Pauline was right. As I crept down the hall to Rainetta’s room with Pauline on lookout back at the staircase, I told her what I’d heard Boyd and Ryann say about Cody and about Ryann saying something about coming to Fishers’ Harbor to get something valuable. I countered our suspicions with a lingering reality. “But what if they were merely taking advantage of the situation of Rainetta’s unlocked room and happened to find the diamonds?”
When I opened the door, Rainetta’s room still looked ordinary. I flipped over the scatter rugs by the bed and chair. The floor didn’t appear to have any scratches or loose boards for hiding things. I contemplated the bed and looked under it. Nothing.
I mused out loud, “They didn’t actually kill her, but the Earlywines definitely took those diamonds and were talking like there was something more to it all.”
“What if they’re part of some ring of thieves and murderers?” Pauline asked from the doorway, her face still pale with fear. “I’m used to catching my kindergartners in lies, and the Earlywines were lying.”
“Meaning what?” I tried to lift the mattress with one hand, but couldn’t.
Pauline came over to help. “Isn’t it odd they’d be here at this time of year to research a lighthouse? It’s darn cold out on the water. Nobody visits lighthouses at this time of year. They wait until after Memorial Day.”
There was nothing under the mattress.
I defended the Earlywines again. “He’s a university professor and she teaches music. Why would they risk their careers? And don’t you teachers have codes of honor?”
“He’s young enough yet that his salary probably isn’t all that much more than mine, and did you see the clothes they were wearing? That leather isn’t cheap.”
“Neither was their perfume.” A hint of Ryann’s expensive fragrance lingered in Rainetta’s room. “But if what you’re saying is true, and they were here to pick up diamonds from that heist, that still lets them off the hook for Rainetta’s death. They were out on the boat with my grandfather on Sunday, stuck in Lake Michigan.”
“True. Maybe they and the Reeds were working together. The Reeds were here. Maybe the Reeds and Earlywines know one another and it was all part of some plan.”
I had to give Pauline credit for that supposition.
“But this means we have to talk to Jordy about the heist and get the details,” I said. “By now he might know if these diamonds really are from that case.”
Talking to Sheriff Jordy Tollefson was the last thing I wanted to do, but if the Reeds and Earlywines were connected somehow, that information might be of vital interest to Jordy. Perhaps the murder case could be solved and Cody and I would be off the hook.
Pauline tapped her fingers on the doorjamb. “We should get out of here before we’re caught.”
“I just need to look in the closet. Maybe there’s something hidden in the hems of the clothes. I saw that done in an old movie.”
Pauline said, “That’s even better than hiding stuff in pockets.”
But opening the closet gave me a surprise. The clothes were gone. Had the Earlywines stolen them? Or maybe Isabelle had merely collected them for the manager who was coming for Rainetta’s body and personal effects? That was logical. Yet nothing about this hot-fudge case had been logical so far.
• • •
When we returned to the backyard party, cameras were rolling on the sheriff. It was frustrating not being able to talk to him right away, and yet, amid a crowd of maybe a hundred people, counting all the journalists, was not the place to try to explain my theories about the murder. I’d be questioned in unflattering ways. But then I smiled. They were doing the interviewing right in front of the round dessert table with my Cinderella Pink Fudge. And half the pieces were gone. I hoped that meant people were eating it and not just stuffing it in a pocket as some weird souvenir.
A flash of pink caught the corner of my eye. Over at the bar area, Mercy Fogg was picking at my fudge in front of a news camera manned by a male reporter. Panic set in. I rushed over in time to hear Mercy say, “And we’ll be closing down the Oosterlings soon. The inspectors will be there tomorrow.”
My heart fell into my stomach. Closing me down? Why? I didn’t dare jump in front of the camera. The reporter asked the question for me.
Mercy lifted up the piece of fudge in its pink cellophane. “It’s totally unhealthy there. She had all manner of people bringing food to sell to the public, and who knows what the conditions of their kitchens were. You have to have a commercial kitchen license, and certain health standards must be met. I’m amazed that more people haven’t gotten sick and died.”
“They were church ladies,” I ranted. “The food was blessed!”
The camera swung my way. The male reporter rushed at me.
And I ran.
At least I stumbled as fast as I could in flip-flops and holding on to my wrist. Now a hipbone was aching again, too. I slowed to an uneven limping gait as I rounded the front of the house, then headed down the steep street, finally taking the shortcut past my house to get to Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers & Belgian Fudge.
Out of breath, I leaned for a moment against my counter.
Whistling startled me.
It was my grandpa, restocking a lower shelf over on his side of the shop. “I thought you and P.M. were at that big party at the Blue Heron.”
After another puff of air, I said, “We were. Gilpa, Mercy Fogg’s sending inspectors here tomorrow.”
“Yeah? What for now?”
“She wants to shut us down. Or me, at least.”
He was humming.
“Grandpa, didn’t you hear what I said?”
“Oh yeah, but I got my motors running again, so if she shuts us down, we’ll just sell bait in here and fudge right off the boat.”
That sounded cool at first blush, but I needed a place for my kettles, the boiler, and the gifts I wanted to sell with the fudge. Not to mention needing space for my white marble table for loafing, plus my supplies.
Gilpa was shaking fish food into the minnow tank. “I’m going home to your grandma. You stickin’ around?”
“Yeah.” My breath was finally returning to normal, but the bruises on my arms felt stiff now, and one knee was ballooned tight against my jeans, as if a bruise there had swollen. “I’m going to whip up a batch of fudge. I might as well use all the ingredients in the place now before I’m shut down. Why can’t Mercy stick to her fight for a stoplight?”
Gilpa gave me a hug that hurt, though I couldn’t let on. He’d be disappointed in me if he found out about my foolish adventures at the old mansion. “You get to sleep early tonight, A.M. I’m fired up about heading out with the boat in the morning. With all the publicity this town’s getting, I’m bettin’ on more fishers than Moose can handle.”
I had to smile. “Maybe there’s an upside to my hot fudge.”
Gilpa laughed as he grabbed his Green Bay Packer cap and slapped it on over his thick, silver hair. “Think you could mind the place by six a.m.?”
“Yeah, sure. I’m glad you got the engines back up.”
“Me too. All’s right with the world. And don’t you worry about that mess with your fudge and that actress. I’ve got some leads on good lawyers, but we won’t need them.”
His confidence buoyed me. The round clock with fish for numbers above the door said it was past “trout” or seven in the evening now. I asked, “Did you happen to catch any news?”
He paused before heading into the back hallway. “You mean did I hear what the sheriff said about tomorrow? Yup. Don’t worry about being arrested.”
I felt heavy as an anchor plunging fast through deep waters. “You heard I was going to be arrested?” Guilt slithered up my back like a snake itching to bite me. Had Jordy found my note in Rainetta’s room after all? Did he know about her diamonds and think I stole them? Did the Earlywines rush right out of the inn to report me?
“Now, now, Ava. Newspeople embellish things. They said the body�
�s going to be released tomorrow and there’ll be warrants for arrests, but there’s no proof you had anything to do with those diamonds.”
“Except that they were in my sugar sacks.” And Pauline had a sack of diamonds in her purse, which the Earlywines would say we stole from Rainetta’s room, if they hadn’t done so already.
“That was Cody’s doing, is all.” With a wave of his hand, Grandpa Gil disappeared. The back door banged softly.
My grandpa was obviously in his own bliss about his boat working. Our troubles weren’t about to disappear with a wave of my hand. And I’d forgotten to ask him about John Schultz being on his boat or not. I’d do that tomorrow first thing.
Alone, looking about my nearly empty fudge shop, I almost cried. The sheriff had obviously been busy or he wouldn’t be talking about arresting somebody. He’d confiscated my goods and had been going through them. He also had sophisticated equipment and procedures to analyze everything and to gather facts, and I didn’t. His list of circumstantial or real evidence was likely mighty long while my list was a mere supposition or two.
It would be easy to give up. How could making fudge turn into this much trouble? But being a cheap Belgian myself, I just couldn’t let the ingredients go to waste or be confiscated tomorrow by Mercy Fogg and her gang of inspectors.
In the galley kitchen, pain in my wrist brought tears to my eyes, but I flipped my hair into a twist on top of my head, then slipped on a white apron, fumbling with the tie in back. Next, cream and butter came out of the refrigerator and vanilla off the shelf. Butter went into the microwave. So far, with one hand, I was doing okay and feeling energized.
In the main shop, I scooted a copper kettle next to the boiling apparatus, which I settled next to my register counter and the new shelving unit behind it. My walnut paddles and steel spatulas were at the ready. Everything was pristine clean. Mercy’s inspectors would congratulate me instead of shut me down. The more I worked, the better I felt in my head, though my bruises hurt under my long red sleeves and jeans. I dared not look at any part of my anatomy; I’d be green and yellow by now—Green Bay Packer colors! I chuckled. I was hurting and happy. Indeed, making fudge was a freeing feeling for me; there was no doubting that. I could trust in fudge if nothing and nobody else.
When it was time to gather the sugar, I had to bring the six ten-pound bags off the shelves in the kitchen pantry one at a time. The empty shelf saddened me. Would I ever be open again for another delivery after tomorrow? Every Wednesday was my and Izzy’s last major delivery of each week. In only about three weeks I’d gotten into a routine of sharing the deliveries with Isabelle. I’d miss our camaraderie. I still felt bad about knowing nothing about her mother or her upbringing before today. And I’d miss Cody yelling “Miss Oosterling!” I worried about him, too, even if he had thrown me down the stairs earlier today.
I lugged each sack to the main floor, then opened the first with a fumbling right hand. Using a knee to steady the bag, I poured it into the vat. With the second sugar sack, I had already created a snow-capped mountain of sparkly white crystals.
I froze.
Some of those crystals were rather fat.
Like diamonds.
A few were colored, too, a tinge of amber, even light brown. Chocolate diamonds? The famous Harry Winston jewelry store in Beverly Hills had loaned some to one of our show’s characters for the Emmy Awards. You’d never be able to discern these diamonds if they ended up in dark chocolate fudge.
After taking a step back, I shook my head, thinking I had to be wrong. But when I put my hand in my boiler to sift through the sugar, I came up with several crystal-clear diamonds along with colored ones. What little I knew about diamonds didn’t matter; all women know that colored diamonds are worth a boatload of dough.
I shut off the burner so the sugar wouldn’t start melting into the cream. With a small scoop and a sifter retrieved from the kitchen, I worked with mostly one hand to return the diamonds to an empty paper sugar package sitting on my counter. Now I knew for sure how the diamonds had gotten into my fudge earlier. Somebody had put them into a sugar sack, then carefully glued the sack shut again. Not all my sugar sacks had been filled with diamonds; Jordy would have found those early in his investigation. But somebody had again used the same trick to hide diamonds. Clever, really. Jordy probably wouldn’t come back again checking my sugar sacks after he’d done that once and found nothing.
Now what? What if someone walked in? Like Mercy Fogg or the Earlywines or Jeremy Stone? Or some other suspect? Would they kill me for the diamonds? If they’d killed Rainetta, the answer was yes. With my bad wrist and stiff legs, I was no match. I shuddered, going cold all over.
Rushing to the kitchen, I perused my shelves. Where to hide diamonds? I had no safe, and neither did my grandpa. I didn’t have any of those fake lettuce heads people used in their refrigerators to hide things. All I had was a ceramic cookie jar that looked like a black-and-white Holstein cow. My mother had given it to me. I grabbed it, opened it—and discovered Rainetta Johnson’s lavender necklace!
• • •
That was how it always went for me—something good happened, then something bad. I was happily making my fudge when, bam, I was a disaster. Cuddling the cow cookie jar in my arms, I ventured back to the front of the shop. It was getting darker now, so I flipped on the lights. I could leave the cookie jar in plain sight, but with the way my luck was rolling, somebody would break in and steal the diamonds and amethyst necklace. But I didn’t want to take them home to my rental cottage and carry my bad luck there. If Jordy were getting close to some arrest, such as Cody’s, he might decide to widen his search for evidence and scour my cottage.
After putting the cookie jar down next to my cash register, I withdrew my phone from my pocket. A voice in my head said I should call Jordy Tollefson. But if he were going to arrest Cody or me tomorrow anyway, why tempt him tonight? I’d rather sleep in my own bed than on the cot in a jail cell down in Sturgeon Bay.
Harsh raps at the front door startled me. My heart kicked in double speed, creating a fizz in my veins down to my fingertips.
But it was only Sam Peterson. I relaxed. Only a little.
“I saw your light come on,” he said after I let him in. “I was walking along the docks to see if Cody might be moping around.”
“He’s not here.”
“Baking cookies now? Or is that filled with fudge?”
“Cookies.”
“I’m starving. Chocolate chip? Let me have one.” He took a step to go around me for the cookie jar.
“No.” I stepped in front of him; then, feeling like a fool, I turned away from him to pick up the ceramic cow. I let out a small yelp because of my wrist.
Sam gave me a strange look, his blue eyes darkening a smidge. “Are you all right?”
Words failed me. I needed Pauline with me. I didn’t trust myself to even talk anymore. “I’m fine. These cookies are a surprise.”
“For who?”
“A surprise for . . . Gilpa. Did you hear he got his boat running?” I headed to the front door. “I was just about to put these on his boat so he had them in the morning when he took his first customer out fishing.”
“I’ll go with you. We can talk.” Sam took the black-and-white cow out of my hands. Carrying it in one arm, he pushed the door open with the other. The cowbell jangled.
The air had become danker with evening coming on. The cold waters of Lake Michigan sloshed under the docks. I still wore my flip-flops, so my toes and feet became icicles as we walked down the wood planks toward Sophie’s Journey. Indistinguishable voices from Isabelle’s party feathered around us.
In the evening’s half-light and the shadow of the hill, my grandpa’s boat looked decrepit. It smelled of the oil and gas I’d sniffed and seen on Gilpa earlier in the day. It was also pretty much a mess, the open seat area in the back near the engines filled with oily rags, sullied newspapers used to catch dripping oil, tools, a bucket of bolts, and crushed
beer cans.
Sam said, “Huh. You sure this tub runs?”
It came to me then that this would be the perfect place to hide the diamonds and amethyst necklace because nobody in their right mind would want to board this boat. I felt sorry for Gilpa, though. He wanted to be proud of me, but I also wanted to be proud of him. And it was hard to be proud of somebody who was foolishly hanging on to an old junker of a boat because he was too cheap to invest in a good one.
I climbed aboard gingerly in my flip-flops, then turned around to take the cookie jar from Sam, who stayed on the dock. I went inside the cabin. Sam was watching from outside, so I couldn’t shove the cookie jar down inside the space where the life preservers were kept and where my grandpa wouldn’t find it. I had to set the jar right on the table in plain sight, making a mental note to come out later to hide it better after Sam left.
Unfortunately, Sam wanted to hang around. He followed me back to the shop, where I was forced to tell him about my need to make up batches of fudge tonight.
He slipped off his jacket, then rolled up his white shirtsleeves. “Put me to work. If Cody sees us both in here making fudge, maybe it’ll entice him to come in out of the cold.”
I didn’t seem to have a choice, so I handed him an apron. “I think he’s scared of Mercy Fogg. So am I.”
“I doubt you really need to worry about Mercy. She’s more interested in fame, but there’s no way she can shut you down. Her bluster is for the cameras. She’s jealous of you and everybody getting more attention than her and her stoplight.”
I trained my eyes on the mixture in the boiler to look for diamonds I might have missed. “Sam, could it be possible that Rainetta Johnson was part of a ring of thieves who stole those diamonds the sheriff mentioned?”
Sam ruminated, his gaze avoiding mine as I handed him the spatula to continue stirring the cream, sugar, and vanilla. I had intended to pop back into the kitchen for the white chocolate, but Sam’s behavior made me pause.
“Sam? You know something, don’t you?”
First-Degree Fudge: A Fudge Shop Mystery Page 13
