Thanksgiving Pizza Murder (Papa Pacelli's Pizzeria Series Book 19)

by Patti Benning

“That’s him?” Liam said. “The guy who came to see you last night?”

  Ellie looked at Russell in surprise. He sighed.

  “Kenneth called me after you went to bed last night. He wanted to talk. I told him to meet me the Sheriff’s Department.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she said.

  “I knew you were already asleep,” he said. “I was going to talk to you about it today.”

  “Do you have any idea where he went afterward?”

  “No,” he said. “I feel terrible. I know there’s no way I could have known, but I was probably one of the last people to see him alive.”

  Liam was looking at his boss with an expression that Ellie hadn’t seen before. Was it suspicion?

  “What happened here to your hand, boss?” he asked.

  “This?” Russell said. He raised his right hand, which was wrapped in a bandage. “I cut it on some glass at Ellie’s house last night. It didn’t quite need stitches. I was lucky.”

  “Can I talk to you for a second?” Liam asked. Raising his eyebrows, Russell nodded and followed his deputy a few feet away, where they had a hushed conversation. Ellie watched her fiancé’s face carefully. His brows drew together, and his frown deepened. Whatever Liam was saying, he didn’t like it.

  After a moment, the deputy walked away. Russell returned to the car.

  “What was that about?” Ellie asked him.

  “He doesn’t think I should be on this case,” her fiancé said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because as far as we know, I’m the last one who saw Kenneth alive, and he heard us arguing last night.”

  “He can’t think that you had anything to do with it,” she said.

  He took a deep breath. “It’s routine,” he said. “I would ask him to step back too, if our positions were switched.”

  Ellie drove slowly back to her house, with Russell following behind in his truck. She knew that she probably should have switched places with her mom; she hardly seemed to be able to feel her hands, and her mind kept wandering. She was surprised when the Pacelli house suddenly loomed in front of her. How had they gotten there so quickly?

  They went inside, all of them silent and occupied with their own thoughts. Without having to discuss it, the four of them went into the living room and sat down. Darlene was the first to speak.

  “How did he die?”

  “I don’t know,” Russell said. “I didn’t get a chance to examine his – the body.”

  Ellie squeezed her eyes shut. How could this be real? She must still be asleep and dreaming. At one point, she had loved him, until he broke her heart. Still, she had never really wished him dead, not like this. She regretted all her spiteful thoughts about him.

  “It’s my fault,” she heard her mother said quietly.

  She opened her eyes. Russell looked toward the older woman as well.

  “I made him come with me. If it wasn’t for me, he would still be back in Chicago. He would still be alive.”

  “It’s not your fault, Mom,” Ellie said. “You couldn’t have known that something like this would happen.” She was angry at her mother for a lot of reasons, but she didn’t blame her for this.

  “Ellie, if it wasn’t for me, he would still be alive. There’s no way around that.”

  “No, if it wasn’t for whoever killed him, he would still be alive.”

  Her mother’s eyes darted toward Russell and narrowed.

  “No. Don’t you dare. I know Russell. He would never do anything like that.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Donna,” Darlene said. “He’s the sheriff. He’s not going to kill someone in a fit of jealousy.”

  “I think that I should get going,” Russell said.

  “No, don’t,” Ellie said, standing up. “I know you didn’t do it, Russell.”

  “I know,” he said, pulling her into a hug. “But your family knew him. I didn’t. I don’t feel like this is something I should be sitting in on.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked. “If you aren’t going to be able to work the case, where will you go?”

  “My parents are getting here later tonight,” he said. “I still have some laundry to do, and I need to buy groceries.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t want you to feel like you have to go.”

  “I will be fine,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? If you need anything, you know where to find me.”

  Ellie walked with him to the front door, hating to see him go, but knowing that she needed to have a serious talk with her mother, and it would be best if he wasn’t there for that. Kenneth was dead. How could she even begin to process that? All she knew was that she didn’t want to be grieving for her ex-fiancé in front of her current one.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  * * *

  In an odd way, her mother’s presence was comforting that evening. They were the only two in the entire town who had known Kenneth. Darlene mostly stayed to her room, but Ellie’s mother sat with her in the living room, not talking, but just offering her presence.

  Ellie was still in shock. She was wrapped in a blanket, staring at the fire, too numb to do anything else. Part of her wished that she had asked Russell to stay, but another part of her was glad that he had left. Ken was from a different part of her life. In many ways, she was a completely different person now than she had been when she had known him. Seeing him again have brought back a lot of memories, not all of which were bad.

  It’s odd, she thought. A few days ago, I had no plans to ever see him again, and I was perfectly fine with that. But now that he’s dead, I can’t stop thinking about him.

  “I’m sorry I was so angry when you showed up,” she said, breaking the silence for the first time in almost an hour.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t handle it better,” her mother said. “I shouldn’t have brought Kenneth. I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea.”

  “I’m going to go upstairs,” Ellie said after a moment. “Try to get some sleep, okay?”

  She shut herself in her room and laid down on her bed, her mind blank. She didn’t know how Kenneth had died, or why. All she knew was that losing someone she had once been close to was a terrible feeling.

  Monday morning, all three of them were subdued. Ellie poured some cereal for herself, then carried the bowl over to the table and sat across from Darlene, who was poking at some of the leftover lasagna that she had heated up.

  “Are you going in to work today?” her cousin asked.

  “Yeah,” Ellie said. “I promised Rose, one of my employees, that she could have the week off to visit her family. That leaves us short staffed already. I can’t call in.”

  “Do you mind if I come with you? I don’t want to stay in this house all day. It’s too depressing.”

  Ellie shrugged, stirring her cereal with a spoon. It was getting soggy, but she didn’t care. She still felt oddly numb.

  Before leaving for work, she knocked on the door to the room her mother was staying in. “Are you all right?” she asked, opening the door a crack and peering in. “I didn’t see you this morning.”

  “I’m just packing.”

  Ellie looked at the jumble of clothes on the bed and her mother’s open suitcase. She sighed. “Why don’t you stay for a while longer? You can have Thanksgiving with us. I don’t want you to go home and spend the holiday alone, not after…”

  She trailed off, unable to complete the sentence. Her mother seemed to understand. She hesitated and looked up at her daughter.

  “Are you sure? I thought I would be the last person you wanted to see just now.”

  “I’m sure,” Ellie said. “You’re still my mother, and I don’t want you going home alone. Stay, make yourself at home. Darlene and I will be back this evening. I’ll bring a pizza home.”

  Her cousin rode with her to the pizzeria, neither of them talking in the car. Ellie wondered what the other woman was thinking. The weekend must have been terrible for her as well. Not only had
Kenneth died, but Darlene had also discovered her husband’s affair. She had a lot of her own problems to deal with. Ellie was glad that she was along; it was better than being alone.

  She turned into the pizzeria’s parking lot, so distracted by her thoughts that she almost didn’t notice the car that was already parked there. She stared at it, puzzled, and wondering whether she had gotten the schedule mixed up. Was someone else supposed to open today?

  Then she realized that she recognized the car; it was her mother’s. Kenneth had driven it into town, but Ellie had forgotten about it after learning of his death. If she had thought about it, she would have assumed that it had been parked at the Marina. What was it doing here?

  “Go on inside,” Ellie said, handing Darlene the keys. “Turn on the lights, if you remember where they are. I will be right in.”

  Her cousin gave her a puzzled look, but didn’t question her. Ellie pulled out her cell phone and called Russell.

  “I found my mom’s car,” she said.

  “Was it missing?”

  “It’s the car that Kenneth drove into town Saturday night. He and my mom traveled out here together, so they only had the one car. I completely forgot about it, and I think my mom must have too. Learning that he was dead was just so shocking, I have hardly been able to think about anything else.”

  “Where is it?”

  “It’s parked here… At the pizzeria.”

  “It’s at the pizzeria? That is odd. He was found at the marina.” He was silent for a moment. “I’ll call Liam and let him know.”

  Ellie had forgotten that he had been asked not to work the case. Feeling a little bit guilty, she said, “thanks, Russell. Darlene and I will be in the pizzeria all day, if you want to stop in. Oh, and my mom will be staying for Thanksgiving.”

  “It will be a full house,” he said, attempting humor. It fell flat, though.

  “I’m sorry. I know that she was pretty rude before. I’m sure she will come around, though. She just has to get to know you.”

  She got off the phone with him and went inside. It was time to get to work. It was Monday, which meant that they had a new pizza of the week. Usually she experimented with recipes over the weekend, but she had completely forgotten about it with everything that had happened. She only had an hour to get a unique pizza that actually tasted good put together.

  She had already decided that she wanted to do something related to the holiday, so thankfully the fridge was stocked with the ingredients that she would need. With Darlene helping her, she prepared a turkey breast, asking her cousin to pull the meat apart using a fork. While Darlene did that, she prepared the crust and put it in the oven to begin baking.

  Once the crust had begun to rise, she pulled out of the oven and slathered it with the stores famous marinara sauce. She sprinkled a mix of mozzarella and asiago cheese across the top, then dropped pieces of shredded turkey over that. She added a sprinkling of dried cranberries, then another layer of cheese.

  “Turkey and cranberry pizza?” her cousin said.

  “We will be the test subjects,” Ellie said. “Put that back in the oven. I’m going to go change the special on the menu up front. It’s not long until we’re supposed to open, and I don’t want to keep people waiting.”

  When she returned to the kitchen, she got started cleaning the dishes that they had used while the pizza finished cooking. It wasn’t long until the cheese was bubbly and beginning to turn a golden brown on top. She pulled the pizza out of the oven and set it on a rack to cool.

  “It actually smells pretty good,” her cousin said.

  “Hopefully it will taste good too,” she said.

  A few minutes later, she cut the pizza into slices and got out two plates.

  “Help yourself,” she told her cousin. She and Darlene each took slices, then sat down together at the little round table in the kitchen.

  “Bon Appétit,” Ellie said. She raised her slice of pizza to her mouth and took a cautious bite. Relieved that the sauce was cool enough that it didn’t burn her tongue, she savored the taste.

  It was good, with the turkey having only a slightly different flavor than the chicken that they normally used as toppings. The dried cranberries had plumped up a little bit thanks to the moisture from the sauce, and added the occasional burst of sweetness that brought back memories of eating turkey and cranberry sauce during Thanksgiving dinner with her family.

  “Not bad,” Darlene said. “You must have a lot of fun, coming up with new toppings every week.”

  “It’s not all me,” Ellie said. “My employees help a lot.”

  It felt good to focus on her work that day. Business was doing better than it had been a couple of weeks ago, and the two of them were kept occupied fulfilling orders and putting pizzas into the oven.

  Ellie was working the drive-up window when she saw something that nearly made her drop the pizza she was holding. Apologizing to her surprised customer, she passed the pizza over to him, then did a double take. Her mother was standing in the parking lot, staring right at her. Their gazes held for a second, then her mother turned around and got into a small silver vehicle with a sticker that said taxi on the side.

  Too frazzled to continue working, she took a break and called her mother.

  “What are you doing in town?” she asked.

  “Shopping,” her mother said shortly. “Do I need your permission for that?”

  “Of course not. Sorry I asked.”

  Ellie hung up, feeling hurt. Her mother had been in town, and hadn’t even stopped in to see the pizzeria. Buying some new clothes was important enough for her to call a taxi, but seeing her own daughter’s restaurant wasn’t even a blip on the radar?

  It took a while for her good mood to return, but eventually she managed to push the incident with her mother to the back of her mind. She was pleasantly surprised when her new neighbor, Adam Felt, stopped in. She thought that she would enjoy being next door to an ice cream parlor in the summer. It would be hard to resist the temptation to walk over and grab a cone during her breaks.

  “This is the guy that’s helping me keep everything up to code,” he said, introducing the young man that had come in with him. “Brian Goodman.”

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Ellie said. She shook his hand, trying to commit his face to memory. She would ask James about him later. He looked far too young to be a licensed contractor, but maybe she was just getting old.

  Adam ordered a small turkey and cranberry pizza, then chatted with her while he waited for it to come out of the oven. “You seem to be doing pretty well, even outside of tourist season.”

  “I have a lot of loyal customers,” she said. “And it helps that I’m the only pizza place that does deliveries in Kittiport. There is another pizzeria in Benton Harbor, but they don’t deliver all the way out here.”

  “I’ve got to say, I think I chose the perfect location for my ice cream parlor. People will come out of your pizzeria in the mood for dessert, and will be able to walk right next door to get an ice cream cone.”

  “If you are open late enough, you will probably get a lot of business after football and basketball games, too. We get a lot of people from the local high school stopping in with their families after games on the weekends during football season.”

  “I will keep that in mind. Any other advice?”

  “As long as you have quality ice cream and great service, I think you will be fine,” she told him. “Actually, there is one more thing. A couple of us are thinking about starting a small business owners club here in Kittiport. Would you like to join? We haven’t had a meeting yet, and probably won’t get around to it until after the holidays, but I think it will be great for all of us to get to know each other.”

  “Count me in,” he said.

  Ellie smiled. She was glad that she hadn’t stayed home today. It was good for her to get out and talk to people. She knew that she still had a lot to process about Kenneth’s death, but feeling something other than
miserable for a few hours was nice.

  CHAPTER NINE

  * * *

  Before she and Darlene left for the evening, she made an extra-large turkey and cranberry pizza to bring home for dinner. She said goodbye to Jacob, who was finishing the closing tasks, then joined her cousin in the car. She felt tired, but in a good way.

  “Do you want to stop anywhere before we go home?” she asked her cousin.

  “No, just going straight home is fine with me.”