by Duffy Brown
“Yeah, I got takers. Lots of ’em.” Speed took a step closer, his lips thin and eyes cold, hot breath across my face, trying to get me to back up. Fat chance. “I’ve got plans,” Speed growled. “And you’re not screwing them up just ’cause you’re from the big city and think you know it all. Bunny tried to mess with me, and look where she ended up. Get me this shop, and no one gets hurt.”
Speed slammed the door as he left, the panes rattling in their frames. I yanked out Sheldon, who really did know it all—that’s why I named my iPhone Sheldon—and Googled Speed Maslow jerk. Okay, I left off the jerk part, but I was thinking it.
Speed won some minor race last year and came in second in a few more and snagged a couple of endorsements along the way. He had his very own patented Speed On-The-Go water bottle in black or poison green, but that was about it—nothing blockbuster in the last two years. Four years ago he won the Tour of Texas, and since there was a list of Google references for that, I figured this was a big deal, except that it was four years ago.
My guess was Mr. Speed planned to cash in on his name while he still had one that people recognized. Okay, so how did Bunny figure into this or was Speed just shooting his mouth off to scare the dumb city girl?
“Cripes almighty,” Rudy said, hobbling his way in the door between the shop and the kitchen. He did the thinking man’s pace back and forth across the kitchen, Cleveland and Bambino watching like it was a slow-motion Ping-Pong match.
“Everybody in town here thinks I’m innocent, the snobs on the hill think I’m guilty, and to top it all off, I wasn’t at the Stang more than five minutes and Huffy comes in and shoves a paper at me to sign agreeing to sell her Rudy’s Rides. Said she’d have the cash in a month and would add a ten percent bonus, and that her dad had nothing to do with it and this was all her doing.”
“Well, guess what. Speed stopped in and wants me to sweet-talk you into selling him the place. Said if I got in his way I’d wind up like Bunny. Does anyone get along around here? So far we know that Dwight wants his mother’s money ’cause he’s in debt, and from what Fiona said, her brother, Smithy, had good motive for sending Bunny over a cliff for screwing up his marriage, but neither of them has a reason to frame you. Then we got Speed and Huffy, who want your shop really bad, probably frame you without batting an eye, but why would they kill Bunny? Did you find out anything else?”
“Jason Bourne’s off to the mainland. Saw him heading for the ferry with a black trench coat slung over his shoulder, briefcase handcuffed to his wrist and sporting a glued-on mustache. Wonder who he’s got in his crosshairs this time around?”
Bourne, or whatever his real name was, obviously didn’t want anyone to know he’d been at Dwight’s house, or he wouldn’t have been hiding in a closet. “Do you really think he’s a hit man?”
“Do you glue on facial hair and handcuff your luggage? Bet he has one of those put-together guns in there with a silencer like you see on TV. I saw Irma walking down the street when I came in,” Rudy added. “She had on a big pink hat with a feather, had a wild look in her eyes and was carrying a plate of fudge. Wonder what that’s all about?”
“Holy cow! Did you smell smoke? I gotta go.” I took the back door that faced the picture-perfect harbor and tripped over a busted wood step with a crack clear through the middle. No wonder Rudy broke his leg.
I turned onto Main Street, which was crowded with horses, bikes and tourists moving so slow I wanted to yell, Get out of the way! I spotted Irma’s hat in the crowd then her pink and chocolate vest. She ambled her way toward Rita’s Fudge Shoppe, holding her tray high like a grand prize.
“Come and get some terrific fudge right here,” Irma sang out, her voice carrying over the street din. “See for yourself how Rita’s Fudge Shoppe makes the best fudge in town. Get some to take home for friends and family. They’ll thank you for it.”
Irma spotted me and gave a big impish grin. She hitched her head toward Rita’s shop. “Free samples of what you’ll find inside,” she sang out again as she stepped onto the porch.
Tourists crowded close, snagging the little white tissue cups and popping the delicious-looking morsels in their mouths. Smiles turned to frowns with fits of choking and gagging, along with bulging eyes, sour faces and some actual spitting on the ground. People pushed and shoved to get to the free fudge, then pushed and shoved to escape.
The crowd on Rita’s porch scattered, the word going viral and spreading to the customers waiting their turn inside. In a flash, the thriving Tuesday afternoon business at Rita’s Fudge Shoppe morphed into impending bankruptcy. Eyes glaring, Rita and Dutchy stormed their way out of the shop, heading straight for Irma.
So this was the Mackinac version of God helping those who helped themselves. With all attention focused on Irma, I slid inside the empty store and past the cute pink and white ice-cream parlor chairs and tables, then slunk behind the glass display counter piled high with really yummy-looking fudge. I snagged a piece along the way, popped it in my mouth and yanked the wall phone off the cradle.
Holy freaking cow! The fudge was maple walnut and was creamy and mind-blowingly delicious. I couldn’t see a thing or even feel my toes and fingers. My brain refused to function, every ounce of my being savoring the orgasmic taste. All this from fudge? Yeah, most definitely, all this from fudge!
Get a grip, Evie. I tried, I really did, but there was no gripping. Instead I ate two more pieces! I didn’t think my mouth was that big, but it was! I needed fudge therapy; a twelve-step program. When a bit of sanity returned, I punched in Winslow’s number.
“Is somebody there?” asked the receptionist.
My mouth was too full to talk. I sucked in a breath around the candy. “Mithr Winow?”
“Pervert.” The line went dead.
I swallowed and tried to convince myself I was a rotten human for eating fudge and not concentrating on the task at hand, except my heart wasn’t in it—the fudge was just too awesome to contemplate remorse.
“What are you doing?” a voice said from behind me.
The only reason I didn’t scream was that my mouth was full of fudge. I swallowed the whole glob in one gulp.
“Fiona?” I coughed as I spun around. “You scared me to death . . . almost literally.” I coughed again.
“I need to make a phone call and I have to hurry. Irma’s got an idea how to get even with Dutchy and Rita for doing her wrong.”
A huge smile skated across Fiona’s face, her green eyes dancing. “Revenge! You betcha’. I’m in, do it. ”
Fiona was my kind of gal.
I repunched the numbers. “Mr. Winslow, please. This is Rita Delong calling from Mackinac Island. I need to speak to him, it’s an emergency.”
Fiona stifled a giggle and I licked a stray glob of fudge off my thumb as I waited for Winslow to come on the line. I could see Rita and Dutchy arguing with Irma on the porch, their heads close, faces red, words like slut, thief, old biddy and granny drifting our way.
“The tourists are snapping pictures as if this were the local zoo,” Fiona said.
“From what I can see, they aren’t too far off the mark.”
Fiona backed us and the curly corded phone into the kitchen, which had copper pots stacked on a table, big bags of sugar on the counter, a king-size stove and a mixer. “Avoiding fudge temptation,” she said, plopping a piece of vanilla fudge in her mouth. “And keeping us out of sight. How long could a fudge-fight last?”
We peeked around the corner as Rita threw a piece of fudge at Irma and Irma hurled a chunk at Dutchy, resulting in the whole tray going airborne and everyone backing away from the toxic pieces. “Pretty darn long,” I said. “Who would have thought?”
“Winslow here,” came the voice on the phone. “How can I help you?”
“This is Rita Delong. Dwight Harrington owes me money, a lot of money. Since you’re Dwight’s attorney, I
’m assuming you know his mother bit the big one, and now that he’s inheriting his mother’s house, I want my cash, and I want it now.”
Fiona gave me a thumbs-up.
“Who is this?” Winslow growled.
“Rita Delong. I own a fudge shop here on Mackinac Island and I want my money. Don’t forget to tell Dwight Harrington that I called.”
The phone went dead and Dutchy rounded the corner, plowing straight into me and knocking me against the giant mixer. “Thought I heard . . . ” He looked from me to Fiona. “What are you two doing back here? You’re fudge thieves. I’m calling the cops.”
Dutchy grabbed for the phone and Fiona beat him to it, clutching it in her hand. “You can’t do that ’cause we were doing you a favor. The phone rang, no one was around, so we took the order.”
Dutchy towered over me, backing me toward the wall, a scowl creasing his forehead. “I heard you talking. What does Dwight have to do with this? And what don’t you want him to forget?”
“Dwight’s the one who made the call,” I said, lying my little fudge-stained heart out as best I could. “He wants five pounds of chocolate-pecan delivered, and I told him I wouldn’t forget to tell you.”
“Dwight?”
“Says he’s your biggest fan. Just add it to his bill.”
“What bill?”
“Drop it off at SeeFar tomorrow. Put it on the back porch. He’s on a sugar high,” Fiona said.
“That’s a nice order.” Dutchy looked confused, and Fiona and I seized the moment of Dutchy contemplating his bank account to duck under his arm and hustle out of the shop, not stopping till we got to the street,
“I think he bought it,” Fiona gushed as we blended in with the foot traffic.
“Now maybe, but when five pounds of fudge gets dropped off and Dwight calls Rita’s Fudge Shoppe wanting to know what’s going on, we’re toast. My grandpa Frank talked me out of being a lawyer because I suck at lying. He said things never got better when I opened my mouth; just a lot more complicated.”
Fiona gave me a friendly shoulder bump. “Maybe he’s right, maybe he’s wrong, but at least this time your mouth was filled with really good fudge.”
The sun sank into Lake Huron, a big ball of fire against the gray blue of deep, cold water. I hadn’t seen Irma since the great fudge encounter of the unbelievable kind, so I couldn’t tell her I contacted Winslow. That I’d gotten myself into a holy mess with the phony fudge order was something I intended to keep to myself, since it involved stuffing my mouth with maple-nut from her stolen recipes. But right now the big question was, where the heck was Irma?
I added another paint-primed bike to the thirteen others as Rudy scooped Bambino from the left pocket of the pool table and plopped down in the wicker rocker. He eased a straightened coat hanger between his thigh and the plaster cast, a look of relief on his face as he maneuvered the wire to a certain spot.
“Dang cast is so blasted itchy, it’s driving me nuts,” Rudy said. “Only good thing is that it takes my mind off the fact that we’ve only rented out eight bikes the whole blessed day. At this rate I’ll be bankrupt by Thanksgiving. When I bought the shop four years ago, I thought of it as vintage bikes on a vintage island. Now my bikes are just old, really old.”
“Old can be good.”
“If it’s Scotch and wine.”
“We need a gimmick. A saying.”
“‘Geezers a go-go’?”
“I was thinking more like chocolate candy that melts in your mouth and not in your hand, or cereal that goes snap, crackle and pop.”
Rudy thought for a minute then let out a long sigh. “I got nothing. I’ll hobble on over to Doud’s and get a few groceries. Least I can do is feed you for all your work. The bikes you painted look good—a lot better than they did before—but they’re still just old.”
“A word of warning: Skip the tater tots and pizza,” I offered as Rudy strapped a shopping tote to his crutch. “You never know what or who those things have been sitting next to in the freezer, if you get my drift.”
Rudy gave me a smile and a two-finger salute. “Got it.”
Rudy fed Bambino and Cleveland a treat each, then stomped off. I scratched my chin and my neck, probably in sympathy to Rudy and his itchy cast. A family of four strolled by the shop, took one look at the red-primed bikes and kept on going. Okay, this was just what I needed: a local focus group. If I got some feedback, maybe I’d find out there was something I could do to fix the bikes that wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg.
“Excuse me,” I called, rushing out onto the sidewalk. I slapped on my best please the customer smile. “What would it take for you to rent these bikes for your family to explore the island?”
The dad was a young exec type with a big income and the ego to match—just the kind of client I loved dealing with in Chicago, always so cooperative.
“A miracle,” he said with a sneer as he studied the front of the shop. “This place is a dump.”
“What about lakeside rustic?”
“Dump.”
Mom flipped back her long blonde hair. “In the fourth grade I had a pink Sweet Thunder bike with a banana seat and purple streamers and a doll carrier. ’Course it was new, not like these. I’d never let my children on these; probably get some disease.”
The smaller boy folded his arms. “I have a Batman mountain bike, special edition.”
The bigger kid sneered like dad. “I play basketball, that’s all I care about. These bikes suck.” I got the snotty-kid eye roll, and the family pranced on down Main.
So this was my target audience? They weren’t out for a bargain rental; they wanted flashy, new and different, something to brag about to family and friends. They were after something that made for great vacation pictures on Facebook and Twitter or got pinned on Pinterest. They wanted a red Ferrari on two wheels. Rudy was right—this wasn’t going to work, and I had no idea how to fix the problem.
“Well now don’t these bicycles look darlin’,” Irish Donna said as she tugged Paddy to a stop by the curb. “Just darlin’ indeed. Rudy is lucky to be having you around even if you are sporting a big black cloud.”
“How would you like to do me a favor and rent one of these darlin’ bicycles?” I said, a wave of desperation washing over me. I needed a bit of good news to save Rudy’s day. “You could ride around tomorrow and give Paddy here a well-deserved rest. Bet he’s one pooped horse, and you’d get some great exercise; wouldn’t that be nice?” I rubbed my hands together to stop the itching. Grandpa Frank once said that an itchy palm meant money was coming. I hoped this was it.
“Well that’s not a bad idea a’tall,” Donna said, a big smile on her face. “I suppose I can be helping out my old pal Rudy by renting a bike. My guess is that sales are pitiful and you’re fighting to save the sinking ship. I can cheer him up on this fine night and be making you a good deal too now that I’m taking the bike off your hands.”
Donna reached down beside her and pulled out a wiggly furball of tan and white. “Our Miss Blueberry snuck out one night and went and got herself in a family way before me and Shamus had the good sense to ship her off to the vet and get her saucy female desires adjusted.”
“It’s a cat.”
“Well now, ye must be one of those brainy college graduates.”
“Rudy already has two cats.”
“And I be a horse person and have Paddy here to be taking me around the island in grand style and I’m in no need to be a renting a bike, yet I’m getting one stashed away in my caboose. Fair is fair now, don’t you think?”
“A cat for a bike? One lasts a day, the other for a whole lot of years—and there’s the litter box and dead mice by the bed and cat puke in your favorite gym shoe when you go to put it on in the morning. What about you rent two bikes for one cat?” I tried to barter.
Donna reached down again and
retrieved another butterscotch kitten with four white paws. “I’m thinking fair is two for two.”
Rudy wasn’t the only one screwed. “One for one is the best I can do,” I agreed, scratching my nose and forehead, my hands itching more than ever, and knowing I’d just been had. “What am I going to do with a cat in my apartment?”
Donna held up the cat and studied his paws. “I’d be getting myself a bigger apartment.”
I hoisted the bike into the back of the carriage, where we’d parked Bunny the night before. Irish Donna forked over the rental money and the kitten about the size of my hand. “Gee, he’s really little.”
“Enjoy the moment.” Donna and Paddy ambled off and I sequestered Little-bit in my room with food and litter till I could think of a way to introduce the new kid on the block to the rest of the gang.
Rudy returned with a sack of groceries, plus chips from Horn’s bar and fried green beans that had to be the best vegetables ever and things called pasties from Millie’s. Back in Chicagoland pasties were not delicious flaky crusts covering meat and veggies. Pasties covered something else entirely—and not something from the food pyramid.
* * *
The next morning I woke up at six thirty to the sounds of Sheldon knocking on Penny’s door emanating from my phone, a feline motor humming on my chest and the moan of foghorns out in the harbor. My legs, arms and face itched like mad. Not only did I have my very own cat—I had my very own cat allergy. I pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt between scratching and more itching, slid my credit card and Sheldon in my back jean pockets then did the good cat-mommy thing and tucked Little-bit under the covers.
I tiptoed down the steps so as not to wake Rudy and have to spill my guts on what I was up to—stealing fudge off Dwight’s porch—and why I was doing it. Instead I left a little white lie note about taking an early-morning run, figuring Rudy hadn’t known me long enough to realize what a crock the note was.
Stepping out onto the sidewalk, I had five-foot visibility at best, with the whole island cocooned in a wad of wispy cotton. I heard horse hooves way before I saw the horses, and considering their Budweiser dimensions, that was going some. I turned for the steps that led up to the bluffs and smacked right into Irma coming the other way—least, I thought it was Irma.
