Hot Fudge Frame-Up: A Fudge Shop Mystery (25 page)

W
e tumbled outside, leaving Libby behind, with me on my cell phone calling nine-one-one. Then something hard hit me alongside the head. The phone and I went flying into the dark abyss.

I was seeing stars but not the kind in the night sky.

Kelsey said, “Stop!” to somebody, and then the echo of something like a board hitting a skull smacked the night air.

After another hit I heard only Pauline groaning from a short distance away.

When a rifle barrel appeared an inch above my face, I squinted upward from the ground and saw the silhouette of Professor Alex Faust, his body backlit by the lighthouse beam above us. He stood next to his briefcase resting at his feet. How had he gotten here so fast? I thought I knew.

He said, “You just had to snoop, didn’t you, Miss Oosterling?”

“Despite your warnings? In your neat, perfect handwriting on paper pilfered from Pauline’s purse at my shop sometime when you were there with your books?”

“Paper is paper. I didn’t steal her paper.”

“But you did. I saw a pad of paper like the kind she uses with her students in Erik’s briefcase, where you put it. Erik said you had scooped all kinds of papers belonging to Lloyd in your briefcase. You were stealing things there, like rifles for doing your murderous deeds, and then you placed one in Dillon’s truck to get rid of it, hoping you could implicate him.”

I scrambled fast near his feet and grabbed the briefcase. It popped open under my hands, but not before Faust snatched for it. I slapped his face, got the notebook, flipped fast through the pages. Disney stickers fell out. In the back, there were several notes made in Pauline’s handwriting, simple notes about what to buy at the store for her classroom. I looked up from the ground. “This is Pauline’s. You stole it. You’re guilty as hell.”

The way he grinned down at me in the dark made me shudder. His pearly whites looked ready to eat me alive.

“It’s a busy little fudge shop,” he said in almost a purr. “Easy to sneak around in when you’re wrapping fudge in your fancy pink paper and Miss Mertens is fussing with sticky children.”

I lay back on the dewy grass, my head smarting from being hit with the rifle. The light beam signaling out to the ships prompted me to ask, “Where’s John?”

“He’s out on a dive, the last I heard.”

Pauline whimpered.

My head was throbbing, but I lurched up to my elbows. “You bastard. You left him out there on his dive. He’s out there alone in the water, in the dark.”

“And soon he’ll have company. We’re going to take a boat ride. Libby, sweetie, get the rope.”

Libby scuttled to the shed, rattling her keys in the lock. She came back and handed them to Alex. “They don’t work.”

He tossed her his set of keys.

Sitting up fully, I scoffed. “You made new sets of keys for everything. New locks and keys for Lloyd’s house, too. New locks and keys to his gun cabinet, I bet. You just waltzed right into his house, and his life. You loved his library; you went through Lloyd’s books, and stacked them neatly even when you were searching for hidden money or the combination to his safe. That was a huge clue that seeded my suspicions about you, Professor. You were planning on moving in after you married Libby. You used her.”

“I love her.”

“Funny joke, Professor. What’s going to happen when your university buddies find out about this?”

“They won’t.”

“If you get away with this, they’ll admire you, won’t they? You hope. After you marry the rich Libby Mueller and end up owning half of Fishers’ Harbor, you’ll show those tenured creeps you’re more than a mere cookbook author. Am I close?”

I could see Libby’s shadow backing away. Maybe if I kept talking to Alex, distracting him, she would decide to side with saving our lives and call for help.

I fixed my attention on Alex standing over me. “You never got over the sting of them forcing you to publish or perish. And now you’re so close to fortune, if not fame, but my family and I have been trying too hard to solve the murder. That messes with your plans. You could see that my love of my fudge shop and grandfather was going to be a problem for you. But this will all work out, won’t it? Kelsey will drown in Lake Michigan with me and Pauline, and you’ll set up rumors that Kelsey murdered Lloyd by poisoning him to cover up their affair. All a lie because Kelsey’s just an innocent pawn of yours in this, too. You’ll say Kelsey and I struggled on the boat. You’ll posit that, at least, or maybe you’ll say it’s a murder-suicide. Kelsey is creative, but you likely loved it that she was fighting with Piers Molinsky in my shop for all the world to see. You’re an opportunist, a real Tom Ripley, aren’t you? Just like the guy in the Matt Damon movie
The Talented Mr. Ripley
. Your plan was set.”

“A thesis worthy of a Ph.D., Miss Oosterling.”

“Maybe a nice thank-you to us all would be appropriate in the acknowledgments page of your next book? For dying to get out of your way? You realize of course that nobody knows yet exactly what Libby gets in the trust or will. Maybe Lloyd left her—I mean, you—nothing.”

“Shut up. You Oosterlings need to go back to the Old Country. I’m sure Lloyd took care of his lovely ex-wife just fine.”

Unfortunately, Libby had come back with several lengths of rope. Which wasn’t “fine.”

Alex said, “Tie their hands and feet.”

“Libby,” I said, “you’re better than this.”

Ignoring me, she tied up Pauline, who was out cold on the grass, barely visible in the dark a few yards from me. I was sitting up and scoping things out, though I was dizzy. I felt sicker when I saw Libby put a rope around Pauline’s neck and snug it down tight.

“Don’t, Libby!” I yelled.

Alex whipped me alongside the head again with the rifle barrel. I went down hard on the ground.

“Shut your trap,” he said. “Or you’ll get worse from me right now.”

He wasn’t going to shoot, because that might bring campers over to see what was going on. He’d just beat me to death on the spot.

“What happens next?” I dragged myself up to my hands and knees, determined not to get tied up.

He nodded toward Lake Michigan. “Somewhere out there, the boat will get a hole in it and go under, while Libby and I will take the rescue skiff and motor back, a harrowing experience for us to tell in the national press. Kelsey became uncontrollable.”

The beam above us shed enough light for me to make out a sizable boat at anchor within wading or swimming distance of the shore. It had to be the boat John and Alex had used to go diving. The skiff was likely just below the steep hill. Alex had arrived while we were inside the lighthouse with Libby.

“So you plan to drag three of us over the rock wall and into that boat? That’s a lot of hard work, Alex.”

“Libby and I managed to get Lloyd up the tower stairs by using a winch off the boat. We can surely roll you three down this embankment, then use fishing gear to haul our catch into the boat. You’re not much bigger than a giant muskie or coho salmon.”

This was sounding way too easy for him. I was sweating, praying, losing my mind and my hope.

Libby finished trussing Kelsey. I was next.

As Libby reached for my ankles, I kicked her in the face, rolled over fast, then crawled like hell. She uttered a loud “Oof.”

I was scrambling to my feet when Lloyd’s rifle stock socked me in the ribs. The breath whooshed out of me. I collapsed on my hands and knees. My body dumped over onto the ground, stiff with the shock of emptied lungs.

Something stomped on my belly then. With big paws. Lucky Harbor.

His tromping worked like a bellows, pushing my diaphragm back into action.

With a gasp, I got up as Lucky Harbor leaped up on Professor Faust, making the man lose his footing. I grabbed the rifle as the professor went backward onto the ground with Lucky Harbor licking him in the face.

I held the rifle on the professor. “You must have been eating fudge on the boat. Just like you were all enjoying my fudge in the lighthouse parlor the night of the murder.”

He gave me a guilty-as-charged look of surprise as Lucky Harbor kept on licking his mouth. The professor tried to get up repeatedly but couldn’t. I didn’t even need to hold a weapon on him.

Libby made a run for it, but a blur of legs whirling like a helicopter’s propeller took her down in a heap. Kelsey.

A moment later Kelsey emerged close to me in the darkness, taking the last of the ropes off her wrists. “We learned in self-defense class how to get out of ropes. But I’m not sure Libby’s heart was in it, either.”

“Thanks. Sorry I was wrong about you at first. How’s Pauline?”

“Out cold. Not good.”

“She’s going to be really mad at me when this is over, especially if we don’t find John.”

I called nine-one-one again to ask for Coast Guard help to find John. The dispatcher said the sheriff was already on his way; they’d done a location search on my cell phone call minutes ago that went unanswered.

Exhausted, I sat in the grass with the rifle. Lucky Harbor came over to me, boinking his nose into my shoulder. I tossed him my entire pocket’s worth of Goldfish crackers.

* * *

A couple of hours later, Pauline and I waited at my cabin for word on John’s rescue. It didn’t come as the hours ticked past midnight.

Pauline now had a bruise on the left side of her face to match the eggplant hue on her right side. She was lying on my couch sniffling, swearing, sighing.

My bruises were going to look pretty fancy, too, by morning. I started a fire in the fireplace to ward off the chill and dampness coming in off the lake. Lucky Harbor lay on the rug next to the couch, watching my every move. I thought back now to the rose garden and the dog’s extra attention to the professor’s shoes. They had probably smelled like the park area and some essence of Lloyd. Lucky Harbor knew all along who the killer was, just as I had suspected.

Dillon and Jordy had arrived at the park almost simultaneously that night. Libby and Alex were hauled off to jail. Dillon had wanted to take me home to the condo where he was staying, but I refused. When he heard me relate my story to Jordy about what Lucky Harbor had done, Dillon said that it’d be good to keep the dog for the night, reminding me that dogs had a way of reassuring people. Whatever the feeling was that I had for Dillon grew a little bit that night. For a man to let you borrow his dog is a big deal. Maybe that’s even real love. I went over to sit on the floor next to the couch to pet the handsome, chocolate-fudge-colored American water spaniel.

The next thing I knew, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I’d fallen asleep next to Lucky Harbor on the floor. His head rested across my legs, as if to make sure I didn’t go anywhere without him.

It was Jordy. He said, “I’m sorry. But there’s still no sign of John.”

When I got off my cell phone I looked at the time. It was five in the morning. The windows were rectangles of gray morning light.

Pauline was stirring on the couch.

I dreaded telling her the news.

* * *

Grandpa and Grandma knocked on the door about a half hour later. They’d just heard about last night’s goings-on. They hugged me and Pauline long and hard with lots of “I love yous” and “Thank God you’re safe.” Pauline was crying.

Grandpa said, “No tears, A.M. and P.M. Move it, move it. Get on the boat.”

“You don’t have a boat, Gilpa.” He’d lost his mind.

“We’re taking Moose Lindstrom’s boat. I already called.”

Now I knew he’d lost his mind—in a good way.

Grandma winked at me. “You gals get going with Gil. We have to find John. I’ll take care of the shop.”

We trundled off fast across the backyard, down the docks, past several slips, and to the very end of the harbor, where Moose’s
Super Catch I
swayed in the light ripples of the water. Moose was already aboard firing up the engines in a big rumble.

The four of us were out onto Lake Michigan within seconds. The eastern sky was pink. Shadows were still deep.

Since the Coast Guard was searching currents from the shipwreck site where John had last been allegedly, according to the professor, we took a different tack.

Grandpa said, “John’s a stumpy guy, but smart enough. Maybe he caught hold of some debris that helped him float.”

Pauline wasn’t cheered.

But then I thought, My grandpa is always right. Even snatching a foam cooler from a boat can save you in the water.

“Grandpa, if he floated, where might he go in these currents?”

“Let’s see, after about ten hours?” My grandpa looked toward the sunrise. It was now past seven in the morning. “Toward Death’s Door.”

Pauline began bawling at those words.

Death’s Door was the area between the northern tip of Door County and Plum Island, where many ships over the centuries had sunk because of treacherous channels. It wasn’t likely that a man could float all the way to Death’s Door from where Alex Faust had abandoned John, but the current was headed in that direction.

Another hour later, we spotted an unusual-looking buoy off Ellison Bay. Pauline screamed, “It’s him! It’s John!”

She leaped up and down, calling his name again and again, waving madly.

The way her face lit up in the morning sun—well, it was like the sun was inside Pauline and the brilliance of the moment evaporated all her bruises. This kind of pure happiness healed anything. Magic was in her heart. The magic was true love.

I got tears in my eyes. I’d been such a fool. John Schultz was the perfect man for my best friend. If he made her
that
happy . . .

Gilpa gave us a three-way hug. “A.M. and P.M., we did it!”

* * *

John’s wet suit helped save him, the Coast Guard said. He was able to ward off hypothermia, and luckily the top layer of the water was fairly warm in July. John said he had grabbed hold of the paddle that Alex Faust had tried to clobber him with and used that to help stay afloat until he got lucky enough to come upon some floating fishing net buoys before he smashed up against the tall buoy marking some shoals. The professor had shot at him several times in the dark, missing every time. John was lucky to be alive.