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

Ranger or Gilpa see this.”
    We went inside to a mess. The only thing on Grandpa’s side not out of place was the minnow tank bubbling away.
    My side? I started with the two center aisles in my half of the building and groaned. The deputy had confiscated the just-delivered pink fairy tale items for girls, including locally hand-crafted Cinderella-at-the-ball dolls and fairy godmothers with wings in pink that matched my fudge. The deputy had probably assumed I hid poison in their bodies.
    With a sigh I also noticed that the loaf of pink fudge had disappeared off my marble table. I rushed to my copper kettles; all the dry fudge ingredients there were gone. The wall shelves were empty. On them I featured the standard fudges to just give me a reason to open my business—double chocolate, caramel, peanut butter, butterscotch, maple, and cookies and cream. I had also made a couple of male varieties. The deputy had cleaned me out.
    He’d also rubbed some chemical on my marble slab and in the copper pans I used to make my fudge. A whiff of something akin to nose-burning solvents ruined the air and obliterating the smells of chocolate and vanilla. Everything would have to be cleaned and sterilized.
    I pushed up my sleeves. I still wore my cherry-stained apron that I’d had on all day. I untied it and balled it up, tossing it aside. I grabbed a fresh apron from a closet behind the cash register.
    Pauline said, “What are you doing?”
    “Making more fudge. Wanna help?”
    “I don’t want to be arrested, so no. Besides, I’m tired.”
    She’d missed the party because it took her three hours to hang book titles and character names from the ceilings of her classroom.
    “How could teaching reading be more important than the debut of my Cinderella Pink Fudge and Cinderella being under suspicion for murder?”
    “Stop it, Ava. There’s no need to take my head off.”
    “All right. Sorry, but . . .” Belgians are stubborn. We hate losing. Pauline was Belgian, too, so our squabbles could go on for days just on principle.
    I finished tying on the fresh apron. “Sorry, Pauline, but this always happens to me. You know it does. As soon as something good comes to me in my life, I’m guaranteed to have something bad happen.”
    “Nothing bad happened to you. The only ‘bad’ thing is the bad heart that woman evidently had.”
    “No, my fudge is gone. That’s very bad. I’m making fudge this instant to bring back good karma. Eating fudge is all about having good karma. Besides, I can’t let Gilpa see these empty shelves and copper kettles. He’ll lose all faith in me and plunk fishing lures in the space.”
    “Tell him you sold all the fudge.”
    “Lies are mortal sins. I don’t have time to go to confession.”
    Pauline muttered something that wasn’t fit for kindergarteners, but she followed me to the back room.
    My cleaning and cooking supplies had been pawed through. Plus, to my chagrin, whoever had been poking around for poison had taken my bottles of vanilla extract. “Crap. That was the expensive stuff.”
    A quick glance in the refrigerator revealed they’d taken my milk, sour cream, and buttermilk—ingredients for my fudge and all fresh from my parents’ farm down near Brussels in the county. I checked my chocolate bins; the imported Belgian bulk dark chocolate was gone, too. That cost a fortune.
    “Why would they take that? Do they believe I sent all the way to Belgium for poison?”
    “They were likely hungry. Better for their hearts than doughnuts.”
    “I can’t make my fudge until I reorder supplies and my Belgian chocolate. The sign outside says ‘Belgian’ fudge, not ‘ordinary’! I’m ruined, done for, cut down in my prime!”
    Pauline grabbed me, flipping me around to face her. I expected her to slap me, but she didn’t. She said in a soothing voice, “Hey, let it go for tonight. Let’s go to your place to regroup. I’ll make you hot cocoa. We’ll wait there to hear from your