Hot Fudge Frame-Up: A Fudge Shop Mystery (27 page)

Pauline said, “You don’t look like you. And that’s a good thing.”

“Gee, thanks, P.M.”

“Hush, A.M.” She rushed to me. “This calls for your hair to be up.”

While she fussed with my hair, Laura said, “You look like Cinderella.”

Titus took that moment to scoot from the kitchen to look up at me before passing us on his way to the underworld of the couch.

Pauline nodded. “Yup, Cinderella. Titus is getting ready to turn into a horse to pull your carriage to the ball at the castle.”

I countered, “I think he’s off the hook because the old fairy tale calls for rats to turn into the horses. Mice helped sew the dress in the Disney movie.”

Laura settled onto the arm of the couch. “Rats, mice—they don’t matter when you have us.”

“And I thank you both,” I said, with the glow of friendship burning bright inside me again. My taste buds and nose recalled the perfume of my winning Rose Garden Fudge.

Pauline said to me, “So, if it’s not Dillon, who’s the mystery date that this dress is perfect for?”

“You’ll see soon enough when we make our entrance. Now help Laura over to the harbor and no peeking toward my cabin. I’ll be there as soon as my date arrives.”

“Jeez but you’re bossy, which you know I totally ignore. Do one last thing for me before we leave,” Pauline said, dragging me back into my bedroom and in front of a mirror, where I got a good look at myself. “What do you think?”

The kindnesses happening to me were overwhelming, like spotting a rainbow the very first time in your life. Pauline had made the most beautiful loose bun on top of my head with wavelets of my summery auburn hair cascading down to my neck. “I really do look like Cinderella. Pauline, thank you.”

“Ah, shucks, it’s nothing. Now you’re taller than me for at least one night.”

Once Pauline and Laura scooted out of the cabin, I grew nervous from my excitement over what I’d planned next.

It was around eight o’clock when my date and I were ready to leave my cabin to make our grand entrance at the harbor. I called John on his cell phone. “You ready to get this on camera?”

“You got it, Ava.”

I smiled at my secret date; then we walked across my lawn to the back door of the fudge shop, went through the dim hallway, then through the shop with the lights off so nobody could really see us through the windows, and then with great aplomb, I opened the door. The cowbell clanged. I took a deep breath.

We stepped outside.

The crowd muttered, then quieted, not knowing how to react. Who was I with?

I stood there with a man in full uniform. Army uniform.

A cry went up in the crowd. It was Laura’s voice. I stepped aside to let the man beside me—Sergeant Brecht Rousseau, her husband—rush to meet his pregnant wife. They hadn’t seen each other for several months.

None of us had dry eyes after that. The school band played “God Bless America.”

Dillon rushed to me. “So he was your date? How did you . . . ?” Then he cocked his head. “My mother.”

“Yup. She knew a senator on the right committee who could get him a special leave. He had to come from halfway around the world, but it happened. They moved up his leave or something so it was all legal. Thanks to your mother and her reputation for giving generously to some political campaigns.”

“She’s my date. But I’ll ditch her for you. Want to take a fast ride in her car?”

Dillon was being his old cowboy self, ready to put me on a horse and ride away into the sunset. My heart said, “Do it.” But Pauline was right, and Dillon was right. It was time to take things slowly, to appreciate each moment of life, to savor things just as I loved to savor a sublime piece of fudge. I could feel that I was different today; something was changing inside me. For the better, I hoped. From a secret pocket in my dress, I took out the betting card I’d saved from the Troubled Trout. “Not so fast, Dillon. Looks like our sewer guy won after all. Excuse me while I find Al Kvalheim.”

Another voice in the crowd stopped me. “I’ll be wounded more if you don’t give me the first dance.” It was Sam. He had his arm still in a sling, but his eyes glistened with meaning. He had my back. He probably always would. He looked handsome beyond compare in a crisp white shirt rolled up to his elbows that showed off his summer tan.

Before I could hunt down Al for the dance I owed him, bearded, stout Spuds Schlimgen stepped forward. “Hey, this little apron honey gal was supposed to be my date.”

Parker Balusek’s tall, slender frame eased through the crowd to join the lineup. “Step aside, men. I believe she’s waiting for me.”

I said, “I am?”

“You are,” said Parker, bowing in a suave way, to the amusement of tourists holding on to beers, wine, plates of pie, and fudge. One person threw rose petals from his plate of Rose Garden Fudge onto the dock at our feet.

Dillon had his arms crossed, chuckling now from his stance in the crowd, enjoying my discomfort.

Before I could bolt, Al’s chubby figure showed up next to Parker, though I barely recognized our water and sewer guy. Al was wearing a crisp striped dress shirt, tie, and dress pants. He was clean! He shook a friendly fist in the air. “I won her fair and square, guys.”

“Hold on, or I might have to put you all under arrest,” another familiar voice said. Jordy Tollefson emerged, off-duty and wearing casual pants and a blue, long-sleeved shirt that showed off his body’s V shape from his broad shoulders to his trim waist. “I believe you owe me this dance . . . Miss Ava Mathilde Oosterling.”

My mouth went dry. When my middle name got invoked, I knew emotions ran deep. What exactly was running deep in Jordy?

This Cinderella at the ball took a step back. Six men of various shapes and all with big grins on their mugs were staring at me. Me! More in the crowd had begun to enjoy our show. Quick side bets were being made. I glanced at John and Pauline, and sure enough, John had his camera rolling. I stood there with my hands and arms akimbo like a still-life doll from my shop, frozen in my confusion.

Verona Klubertanz raced full bore at me but stopped just short of touching my dress with hands filled with fudge. “You’re not Ava! You’re Cinderella!” She pointed to the six men. “And those are the six rats who go poof and turn into horses.”

The crowd laughed, which broke the tension. My breath came back.

“Thank you, Verona.”

But how was I going to get out of this gracefully? Who was I going to choose for the first dance? And why had they all stepped forward like this? Why had Dillon backed off? Then he hoisted a big pickle jar I hadn’t noticed because of the crowd. It was filled with money.

He yelled out, “Who wants a dance with Ava Oosterling? All the money goes to new playground equipment for the kids.”

So that’s why Dillon wasn’t first in line for a dance with me. But he’d left me adrift in a sea of eager smiles from the other guys. My heart was thumping louder than Lucky Harbor scratching himself with a hind leg bumping against one of my shop’s cabinets. Old Al was so cute. And Parker, well, there was a tall drink, as the saying goes; and he and I could talk basketball all night and keep us both happy. But maybe Spuds deserved to have the first dance for the way he recognized my “apron sexiness” in my shop. Then there was Jordy, arresting my heart in a new, though benign way that was befuddling.

A tap on my shoulder startled me. I turned around. It was my grandfather.

“Hey there, A.M. honey. Give your Gilpa the first dance?”

He’d saved me. As he always had. With glee in my heart, we danced to the spirited “Beer Barrel Polka.” My pink netted skirt dipped this way and that like an inverted cup as Gilpa and I stomped about the Fishers’ Harbor dock with arms pumping up and down.

Al got the next dance; then everybody began dancing with everybody else’s partners—the children, and grandmothers and grandfathers, Pauline and John, Grandpa Gil and Grandma Sophie, my parents, Pete and Florine, and the tourists. I danced with every man on the docks, it seemed, earning a lot of money for the playground. Finally, I fell into the arms of Dillon. I saved my last dance for him.

I thought I heard my grandpa growl and my mother gasp, but my heart was soaring above it all and my head said Gilpa would still love me no matter what, just as he always had. Pauline gave me a wink as she and John passed by during a swirling, stomping polka with a loud tuba’s
oompah, oompah
.

Lucky Harbor handled the commotion by leaping into the water repeatedly, then coming to shake all over me, begging for “fudge.” Luckily for Lucky Harbor, Laura had sewn in the secret pockets just for the dog; I tossed him Goldfish crackers throughout the night.

Best of all, Laura and Brecht got to slow-dance into each other’s heart. It made me smile to think that my fudge played a role in their reunion.

Coming home to Door County and Fishers’ Harbor, and trying for this fresh start of my own with a goofy fudge shop was working out after all—even if I had “six rats” in my own love life to deal with in my future.

T
he next morning was Sunday, gloriously, thankfully so. Tourists always slept in; my fudge shop could wait for me to wake up. I was beat and achy and itchy but for all good reasons. I’d gotten to bed by midnight, which was reasonable. However, Laura had called me at three a.m. to say her twins had been born. She thanked me profusely for bringing her husband home just in time. She’d given birth to a boy and a girl. She’d used Pauline’s name and my name to create their middle names. The boy was Spencer Paul Rousseau, and the girl was Clara Ava Rousseau.

At seven o’clock—late by my usual standards—I hiked through the dewy grass to Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers & Belgian Fudge & Beer to help my grandpa. Fishers’ Harbor was so quiet that at first I only heard a lone, yappy dog bark as it was let outside at the end of my street. Robins seemed subdued for once. A misty fog patted my cheeks as it threatened to turn into rain.

My grandfather wasn’t in the shop. I heard whistling, though. A few of Lloyd’s small church cookbooks sat next to the coffeepot, so I grabbed them along with a cup of chocolate-laced coffee, then followed the pleasant morning trill of my grandfather’s out the front door and down the first pier to his docked and dead boat. Gilpa was inside, tossing things in a bucket. Bolts, rags—everything was flying. Lucky Harbor was with him; the dog smiled up at me, his tail thumping on the floor of the boat and his dark eyes watching my hands in case they dove into a pocket to toss him a treat. I came on deck.

“What’s going on, Gilpa?”

“Gotta clean up the boat. Looky here what I found.” He held up a fishing net filled with pink purses, pink dolls, pink wrapping paper, and even crayons—all from the shop. Grandpa winked toward the dog. “He seems to think my boat is his storage unit for the stuff he steals from your shop. Most of these were behind a life preserver.”

Boy, was I glad I’d never confronted little Verona Klubertanz! “So Dillon’s dog is a thief.”

“Matches Dillon’s personality. He stole you once. He doing that again?”

I set my coffee on the small table in the center of the boat, then plopped down with the cookbooks on the gunwale. “Just because we danced last night doesn’t mean I’m marrying him.” Yet.

“Did you kiss him?”

“Last night? Yup.”

“Before last night?”

“Yup.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I know that, Gilpa. Maybe that’s why I kissed him.” I winked at him.

Gilpa gave me a look, then stabbed at his silver hair with his oily fingers. “Bah. You’re nothing but a stubborn Belgian.”

“It’s inherited.”

“Bah and booyah on you.”

“Don’t be so hard on Dillon. He helped me get you and Grandma back together, he found me a truck, and he and his mother helped me with information to solve Lloyd’s murder. Not to mention he let me borrow his dog now and then.”

Gilpa went back to gathering items from the boat.

I was looking again at the photos in the cookbook focusing on the history of the fishermen, including those who were my loose relatives who’d come here in the 1800s. What did the wives do while men went onto Lake Michigan for weeks at a time to fish in the 1800s or even before those days when the Woodland and Onesta Indians lived here in AD 1000? Those men had to have ventured far out into the treacherous waters for food in skimpy vessels. I had a feeling that Pauline would have to put up with John, too, leaving for days and weeks to follow his creative ideas and adventuresome spirit. I said as much to Gilpa.

“Pauline has a good head on those tall shoulders. Whatever she decides will be the right thing. I’m sure she’ll be at the fudge shop to tell us one way or the other about John’s intentions by the time the sun burns off the fog. My A.M. and P.M. are never apart for long.”

He started whistling again. But within seconds he stopped with a big grin on his face. He was bursting to tell me something.

“What is it, Gilpa?”

“Parker Balusek sent me an e-mail early this morning. I called him back.”

The cookbooks shook in my nervous hands. “And what’d he say about all the property woes we have?”

“Lloyd’s trust gave his property to Cody Fjelstad.”

I almost lost my seat and fell backward into the water. “Our Cody? Ranger?”

“That’s the one.” Grandpa waved a hand about the harbor, over to Duck Marsh Street, and then toward the backs of the buildings that lined Main Street. “Cody gets all of this when he’s twenty-five. At least, that’s what Parker says is in the estate papers, which should stand up in court now that the sale to a buyer hasn’t gone through.”

“But what about now? What about our shop?”

“It’s free and clear. To you and me. The trust has instructions to sell Lloyd’s house and use that to pay off the taxes and the lien on this property on one condition.”

My heart plummeted into my stomach. “What’s that?”

“Lloyd left notes in the trust. He wants us to buy the Blue Heron Inn. He wants it preserved.”

“Us? We have no money to buy it. Lloyd didn’t even own it.”

“Ava honey, Lloyd was hoping we’d take a risk and get out of our old tired ways. We’ll have to borrow money or make money somehow. Work twice as hard. Change is a good thing.”

“You talkin’ about me or you?”

He chuckled as he tossed more old tools into a plastic pail. “Parker said that if you and I own the bait shop free and clear, we might be able to borrow against it for enough money for a down payment on the Blue Heron Inn. I can’t afford it alone, but with you winning the fudge contest with raspberries and Lloyd’s roses, you’re going to sell more fudge and become busier and need that big kitchen. Maybe together we can make enough money to meet the payments on that old bed-and-breakfast.”

The breath had been knocked from my lungs. “And buy a boat?”

“No.” He didn’t even pause while tossing bolts into the bucket. “Money won’t stretch that far. For now, I’m willing to go in with Moose and rent his boat so that I can help you buy that inn up on the hill. I’m donating this boat to a place Cody told me about that helps boys get rehabilitated and learn worthwhile skills.”

“But this is your boat that you’ve had forever. Since I was a little girl.”

“Ava honey, you’re more important than any old boat. And you were right what you said the other day. It’s time to let go of this piece of junk. Let’s get the Blue Heron Inn up and running again, then think about a boat later. What matters is that our little shop will stay the way it is. At least for now.”

A lump grew in my throat. My heart swelled with all the love pouring into it from my grandfather’s sacrifices. “Grandpa, all of the changes will be hard.”

“Nothing worth a spit in life is easy, honey. Now, I was figuring we’d better start planning that Belgian kermis thing for next July.”

“It’s a Founders’ Day, remember? For everybody and not just Belgians. I want it to be for all of Fishers’ Harbor and all of Door County, for all the immigrants and their descendents who have preserved the quaintness and good soul of this place. Maybe we could do a little kermis here, though, come this fall sometime. That booyah last night was pretty tasty; I wouldn’t mind if Grandma and her church ladies made that again, along with all those pies.”

“Smart girl. But is it okay if I invite somebody from Belgium to come over sometime soon, now that we have a whole big inn up on the bluff with rooms to fill and rent out?”

The way he looked at me told me something more was going on. He had a secret. I said, “You invited somebody already, didn’t you? Who?”

“It’ll be a surprise. A special delivery of sorts for you straight from Belgium.” He nodded at the books in my lap. “A clue is in there.”

“In this book?” I had it open to the picture of Bram Oosterling and Clément Van Damme with their big fish. “One of our relatives?”

“Well, yes and no. And it has to do with that darn cup John Schultz brought up from an old shipwreck.”

A sudden flash of the imagery of the fancy script “AVD” on the cup came to me. “There was another Ava Van Damme? Did she lose her dinnerware service during a storm on Lake Michigan?” I didn’t recall any tales about our ancestors dying on the lake like so many others, but now I wondered. Fortunately, the cups stolen from Lloyd’s house had been found in Professor Faust’s car and had been returned. I wondered about the tales behind that collection, too.

Gilpa grabbed his coffee off the table for a slurp. “Not an ‘Ava.’ Lloyd’s lawyer says that among the safe’s papers were notes about Lloyd’s ancestor being helped by a Belgian by the name of Arnaud Van Damme. That would’ve been way back on your grandmother’s side of things. I asked Sophie about the name and she didn’t know it. But Parker called up one of his church history guys, and the guy seems to think Arnaud married some royal family princess by the name of Amandine.”

A feeling akin to winning the lottery washed over me. Bubbles started effervescing in my veins. “So maybe what John has found is valuable? It belongs to a royal family? And we’re related?” I stared hard at the young men of years gone by in the cookbook on my lap. They didn’t look like royalty. “This person coming from Belgium might know more about the men in this picture? And a cup?”

“I hope so,” Gilpa said, grinning behind his coffee cup. “In the meantime, Parker’s going to talk with John about going back to the shipwreck site to explore even more. A full table service could be worth a fortune, Parker says.” His grin turned into a wicked smile. “By the way, Parker said he’d be over later to work on the real estate offer for the inn with you. I suggested he make it noon and bring a picnic basket along and take you to one of our lovely beaches or lighthouse parks for lunch.”

“You didn’t!” But I could tell he was lying. “Stubborn buffalo Belgian.” He’d got me. But then I got an idea and said, “Gilpa, a picnic sounds wonderful.” A picnic with Dillon and Lucky Harbor on a secluded beach for lunch. “Could you handle the fudge shop this afternoon?”

“Sure. Seems I owe you. Now that I don’t have a boat to preoccupy me, I’ve got time on my hands.”

“Well, then, that gives me more time to experiment with new fudge recipes. If I’m going to be tested by people who enjoy fine chocolate candies daily in our motherland, I’ve got to roll up my sleeves and work on my art.”

“Who knows! Your fudge might end up in the royal palace in Belgium. Maybe you and Sophie’s friends can also make more aprons as gifts for our guests to take home with them? Those are a hit with both the ladies and the men.” He winked.

“Leave it to Grandma’s church lady friends to find the secret to a man’s heart. It’s not food; it’s aprons!”

He grew somber then as he sat down on the stool next to the bolted table in the middle of the open cabin. “I’m going to miss this old bucket, but we’re gonna be too busy to be sad about it, Ava honey.” Then mischief came dancing back into his dark eyes. “Parker’s a nice guy. You could do worse, you know.”

He meant Dillon. Then he was laughing and ruffling the dog’s fur. “I guess we all deserve a second chance. Even that Dillon fellow.”

Gilpa’s silver hair fluttered in the breeze coming off the harbor. My grandfather was happy in a new, wonderful way, despite saying good-bye to his boat. Perhaps I’d helped liberate him somehow, and he was happy to start a new journey in his life, one where he’d set sail for adventures on Lake Michigan as our ancestors did when they came to Door County from Europe. Grandpa looked young again.

Lucky Harbor poked his nose into my lap.

I got up, set the cookbooks a safe distance away on the table, then reached in my pocket for Goldfish crackers. I tossed them in the harbor.

The big splash from the dog jumping in drenched Gilpa and me. It was a baptism, I sensed. My life was ready to begin a new chapter. I was stronger. I needed to be, what with all the mysteries ahead of me to solve. What would become of my grandpa and me in the months and years to come? Would Dillon and I make it together finally? Could I run the Blue Heron Inn on my own? Who were Grandpa’s visitors he’d invited? What if our family really was connected to some princess and royalty?

There was so much to think about all at once that I knew just what I had to do first in order to sort it all out—make fudge!