First-Degree Fudge: A Fudge Shop Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page A

aren’t good at all, Sheriff.”
    “We have skilled people with him.”
    “But you’re asking Ranger questions about things like poison getting into the fudge, and he won’t understand that. He’ll think he killed that woman. Holy cow, what a mess.” Tears stung my eyes in my frustration.
    Jordy handed over a box of tissues.
    I got off the chair to snatch a tissue, then headed to the door. Earlier in the squad car I’d called Pauline to come pick me up. I figured she had to be waiting outside by now. “I’ll take Ranger home.”
    “We’ll handle that.” The sheriff came around the table to hand me a clipboard with a blank piece of paper on it.
    “Now what?” I asked, not caring that I sounded belligerent.
    He showed me to my chair. “Write down the ingredients you put in the fudge.”
    “I’m not revealing my recipe.”
    “Are you saying you’re refusing to cooperate?” He leaned over his knuckles and got right in my face. I could smell his coffee breath.
    “No, I’m just saying I’m not telling you my trade secrets. Food artists don’t reveal their recipes.” I suspected he wanted me to break down in sobs about the poison.
    Jordy sat down on his side of the table, nodding toward the clipboard in my hands. “Write down what you recall putting in the fudge.”
    “Fairy glitter? Wings of spun sugar? Is that what you want me to write?”
    “Whatever you claim is in the fudge, I want to know about it.”
    Darned if I was going to give him any trade secrets. Nobody but Ranger knew what I put in my Cinderella Pink Fudge. I thought for a moment, then wrote.
    I handed the clipboard across the table.
    Jordy squinted at it. “What’s this gibberish?”
    “The chemical formula for the reaction of sugar boiled in milk. It’s boiled at two hundred thirty-eight degrees, which is above the normal boiling point of two-hundred twelve degrees for water. This high temperature boils off enough water to bring the sucrose and fructose into alignment for proper crystallization of the fudge. If there was poison present, it would have interfered with the crystallization, and I would have noticed.”
    “Poison can be added to anything after it’s done boiling,” he said in a deadpan way. “This silliness just makes you look guilty, Ava.”
    I signed my statement and sketches of chemical formulas with a shaky hand.
    He said, “You can go now, Miss Oosterling, but you’ll have to stay out of your fudge shop until I say it’s okay.”
    “You can’t do that. For what reason? I haven’t been arrested.”
    “Do you want to be?”
    “Cut it out, Jordy. My grandfather’s bait shop needs to stay open for the fishermen. It’s fishing season. This affects my grandfather, too.”
    Jordy shrugged. “I’m sorry. I’m sure the deputy will take only a couple of days to swab down that tiny bait and bonbon shop.”
    He was making me mad. Fortunately he let me go at that point.
    • • •
    Pauline and I got back to Fishers’ Harbor a little after four that afternoon. And sure enough, there was yellow tape unspooled around Oosterlings’ Live Bait, Bobbers & Belgian Fudge. The graying wood building looked pitiful, as if it wore a prison uniform now. I sank into my own miasma rising from the sudden decay of my life.
    I must have said that out loud because Pauline said, “Quit being so dramatic. You didn’t kill anybody.”
    The snow had stopped, but a cold wind flapped the tape against the weathered wood and the windowpanes. My stomach juices surged with disgust. I walked right up to the tape and ripped it down. “You’re right, Pauline.”
    Pauline charged up to me, whipping her black hair over a shoulder like she meant business. With her height and that hair she can be intimidating when she looks down at me. “You can’t do that,” she said. “That’s real tape, not the fake Halloween type of tape.”
    “I don’t care.”
    “You’ll get in trouble. Arrested or something.”
    “Or something. I can’t let