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

grandfather.”
    For a startling moment I realized that in my selfish need to rail at the world I’d forgotten about Gilpa’s plight. I forced myself to breathe. “Wow. Sorry. That’s why I needed to move back here from Los Angeles. I just sounded like the producer I worked for on that crappy TV show.”
    My dream of becoming a writer had become one of my infamous spontaneous combustions, like my marriage. The experience of working in TV production was still too raw to talk about, and a wish that I’d done better lingered inside of me; nobody but Pauline knew I was basically licking my wounds. When my grandmother Sophie Oosterling had broken her leg three weeks ago, my dad had called me to say she and Gilpa needed somebody to help them and would I consider coming home?
    Of course I leaped at the chance to help my beloved grandparents, but only Pauline knew I was probably going to be fired from the half-hour TV comedy
The Topsy-Turvy Girls
after this season’s low ratings. The show starred two young women like me and Pauline, trying to find love and success. The script that got me on the show was based on my very odd divorce circumstances. By the fifth year working for the show, I was beginning to run out of ideas based on my experiences or lack thereof in the realms of romance and success. The only good thing about the TV experience was that as my writing assignments decreased, the executive producer had put me in charge of buying the treats for the cast table. They thought I got the stuff from fancy chefs. I pocketed the cash and made what made me hunger for home—homemade fudge. At least the fudge was a hit.
    Then, last Christmas, when I was home and making fudge from my grandma Sophie’s recipe, she and Gilpa offhandedly said that I should start my own business making candy. When I came home two weeks ago, I was surprised to find out that my grandparents and my parents had been scouring the county and beyond for secondhand equipment for my business—should I ever end up moving back to the Midwest. Between the time I’d said yes to coming back and my arrival in Fishers’ Harbor just days later, my grandfather and dad had remade the bait shop.
    Pauline and I went to my rental place in the small enclave of fishers’ cottages behind the bait shop to share my misery over cocoa. Gilpa and Grandma Sophie owned one of the cottages across the narrow street and west from me. My rental sat right behind my fudge shop. The cottages were log cabins that had been built in the 1800s by the Belgians, Finns, and Swedes who came to Wisconsin for a new life based on fishing and lumbering.
    “Have you called your parents?” Pauline asked.
    “No way. This will blow over like that storm outside.”
    My parents, Pete and Florine, were dairy farmers down in Brussels, a town in the southern area of the county. My parents supplied all the dairy products that made my Belgian fudge unique and tasty. Mom and Dad were salt-of-the-earth folks, expert farmers and proud of what they did. They had not liked me running off to Vegas and then to Los Angeles after the divorce. They’d felt I was abandoning them and my heritage. They had expected me to join them to milk cows, raise calves and my own kids. And here I was, back for only two weeks—working alongside Grandpa and helping Grandma, which was all good—then bam, something bad happens and I’m accused of murder. My same old pattern. Good, then bad.
    “I doubt a murder will blow over,” Pauline said. “Jeremy Stone will issue his ‘Fatal Fudge Flames out Forgotten Film Star’ front-page headline tomorrow all over the Web.”
    “Thanks for making me feel even worse.” I set my cup of cocoa down in disgust on the table by my chair. We were in the living room area with the fireplace roaring.
    Pauline said, “You should call or e-mail Stone. Give him your side to the story right away. Tell him how sorry you are she died of a heart attack.”
    “We don’t know yet how she died,” I