Pall Bearers and Pepperoni: Book 1 in The Papa Pacelli's Pizzeria Series Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PALL BEARERS AND PEPPERONI

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  Pall Bearers

  And

  Pepperoni

  Book One

  in the

  Papa Pacelli’s Pizza Series

  By

  Patti Benning

  Copyright 2016 Summer Prescott Books

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication nor any of the information herein may be quoted from, nor reproduced, in any form, including but not limited to: printing, scanning, photocopying or any other printed, digital, or audio formats, without prior express written consent of the copyright holder.

  **This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons, living or dead, places of business, or situations past or present, is completely unintentional.

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  PALL BEARERS AND

  PEPPERONI

  Book One in the Papa Pacelli’s Pizza Series

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Well, Bunny, we’re here.”

  Eleanora Pacelli shut off her car’s engine and unbuckled her seatbelt, which sent her little black-and-white papillon, Bunny, into a spinning frenzy in the passenger seat. After two nine-hour days spent on the road, she didn’t blame the dog for being excited to have a chance to stretch her legs at last.

  “Remember, be nice to Nonna. It was very nice of her to let you come, too, and I want you to be on your very best behavior.”

  The little dog’s tail began wagging even faster at her owner’s words, which Ellie decided to take as a sign of agreement. She grabbed a thin leather leash and clipped it to the ring on Bunny’s harness before scooping the eight-pound dog into her arms and depositing her gently on the ground outside of the car. Bunny in the lead, the two of them approached the maroon front door, which opened before they reached the stoop. In the doorway stood a strong-boned elderly woman with curled white hair and wearing a pair of turquoise reading glasses from a cord around her neck.

  “Ellie! My goodness, girl, you’ve grown since I’ve last seen you. I’d never forget that face, though.”

  Before she knew it, Ellie found herself enveloped in her grandmother’s arms. With one hand clasping the leash and the other holding onto her purse, she returned the hug as best she could.

  “Of course I’ve grown, Nonna,” she said when they pulled apart. “It’s been twenty-five years since we’ve seen each other.”

  Ann Pacelli was her paternal grandmother, and after Ellie’s father had washed his hands of her and her mother, they had fallen out of touch with his side of the family. Oh, sure, she still got the yearly birthday call from her grandma, but she and her mother hadn’t actually made the trip out here to visit since the divorce. It was a source of guilt for Ellie—she had had plenty of opportunity to visit on her own over the years, but had kept putting it off. Now, she had waited too long; her grandfather had passed away just weeks ago. She had never been close to the serious, quiet man, but had still been stunned to hear of his unexpected passing.

  “Over twenty years,” the old woman said, shaking her head slowly. “I can’t believe it. It seems like just yesterday that you were a tiny little girl begging me to take her down to the ocean.”

  “It’s crazy how quickly time passes,” Ellie agreed. A high-pitched yap brought her attention down to the papillon, who was standing on her hind legs between them in an effort to draw attention to herself. “Oh, this is Bunny, my dog.”

  “Bunny? I thought I must have heard you wrong on the phone.” Ann bent down, a careful hand kept on the front stoop’s railing for support, and petted the little dog, who gave her hand a flurry of kisses.

  “We never planned to name her that, but her ears were so big when she was a puppy that Ken kept saying she looked like a little rabbit… and the name Bunny just sort of stuck.”

  She fell silent, trying to tamp down the emotion that flooded her whenever she thought of her fiancé. Ex-fiancé, she reminded herself. He had made the ex- part very clear when he moved in with his old girlfriend.

  “Bunny… it’s cute,” her grandmother said, straightening up. “I just hope she doesn’t frighten Marlowe.”

  “Who’s Marlowe? I thought it would just be you and me here.”

  “Why don’t you come in and see?” The old woman asked with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “I’ll introduce you to Marlowe and give you the grand tour, then you can bring your bags in and start getting settled.”

  With a firm grip on Bunny’s leash, she followed her nonna into the big white colonial house. She wasn’t surprised to find that although she hadn’t been inside the house since shortly after her sixteenth birthday, the interior was mostly just as she remembered. There was, however, one glaring difference. Next to the stairs in the front room was a huge birdcage, which held a giant red parrot with green and blue feathers on its wings.

  “Ellie, this is Marlowe. Marlowe, meet Ellie.”

  The bird ruffled its feathers in a way that Ellie imagined wasn’t totally friendly, although to be fair she knew about as much about birds as she knew about ancient Greek—not much at all.

  “What is it?” she asked, taking a hesitant step toward the cage.

  “She’s a green-winged macaw,” her grandmother explained. “She belonged to your grandfather. He got her just after he opened the pizzeria. She’s nineteen years old.”

  “Wow,” Ellie said. “How long do they usually live?”

  “I think your grandfather said that one of the oldest macaws in the world was confirmed to be over a hundred, although they don’t all live that long. She’ll outlive me, that’s for sure.”

  “She’s gorgeous. Hi, Marlowe. You’re such a pretty—”

  The bird lunged at the cage bars, making Ellie jump back and break off in the middle of her sentence.

  “She hasn’t let anyone get near her since Art died,” her grandmother said with a chuc
kle. “I should have warned you. She used to live in his study, but since no one goes in there anymore, I thought she would be happier out here. Well, let’s get started on that tour. We’ve changed some things since you were here last. After that, I’m sure you’re eager to begin unpacking.”

  With a backwards glance at the angry red bird, Ellie followed her grandmother down the hall. She did her best to remember where everything was, but she was exhausted, and still reeling from the dual blow of losing her fiancé and her job in the same week. All she wanted was to curl up in bed with Bunny and sleep the rest of the day away.

  Her wish was partially granted—after the tour, she lugged her bags upstairs and chose the largest of the three bedrooms on the upper level as hers. It was a corner room, with two big windows, an attached bathroom, and a sizable closet. Since her grandmother didn’t go upstairs anymore, the entire upper level of the house was Ellie’s to do with as she pleased. Still tired from her long drive, she put off unpacking and settled in for a nap.

  She woke up a few hours later to the delicious scent of food in the air, and an eager papillon waiting by the bedroom door. Ellie glanced at her phone and realized, with a surge of guilt, that it was dinnertime. She had meant to help with the cooking; she was determined not to be a burden to her grandmother, who was in her late eighties. Although unusually active for her age, the elderly woman surely wouldn’t appreciate any extra work that Ellie’s presence caused her.

  Her clothes were rumpled from the nap, so she hurried into the bathroom to change. Her straight dark hair, which had never been easy to style, was a mess. Her makeup was smudged, and her brown eyes—which she had always thought of as boring and earthy—were slightly red and irritated from sleeping with her contacts in.

  “I look terrible,” she muttered. She turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on her face, determined to clean herself up a little bit before helping her grandmother finish making dinner.

  Her grandmother, it turned out, did not need any help whatsoever. The kitchen was spotless, and on the table in the breakfast nook was a meal worthy of a magazine spread. Baked lobster tails still in the shell with small dishes of melted butter beside them for dipping, creamy mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and a bean and mushroom casserole with lightly browned breadcrumbs on top.

  “I was just about to come wake you,” her grandmother said as Ellie took in the table. “I just finished dinner.”

  “Wow, Nonna, this looks delicious,” Ellie breathed. “You should have woken me up. I would have helped.”

  “Nonsense, dear. It’s your first day here. Tomorrow will be busy enough for you. This is the least I could do.”

  “Thank you. I can’t wait to taste it.”

  The meal was every bit as scrumptious as it looked. Ellie ate until she felt like she would burst. Even then, it was hard to resist taking a second serving. Her grandmother definitely was a good cook. The taste of the food brought her back to early childhood, but the memories were bittersweet, and she pushed them aside for the moment. There were more urgent matters to discuss.

  “So… tomorrow,” she began. “I… uh… I guess I still don’t know exactly what you want me to do. I know you wanted help with finances, and I can do that, but running a pizzeria is a far cry from working as a financial consultant in Chicago.”

  “You can start by going through the papers in your grandfather’s study. He kept handwritten records of everything he put into his restaurant—Art never did trust computers. The pizzeria doesn’t open until noon, so that should give you time to get some idea of what state your grandfather left things in. I told Xavier that you would be stopping by at some point tomorrow, so he should be expecting you.”

  “Xavier… he’s the manager, right?”

  “Assistant manager,” her grandmother corrected. “He’s been there for two years, and he should know the ropes enough to show you around and introduce you to the other employees.”

  “And, well, what will my job be, exactly?”

  “You’re taking over for your grandfather, sweetie. You’ll be the boss, so you can be just as involved as you’d like to be. I don’t know the first thing about your grandfather’s plans for the pizzeria, all I want is for it to stay open. It was his darling, you understand. I just don’t have the energy to try to manage it. Any profit you turn over from it is yours to keep—I have more than enough from his pension and our savings.”

  “I can get a head start on his records tonight if you’d like,” Ellie said. The thought of being responsible for the business that her grandfather had spent over thirty years building made her stomach roil with anxiety; going through the financial records would at least take her mind off of the monumental job ahead of her. She was plagued by doubt once again—had she made a mistake in coming here and agreeing to help her grandmother? Would it have been better to stay in Chicago and try to find another job there, one that she was actually qualified for?

  It’s too late to change my mind now, she told herself. If this doesn’t work out, I can always leave after a few months. I just have to help Nonna get back on her feet first. Losing Papa has been hard on her.

  “If you’d like, dear, go ahead. I’ll fetch you the key to his study before I head off to bed. I’ve got an early doctor’s appointment, so I’ll be gone when you wake up, but I’ll have my mobile phone with me, so you feel free to call me if you have any questions—or if Xavier gives you any trouble. From the little I’ve heard about him from your grandfather, he can be quite the character.”

  What’s that supposed to mean? Ellie thought, feeling momentary panic. Am I going to have trouble with the employees right off the bat? Was this move really the right thing to do? Maybe I should have tried to pick up the pieces back in Chicago after all. Even if she had made the wrong choice, it was too late to pack up and go home. She would just have to see what the next day brought.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ellie woke up the next morning to an empty house and a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach. Going over her grandfather’s finances for the pizzeria hadn’t put her at ease as she had hoped. Instead, it had driven home the dire reality of the situation in which Arthur Pacelli had left his business. The pizzeria had been losing money for the last two years. Her grandfather had reached into his own pocket quite a few times just to keep the place running.

  If this was something a client showed me, I would suggest that they cut their losses and sell the place, she thought. But I don’t have that option. I promised Nonna that I would keep the restaurant open; in exchange, she’s giving me the chance to have a fresh start here after the mess I made of my life in Chicago. Ellie didn’t have the faintest idea how she was going to keep that promise, but she was prepared to try… although she knew it wouldn’t be easy by a long shot.

  “I guess I’ll just have to try to stay optimistic and face the day, Bunny,” she said to the little dog, who was curled up on the pillow next to her. At the sound of her name, the papillon’s oversized ears perked up. Ellie smiled. “I know just the thing to start with. Do you want to go outside?”

  At those words the dog leapt off the bed and rushed over to the bedroom door. She began spinning in excited circles as she waited for her owner to drag herself out of bed.

  “At least one of us is enthusiastic about starting the day,” Ellie said. “Now, where did I put your leash?”

  The morning was chilly and grey, a far cry from the eighty-degree weather she had left behind in Chicago. She remembered the summers that she had spent here as a child; they might be in for another hot and toasty day or two, but by the end of the month the average temperature would have dropped down to the sixties. Guess I won’t be wearing these for much longer, she thought, looking down at her sandals. Before she knew it, she would have to bundle up for the Northeast winter.

  While she waited for Bunny to do her business, she looked around. The area around her grandparents’ big colonial house, just north of the small town of Kittiport, had changed substantially i
n the twenty-five years since she last visited—a few more houses had popped up, and the road was paved with fresh blacktop instead of gravel—but the area was still far from being urban. She could see the steely grey line of the ocean over the hill across the road, and when the breeze gusted she thought she could even smell the distinctive scent of the salty waves. Her grandmother’s yard backed up to a pine forest that was part of a state park. Ellie, used to living in a little apartment in downtown Chicago, loved the thought of having wilderness right outside her door.

  “All set?” she asked when the little dog came prancing up to her. She realized that Bunny probably didn’t even need the leash—they didn’t exactly live in a busy city anymore. This move was going to be a big change for both of them, but there were definitely some bright spots.

  Inside she found a basket of freshly baked blueberry muffins waiting for her on the table in the breakfast nook, along with a handwritten note.

  Ellie, would you be a dear and feed Marlowe for me? Her food is in the pantry. She might also appreciate a bite of one of these muffins. I’ll see you this evening. I can’t wait to hear all about your first day at the pizzeria!

  After reading through the note, she put it down and reluctantly got up to look in the pantry for the bird’s food. While she feared Marlowe’s giant beak, but she couldn’t very well let the poor thing starve.

  She found a bag of colorful pellets with a picture of a macaw on the front and filled the scoop inside with the food. After hesitating a second, she broke off a sizable chunk of muffin. If she was going to approach the bird, it was probably best to do it with a bribe.

  Marlowe eyed her warily as she walked toward the cage. She really is a beautiful bird, Ellie thought. It’s a pity she’s so unfriendly. Even Nonna can’t hold her. She knew the bird hadn’t always been this way; when she was in her grandfather’s study the evening before going over his files for the pizzeria, she had seen pictures of him with Marlowe. The two of them seemed to have been inseparable.