Hot Fudge Frame-Up

Book 2: Fudge Shop Mystery

by Christine DeSmet

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

Candy shop owner Ava Oosterling mixes it up with a fudge judge with a grudge—who loses his life before he can pick a winner....
 
Ava is gearing up for the First Annual Arts Festival—a huge celebration that could draw national attention to her old-fashioned fudge shop in Door County, Wisconsin. She’s invited two celebrity chefs to go head-to-head with her in a fudge contest. Everyone is having a tasty time…until a judge for the festival is found dead.
 
To her shock, he’d been complaining around town that her Fairy Tale fudge flavors were…well, fudged. Now the sheriff is wondering if Ava fits the mold for a murder suspect. As Ava tries to square her reputation and find the real killer, she’s in for a whole batch of trouble….
 
Includes Delicious Recipes and Fudge-Making Tips!

Release date: June 3, 2014

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 352

Sample

Chapter 1

Everything and everyone has a purpose in life, and a place, my grandmother Sophie always said. “And everyone and everything can be good and then go bad. Lloyd Mueller is like beer fudge. Enjoy it now because it only has a shelf life of about three days.”

I shivered at what she’d just insinuated. But nobody contradicted my Belgian grandmother, especially when she was upset. And yet I plunged in like a ninny. “Grandma, Lloyd is a good landlord. Or was. At least he’s giving me a refund for making me move out of this rental cabin early. He’s bringing the check to the meeting at the fudge shop. And please don’t talk about him having a shelf life.” My skin rippled again, this time with big goose bumps. “You make it sound like somebody will do him in for having me move.”

“Bah and booyah! Maybe he should watch out! You’re moving out of this lovely cabin and then moving into the storage room of your fudge shop? Whoever heard of living in a fudge shop! This is going to be trouble for you and worse for Lloyd!” Exclamation points spat out of her mouth as my grandmother splashed suds about the fudge utensils in my cabin’s kitchen sink.

My cabin was one of several rentals along the three-block length of Duck Marsh Street in Fishers’ Harbor, a tourist town on peninsular Door County, Wisconsin, which juts into Lake Michigan. Our county was known as the Cape Cod of the Midwest. In the summer our village’s population of two hundred swelled to a couple of thousand when the condos and summer homes filled with vacationers from Chicago and beyond.

“I don’t like it,” Grandma said, persisting. We Belgians are like that, the old “dog on a bone,” never giving up. “He’s up to no good.”

I had to admit I felt the same way. Everybody knew everybody’s business here. Lloyd was the richest man in town by far. All we knew was that he intended to buy the Blue Heron Inn, but he wasn’t telling anybody his intentions except to say it wouldn’t be an inn anymore. People all over town were nervous about the secrecy. Even Lloyd’s ex-wife, Libby—who got along with him fine—had told my grandma she was worried about the mysterious surprise he had cooking for Fishers’ Harbor. Libby said he wouldn’t even tell her. What did that mean? That he was up to no good, as Grandma said?

It was hard for me to worry too much about this big secret at the moment. I was in the living room packing books in a hurry in sticky July humidity. It was Friday morning after the Fourth, and I’d told Lloyd I’d be out by Sunday. I could fuss and ask for thirty days’ notice, but Lloyd—for all his faults—was also my grandfather’s old high school buddy. Besides, I liked the thought of living in a fudge shop. The early-morning fog was being steamed by the sun, steeping me like a tea bag. My long brown hair in a twist atop my head was coming undone on my damp neck, and my trademark pink blouse was beginning to stick to my back.

I’d been up since five, the water had been cut off in my fudge shop today, and the birdcall clock over the sink had just cardinal-chirped eight o’clock, which panicked me. In a half hour I had to meet up with the fudge contest judges and confectioner chef contestants at my shop. Fortunately, Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers & Belgian Fudge & Beer was only about thirty feet away across my backyard. It sat on the docks of our Lake Michigan harbor.

Grandma said amid pans rattling in the sink, “I don’t see why you can’t live in our sunporch for now.”

Grandma and Grandpa Oosterling lived across the way, in one of only two cabins on this street not owned by Lloyd Mueller. Moving in with my Grandma Sophie and Grandpa Gil would be convenient, but I was thirty-two, and I’d heard too many jokes about thirtysomethings moving back in with family to be comfortable with the invitation.

“Grandma, I’ll be fine. I need to worry about settling on a new fudge flavor for next week’s contest.” I tossed more cookbooks and scriptwriting books into the next empty box sitting near me on the floor by the couch.

“You like Brussels sprouts.”

“Sprout fudge?” I swallowed down my gag reflex, then heard her squelch a giggle. My grandma was like that, always keeping me on my toes. “What fairy tale is that based on?” From the start of my business I had decided that all my fudge flavors for females had to be named for a fairy tale.

Grandma said, “The story of the Three Bears. Porridge fudge.”

Smiling at that flavor, I countered, “Maybe a Goldilocks flavor, something in gold? I’m not sure what flavor that could be, but it needs to be as nice as my cherry-vanilla Cinderella Pink Fudge.” The Cinderella fudge had become an instant hit with the tourists. “I want something gal pals will savor with a fine Door County wine or that their little girls would find cute and fun for their tea parties. I’m starting to panic.”

“Ah, the sweet success of your first fudge flavor is pressuring you.” Grandma Sophie wrestled a big stainless steel mixer bowl into the sink. “Come over for dinner tonight and we’ll brainstorm. And move your stuff into our cabin. Whoever heard of living in a storage room amid milk, cream, and mice!”

“There are no mice in my fudge shop, Grandma. There’s only Titus here in the cabin, in the bottom cupboard.”

“I can’t believe you named a mouse. Bah.”

“Well, he wouldn’t climb into my traps for cheese or even peanut butter, so I figured I’d give him a name and then just call him out of hiding.”

“Booyah to you.” The word “booyah” refers to a traditional Belgian celebration stew made with chicken and vegetables, but now the word is used all the time as a cheer word. Grandma continued as she swished suds around the bowl. “That mouse will have more living space than you. And moving now is the worst possible time to do it in your life. Lloyd should be ashamed of himself for telling the new owner you’d be gone by Sunday sometime. Who do you suppose he sold these cabins to?”

“Maybe Libby’s learned more. I’ll ask her. I have to stop over at the lighthouse later with her batch of fudge anyway.” I sneezed from the books as I packed another box on the floor. I hadn’t dusted anything since I arrived in town in late April. Opening and operating the fudge shop had kept me too busy. “Grandma, maybe we should just be happy that Lloyd isn’t letting the inn sit empty and become a home for Titus’s relatives.”

“I suppose you’re right. Not many people want to move into a place where a murder happened.”

I shivered all over again for the umpteenth time just thinking about my involvement. Back in May my fudge had been stuck down the throat of an actress who was choked to death. The killer had tried to pin it all on the newbie back in town—me. I wondered now if some relative of the murdered woman had bought my cabin in order to be close to her spirit. Was my landlord afraid I’d be freaked out? Try to stop the sale?

But I had more important worries. The First Annual Fishers’ Harbor Fudge Festival was being held a week from tomorrow—Saturday. Back in May I’d been conned into sponsoring a fudge contest by my girlfriend’s new boyfriend. John Schultz was a tourism and tour promoter out of Milwaukee who looked for any angle to bring himself up to Door County to visit Pauline Mertens. John had convinced me that a fudge contest would help me look like a good business member of the community while making amends for drawing bad karma to Fishers’ Harbor with the murder involving my fudge. The taste-off next Saturday afternoon would be followed by an adult prom dance in the evening outside the fudge shop on the docks. The prom was also hatched by John, with Pauline’s blessing. I couldn’t say no to Pauline. She felt sorry for me. I’d never been to a prom because as a teenager I was a too-tall, athletic, nerd-farm-girl that the boys passed in the hallway as if I were invisible.

Unfortunately, things were going wrong. While anybody could enter the fudge contest, John had created a celebrity panel consisting of me and two chefs to draw publicity to the fudge festival. His guest celebrity chef contestants, who had arrived this past Monday for a two-week stay, had taken over the six copper kettles in my shop—as in not sharing them with me at all. And I couldn’t seem to come up with a new fudge flavor that would knock everybody’s socks off. What’s more, I had to find or make a prom dress—something that wouldn’t reveal how much fudge I’d eaten in the past couple of months. My excited and desperate friends Pauline and Laura Rousseau were coming over later this morning with yet another set of fabric swatches and dress patterns. Laura was two weeks away from delivering twins and desperate to fill her time after the doctor told her to quit her job.

Rapid-fire knocking on my front door was followed by my young, red-haired shop assistant, Cody Fjelstad, yelling through the screen, “Miss Oosterling! Come quick!”

My mother was with him. She hollered from behind Cody, “Ava honey, your shop’s being destroyed!”

“What?” The nonsensical news kept me rooted for just a second on the floor.

Cody opened the screen door, then waved frantically. “Get a move on, Miss Oosterling. Your chefs are chasing each other around the shop with fudge cutters. They keep saying they’re going to kill each other.”

* * *

My fudge shop and all my freshly made fudge were being held hostage by two chefs with circular knives.

When I rushed in through the back door of my shop, Kelsey King, a petite blonde from Portland, Oregon, and Piers Molinsky, a portly giant from Chicago, were wielding fudge cutters from their stances on both ends of my white, marble-slab table. My freshly made Cinderella Pink Fudge lay hostage in its pans between them. Kelsey and Piers had fudge cutters poised over the pans.

Fudge cutters look like pizza cutters—round, sharp disks. Kelsey held up a cutter with one disk while Piers had one with multiple disks that could cause a lot of quick damage if tossed at Kelsey.

I stood in shock behind my old-fashioned cash register, thinking I might need it as protection.

My mom muttered behind my back, “I forgot to tell you about the smell, too.”

The grab bag of aromas in the place made me pause. What had the chefs been up to in only a few minutes’ time this morning? I’d left the place just an hour ago and nobody had been here but my grandpa Gil and a few fishermen. It had smelled of the strong fresh coffee we always had on hand and my new batch of cherry-vanilla pink perfection fudge. Now the bait-and-fudge shop smelled of bacon, of all things, and a heady, earthy mix of spices such as nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and maybe some anise and orange peel tossed in.

I called out from behind my small fortress, “What’s wrong with you two? Stop!”

Piers, his chubby face red, his furry brown eyebrows pinched together, kept his gaze lasered on his enemy across the marble table as he picked up a pan of my fudge.

My heart rate accelerated. “Put the fudge down, Piers.”

Piers ignored me, growling at Kelsey, “You do not belong in this contest. This is what fudge looks like.” He waved my pan of Cinderella Pink Fudge in the air.

Behind me, my mother whined in panic or disgust or both.

Kelsey snatched up the other pan of my fudge, waving her fudge cutter over it as she glared at Piers. “You see this fudge? This is your face!”

She slashed at my pretty pink fudge.

My mother screamed, nearly turning me deaf. I gasped, stunned for a moment, waiting for my hearing to come back.

Cody, whose dream was to be a law officer or park ranger, grabbed one of my four-foot spatulas from a nearby copper kettle. “I’ll stop ’em, Miss Oosterling.”

“No, Ranger, don’t. Stand back.” Cody liked being called “Ranger,” especially after he had helped me solve the murder in May and our county sheriff had awarded him a good-citizenship star. Cody was eighteen and had a mild form of Asperger’s. He was making remarkable progress toward independent living with the help of a social worker friend of mine.

I could’ve used the sheriff’s help at the moment. Ordinarily, my popular pink fudge sat in front of the big bay window to cure and to entice tourists. Now there was nobody waiting, just the view of Lake Michigan lapping up against the boats rocking at their moorings. Any customers there to buy fudge or bait had scattered to save their lives. Even if I called Sheriff Tollefson or a deputy, the sheriff’s office was a half hour’s drive away in Sturgeon Bay.

I glanced to the bait-shop side of the place. “Gilpa?” The word came out strangled in my tight throat. Since a little girl I’d called Grandpa Gil the shortcut name of “Gilpa.”

Ranger said, “He took a fisherman out just as I got here.”

I appealed again to the chefs. “This is silly. It’s going to be a beautiful day. Why start it out with a fight?”

Neither looked at me. Instead, they started a volley of words while shaking the fudge cutters and my fudge all about in the air. The glass in the bay window within inches of them was vibrating from the intensity.

I hesitated going over to the two on my own. Kelsey’s blond cuteness and petite frame rendered her deceivingly harmless-looking. But she was a fitness guru who ran a health spa. She knew karate and ate the bark off trees. I was probably smelling bark cooking in the aromas floating about us. Piers, whose bulk reflected his love of the muffin tops he’d made famous in Chicago, growled like a bear at Kelsey.

Piers used his fudge cutter to gouge out and flick a good-sized portion of my precious pink confection onto the floor. He smashed it with the heel of one boot. “This is your face.”

We all cried out in pain—me, Cody, my mom, and two customers who popped up from behind a shelving unit filled with handmade Cinderella Pink dolls, purses, and teacups. I recognized the ladies from my grandmother’s church group. They rushed out, screaming something about “saints and sinners.” The cowbell on the door clanged. A teacup fell to the floor in their wake and broke.

Those ladies would spread the gossip fast, so I had to take action. I used the weapon that always worked. “There could be TV cameras on you right now for all you know. I think that’s John coming down the docks right now.”

My mother whimpered, “Oh no.”

John Schultz had been videotaping us every spare moment of his time. To keep things manageable for his videotaping, John wanted just three celebrity contestants—me and these two trying to kill one another. He’d scoured his universe of contacts in the travel industry and come up with Piers and Kelsey. I’m sad to say I approved them. Shows my talent for judging people. John had insisted that he tape the fudge contest activities this week and the next, with the hopes of ending up on a cable channel. He’d get a show of his own, he said, and I’d get fudge fame. But John wasn’t coming down the docks right now; I’d lied.

Fortunately, my lie worked like a hose on two fighting cats. Kelsey broke into tears, dropping her fudge cutter on the marble slab. She looked around for the camera on her. It was pitiful. I almost wished John were here. Piers whipped off his white apron, then used it to swab my ruined pink fudge off the floor. He, too, looked about for the camera, smiling, which galled me.

“Were you two faking? Practicing?” I asked. “You gave my mother a heart attack.”

“I’m so sorry,” Piers said, turning into a teddy bear. “Please forgive me, Ava. You were so kind to invite me, and yet I did this to you. Sorry.”

His words were stilted, obviously an act for the nonexistent camera. At least he was being polite again to me and my fudge.

Kelsey, though, slapped a hand on the marble table. “Sorry? That’s all you’ve got to say for cheating? He was hogging the copper kettles again for his hog that he’s cooking.” Her shoulders hunched up to her earlobes in a shudder. “He’s putting hog bits into the fudge.”

“Hog bits?” I asked.

“Bacon,” Piers said, pulling his shoulders back in pride. “I’m experimenting with bacon fudge.”

Kelsey sniped, “He took over four of the kettles. Then he put bacon in one of my kettles of boiling ingredients so I’d have to throw it out. After I did, I looked away for just a moment, and he’d tossed more bacon—meat—into my kettle. Yewww.”

My mother touched my arm. “Honey, I have to finish making deliveries. Maybe you should come with me and let them cool down.”

Kelsey said with a big fake smile, “That cow truck you drive is just the cutest thing, Florine.”

Mom—Florine, never Flo—drove a black-and-white-cow-motif minivan around the county, delivering our farm’s organic cream, cheeses, milk, and butter to various restaurants and to my fudge shop each day. When I’d contacted Kelsey King weeks ago in Portland, where she had a fledgling TV show featuring organics, she’d been thrilled to hear about our farm’s organic nature. She agreed instantly to the adventure of being a contestant in a fudge contest in Door County. I tried to use that modicum of respect to quell the fight now.

“Kelsey, my mother can replace all of your ingredients with fresh ones right now. And maybe the bacon falling into your fudge mix was a mistake.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Her fake smile stiffened.

I turned to look up at Piers. “Why do you need four kettles? You were each assigned two to use. Two for each of you, with two left for me.”

That’s when the smells in the place became a warning along with the odd sounds of audible gulps, lapping, and growls. I looked at the north wall area behind our short counter and glass shelving where the six kettles sat over their open-flame heating units. “Oh my gosh!”

Two copper kettles had bubbled over, oozing sugar and mystery ingredients—and bite-sized bacon pieces—onto the floor. A troublemaking furry brown dog belonging to my ex-husband—the infamous bigamist—leaped about in the middle of canine nirvana, slurping up bacon bits as fast as his long pink tongue could operate. We were lucky the dog hadn’t knocked over the open flames and caused a fire. Ironically, my ex had named the dog “Lucky” after his gambling prowess—my ex’s prowess and not the dog’s. Since my ex had come back to town for utility construction business in May, the dog seemed to get loose and show up just about every other day in my shop. I glanced toward the door now with my heartbeat racing a bit in nervous trepidation. The dog’s rogue appearances usually brought my ex, Dillon Rivers, through the door soon after.

Cody the “Ranger” dashed over to turn off the burners. He grabbed the gangly water spaniel, who was now rolling in the bacon goop on the floor. “Harbor, no! Come with me.” Cody had dubbed the dog Harbor the first day the dog sneaked into our shop because the gregarious animal loved to fling himself into the harbor water outside our front door.

The dog with two names was always a mess unless he was secured with a leash. Lucky Harbor also loved to steal fudge if I didn’t watch him. Chocolate isn’t good for dogs; it can be fatal. I dashed over to Gilpa’s side of the shop for a piece of twine. Lucky Harbor began barking so loudly in protest over leaving his puddle of bacon that everybody in the shop had their hands clamped over their ears.

“Please take him into the back somewhere for now, Ranger. Tie him to a doorknob or something.”

Piers said, “At least the dog shows good taste.”

Piers found a spoon, then began ladling up the mess on the floor. “You weren’t using your kettles, Ava, so I took them over, thinking I was doing you a favor. You weren’t here when I arrived. You didn’t see Kelsey sabotaging the ingredients.”

Kelsey yelped, “You liar.” She grabbed the fudge cutter again to wave at him. “You’re the one sabotaging me, you sausage hick from Chicago!”

At that moment, two of the four fudge judges arrived through the front door: my landlord, Lloyd Mueller; and a local cookbook author, Professor Alex Faust. One of the people ducking and running earlier had looked like my third judge—Dotty Klubertanz, the unofficial head of the church ladies in Door County. Dotty knew her sweets. The fourth judge was Erik Gustafson, our new village president.

My grandmother—who desperately wanted to be a fudge judge so she could vote for me—came in through the back door, finally catching up with us. “What’s that smell?”

“Bacon,” I said.

“No, the other smell. Like dirt cooking.”

Kelsey seethed at Piers. “That’s the smell of my ruined fudge.”

Piers snapped, “It’s real dirt. She’s putting black dirt in chocolate fudge! Says they cook with dirt in Japan.”

Kelsey flew at Piers with a karate kick, which he caught in his beefy hands, but he slipped on the oozing syrup and bacon fat on the floor. They slid out from behind my glass counter loaded with various fudges, landing on their backs in the goo. I rushed to help, but Kelsey got up fast to push me away so she could go at Piers again. I grabbed her in an armlock to break it up—

Just as Dillon Rivers charged through the door. The cowbell clanged against the wall. “Whoa, are we puttin’ bets down on who wins this wrestling match? I’ve got five bucks on the fudge lady.”

I let go of Kelsey.

My tall, killer-handsome ex swept off his hard hat, combing his chestnut-colored hair with his fingers. His muscular chest was bare and glistening already from morning exertion. Both my heart and my stomach did a flippity-flop.

My mother groaned. She did not like Dillon. She said to me, “I’ll call the sheriff.” She was thumb-dialing her phone as she said it.

Grandma said, “I’ll buzz Gil.” She dug in her jeans for her phone.

Professor Faust, a genial, sixtysomething, gray-haired guy in a blue shirt and tan pants, stood wide-eyed. He was carrying a stack of his latest cookbook. “Perhaps this isn’t a good time for a meeting of the judges? Where can I leave my books? They’re all signed.”

Everybody ignored Professor Faust because that’s what happened when Dillon was in a room, especially with his shirt off.

“Hey there,” Dillon said, with a look that said he knew exactly what he was doing to me. He slipped on a neon yellow T-shirt with his construction company logo on it that he’d had shoved in a back pocket. “Anybody see my dog? And what’s this I hear about the fudge shop closing and the contest being canceled?”

Ugh, Grandma’s gossipy church-lady friends must have met him on the docks.

I said to Dillon, “We’re in the middle of something. Your dog’s in the back. You’ll need to take him for a swim before you let him in your truck.”

Dillon chuckled as he looked me up and down. “Maybe you’d like to go for a swim, too.” He sniffed at me. “You smell like bacon. I’d better ask you to the prom before other guys get a whiff of you.”

“Very funny,” I said.

My mother rushed between us, clicking off her phone. “Honey, come with me to the lighthouse. Now.”

At first, her urgency was lost on me. Kelsey and Piers were arguing again while cleaning up the slippery floor, and the dog was barking from the back. Cody had come back into the main shop to boss Kelsey and Piers; Cody obsessed about germs and cleanliness in the fudge shop.

Lloyd had just arrived. With his salt-and-pepper mustache wiggling, he rubbed his bald head in confusion. His gaze fixed on Kelsey for a long moment. He looked as if he were about to admonish the petite thing for bad behavior, but then he blinked and let it pass. He held up an envelope in the other hand. It had to be my rent reimbursement. “Should I hang on to this check and come back another time? This doesn’t look like a good time for a meeting.”

Grandma was on him like flies on fish left too long in the sun. Shaking a finger under his nose, almost touching his mustache, she said, “This is your fault, Lloyd. You’re ruining my granddaughter’s life. Why?”

Dillon said, “Hold on there, Sophie. The man’s an upstanding citizen.”

My grandmother muttered Belgian words under her breath as she advanced on Dillon.

My mother and I hustled Grandma Sophie out the door before another fight started. I felt bad that my ex was such an object of scorn, because he was a decent enough guy. But Florine and Sophie blamed Dillon for whisking me away to Las Vegas eight years ago to marry him in one of those youthful, stupid indiscretions that not even I can believe I did after looking back on it.

I put thoughts of Dillon aside as Mom was erratically driving ten miles an hour over the speed limit through the back streets of Fishers’ Harbor and then even faster on Highway 42 barely outside the village. We were heading northerly, with glimpses of Lake Michigan going by like flipped pages in a book.

“Mom, slow down. There are tourists all over the place.” Tourists often stopped their vehicles at the oddest times to gawk at our spectacular scenery of the lake or to find the quaint art shops tucked away in the woodlands.

Grandma gasped when Mom hit the horn and swerved around a slowing car ahead of us on the two-lane highway. “Florine, what the hell—?”

Mom veered into the entrance to Peninsula State Park. We went through the park gates, then headed down Shore Road, which went to the Eagle Bluff Lighthouse.

I told Mom, “I forgot Libby’s fudge.”

Mom barely missed a hen turkey and her poults that were strutting across the blacktop. Before I could complain again, I noticed the sheriff’s car with its red-and-blue lights swirling in front of the lighthouse.

The lighthouse was made of Cream City brick with a red roof on top of its main house and atop the cupola tower. In the morning sun, the four-story tower had a yellow glow but with red-and-blue striations.

“What’s going on, Mom?”

Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “The sheriff said Libby found something that he wants you to look at.”

“Me? Why didn’t you tell me?” I knew why. My mother did not handle stress or my adventurous life very well.

We parked next to the cruiser. Before we got out, my mother had a shaky hand on my arm. “Honey, are you in some kind of trouble again?”

“No,” I said, though I always seemed to be in trouble and not know it. I searched my brain for something that would require a sheriff but came up with nothing. The fighting confectioner chefs were the only issue that came close to needing law enforcement interference of late. “Is Libby all right?”

She paled. “I forgot to ask. When I called the sheriff he just said something had happened out here, and he needed you.”

By then Sheriff Jordy Tollefson came out to greet us. He was about six feet four inches tall; he had six inches on me. Jordy was in his early forties, lean, a runner, with the demeanor of a marine—perfection and precision. He escorted us inside, into the small room that served as the gift shop. A window had been busted.

Libby was sitting on a stool by the register counter, sniffling into a tissue. When she saw us, she rushed over to hug Grandma.

“Oh, Sophie, I’m so glad you’re here. And I’m so sorry it has to involve your granddaughter.”

A tiny bomb went off inside my stomach. I looked up at Jordy’s stern face and steady brown eyes and said, “What happened?”

Jordy picked up a Baggie off the counter. It held a rock. “Somebody sent this through the window.”

Then he picked up another Baggie with a piece of paper in it. It was ruled pa