“Don’t worry about it,” Ellie said. “Really. We don’t mind a little competition, and I know it wasn’t your fault anyway.”
“Yeah.” He winced at the reminder of the scene his boss had caused. “Well, I’ll see you two in a little while, I’m sure.”
“Enjoy your break!” Joanna called to him as he walked away. She turned her attention to Ellie once he had gotten a little way down the path. “Lunch actually sounds good right about now. Do you want to close up for half an hour, grab some tacos, and go walk around the festival?”
“I couldn’t have come up with a better plan myself,” Ellie said, feeling her stomach rumble.
They secured everything they could on the food cart and taped a sign that said Closed for Lunch — Back Soon! to the counter, then walked over to the taco cart. Rosa smiled at them in greeting.
“Hi, festival neighbors,” she said. “What can I get you?”
“I’ll have the shredded pork taco,” Joanna said. “Can I get sour cream on the side?”
Rosa nodded and turned her gaze to Ellie.
“The chicken quesadilla looks great. I’ll take that and a churro.”
“Coming right up.”
Rosa made their food with practiced skill, and a few minutes later both women walked away with the food in their hands. They found an empty picnic table nearby to sit at and dug in.
“Wow,” Joanna said.
Ellie nodded. “This is great. Everything tastes homemade. I’m going to have to bring something to Russell before we get back to work. I think he’s going to love their food.”
“It’s a shame that Tim guy seems like such a jerk.”
“Yeah.” Ellie frowned. “Maybe he was just stressed, and isn’t normally so bad. His wife seems pretty nice.”
“She does,” Joanna agreed. She finished her taco and gathered her trash up. Ellie did the same, and took a detour to a garbage can before heading over to grab the dogs She put their leashes on and led them out of the pen; she wasn’t comfortable with the thought of leaving them completely unsupervised while she and Joanna explored the busy festival.
The children’s costume contest was still going on, and Ellie could see Russell sitting on stage between two other judges, neither of whom she recognized. She smiled at the sight of him up there. He looked to be taking his judging duties very seriously. She and Joanna watched the contest for a few minutes, both of them impressed by some of the costumes that the kids and their parents had come up with.
“Did Shannon enter Andrew?” Joanna asked, peering at the line of people who were still waiting for their turn to go on stage.
“No, the minimum age is three,” she said. “He’s still too young.”
“That’s a shame. I bet he would win for sure.”
“Poor Russell would be so conflicted if he had to judge family,” Ellie said, chuckling. “Hey, we should go check out that haunted house. It looks pretty scary this year.”
They made their way through the crowd and over toward the hastily erected structure. The music blaring from it was even louder this close, and the sound of it coming from low quality speakers made Ellie wince. Still, she was all set to go in until she felt a tug on the leashes in her hand and remembered that she had the dogs with her.
“Shoot, I don’t think they can go in. Bunny would be too scared even if they could.” She sighed and stepped back. “Go on in without me. I’ll meet you on the other side.”
Joanna shook her head and reached for the leashes. “You can go in. I’ve had a couple bad experiences with haunted houses. I’m not really a fan of jump scares. I can watch the dogs for a little while.”
“Are you sure?” Ellie asked.
“I’m sure,” her friend said firmly. “You go. Enjoy yourself.”
Ellie shot her friend a quick grin in thanks and handed over Sawyer and Bunny’s leashes. Joanna crouched down to pet the dogs while Ellie walked toward the haunted house. She paid for her ticket and stepped through the curtain that covered the doorway. Thankfully, the speakers were mounted on the outside of the building, so the loud music was a bit muted inside.
The first room had walls that were lined with mirrors and flickering lights. When the lights went out with a crash of recorded thunder, one of the mirror sections lit up and dark red lights illuminated a cackling ghoulish figure behind it. A two way mirror, she thought. That’s pretty fun.
She went into the next room. This one was filled with a creeping mist, courtesy of a fog machine in the corner. The lights were dim, and the music in here was a mellow funeral dirge.
All of a sudden, a shrouded figure sat up from where the fog was the thickest, moaning loudly and reaching for her. She actually jumped this time, then giggled, feeling her heart pound and her palms prickle with adrenaline. She had gone to a few haunted houses in her time, she always found the rooms with live actors more frightening than the ones with props.
Edging around the moaning figure in the room, which stumbled toward her slowly as she moved, she walked through the curtain into the next room.
This one had strobe lights. The floors were covered in uneven black and white tiles, and there were billowing white sheets — or curtains, she wasn’t sure — hanging all around her, making for a disorienting, constantly changing maze. She could have just pushed her way through the hanging sheets, but decided to go through the room as it was probably meant to be experienced, and wove her way around them instead.
She saw the first drops of fake blood toward the center of the room and, deciding that they would probably lead to something good, she followed the trail sideways. The blood got thicker as she got closer to whatever the room’s main event was. She saw a smudged handprint and then… a body. It was lying face down, close to the wall and out of the way of the billowing curtains. The strobe lights made it hard to tell whether it was a prop or an actor, so she was reluctant to turn her back. She was on edge enough from the last room, and a good jump scare in this one might actually make her scream.
She waited for a handful of moments, but nothing happened. Strange, she thought. Why would they just leave a prop lying to the side like this? Most people probably wouldn’t even follow the trail of blood. It seemed like a waste to her.
She half-turned to walk away, but hesitated. Something about all of this seemed off to her. The trail of blood, the way the body was just left by the wall outside of the main exhibit, the perfectly normal clothes it was wearing…
Feeling foolish, she stepped closer to the body and crouched down, eyeing the stab wound in the body’s back. “I’m going to feel pretty silly if you’re just a prop, but if you’re a person, say something. I just want to make sure you’re not actually hurt.”
There was no response. Up closer, she could tell that the body had too much fine detail to be a prop. Her heart beginning to beat faster, she reached for the man’s shoulder to see if touching him got a response. She squeezed his shoulder gently, but it was enough to cause the body to roll over onto its back, giving her a clear view of the face. She recognized it even in the strobing lights.
It was Tim, of Tim’s Taco Treasures, and his wide-eyed stare told her that none of this was fake. He was dead.
Chapter Four
Ellie screamed, shooting to her feet and stumbling backwards. Something rolled under her heel and she went down, landing hard on her tailbone and taking one of the hanging sheets with her. Her hand reached down to feel for whatever had tripped her. When she saw that it was a blood covered knife, she screamed again, threw it away from herself, and scrambled back up.
She was in pure panic mode as she ran through the room, hitting the sheets out of the way as she searched for a way out. She was certain that whoever had attacked Tim was still in there, that she would yank one of the sheets aside to see a dark figure standing in front of her with a wickedly sharp knife raised, never mind the fact that she had just tripped over the knife.
The next curtain that she yanked aside revealed not a killer, but a door. She sho
ved her way through it and realized it led back the way she had come. Her fear pushed her through the slowly eddying fog, past the confused figure who sat up in the center of the room to watch her go by, and out through the mirror room, where she almost ran into a young couple that were buying their tickets from the person who was running the haunted house.
“Hey, you’re supposed to go out the other exit,” he said.
“There’s a body,” she gasped, reaching for the railing to steady herself.
“Of course there is,” he said slowly, looking at her like she was crazy. “It’s a haunted house. And it’s not even that scary. I mean, I’d get it if you were a little kid, but jeeze.”
The young couple was looking at her strangely, seemingly torn between amusement and concern. Ellie straightened up, catching her breath.
“No, there’s a real body. In the third room, the one with all the sheets hanging down.” When all three of them kept looking at her skeptically — though the man in charge of the haunted house was beginning to look concerned; he would know that there wasn’t supposed to be a prop in that room — Ellie decided to play her trump card. “My husband is the sheriff. I know a body when I see one. Someone needs to get the police over here and you can’t let anyone else go inside.”
That seemed to do it.
“All right, everyone, stay back,” the employee said. He hung up a Closed sign on the entrance to the haunted house, then picked up his radio. “Hey, Trev, is there anyone still inside?”
“We had an older couple come out a couple minutes ago. The next person should have come through already. I was just about to call you. What’s the holdup?”
“I’ve got the last person I sold a ticket to right here,” he said, looking at Ellie. “The house should be empty. Do me a favor and don’t let anyone go back in, even if they say they forgot something. And don’t go in yourself, got that?”
“Got it. But why?”
“There’s been a situation. Possible fatality.”
She heard the man on the radio mutter an oath. “I’ll stand guard,” he said at last. “Keep me updated. Out.”
Ellie snapped out of her shock when the man put the radio down and started patting his pockets for his cell phone. “I’ve got mine on me,” she said. “I’ll make the call.”
She hesitated for a moment before dialing the emergency number. Russell was at the festival himself, after all, but he was technically off duty, and she knew that the first thing he would do would be to phone it in anyway. Still, it felt odd to go call 911 when the sheriff was only a few hundred yards away, judging a costume contest.
She quickly explained the situation to the dispatcher, who promised that the police were on their way. While she was on the phone, the employee radioed someone else, and a moment later a couple of people dressed up in costumes — including one that she recognized as the shrouded figure in the fog room — trailed out, chattering nervously amongst themselves. After that, there was nothing else to do but wait.
Liam, the on-duty deputy, arrived on scene shortly before Russell did. Ellie had been calling and texting her husband while they waited, but she knew that he likely had his phone off for the costume contest.
When he looked at her in surprise, she realized he must have followed Liam over. As she watched, he pulled out his cell phone, read something on the screen — probably her messages — and winced, looking back up at her apologetically.
Liam started to speak, then paused, looking over to Russell, seemingly asking if he wanted to take over. The sheriff shook his head and gestured for him to continue.
“I’m going to need everyone to keep back. I’m going to go in to get an idea of the situation. Please, if you think you might have witnessed something, stay close so we can get your statement. Please keep the sidewalk clear for the paramedics when they arrive.”
Ellie moved away from the haunted house to stand with the other bystanders in the grass while Liam and Russell ventured inside. A moment after they disappeared through the door, Liam stuck his head back out and addressed the employee. “Could you turn off the flickering lights and the power to the mechanisms?”
“Oh, sorry. Yeah, I’ll do that.” He jumped to action, going around to the side of the building and doing something. A few seconds later, she heard Liam call out, “Thanks!”
The crime scene slowly came together, with uniformed officers arriving to tape off the building, and paramedics coming to wheel the body out. Ellie was saddened to see that the figure on the stretcher was covered in a sheet. She had hoped that she had been wrong; that he had still been alive, somehow.
While the officers worked to photograph and preserve the crime scene, Russell and Liam began questioning the people who had stuck around. Ellie was one of the first to be called for questioning, since she had been the one to discover the body. Liam was the one who claimed that job; questioning his own wife was a bit too personal for Russell to be able to do it ethically. Ellie didn’t mind; she liked Liam, and had been friendly with him for years.
He flipped open his notebook and started in after giving her a quick greeting and a somewhat amused raised eyebrow. “Tell me how you found the deceased.”
“I saw a trail of blood. It’s a haunted house, after all, so I thought I was supposed to follow it…” She told him the story, including how she had tripped over a bloody knife, and ended it with her rushing outside to let the person in charge of the haunted house know what had happened.
“You said you recognized the victim. How well did you know him?”
“I don’t know him at all, actually,” she said. “I just recognized him from earlier today. He had one of his employees set a food cart up directly across from mine and caused some drama.”
“I see,” Liam said, a flash of interest going through his eyes. Ellie knew why; an argument could lead toward possible motive.
Before he could say anything else, a woman who Russell was questioning started screaming, “It’s her! It’s her! She’s the one who killed Tim! Arrest her!”
Ellie spun around to find that the woman was pointing directly at her.
Chapter Five
Ellie took half a step back, her eyes widening. She recognized the woman as the older woman who had been with Tim’s wife, Rosa, earlier in the day. The woman looked half-mad now, with her lips pulled back in an angry snarl and her eyes frantic as a quivering finger pointed like a beacon toward the pizzeria owner.
“What? I—I didn’t —”
She was saved from having to proclaim her innocence by Russell, who stepped forward and put a gentle hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Mrs. Garcia, can I ask you to step over here?”
She twisted away from him. “No! That woman killed my son-in-law, and I want some justice”
Russell shot Ellie a puzzled glance before refocusing his attention on the older woman. “Come with me and we can discuss your suspicions somewhere more private. I understand that you’re grieving, but —”
“I don’t need to go somewhere more private! I’m not letting her out of my sight until she’s in handcuffs.”
The woman moved forward and Liam took a protective step in front of Ellie while Russell placed his hand on the woman’s arm. “Sorry, ma’am, but we need to relocate this somewhere else. Are you willing to come down to the sheriff’s department with me?”
For a moment, Ellie thought the woman was about to refuse, but at long last she gave a single curt nod and followed Russell away. Letting a sigh of relief escape past her lips, the pizzeria owner looked at Liam, confused.
“I don’t know what that was about,” he admitted, frowning. “But Russell’s got it under control. Are you ready to finish up here, or do you need a minute?”
She took a deep breath, trying to clear the incident from her mind. “I’m ready,” she said.
It was a long day for everyone. Ellie and Joanna — who had watched the police scene unfold, but had opted to keep the dogs back and out of the way until it was less crowded — had to pa
ck up the food cart and head back earlier than planned, but that didn’t mean there was less to do. They still had to clean all of the cooking implements, and then tow the cart itself back to the hotdog shop, where they stowed it in a small shed in the alley behind the building. Then Ellie decided to finish up the workday at the pizzeria, after a quick detour home to drop the dogs off, and spent more time than she expected telling her employees what had happened.
When she finally returned to her house later that evening, she was bone tired, but knew her day wasn’t done just yet. With Russell working a murder case, she knew he’d be out late, and Nonna would have long since eaten and gone to bed, which meant that she was on her own for dinner.
Making dinner for one always reminded her of her days living alone with Bunny in Chicago. There was something a bit nostalgic about putting a single fillet of salmon in the oven to broil, and frying up one helping of green beans. It reminded her of when it was just her and her dog against the world. It was a good reminder of what she had gained.
Spooky Pizza Murder Page 2
