Five-Alarm Fudge by Christine DeSmet Page A

This’ll take her mind off her royal relatives.”
    Gilpa and Sophie had the people on the bus in no time. Mercy was impressed with my quick work that earned her some dough. She loaned me her house keys.
    Cody agreed to man the shop, but I encouraged him to call his girlfriend, Bethany, to help. I usually gave a fudge-making demonstration at the copper kettles around one o’clock. Cody might have to pinch-hit for me.
    I hopped in my yellow truck in the parking lot and within a minute was at the Blue Heron Inn. Dillon, covered in plaster dust, was in an unfinished bedroom upstairs.
    Breathless from the race up the stairs, I said, “I need your help.”
    “Of course, Ava.” He dropped his hammer and then loped toward me. “What’s up?”
    Once he heard the ghastly story about Mercy and John, we hopped in his white construction pickup truck with Lucky Harbor in the backseat, his tail slapping the vinyl.
    We wended over to the school to pick up Pauline. She shared the backseat with the panting water spaniel.
    Dillon skidded and fishtailed through the back streetsand alleys until we found Mercy’s quiet street. Houses were set back in lots filled with cedars, pines, and maples, with forest land behind the homes and a rural road not far beyond that. Her house was a modest bi-level, brown with white trim and a white door in the middle with a garage to the right. We parked in her driveway.
    I unlocked the front door, and then we hurried up the steps to the main floor.
    Pauline called out, “John? Sweetie? It’s Pauline.”
    For a moment we stood in place, adjusting our eyes to all the colors. Mercy was apparently in love with folk art. Her walls, furniture, and furnishings sported every mismatched color and pattern imaginable, but it was all rather quaint in a county fair way.
    Lucky Harbor set to work sniffing around the house.
    Dillon said, “Now we know what she’s been doing since she lost her job as village president last year.”
    Every chair in her dining room was painted a different color—lime green, shocking pink, yellow with black polka dots, and one with purple and teal stripes. But there was no John. The living room was the same.
    Pauline said, “If John is here, my eyes can’t pick him out.”
    Dillon yelled, “John, where are you?”
    A muffled noise emanated from a short hallway.
    We found John in a bedroom festooned with flower patterns. The bedspread sported splotches of yellow daylilies against a white background.
    Pauline rushed to John, easing her hips onto the bed. “Honey, what happened? How are you?”
    “Where am I? How’d I get here?”
    Pauline collapsed on him, hugging him, her black hair shifting like a river’s currents over his face and chest. Then she kissed his face several times.
    Again he said, “Where am I?”
    Pauline took one of his hands in hers. “You’re with me, sweetie.”
    Dillon and I exchanged a look. He put an arm around me, but the pleasant gesture didn’t cure my wooziness overmy secret: John had told Mercy something about being in a church and a fight. And John was disoriented now.
    He appeared okay physically. But then as Pauline went to help him up, the bodice of a nightgown appeared on John’s burly chest. It had little yellow ducks on it.
    Pauline screwed up her nose. “What are you doing wearing a nightgown?”
    Dillon chuckled. “You look mighty pretty, John, but let me find your clothes.” Dillon started pawing in a clothes hamper nearby.
    John sat up against the pillow. Pauline stuffed another pillow behind him. He said, “Not sure how I got into this or why. I remember being naked in a bathtub, though, with somebody washing me off. That wasn’t you, Paulie Pal?”
    Pauline gasped, “No, John.” Her shoulders straightened. “You left our bed to come over here with Mercy?”
    He said, “Is that where I am? How’d I get here?”
    I sat down on the opposite side of the bed. “Mercy said she found you on the bus. With blood on your hands.”