A CRISPY SLICE OF MURDER (Papa Pacelli's Pizzeria Series Book 21)

by Patti Benning

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  * * *

  Ellie stared at the back of her friend’s head, desperately hoping that Shannon would look back at her. They had both been wrong all along. Clark and Kaitlin had nothing to do with Anne’s murder or James’s kidnapping. It had always been Danny. Danny, who Russell had known for years. Danny, who had been in town the last time around too. It was no wonder they had never made any progress on Anne’s case; one of the people involved in her case had been her killer. With him working so closely on the case, it had probably been easy enough for him to cover his tracks. One thing she didn’t understand was why he had come back now, and why he had targeted James.

  If only Shannon would look at her, she could show the notepad to her friend. Right now, however, she was looking glumly out the window. Ellie had the suspicion that her friend had given up. Come on, Shannon, she thought. Just look at me, once. Look at my face. Realize that something isn’t right. I need you on my side for this.

  In the front seat, Danny cleared his throat. He shifted, and Ellie peered around the back of the seat to see what he was doing. He was checking his cell phone.

  “Sorry, ladies. Just got a text from Russell. He wants you to meet him at the sheriff’s department instead.”

  Shannon gave a slight shrug, and didn’t take her eyes away from the window. Ellie sat back in her seat, trying to look relaxed despite the turmoil inside. The sooner Danny knew what she knew — or suspected — the worse that things would be.

  When he reached the coastal road, he turned right instead of left, heading for town. Ellie looked to her friend for help one last time, but Shannon was still seemingly lost in her own thoughts. If Ellie wanted them to get the upper hand on Danny, then it was up to her to figure out how. She looked around the back seat, but saw nothing useful besides a plastic ice scraper on the floor. It was far from an ideal weapon, but in a pinch, it might work.

  She opened her purse, digging through the contents. Lipstick, her wallet, a few loose coins on the bottom, a package of tissues, a folding mirror, and her keys were all that she had. If she had to, she might be able to scratch him with the keys, but otherwise, the contents of her purse were useless. If only she had her phone. She had been so sure it had been on the dashboard. Where else —

  She froze, then slowly glanced up to the rear-view mirror. Danny. He must have taken it. He would have had the chance while she and Shannon were warming up inside the motel’s office. He must have done something to her car, too, to stop it from working.

  “Everything all right?” he asked, meeting her gaze in the mirror.

  “I’m just wishing this day was over already,” she said.

  She spent the next few minutes looking out her window, like Shannon was, not wanting to draw attention to herself. The more relaxed he was, the more likely he was to give them an opening to escape.

  It wasn’t until they reached the sheriff’s department and, a moment later, passed right by it, that Shannon seemed to come out of her daze.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Change of plans,” Danny said simply.

  “Again?” Shannon looked over at him, frowning. “I didn’t see you check your phone.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’re almost there, anyway.”

  Shannon opened her mouth to argue. Taking a chance, Ellie nudged the back of her seat. Her friend turned to frown at her. Ellie shook her head, glanced at Danny, then widened her eyes. Shannon’s frown deepened, and she opened her mouth as if she was about to say something, but then snapped it shut again. She turned back to face the front and resumed looking out the window, but this time Ellie noticed tension in her shoulders. She could only hope that Shannon had gotten the message.

  Ellie leaned her head back against the seat rest and closed her eyes until she could just see out of them. She figured the less alert she looked, the more relaxed Danny would be. It was hard to remain still as they left town, drawing farther and farther away from help.

  At last, he slowed and turned into a long driveway, marked by a For Sale sign. White pines quickly obscured the road, and the car bumped and rattled over the snow-packed drive. They rounded a curve and Ellie saw a house with dark windows and untouched snow in the yard. Danny parked in front of the garage and shut the engine off. The silence that fell seemed unusually heavy.

  “Where are we?” Shannon asked. Ellie sat up straight, glancing down at the ice scraper. It seemed like a pitiful weapon, but it was all she had.

  “I’m disappointed in you ladies,” Danny said. “I thought things were going so well.”

  Ellie looked at the door beside her. It was unlocked. She might be able to make a break for it, but Shannon couldn’t. No matter how frightened she was, she couldn’t abandon her friend.

  “You… you’re… you took James,” Shannon spluttered, one of her hands coming up to protectively cover her belly as she leaned as far away from him as she could.

  “I did,” he said with a sigh. “This didn’t go at all as I planned. Get out of the car. We’ll go inside.”

  He opened his door and got out, slamming it shut behind him. Ellie and Shannon exchanged a glance. They were alone in the car. It was the two of them against him. Surely they could come up with some sort of plan.

  Danny rapped on the car’s window. He pulled his coat to the side and pointed to his gun, then jerked his thumb toward the house. The message was clear. Get moving.

  While she and Shannon got themselves out of the car, Danny unlocked the side door. He ushered them in, then turned the deadbolt behind the three of them, giving Ellie and Shannon a moment to look around. The house was big, but empty. It was cold inside, only a few degrees above freezing. The kitchen faucet was dripping slowly; a trick people used so their pipes wouldn’t freeze in the dead of the Maine winter.

  “Through there,” Danny said, pointing to a door about halfway across the spacious kitchen. “Down the stairs. You’ll find what you’re looking for. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Ellie felt as if her limbs had turned to ice. She didn’t know what they were about to find. They didn’t know if James was even still alive, or if he was, what sort of state he was in. Surprisingly, Shannon, who had seemed so shut down just minutes ago, was the first one to move. She walked toward the door, then looked back at Ellie with her hand on the doorknob.

  “Are you coming?”

  Nodding, Ellie forced herself to move. She and Shannon had been in this together since the beginning, and she wasn’t about to abandon her friend now. Shannon turned the knob and pulled the door open to reveal a staircase that descended into the dark basement. Ellie spotted a light switch and flicked it. Dim illumination flicked on at the bottom of the stairs.

  Shannon went first. Ellie followed close behind her. She glanced back to see Danny still standing in the kitchen, smiling at them. He seemed almost… eager. She shuddered and turned her attention back to what was in front of her.

  Her friend reached the bottom of the stairs first. She froze, then gasped. “James!” She ran out of sight, leaving Ellie to catch up.

  A wave of relief washed over her when she saw James. He was tied to the same chair they had seen in the video and had a bandage wrapped around his right arm, but other than that he seemed uninjured.

  “Shannon?” he said groggily, blinking at them. He sat up straighter, fear flooding his eyes. “You have to go. Get out of here. He’s going to kill both of you.”

  “I’m not leaving you,” Shannon said. She tossed her purse to the side and knelt on the floor beside him. “Not when I just found you. We’ll all get out of here together.”

  Ellie took a step toward them, meaning to help untie James, but her eyes drifted toward her friend’s purse. Shannon’s phone hadn’t been taken like Ellie’s had. Her friend had kept it on her the entire time. If she could get a call out to Russell, then maybe all three of them could get out of this alive.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  * * *

  She g
rabbed the bag just as she heard Danny begin to descend the stairs. Dumping the contents on the floor, she sorted through them until she found her friend’s cell phone. She turned the screen on with shaking fingers and dialed Russell’s number by heart. There was only one tiny bar of service, but thankfully it began to ring.

  All of this had taken only a handful of seconds, but Danny was already more than halfway down the stairs. Ellie knew she wouldn’t have time to tell Russell where they were before Danny realized what she was doing. She would have to hide the phone and hope for the best — but where could she put it?

  Her eyes landed on James. Shannon had been trying to untie him, but to no avail; Ellie saw that the bindings on his wrists and ankles were zip ties rather than ropes. Holding the phone carefully so as not to accidentally hang up, she hurried forward and slipped the device into the pocket on the front of James’ shirt. With luck, Danny would be too focused on her and Shannon to notice the odd bulge.

  From his pocket, she heard a tinny. “Hello?”

  “It’s Russell,” she whispered to James. She saw him give a slight nod, then Danny reached the bottom of the stairs and cleared his throat loudly.

  “Well, this is a touching reunion, but it’s going to have to end now.”

  Ellie turned around to face him, stepping between him and Shannon. Her heart stuttered when she saw the long, curved hunting knife in his hand. It had a brutal hook on the end, and frightened her far more than his gun had. This was a tool of cruelty. “Why are you doing this?” she asked. “What did we ever do to you?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Not you, specifically, that is. This is, and has always been, all about Russell.”

  “You already killed his wife,” Shannon said from behind her. “What more do you want? You’ve already wrecked his life once. He did nothing to deserve this.”

  “Do you know what it was like growing up with a neighbor who always had everything you ever wanted? He had the perfect family, the perfect friends, the perfect wife, and eventually, the perfect job. It wasn’t fair. It isn’t fair. I’ve worked just as hard for everything as he has, but for some reason the rest of the world has always been on his side and not mine.”

  “So, you killed his wife? It wasn’t either of their faults that your life wasn’t the same as his,” Ellie said.

  “I didn’t mean to kill Anne,” he said. “I took her. Kidnapped her. I wanted to make Russell look like a fool, and I knew with his wife in my control, I could have made him do whatever I wanted. But she fought harder than I expected. When I was trying to tie her up, the knife slipped. It hurt her, badly. I knew that she wouldn’t survive without professional help, and I was too far in to take her to a hospital, so I did the humane thing and put her out of her misery.”

  Despite the horrible story, Ellie felt a glimmer of hope. Danny had never murdered someone in cold blood. Would he be able to follow through with it with them?

  “You can still let us go,” she said. “You can make amends for what you did.”

  “There’s no going back,” he said. “I should never have come back to this town. Old Mr. Winston, who was the sheriff before Russell, always sensed something about me. When the case was closed, and I stopped officially helping, he told me that I had better leave town and never come back. He knew I had something to do with it. He felt it in his bones, though he didn’t have any proof. I was so shaken by what I had done and so frightened that it would somehow end up leading back to me I just did what he said. I left. But then I made the mistake of coming back. I was just driving by, and I decided to visit the town I had grown up in. It was the worst mistake I had made in years. Winston recognized me and told me he was going to tell Russell what he suspected. He was old and retired, but I knew that good old Russell would still listen to the old man if he went to him. I killed him with this very knife. Imagine my surprise when, less than a day later, I get a call from Russell himself telling me that Winston’s killer had escaped, and he needed help finding him.”

  Danny laughed. Ellie felt sick. He told the story with very little remorse. She had the feeling that Anne’s death had unsettled him, but he didn’t seem to care about killing the ex-sheriff at all. He had now killed twice, and was planning on doing it three more times. What’s more, that meant that Clark had been telling the truth. He hadn’t killed anyone.

  “You won’t get away with it this time,” Shannon said from behind her. “Russell will figure it out. He knows we went with you.”

  “I don’t care,” he said. “I’m done. With all of this. I’ll kill you, and I’ll kill him too if I can. I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck, bringing in people who have skipped bail and serving warrants. My one solace was that I was at least doing better than Russell for once. Imagine, when I came back and I found out that he was sheriff, that he was engaged again, and that he was about to become an uncle. Even now, his life is perfect.”

  “It’s not,” Ellie said. “You have no idea what he has gone through, or what he feels. His life isn’t perfect, and neither is mine, or Shannon’s. We all have our problems. The only difference with us is that we don’t blame other people for them.”

  “You’ve never really hated someone, have you?” Danny asked, running a finger carefully up and down the knife’s sharp edge. “You wouldn’t understand. I am going to destroy Russell. I’m going to kill the three people he cares about the most, and lead him right to your bodies. I’ll laugh when he finds you, and then I’ll shoot him in the back. It’s funny, actually, I wasn’t planning to kidnap anyone at first. I was going to just kill you in your houses, but then James struggled and shouted, and I didn’t want to chance getting caught before I had time to finish off you two ladies. I managed to knock him over the head and daze him enough to get him in my car and tie his wrists. It took me forever to figure out where to stash him, but I finally found this house that looked like no one had touched for months. It’s perfect; close to town and off of the main road, but private and secluded. Then it was just a matter of luring the two of you out here. I was going to send you directions to this place tomorrow. I guess this is the same ending, but our game just got cut a little bit short. That’s enough talking. You know why you’re about to die. I’ll try to make it quick. I’m not a cruel man. Just ask James here. I hardly touched a hair on his head after our first scuffle.”

  “Don’t touch my wife,” James said. “Please. She’s pregnant.”

  “I see that. It would be hard to miss.”

  “Please,” James said again. “I’m begging you.”

  Ellie thought she saw something in Danny’s eyes. Was that a flicker of hesitation? She latched onto it.

  “You already know you won’t get out of this,” she said. “It won’t hurt you at all to leave Shannon alive. The baby is completely innocent. You talk about life being unfair — well, how unfair would it be to kill an infant?”

  He glanced from Shannon to Ellie, indecision written across his face. “If I leave her alive, Russell wins again. He always wins. He always comes out on top. I want him to hit rock bottom hard enough that he’ll never get up again.”

  “I thought you were going to kill him,” James said. “What difference does it make to you if Shannon and the baby live after he’s gone?”

  Danny let the knife fall a little bit. “Very well. You,” he said, gesturing to Shannon with the knife, “get the pack of zip ties off the bench. Fasten your wrists around that support pole. I don’t want to have to worry about you while I finish these two off.”

  Pale and shaking, Shannon silently walked over to the workbench on the other side of the room. Ellie saw her fumble and drop the bag of zip ties into an open toolbox. She quickly picked them up again. With her lower lip quivering, she walked over to James and gave him one last hug, then approached the pole she was supposed to tie herself to. She was shaking so much that Danny eventually sighed and went over to help her with the zip ties.

  “Ellie, I want to say goodbye,” James said. She glanced over at him. H
e jerked his head silently, beckoning her over. “You would have been a great sister-in-law.”

  “You would have been a great brother-in-law,” Ellie said. She edged toward him, her eyes on Danny. He was still trying to bind Shannon to the pole.

  “My hands,” James whispered when she was close enough.

  Ellie peered behind him and saw, clutched in his fingers, a pair of wire cutters. Shannon must have picked them up out of the toolbox and given them to him when she hugged him.

  “What are you doing?” Danny snapped, looking over at them. “Stay away from him. Don’t try anything.”

  “I’m just saying goodbye,” Ellie said.