Chicken Club Murder (The Darling Deli Series Book 21) Read online

  David had her take a picture of the print with her phone. Then he spent another couple of minutes looking around for further clues, before eventually conceding that it would be better to wait until daylight.

  They went back inside. Moira was shaken. She had almost managed to convince herself that it had been nothing more than one of the neighbor’s kids or an animal that hadn’t noticed how close she was, but there was no mistaking the shoe print for one of a child’s. A man—well, either a man or a woman with very large feet—had been standing behind the cover of the trees, just feet away from her earlier in the day.

  It was hard to think about. David seemed more angry than frightened, which was reassuring, at least.

  “We should call the police,” he said.

  “I thought about that, but what would they be able to do? I didn’t actually see anyone, and whoever it was didn’t do anything more than walk a few feet onto our property.”

  “He was spying on you with a camera.”

  “But I didn’t see anything. I could have imagined the noise of a shutter. I don’t think I did, but it’s possible. I just don’t want to waste their time.” Something occurred to her. “There was someone across the road doing a survey when I got home. It could have been him.”

  David considered this, then shook his head. “The shoe print was facing towards our house. If it was the survey man, he wasn’t surveying the road. All the more reason to involve the authorities. What if he spies on others under the guise of just doing his job?”

  “Okay, we can tell the police,” she agreed at last. She didn’t know why she was so reluctant. It just felt so personal, somehow, and she didn’t like the thought of everyone at the police station knowing that someone had been peeping at her. “Let’s get back to our dinner,” she said to her husband. “I’ve wasted enough of my time thinking about this person. With any luck, he’ll never show up again and I’ll be able to go back to feeling comfortable on my own property again.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  * * *

  Moira woke up on Mother’s Day morning to an empty bed. She stayed there for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of the house in an effort to determine where her husband was. Had he risen early to make breakfast? He did that sometimes, on special days, but today she couldn’t hear or smell any evidence of cooking from the lower floor.

  She got up, put on her favorite pair of plush slippers, and slowly made her way downstairs. The dogs greeted her, but there was still no sign of her husband. Frowning, Moira went into the kitchen, where she found a note propped up against a bag of muffins and croissants from the local bakery.

  The dogs have been out and fed. Enjoy the baked goods! I love you, and I’ll see you later today.

  That was it. Moira grabbed a blueberry muffin out of the bag and sat down at the table to pick at it while she reread the note. Nothing about where he had gone, or when he would be back. It wasn’t like him at all.

  She went back upstairs to grab her cell phone in case he had left her a message there, but there was nothing. What’s going on? she wondered. Was there some kind of emergency at the brewery that he didn’t want to bother her with? When she thought about it, that didn’t make much sense. If there had been an emergency, he wouldn’t have had time to stop at the bakery and then back home first. Besides, she was certain that he would have woken her up if it was something important.

  Puzzled, Moira decided to trust the man that she had married and not to worry about it for the time being. She poured herself a cup of hot, freshly made coffee, and grabbed the rest of the muffin to have outside on the back porch.

  She was just finishing up half an hour later when her phone buzzed. She smiled when she saw a text from her daughter, wishing her a happy Mother’s Day. She responded, asking Candice if she still wanted to get together for lunch. No response came, and after a few minutes she got up to bring her mug inside. It looked like for better or for worse, she was alone on Mother’s Day morning.

  By the time the clock struck ten, Moira was bored. She had expected to go to an early lunch with her daughter, but the young woman had still not messaged her back. She had to admit to herself that she was just a little bit disappointed. Was it wrong that she had expected just a little more for Mother’s Day? Her daughter was engaged now, and had just bought a new house that needed some fixing up. She had her own life, and was growing—well, was grown—up. Still, Mother’s Day had always been a special holiday for the two of them. Although she could understand why her daughter might be preoccupied, it still hurt.

  She decided to head to work early. Sitting around the house bored silly didn’t make sense, not when she had energy and the desire to do something with it. The fridge needed reorganizing, and there were a few recipes she wanted to try out before customers started coming in. It would be the first day that she had worked alone at the deli in a long time, and she was rather looking forward to it. She loved her employees and knew it was a good thing to be able to delegate some of her responsibilities, but there were times that she missed the simple days when she and her daughter ran the deli by themselves.

  On her way out, she called David. When he didn’t answer, she left a message telling him where she was going and thanking him for the breakfast. She grabbed a croissant to eat on the way into down, gave the dogs one last pat, and left, keeping an eye on the trees as she drove down the driveway. The experience from a few days ago was still haunting her. Since her attempted relaxation in the hammock, the dogs had twice barked at something outside that she couldn’t see, but she hadn’t found any more evidence of footprints. There was a lot of wildlife in the woods, especially at this time of year, but whenever the dogs went off, she couldn’t help but wonder if it was because the man had come back and was watching her once more.

  She parked in front of the deli, but walked around to the side entrance so she could shut off the alarm. It took her two tries to get the door unlocked—which meant that whoever had closed last night had forgotten to lock it. Annoyed, she made a mental note to check the schedule and send a quick text to whichever employees had been responsible—no, she would wait until tomorrow. There was no reason to worry them on their day off.

  Pushing the door open, she stepped through and quickly reached for the alarm to deactivate it. Her hand froze mid-air. The alarm had a single glowing green light, which meant that it wasn’t armed. Someone had forgotten to lock the door and to set the alarm? Her annoyance changed to anger. She had thought that her employees were more responsible than that.

  She walked into the kitchen and tossed her bag on the counter before turning on the light. She turned back toward the counter, then froze when she saw what was sitting only inches away from her purse. A bouquet of flowers.

  Did Candice stop by to drop these off as a surprise? she wondered. The flowers were beautiful, a mixture of red and white roses. She picked the bouquet up and inhaled the fragrance before moving toward the kitchen sink. She needed to find something to put them in and give them water. When she got home, she could put them in a vase.

  She stumbled to a stop for the second time when she saw even more flowers. These were strewn across the floor. One had been wedged under the door that led to the main room and the floor. Frowning, Moira pushed the door open. What she saw on the other side made her drop the bouquet of flowers and take a step backwards. She felt her heel crush one of the blossoms.

  Slumped against the counter was a dead man with blood on his shirt and one of her own kitchen knives sticking out of his chest.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  * * *

  She couldn’t take her eyes off the man. His head drooped against his chest, his face pointed at the ground. Even though she couldn’t see his features, she was almost certain that she didn’t know him.

  She felt relief. The first horrible thought that had popped into her mind when she saw the body was that it was David. His hair was dark like her husband’s, but thankfully the similarities ended there.

  Clutching t
he counter to steady herself, Moira looked around the room. Now that she was paying attention, she could see multiple signs that someone else had been there. There were unlit tealights on the counter, and a lighter that she didn’t recognize was by the microwave. Someone had left a glass on the counter near the sink. The bathroom door was open a crack, when they normally left it closed.

  Someone had broken in, spread candles and flowers around her kitchen, helped themselves to a drink and a trip to the toilet… and then what? The dead man hadn’t stabbed himself. Or had he? No, she decided after risking another glance at the body, he wouldn’t have been able to drive the knife that far into his own chest.

  She took a shuddery breath and let go of the counter, trying not to look too much at the horribly still form laying there. Instead, she looked at the floor, where something else caught her eye. The grip of some sort of gun, half-hidden beneath the counter. There was a smear of red on the floor beside it.

  “Oh my goodness,” she breathed. Feeling suddenly sick, she hurried out of the kitchen, grabbing her purse on the way. She dug through the contents until she found her phone. Her shaking fingers managed to press the right buttons, and before she knew it she was talking to the nine-one-one dispatcher.

  The story that she told didn’t sound very coherent, even to her own ears, but the dispatcher got the gist of it and promised that help was on its way.

  Moira dialed a second number, but this one rang through to voicemail without her husband picking up. She tried again, and this time he answered on the second ring.

  “Hey,” he said, sounding happy and normal.

  “David,” she said, her mind still reeling at the horror of the murder scene inside her restaurant. “Something happened. I’m at the deli.”

  “What? Moira, what’s going on?”

  “I just got here, and there’s a body. I called the police. I—”

  “A body? Who is it? What happened? Are you all right?”

  She heard sirens, drawing nearer. “I’ve got to go; the police are almost here. Just… hurry. I love you.”

  Before he could respond, she hung up.

  She was grateful to see Detective Jefferson’s familiar form unfold itself from within a police car. She was less glad to see the sour-faced woman who got out the other side. Detective Wilson had disliked Moira from the beginning.

  “Ms. Darling, are you okay?” Jefferson asked. Wilson paused at his shoulder, but he waved her past him. She went inside.

  “I’m not hurt, but I can’t really say I’m okay,” Moira told him. “It’s… pretty bad in there.”

  “Will you be okay waiting here?” He sought out one of the officers, and he beckoned her over. “Officer Li will stay with you. I’m going to take a look inside, then I’ll be back to ask you some questions.”

  The officer was maybe a decade younger than Moira with Asian features. The deli owner turned to her as Jefferson walked away.

  “I’m Alice Li,” she said. “I’m a bit new to town. Been here a few months. Anyway, feel free to call me Alice. Do you want to sit down?”

  The two of them took a seat on one of the benches in front of the deli. Moira glanced through the dark window—she hadn’t turned the lights in the main room on yet—and saw the silhouettes of the police officers standing in the doorway across the room.

  “I just can’t believe it,” she said, turning back to the policewoman. She knew that Alice Li had been given the task of essentially babysitting her, but she didn’t mind. The company was nice, and the woman had a friendly face. “Half an hour ago I was just enjoying my Mother’s Day, and now there’s a dead person in my restaurant. Part of me thinks I’m going to wake up and this will all have been a dream.”

  “I know it’s not easy. Seeing a body is never easy.” Alice frowned, and Moira wondered what bodies she had seen.

  “I’ve seen dead people before,” the deli owner said. “But the surprise of it… it’s not something I ever expected to see.”

  “It’s perfectly normal to be upset about something like this. You’re in shock right now. Don’t feel bad about being upset. If you weren’t upset, I’d worry.”

  Moira gave a small smile. “Well, at least you know I’m not a sociopath.” She was starting to feel a little bit more like her normal self. At least her head no longer seemed to be surrounded by fog. “Thanks for sitting and talking to me. It’s a lot nicer than waiting here alone.”

  “Jefferson seems pretty thoughtful,” the officer said. “I haven’t known him for long, but from what I’ve seen he’s great with people.”

  “He is,” Moira agreed. “He’s great at everything his job entails. He’s helped me and my family more times than I can count.”

  “Here he comes. We’d better not let him hear us talking about him, he might start to get a big head.”

  The deli owner surprised herself by actually chuckling at Alice’s words. It really was amazing what having a friendly shoulder to cry on—even if the crying was purely metaphorical—could do.

  “I’ve seen what I needed to see. Are you ready to answer some questions?” Jefferson asked when he drew near. “We can wait for a little bit, but it’s better to do this while the memories are fresh in your head.”

  “I’m ready,” Moira said. “Where should I start?”

  “Well first, did you know the victim?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. It’s possible he’s come into the deli before, but I’m positive that I didn’t know him well.”

  “Do you have any idea what he might have been doing in the deli this morning?”

  Moira pictured the flowers and candles. “Honestly, I haven’t the faintest idea. The whole thing is just so strange.”

  “Do you normally set the alarm and lock the doors before leaving the deli in the evenings?”

  “Normally, yes. But I didn’t close last night. My employees are usually pretty good about it.”

  “I’ll need all of their names and contact information,” he said. “I’ll also need a copy of the video footage from all of the cameras.”

  “Of course. Take whatever you need.”

  He gave her a weak smile and patted her somewhat awkwardly on the shoulder. “We’ll figure all of this out. It might seem like a mess right now, but I’ll find answers, and when I do I’ll tell you everything I can.”

  She nodded her thanks and accepted a water bottle that someone—one of the paramedics—shoved into her hand. She was about to ask him something else when there was a commotion near the entrance to the deli’s parking lot.

  One of the officers was trying to stop a familiar black car from pulling in. She turned toward Jefferson, but he had already seen the problem and was walking forward to make sure her husband was allowed to park.

  CHAPTER SIX

  * * *

  David pulled her into a hug as soon as he got close enough. She saw the concern in his face as he pulled back, and hurried to assure him that she was fine.

  “I don’t know the person who was killed,” she told him. “Someone must have a picture of him. You might be able to help them identify him.”

  David was a private investigator, and occasionally made enemies in his line of work. Normally just angry husbands or wives who had been caught cheating on their spouses, sometimes those enemies proved themselves to actually be dangerous. If the victim had been part of a plot to get back at David—a plot gone wrong, thankfully—then it might start to explain some of the weirdness.

  “Tell me what happened,” he suggested as they walked back towards the deli. “All I know is that you found a body.”

  She launched into the story, finding it easier to tell him than it had been to tell Detective Jefferson. David’s lips tightened as she told him about the mysterious flowers and candles, but he didn’t say anything until she was done.

  “And you’re sure you didn’t know this guy?”

  “He didn’t look familiar. I didn’t get a very good look at his face, of course, but I could
tell he wasn’t anyone I knew well. Like I told Jefferson, I can’t promise that he had never come into the deli before, but if he had, he wasn’t a regular.”

  He frowned. “So not only did someone break into your deli and leave you flowers, but then someone else showed up and killed him? That’s just… strange.”

  “Maybe the dead man was a good Samaritan. He might have seen the door propped open, or seen someone sneaking around, and decided to check it out himself. Then the person who broke in stabbed him.”

  David considered this, then shook his head. “This is all just speculation. Your theory makes sense, at least, but there are still plenty of unanswered questions. Why was the door unlocked and the alarm left off? I don’t think that was a coincidence. If it was, then we have one lucky burglar.”

  “Are you saying you think one of the employees might have had something to do with this?”

  “I don’t know enough yet to make any guesses. Look, I’m going to go and talk with Jefferson. Candice came with me. Do you want to sit in the car and talk with her? You look a little bit pale. You should drink some of that water.”

  For a moment she thought about arguing, but then she realized that she didn’t really want to go and stand with the police while they went over the crime once again. Talking with her daughter sounded like a much better idea. Besides, she thought that Jefferson might be willing to share more information with David than he would be with her. After all, David had helped him on some police cases in the past. The two men could almost be considered friends.

  “All right. If anyone needs anything, you know where I’ll be.” She gave him a quick peck on the cheek, then turned to join her daughter in the car.