Chicken Pesto Murder: Book 5 in The Darling Deli Series

by Patti Benning

  She started her car and pulled out of the parking lot. She meant to go home, but her foot seemed to stall on the gas pedal as she approached the intersection in the center of town. She couldn’t stand the thought of the spiky-haired dog thief slipping away in the middle of the night. If he left, then Jefferson might never be able to see his partner’s killer behind bars, and it might be harder for David to clear his name. If all I do is watch his apartment, she thought, what’s the worst that can happen? She knew from overhearing his conversation with the woman at the police station that he was staying with a friend at Pineview Apartments, which was only a couple of minutes away. If she just parked in the lot and kept an eye on his friend’s building, she would be able to tail him if he tried leaving. It seemed like something that David would do, and after all that he had done to help her, she owed it to him to make sure that the guy that had falsely accused him didn’t get away. Her phone was halfway charged, which should be enough to last her through the night at least.

  She debated about whether or not to tell Candice what she was doing, and decided against it. Her daughter was probably already asleep, and would likely try to convince her mother that staking out a murderer alone was a bad idea.

  The apartment complex was easy enough to find. The hard part was choosing a spot to park. Thanks to the rain, visibility wasn’t that good, and she had to be close enough to see the entrance without her car being too obvious. She settled on a spot a row away from the sidewalk, shut her headlights off, and slid an audio book disc into the CD player. This was definitely better than tossing and turning in bed at home, if a bit less comfortable.

  She was just beginning to get bored sitting in the car when she saw a large dark shape come hurrying around the side of the apartment building. It was a dog, unleashed and sopping wet from the rain. It sniffed at the corner of the building for a moment, and then darted into the parking lot. Moira stared at it, unsure what to do. It could just be a stray, or it might be one of the stolen dogs. She couldn’t very well let someone’s missing pet wander around in the rain, could she? With a sigh, she broke her promise to herself not to leave the car, and opened the driver’s side door. She would just see if the dog was friendly, that was it. If it seemed lost, she could let it into the back of the car, and she’d take it to the shelter in the morning.

  “Here, doggy,” she called softly. The rain was lightening up a bit, and her jacket sufficed to keep her from getting too wet. “Where’d you go?”

  The dog appeared between two cars, startling her. This close, she could see that it was a German Shepherd, a big one, with more black than tan. She had never been nervous around dogs, but she found herself hoping that this one wasn’t a biter.

  “Hey, sweetie, are you lost?” she asked. She held out a hand, and the dog stared at her for a moment before moving a few hesitant steps closer. He looked a bit on the thin side, but didn’t have the mangy look of a stray. A thick black collar wrapped around his neck, but she couldn’t see any tags attached to it.

  Were any of the stolen dogs German shepherds? she wondered. She didn’t think that any on the original list had been, but David had said that more dogs had gone missing.

  “Are you stolen, buddy?” she asked, crouching down in an attempt to appear less threatening. The dog seemed to appreciate the gesture——he walked over and sniffed at her hand, then wagged his tail as she petted him. I wish I could call David, she thought. She didn’t know what to do now that she had made friends with the dog. If it was one of the stolen dogs, then she couldn’t just leave it here. But if it was somebody’s pet that had slipped out for a midnight stroll, then she didn’t want to cart the pooch all the way to the animal shelter.

  “There you are,” a sharp voice said, startling both her and the dog. “Bad boy, Maverick. Get over here.”

  Moira looked up and her heart faltered when she saw the owner of the voice. It was the man with the spiky hair, Mikey Strauss, striding around the corner of the building with a lit cigarette in his mouth. So much for my stakeout, she thought. What do I do now? There was no way that the man hadn’t seen her—she was crouched in the middle of a parking lot, petting the dog that he was talking to. Thunder rumbled in the sky as he approached. Moira withdrew her hand from the dog’s fur and rose slowly.

  “Come here, I said.” Strauss’s voice was angry, and when he gestured with the hand that was holding the cigarette, the dog flinched and trembled, pressing himself into Moira’s leg. “Sorry,” he said grudgingly, glancing at Moira. “He usually listens—“ He froze, the cigarette dropping from his hand and falling to the ground to sizzle out in a puddle.

  “It’s you,” he said. She took a step back. “You were at the police station. And at the deli.” He frowned. “You were at that restaurant too, weren’t you?” He took a step forward, his eyes dark and full of suspicion. “Are you following me?”

  “No,” she said in a trembling voice. “I’m not. I—I just…” she trailed off, unable to come up with a good explanation. She took another step back, wishing that she hadn’t moved quite so far from her car to find the dog.

  “Why would you be following me?” he mused. He snapped his fingers and the dog finally slunk towards him, tail tucked between his legs. “I don’t like it when people follow me.”

  She backed up a few more steps, eager to put as much distance between them as she could.

  “I’m not following you, I promise.”

  “I think you are.” His gaze narrowed. “Are you working with the police?”

  “No, I’m not.” She hoped that he would hear the ring of truth in her voice. She most definitely was not working with the police at the moment. In fact, they would probably be pretty unhappy if they knew he was there.

  To her relief he didn’t say anything else, just stood there frowning at her. She was beginning to think that she would be able to get away, when her cell phone rang. Mikey’s gaze snapped to her pocket.

  “Who is it?” he asked. She hesitated. He lunged forward, quickly closing the distance between them. Grabbing her arm and holding it away, he dug into her pocket, removing her keys and dropping them carelessly to the ground, finally reaching her phone. He looked at the screen. Moira glanced at it too, and was surprised to see David’s name on the caller ID. Had he been released from police custody?

  Mikey mouthed the name, his face furrowed in concentration. She could tell that he recognized David’s name, and she saw the exact moment that he made the connection. His face paled, and he tossed her phone to the ground.

  “You’re coming with me,” he growled. “I get the feeling that I’m going to need a bargaining chip.” He reached for her arm again, but Moira twisted out of the way and ran blindly for the car. She was expecting to feel him tackle her at any moment, but instead hear a splash followed by a stream of curses, and then a yelp. She couldn’t risk a look over her shoulder to see what was happening, but hoped that the dog was all right.

  The second she reached her car, she yanked the driver’s side door open and got in, then jabbed her finger at the lock button. She heard the click of all four doors locking just as Mikey reached the vehicle. He pounded on the window, his pale face twisted in anger. All Moira could do was sit there and stare at him as the rain began to fall harder, and the wind picked up.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  When Mikey walked away, Moira breathed a sigh of relief. She thought that he was giving up, that he had realized that there was no way to reach her. As soon as he disappeared from sight, she would leap out of the car and make a dash for the fallen keys. Then she would get out of there and head straight for the nearest pay phone.

  But the dog thief didn’t go in the building. Instead, he walked up to a station wagon, opened the trunk and rummaged around in the darkness. When his upper half reappeared, he was holding a long crowbar. Moira let out a squeak of fear and looked around the car for anything she could use to defend herself. There was nothing. She was a tidy person, and didn’t even have a spare coffee mug in
her car, let alone anything that could be used as a real weapon.

  She watched with terror as the man approached. He twirled the crowbar with an ease that gave her shivers, and from the expression on his face she could tell that he was enjoying this immensely.

  Realizing that her only hope of escape would be if she could outrun him, Moira struggled into the back seat of her car, giving herself easier access to the rear doors. As soon as he broke a window, she would escape out the opposite side and run as far and as fast as she could.

  Her plan was good in theory, but she wasn’t prepared for how casually and quickly the man acted. He approached her car and, as soon as he was in range, swung the crow bar at her front windshield. It didn’t shatter quite like she had expected, thanks to the safety glass, but with his second hit, most of the glass caved in.

  Moira screamed as he walked around to the driver’s side and did the same thing to the front window. Run, she told herself, but her body didn’t seem to be listening to her brain at the moment.

  It wasn’t until he was approaching the back window that her survival instinct kicked into gear and she slid to the other side of the car, manually unlocked the door, and threw herself into the downpour. She heard his footsteps rounding the car, and knew that he would be on her in moments.

  She wasn’t the fastest runner at the best of times, but tonight she felt like she was moving in a dream. No matter how hard she pounded her legs, she felt like she was moving in slow motion. Mikey’s shape loomed behind her, and out of the corner of her eye she saw him raise the crowbar. He might not have originally planned to kill, but in the thrill of the chase, he seemed to have forgotten his desire for a hostage.

  Moira squeezed her eyes shut and tried her best to duck the blow. She knew that she hadn’t been fast enough, and was prepared to feel the sharp pain of the blow.

  A sudden loud snap shocked her, and she had just enough time to throw her hands out in front of her to cushion her fall before she smashed into the ground. Her ankle blazed with pain, and she realized that one of her heels, which she had worn to dinner with David earlier in the evening, must have broken. A moment later, Mikey, unable to stop his momentum, tumbled over her. She heard a sharp clang as the crowbar landed only inches from her head.

  Struggling to untangle herself, Moira managed to get to her feet. Mentally cursing her choice in shoes, she reached down and tried to snap off the remaining heel like she had seen people do in movies. Either they used special prop shoes, or she was even more out of shape than she had thought, for all she accomplished was scraping the palm of her hand.

  Mikey was beginning to reach for the crowbar so, left with no other choice, she began to hobble away from him. Between the unevenness of having one three-inch-high heel and one broken one, and the flaming pain in her ankle, her pace was slow, but the dog thief must have been injured in the fall as well, because he was still on the ground, a groan coming from his lips.

  Moira was heading back to her car—the windows might be broken, but if she could find the keys, it would still drive—when she saw flashing lights on the main road. She paused, hoping, and felt almost faint with relief as the police car turned into the parking lot.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “David’s coming over,” Moira told her daughter from the couch. “He said that he’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  “All right, I’ll go make sure the door is unlocked.” Candice paused at the entrance to the living room. “Are you sure you don’t need me to get you anything else?”

  “I’m fine for now, sweetie,” she replied. “Thanks.” She gave her daughter a grateful smile and rearranged herself on the cushion, then winced when her ankle began throbbing. She knew that she was lucky to escape last night’s fiasco with nothing more than a sprained ankle and some scrapes, but being injured was never fun.

  “How are you doing?” David asked when he got there. He looked tired, but happier than he had in a while, besides the concern for her that pulled his brow together in a slight frown.

  “I’ve been better,” she said. “But I’ve also been worse. It’s not too bad. I’m supposed to take a couple of days off.” She made a face, and he laughed.

  “Anyone else would be glad to have a few days of guilt-free bed rest, but not you,” he said fondly. More seriously, he added, “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “Thanks. Me too.” She smiled at him. “It’s good to see you. I’m so glad they released you as soon as they realized the truth.”

  “Detective Jefferson is a fair man, and he cares about getting the right guy. He was very apologetic when he let me out of the cell.”

  “It’s good that he was so quick to review the evidence,” she said. “Otherwise you might have had to spend the whole night in the holding cell.”

  “And you might have been Mikey Strauss’s next victim.” David’s frown deepened, and he sat down on the chair across the room from the couch. “You need to stop getting into trouble, Moira. The stress of worrying about you is going to be the death of me.”

  “It’s not my fault. I think I’m cursed,” she joked.

  “You definitely lead quite the life for someone who runs a deli.”

  “Not by choice.” She sat the rest of the way up, trying to think through the pain medicine. “So, why did Strauss kill Detective Fitzgerald?” she asked. “Was it just a coincidence?”

  “No. It was premeditated. Several years in the planning, in fact.” David sighed. “Five years ago, Fitzgerald arrested Mikey Strauss’s father—his only family. Strauss Senior got life with no chance of parole for a double homicide. This was a revenge killing.”

  “Wow.” She sat back, leaning against the couch cushions. “I would almost feel bad for Mikey, if he weren’t a murderer, of course. Why did he try to frame you? Did you have something to do with sending his father to prison?”

  “No, I think my involvement was just bad luck on my part. He must have realized that with the public argument and my wallet as evidence, I would be a pretty convincing suspect. I don’t think he was planning on staying around for too much longer. He had a big stack of cash in his friend’s apartment, likely from selling the stolen pets and pawning some stuff he’d stolen,” he said.

  “Speaking of the argument,” she began.

  “I’ll tell you what it was about,” David said, surprising her. “But I don’t want you to get upset.”

  “I can’t promise that until I know what it was about,” she pointed out.

  “Of course you can’t,” he said, the ghost of a smile appearing on his lips. “It was about you.”

  “Me?” she asked.

  “Fitzgerald made a comment to me about how he wished that you would keep your nose out of police business. He thinks you’re deliberately putting yourself in harm’s way. Apparently, he thought we are… um… closer than we really are. He told me that I should be able to keep a tighter rein on ‘my woman,’ and that he’d rather you stayed home altogether.”

  As Moira gaped in shock, David continued with a grimace, “I couldn’t just let that pass. Any of it. So I told him that it wasn’t my place to keep you anywhere—that you were a free agent and could handle yourself. That even if we were… um… closer, that you were perfectly capable of making your own decisions and maybe you wouldn’t have to get so involved with solving crimes if he was better at his own job. Which, as you can imagine, he didn’t like very much.”

  Moira was stunned. Her emotions were mixed; part of her was hurt that the detective had thought so little of her. It wasn’t like she sought out murderers and thieves. On the contrary, it seemed like she couldn’t avoid them. She was also touched that David would defend her, and speak up on her behalf even when she wasn’t around.

  “Thank you,” she said at last. “For telling me, and for defending my honor.”

  “You’re welcome.” He grinned at her. “One more thing before I let you rest. Do you still want to get a dog?”

  “Yeah, I do,” she said. “I think it’
s time to open up my heart to another pet, and I don’t think I’d be able to stand living completely alone when Candice leaves.”

  “Wait here.” Moira gave a snort of unladylike laughter—as if she was going anywhere with her sprained ankle. A moment later, David came back. To her surprise, Maverick the German shepherd was trailing behind him on a leash. As he saw Moira, Maverick rushed forward and put his head on her lap.

  “Couldn’t you find his family?” she asked, leaning forward and petting the dog.

  “He wasn’t stolen. He belongs—belonged—to Mikey Strauss,” David explained. “Strauss relinquished him voluntarily when his friend began telling Jefferson about how Mikey treated the dog. He’s yours if you want him. Otherwise, he’ll probably find his way to a rescue group of some sort.” He gave the dog a fond look. “This guy saved your life, you know.”

  “He did?” Moira asked. “How?”

  “According to Strauss, he tripped over the dog when he started chasing you.” David smirked. “He fell into a puddle. He was more upset about ruining his cell phone than losing the dog.”

  Moira remembered the sounds of the dog thief falling and the dog yelping. She stroked Maverick’s soft fur, and knew that she didn’t need any time to think about it.

  “Of course I’ll keep him,” she said. “He’ll have a home here for the rest of his life.”