All Fudged Up (A Candy-Coated Mystery) Read Online Free PDF

insane.
    I glared at the flashing light. Beep. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Beep. Was this part of Joe’s prank? If so, I might have had to—
    “Thank you for holding. Your call is important to us. A customer service representative will be with you shortly.”
    The man was already dead. No use in wishing bad things on him. For all I knew the power outage was due to a tree limb or something. I leaned my elbows on Papa Liam’s old pine desk and thought that when it was my time to go, I hoped it wasn’t in a powerless room listening to the maddening beep of a battery backup system.
    “I’m buying a generator,” I muttered and with my free hand added that task to my insanely huge to-do list. It was April 7 and, instead of being on spring break, I had three weeks to finish Papa’s renovations, hire seasonal help, and make a go of the place on my own. That is, if the blue-eyed police officer let me back onto the second floor.
    It took some fancy negotiation on the part of Frances’s cousin William, but Officer Manning finally allowed me to continue with my renovations on the first floor as long as we kept them to the first floor. Which was fine as it meant I wouldn’t lose my subcontractors to their next job.
    “This is Island Electric. My name is Steve. How can I help you?”
    Finally! “Hi Steve, this is Allie McMurphy. I’m at the McMurphy Hotel and Fudge Shoppe and I have no power . . . again.”
    “Let me look that up for you.”
    I could hear his fingers clacking on his keyboard as he breathed into my ear. “It looks like your power was shut off due to the certified death of Liam McMurphy. Are you saying you’re the new owner?”
    I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I’m the new owner. I’m Allie McMurphy. I’m the one who came down to the office, showed you guys the death certificate, and had the account moved over into my name.”
    “Huh.” There was more clacking. “When did you come down?”
    “Monday. I spoke to Heather. She said there would be no disruption in service.”
    “Did she give you a new account number?”
    Scowling, I dug through the papers in the “done” section of my in-box. “I’m not sure. She did give me a copy of a paper I signed.”
    “There isn’t anything I can do without an account number,” Steve warned me.
    “I realize that. I have the paperwork here. Hold on.” I put down my cell phone and dug through the big pile of papers, with the annoying beep in the background pushing me. “Darn it,” I muttered. It was right here. I know I put it here. I picked up my phone. “I’ll have to get back to you as soon as I find it.”
    “That’s fine. Our office hours are nine AM to five PM .”
    “Right.” I glanced at the time on my laptop. It was 3:30 PM . I pressed the OFF button, grabbed the big pile of papers, and left the incessant reminder of the battery backup. The office was on the same floor as Papa Liam’s apartment. I hadn’t gone in the apartment yet for fear Officer Manning would see it as an opening to search the room. It’s not that I had anything to hide, but I didn’t know for sure if Papa did.
    I took the stairs down to the lobby. The front door was currently wide-open even though it was all of forty-five degrees outside. Mackinac Island sat in the middle of Lake Huron on the northern edge of the Lower Peninsula of the state of Michigan, accessible by boat from either the Upper or Lower Peninsula. April, while lovely, wasn’t exactly steamy.
    The door was open because I had a painting crew working on the inside lobby walls and the exterior false front of the hotel. Papa’d left me money for repairs and general maintenance, along with scheduled subcontractors so I wasn’t entirely without a plan. But even with reservations from long-standing clients, I wasn’t rich by any means. If I didn’t make a go of things this season, there would be precious little leftover money for next season’s start-up.
    Which is why I couldn’t let anything—not even a dead