To Fudge or Not to Fudge (A Candy-Coated Mystery with Recipes) Read Online Free Page B

if I die first.”
    The crowds picked up along Main Street as the ferry boats came in with their fresh load of tourists. Fudgies, they were called by the locals. I loved watching them file off the ferries. Sometimes they looked a bit dazed and uncertain—the regulars come off with confidence, certain in where they are going. Others spoke with the porters and were happily surprised when young men on bicycles biked their suitcases to their hotels. The McMurphy was only two blocks from the dock, so my guests usually wheeled their own suitcases over.
    On occasion I paid Oliver Crumbley, my neighbor’s son, to porter—especially when I knew a large party was coming in for the weekend. Today was Monday, usually a slow day, which is why I had time to run to the Crier and place a want ad. At least I thought I had time.
    “Hey, Allie.” Mary Evans came up behind me. She was about five foot two inches talll, with a gray pony tail, and big blue eyes. Mary was seventy if she was a day old, but, like many senior citizens on the island, she kept trim with her twice-daily walks. Today she wore a pastel green velour tracksuit and had two-pound weights in her hands. She lifted the weights one at a time over her head as she stopped to talk. “What’s this I hear you’re burying people under lilac bushes?”
    “I am not burying people.” I took a step back as she switched her weight training from the overhead move to straight out in front of her, nearly punching me in the chest. I noted that a fine mist formed on her forehead. It was a bright day out and the temperature was mild enough to wear a sweater, but if you worked as hard as Mary, you’d break into a sweat. “Mal uncovered bits of a body—bones really. Shane Carpenter thinks they may have been there a while. Anyone you know go missing this winter?”
    “No, all my friends are accounted for.” Mary frowned. “I’ll ask around. Was it a male or a female?”
    “I couldn’t really tell.” I shuddered. “We found bones mostly. There was the toe of a shoe, but again, hard to tell at this point whether it was a man’s or a woman’s shoe. It was pretty degraded.”
    Mary pursed her thin lips. “They might be Indigenous bones,” she shook her head. “You’ll be in a heap of trouble if they are. The Indigenous don’t like anyone messing with their ancestors.”
    “Oh, I’m sure they aren’t.” I kept on walking. “They were under the lilac bushes. Whoever planted the lilacs would have found them first if they were Indigenous.”
    Mary marched a circle around me, dodging tourists in T-shirts, shorts, and Windbreakers. “Maybe Irene Raiser knows something. Keep me posted.”
    “I will if you do the same,” I said and watched as she waved her hand and took off down the street. Mary owned a jewelry store on Main. It was the next block down from mine. Her son, Doug, ran the store these days, but Mary still kept her eyes on her community. I could only hope that when I was seventy I had half as much energy and interest in the community.
    I opened the front door and stepped into the turn-of-the-1900s décor of the historic McMurphy Hotel and Fudge Shoppe. It was noon, and everyone who checked out had already left.
    Frances Wentworth, my Papa Liam’s front desk clerk and now my hotel manager, sat behind the reservation desk. She had blue, cat-eye glasses, with rhinestones on the corners, perched on the bridge of her nose as she stared through them at the flat screen of a computer.
    “We are finally full up for the Lilac Festival,” she said as she clutched the mouse and scrolled through her program. “The Santimores are taking rooms 210 and 212.”
    “Yay, now we can afford the payroll.” I took my baker’s white coat off the hook just inside the fudge shop area of the lobby. I slipped my arms in, buttoned the length of it, and rolled up the sleeves. I liked the thickness of the coat and had a handful embroidered with the McMurphy logo as a uniform. People liked