Gourmet Holiday Murder: Book 6 in Papa Pacelli's Pizzeria Series Read online

  When three o’clock in the afternoon rolled around, Ellie had Clara turn off the neon sign in the front window and tape a Closed for Construction sign on the front door, then she, Clara, and Rose worked together to cover up all of the appliances with sheets of heavy plastic. They spread some old bed sheets across the floor, and made sure the pantry door was tightly shut. The last thing they needed was dust from the construction all over their supplies.

  “Thanks for helping,” Ellie said when they had finished. “Enjoy the extra time off.”

  “We will,” Rose assured her. “It will be nice to get home when it’s still light out for once.”

  “I’m not scheduled to work until Friday,” Clara said. “This is going to be great. I may stop in Thursday evening anyway, though, just to see how it turns out.”

  “Better yet, order a pizza and pick it up at the new window,” Ellie suggested, smiling.

  “I will.”

  The two young women waved goodbye and left through the back door. A gust of wind blew a few flakes of snow in. Ellie was glad that she would get home early today—it was the perfect snowy evening to drink hot cocoa and read a book by the fireplace with Bunny curled up beside her.

  The contractor arrived just a few minutes later, stomping off his boots inside the door and giving her hand a firm shake before looking around.

  “Glad to see you again, Mr. Bidwell,” she said.

  “Call me Nathan,” he said amiably. “Looks like you’re all set, huh? That’s good. The men will be here soon, I just wanted to go over things with you one last time before we get started.”

  They sat down at the round table in the back of the kitchen that the employees used on their breaks. Nathan pulled a folder out of a sleek leather briefcase and withdrew a sketch of the pizzeria’s back wall, and the new pickup window.

  “Everything look all right?” he asked her.

  “It’s perfect,” she said. “I can’t wait to see it in real life.”

  “You’ll be handing pizzas out of it in no time at all,” he said with a smile. “I’d like to thank you again for choosing Bidwell Contracting for this project.”

  “You won me over when you told me that you weren’t a fan of Cheesaroni,” she told him. “I figured if you don’t like them, then you’ve got to be a good guy.”

  He laughed as he returned the sketch and the folder to his briefcase. “Well, I’m glad I made an impression. I’m sure you’ll be happy with our work. Have a great day, Ms. Pacelli.”

  As Ellie drove home, she thought back over the last few weeks. She was still in a state of shock over the fact that Papa Pacelli’s was hers. She had grown to love the pizzeria, not just as her grandfather’s business, but for the warm, welcoming place that it was to so many of Kittiport’s citizens. She really hoped that she was doing the right thing by adding this pickup window; now that the process had irrevocably begun, she found that she was having doubts. Would the fact that fewer people would be coming into the pizzeria mean that she would lose some of her chances to develop friendly relationships with her customers? She didn’t want to lose that special connection to her guests.

  I’ll just have to wait and see, she thought with a sigh. Hopefully my gut was right. At least if this was a mistake, it’s not such a big one. If the pickup window didn’t end up working out as well as she planned, it would be easy enough to return to the way they were doing things now.

  She took the turn onto her road slowly. It was still snowing, and the roads were caked with half-frozen slush and occasional dangerous patches of ice. The sun was already well down in the sky even though it was still late afternoon, and she knew it would be completely dark in under two hours. Definitely the perfect sort of day for hot cocoa, she thought.

  The snow began falling even harder the next day, and didn’t stop until sometime late Wednesday night. When Ellie opened the back door to let Bunny outside the next morning, she found herself looking out at an unbroken expanse of pure white that reached past the papillon’s shoulders. The little dog left a trough through the snow, and needed to be wiped off with a dish towel when she came back inside.

  “This sure is beautiful,” Ellie said, sparing another glance at the sparkling field of snow between the house and the trees before she shut the back door. “It probably isn’t the best day to take another walk, though. You’d have to tunnel through the drifts, wouldn’t you, Bunny?”

  It was a peaceful, quiet sort of morning; the sort of morning that Ellie would have usually taken the time to enjoy had she not been so eager to see the finished pickup window at the pizzeria later that day. She had called Mr. Bidwell—Nathan, as he wanted to be called—but had yet to hear back from him. She hoped everything was going smoothly; with the amount of snow they had gotten over the past few days, she wouldn’t be surprised if some areas had lost power. Ellie decided to assume that no news meant good news, and forced herself to focus on other things while she waited to hear back from the contractor.

  The call came just before four that afternoon. Ellie was trying to convince Marlowe to eat some baked sweet potatoes, but the bird wasn’t having any of it. When her phone rang, she nearly dropped the dish in her excitement, making Marlowe squawk and jump sideways. She shot a quick apology at the bird as she hurried across the room to grab her phone from the table where it was charging.

  She felt a stab of disappointment when she saw that the call wasn’t from the contractor, as she had been hoping. Instead, it was Iris. Ellie realized her employees were probably wondering if they were going to be coming in to work at all that day—she had told them she would give them a call when she heard from the contractor that the renovations were finished, but it was already past the time that she had expected to hear from him.

  “Hey,” she said, answering the phone just before the call went to voicemail. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting, but Mr. Bidwell hasn’t called yet, so I still don’t know if we’ll be able to open today or if there was some sort of delay.”

  “Ms. P.…”

  Ellie was surprised to hear the young woman on the other end of the phone choke back a sob. “What’s wrong, Iris?” she asked, her heart rate kicking into overdrive.

  “The police said to call you… you need to get down here. Jacob and I found him behind the pizzeria. We thought we’d stop by to see how the work was going and we saw him in the snow—”

  “Iris, slow down. What’s going on?”

  “It’s the contractor,” her employee said. “Ms. Pacelli… he’s dead.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  * * *

  After Iris hung up, Ellie slid the cellphone into her pocket with shaking fingers and looked blankly down at Bunny, who was sniffing her slippers. Part of her mind insisted that this couldn’t be real. She must have misheard Iris. That’s right, she would go into town and find out that all of this had been a misunderstanding. Someone had gotten hurt, maybe, but no one would be dead.

  Feeling like she was in a dream, Ellie shoved her feet into socks and a pair of boots, grabbed her coat and purse from the counter, and walked out the front door, barely remembering to lock it behind her. She fumbled for a moment at her car as she knocked enough snow off of the door with her bare hands so she could get the key in the lock. After starting the engine, she spent a few desperate moments removing the snow and ice from the windshield, then tossed the scraper on the back seat and used the windshield wipers to clear the rest of the front window.

  Even though the interior of her car was toasty warm by the time she pulled into the pizzeria’s parking lot, Ellie felt cold. There was an ambulance parked behind the building, along with a pair of patrol cars. Ellie saw her two employees standing by the back entrance, and made a beeline towards them as soon as she parked her car. Liam intercepted her before she reached them.

  “The sheriff wants to talk to you,” he said without preamble. “He’s inside.”

  Ellie followed him past Jacob and Iris and into the building. With the plastic sheeting over all of the appliances and snow blown in across the floor, the kitchen had a sad, unused look. Russell was flipping through some papers on the table, but looked up when he noticed her and Liam.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” his deputy said. “The coroner will be here in five minutes. The paramedics are on their way out. They called time of death as over twenty-four hours ago, but can’t get more exact than that.”

  “What happened?” Ellie asked once they were alone. “How could something like this—”

  “We’re still trying to figure all of that out,” Russell said. “I only got the call about twenty minutes ago. When I heard a body had been found at Papa Pacelli’s, my first thought was that it was you. You have no idea how relieved I was when I learned the victim was a man. I don’t think I’ve ever felt relief in relation to a murder before.”

  “Someone murdered him?” she said, her eyes going wide. “You’re sure?”

  The sheriff nodded. “The murder weapon was found just feet away from his body. One of your employees found it, in fact.”

  “Oh my goodness,” Ellie breathed. “Which one?”

  “The young woman with the colored hair, the new one… I wrote her name down—” He flipped through the small, pocket sized notebook that he kept in his jacket pocket.

  “That’s Iris,” Ellie said. “The poor girl. How much longer do you need to keep her here?”

  “She’s already agreed to come down to the station with Bethany,” Russell said. “Since she touched the murder weapon, we need to record her fingerprints. Your other employee will be free to go once Liam’s done talking to him. I’ll need to ask you some questions too, but first I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m still in shock,” she admitted. “I saw him yesterday. He was so nice. I can’t believe he’s dead. He didn’t deserve that.”

  “They never do,” the sheriff said grimly. “But we’ll do everything we can to catch the person who killed him. Now, I need to ask you a few questions, if you’re feeling up to it.”

  “Of course,” Ellie said. “Anything I can do to help.”

  “Here, we can sit down.” He pulled out a chair, and she gingerly sat in it. He seemed to realize what she was thinking. “Don’t worry about contaminating any evidence. The back door was locked when we arrived, and there are no signs that anything in here has been disturbed. I don’t believe the killer came inside at all.”

  “Do you think it might have been a random attack? A mugging, maybe?”

  “It’s hard to say.” He sat down across from her and got ready to take notes. “Are you ready to begin?”

  The questioning session didn’t take long, since Ellie couldn’t answer most of Russell’s questions, but she helped where she could. Some of the shock started wearing off, and she found herself faced with a problem that was minor in the face of a man’s murder, but had a serious impact on the pizzeria. What in the world was she going to do with a gaping hole in the back of her kitchen?

  The construction crew had only gotten as far as cutting a rough hole in the wall, and draping plastic sheeting over it to protect the kitchen from the elements while they were gone. To Ellie, it didn’t look as if they had spent more than a few hours in total on the project. She wasn’t sure what came next; would she have to find a new contractor? How long would it take to untangle the mess that Nathan Bidwell’s murder had left behind?

  Once she had answered everything that she could, Russell told her that she and Jacob were free to go. They wouldn’t be able to open the pizzeria at all that day, which she had expected. Still, it was an additional blow on top of everything else. The weather was warming up, the roads were clear for the first time in days; in other words, this was likely to be a busy day in Kittiport as people ventured out after the snowstorm.

  “Hey, Ms. P,” Jacob said, taking a hand out of his jacket pocket to give her a subdued wave when he saw her leave the pizzeria.

  “Hi, Jacob,” she said, walking over to where he was leaning against the back of the pizzeria. “Are you still waiting to be questioned?”

  “Nah, Deputy Lafferre said I was free to go. I was just waiting for you.”

  “Sorry, I don’t have any answers for you. You probably know more than I do at this point. All I know is that Mr. Bidwell is dead, and you and Iris found him.”

  “Iris is the one that found him, actually. I didn’t even get out of the car until I saw her drop the hammer and stumble backwards. We just stopped by to see how things were looking, then we were going to carpool to the community college, since we’ve both got some final exams to finish up before Christmas break.”

  “She dropped a hammer?” Ellie asked, utterly confused.

  “She picked up a hammer from the ground,” he said. “I guess the police think it was the murder weapon or something. You should ask her about it, she’s better at explaining things than I am.”

  “I don’t want to make her talk about it until she’s ready,” Ellie said. “I’m sure she’s already explained everything to the police a couple of times. Did she leave already/”

  “Yeah, she went to the sheriff’s department with one of the deputies. I don’t think she’ll mind talking about it. She said she wanted to see you when she was done having her fingerprints recorded.”

  Ellie and Jacob drove their cars over to the sheriff’s department and waited inside for Iris. It wasn’t long before the young woman with the brightly colored hair appeared and announced that she was free to go. Ellie offered to pay for a late lunch, and the two young adults took her up on the offer gratefully.

  They ended up at a small café that served sandwiches and soups in addition to fresh pastries and, of course, steaming mugs of coffee and cocoa. The pizzeria owner told them she was treating, and within minutes the three of them were seated at a small table in the corner with their food and drinks in front of them. They ate in silence for a moment while Ellie tried to figure out where to start.

  “I’m sorry you two had to be there and see that,” she said at last. “I feel like it was my fault, somehow…”

  “It’s not like you killed the guy,” Iris said. “We’re the ones that decided to stop by and see how the construction was coming. Plus, it’s better that we found him than someone else. What if some kid decided to cut through the parking lot after school or something?”

  “I still feel bad. I know how horrible it is to see a body.”

  “It was more surprising than anything. I didn’t even realize what I was seeing at first. He was partially covered by snow.” Iris frowned, poking at her bread bowl with a spoon. “I just can’t stop thinking about his family. That’s what really gets me. Do you know if he had kids or anything?”

  “I don’t,” Ellie said. She didn’t even want to imagine what his next of kin must be going through right now. She didn’t envy whoever it was that had to make that call. “If you don’t mind talking about it, would it be all right if I asked you to tell me everything that happened? I know that you told all of this to the police already. Don’t worry about it if you don’t want to talk about it again.”

  “Nah, that’s fine. There isn’t much to tell. Jacob texted me a few hours ago to ask if I had heard from you, and I hadn’t, so we decided to wait for another hour or two and then go see how things were going with the construction crew. If it looked like they were almost done, we’d stick around, but if it looked like they still had a lot to do, we decided we would call you and then head out to the community college to take our finals while the roads are clear.” She took a sip of her soda, then continued. “Anyway, when we got there, the parking lot was empty, and there were no fresh tracks in the snow. I couldn’t tell how much progress they had made, so I got out of the car to take a look under the plastic they put up to cover the window hole. When I got closer to the building, I saw a hammer sticking out of the snow by the door. I thought one of the guys must have dropped it, so I picked it up… then I saw Mr. Bidwell leaning against the building. He was covered in snow, so I knew right away he was dead.”

  Ellie thanked her employee for telling her story. Her mind was racing. Liam had told Russell that the paramedics thought Nathan Bidwell had been dead for at least a day. How had no one noticed he was missing? What about the men who he had hired to work on the window? She was surprised that none of them had shown up to work the day before. They would have found his body immediately, of course. What was going on here? Who had killed Mr. Bidwell, and why?

  CHAPTER SIX

  * * *

  With the pizzeria closed for another day while the police investigated the crime scene, Ellie decided to try to accomplish at least one of the tasks on her to-do list. Christmas tree shopping was something she hadn’t done for years. It hadn’t been realistic to haul a real tree up to her apartment every year back when she lived in Chicago, so she had made do with a fake one from the craft store.

  Now she was in the Pacelli house instead of a small apartment, and the high ceiling in the living room was just begging for a splendid pine tree. She had been looking forward to Russell accompanying them to get the tree, but that was out of the question now that he had another murder to solve. The thought of leaving him behind made her feel guilty, but there wasn’t anything she could do. If it was possible for her to help investigate alongside him, she would do that in a heartbeat. She knew he wouldn’t like that idea, though, so she would just have to do what she could do, and that meant getting a Christmas tree with her grandmother.

  Marcel’s Tree Farm was only a couple of miles out of town. The weather was even nicer than it had been the day before, and in what might be the last warm day of the year, the snow was beginning to melt. The roads were clear and mostly dry, and Nonna was in an unusually good mood.

  “Ooh, I haven’t been out here in ages,” she said. “I used to love stopping at that little convenience shop on the corner with your grandfather. They sell everything in there.”