A Saucy Taste of Murder

by Patti Benning

  “Hey.” He sounded tired. “I just wanted to let you know that I'm on my way home.”

  “I'll be home soon too,” Ellie said. “I'll probably beat you there by a few minutes. I'll get the table set and get dinner ready. I brought home a couple large pizzas for us. I figured you'd be busy working the next couple of days, so you can just grab a slice out of the fridge and go in the morning.”

  “Thanks, Ellie,” he said. “How did I get so lucky as to marry someone like you?”

  She smiled, thinking that went both ways. “I love you.”

  “Love you too. I'll see you shortly. Drive safely.”

  She ended the call, her heart singing. Russell was truly the best man she had ever known. She often wondered how she got so lucky as to be with him. He was brave and honest and smart, hard-working and willing to put his life on the line for the people he loved, while still being even minded enough to know when to take a step back from a dangerous situation. She felt lucky that she hadn't taken the plunge and gotten married before meeting him. If she had, she may never have met Russell, and she couldn't imagine a better life than the one she was living at the moment.

  When she got home, she went through her routine; letting the dogs outside, giving Marlowe fresh food and water, pulling out her ponytail and brushing her hair, and changing into clean T-shirt that smelled like fabric softener instead of pizza. Once she was done, she put the two pizza boxes on the table, along with a pair of plates, napkins, and glasses. She had just finished filling both glasses with milk when she heard the front door open. Bunny and Sawyer took off for the front of the house, their paws skittering across the hardwood floor. Ellie smiled and made her own, slower way toward the front door.

  She greeted Russell with a hug and a kiss to his cheek. He looked just as tired as he had sounded on the phone, and she knew that he was working hard to solve the case. Murder was something that Russell always had a hard time tearing himself away from. His first wife had been killed by someone he had failed to catch in time, and she knew that he lived in terror of that happening again, either to her or to someone else. She knew that he faced a lot of guilt, and she was proud of him for being so strong. She didn't know if she would be able to do his job. In fact, she was pretty sure she wouldn't. Seeing all those horrible things that people did to each other every single day would wear her down in no time at all. At the pizzeria, she mostly got to see the best of humanity. Very few people were in a bad mood when they were eating pizza.

  “Any progress?” she asked softly as they sat down at the table, careful not to make it sound like she was prodding too much. She knew if he hadn't made any progress, he would just blame himself, and she didn't want him to dwell on it.

  “How about you tell me about your day first?” Russell said, reaching for a slice of pizza. “I'll tell you about mine, once I’ve had a chance to unwind a little.”

  “Of course,” Ellie said. She took a few moments to bite into her slice and take a sip of milk. She was surprisingly hungry. She hadn't eaten much that day, having been so distracted by everything else that was going on.

  “My day was stressful,” she admitted. “Nothing like yours, I'm sure, but the morning was extremely slow thanks to the accident on Main Street. Rose arrived late and she was worried that she'd be in trouble, poor thing. We hardly got any orders all morning, but thankfully it picked up later in the day. Everyone was talking about what happened. I listened for anything out of the ordinary, but I didn't catch anything. It was stressful mostly just because everyone was on edge.” She thought back to the nervous energy that had permeated the town earlier that day. “People are really upset about what happened, Russell.”

  He wiped his face, nodding. “I know,” he said. “Something like this… a public figure being killed…” He shook his head. “It's not going to be good for the town. Especially once word gets out that all of the donations were stolen.”

  “Who would've done such a thing?” Ellie asked, fiddling with her napkin. “I still can't wrap my head around it. Whatever happened with that man you were bringing in for questioning?”

  “I was planning on getting to that when I told you about my day. I’ll start from the beginning. As you know, I got the call to come in early this morning. The person who called in was pretty unclear about what she had found, and Liam called me because he didn’t know what he would find. When I got there, I found the car crash scene, which Liam was already responding to. At first, I thought that was why I had been called in, but then he pointed me toward the City Hall.” Her husband fell silent for a long moment, staring at his glass of milk. “Whoever killed her… it looked personal. I've seen a lot of crime scenes in my day, but rarely one as bloody as that one was.”

  “Do you know how she died?” Ellie asked.

  “She was stabbed with something,” Russell said. “There was also some blunt force trauma. If I had to guess, I'd say that she was kicked once she was on the floor. Multiple times. I'm almost certain that whoever did this knew her.”

  “So it doesn't sound like it was the guy from the park, then. He couldn’t have known her very well.”

  Russell shook his head slowly. “Once I was finished at the crime scene, I spoke to Liam and we both realized that the person who caused the car accident was the same one who called the body in. The whole thing was a mess. I guess she saw the body and panicked. She must've left her cell phone in the car, or just didn't think about it, because she left the building and ran across the road, heading for the coffee shop across the street to use their phone. She said that she was so freaked out that she didn’t look both ways before crossing and the car could have killed her. We're lucky that there wasn't more than one death there today. That car accident could have been really bad.”

  “I was worried that someone got hit when I saw it,” Ellie said. “I’m just glad that she’s okay. Who is she, anyway?

  “Cherish Rogers, she is the assistant head of the department. Anyway, after all that, we went and brought in the man from the park, Jeremy Smith, and spent about two hours questioning him. At first, he didn't know what he was brought in for. He was acting shifty, but then when we broached the subject of the murder, he seemed almost… relieved. He shook it off, swore up and down that he didn’t do it, and stopped looking so nervous. Not quite the normal reaction that a guilty person would have.”

  “So, you don't think he did it?”

  “I think he did something,” Russell said slowly. “But I'm not sure what it is. I do not think that he killed her. I'm not certain about it, but something just feels off. Like I said, this seems like something that was very personal. Mr. Smith definitely has a temper, but I’ve seen no evidence that he’s willing to take a confrontation past shouting.”

  Ellie sighed. “So you’re back to square one?”

  “For now, at least,” Russell said. “We'll keep an eye on him as a person of interest, of course, but right now he's not our main suspect.” He gave a frustrated sigh. “We don't have a main suspect. We got some fingerprints off of the crime scene, but none of them match anyone in the database. No witnesses, and most of the City Hall’s security cameras aren’t functional. It's… frustrating.”

  “I can imagine,” Ellie said. “I'm sorry, Russell. I wish there was something I could do to help.”

  “It's just going to take time,” he said.

  “Should we cancel the barbecue for tomorrow?” Ellie asked.

  Her husband hesitated, then shook his head. “I don't think so. I'll try to be out of work in time to join you. I might not be able to help you out as much as I was hoping to, but I definitely want to be there. Everyone else is looking forward to it, and it's not fair to cancel just because I've got to work. Will you be okay hosting even if I can't make it quite on time?”

  “Of course,” Ellie said. “I'd hate for you to miss the whole thing, though. If you think we need to move it back a bit, I'm sure everyone would be okay with that.”

  “Maybe we could move it back an hour,
” Russell said with a sigh, leaning back in his chair. “This is not how I wanted to spend my week. And I doubt poor Ms. Warton wanted to spend hers in the morgue. I'm going to catch whoever did this, Ellie. And when I do, they're going to pay. With how violent the killing was, I am certain the prosecutors will push for the maximum sentence. With how much awareness this is going to get with the townsfolk, I doubt any judge in the world will be lenient.”

  Chapter Six

  Ellie woke up early the next morning when Russell’s alarm went off. They kissed goodbye at the front door, with Russell promising to be home in time for the barbecue. She did her best to reassure him that he didn't need to be. She knew how much he wanted to join them, and she desperately wanted him there, but she didn't want him to feel added guilt if he ended up not being able to make it. They had gone into their marriage knowing that they were both practically married to their jobs. She would never harp on him for working too much while she herself was still so dedicated to the two pizzerias.

  She had taken the day off for the barbecue so she had plenty of time to prepare for it. They had decided to host it at their house instead of Nonna’s, mostly because they had yet to set up her grill, whereas theirs was already sitting on the porch ready to go.

  Ellie spent the early hours tidying up. Her grandmother came over around late morning, carrying a paper bag with ingredients inside.

  “Nonna, I keep telling you, you don’t have to knock. You're free to just come on in.”

  “I know, dear,” Nonna said. “I just don't want to overstep my bounds. You're a married woman now, and have every right to your privacy.”

  Ellie pulled the other woman into a hug, then stepped back so she could come inside. She held Sawyer’s collar while Bunny, the smaller of the two, greeted her grandmother. She kept Sawyer by her side until he calmed down. If he jumped on Nonna – which he still did sometimes, even though he wasn't supposed to – he could be very capable of knocking her down and hurting her.

  They spent a few minutes in the hallway, chatting with Marlowe. The bird had belonged to Ellie's grandfather. It had never particularly liked Nonna, which according to Ellie’s research was pretty normal for parrots. They tended to pick one person and bond strongly with them. Others were either tolerated or outright hated. Marlowe was a one person bird, though she would accept treats from just about anyone.

  “Your house is so lovely,” Nonna said. “You and Russell certainly changed a lot, didn't you?”

  She nodded as they headed toward the kitchen. “Well, we had to redo the carpeting on the stairs anyway, so we decided to redo all of it. We tore down the ancient wallpaper that was in some of the rooms, repainted everything, resurfaced the original hardwood, and installed new counters.”

  “Well, the two of you did a lovely job. I haven't had a chance to thank you, Ellie, for everything you did with my house while I was away.”

  “It was no problem, Nonna. The tenants were great, and everything went smoothly.” For the most part, she thought. “I'll be happy to do it again for you later this year.”

  She and her grandmother worked in the kitchen in companionable silence for a while. Nonna had brought over her old recipe books, and the two of them were getting a head start on the pies they were making for dessert. They were best served cold, so they needed a few hours to chill.

  While she worked, Ellie thought about her grandmother's life. It must be strange, she thought as she rolled out the piecrust, to live in two different worlds. I wonder if I'll ever do something like that. She shook her head, dismissing the thought. Even though she could see herself living half the year in Maine and half in Florida – especially with the two pizzerias – she knew that Russell would never want to leave Kittiport for more than a short vacation, even after he retired from his job as sheriff. She could understand that. This place was his home in a way that no place had ever been hers. He had spent the vast majority of his life here, and was a part of the town as much as the town was a part of him. She respected that completely, and thought she would be happy to grow old in this house with him, as long as she could still take the occasional trip somewhere warm and sunny.

  “I can't wait to try this,” Nonna said a while later as they put the two pies into the fridge. “Homemade key lime and banana cream pies. Of course, it's not made with real key limes, so won't be quite the same, but I'm sure both of them will still be wonderful.”

  “It's going to be hard to wait until it's time for dessert to try them,” Ellie said, eyeing the pies one last time and she shut the fridge door. “Do you think anyone will miss just one piece?”

  “Maybe not, if we take one slice out of each of them and then rearrange the rest of the slices so they look like they’re just small pies.”

  Ellie chuckled, shaking her head. That, she knew, was an old trick with pizzas.

  She went into the pantry to fetch a bag of red skin potatoes, and she and Nonna washed them together, their conversation coming around to what happened to the head of the parks department.

  “That poor dear,” Nonna said as she scrubbed the potatoes in the sink. “When I saw what happened on the news, I was just horrified. All of that, for a box of money. Most of which, they won't even be able to use, since a lot of people donated checks instead of cash.”

  “It really is horrible,” Ellie agreed. “A box of donated money isn’t worth a person’s life. It just makes me sick.”

  “I'm starting to wonder if the park will ever get built,” her grandmother continued. “I know they've been trying for years and years. Something always seems to go wrong.”

  Ellie raised her eyebrows, remembering that Jessica had said something similar. “Do you know anything about what happened previously to prevent it from being built?”

  “Well, first, they had serious trouble getting the permits they needed to build on the land. I don’t know how they managed that, since the permits get issued in another department in City Hall. “Then there was some protest about a species of bird that nests in the trees. The head of the department agreed to cut down as few trees as possible. Then they tried raising funds online, but no one donated, and they found out that somehow the online campaign for it had gotten canceled before anyone had the chance to give any money. And now… this. My friend Greta used to work at City Hall, and she told me all about it last night after she heard about the murder. She thinks that the park is cursed.”

  Ellie frowned. “You really should tell Russell all of that, Nonna. That definitely makes it sound like something suspicious is going on.”

  Her grandmother nodded. “I will tonight. I… I didn't even think of that before. Oh dear, what if we could have done something earlier to help save this poor woman?”

  Ellie put her hand on the older woman’s shoulder. “Trust me, no one could have guessed that it would come to murder. For all we know, it had nothing to do with the park’s shady history and it really was just a random theft. I just want Russell to have all the information that he can get.”

  She was disappointed but not surprised when she got a call from Russell about half an hour before the barbecue was supposed to begin. “I'm sorry, Ellie, but I'm not going to be able to make it,” he said.

  “That's okay,” she said, trying to disguise her disappointment. “What time do you think you'll be here? Will you make it at all, or…?”

  “I don't think I'll make it at all,” he said. “If I do, it’ll be in a couple of hours. I'm really sorry, Ellie. I wanted to do this with you.”

  “Russ,” she said softly. “It's fine. Trust me.”

  They said their goodbyes and she hung up before turning to Nonna, who had heard enough of the conversation to know what was going on. “We'll just have to save him some pie then,” the old woman said. “I’ll put some of the potato salad aside for him too.”

  “Thanks, Nonna. Maybe the three of us can get together another night this weekend and have our own mini barbecue.”

  “That would be lovely,” the older woman said. �
�And we’ll enjoy tonight in the meantime. We’ll see if the guys will grill, shall we?”

  James and Shannon were the first to arrive, with Andrew in tow, with Joanna and Steve getting there just a few minutes later. Ellie embraced her friends and her brother-in-law, glad to see them all. She usually saw Shannon and Joanna once or twice a week, but it was rare that she saw them together, and even rarer that their husbands were there too. She was looking forward to a nice evening, despite the fact that Russell was busy. Having most of the people she cared about all together, enjoying good food and laughing with one another, would always lifted her heart.

  “So, how are things with you?” Shannon asked, propping Andrew up on her hip and rubbing the baby’s back. She and Ellie were in the kitchen, watching as the two men talked over the grill outside. Nonna had gone to the other room to freshen up, and Joanna was busy making fruit punch.

  “Not bad,” Ellie said. “The nice weather always means more pedestrians, which means more walk-in traffic for the pizzeria. Things will only get busier throughout the summer. It will start to slow down again in the fall.”