by Duffy Brown
Two customers came into the shop looking for bikes and trail mix. As Rudy took care of business, Sutter snagged my sweatshirt hood and marched me toward the kitchen. “If you were this much of a pain in the butt in Chicago, they’re never going to let you back in, and you are not staying here, and what in the heck is that smell?”
And you have my cat and I want him back was on the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t say it. What was I going to do with a cat in a two-by-four apartment in Chicago? I was always at work, and that’s not fair—he or she would get bored and pee on my clothes for sport. And maybe a cat would actually calm Sutter down. Though from the looks of things it wasn’t working.
“You’re about an inch away from jail,” Sutter groused.
“There’s a killer out there running around and you’re going to lock me up? On what charges? Impersonating a waitress? Taking a white jacket that I’m sure was found later, borrowing a tray of ice cream or being a really bad pooper-scooper? And you better be good to that cat.”
Sutter stilled, a smile playing at the corners of his lips, something I’d never seen before. He shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Wanna run that by me again?”
I grabbed him by the front of his shirt, surprising the heck out of both of us. “The cat—the furry thing that goes meow-meow and has whiskers and a tail. You’d better buy him toys and organic food and treats and the good litter, not the junk that sticks to his paws.”
“I’m still back at pooper-scooper.” Sutter’s phone buzzed and I let go of his shirt, my cat-mommy adrenaline rush subsiding. I was suddenly aware of the scent of pine, sunshine and a hint of morning shower that wasn’t me and smelled really good. Too good. Male good. Sutter? Why couldn’t he be the one who smelled like pooper-scooper?
“I gotta take this,” Sutter said, studying the phone screen and stepping out the back door. He caught the broken step and tripped, arms flailing, then landed flat-out on the deck with a solid thud, looking like a giant squashed spider. He scrambled to his feet and I retrieved the phone, which had skittered into the grass. I started to hand it back, then stopped, my steps slowing as I read the text aloud. “SOS. Meatball and Partner headed to you.” I looked back to Sutter. “I don’t think this means make a lot of spaghetti because company’s coming.”
Sutter snapped the phone from my fingers and shoved it in his jeans pocket. “How do you keep falling into everyone else’s business? You got a built-in radar? Something goes sideways, and there you are right in the thick of it, making things worse. I gotta go.”
I blocked Sutter’s path. “No one sends SOS to a cop for kicks. What’s this all about? I live here too, you know.”
“Like I can forget.” Sutter let out a resigned breath. “Sure, why not. Maybe you’ve heard something, and you can drive these guys nuts for a while and give me a break.” Sutter raked back his too-long hair. “Partner is the Partnership—the Detroit mob.”
“In Chicago, it’s the Outfit.” That got me a Sutter double-take and a hint of respect for knowing more about Chicago than that it had good pizza and strong winds. “I come from a family of lawyers. You can’t swing a dead cat around that city without the Outfit being in on it.”
“Meatball is probably the capo, the boss. Street chatter is they’re not coming to take in the sights. It’s business, and it’s personal.”
“What are they going to do, shake down the fudge shops? Unionize the horses? Infiltrate the town council? Good luck with that one.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Irma said to me in a rush, hustling out the back door of the emporium, and across her backyard that connected to Rudy’s. “We have to get . . .” The rest of her sentence died in her throat when she spotted Nate. Irma slapped a too-bright smile on her face. “Why are you here, dear?”
“Lately I’ve been asking myself that same question. And what do you have to get? I can get it for you. Just because I’m house-sitting over at HighSail with Bernie laid up in rehab, it doesn’t mean I can’t help you out.” Nate kissed Irma on the cheek followed by a shake of the head at me. I wasn’t up to speed on police mime, but my guess was Sutter wanted me to keep the info about the mob on the move to myself.
“Isn’t there someplace you have to be?” Irma said to sonny boy, nudging him down the narrow walkway between the emporium and Rudy’s Rides that led to Main Street. “Surely somebody’s screwing up around here and needs a ticket to straighten them out,” she went on. “Or maybe there’s a nice robbery you can look into or a little old lady to help cross the street. You should go have a look around and keep us all safe; isn’t that a great idea?”
Sutter tipped Irma’s chin, his eyes peering into hers. “Have you been drinking?”
“Not yet, dear, but give it time.” Irma nudged Nate with a little push out into the street. He stumbled as Irma waved him off. As soon as he was out of sight Irma rushed back to me, her eyes dancing. “He’s come, he’s come.”
“The Lord?”
“Winslow! Dwight must have hit the panic button over his estate, and best of all, now it’s my turn to make Dutchy and Rita sweat a little. This is gonna be fun.”
“Winslow just got off Arnold’s ferry and is probably walking up the dock right this minute,” Irma said, grabbing my hand and heading for Main Street. She shoved two little kids and a Red Hat group to the side, weaving us in and out of tourists and past the Pink Pony and Huffy’s Bike Hut. “Hurry it up; we don’t want to miss him.”
“Hold on,” I said as we pulled up in front of the information center, where a crowd of disembarking fudgies was meandering up the wood pier. “How do you know what Winslow looks like, and how do you know he’s here?”
“There’s who you’re looking for,” said one of the luggage porters, rushing over to us. He pointed to a guy in a bad toupee and a red polo shirt carrying a leather briefcase and dragging a rolling weekender. The porter held out his hand. “Okay, so where’s my ten bucks?”
“That’s him,” another porter said, holding his hand out to Irma. “You got your man, now I want my money.”
“Screw you.” Another porter elbowed the first and second porters out of the way. “I’m the one who called Irma; she pays me.”
Another porter rushed our way, snagging Winslow by the arm and leading him over to Irma. “This the guy you want?” The porter yanked out his iPhone and held up Winslow’s picture for all to see. He said to Irma, “You tweeted that you’d pay.” He slapped Winslow on the back, nearly knocking him over.
“What is this all about?” Winslow asked as Irma frantically pulled bills from her pocket, the crowd swelling with porters and nosy tourists.
I whispered to Irma, “What happened to a low profile?”
Irma dropped another ten-dollar bill into a porter’s palm. “It just blew up.”
Except Winslow didn’t know that. Drawing on the advertising theory that people like to feel important, I said, “Congratulations, Mr. Winslow, all this commotion is because you are our hundredth fudgie, I mean visitor, here to Mackinac Island this morning, and you get a free tour. Isn’t that great?”
Before he could answer, I snagged the handle of his rolling weekender, hooked my arm through his and propelled him around a team of idling horses, through a maze of cyclists and across the street.
“But I don’t want a tour,” Winslow said, grabbing for the suitcase.
“But you won.” I yanked the suitcase out of his grasp. “Nothing better than winning, right?” Any kind of winning was music to a lawyer’s ears.
“Okay, okay,” he panted, out of breath. “Just take me to Rita’s Fudge Shoppe. I need to find out what’s going on there and I have legal papers to deliver, and then you can get me to a house called SeeFar.” Winslow smoothed back his fake hair and glared at me. “So?”
“So?”
“So tell me about the island. This is a free tour, right? I
’m here, I won, I want a tour.” Just like I thought—lawyers are all about the win no matter where or what.
“Uh, well this is Main Street, and . . . and there aren’t any cars here—gee, can you imagine that?” I added, scrambling to think of enough stuff to talk about till we got to Rita’s shop.
“We have a lot of fudge shops, a whole lot, and T-shirt shops and Rudy’s Rides bicycle rental. It’s just up the street, and they have some pretty kick-ass trail mix. Oh, and the tourists are called fudgies ’cause they buy a lot of fudge; isn’t that clever?”
Winslow gave me a weird look. “You suck as a tour guide and you have some kind of rash; no wonder the tour’s free. What’s your name? I should report you to the visitor’s bureau.” He took a step back. “Are you contagious?”
“The English settled here in fifteen twenty-five,” Irma rushed in, catching up to us on the sidewalk and pointing to the whitewashed Fort Something-or-other on the far hill. “And then the French paddled over from Canada, and you know how rambunctious those Canadians are—always in a snit about something,” Irma prattled on. “And in fifteen ninety-seven there was the French and Indian War because nobody shared and they didn’t have anything else to do but fight, and there were a lot of bows and arrows flying around, I can tell you that.”
Winslow stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “I thought the first settlement was Jamestown in sixteen oh seven and the French Indian War was seventeen fifty-four. What do you mean they had nothing to do? Bows and arrows flying?”
“There’s Rita’s,” I said, nodding up ahead to the pink and chocolate awning. I grabbed Winslow’s shirtsleeve and stepped up the pace, using the wheeled weekender as a battering ram out in front to clear away plodding tourists. This was not a time to plod.
“You go inside and take care of your business,” I said to Winslow, who was huffing and puffing with a face red, heart attack imminent. “We’ll watch your luggage and wait for you right out here so we don’t get in your way.”
Winslow swiped his hand across his forehead to mop up the line of sweat. “You’re both bonkers, you know that?” He opened the door with the little bell tinkling; Dutchy was inside at the fudgie-congested counter.
“Okay, now we need to get out of here,” I said to Irma while parking the weekender to the side. “If Dutchy and Rita see us with Winslow showing up in their shop, they might suspect something’s up.”
“No way.” Irma parked her hands on her hips. “I want to see Dutchy and Rita Round-heels squirm when Winslow brings up the money issue. It’s a little payback for stealing my fudge recipes. So far they’ve gotten away with it all scot-free. I just wish Winslow looked scarier—more Charles Bronson than Danny DeVito.”
“He’s a lawyer with papers. He’s all Bronson, trust me.”
“Think there might be some suing involved?” Irma pulled me to the edge of the window and crouched down with me hovering over her, both of us peering inside. “That always makes people sweat.”
“Suing’s always involved,” I responded. “And what was all that talk about the French and Indian War and the Canadians?”
“Who listens to that tour stuff? It’s just a bunch of pointing and blah-blah-blah and then someone in the crowd asks, Where’s the best place around here for lunch? How’d I know we’d wind up with Mr. Encyclopedia of the history world?”
We watched Winslow hand over some papers with a blue backing, the official presentation package of lawyerese. Dutchy yelled something about never making a phone call. He raised his fist and did some pounding on the counter, Rita looking pale and shaking her head, customers fleeing for their lives.
“Hey, Evie girl, what’s going on?” Fiona said, coming up behind me. “Are you thinking about getting some of Rita’s peanut butter fudge to send to your folks like I get for my niece? It rocks; you won’t be sorry. They’ll love you for it.”
Irma slowly stood from her crouched position below me and turned around, eyes beady, facing Fiona. “You shop here?” Irma yelped. “You eat this fudge from my recipes after you know what Dutchy did to me?”
“I mean . . . I mean . . .” Fiona bit her bottom lip. “It’s just for variety, I swear, Irma, and I try to support all the shops on the island because I’m editor of the Crier now and need to be impartial, and personally I hate Rita’s fudge. Yuck. It’s too sweet and creamy. I like nice chewy fudge like yours, fudge you can sink your teeth into and that sticks to your gums and your gut and even beyond your gut and tastes like . . .”
Fiona looked from me to Irma, seeing that Irma wasn’t buying any of it. “Oh what the heck,” Fiona said. “I’m a big fat traitor, a Brutus and Benedict Arnold all rolled into one, and I’m sorry, Irma, I really am.”
“Well you sure don’t look sorry. You’re grinning like a mindless baboon with a barrel of bananas.” Irma folded her arms, her lips in a pout.
Fiona grabbed Irma’s shoulders, the grin expanding to cover half her face. “To tell you the truth, I can’t be sorry about anything right now. I just found out that Little Princess is coming to see her daddy for Thanksgiving. Smithy is over the moon excited and I haven’t seen him this way in a long time. Since Buttinski Bunny’s doing Holiday on Ice over at Doud’s and in no position to protest, Constance agreed to let Smithy have his daughter for a little vacation. This sudden change of attitude might have something to do with the fact that Constance and her new husband want to take a cruise and need a babysitter, but I don’t care why she’s letting her come. I’m just happy for Smithy.” Fiona bit her lip. “But I do apologize about the fudge, Irma. How can I make it up to you?”
“For starters, you can tell everyone how great my fudge is.” Irma jutted her chin.
“Uh, can you maybe think of something else I can do?”
Was that a growl coming from Irma? It must have been, because Fiona took a few steps away, turned and ran off just as Dutchy barreled through the double glass doors onto the porch. His face was red, eyes bulging. He pointed right at me, his lips curling in a snarl. “You’re the one who used our phone two days ago. I remember seeing you in the kitchen with the phone right in your hand and making up some story about a fudge order from Dwight.”
Uh-oh. I did the dumb brunette routine. “Phone call? Hmm, I do remember now that you mention it. I was just trying to be helpful; that’s what people do around here, right? No one was in the store and I was picking out fudge and the phone rang, so I took the call like a good citizen. Dwight said he’d stop by and pay the bill later on. So,” I asked, all sweet and innocent, “did he pay the bill? Because if he did, that means he must have put in the order.”
“I didn’t order any fudge,” Dwight said from behind me. A crowd was starting to gather to check out the drama. “I hate the stuff. But what I want to know is why did Rita call Winslow saying I owe her money, and how did she know Winslow was my attorney in the first place?”
Pale and shaking, Rita squealed, “I never made any calls about wanting money from the sale of SeeFar, I swear. I don’t need any trouble with attorneys, or with you, Dwight.”
“And you better remember that,” Huffy said, stepping up onto the porch, which was getting a little crowded. “SeeFar belongs to Dwight, all of it, every last plank and window. His sister doesn’t want any part of it, so it’s ours, you got it? Ours, ours, ours.” She jabbed her finger at Rita. “Now you just butt out if you know what’s good for you.”
“That’s it,” Winslow said in a commanding courtroom voice that didn’t fit his Napoleon size. “Everybody just settle down. I have Bunny’s will. I came to clear things up once and for all. I don’t know what’s going on here, but the bottom line is Dwight inherits the house and doesn’t owe anybody anything, right, Dwight?”
Dwight did the guilty-man shuffle. “Right,” he said in an unconvincing voice.
I might suck at lying, and the leaves-of-three thing was still a mystery—heck, everything I loo
ked at had three leaves—but from years as the black sheep of the Bloomfields, I knew all about the guilty shuffle. The question here was what Dwight Harrington had to look guilty about, and it was something about SeeFar.
Dwight and Winslow flagged down an eight-legged taxi, and Dutchy draped his arm around Rita and said to Irma, “You’re nothing but a troublemaker, you know that? You started the fudge fight to distract me so your Chicago sidekick here could make that call to Winslow.” He dropped his voice. “You’re going to be sorry you upset my little fudge muffin here. Look at her—she’s all worked up. You’re going to be real sorry.”
Irma started to do her own version of the guilty shuffle, then stopped. She looked Dutchy right in the eyes, a bit of danger creeping into her own as she stepped close. “The only thing I’m sorry about is that I ever got mixed up with the likes of you.”
“You’re nothing but an old warhorse,” Rita shot back. “You should be put out to pasture.”
“Well, your darling boyfriend here sure had eyes on this old horse’s heaving bosom last night up at the Grand Hotel. Fact is, he fell down the stairs right there in front of everyone, and it wasn’t from too much hooch. He wasn’t watching where he was going ’cause he was watching little ol’ me.”
“Heaving what?!” Rita yelped, fire in her eyes.
“Bosom,” Irma answered, all smiles. “As in boobs, chest, melons, jugs, cans, gazongas.”
Rita wiggled from under Dutchy’s arm. “You no-good, two-timing jerk.” She socked him right in the gut with a solid whomp and stormed back inside.
“But . . . but, fudge muffin?” Dutchy bellowed like a wounded calf. “I’m on your side. You can’t believe Irma. She’s a bitter old woman.”
Irma tossed her blonde hair and puckered her Pink Coquette lips. “Do I look like a bitter old woman? I look hot.”
Dutchy shook his fist at Irma, then hobbled through the doors, fudge muffin pelting him with pieces of chocolate and my favorite maple-nut. Fudge muffin had a pretty mean right arm.
