Ellie nodded. “It will set us back a bit, but it’s doable. I need to talk to Linda again, but I want to give her more time to rest, recover, and process everything that’s happened before I start talking about business. I hate feeling so helpless.”
“I know,” he said. “I wish I could do something to make all of this just go away. What do you want to do now? We could go to the hospital and see how Linda’s doing, or head back to the hotel.”
“Why don’t we go and visit Nonna?” she asked. “Talking to her always makes me feel better.”
“That sounds good to me. Just tell me where to go.”
The first time Ellie had seen the quiet retirement community on the coast, she had known that it would be perfect for her grandmother, who already had friends living there. The small, neat condos were all single-story, with white picket fences and perfectly trimmed lawns. They passed a couple of people who were taking leisurely strolls down the sidewalk and drove by a game of tennis taking place near the pool.
“This one is hers,” Ellie said, pointing out the driveway. Russell pulled in and shut off the engine.
“Should you call her?” he asked.
“I’ll just go knock and see if she’s home. If she doesn’t answer the door, then I’ll try her cell phone.”
Ellie stepped out of the air-conditioned interior of the car into the Florida heat. It was a striking difference from the chilly weather that they had left behind in Maine, and she was beginning to wish that she had put on shorts that morning.
Russell followed her up to the door where she hesitated for just a moment before knocking. Maybe they should have called first, but she wanted to surprise her grandmother.
The door swung open, and Nonna gaped at them for a long moment before exclaiming, “Ellie! I didn’t expect to see you until April. What on earth are you doing here?”
“It’s a long story,” Ellie said. “Is this a good time? We thought we’d drop by, but we can come back if you’re busy.”
“I’m not busy at all. Why don’t you come in? I was just about to order something for lunch, but now that you’re here, maybe we can go out. Is everything okay, dear? What about your honeymoon?”
“We’re fine, but something happened to the women who run the pizzeria down here.” She grimaced. “I’ll tell you about it once we go indoors. The honeymoon’s on hold for now, but we plan to go ahead with it as soon as possible.”
They followed her grandmother into the kitchen where Nonna poured them both glasses of ice water while Ellie told her story. When she got to the accident, her grandmother gasped with a horrified look on her face.
“Oh, dear. Poor Sandra. I hadn’t been to the pizzeria in a few days. Not since last week, in fact. I hadn’t realized that anything was even wrong.”
“I’m still trying to come to terms with it myself,” Ellie said. “So, you can see why Russell and I had to rush down here instead of going on the trip we had planned.”
“Certainly,” her grandmother said. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I don’t know,” Ellie said. “I don’t think so. Right now, I’m just trying to figure out what to do about the pizzeria. Linda was in no state to run it when I saw her, and I don’t think the employees will be able to manage on their own.”
“How long do you think you’ll be down here?”
“We haven’t decided yet,” she said.
“As long as we need to be,” Russell added.
“Well, you just let me know if there’s anything I can do. Do the two of you want to go out to eat now? We can keep talking about this in the car. I wouldn’t rush things, but I’ve begun feeling a bit dizzy whenever my blood sugar gets low, and I really shouldn’t put off eating for too long.”
“Of course,” Ellie said. “Have you seen a doctor about it? You need to take care of yourself, Nonna…”
Ellie and her grandmother talked about the older woman’s health issues for a few minutes as Russell drove back toward the city. At last, he cleared his throat. “Where would the two of you like to eat?”
“Why don’t we go to…” Nonna broke off mid-sentence, and Ellie knew that she had been about to suggest the pizzeria. “We can just drive around until we find somewhere that looks good,” she amended.
“You can choose, Russell,” Ellie said. “I don’t really care where we go.” Her husband nodded.
“You know, I can help out at the restaurant a little bit myself. I can take orders and make change at the cash register. It wouldn’t be any hardship. In fact, I would enjoy it.”
Ellie smiled at her grandmother, touched by the older woman’s offer. Having Nonna work at the pizzeria part-time had been an idea that had occurred to her already, but she hadn’t wanted to bring it up. She knew that if she broached the subject, her grandmother would accept even if the work and stress would be too much for her. Now that her grandmother had made the offer herself, she would feel better about Nonna working there temporarily.
“It’s something we can consider if I don’t come up with anything else,” she said. “I don’t want to put you in a position where you have to work, though.”
“I would be happy to do it. I want to see the restaurant succeed just as much as you do. It would be sad if it went the same way as Pizza Perfect.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, it’s a pizza shop that’s closing down a few blocks away from your store. You know I usually take lunch with my friends once a week or so at Papa Pacelli’s? Well, last time I was there, there was someone outside trying to dissuade customers from going in. He was handing out coupons for Pizza Perfect. When I asked Ms. Linda about it, she told me that Pizza Perfect is going out of business and blames them.”
Ellie exchanged a glance with Russell. All of a sudden, she remembered the bad reviews that had appeared on the restaurant’s website over the past few weeks. Another pizzeria was going out of business and blamed them enough to camp outside their store and, assuming the culprit of the reviews was them, make multiple fake accounts just to try to bring Papa Pacelli’s rating down. They were willing to go to great lengths to try to drag the name of her restaurant through the mud, but did that add up to a motive for murder?
Even though she was skeptical about the idea that Russell had presented, she hadn’t dismissed it entirely. If someone had tried to kill Linda and Sandra on purpose, then Linda might still be in danger. This was something that she wanted to look into more.
“Why don’t we eat there for lunch?” she suggested. She saw her grandmother’s surprise reflected in the rearview mirror.
“It’s okay with me, but I’m shocked that you would want to go there. They are a competitor, after all.”
“If they have been bothering my employees, I want to know about it. I’d like to get a look at the people who work there, and maybe ask them a few questions. If I do all of that without ordering anything, they probably won’t be very receptive.”
She and Russell had eaten pizza for breakfast, and she might have preferred something different for lunch, but suddenly this had turned into a business outing, not a pleasure one.
“I agree that we should check them out,” Russell said. “However, if Ann wants to eat elsewhere, we can always do it later this evening.”
“Don’t you dare go there without me,” Nonna said. “If you’re going to investigate, I want to be involved.”
It was settled. They would go to Pizza Perfect for lunch, and she and Russell would try to look for clues that one of the people who worked there was a murderer.
CHAPTER SIX
* * *
Pizza Perfect was in a large, shabby building only a couple of streets over from Papa Pacelli’s. The interior was colorful but worn down. The walls could have used a fresh coat of paint, some of the tiles on the floor were chipped, and all of the tables had scratches and scuff marks. It wasn’t busy, besides a handful of people eating at one of the tables in the corner. Ellie could only spot one employee; a young woman sitting b
ehind the cash register who looked up as they came in, then refocused her attention back on the cell phone in her hands.
The three of them walked forward, and Ellie noticed that the floor was sticky underneath her shoes. She tried to keep from making a face. She would have been horrified if the floors were sticky at one of the Papa Pacelli’s restaurants. It wasn’t difficult to run a mop across the floor at closing every evening and clean up any spills right when they happened. Somehow, she doubted that the fact that Pizza Perfect was going out of business had anything to do with her pizzeria.
“Can I help you?” the young woman at the register asked, still not looking up from her phone for more than a second.
Ellie looked over the menu, and spent a few seconds conferring with Russell and Nonna. They decided to go with something simple and ordered a pepperoni pizza.
“All right, it’ll be out in about ten minutes. Sit wherever you want.”
After running Ellie’s card, the employee turned her gaze back to her phone, this time turning away from them slightly to make it clear that she was done talking to them. Growing more and more horrified at the service – or the lack of it – Ellie followed Russell to one of the closer tables. The closer they were to the register, the easier it would be to keep an eye on the employee and asked her questions if she ever looked up from her phone.
“I would ask how everything is doing at home, but it’s only been a few days since I left,” Nonna said, breaking the silence after a few moments. “Has anything interesting happened since I flew back here?”
“No,” Ellie said. “Not really. I spent most of Monday evening and Tuesday packing and getting the animals taken care of.” She realized with a pang that she hadn’t remembered to call either Shannon or the pet sitter the day before. She would have to do it this evening, or they might begin to worry.
When the pizza came out, the employee didn’t bring it over to their table. Instead, she placed it on the counter in front of her, called out the order number, then sat back down and returned to whatever was so interesting and her cell phone. It took Ellie a moment to realize that the pizza was for them. She went up, got it, and thanked the young woman, who grunted in reply. Ellie brought the pizza box back to the table, realizing belatedly that there were no napkins on the table. The dispenser was empty, something that would never happen in a Papa Pacelli’s restaurant.
Is it wrong for me to be comparing this place to my own restaurant so much? she wondered. Maybe the service is so terrible because they’re short on staff. If they’re going out of business, everyone who works here must be worried. It must be hard for the employees to be concerned about doing their jobs when they know they won’t even have one in a couple of weeks. She tried to be generous but knew in her heart that even if Papa Pacelli’s was in a similar situation, she would never let the restaurant sink so low.
“I’ll go grab some napkins and see if they have any paper plates,” Ellie said. “Do you want anything to drink, either of you?”
She had to fight to get the employees attention, but finally managed to grab a couple of paper plates and napkins, and some soda for each of them. They settled down at the table and Russell opened the pizza box. Ellie eyed the creation inside. It didn’t look terrible, but it wasn’t comparable to one of her gourmet pizzas in the slightest.
She took a piece and set it on a paper plate, deciding to wait another minute or two for it to cool off. She was beginning to regret coming there. She and Russell had both wanted to learn something useful about Pizza Perfect –, but it was so empty and quiet inside that no one was talking. The one employee certainly wasn’t about to start up a conversation, and the other customers had left.
“This tastes like frozen pizza,” Nonna complained. “I don’t think they made it fresh here.”
Ellie took a bite and had to agree. It had been a long time since she had eaten a frozen pizza, but they had a certain rubbery texture that couldn’t be mistaken.
She was about to promise her grandmother that they would stop somewhere else on their way back and pick up some good food for her to eat for dinner when the door behind the register swung open and a red-faced man came out, followed closely by a dapper looking man in a business suit.
“Jim, calm down,” the man in the business suit was saying. “It was never a done deal.”
“You were about to put money in escrow!” the red-faced man replied. “You were all set to sign on the dotted line. When is my life going to stop falling apart? It’s bad enough that other place opened up on the corner and is stealing all my business, but now I can’t even sell the building for a fraction of what it’s worth. Go. Just go. I’m done with this.”
He stepped back through the door and disappeared into the back half of the building, leaving the man in the business suit to stand in shocked silence for a moment before making his way out through the restaurant’s front door.
The three of them were too surprised to speak. Ellie had begun to think that no one at the store could possibly care enough to be compelled to murder someone, but after seeing that man – she assumed was either the owner or the manager – she realized that she had been very wrong. There was at least one person here who was very upset that the restaurant was closing and seemed willing to blame other people for his own mistakes. Had she just seen the person responsible for Sandra’s death?
In spite of her doubts, Ellie knew that she had no choice but to get the Florida pizzeria back on its feet if she ever wanted it to recover from the days of being closed. That evening, she called the employees and made a last-minute schedule for tomorrow, then let Linda know that she would be running the pizzeria herself for a few days while they figured out what to do long term. After taking care of that, she called home to let Shannon and the pet sitter know that she and Russell were all right, and to ask how the animals were doing.
The next morning, after she and Russell had eaten the complimentary breakfast that the hotel offered, she returned to their hotel room while he hit the gym. Pulling her laptop out of her bag, she set it up on the table and connected to the hotel’s internet. It was time to let her customers know what was going on, and to let all of Miami know that Papa Pacelli’s was open and back in business.
She had been thinking about what she wanted to tell their customers ever since the accident happened and decided to stick to the basics – that one of the managers was seriously injured, and the other had passed away. She mentioned a car accident but didn’t say anything further apart from asking the customers to treat everyone at the store respectfully, and not to ask her employees too much about what had happened, as they were all still grieving.
That done, she sent a quick email out to the email list letting the followers know that the restaurant would be open that day, then updated their social media page as well. She hoped that would repair at least some of the damage done by the restaurant’s unexpected closing. Then it was time for her to get ready to go. She had hopes that today would be a busy day and wanted to be ready to face whatever it threw at her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
* * *
She was not disappointed. Either her regular customers followed the restaurant’s social media page more closely than she had thought, or the Florida pizzeria was a busy enough place that it simply didn’t matter, but she and the other employees were kept on their toes from the moment the doors opened.
After her terrible experience at Pizza Perfect, being in Papa Pacelli’s made her feel prouder than ever. Everything was clean, the kitchen ran like a well-oiled machine, and she didn’t see any of her employees being rude to a customer. She helped out wherever she was needed, but for the most part, let the employees take charge. She wanted to see how well they worked together, and what all they could handle on their own. She was pleasantly surprised to find that the three of them managed to handle the busy crowds well, even with the flurry of deliveries they got. On the other hand, they often had up to two employees out of the building at a time making deliveries, which m
eant that they needed at least three people, preferably four, so they could split shifts, on staff each day. They simply needed more employees. Once Linda came back and they hired someone else, it would be manageable, but Ellie had the feeling that they needed even more people than they had before. How had they managed to function for so long with only five people working there?
It was late in the afternoon, just before the dinner rush began, when the first sign of trouble came in. Ellie was working the register, so luckily, she was the one that he confronted.
“Welcome to Papa Pacelli’s. What can I get for you?” she asked cheerfully, giving him the standard greeting as he approached.
“Where’s my refund?” he demanded, almost shouting. Ellie was unprepared for the loudness of his demand and jumped.
“Pardon me?” she said.
Pizza, Paradise, and Murder (Papa Pacelli's Pizzeria Series Book 24) Page 3