Jalapeno Pizza Murder Read online

  As the sauce simmered, she put a crust in the oven to pre-cook, and then started cleaning up the mess she had left behind. By the time the dishes were clean and drying, the crust was ready to come out of the oven.

  As she slathered the creamy garlic sauce over the crust, she felt her stomach rumble. She hadn’t bothered to eat breakfast, and now she was starving. As soon at this pizza came out of the oven, she knew that she would be grabbing a slice or two for herself.

  It turned out to be a slow day at the pizzeria, with only a few customers coming in during the first couple of hours. That left Ellie a lot of time to think, and thinking always led her right back to poor Bea. She tried to distract herself by reading stories online and playing around with a few new pizza ideas, but the long lulls between customers always ended up leaving her buried under grim thoughts.

  Shortly before Iris was due to come in to help with the evening shift, when they would start offering deliveries, a familiar face walked through the pizzeria’s front doors. Ellie’s heart sank. Daphne. The last thing she wanted to do right now was to talk to any of Bea’s friends.

  Still, she forced a smile onto her face and put the pizzeria’s tablet down, sliding off the stool behind the counter and standing up. “Hey,” she said. “Welcome to Papa Pacelli’s.”

  As Daphne smiled in greeting and approached the counter, a horrible thought occurred to Ellie. The other woman might not know about Bea’s death. In fact, Ellie didn’t know how she could know. She hadn’t called her, and she didn’t think Russell had either. Gulping, she steeled herself for the horrible conversation she suspected she was about to have.

  “Hey,” Daphne said once she reached the counter. “I’m sorry if this seems weird, but I heard about Bea’s death and I just wanted to see if you were okay. I wasn’t sure if you’d be in today or not.”

  Ellie exhaled. “It’s been hard. I thought about taking the day off, but I don’t have very many employees and I’ve already had them cover for me a lot lately. Besides, working helps me organize my thoughts and it usually makes me feel better.” She slouched, allowing herself to lean against the counter. “How are you doing? I know you and she go way back. And how did you hear about what happened? Did Russell call you?”

  “Georgie told me.” Daphne wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know how, but that woman seems to know everything about everything in this town. To answer your question, I’m just shocked more than anything right now. I don’t think it’s really sunken in yet. I completely understand if you don’t want to talk about it, but I was hoping you might be able to tell me what happened. Georgie didn’t have much information other than that Bea had passed.”

  Ellie made a mental note to ask Russell if he had called Georgie. She didn’t see how else the woman could have found out, unless Shannon or James had told her. A prickle of suspicion nudged at her mind, but she pushed it aside. There were plenty of ways Georgie could have found out, even if Russell hadn’t told her. It didn’t mean anything.

  She considered the next part of what Daphne had said. While the last thing in the world she wanted to do was to relive the horrible morning from the day before, she could understand the other woman’s need to know. If something happened to Shannon — she shuddered at the thought — and all she was told was that her sister-in-law had passed, she would need to find out what, exactly, had happened. Daphne had known Bea for as long as she had known Shannon, if not longer, and Ellie imagined that she needed the closure that knowledge could provide.

  “I’ll tell you what happened,” she said reluctantly. “Do you want to grab a seat? Can I get you a slice of pizza or a drink? I’d rather sit and talk than stand and talk.”

  “I’ll have some water, but I’m not very hungry.” Daphne pursed her lips. “Just thinking about Bea makes me feel ill.”

  “I know what you mean.” Ellie gave the other woman’s arm a sympathetic touch, then nodded at the booth closest to the register. The pizzeria was empty, so they would have privacy.

  She stepped into the kitchen to get two glasses of ice water, then joined Daphne in the booth, sitting across from her and taking a sip of the water as she mentally prepared what she wanted to say. She didn’t want to give Daphne too much detail, but she also didn’t want to leave the other woman with too little.

  “When I woke up yesterday morning, I didn’t even know anything was wrong,” she began. “But then, I realized the water in the guest bathroom had been running for quite some time…”

  Chapter Nine

  She finished her story and fell silent. Daphne stared at her glass of water, idly trailing a finger through the condensation as she digested the words. After a moment, she sighed.

  “It’s such a horrible way to go,” she said. “Bea would have hated it. She would have wanted to go in a skydiving accident, or caught in the crossfire of an assassination attempt or something. Slipping on the bathroom floor and hitting her head… it just isn’t her.”

  “Russell doesn’t seem comfortable with the thought of it being an accident either,” Ellie admitted. “He keeps trying to figure out if she had any enemies. I think he wants to see a murder where there isn’t one, because at least then he’ll have someone to blame.”

  Daphne gave a dry chuckle. “Oh, she had enemies. Don’t get me wrong, Bea was a fun person to hang out with, but it’s been years since I’ve considered her a good friend. She’s like… like a flame. She’s enjoyable to be around, but if you get too close, you’ll get burned. It really wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she had been murdered. None of us ever thought an accident like this would be what got her.”

  Ellie frowned. Russell’s insistence that something didn’t sit right with him came back to her. At the time, she had brushed it off as him going through the grieving process, but now, for the second time in twenty-four hours, someone else was talking about murder and Bea in the same sentence.

  “I just don’t see how it could be anything but an accident,” she said. “I mean, the bathroom door was locked, and that bathroom doesn’t have windows in it. The doors to our house were locked. None of the windows had been forced open. Even if someone did break in, we would have heard a struggle.”

  Daphne shrugged. “I’m not saying someone killed her, I’m sure you’re right about it being an accident. I’m just saying that if your husband ends up digging up evidence of a murder, I wouldn’t be surprised. I’ve had moments where I’ve been tempted to kill her myself, like after I found her and Paul together.” She winced. “That’s insensitive, isn’t it? I told you, I’m still in shock. It doesn’t really feel real, you know? Or maybe it does to you, since you saw her body, but — oh goodness, I’m really putting my foot in my mouth, aren’t I?”

  Ellie had barely heard anything the other woman had said after she mentioned Paul. The words had brought her back to that strange interaction during the dinner party, when Paul had offered to go help Bea bring the food in, and Daphne had snapped at him. Once again, she felt that prickle of suspicion, but she tried to ignore it. It just wasn’t possible that someone had broken in and hit Bea over the head while she and Russell slept. Still, she couldn’t contain her curiosity fully.

  “You found her and Paul together? You mean, he cheated on you with her?”

  Daphne waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, this was before we were married. Before he and I were even dating, in fact. He was part of a group of guys we used to hang out with back in the day, and she knew I liked him, but that didn’t stop her from taking what she wanted. That was actually one of the biggest fights we ever had, but I’ve forgiven her, for the most part. I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that Paul still carries a flame for her, though. I don’t think he’d ever do anything about it, mind you, it’s really Bea that I don’t trust alone with him.”

  Ellie shook her head. She was still trying to figure out the dynamic Bea seemed to have with her friends. Daphne seemed to like her well enough, but she obviously didn’t trust her at all, and Georgie seemed to feel similarly,
if the look she had traded with Daphne after the scene with Paul was any indication. It was very different from the relationship she had with Shannon. She trusted her sister-in-law completely, with everything.

  “Thanks for talking with me,” Daphne said after a moment, when the silence between them had stretched too long. “It does help to know what happened. It’s just… weird, to think that she’s gone now. She’s been a part of my life since I was a teenager. I’m going to miss her.”

  “A lot of people are,” Ellie said. “I’m glad I could help, even if it wasn’t much. Feel free to stop in if you ever want to chat again.”

  “I definitely will,” the other woman said.

  They rose, and Daphne gave Ellie a quick embrace before saying her goodbyes and leaving. Sighing, Ellie went back to her seat behind the counter. It seemed that none of Bea’s relationships had been as clear cut as she had thought.

  The house was unusually quiet when she got home that evening. Ellie felt a moment of panic when she couldn’t find Russell or either of the dogs, until she spotted the note her husband had left on the island in the kitchen.

  Went on a walk with the dogs. I’ll be back before long, just needed to get out of the house and clear my head. Yes, I put Bunny’s sweater on. Love you. -Russell

  “I guess it’s just you and me,” Ellie said to Marlowe when she opened the bird’s cage to get her fresh water and fill up her food dish. “I haven’t been paying enough attention to you this week, have I? Don’t worry, we’ll watch some TV together tonight. I might even make blueberry muffins. Yes, it’s cheating on my diet, but I won’t tell if you don’t.”

  She dropped a seed cluster in the macaw’s bowl, then shut the cage door, watching fondly as Marlowe climbed over to her dish and began eating. She would never admit it to anyone, but when she was alone in the house, she talked to the bird just like she would with another person, and even occasionally fancied that Marlowe understood some of what she was saying. There was no denying that the macaw was smart, and she figured talking to an animal that could talk back wasn’t quite as bad as talking to herself or even one of the dogs.

  While she wanted to spend some quality time with Marlowe, there was something she needed to do first. She hadn’t touched the guest bathroom since the police had gone through it, and it needed to be cleaned. She would rather get it done now, while Russell was out of the house. She didn’t think it would be good for him to be around while she moved his dead cousin’s stuff into a box.

  The first thing she saw when she walked into the room was the full-to-bursting toiletry bag. She had no idea what they were going to do with all of Bea’s things. She knew the toiletry bag was just scratching the surface of what Bea had brought with her. Would her parents want everything shipped to them? Or maybe Daphne and Georgie would want it? Somehow, it didn’t feel right to throw her things away.

  Feeling uncomfortable, but knowing it had to be done, she began gathering up the bathmat, towels, and even the cloth shower curtain, and put everything in a pile. She wanted to give the bathroom a thorough scrubbing, and if that didn’t work to get the ghost of the dead woman out of there, then maybe she’d repaint and buy entirely new linens for it.

  Her next stop was the basement, where she grabbed an empty box. She put it down on the toilet and lifted the toiletry bag into it before bending down to pick up the bottle of contact solution that had fallen to the floor. She knew she should probably just throw it away; no one would want an open bottle of contact solution, after all, but the thought of tossing anything of Bea’s in the garbage made her uncomfortable so she put it in the box along with everything else.

  Bea’s hairbrush and a contact case were still on the counter, and she dropped the brush into the toiletry bag, then picked up the contact case, which had been left open, and dumped the used solution into the sink before screwing the lids on and tossing it into the box along with everything else. A faint smell of almonds rose to her nose. As she bent down to pick up the pile of laundry, she noticed that a drop of the solution had fallen on the counter, and idly wiped it away with her thumb. Gathering the laundry into her arms, she straightened up. A stray dog hair made its way into her mouth and she plucked it out, noticing the salty, bitter taste of the contact solution on her thumb as she did so. She forgot about it in the next second and made her way to the laundry room with the bathroom linens in her arms.

  Chapter Ten

  When Russell got back with the dogs a few minutes later, Ellie was back in the guest bathroom, scrubbing the tiles with bleach, and she was starting to get lightheaded. The bathroom fan was on, but she knew it was nowhere near as effective as an open window, and she was glad for the excuse to take a break.

  “How was your walk?” she asked as she walked into the kitchen, where her husband was hanging up the dogs’ leashes by the back door.

  “It did me good,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t have stayed cooped up inside all day.”

  “I’m sorry I left you alone here all day,” Ellie said. “I should have begged one of my employees to cover for me.”

  “No, that’s okay. I needed time alone to grieve. It feels real to me now, not like a bad dream. It still hurts, but I feel like I’m actually thinking clearly again. I — are you okay?”

  Ellie had stumbled to the side, catching herself against the kitchen island, and was clutching her head.

  “I just don’t feel great,” she managed to bite out around gritted teeth. It was an understatement; her head was pounding and the world was tilting, and even her stomach seemed to be rebelling. “I’ve been cleaning the bathroom. It’s probably the fumes.”

  She pulled out a stool with shaking arms and sat down, letting her head hang as she took quick, shallow breaths.

  “Ellie?”

  She felt Russell’s hands on her shoulders and she looked up at him, blinking. His voice seemed to be coming from far away.

  “I’m fine,” she muttered.

  “No, you’re not. You’re flushed and you’re dizzy. What happened? Did you eat anything unusual?”

  She shook her head. “Didn’t do anything but clean since I got home.”

  “You said you were cleaning the bathroom. The guest bathroom?” She nodded. His grip on her shoulders tightened. “Tell me exactly what you did. Was there anything you didn’t recognize? Anything that could have been drugs? I don’t think Bea would… but you never know. Ellie?”

  The world was fading. Ellie tried to focus on her husband’s face, but failed. “Almonds,” she whispered. “The contact solution smelled like almonds.”

  Then everything went black.

  When Ellie woke up, it was to a bright light and a pounding headache. Blinking, she looked around. She was in a hospital room. The last thing she remembered was feeling strange after Russell got back. It was disorienting to go from her kitchen to here with no clear memory of anything in between.

  It wasn’t until she sat up that she realized she had an IV in her arm. Making a face, she did her best to ignore the tubes sticking out of her and tried to focus on her surroundings instead. She heard Russell’s voice coming from the other side of the door to her room. It sounded like he was arguing with someone, but she couldn’t make out the words. Within the next second, his voice moved away, and a moment later, the door opened and a nurse came in. When she saw that Ellie was awake, a bright smile appeared on her face.

  “Rise and shine,” she said cheerfully. “How are you feeling?”

  “Not great, but not horrible either,” she replied. “What happened?”

  “You found your way into something nasty. I’ll get the doctor in here to explain everything to you, but first I need to take your vitals. Can you hold out your arm, palm up?”

  Ellie waited while the nurse took her blood pressure and checked the machines she was hooked up to. When she was done, she patted Ellie on the hand and promised the doctor would be right in, then left her alone in the room.

  Russell got there first. He took one look a
t Ellie sitting up in her bed and rushed over, pulling her into a hug.

  “Thank goodness,” he said. “I was so worried. I thought I’d lost you too.”

  She relaxed into his arms and let herself enjoy the hug for a long moment before pulling away and looking up into his face. “Russell, what happened?” she asked.

  “You had cyanide poisoning.” His expression darkened. “You collapsed in the kitchen, and I rushed you to the medical center in Benton Harbor. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  Ellie shivered. “Cyanide poisoning? How did that happen? And how on earth did I survive?”

  “There are treatments for it now, if it’s caught early enough. And you had a low dose, thank goodness. As for how it happened… well, I have a theory. Right before you passed out, you mentioned something about Bea’s contact solution. Do you remember?”