Five-Alarm Fudge

by Christine DeSmet

  Pauline smiled. “Thank you. My kids mind when I use it. But I wouldn’t want to scare John.”

  “Scare him. He needs the real you.”

  Before we could leave, a fire engine and a Haz Mat truck cruised past us to the corner of the building. Close behind was Dillon’s white construction truck with Cody in the passenger seat and Sam in the backseat.

  Lucky Harbor and I raced over. The dog was all over Dillon, happier than heck to see him. I was, too.

  I asked, “What’re you guys doing down here?”

  Cody and Dillon had on firefighter gear. Sam was still dressed in his office duds of a white shirt, tie, and tan pants.

  Dillon said, “We don’t get real-life Haz Mat training much in Door County, so we all got the call. I picked up Cody and Sam was with him and here we are.”

  Dillon and Cody rushed to observe and help load chemicals onto the Haz Mat van.

  Sam came up to me.

  I said, “He’s growing up.”

  Sam said, “Who? Dillon?”

  I had to chuckle. Pauline did, too.

  * * *

  Pauline called John as I was driving the two of us without the dog back up the county to Fishers’ Harbor at around five thirty. Sam had told me the church ladies were handling the fudge shop. They’d brought new sparkly doodads to sell.

  Fearful of what I’d find at the shop, I was speeding up Highway 42.

  “Slow down,” Pauline said. “This is when the deer like to come out.”

  It was dusk. The sunset was in my rearview mirror. Buildings ahead of us on the crests of hills were painted gold. Sunsets were why some visited Door County. It’d been a long time since I’d gone to Fred and Fuzzy’s Waterfront Bar and Grill near Sister Bay to watch the sun drop on the horizon. I mentioned aloud how that little spot in the woods behind the Bay Ridge Golf Course was romantic, that I wanted to grab Dillon sometime and watch the sun drop.

  Pauline said, “You’d be bored and find a body floating in their bay.”

  Pauline called John again. “John and Marc are still out on the Super Catch I with your grandpa. John says they were filming earlier at the winery. He forgot his watch.”

  “What’d he say about our discovery?”

  “They’ll make it part of a TV story about how international terrorism was foiled in Door County.”

  “You’re at your best when you’re being sarcastic, P.M.”

  “What John needs are mindfulness exercises I use with my kindergartners to bring him back to reality.”

  “So you don’t think he’s going to be successful with his TV show proposal?”

  “No.”

  Her answer was so simple that it made me sad. She didn’t believe in John? I had to change the subject. “Tell me about your kindergartner exercises.”

  Mindfulness had been the rage in Hollywood for years. People took expensive classes to have somebody tell them to focus on their breathing.

  “We do belly buddy breathing. Kindergartners love their bellies and belly buttons. We practice putting a hand on our own bellies for three or four breaths. It calms them down.”

  “The thought of you rubbing John’s belly is pretty funny.”

  “If only we were in such proximity for even a minute, I would love rubbing his belly. Anything at this point.”

  As Pauline and I headed toward Juddville, almost to Fishers’ Harbor, an idea popped into my head. “John and Marc have taken a lot of video and photos. I never thought to ask them what they might have shot that night they went to the church.”

  “But John said the church was dark and he got hit on the head. They ran for their lives. I doubt they were thinking about filming.”

  “Maybe they were filming and didn’t realize it. You know how it is when you panic. If you’re holding something, you grip it tightly. They could have been pressing buttons on their phones or cameras in their hands and took shots they don’t even realize they have. Marc is Mr. Automatic with his phone. It’s always on.”

  A moment of stunned silence passed as we rolled along behind a car from Illinois. What if solving this was as simple as searching John’s or Marc’s cell phone?

  Pauline said, “You’re good at this sleuthing stuff, Poirot.”

  “Even if I have no restraint, Hastings?” Arthur Hastings was Hercule Poirot’s army captain friend.

  “I concede I admire your creativity.”

  “But we still don’t know who put that pin in the doll.”

  “Probably Jonas. Mike seems to think he’s gone off the deep end.”

  “As soon as we get home, I’m calling Jonas,” I said.

  “Are you going to tell him that Mike’s in love with Fontana?”

  “I’m not entirely convinced that’s true. Fontana is playing the field. I don’t think she’d do that if she felt something was unresolved with Mike.”

  “Do you think she’s telling the truth about what happened at the church and school with Cherry?”

  “Not the whole truth. She babbled about that whole making-love thing at the schoolhouse, and I doubt she walked home alone on the country roads. Fontana knows how to take care of herself that way.”

  “Don’t you find it weird that she neglects her own roadside market in order to be around you?”

  “What do you mean ‘around me’?”

  “She thinks you found Cherry’s body. You were close to him at the end. I think she’s watching you. That’s why she’s working at the winery and over at Jonas’s farm. She wants to keep an eye on Ava’s Autumn Harvest. She’s probably jealous of your relationship with Dillon. She could have set the fires to make you leave the neighborhood to her. She most definitely could have filled that roadside chapel with items from your fudge shop and stuck that pin in the head of the doll that looks like you.”

  “But Grandma or Grandpa would have said something if they noticed her at the fudge shop.”

  “But your grandparents aren’t there that often. Neither are you lately. Your fudge shop is operated by Cody, or Bethany, or Lois and Dotty or the other church ladies. And sometimes, frankly, there’s nobody behind the counter. Fontana could have stopped by one of those times and hauled out an armful without paying.”

  Everything about her words disturbed something in my soul, but the soap opera of Fontana was shunted aside when we pulled up in front of my cabin on Duck Marsh Street. Across the way my grandmother was struggling to get two large suitcases in the back hatch area of her SUV.

  Pauline and I piled out, then hurried over.

  “Grandma, where are you going?”

  “Now, Ava, don’t get all upset. I’m going to Chicago for a couple of days.”

  “Does Grandpa know?”

  “He’s busy. I’ll be back before he notices I’m gone.”

  I pushed down the bag she was attempting to lift to the back of the SUV. “That’s not true. Grandma, we’re all busy, but if you’re mad at him, this isn’t the way to handle it. One of us should go with you to Chicago. What is this ghost about?”

  Grandma was trying to lift the bag again, but I snatched it and shoved it toward Pauline.

  I grabbed the other suitcase from the SUV and shut the back hatch lid.

  Grandma pushed both hands through her big white hair in frustration. The wind was catching it in a shape that made her look like a tipsy vanilla ice-cream cone. “I have to go to Chicago. It’ll clear everything up.”

  Her normally creamy complexion was ruddy, as if she’d been crying. I dropped the suitcase in my hands in order to hug her. I melded one of my cheeks to hers in desperation. “Grandma, please tell me what’s going on. Please. Pauline and I won’t tell a soul. We’ll help you. If you want to go to Chicago, I’ll call Dotty and Lois and have them take over the fudge shop for the long weekend.”

  Her body went limp in the cradle of my arms. “You’d go to Chicago with me?”

  “If that’s what you want. Let’s go inside and talk about it.”

  Pauline and I escorted her with th
e bags into my grandparents’ cabin. My heart was thumping hard against my breastbone.

  Grandma headed straight for the kitchen while Pauline and I dumped the suitcases in the bedroom.

  When the two of us returned to the kitchen, Grandma was already pulling out a big Belgian pie tin a foot across in size. Pumpkins sat on a board waiting to be cut and scooped for pie filling. She did her best thinking when she made pies.

  But all of us were too agitated to be trusted with big knives to cut up pumpkins. Going to the refrigerator where I thankfully found cream cheese, I waved it around and said, “Let’s make truffles instead.”

  Pauline said, “Perfect. My kindergartners love making those. I’m an expert.”

  Truffles are an easy Belgian treat. The ingredients are simple: eight ounces of cream cheese, three cups of powdered sugar, twelve ounces of semisweet chocolate, and any flavoring you like.

  Grandma beat the cream cheese and sugar together while I melted chocolate.

  Pauline heated cups of water in the microwave for tea. The thought of something warm felt good. The kitchen window was open and cool air was crawling in like a stealthy cat from the marshland and harbor, dropping to the floor and weaving around us. I closed the window a smidgen, but the crisp evening air would be needed to cool the chocolate down in order to make the truffles.

  At first, we settled for small talk about the flowers going to seed out back and the blackbirds flocking to fly south. We speculated on when a killing frost might come.

  But then I got to the subject at hand. “Grandma, why were you heading for Chicago?”

  “Family ghosts. My relatives aren’t real.”

  Pauline and I exchanged a look across the table. We were sitting down now, creating one-inch balls of creamy chocolate. We handed them to Grandma to roll in cocoa before placing them in a pan with wax paper in the bottom.

  I said, “Now you’re confusing me. The Van Dammes are real. They’d have to be real or you wouldn’t have been born.”

  With cocoa-covered hands, Grandma picked up her cup of tea from the table. “I suppose it’s time I told somebody. You have to promise not to tell your parents or your grandfather, though.”

  “Okay. What is it?”

  “I hope it’s not too late to tell the prince and princess not to come.”

  So Grandpa still hadn’t told her his secret. Indigestion set in. “Why are you so adamant about them not coming here?”

  Grandma put down her teacup a little too hard. Tea spurted up and onto the table, just missing a truffle. “I’m afraid we’re not related to royalty.”

  “How can that be? Grandpa found the link. The royals called back to say it was true.”

  “I don’t even think the prince and princess are true royalty. The Van Damme bloodline died a long time ago.”

  Chapter 27

  Grandma’s words made me drop my truffle on the floor. Adhering to the three-seconds rule, I grabbed it and took a bite hoping I’d heard wrong. “What do you mean we’re not related to the prince and princess? They’re not royalty? We’re not?”

  I stuffed the remainder of the truffle in my mouth. Across from me, Pauline did the same with a truffle, chewing like crazy.

  To my left, Grandma punished a truffle by burying it under a pile of cocoa in the pan. “It’s true. When I was a little girl, one of my great-aunts told me about how a Van Damme had moved back to Belgium with a secret. My great-aunt had been raised in Belgium herself. She said the family secret was that the royal lineage wasn’t royal at all.”

  “Grandma, I looked them up on the Internet. They wear royal uniforms and crowns at special events. They look royal to me.”

  “They don’t know they’re not of royal blood.”

  “I’m confused.” And I was worried. My grandmother was the most commonsense person in our family. She didn’t lie like the rest of us.

  Grandma explained the family rumor she’d heard when a little girl. One of the Van Damme men of royal lineage and his wife—a distant aunt of my grandmother’s—had come to Door County and stayed for weeks, enjoying visiting the Belgians around Brussels and Namur and other locales. They took a trip to Chicago a few weeks before their return to Belgium. This woman had been pregnant, but the tale handed down to my grandmother as a girl said our relative lost her own child in childbirth, but hid the fact. The couple traveled to Chicago so that they could adopt a baby.

  The story stunned me. “So you believe that baby had no royal blood? But they passed it off as being of royal lineage when they returned to Belgium.”

  Grandma nodded.

  I exchanged a look with Pauline. We popped another truffle ball into our mouths.

  Around her mouthful, Pauline said, “But do you know this for sure? It sounds like gossip. The same sort of gossip surrounding the murder of Tristan Hardy. Of course, there’s no baby involved with Tristan Hardy’s case, but—”

  “Pauline,” I said, grimacing at her, “this is serious.”

  “Sorry, Sophie. I’m just trying to help,” Pauline said. “My kindergartners get things twisted all the time. They tell me gossip about their parents and relatives, and maybe one percent of it is true. Maybe this is a one percent thing.”

  “And adoption still means the baby was within the royal family.”

  Grandma said, “Blood is thicker than water. Because the baby being adopted was kept a secret, I believe they were afraid others would remove the family’s or the boy’s royal status. A baby not inheriting the royal genes could have been passed over when it came time to ascending to a throne or taking over a position in a royal court or a castle.”

  Grandma got up to wash her hands at the sink. “I have to make a pie.”

  What she meant was “I have to think.” She took out a big bowl and, standing at the counter, plopped enough flour in it for at least six pies.

  Grandma said, “I’ve never told anyone because I didn’t think I had to worry about this. Now your grandfather has invited the royal Van Damme family for next week, and they may not even have royal blood in them.”

  “For the sake of argument,” I said, picking at the creamy chocolate dough in the bowl in the middle of the table, “let’s say they adopted a baby boy and that baby went back to Belgium and was assumed to be their biological baby. When was this exactly?”

  “The late 1850s. That baby grew up and went on to marry and have children. And those children had children. Clement Van Damme and his friend Bram Oosterling immigrated here. Clement was my great-uncle.”

  In the many cookbooks I’d inherited from Lloyd Mueller, I’d found pictures of Clement and Bram as young men. My grandpa had said he thought it possible that it was Clement who was betrothed to somebody with an A name, and thus the chinaware in the bottom of our Lake Michigan bay belonged to him.

  Pauline and I rolled more chocolate balls into the cocoa dust. I said to Grandma, “Your grandparents didn’t have names that started with A. Do you recall anybody with an A name?”

  “No,” Grandma said, now cracking eight eggs with loud whacks in quick succession. “This hunt for chinaware is all for naught, too.”

  Pauline raised her hand across the table from me. “What if the cups were for Adele Brise?”

  Grandma slid into her chair to join us. “But she gave her life to God. She didn’t marry.”

  “Yes,” Pauline said, rolling a truffle in her hands, “but before she became a nun she was a young woman who’d come over on a ship looking for a better life. Maybe she was going to marry a Van Damme here. And it never came to pass.”

  I said, “Adele’s journey was documented pretty closely. She wasn’t betrothed. Maybe the cup isn’t for a woman at all. Remember that another Arnaud Van Damme in the family married into a royal family. Grandpa told me that back in July. So there is royalty on the other side somewhere back in time.”

  My grandma shrugged. “What does it matter? We’re not of pure royal lineage. It’s all a lie. We’re like ghosts. And the prince probably doesn’t kn
ow he’s not of royal blood.”

  Grandma got up and went straight to beating the eggs into the flour in her pan on the counter. Belgians are practical and move on quickly. “This is a terrible secret, Ava, but I guess I can keep it buried in my heart until I die.”

  Both Pauline and I got out of our chairs to stand next to my grandmother. The cool air from the kitchen window over the sink feathered across our cheeks.

  Grandma said, “I suppose I’m sounding old and senile.”

  “Grandma, you’re a vital, smart woman in her seventies. Were you going to Chicago to see if you could find the adoption records?”

  “Yes. I found some agencies online and contacted them. Their people said it might be good to consult church records that aren’t yet on the Internet and visit the library collections.”

  Pauline and I returned to the table. I tossed more truffles in the cocoa. “Grandma, you know it doesn’t matter to me if we’re not blood relatives of the royal line. We’re still Belgian. The lineage married other Belgians, even marrying royalty.”

  “But the Van Dammes aren’t pure royalty. They pulled a fast one. Your grandfather doesn’t know any of this. He thinks you could be a princess by bloodline somehow. Now what do I do? It makes me ache to think about telling him.”

  “Don’t tell him.”

  Pauline gave me a cross-eyed look before stuffing another truffle in her mouth.

  I said, “Grandma, Prince Arnaud and Princess Amandine are royal people. They live in a castle in Belgium and have horses and do things for charity and wear crowns. That’s real enough for me. And it’s really not our place to tell them to get a DNA test because of something that happened over a hundred and sixty years ago.”

  Grandma was pouring cream into the flour and eggs to make her piecrust dough. She put the jug of cream down on the counter. Then she laughed, turning to us. “You’re right. Bah and booyah on me. That’s what it boils down to, doesn’t it? I’d be asking a prince and princess to get a blood test. I’d be construed as a lunatic.”