As we enjoyed the outdoor deck, I ventured, “We have changed.”
Dillon had a hand at the small of my back. “The chef has wasted his time creating a meal. I have mine right here.”
Before I knew it, Dillon let down my hair and had both hands in it as he brought me into a kiss that had me swaying in the rhythm of the boat and breeze. I felt as weightless as the tissue-thin clouds turning tangerine and rosy above us in the sky.
We went inside where an artful dinner awaited us in an elegant dining area decked out with black-and-white linens. The repast came from Door County gardens, orchards, and Lake Michigan. Dillon explained the trout had been caught by my grandfather. Dillon said the chef had preordered it.
“My grandfather knows about this?”
“No. He thinks I ordered it for my mother. I wanted this to be private, only for you and me. Our secret.”
Our secret. I smiled. I hoped Dillon had no idea I was thinking about all the many secrets I’d been tussling with lately.
After we’d eaten a couple of bites, the chef appeared. I was shocked.
The chef was Piers Molinsky, one of the guest chefs and bakers who had almost deep-sixed my First Annual Fishers’ Harbor Fudge Festival in July. Famous for his muffins in Chicago, he was a portly behemoth with messy brown hair and big fuzzy eyebrows. On one occasion I’d caught him in a fight involving fudge cutters wielded by the other chef, Kelsey King. The two had ended up wrestling in a fight on the floor of my shop, almost knocking over copper kettles full of hot cream and melted Belgian chocolate. As it was, the kettles had boiled over during the fight and Lucky Harbor had lapped up bacon fudge created by Piers.
“Piers? What are you doing back in Door County?”
He laughed heartily as he corralled Lucky Harbor and snapped on a leash. “Don’t be afraid of me. I’m not a fighter. I couldn’t stand that twit, Kelsey King, who pretended she was a chef. Imagine putting weeds into fudge.” He visibly shuddered.
Indeed, the woman guest chef from the West Coast had almost ruined my festival with her crazy “edible wild-food fudge” ideas.
Dillon said, “Piers is looking around for a location to start a branch of his famous muffin shops.”
I told Piers good luck, but I didn’t entirely mean it. I sensed trouble brewing again with his return to Fishers’ Harbor.
Piers handed me some Goldfish crackers. His thoughtful gesture surprised me. And pleased me a little bit. Good cooks or chefs remember the favorite dishes of their customers. Piers had obviously made a note last July that Lucky Harbor loved cheesy crackers. I tossed a couple of crackers in the air and said to Lucky Harbor, “Want some fudge?”
The happy dog snapped up the crackers. Piers led the dog to the recreation room at the other end of the yacht that had its own private deck.
When we were alone again, Dillon explained, “My mother insisted the chef create a dog-friendly meal just for Lucky. I’m afraid she’s to blame for inviting Piers back to Door County. She remembered that he used your Cinderella Pink Fudge in his red velvet muffins and they were all the rage last July.”
“Your mother seems quite eager to make this perfect for us. Should we be suspicious?” I was eager to get to the “issue” he’d mentioned.
“It’s no secret she wants grandchildren. She figures she had a near miss eight years ago with us, and now she’s going to do everything she can to fix that.”
“Have you told her we’re taking our relationship slow and proper?”
“No way!” he said, guffawing. “I’d get all kinds of lectures on how she’s growing old and all her friends have grandchildren. I go with the flow. I told her we’d have at least a dozen children.” He winked.
He wasn’t serious. However, I was starting to see something new in Dillon that caused me to pause. Did he secretly want children—now? Was that the issue he wanted to talk about?
A wine steward interrupted us. He was nobody I knew. I was glad, because my face must have gone pale. Somehow leaping ahead to the possibility of having children with Dillon when we were still exploring only being good friends was definitely the “cart before the horse” for me. I decided murder was a safer subject.
Uninterrupted, Dillon and I talked about everything we knew so far over bites of lake trout, cabbage-fried in a red wine sauce, as well as mashed potatoes and a cauliflower jut topped with bubbly yellow cheddar cheese. There was asparagus. Honey-glazed carrots also graced our plates as a waiter in white ferried back and forth to the kitchen. Warm cheese bread from Laura’s Luscious Ladle Bakery enticed us bite after bite until we were stuffed. But still we had room for a real Belgian pie—a twelve-inch pan filled with ambrosial chocolate pudding within a brownie crust.
As I finished my large slice, I had to point to the pan with my head shaking. “Plenty for more picnics.”
“Or for later? After some exercise?”
Dillon’s heated gaze snatched my breath away, giving my mind and heart a quixotic tilting. I loved him—oh boy, did I ever!—but I didn’t know if this love could last. It hadn’t last time. We’d dived into marriage too fast. Marriage struck me a little like the process of canning vegetables or preserving fruits. If you went about putting up preserves—or a marriage—in haste, the fruit would spoil.
“I probably should get back to my fudge shop.” The words sounded inane, but I suddenly wanted to escape Dillon and the boat.
The confidence I’d cultivated over the past few months was slipping away. I started searching for my phone in a pocket, then realized I had no pockets and had left the cell phone in the stateroom.
Dillon reached across our small table to take one of my hands in his. “You don’t trust me.”
The good feelings imploded inside me, mingling with the doubts. I waved a hand about to indicate the scrumptious, lavish dinner and yacht. “It’s not real, Dillon. We promised each other that this time our relationship would be grounded. We’d be more practical.”
“And yet you make Cinderella Pink Fairy Tale Fudge. You like fairy tales, and you want them to happen for you, if you would let yourself admit to that.”
He had me. What woman didn’t dream of fairy tales now and then? Or pirates stealing her out to sea for a life of coddling and cuddling?
“But my life is more than make-believe. What’s happening to my family and friends is real.”
I rushed to tell him about finding the “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” scenario at the schoolhouse. “Pauline and I think the killers hid out there that night. They lay low, and when they thought the coast was clear, they got into their car and Cherry’s car and drove away.”
Dillon withdrew his hand and sat back. “So, who’s Goldilocks?”
“Maybe Fontana Dahlgren. And one of the bears is Michael Prevost. He’s admitted to wanting Cherry out of the way.” I nibbled my lower lip in thought. “And I have doubts about Jonas Coppens, too.”
“Another bear. And the Dahlgrens? They’re sitting in jail, after all. The sheriff believes they committed the murder.”
“On the basis of a shovel? We have to do something to prove they didn’t do it.”
“Their lawyer is doing that. I saw Parker earlier.”
“Where?”
“In Namur going into Chris and Jack’s Belgian Bar. Parker said he got inside the church for an inspection. He’s representing the Dahlgrens.”
“So, what did Parker find?”
Parker Balusek was an expert in historic church renovations and an attorney in Kewaunee County south of Door County. Parker had been the lawyer of Grandpa’s murdered friend, Lloyd Mueller. We’d all spent enough time together that Grandpa hinted to me that Parker would be good marriage material.
Dillon said, “Parker didn’t get to look as much as he’d have liked. He had to wear the booties and gloves, even a hair net, and Deputy Maria Vasquez escorted him. He said there are often hidden panels in walls in old buildings. Because of the lack of nearby banks back when the buildings were built, secret hiding plac
es abounded. He’s sure Saint Mary of the Snows could hold the recipe.”
“My grandfather is excited about that, but my grandmother is not so much.”
Dillon pushed back his chair, stood, then held out his hand toward me. “I’m working on that secret your grandmother is hiding.”
That news got me off my chair. “How so?”
“Thank my mother yet again. She offered to have a talk with your grandmother about our family’s secret. She figures if she confesses, maybe your grandmother will confess.”
“What secret?”
“It wouldn’t be a secret if I told you.”
“Stop that.” I gave him a playful swat on the chest. “What’s your secret?”
He walked away from me a few steps. I watched his shoulders flinch before he turned back to me. “When I was born, my parents gave me away.”
I was sure I hadn’t heard him correctly.
Dillon nodded. “My mother suffered from postpartum depression and it was bad. Of course I heard about this years later. For much of my first year I was raised mostly by Grandmother Violet and Grandpa Herman Rivers.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”
“It was a family secret and I keep secrets. What mother wouldn’t be ashamed that she wondered about being a good mother? She said she had horrible doubts and couldn’t bond with me at first.”
“Oh, Dillon, I’m so sorry.” I hugged him tightly. “But she got through it.”
Dillon squeezed me back. “Yes. With a good doctor, and much love from my father and her friends, she got well. Now, thirty-eight years later, she feels it’s time to help others who are suffering with depression of any kind, particularly women. She mentioned to me the other day that she marveled at the way you’re renewing your life. She feels it’s time to do that herself.”
“Me? I influenced your mother? Wait a minute. She thinks I suffer from depression?”
“No. Remember the word ‘renewal.’ She sees that you’re determined to renew your life here. You’re a bundle of energy. She sees herself in you at times. You know she’s a whirlwind.”
“Indeed.”
“And she cares about you and your grandmother.”
Breathless with emotions, I went to the windows of the dining room to stare at the lake. My breathing began to match the rhythm of the gentle waves rising and falling. Seagulls swooped by us outside, their wings pumping up and down like a bellows atop the breeze. “I don’t think your mother talking to my grandmother will help things.”
Dillon took me in his arms again. “Cinderella, I worry about you.”
We began to slow-dance to the forward-and-back brush of the boat against the water as we coursed across the bay.
“Why?”
“You can’t keep your shop, the inn’s remodeling, and the roadside market running while simultaneously trying to save your grandmother, solve a murder, and get ready for the prince and princess. No one person can do all that. You’re headed for disaster.”
I stopped dancing. Indignation simmered inside me. “You want me to stop doing something? Which thing?”
“I want you to allow me to help with more than what I’m doing now. My mother’s interested in helping. Allow me to offer that.”
“Allow? Don’t I allow you to do things?”
“No, you don’t. You watch over me and you keep me locked at the inn pounding nails. Because I’m safe that way.”
“Safe from what?”
“Not what. From you. If I’m busy and not hanging around, you don’t have to deal with my opinions. There’s no opinion involved with pounding nails. It’s safe.”
“This is silly.” My heart said it wasn’t, that he’d locked on to some truth I’d missed somehow about myself.
“I sense that you have fear about our relationship. If we did more things together, you might discover I have different opinions. You might be afraid that our relationship will fall apart. Like it did before.” The setting sun strafing us through the windows gave Dillon an even more chiseled appearance than normal.
“Exactly what are you asking of me? Is this the ‘issue’ you wanted to talk about?”
“Yes. I want you to allow me to be a true partner in your life. I want more from this relationship than we ever dared have before. I want to change. Together. Real change. Not pretend change.”
“I’ve been pretending? I haven’t changed?” Panic was setting in. My brain searched the universe. Then I recalled Marc’s words.
A sudden revelation came to me, as if Dillon had opened a door to a new room of a house, only this house was my brain. “My manager, of all people, told me I’d changed. But he said I was taller than he remembered. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. It felt odd at the time, but now I realize I haven’t changed enough for him to recognize changes in me. Is that what you’re getting at?”
“I’m just worried about you being overextended. That’s all I’m getting at.”
“So I’m busier than ever, but busy doesn’t mean I’ve changed for the better.” This, too, felt like a wondrous truth flowering inside me.
“Sometimes I wonder if you’re trying to prove to all those guys on that TV show you used to belong to that you’re better than them. Honey, you don’t have to prove anything. You’re talented in every way. But you tend to become obsessed to prove your points. You’re obsessed with this murder. This is Monday night and look where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing in just two days’ time. You can’t keep this up. You have to trust Sheriff Tollefson.”
“But the guy often doesn’t see motives and clues like I do.”
Dillon hiked an eyebrow at me. “Really? Despite his probable six years of school to learn his business and then his decade of on-the-job-experience? You know more?”
Dillon was playing hardball. I sighed. “You’re right. We need more time for us, don’t we?”
“But do you need me?”
His question slayed me. “Yes.” My heart rate was bouncing about like a tadpole struggling to go upstream in a current. “I need you. I need your help, Dillon. I really do. And thank you. I had no idea I was getting so out of hand.”
“I bet Pauline was noticing it.”
I laughed. “Come to think of it, I think you’re right.”
Dillon kissed me on the lips. “What can I do?”
“Find Tristan Hardy’s missing car. It’s a new blue Ford Fusion.”
Dillon laughed so hard I thought that he had rocked the yacht. “Is that all?”
“No. Maybe you could hang out at the local bars more to see what the gossip is?”
“Tough job, but I’ll do my best. What are you going to be up to?”
“Since I’ve met Professor Weaver in the past and know him—”
“You’re going to wheedle words from Weaver?”
“Pauline would be proud of your alliteration. I have to visit Michael Prevost, too, and ask him the real reason he was so happy Cherry died, and then ask why Michael got my grandmother drunk. I doubt, as Mercy told me, that Grandma was drinking heavily because people asked her about Prince Arnaud and Princess Amandine coming.”
“But they could be the simple reason.”
“You’re right.” Working with Dillon was already feeling good. “But my grandma would’ve merely walked away from that conversation. I suspect my grandmother was asking him too many questions about Cherry and he wanted to shut her up, so he kept asking her to taste-test new bottles and somehow fooled her. Maybe he drugged her—”
“There you go again.” Dillon engulfed me in his arms as he planted a more sensual kiss on my lips. “Ava, sweetheart, my Belgian belle, we should try to do something together, but not this discussion. Not now. I realize it’s not Wednesday. This is only Monday, but . . .”
Some things inside me had not changed and I hoped they wouldn’t. Like my yearning for him. I purred, “You’re a pirate?”
“If you’re a maiden who needs capturing.”
We hurr
ied belowdecks to the privacy of our stateroom.
Chapter 17
Refreshed after the best date ever on the yacht, I was at Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers & Belgian Fudge & Beer by five thirty Tuesday morning making fudge.
I vowed to be a new woman. I would simplify my life, relax, and try not to do the sheriff’s job plus a half dozen other things.
My grandfather had taken fishermen out and had returned early, fussing about how cold the air-conditioning was on the Super Catch I. He also complained that it was too hot and dry outside. He was complaining a lot lately about insignificant things. The opposite of me, he didn’t have enough to do anymore. It felt awkward being out of sync with Gilpa.
By ten I’d whipped up two batches of Rose Garden Fudge from petals in the roses behind Lloyd’s empty house, plus Cinderella Pink Fudge and Rapunzel Raspberry Rapture Fudge. I tried to think about what my next flavor should be in my signature Fairy Tale line. Goldilocks? Dillon and I had mentioned that tale last night. What flavor would fit Goldilocks and her three bears? I also had many other tales to choose from.
Customers streamed in and out and I enjoyed chatting with them about possible new flavors. Some wanted Snow White. One little girl wanted that to be peppermint.
I couldn’t decide. But I knew I had to create divinity fudge for the prince.
Because of the low humidity, at around noon I began whipping egg whites for a divinity fudge recipe I found in a 1930s cookbook put together by a farm family from the Maplewood area of our county and the Ahnapee Trail. The trail was a favorite for those who hiked, biked, or rode horses. The colors in the autumn there made you feel as if you walked inside a rainbow.
My mother called, yelling over my phone, “There’s a fire!”
I almost dropped my bowl of egg whites. “Where?”
“Outside Harvest.”
She hung up. I called her back, but she didn’t answer.
Cody was stocking my shelves with new pink doll clothing the church ladies had made for us when he got the message about the fire on his phone.
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