began imagining where the recipe might be hidden.

  John addressed his tour. “Hold on, everybody. The divinity fudge recipe is merely a story made up by Ava Oosterling’s grandfather to help celebrate the prince’s visit. But Ava will be making divinity fudge for the kermis. So all of you should come back here in two weeks to try it. Your donations will help us restore the steeple above us and help support our local volunteer fire department. Ava’s fudge is heavenly tasting, a miracle all its own. Did you know that Ava’s Autumn Harvest is in a historic stone barn that escaped the Great Fire of 1871? Did you know that fire took over one thousand lives here the same day the Great Chicago Fire took three hundred lives?”

  Just like that, John wrestled the crowd’s attention away from Fontana while also squelching the rumor about the fudge. I w
anted to hug Pauline’s boyfriend.

  A school bus waited for them on the blacktopped road in front of the church.

  Cherry hustled after John out the door. Fontana wiggled along in her wedge sandals at Cherry’s elbow.

  Pauline and I piled into the front seats of my yellow Chevy pickup truck. I had pulled onto the road heading east when a flash of red and yellow appeared in my side mirror. I stopped.

  “What’s wrong?” Pauline asked.

  “Double-fudge trouble.” I shifted into reverse.

  “Don’t hit the bus.”

  “I won’t.” I backed up enough to let Fontana see me. “Fontana is trying to sneak back in the church.”

  After spotting me watching her, she headed in the opposite direction toward Jonas over at the historic schoolhouse east of the church.

  Pauline growled, “Let her sneak back in. She owes us for not helping us clean the church.”

  “I think she knows something about that knife, Pauline.”

  “I told you to forget that knife. And don’t get involved with Fontana. She’s been too unpredictable since her divorce from Daniel. Let’s go.”

  Fontana was waving her hand in the air toward Jonas, who was pushing a wheelbarrow filled with garden tools. Through our open windows we heard Fontana yell, “Jonas! I need a ride.”

  “A ride, my foot,” I muttered. “She’s waiting for me to leave. Then she’ll duck into that church to look for that recipe and hide that knife.”

  I pulled my cell phone out of my shorts pocket, intending to call the sheriff.

  Pauline groaned. “Don’t call Jordy. That woman isn’t somebody you want to tangle with. Daniel nearly lost his property in their divorce because she was sentimental about the tree in their yard where she’d carved their initials. Who knows how she’ll get back at you for having her arrested inside this church? We don’t know for sure she had anything to do with that knife.”