Five-Alarm Fudge by Christine DeSmet Page B

I’d told Dillon and Pauline about the blood previously. “John, do you remember how you got on the bus?”
    “No.”
    Pauline asked, “What did you do last night?”
    “I got in my car to go buy something. I don’t know what now. I remember driving, but I don’t know where I went. I remember being outside my car. Maybe checking a tire? I vaguely recall somebody had stopped, or maybe I stopped behind somebody else. Maybe I had stopped to help them. I don’t know.” He lifted a hand to the back of his head. “I got a bit of a knot somehow.”
    Dillon said, “I can’t find your clothes. But we need to get you to the hospital. Do you feel up to me helping you down the front stairs?”
    John nodded, one of his hands examining the knot on the back of his head. “I’m not feeling dizzy anymore. Maybe I slipped and fell on the road and Mercy found me. I can’t remember if she said anything. You find my car?”
    Dillon said, “We only learned you were here minutes ago. I’ll find your car.”
    Pauline scurried about the room, opening closet doors and drawers. “You and Mercy are probably about the same size around the waist.” She held up baggy denim jeans. “Will these do?”
    John nodded. “But they’re Mercy’s clothes.”
    Pauline said, “All that matters is that we get you out of her house.”
    Dillon found a Packers-logo sweatshirt, and then he had the audacity to hold up a giant pair of grandma-style panties. “She’s got clean undies, but I think you’ll want to let the boys hang loose for this ride.”
    “You got that right,” John said.
    We all shared a needed chuckle.
    Pauline and I left the room while Dillon helped John take off the nightgown.
    In the living room, Pauline said, “That woman has gone over the edge. I bet she murdered Tristan Hardy, ran into John for some reason, or ran him off the road, then brought him here to wash off all the evidence.”
    “You’ve been reading suspense novels again.”
    “What of it? There are only so many picture books about puppies that I can handle. Why aren’t you suspicious of this? We just came from your mother’s place and the church where the sheriff and medical examiner found the body. We saw the body. There was blood. What if that blood on John was Tristan Hardy’s blood that came off Mercy’s hands after she killed Tristan? What if John had gone down to the Namur church for some reason and stumbled across the murder?”
    With Pauline’s imagination, I wasn’t going to need to tell her what Mercy told me about the church and the fight.
    She collapsed into a nearby chair covered with a quilt. “We need to find his car. Why can’t he remember things, Ava?”
    “I don’t know, Pauline.”
    “I’m scared.”
    A sharp bang caught our attention.
    I said, “The dog. We forgot about Lucky Harbor.”
    Pauline and I rushed to the kitchen. A large roaster pan sat upside down on the vinyl floor. Lucky Harbor hadalready scarfed up whatever had been in the pan. He was mopping the floor with his tongue. I tossed the pan on the counter, and then we got the heck out of there.
    *   *   *
    After Dillon dropped me off at the fudge shop, he and Pauline headed to the hospital with John.
    I whipped on an apron with orange pumpkins embroidered on it.
    Cody was handling both sides of the shop. Bethany wasn’t there; she was studying for a test, Cody explained.
    But efficient Lois Forbes in her red-dyed hair and Dotty Klubertanz, a plump lady with short white hair and dressed in her usual pink sweats with sequins, were ringing up sales of fudge and aprons on my side of our little outpost on the harbor. Both ladies were in their sixties and part of the church ladies brigade that always seemed to frustrate me as much as it helped me. If I didn’t keep a firm hold on my shop as manager, Dotty and Lois could turn the place into a church bazaar fund-raiser within the time it took to recite the Lord’s Prayer.
    Dotty rushed over to help me tie the back