A Pizza To Die For

by None

  “Believe me when I tell you that I’m not looking forward to it.”

  He turned and looked at me one last time and then said, “Now that I believe completely, regardless of what I said before.”

  “Can you imagine the nerve of that man?” Maddy asked the second Kevin left the kitchen. “He was back here grilling you, wasn’t he?”

  “Of course he was, but we’ll have to talk about it later,” I said as I pulled another pizza off the line, cut it, and shoved it toward her. “We have too many customers in the Slice right now to drop everything and worry about what Kevin Hurley is doing.”

  “I know that,” she said, “but there’s no way that we can afford to let him accuse us all of murder.”

  “I’m guessing he said something to you, too,” I said as I prepped another dough round. Knuckling the dough into place onto the pan wasn’t as fancy as tossing it in the air, and I doubted anyone would ever classify it as a “show,” but it had to be a faster and more efficient way to make pizzas in a hurry.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. As Maddy picked up the waiting pizza, along with its twin, she headed out the door. “This makes things worse than they were before, Eleanor. We’re going to have to come up with a plan.”

  I knew what that meant. Maddy and I had meddled into murder investigations in the past, and while it was never my choice, trouble seemed to continue finding me. Still, I wasn’t about to back down from a fight, and I wouldn’t stop digging into Judson’s murder.

  Josh came in a minute later for the next load of pizzas.

  As he grabbed two and headed back out, I asked, “Is it slowing down any out there?”

  “Are you kidding? We’re being overrun.”

  “Make an announcement,” I said, making an executive decision. “Tell anyone coming in that we’ve run out of dough, but if they’d like sandwiches, we’d be more than happy to make them.”

  “They aren’t going to like that,” Josh said.

  “The dough in the refrigerator is gone with this pizza,” I said. “We really don’t have much choice.”

  “Use the fresh you made this morning.”

  “That was gone quite awhile ago,” I replied. “Tell Maddy to do it if you don’t want to. She’s never been afraid to speak in public.”

  “I’ve got it covered, Eleanor. I’ll tell them,” he said.

  I slid the last pizza onto the conveyor and started to clean up my prep stations while I waited for sandwich orders. The sauce I made every week was getting low, and if we ran out of that, I wasn’t sure what we’d be serving, since that went on just about everything we made.

  Maddy came back to the kitchen for another pickup minutes later. “Smart move. That will clear some of them out.”

  “It wasn’t a ploy,” I said. “It happens to be true.”

  “Wow, we had a bigger run than I thought.”

  “Has the announcement had any effect on the folks waiting?” I hated the idea of losing customers, not that there was anything I could do about it.

  “A few of them drifted out,” she said, “but it’s not exactly like we had any tables for them anyway. I think the worst of it is over.”

  “Thank goodness. We’re closing in an hour, regardless of who’s still waiting to eat,” I said as I glanced at the clock and I knew some of our dinner patrons would be unhappy with it. I could always make more quick dough given enough time, but I was exhausted, and I was sure the other three were, too.

  Maddy looked relieved by the news. “If you weren’t going to pull the plug, Greg and Josh wanted me to come back here to urge you to close soon. We’re beat.”

  “Trust me, I’m worn out, too,” I said with a slight smile. “I think we deserve a little break this evening. Do you want to make a sign for the door, or should I?”

  “I’ll handle it,” she said as she looked around the kitchen, which was messier than I ever liked to see it. “You’ve got your hands full back here.”

  “I was told you were back here,” Bob Lemon said as he walked into the kitchen to join us.

  “Sorry, Bob, I can’t talk,” I said.

  He ignored me completely. “Madeline, you are not to investigate this man’s murder, and that’s final.”

  Maddy hated her given name, and I could see her bristling at its use, not to mention the direct order her boyfriend had just given her. I looked around for something I could use as a shield when she exploded, but my sister surprised me by smiling at him.

  It was clear that Bob was puzzled by her reaction as well.

  “Did you hear me?” he asked in a halting voice.

  Her smile never wavered as she said, “I must not have. It sounded as though you were telling me what to do, and I know you’re more intelligent than that.”

  His voice had a deeper pleading quality to it as he said, “The police chief is going to make this case his number one priority. If he finds you interfering with his investigation, you might get into a mess that even I can’t get you out of.”

  I was watching his face, and it was clear that he realized he’d made a mistake as the words left his mouth. “What I mean to say is . . .”

  One look at my sister’s stare was enough to silence him.

  After a brief pause, Maddy said to him softly, “You may leave,” her tone calm and even.

  “Maddy, I . . .”

  “Now,” she said, with just the slightest hint of force behind it.

  He started to say something else—I could almost see the words forming on his lips—when he decided he’d buried himself deep enough, turned, and left.

  “Wow, you’ve got to teach me how to do that sometime,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Intimidate someone like that,” I replied. “I had chills and a fever from seeing it, and it wasn’t even directed at me.”

  “Not now, Eleanor.”

  I could tell from her voice that she was in no mood to be jollied out of her anger.

  “Got it,” I said.

  As Maddy left the kitchen, I started cleaning up between pulling pizzas out of the oven and preparing them for delivery. Bob should have known better, but I could relate to his sentiment. He cared for my sister, maybe he even loved her, but if he wanted to be with her, he was going to have to learn how to deal with her better than he’d been managing lately. It was his problem, though, not mine. I had enough of my own grief and concern without taking anyone else’s on.

  Greg came into the kitchen forty-five minutes later and announced, “The last customer just left and the front door’s locked.”

  “I thought we were staying open for another fifteen minutes,” I said as I glanced at the wall clock.

  “We had a hunch that no one else would want to come in, given the fact that we had already locked the door and put up the CLOSED sign,” he said with a smile. “Would you like some help with the dishes?”

  I’d been steadily working on them as the orders had decreased, and I’d been through four sinks of suds so far. “Thanks, but I think I’ve got it under control. How’s the front look?”

  “Like a herd of angry llamas stormed through it,” he said. “But we’re getting it in good shape.”

  Maddy came back, followed by Josh. “We’re here to help you tackle the back,” she said. My sister looked around the kitchen and whistled. “Wow, I’ve got to hand it to you, Eleanor. You work fast.”

  “It pays to keep on it all the time,” I said. “That way, it’s usually not as bad at the end.”

  “I can see that. We’ve got the front in pretty good shape.”

  “What about the llamas?” I asked.

  “What?”

  Greg said, “Maybe I exaggerated a little.”

  “Maybe. Why don’t you all go on home? Everyone deserves to have an early evening, and I can handle the rest of this myself.”

  Greg and Josh were headed for the front door when Maddy said, “I’ll let them out, and then I’m coming back.”

  “It’s okay. You can go, too,” I sa
id.

  “Why?”

  “Don’t you have a date tonight?”

  She frowned. “The key word is ‘had,’ not ‘have,’ ” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  Maddy bit her lip and then asked, “Eleanor, do I look like I’m kidding?”

  I could see that she was in pain, but for the moment, there was nothing I could do about it. “Okay, I’ll gladly take the help, if you’re sure.”

  She came back a minute later, smiling. “Man, I didn’t know how fast those two could move when they had incentive.”

  “Were they in that big a hurry to get out of here?”

  She laughed, a sound I always liked hearing. There was something about a laugh that infected me with a touch of joy myself, and I just couldn’t get enough of it. “They were both afraid you’d change your mind.”

  “I’m not that bad to work for, am I?”

  “You have your moments,” she said as she took up the drying towel, “but most of the time you’re a wonderful boss.”

  As we worked our way through the rest of the dishes, I said, “I still can’t believe Judson is dead.”

  “Are you kidding me? After the way he treated us? I can’t believe he lasted as long as he did, if that was his standard of behavior toward people.”

  “Nonetheless, it looks bad for us, doesn’t it?” I asked as I handed her another glass to dry.

  She nodded. “That’s exactly why we have to ignore what Bob said and dig into this ourselves.”

  I thought about that for a few seconds, and then said, “At the risk of having a pot thrown at me, can I say there’s a chance that Bob might be right?”

  Maddy looked at me with a serious expression, and then smiled broadly. “Of course he’s right, but we can’t let that stop us, can we? Since when have we been afraid of stepping on Kevin Hurley’s toes? We both have a stake in this, and you know it.”

  “So we start digging into Judson Sizemore’s life. What do we really know about him?” I asked.

  “Other than the fact that he was a pretentious bore?”

  “Maddy,” I said.

  “Okay, I’ll get back on track. The only thing we really know is that he was being backed by one of the richest men in Timber Ridge, someone we thought was just about stone broke. That’s as good a place to start as any, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Then we need to talk to Nathan Sizemore.”

  As we drove to Nathan’s house on the outskirts of town, I realized that I didn’t really know much about the man other than the reputation he had around town. He was an odd bird, there was no denying that, and I was still trying to accept the fact that he was wealthy beyond my wildest dreams as we headed over to speak with him. I’d only seen his house a few times as a kid, and I hadn’t really thought much about him since then, if I was being honest about it.

  When we arrived, I stared at Nathan’s home, trying to peer through the heavy vines that covered the front porch. It was difficult to see the bones of the basic house underneath it all. The place was in dire need of some serious landscaping, a good scrubbing, and a fresh coat of paint on the outside, and some of the columns on the front porch were showing signs of decay. But as I stared at it, erasing the clutter and disrepair in my mind, I began to see that it was an Arts and Crafts bungalow, much like my own.

  “I never realized that it was just like my house,” I said.

  Maddy looked at the house, and then stared at me. “Eleanor, are you okay? Did you hit your head in the kitchen and not tell me?”

  Her sarcasm was thick, but I wasn’t about to be dissuaded from my point of view. “Maddy, look at the frame and forget everything else and you can see it. It’s a bungalow, and I’m willing to bet the builder used the same crew that constructed mine.”

  She looked at the house again, this time longer and harder, and then finally said, “I don’t see it.”

  “That’s because you didn’t spend a year of your life refurbishing one.”

  We were about to approach the porch when a wiry old man with a shotgun threw open the front door and pointed it in our direction.

  “Get off my land, or I’ll shoot you both where you stand.”

  It was time for some fast talking, and that shotgun gave me plenty of incentive. “Mr. Sizemore, I’m Eleanor Swift, and this is my sister, Maddy. We came to talk to you about . . .” I wanted to say Italia’s, but instead, found myself finishing with “your house. I own an Arts and Crafts bungalow myself.”

  His shotgun started to lower as I said it. “You trying to tell me that you own the place on Farrar?”

  “My late husband, Joe, and I rehabbed it from top to bottom,” I admitted.

  “I wouldn’t mind seeing it,” he said, the shotgun now pointed straight down at the porch floor. “I’ve always wondered what it looked like on the inside.”

  I had a sudden inspiration. “Why don’t I show it to you right now? It’s not clean, or ready for any company, but you can see the work we did.”

  He nodded. “I never worried about a mess I made myself in my life. Maid services are for sissies.”

  Nathan started to walk off the porch when I asked him carefully, “Did you forget something?”

  “I surely did,” he said as he walked back and locked his front door soundly.

  That wasn’t what I’d meant.

  I pointed to his weapon and said, “There’s no need to go there armed.”

  Nathan shrugged. “You never know,” he said, but he got the hint and unlocked the door again so that he could stow the shotgun inside. “You never can be too careful these days,” he said. “Are you driving, or should I?”

  I’d seen the rusty old pickup he drove through town, and I didn’t want to chance getting lockjaw from sitting in it.

  I decided to volunteer my services. “I’ll be glad to drive,” I said.

  Maddy got in the back, and Nathan sat up front with me. As we drove, I wondered how I might bring up the pizzeria and what had happened to its owner. I was about to say something about it when Maddy tapped me on the shoulder. When I looked back at her in the rearview mirror, she shook her head slightly. I had to be imagining things. Was my sister actually telling me not to talk about something? I decided to hold my questions until later. She must have had her reasons, even though they weren’t obvious to me.

  We got to my house, and I led the way up front. When I got to the porch, I was surprised to see that Nathan Sizemore was still standing on the sidewalk.

  “I like it,” he said after a moment’s pause.

  “I’m glad,” I said. “Trust me. It looks even better inside.”

  I unlocked the door, and as Maddy and I waited for him to join us, she said softly, “Save our interrogation for the ride home when he’s more receptive.”

  “Okay,” I replied.

  Once Nathan joined us, I explained, “We stripped four coats of paint from the wainscoting in the living room before we got to the bare wood. It’s quarter sawn oak, you know.”

  He looked at me for a moment, and then said, “Thanks all the same, but I don’t need a tour guide. I know what I’m looking at.”

  “Fine. Be my guest, then. Feel free to look around all you like.”

  He nodded and then did as I’d suggested, wandering around the first floor without any acknowledgment that Maddy and I were still standing there. Other than a few grunts and nods of approval every now and then, the house was silent. Only when he got to the oak staircase did he hesitate long enough to look at me. “Mind?”

  “Go right ahead,” I said, and Maddy and I trudged up after him.

  After he’d poked his head into every nook and cranny upstairs, he said, “I’ve seen enough.”

  “Would you care for some coffee?” I asked.

  “Can’t stand the stuff,” he said.

  “How about tea?”

  He appeared to consider it, and then finally rendered his verdict. “Got any hot cocoa?”

  “Always,” I said with a laug
h. We went into the kitchen, where Nathan took a seat at the table as though he’d been there a thousand times before.

  As I made the cocoa, he took a checkbook out from his jacket pocket and started scribbling.

  “I’m not going to charge you for it. The cocoa’s on the house,” I said, trying to be funny, but apparently failing miserably.

  “This isn’t for the drink,” he said as he finished signing his name with a flourish.

  After he tore it out of the book, Nathan handed me a check for more money than I’d ever seen in my life. “What is this for?”

  “I’ll take it, furnishings and all,” he explained as he sipped the cocoa I’d just handed him.

  I dropped the check as though it were coated in anthrax. “Sorry, but my house is not for sale.”

  “Everything in this world is for sale, if the price is right,” he said. He retrieved the check, tore it up, and then put the pieces into his pocket.

  As he began to write another check, he chuckled. “I shouldn’t have low-balled you the first time. My mistake.”

  I couldn’t believe this man. Did he honestly think he was going to waltz into my home and buy it from me without even asking first? “Mr. Sizemore, I don’t care how much that check is written for, I won’t take it. I told you before and I meant it, so it would be in your best interest to believe me that my home is not for sale at any price.”

  He looked surprised. “Would you mind telling me why not?”

  “My late husband, Joe, and I remodeled this place from top to bottom. Do you honestly think those kinds of memories are for sale? This is my home. More importantly, it was his as well.” I felt tears come to my eyes as I spoke, but I didn’t care if he saw them or not.

  Nathan shook his head. “Mrs. Swift, I don’t want to buy your memories. The house is all I want. With your little pizza place struggling, I figured you’d be happy for the chance to make some real money.”

  “I guess you were wrong, then,” I said, and then pressed my lips firmly together before I said anything I might regret.