A Crunchy Crust of Murder Read online

  “Did you get any good leads today?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing that stands out. We brought his girlfriend and his other roommate in for questioning, and spoke with a couple of his other friends, but didn't find anything incriminating. Definitely not anything that might be cause for murder.”

  “How are his friends handling what happened?”

  “They are all pretty upset. Everyone claims they liked him, never had any major fights with him, and they all got along.”

  “What about the girlfriend?” Ellie asked.

  “Same thing there.” Russell sighed. “She seemed extremely upset, which is to be expected. There wasn't any major conflict between them that I know of. No signs of either of them cheating, no abuse going either direction. The victim seems to have been a pretty average young man, well liked and relatively social.”

  “Could it have been a random crime?” Ellie asked. “In a way, that would almost be scarier than an attack that specifically targeted him. Anyone could be the next victim.”

  “I don't know yet. My gut tells me it's not,” he said. “Why would someone attack him and not even take the cash from his wallet? It’s a puzzle, that’s for sure. Oh, your employee called me.”

  “Pete? Good. I told him to give you a call. He knew Devon pretty well from what I've been able to gather.”

  “He mentioned that his friend had recently won some money through the lottery.”

  “Yeah,” Ellie said. “He came into the pizzeria to tell Pete about it. I was there, and I overheard some of it.”

  “We haven't found the lottery ticket,” Russell said. “Right now, that's looking like our most likely motive.”

  “So, it would have to be someone who knew he had won twenty-thousand dollars,” Ellie said. “And someone who needed it badly enough to be willing to kill for it.”

  “I think there are quite a few people out there who would be willing to kill for that amount of money,” he said, his voice sad. “Unfortunately, it means that we’re going to have to start looking at everyone and anyone he might have told. His family, his friends, his friends’ families and their friends… there's no telling how far the news could have spread. I'd like to question everyone who knew about it and who doesn't have an alibi for that night.”

  “I guess eating dinner with the sheriff counts as an alibi?” Ellie asked, wanting to lighten the mood a bit.

  He grinned at her. “I think that will be sufficient. Though, who knows, maybe you used a body double.”

  “If you couldn't recognize your own wife's body double, then I think you've got bigger problems than just finding a killer.”

  He chuckled and shook his head, then his face grew more serious. “I'm going to have to officially question your employee, Pete. From what you said, he knew all about the lottery ticket. You mentioned that he was going to see Devon that night, but canceled. Do you have any idea why he canceled?”

  “He told me his girlfriend’s cat passed away. Did he mention it to you?”

  “He only mentioned his plans in passing. We spoke over the phone, and I wasn't really set up to interview him at the moment. Do you believe him?”

  “Believe Pete?” Ellie blinked. “Of course. What do you mean? Why would I not believe him?”

  “Well, he was the last person we know for a fact had plans with the deceased.” He held up a hand, already knowing that she was going to object. “I'm not saying he's guilty, I am just asking you. Do you believe him about having to cancel because of his girlfriend’s cat? Do you get the sense that there's something he's not telling you?”

  “No,” she said firmly. “I believe him. You didn't see him, Russell. When he learned that it was Devon who was killed, he was crushed. Pete is a good guy. Question him if you have to, I don't want to stop you from doing your job, but I really do not think he had anything to do with this.”

  “All right,” her husband said. “I do trust your judgment, Ellie. The only reason I even suspect him is because of the timing of the death and how close it was to the pizzeria. That could just be a coincidence.”

  “Devon was planning on meeting Pete there for a ride later that evening. It's possible he just had someone else meet him instead.”

  “I will have to look into that,” Russell said. “Can you think of anything else that happened yesterday? Anyone else that he might have told about the winning lottery ticket?”

  “Well, there were a couple of guests in the pizzeria when he was talking about it, but they were sitting on the other side of the room. I don't know if they would've been able to hear him or not. I can go through the credit card records and try to figure out who they were. Oh, and Adam, the delivery driver, he overheard it.”

  Her husband frowned. “The young man who I pulled over for speeding last night?”

  Ellie felt an uncomfortable prickle. “Yeah. Him.”

  “All right. Thanks. You've given me some more to look into. If you can think of anything else that might be important, you know where to find me.”

  She chuckled and leaned into his arm. “Yep. I know where you sleep. Keep me updated, okay? I know you can't tell me everything, but since this happened so close to the pizzeria and he was the friend of one of my employees, I just want to know what's going on.”

  “I'll tell you what I can,” he promised. “You know that if I ever thought you would be in danger, I would tell you right away. I'll make sure you're safe, Ellie.”

  “Not just me,” she said. “All of my employees too. If there is a killer somewhere near the pizzeria, I don't want him getting close to anyone I care about.”

  Chapter Six

  Ellie sent out a quick text to Pete the next morning, just letting him know that she was checking on him and was concerned about him. He wasn’t scheduled to work that day, but she wanted to make sure that he was okay. Losing a friend, she knew, could not be easy. Somehow, Devon's recent big break only made his death sadder. She remembered the excitement and happiness in the young man's eyes, and felt her heart clench.

  Since Russell was working on an active murder case, he left early, and Ellie was restless around the house. Normally she would go over and spend time with her grandmother, but the older woman had a water therapy class in town today and had already left with one of her friends. She decided to go to the pizzeria early and get some work done. At least it would be something to do, and being there in the peace and quiet before the restaurant opened might help jog her memory. If she had seen something or heard something suspicious the day of Devon's death and had forgotten about it, she wanted to remember so she could tell Russell.

  It was a bright, sunny day, in sharp contrast to her mood. The glimpses of the ocean she got as she drove into town made her ache to take the boat out. Her grandfather's boat, the Eleanora – named after her – had taken her a while to learn how to drive. She'd only just begun to really get comfortable with it in the last year, and soon it would be time to take it out for the first time since winter. Normally she would be bursting with excitement for it, but Devon's death put a definite damper on it. It seemed unfair to be excited about something so mundane when a young man had just been killed, his entire future snuffed out as if it had been nothing more than a tiny candle flame.

  Given the extra time, she decided to experiment a bit. She’d had the idea for a walnut brie pizza a few weeks ago, and was finally ready to start making it.

  She opted for a thin crust, and rolled out some dough as the oven preheated. While the crust prebaked, she got out her other ingredients. The pizza would be a sweet one, with a honey butter sauce, gooey brie cheese, and candied walnuts. It wasn’t hard to make, but preparing all of the ingredients was time consuming.

  It was when she was reaching for her pan that her phone buzzed. She looked down to see the notification, Video storage almost full! It's only $10.99 a month to increase your storage to one 1TB. She frowned, then realized that the message from was from the company that her security cameras fed to. She could access the se
curity feed from online anywhere, but had to pay a monthly fee. Apparently, the amount of storage she had already bought wasn't going to be enough. Either that, or she would have to start saving less of the footage.

  She sighed and was about to slip her phone back into her pocket when an idea hit her. She already knew that the security cameras’ field of view didn't reach out to the street where the trail of blood had led to, but they would catch anything that happened in the majority of the pizzeria’s parking lot. She didn't know whether or not Russell had already checked the saved recordings. He may have; usually that was something he would tell her about, but he had been busy and it was possible he had just forgotten to mention it to her. Still… if somehow it hadn't crossed his mind, then she really should check to see if the cameras had managed to catch anything. It was very possible that the killer or Devon himself had crossed through the parking lot at some point that night.

  She finished the pizza in a hurry and shoved it into the oven before grabbing the tablet she kept at work and settling down on one of the stools in the kitchen. She logged onto the security camera account, ignoring the message that warned her that her storage space was almost full, and scrolled through the saved files until she found the one from the right day. It took her a bit longer to pinpoint the correct range of time. Once she found the section of the recording from mid-evening until midnight, she started fast-forwarding it. She watched as a couple of pedestrians walked across the screen. None of them stood out to her. The timestamp was getting close to eleven when she saw something that didn't belong there. It was the delivery truck, the one with Lorenzo's printed on the side in big, elegant words.

  Adam had come back that night?

  She stared at the screen, frowning, then picked up her phone and sent a text to Russell. Did you check the pizzeria’s security cameras?

  She spent the next few minutes fiddling with the tablet, trying to figure out how to take a screenshot. Jacob had showed her once, but she has since forgotten how. She didn't understand how the younger generation seemed to find technology so intuitive, but she could barely remember the basics.

  She still hadn’t gotten it by the time her husband texted her back. No, it's on my list.

  You might want to move it up your list, she texted. Getting fed up with the tablet, she just took a picture of the screen with her cell phone and sent it to him, complete with the timestamp. It was a little bit grainy, but it was still possible to tell what it was. She waited, and then her phone rang.

  “That’s the same truck I pulled over on my way home that night,” he said by way of greeting.

  “I know,” she told him. “I wonder what Adam was doing at the pizzeria. Was this before or after you pulled him over?”

  “I will have to double check,” he said. “I logged the warning in the system. I don't remember exactly what time it was off the top of my head. Either way, your delivery driver just made it to the top of my suspect list.”

  “You still haven't found the lottery ticket, right?”

  “It’s still missing,” Russell said. “We contacted the state lottery department. It hasn't been claimed yet.”

  “I think someone should check to see if Adam happened to have quit his job at the Lorenzo's,” Ellie said. “Will you be able to track him down if he cashes it in?

  “We notified the lottery department. They said they would call us if it gets claimed.”

  “Well, thank you for bringing this to my attention,” Russell said. “I'm logging in now. I'm going to look over the footage and see if I can spot anything else out of place. It's very possible that we may have just caught the killer.”

  After the call ended, Ellie turned her attention back to the pizza. She was feeling hopeful for the first time since Devon’s death… hopeful that this would all be over soon.

  Chapter Seven

  Russell got home so late that night that she barely had any time to see him. He was exhausted and went to bed as soon as they had eaten – leftovers from their dinner the night before. She knew that cases like this were always hard for him. He felt that it was his responsibility to make sure that the citizens of Kittiport were safe, and when someone – especially someone so young – lost their life to violent crime, he blamed himself.

  All she could do was help him through the hard times by being supportive and making life easy for him. While it was true that she worked hard at the pizzeria, it was rarely anywhere near as stressful as his job was. Most days, she went to work with a smile on her face and came home the same way. Her job was important, and she enjoyed it greatly, but it did not take the same emotional toll on her as his did on him.

  Knowing all this, she decided to wake up early the next morning and put together a lovely breakfast for the two of them before Russell went to work. She was just cracking the first eggs in the frying pan when he came downstairs, still buckling his belt on his work pants.

  “What's going on?”

  “I've got to run,” he told her, hiding a yawn behind his hand. “Liam called me. He's made an arrest in Devon's case.”

  Ellie blinked. That had been fast. She itched to know who had been arrested, but she didn't want to put Russell in a situation where he felt he had to either betray his job or keep secrets from her. She was well aware that she got some special treatment being married to him, but she didn't want to ask for too much.

  “Well, good luck,” she said. “If you can wait two minutes, I'll get you an egg sandwich.”

  He walked up to her and kissed her on the cheek. “That sounds perfect.” He glanced at the frying pan and the package of bacon she had laid out. “I'm sorry. You were planning a big breakfast, weren't you?”

  She shrugged. “I'll just invite my grandmother over. Don't worry, it will be fine. I haven't been spending as much time with her as I’d like these past few days anyway.” She grabbed two slices of bread out of the bag and put them in the toaster, then turned her attention back to the eggs, flipping them expertly. Fried eggs weren't exactly a staple at the pizzeria, but she and her grandmother often made breakfast together, and the older woman had taught her all the tricks in the book for making the perfect breakfast foods.

  The bread popped out of the toaster and she put the slices on a plate before sliding the fried egg onto the bottom piece. She added a dollop of hot sauce, some salt and pepper, then slid the entire thing onto a napkin for Russell.

  Russell came out of the bathroom and spotted the sandwich on the counter. He grabbed it and bit into it, throwing Ellie a grateful look.

  “Thanks,” he said. “This is wonderful. Just what I need to jump start my day. I’ve got to run, but I'll call you later today when I know what's going on. Have a good day at the pizzeria. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” she said, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “You have a good day at work. I hope it's productive and that you can close this case.”

  She walked him to the front door and watched as he left. It was still dark outside, but there was a hint of dawn in the eastern sky. It was the time of day when everything was quiet, and though it had been warmer recently, there was a certain nip to the air that made her shiver.

  Leaning just a foot out the front door granted her a view of her grandmother's house. She spotted a light on in the kitchen and smiled. It was time to put that intercom to good use.

  The system had been installed mainly due to Ellie's concerns that her grandmother would fall or otherwise injure herself and wouldn't be able to reach a phone in time while she lived alone. They hadn't used it very much. Reaching for a phone to call a loved one was a hard habit to break. Still, it was useful on occasion when Ellie wanted to remind her grandmother to bring something over for a meal or vice versa. Right now, she hit the intercom button on the speaker in the front entranceway. “Nonna?”

  She waited a moment, then heard a crackle of static. “Ellie,” her grandmother said. “You're up early. Is everything all right?”

  “I woke up early to make Russell a nice big breakfas
t. He had to run, though, so I've got a big breakfast on the stove and no one to feed it to. Do you want to come over? We've got a lot to catch up on. I'll tell you what I can about the new case he's working on.”

  “That sounds lovely. I'll be over there in about ten minutes. Do you mind if I bring Amie?”

  “Go ahead. I’ll make sure Sawyer's put away.”

  Her grandmother's chihuahua was so tiny that Ellie worried that Sawyer, even though he was friendly, would inadvertently harm the little dog. One misstep or overly rambunctious jump could easily send the chihuahua to the emergency vet. It was no big deal for her to just put him behind a baby gate in her home office. That way he would still be able to look out and interact with them, but the tiny dog would be safe.