Parmesan Pizza Murder

by Patti Benning

  “Not too bad,” he said. He glanced at the folder, but evidently decided not to ask about her strange reaction. She was glad. She didn’t want to tell him what was going on, on the off chance that she and Russell were wrong. She didn’t want Shannon’s words at the memorial to come back to haunt her. It would be terrible to start a town-wide manhunt on someone innocent. “Thanks for asking. So, what’s the menu for today?”

  “We’re still serving the cauliflower crust pizza,” she said. “Sorry, but I’ve been so distracted by everything with Sabrina that I haven’t set up anything for this week’s special. I’ll get around to it tomorrow.”

  “That’s fine, people seem to like the cauliflower crust anyway,” he said. “We don’t exactly have a lot of health food options in this town.”

  She smiled. “No, that’s true.” She remembered with a pang that there would be no more farmer’s markets until next year. She had enjoyed visiting the last one with her grandmother, even though the pickings had been a bit slim. The season was gradually changing, and soon enough they would be facing the end of another year.

  She realized that she hadn’t thought about the second pizzeria very much over the past week. Linda had been forced to deal with some of the issues that had arisen on her own, and Ellie was pleasantly surprised to see that she had managed it quite well. The time for the grand opening was drawing nearer and nearer. She was less nervous than she had been before. Somehow, Sabrina’s death had reminded her that her own problems, while important to her, weren’t very important in the grand scheme of things. Even if the second pizzeria ended up being a complete disaster, she would still have her family and her friends by her side, and the rest of her life to branch out and achieve her goals.

  “So, do you want me to drive delivery today?”

  She blinked, drawn back to the present by Jacob’s question. They hadn’t accepted any delivery orders for the past week, while she had been figuring out what Sabrina’s murder meant for the pizzeria. I guess we can start doing them again, she thought. Russell’s about to arrest the person responsible, so no one will be in danger any longer.

  “If you’re comfortable doing it,” she said.

  “I am. I’ll just keep my eyes open and be careful. If someone’s out there, they’re probably less likely to attack a guy than a girl. Pete and I should probably be the only ones to do deliveries for a while.”

  “That’s very gallant of you,” she said, smiling. “I’d better go start opening for the day. If you could pre-heat the ovens and restock the soda fridge out front, that would be great.”

  “Will do,” he said.

  She got to work, turning on the lights in the dining area and flipping the sign from closed to open before unlocking the door. She kept her phone with her, hoping Russell would tell her as soon as Kyle was found. She wanted closure, and she was sure Sabrina’s parents did too. The whole town would be able to rest easier at night knowing that the killer was apprehended and safely locked away.

  However, the call that she was waiting for didn’t come. She checked her phone every time she got a break, but Russell hadn’t called or texted her. That meant only one thing; that he hadn’t found Kyle yet. Had she waited too long? What if Kyle had gotten nervous and left town? She hoped that wasn’t the case. For Sabrina, as well as everyone else in town, she wanted him to face justice for what he did.

  She stayed late at the pizzeria, cleaning and scrubbing, letting all of her anxieties melt away in the best way she knew how. The kitchen was sparkling by the time she was done. She didn’t feel much better, but at least she had killed an extra hour. It was time to go home, call Russell, and see what was going on.

  She grabbed the pair of black garbage bags that held the day’s trash and stepped out through the employee entrance in the back to take them to the dumpster. She froze halfway through the door. There was a shadowed form standing by the dumpster, digging through the bags inside. Her first thought was that one of her employees had dropped something inside, but something about the shape made her hesitate. The person was wearing a dark sweatshirt with the hood drawn up over their head. The movements were furtive and cautious, as if he was trying to finish what he was doing before anyone saw him. Someone who had a valid reason for being there wouldn’t look like that. Ellie wanted to grab her phone, but to do so she would have to put down the garbage bags, and then the plastic would rustle and alert him to her presence. Instead, she stood frozen, watching as the person sorted through the garbage. To her surprise, what he pulled out was an empty pizza box.

  “What are you doing?” she snapped. The person jumped. The pizza box in his hand went flying, and he turned to sprint down the road. Ellie was stunned. She had spoken without thinking first. She should have waited to see what the person in the hoodie did after that. Seeing the pizza box had reminded her of the whole mystery surrounding her employee’s death, and she had forgotten the need for secrecy.

  She dropped the bags and took a hesitant step forward, her mind racing. What was this person doing, stealing empty pizza boxes out of the dumpster? She began to connect the dots. The pizza delivery car late at night, the second pizza box where there should only have been one, the business card with the phone number on it that wasn’t Papa Pacelli’s… Someone was trying to steal business from her.

  It seemed far-fetched, but the evidence was here in front of her eyes. What other reason could someone have for stealing empty pizza boxes if they weren’t planning on using them?

  She hesitated only a second before she took off running after the person. She had never been a fan of jogging, but she was relatively fit from her long walks with Bunny and Russell. That and the fact that she stayed on her feet all day at the pizzeria meant that she had more stamina than she thought. She wasn’t gaining on the person, but she wasn’t losing ground either. She saw the person make a sharp turn between two buildings. She ran after them, and found to her relief that they had stumbled right into a fence. The mysterious thief was trapped.

  She reached forward and yanked the person’s hood back, expecting to reveal Kyle. What she saw instead made her gasp.

  “You?”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  * * *

  Sadie stared back at her, her eyes wide. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know that taking something out of a dumpster was a crime.”

  “It’s not.” Ellie realized she actually had no idea whether or not it was. “Well, at least that’s not why I was chasing you. I thought you were someone else. I’m sorry.”

  Sadie frowned. “Who did you think I was?”

  “Just this guy…” She sighed. Sadie had been Sabrina’s best friend. She deserved to know. “Don’t tell anyone, but we think we know who the killer is. There’s this guy, Kyle, who has been wanting to work here, and something weird had been going on with the pizzeria, so when I saw someone going through the dumpster, everything just sort of came together and seemed to make sense. Obviously, I was wrong. Sorry again for frightening you.”

  “That’s all right. Um, I should probably get going.”

  “Wait,” Ellie said. “What were you doing?”

  “I was just… looking for something.” She shook her head. “It’s not important. I really should be going.”

  Ellie frowned as the young woman inched around her.

  “Wait. I want you to tell me, why are you taking empty pizza boxes?”

  “I wasn’t –”

  “I think you should come with me,” Ellie said, a new suspicion beginning to simmer inside of her. She didn’t know exactly what was happening, but it was evident that Sadie had something to do with it.

  Before the young woman could slip away, Ellie had grabbed her by her arm walking back down the road. Sadie followed reluctantly. Ellie marched to the employee entrance and tugged it open. Stepping past the garbage bags, she led Sadie inside. “Wait at the table,” she said. “I’m going to call the sheriff.”

  “Ellie, sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner,” he sai
d, not giving her a chance to speak when he first answered. “I haven’t found Kyle yet. I got in touch with one of his friends from work and according to her, he’s out of town for the next couple of days.”

  “That’s all right,” Ellie said. “That’s not what I want to talk about anyway.” She lowered her voice. “Sadie, that friend of Sabrina’s, was digging through the dumpster outside the pizzeria when I went to take the trash out. She was pulling out empty pizza boxes, and when I confronted her she acted oddly. I think you should come here and talk to her.”

  “Hold on,” he said. “Where is she now?”

  “She’s here. I brought her back to the pizzeria.”

  “I’ll be right over,” he said. “Just… be careful, alright?”

  She set the phone down and turned to find Sadie getting out of her chair. “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “I’m getting out of here,” the young woman said.

  “No, you need to stay. Russell is on his way over here.”

  “You can’t just keep me here,” the young woman said. “That’s… I don’t know, kidnapping or something.”

  “Then give me a straight answer. What were you doing with the pizza boxes?”

  The young woman looked down at the floor. “I just need them, okay?”

  Ellie frowned. The dots were beginning to connect in a new way. “Have you been selling pizzas under my name?” she asked.

  Sadie paled visibly. “You’re crazy,” she said. “Get out of my way.”

  “No, this is serious. This could get me in huge legal trouble. There are codes a restaurant has to follow for food safety and health. If someone thinks I’ve been letting you sell pizzas out of the back of your car, they could shut Papa Pacelli’s down. You have no right to do that to me and everyone who works here.”

  “I need the extra money, okay? It seemed like an easy thing to do at the time.”

  Ellie was stunned at the young woman’s confession. She had begun to suspect something like that was going on, but to hear it confirmed blew her away. “How long has this been going on? How have you been doing it?”

  “I mean, it wasn’t that hard. I got the idea when Sabrina started working here. She’s always talking about how you make everything, and kept mentioning hints about your grandfather’s secret recipe, and I thought it didn’t sound too hard. I mean, making money by selling what’s essentially bread with sauce and cheese on it? I wanted in. At first, I tried just doing it on my own, but no one wanted to buy pizzas from someone they had never heard of before.”

  Ellie shook her head out of amazement. Sadie made it sound so easy. It wasn’t just a matter of throwing together some ingredients. She refrained from interrupting only because she wanted to hear the rest of the story.

  Sadie continued. “Then I saw your business cards lying around – Sabrina brought some with her to hand out at some church retreat – and it just kind of clicked for me. I made a couple copies of them, but replaced your number with mine. I started handing them out, and I began getting calls for orders. Then of course I realized I needed a way to deliver the pizzas that wouldn’t make people suspicious, so I started asking Sabrina to bring me some boxes, but after couple time she started asking questions so I stopped. That’s when I began stealing the empty ones from the dumpster. It sounds gross, but I only used the clean ones. Things just kind of… evolved. I bought that light for the top my car a couple weeks ago, and it was like the world opened up. I got all the late-night orders and delivered to people who wanted pizzas outside of your normal delivery zone. Only a couple of people noticed the difference between my pizzas and yours, but I just blocked their numbers from my phone when they called to complain.”

  “I can’t believe you did that,” Ellie said. “You stole business from me.”

  The young woman snorted. “It’s not like the restaurant’s about to shut down or anything. You’re doing just fine.”

  “That’s not the point,” Ellie said. “Did Sabrina know about this?”

  “No. I knew I couldn’t trust her. She would’ve told you. She was always the good one out of the two of us.” The young woman looked away and scuffed her shoe across the floor, some unidentified emotion flashing across her face. Was it guilt?

  Ellie felt as if her stomach had turned to lead. The second pizza box on the lawn the night of Sabrina’s murder now seemed to make sense. “It was you,” she breathed.

  “What are you talking about?” Sadie asked, her voice suddenly cold.

  “You were there the night that Sabrina died.”

  The other woman didn’t respond immediately. Ellie saw her jaw clench. The young woman glanced away after a moment. Ellie wondered what was going through her brain.

  “So what if I was?”

  “You killed her, didn’t you?”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “You killed your best friend because she was going to tell me what you were doing.”

  Sadie fell silent. Ellie continued, “that explains the weird call they made to change their order – an order that we hadn’t gotten. They had called you first and ordered a pizza using your number, hadn’t they? Then when they wanted to change it, they must have looked us up online instead of using the number on the fake business card you gave them. The two of you must have gotten there at the same time. Sabrina would have recognized your car, and when she saw what you were doing, she must have put two and two together. She was a smart girl.”

  “Just shut up,” Sadie said. “You don’t know what it was like. You don’t know how much I needed the money. If she was a real friend, she wouldn’t have threatened to turn me in.”

  “Sabrina was doing what was right,” Ellie said. “But nothing you did was right. How do you think she must’ve felt in her last moments knowing that her friend –”

  Sadie lurched forward, rushing for the door. Without thinking, Ellie got in front of her. The young woman collided with her, slapping her hands away as she reached for the handle. Ellie saw panic in her eyes.

  She shoved Sadie away and reached for her phone, which she had left on the counter. She was too slow, and too oblivious. Before she knew what was happening, Sadie had grabbed a rolling pin and was swinging it at her. Ellie managed to jump back just in time. A second later, and she might have had a broken arm.

  To her surprise, the young woman began laughing even though there were tears streaming down her face. “Talk about déjà vu,” she said, half sobbing. “I killed my best friend with my bat from softball practice, now I’m attacking her boss with a rolling pin.”

  “Just put it down,” Ellie said. “It’s time to give up, Sadie. You’ve been caught.”

  The woman was too far gone to hear or care. She swung the rolling pin at Ellie again. Ellie jumped out of the way and the pin crashed onto the counter. Before Sadie could raise it again, Ellie stepped forward and wrapped her arms around the young woman, pinning her arms to her side. Sadie struggle for a moment, but Ellie had weight on her, and years of experience. A bear hug might not be the most traditional way of defending herself, but as long as it kept her from getting hit with that rolling pin, she wasn’t about to complain.

  Suddenly all of the fight went out of Sadie. The rolling pin fell to the floor. The young woman went limp in her arms, then started to cry into Ellie’s shoulder. Ellie patted her back, not letting her go just in case she decided to try something again. She hoped that Russell made good on his word. He couldn’t get there soon enough.

  EPILOGUE

  * * *

  Ellie reached for another cookie, reveling in the guilty pleasure of eating as many as she wanted. She had earned it.

  “Killed by her best friend.” Shannon shook her head. “If you ever get mad at me, I’d rather us talk it out than be reduced to violence like that.”

  “I’ll just sick Bunny on you,” Ellie said with a faint smile. “She’s fierce, but she won’t actually do much damage.”

  Her friend laughed. “I can deal with that. Sorry. We should
n’t be joking about this, not with what happened to Sabrina.”

  “It’s good to smile again,” Ellie said. “Thanks for coming over.”

  “Are you kidding me? Your grandmother’s homemade chocolate chip cookies and wine? Well, in my case sparkling grape juice, but it’s basically the same thing. I couldn’t resist.”

  “It’s the ultimate comfort food,” Ellie said.

  “I’m glad that her family’s able to get closure now, but it makes me sad to think of all of the murders that go unsolved all over the country. I hate the fact that there are people like Sadie out there still walking around and enjoying their lives while their victims are dead.”

  “It bothers me too,” the pizzeria owner said. “I know it bothers Russell too, but at least he can do something about it.”