Pesto Pizza Murder

by Patti Benning

  “Thanks.” She gave Ellie a small smile. “My name’s Jessie, by the way. Mark and I are from out of town, but Iggy’s lived here for a while and he convinced us this was the best place to go for a quick, good meal and a chance to talk. It sounds like he was right about how nice everyone is here. I’m only going to be here for a few more days, until after my mother’s will is read, but I love pizza, so I’ll probably stop by at least once more if it’s as good as my little brother tells me it is.”

  “Well, I hope we live up to your expectations,” she replied. “I’ll go run your order back. Feel free to grab your drinks. I’ll get the pizza out to you as soon as possible.”

  True to her word, she kept an eye on the three mourning siblings and made sure nothing disturbed them. She wished there was more she could do. She knew how difficult losses like theirs could be, and felt her heart ache in sympathy.

  As darkness fell, the pizzeria began to get more and more delivery orders. It still had yet to start snowing in earnest, and Pete and Iris did their best to keep up with the flurry of deliveries. By the time closing time came around, everyone was exhausted. Ellie had just enough presence of mind to make a personal pizza for herself before locking up and heading home.

  The wind was even worse on the drive back, but she was beginning to hope that the promised snow wouldn’t come. Though the sky had remained dark and ominous all day, they hadn’t gotten anything more than flurries. The roads were still drivable, and none of her customers had complained about losing power. Her fingers were crossed that by morning the storm would have blown over, to deposit its load of snow elsewhere.

  Her phone rang as she was unlocking her front door, and by the time she had the door shut behind her and was able to dig through her purse, she had missed the call. Turning on the phone, she saw that the missed call was from Shannon. She paused to take off her shoes and shrug off her coat, then redialed the number, walking into the kitchen with her pizza and purse in her arms.

  “Hey,” Shannon said, answering the call. “Are you still in town?”

  “Just got home,” Ellie said. “What’s going on?”

  “I was wondering if you wanted to come over. James is staying at a hotel tonight; I told him not to risk driving home through the storm, but of course we’re still waiting on all of that snow. It’s lonely here, with just me and the baby. I was thinking of seeing if Joanna wanted to come over as well, and the three of us could watch a movie and have a girls’ night in. But if you just got home, you probably don’t want to turn around and drive back to town.”

  “I wouldn’t mind too much, but I’d be worried about getting stuck there if the snow comes after all. With Russell out of town, I can’t risk not being able to make it back here. The animals will need me to take care of them.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Shannon said. “Sorry, I didn’t even think of that.”

  “If you want, you and Andrew are more than welcome to come out here. And Joanna too, if you still want to call her.” Ellie smiled, tucking the phone between her ear and shoulder as she opened the back door to let the dogs out. “A girls’ night in sounds great to me, and there’s plenty of space here if it ends up snowing and you don’t want to drive home.”

  “If you’re sure you don’t mind, I’d love to come over.”

  “My plan was to eat alone in front of the TV tonight,” Ellie replied with a chuckle. “Trust me, the company will be welcome.”

  “Great. I’ll pack up Andrew’s things and call Joanna to see if she wants to join us. I’ll be there in about an hour.”

  “I’ll put together some snacks and find us a movie to watch,” Ellie said. “My night just got a whole lot better.”

  Chapter Four

  With two of her closest friends and her little nephew in the house, things suddenly became much livelier. They set up Andrew’s play pen in the corner of the living room, then Joanna and Shannon looked through the DVDs while Ellie put the finishing touches on a plate of meat and cheese and took a pan of brownies out of the oven. Deciding they might as well live it up a little, she opened a bottle of wine she and Russell had gotten for their wedding. None of them had any early morning commitments, so they could afford to have a bit of fun.

  Her friends settled on a romantic comedy that had come out the year before, and that Joanna hadn’t seen yet, and the three of them relaxed on the couch, the lights dim as they sipped their wine and ate too many brownies.

  Halfway through the movie, Ellie got up to feed the dogs dinner. After filling their bowls, she glanced out the kitchen window and saw that the promised snow had come, after all. Large flakes whirled and blew on the other side of the glass, and if she listened, she could hear the moaning of the wind over the laughter of her friends. She shivered and turned away from the window, glad for the company and warmth. She would not want to be outside on a night like this.

  Returning to her friends, she sat back down in her spot and pulled an afghan over her legs. “The weather’s getting worse,” she whispered, so as not to wake Andrew, who had fallen asleep in his play pen. “Both of you can spend the night if you want. There’s the bed in the guest room, and the office has a nice daybed that someone else can sleep on.”

  “Thanks,” Joanna whispered back. “I’ll call Steve and let him know I’ll be home in the morning. What time do they normally get the roads cleared out here?”

  “They should be done by eleven at the latest,” Ellie responded. “But usually they get the plows out earlier —”

  She broke off as the house was suddenly plunged into darkness. None of them made a sound until they heard a loud crashing sound from somewhere over their heads. Ellie jumped, and she heard one of her friends bite back a shriek. A moment later, the lights flickered, and then came back on. The DVD had reset to the menu option, and her phone, sitting on an end table, lit up as the charging cord it was plugged into started supplying power again.

  Ellie, Shannon, and Joanna all exchanged wide-eyed looks. Shannon got up to check on her baby while Joanna turned to Ellie.

  “What was that noise?” she asked, her voice low.

  “I have no idea,” Ellie replied. “It sounded like it came from upstairs, didn’t it?” She bit her lip, trying to figure out what it could have been. Had some shingles blown off in the storm? She didn’t think they would make that loud of a noise. Maybe a limb had fallen off the tree that stood behind the house. She shuddered to think of the damage it might have caused if that was the case.

  “He’s still sleeping,” Shannon said, straightening up from where she was standing by the play pen. “I’m going to go rinse off. I spilled some wine on myself when I jumped after that big crash.”

  Ellie nodded, trying to calm her pounding heart as she, too, rose. “I’d better go see what that was.”

  “Let’s wait for Shannon to get back,” Joanna said. “I’m kind of freaked out, if I’m telling the truth.”

  She wasn’t about to argue with that. She and Joanna waited in the hallway, shifting back and forth and occasionally shooting glances upstairs. Ellie heard the floorboards creak down the hall, but it was only Sawyer, coming out of the kitchen now that he was finished with his meal.

  “I bet you didn’t even notice that the power went out,” she murmured, stroking the lab’s head. “You dogs and your obsession with food. The world could end, and you wouldn’t notice as long as your muzzle was in a food bowl.”

  The young dog wagged his tail happily, and Ellie chuckled. It was nice having Sawyer around. Bunny was too small to be much of a protector, though she tried to make up for it with heart. She didn’t know if the lab would actually do anything to protect her if a situation ever arose — he had never met a person he didn’t like — but at least he looked intimidating. That had to count for something.

  She heard footsteps and looked up to see Shannon coming out of the hallway that led to the guest bathroom. Her shirt still had spots of wine on it.

  “The light in the bathroom isn’t working,” s
he explained. “I washed my hands, but I couldn’t see well enough from just the hallway light to do my shirt. Do you mind if I throw it in the wash once we’re done checking out the noise?”

  Ellie was already nodding, even as she frowned. The guest bathroom was the scene of a recent murder, and she hadn’t felt comfortable in that room since. Now the lights weren’t working, right after a mysterious noise and flickering lights? I don’t believe in ghosts, she reminded herself.

  Clearing her throat, she said, “I’ll grab you one of my t-shirts, and you can wash your shirt. First, though, let’s find out what that noise was.”

  Taking a deep breath, Ellie led the way upstairs with Sawyer at her side and her friends trailing behind her.

  Chapter Five

  Whatever Ellie had expected to find, it wasn’t nothing. They checked the rooms upstairs, then double checked them. Ellie peered out the windows, wondering if the satellite had somehow been blown off the roof, but saw nothing but more snow.

  “Something had to have made that noise,” she said at last, exasperated. “But nothing’s out of place up here.”

  “Maybe something in the attic?” Joanna suggested.

  Ellie frowned. She hadn’t been in the attic since they moved in, when she and Russell had brought boxes of miscellanea up. She didn’t know what could have made that crashing noise, but it was the last place that they hadn’t looked. It was worth a try.

  Fetching a flashlight from her bedside table, she rejoined her friends in the hallway and pulled the cord that was attached to the trapdoor. The ladder to the attic unfolded. Biting her lip, Ellie stared up into the darkness, and flicked the flashlight on. She could feel a blast of cold air blowing down at her. I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t.

  “I’ll be right back down,” she said. “It — it was probably nothing.”

  She was met with silence. A glance at her friends told her that they were uneasy as well. She turned back to the ladder, wishing she could send Sawyer up ahead of her, but knowing the clumsy dog would never be able to climb the ladder on his own. Taking a deep breath, she began the ascent.

  The attic was freezing. That was the first thing that she noticed as she heaved herself up into the dark space. She adjusted the flashlight in her hand and swept the beam around the room. She had barely had a chance to look around when a blast of cold air hit her from behind and she spun around.

  The attic window was open. She breathed a sigh of relief. The wind must have done it, somehow. Standing up, she walked over to the window and examined the latch. The wood was splintered, as if something had hit the frame from the other side with great force. Could the wind have done that? She didn’t think so.

  She felt goosebumps spread across her skin as she spun around, raking the light from the flashlight across the dark room, convinced she was going to see a figure standing in the corner or behind a box, but there was nothing. Nothing but a mess. She wasn’t sure how, but the wind must have knocked a couple of boxes over. Two of them had burst open on impact with the ground, spilling papers and clothes across the floor.

  “Is everything okay?” Shannon shouted from below.

  “It’s fine,” Ellie called back. “It looks like the wind must have blown the window open up here. The frame is splintered. Can one of you grab me some duct tape? It’s in the drawer next to the pantry in the kitchen. I need to fix it well enough that it won’t blow open again during the storm.”

  One of her friends shouted an affirmative, and a couple of minutes later, Joanna appeared, her head and shoulders popping up through the trap doors. She handed the roll of tape to Ellie, then heaved herself up and looked around.

  “Wow, did the wind do all of this?”

  Ellie handed the flashlight to her friend, then wrestled the window shut and tore off a strip of tape. Russell would probably be able to repair the window frame when he got back, but for now, the duct tape would have to do.

  “I guess so,” she said as she tore another strip of tape off. “It wasn’t this much of a mess before. I haven’t even come up here since we brought the boxes up, and I don’t think Russell has either.”

  “I’m glad you’ve got a guest bed,” her friend said, looking around at the snow and scattered items with wide eyes. “If the wind did this to your attic, I don’t even want to think about trying to drive home through it.”

  Ellie tore off one last strip of tape and smoothed it across the frame, then took a step back and eyed her handywork. She didn’t know how long the tape would hold, but hopefully it would be good for the rest of the night. Maybe in the morning she could find a wooden board and some nails and could rig up something more solid.

  “Let’s go finish the movie,” she said. “Hopefully all of the excitement is over for the rest of the night.”

  Ellie woke the next morning to a winter wonderland. The sun was out, and when she looked out her window, the pure, untouched snow that had raged around the house the night before seemed to glitter. The forest behind the house was covered in white, and even the tallest trees seemed to droop under the weight of the snow.

  She went downstairs quietly, not wanting to wake her guests. After grabbing Bunny’s coat out of the closet, she herded the dogs to the back door. She put the papillon’s jacket on, knowing that the little dog would be reluctant to go out in snow that was probably taller than she was, and then opened the door.

  She jumped back with a muttered exclamation as snow that had drifted against the house overnight tumbled into the kitchen. Sawyer darted outside, thrilled with the fresh snow to play in. Bunny gave Ellie a disbelieving look and then turned and walked away. Ellie didn’t blame her. The snow drifts against the house were higher than her hips. There was no way the pint-sized dog would be able to go out in that.

  With a sigh, she trudged back to the front door and pulled on her boots, her winter coat, and her warmest pair of gloves, then grabbed the snow shovel from the front closet.

  Clearing even a few square feet around the back door was a challenge. She didn’t think she had ever seen so much snow before. Even after she had managed to clear some space, it took some convincing to get Bunny outside. Just as the little dog slunk through the door, Sawyer came running through the snow and clipped Ellie right behind the knees, nearly knocking her over. Yelping, Ellie caught herself with the shovel, then heaved a load of the loose, powdery snow at the big black dog.

  “You’re going to break my neck one of these days,” she said, only half angry as the lab snapped playfully at the shower of snow, then dropped to the ground and rolled in it, turning more white than black.

  Laughing, Ellie shook her head. The ominous feeling from the day before was gone, and with the beautiful sight of the new snow and Sawyer’s contagious good mood, she was able to nearly forget about all of her worries.

  Chapter Six

  The snow plows must have started working in the early hours of the morning, because the roads by Ellie’s house were cleared by ten. Joanna and Shannon took their leave, both of them eager to get to their own homes and see if they had power. The generator had come on overnight, and Ellie was glad for it. It was one thing to enjoy the beautiful snowfall if she had a nice, toasty house to retreat to; it would be quite another if she had no heat or hot water.

  She had already updated the pizzeria’s website to let her customers know that the restaurant would be opening a couple of hours later than usual due to the weather, so she had some time on her hands after her friends left. First thing first, she had to let Russell know she had made it through the storm all right. She sat down in front of her computer and began drafting an email to him. She hesitated when she came to the part about the attic window blowing open, and after a moment’s thought, she deleted the paragraph about how frightened she had been as she climbed up into the dark attic alone. She didn’t want to make him feel bad for leaving. She had told him it was okay, and the last thing she wanted to do was to guilt trip him.

  Instead she just told him she had fixed the w
indow as best she could, typed a quick “I love you,” and sent the message. Then she leaned back in her chair and drummed her fingers on the table. There really wasn’t much else she could do this morning. The generator was still running, which meant the power was still out, and she had to make sure she conserved the fuel. That meant no running the dishwasher or laundry machine. She had already turned the thermostat down a few degrees, and was making sure all of the lights she wasn’t currently using were off. With luck, the power would come back on in her area soon, but for now she just had to make sure the generator kept running and was able to keep the house warm enough to keep her and the animals comfortable.

  She could head to work early, she supposed, but she had meant to take this extra time off to catch up on some chores. It was beginning to look like she was going to spend the rest of her morning sweeping and mopping. Mopping… she thought. Suddenly she remembered the snow that had blown into the attic the night before, and the fact that all of that snow would have melted by now. She hadn’t taken the time to see exactly which boxes had been knocked over in the storm, which meant that for all she knew, precious family photos of hers or Russell’s could be lying in a puddle of melted snow.