Free Five-Alarm Fudge by Christine DeSmet Page A

same guy.”
    Writing, Jordy said, “The same guy who was staying at the Blue Heron Inn in May when that actress keeled over from your fudge?”
    “She didn’t die from my fudge. She was choked to death using my fudge, at the hands of a wily woman who was after her money and jewels.”
    “Nevertheless, John Schultz seems to have the same talent you do for getting involved with illegal activities.”
    Pauline groaned.
    Jordy snapped his notepad shut. “The church is off-limits for now. You’ll need to explain to folks that they’ll have to move the kermis, or cancel it.”
    “Not this again. You can’t cancel anything and we don’t want to move it. The church is special. Can’t you hurry up the investigation?”
    He gave me a sharp look that sent chills down my back. We walked ahead of him out of the church.
    When we were outside he confiscated my church key and locked up. After he drove away, Pauline hit me in the butt with her big bag.
    “Ouch. What’d you do that for?”
    She tossed her hair off her shoulder. There were tears in her eyes, so unlike Pauline. “You’ve ruined John’s fall tours. People are going to be really mad at him if he doesn’t let them inside this church where they think Sister Adele hid the divinity fudge recipe.”
    She was loping toward my truck ahead of me.
    “Pauline, John wasn’t supposed to be telling people about the recipe anyway. We don’t want people breaking into the church and stealing mementos. We wanted the recipe all hush-hush before the prince arrived. John violated my trust. And it’s not my fault that Cherry got killed in the church.”
    “There you go again. You’re always right.” She hadn’t turned around. She charged into the truck cab, closing the door with a bang.
    Something was wrong. Pauline was never petulant.
    I eased in on the driver’s side. “I’m sorry, but John wasn’t even supposed to be in the church yesterday when he was. Why was he there so early? And with Cherry? Cherry was going to give his presentation about his research at lunch after the tour, not during the tour.”
    To my shock, Pauline’s tears turned to a sob. She dug a tissue out of her purse.
    “Pauline? What’s wrong?”
    “Tristan Hardy bullied his way onto the bus during a tour stop earlier. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that. John didn’t like it. You saw how they were in the church yesterday. Cherry was trying to take over the tour.”
    “But what does this have to do with Cherry’s murder?”
    The tears flowed faster. “John and I didn’t go on our date last night.”
    “But you were together this morning, right? When I called, I thought you sounded sultry . . .”
    “Like you’d interrupted a blissful morning after sex? The truth was he was so upset about Cherry that I told him to skip our date because I didn’t want to talk about it over dinner. I was sick of hearing about Cherry.”
    “I’m sorry, but I still don’t see . . .”
    She wiped at her nose with the tissue. “We were together last night at my house, but John was determined to reroute his tour so that he could somehow avoid Tristan Hardy. So he spent the night on the phone with some guy and got all excited about his TV show idea all over again. We’d gone to bed around ten o’clock when minutes later he got up from the bed and then never came back. I felt bad and got up to go find him, but his car was gone. I think he went to meet up with Cherry.”
    Panic punched my stomach. “No, Pauline. I doubt John came to this church last night to meet Cherry.”
    She had red eyes. “John loves treasure hunting. He found that precious cup with AVD on it in that big bay. What if they both came here thinking they could sneak in at night to look for the divinity fudge recipe? What if they ended up in a fight? What if John killed Tristan Hardy because of fudge?”

Chapter 6
    I tried to reassure Pauline that a mere fudge recipe couldn’t be the motive for John killing Tristan