Pretzel Pizza Murder

by Patti Benning

  Russell, she thought, I have to tell Russell. He wasn’t involved with the pizzeria, but as her fiancé, he had a right to know. She didn’t think he would like this any more than she did. It didn’t seem fair that this woman could just come in and take over when she wasn’t even involved with family. What had her grandfather even been thinking when he made that will?

  The next few days passed by agonizingly slowly. After the lawyer’s decision, Orson and Marietta left to stay at a motel in town while they figured out what they wanted to do long-term, which improved their lives slightly, but Ellie still saw the older woman quite often. She seemed to have taken a liking to stopping in at the pizzeria at the most random hours of the day, and often asked Ellie all sorts of questions about how it was run.

  Both Russell and Ellie’s best friend, Shannon, had been shocked and angry at the news, though with the recent murder case, Russell was too busy to do much more than offer his condolences. Shannon was the one that offered her a shoulder to lean on. Ellie felt bad telling her pregnant friend something that she knew was bound to cause her a lot of stress, but she also knew that Shannon wouldn’t appreciate being treated as if she was made of glass. It was a huge blow to them all, but she did feel slightly better knowing how supportive her friends and family were.

  Aunt Marietta’s claim to the pizzeria wasn’t the only stressful thing she had to deal with. The days were ticking by, and the moment of Clara’s leaving was coming nearer. She had to hire someone else, there was no way around it.

  On Thursday, she held interviews for prospective new employees. She commandeered a table on the patio outside, angled the large umbrella to give them the most shade possible, and made a large picture of ice-cold lemonade. It was a hot day, but there was a pleasant enough breeze coming from the marina, and it would be a lot easier to talk to people out there than it would have been in the crowded kitchen.

  She was just about to start the final interview of the day when she heard Marietta’s familiar voice float out from the open door that led to the dining area. She apologized to the young woman sitting across from her and excused herself from the table.

  “Ellie, there you are,” Marietta said, striding over to her. “Iris told me that you started the interviews already. I thought you were going to wait for me?”

  “I never agreed to do that,” Ellie said.

  “I told you I wanted to be involved in this,” the woman said. “Hiring is an important part of owning a business. We should both get a say.”

  “Well, I know the people of this town, I know my other employees, and I know what sort of person I need. Unless you’ve been working here for the past year, you can’t possibly know those things.”

  “We’re business partners now,” Marietta said. “You have to let me help make decisions like this.”

  Ellie bit the inside of her lip, pushing down the surge of anger she felt. She didn’t want to involve her aunt Marietta in anything, but she knew that she had to. “Fine,” she said with a sigh. “I’m interviewing one more person. You can come and meet her.”

  She went back to the table, not bothering to make sure the older woman was following her. Grabbing a third chair, she dragged it over and set it down. She took her own seat back, and gave the young woman what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

  “Someone else will be joining us for your interview,” she said. “This is my Aunt Marietta.”

  The young woman, Sabrina, introduced herself to Marietta, and Ellie waited while the older woman settled into her chair.

  “Okay,” she said at last. “Let’s get started…”

  She supposed it could have gone worse. Marietta was content to let Ellie take the lead. She only questioned the girl once, asking her who her grandparents were. When Sabrina told her, the older woman nodded.

  “I knew your grandmother. She was a pleasant woman.”

  Ellie waited in case her aunt wanted to say anything else, but she remained silent. She was struck by the fact that Marietta had grown up in Kittiport. She had known the town as it was decades ago. How much had it changed since then? Her grandmother, who had lived in the town her whole life, might not have noticed some of the more gradual changes, but Marietta was looking at the town with fresh eyes. If they could ever get their differences figured out, Ellie was convinced that they would be able to have some extremely interesting conversations about the town’s history.

  After Sabrina’s interview, Ellie let her aunt read the notes that she had made on the other interviewees. Ellie was already leaning towards hiring Sabrina, and she was relieved when Marietta agreed. Maybe this could work. It would have to, if Ellie wanted to keep being involved in the pizzeria. She supposed that working with people she didn’t like was just part of being an adult. So far, her aunt hadn’t tried to change anything major. Maybe she just wanted something to be involved in. Maybe this is her way of trying to reconnect with her family. Maybe I’ve been unfair, she thought. She decided to give her aunt a chance.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  * * *

  Ellie had never been a morning person, so when she woke up to the sound of her cell phone ringing, her first reaction was to groan. If she had had fewer responsibilities, she might have hidden her head under the pillow. Instead, she forced herself to open her eyes. Bunny, who had been sleeping on the pillow by her head, stared at her mournfully, just as upset at the interruption of her sleep as her owner was.

  She grabbed her phone and saw Russell’s name on the caller ID. She cleared her throat, hoping that she wouldn’t sound too groggy when she answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Ellie, I’m glad you’re up. Is this a good time?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said.

  “It's about the murder,” he said. “Whoever tried to break into his office before tried again, and this time they succeeded.”

  “That's terrible,” she said. “Did they take anything?”

  “We're not certain. They certainly raided his office, but Zane Drescher is probably the only one that could have said for sure what’s missing. The thing is, we found something just inside the doorway – a fake nail. I noticed that your aunt was wearing them when I interviewed her. Could you check and see if she’s missing one?”

  “She’s not staying with us anymore,” Ellie said. “She's at the motel in town.”

  “Okay. I'll stop by and check myself later this morning. Don't tell anyone, okay? Not even your grandmother. It's probably not hers, or if it is whoever broke in could have tracked it in through the door. We just have to cover our bases.”

  Even after Russell hung up, Ellie couldn't shake the uneasy feeling she had. She remembered hearing someone leave the night of Zane's murder. She hadn’t dwelt much on it then, but now its importance seemed to grow.

  Feeling concerned, she got up and helped Bunny off the bed. The papillon had recently had a cast removed from her leg, which had been broken over a month before. She seemed completely better, but Ellie was still cautious about her injuring herself again. Bunny didn't seem to mind the special treatment. She had always enjoyed being spoiled.

  “It probably doesn't mean anything,” she said out loud to the little dog. “What reason would Marietta have to kill the lawyer? She would have no reason to break into his office, either. I'm just being suspicious because I don't like her.”

  The two of them went downstairs. Ellie let the little dog out back to sniff around, then grabbed a couple pieces of fresh fruit from the fridge and chopped them up for Marlowe. She spent a few minutes chatting to the bird, then returned to the kitchen to begin making breakfast. Her grandmother was already awake, and had eaten without her. The two of them kept different schedules, but still managed to get plenty of quality time together.

  After a lazy morning lounging around the house, Ellie went back upstairs and got ready for work. Sabrina was supposed to start that day, and she was excited to begin teaching her new employee the ropes.

  When she pulled into the pizzeria's parking lot,
she recognized her aunt’s car immediately. She felt a stab of annoyance. What was the older woman doing there already? Ellie had been forced to give her a copy of the key, but she couldn’t think of any good reason for Marietta to be there before the restaurant was even open.

  She turned her car off, shoved her keys in her purse, and stomped up to the door. The employee entrance was unlocked and she walked straight into the kitchen. It was empty, with no sign of her aunt anywhere. Frowning, Ellie hung her purse on the hooks near the table that the employees used to eat their lunch at and pushed through the door to the dining area. There, she found her aunt and two men gathered around the counter. Their old register and card machine had vanished, and in its place, was a slim white screen with the card reader built-in, the mirror of the one at Joanna's hotdog shop.

  “What's going on?” Ellie snapped.

  Her aunt looked around at her, a sickly-sweet smile on her face. “I decided to put some of the extra money in the pizzeria's account towards updating certain things. I think this will help us ring up orders a lot more quickly. There won't be any room for error. You can program it to do all sorts of things. The employees will just have to touch the pictures of the correct toppings, and it will send the order back automatically to a similar screen in the kitchen. No more wasted paper.”

  “You can't just install things without talking to me,” Ellie replied. She took a deep breath, determined that she wasn’t going to lose her temper in front of the men who were installing the new register – if she could even call it that. “I don't want a touchscreen in the kitchen. Think of how greasy it would get. We’re handling food back there all-day long. If my employees have to pause in what they're doing, scrub their hands, check the screen, and wash their hands again before getting back to work just to check an order, it's going to slow things down. We rarely use paper for the orders right now; whoever is working up front just calls them back. We do have a notepad people can use for the more complex ones, but for the most part we just remember it. Plus, we get different ingredients every week. I don't want to have to program a computer just because we’re using truffles or barbecue sauce one week, when we might not have the same ingredients the next.”

  “Trust me, Ellie, this will speed things up a lot. We’re in the twenty-first century. You’ve got to start using modern technology to do these things. In a few years, maybe we’ll install a little kiosk out front where the customers can place their orders and it will go directly back to the kitchen. You won’t even need someone up front.”

  “I don't want everything to be automated,” Ellie said. “People like a personal touch. Now, I'm going to have to retrain all of my employees to use this new register. I’ll have to learn how to use it myself. Business is going to be extremely slow today, and that’s not fair to the customers. Something like this should be planned way in advance. I don't think you understand that things only go so smoothly here because everyone knows exactly what they're doing. You're the one that keeps saying we need to talk to each other before making big decisions, but you're not doing that for me.”

  “Dear, you’re opening an entire restaurant many states away. I wouldn't have made that decision, for quite a few reasons. However, you made it very clear to me that’s something you won't budge on, so I thought it was fair for me to make some of my own decisions about some things. You get your Florida restaurant, and I get my new register. It will look so much nicer in here with some modern updates, don’t you think?”

  “It won't look nice at all,” Ellie growled. “This is a sixty-year-old building. It’s not supposed to be all shiny and new and modern. This restaurant is a slice of Kittiport's history.”

  “Let’s not have this argument in front of the workers,” Marietta said with a sniff. “We can discuss this later. I have to leave after this is installed. The instruction manual is in the kitchen for you.”

  Ellie took a slow breath, closed her eyes, and let the breath back out. She would make sure they discussed this later. A new register was one thing. Who knew what Marietta might want to do next?

  CHAPTER NINE

  * * *

  Ellie spent the rest of the work day fuming over her aunt's decision to install the new register. It made things just as difficult as she had feared, slowing down the entire restaurant to almost a snail’s pace as they tried to figure it out on the go. Yes, the slim touch screen did have a lot of new features, but many of them required intensive customization. They just didn't have time to do any of that while they were trying to keep the pizzeria running. They ended up using it only to slide cards, and kept a tally of the day’s totals by hand. The old register had a built-in receipt printer, but this one didn't. Her aunt had overlooked that little tidbit, which meant that they had no way to print receipts for customers and wouldn’t until Ellie managed to get her hands on one.

  The change made it difficult to train Sabrina, but the young woman was amazingly patient. Ellie ended up having her spend most of the day in kitchen, learning her way around making a good pizza, something that everyone that worked there had to know how to do even if they would primarily be a delivery driver.

  Their orders were slowed down even more due to the fact that they had a new recipe of the week – pretzel pizza with a cheese stuffed crust. To make it, she had to modify her grandfather's crust recipe just a bit, and each batch of new dough had to be left to rise for nearly an hour. Even once the dough was ready, the pizza took a while to make, since they had to fold the mozzarella cheese into the crust by hand.

  It was delicious, though. Ellie made herself and her employees one for their early dinner break. With the salt-dotted crust, the generous dollop of their homemade red sauce, topped with extra cheese, locally made pepperoni and mushrooms, it was a mouthwatering feast. She didn't even want to know how many calories were in each slice, and even though the pizza took a while to make, she knew that they would bring the special recipe back later. Who could resist a gooey, cheesy, pretzel flavored pizza?

  The one good thing about the busy day was that it took her mind off of the whole fiasco with her aunt for a little bit. She didn’t have time to focus on it, not when she was already juggling multiple tasks at once. It wasn’t until she locked up that evening that her annoyance at her aunt returned full-force. It wasn't just the register, it was everything. She loved the pizzeria, and the truth was that she simply didn't want to lose control over it. Maybe it was petty of her, but it was the way that she felt, it was hard to ignore. It was hard to believe that just days ago everything had been going perfectly.

  At least she had one thing to look forward to that evening; Russell was coming over for dinner with her and her grandmother. It had been a while since she had been able to spend time with him, and she found that she missed him more than she had expected. Whenever a serious crime occurred in Kittiport, she tended to lose her fiancé until it was solved. It was just part of the reality of being engaged to the sheriff, and she had already made her peace with it. His job was important, and if saving lives meant that sometimes they didn’t see each other that often, then so be it.

  Thinking of dinner with Russell reminded her of his phone call that morning. It had gone completely out of her mind after she had seen the surprise that her aunt had left for her at Papa Pacelli's. The fact that her aunt had been at the pizzeria to oversee the installation of the register meant that he hadn’t been able to tie her to the crime. If he had, she would have been behind bars. She was glad that a member of her family, even an estranged member of her family, hadn't been found guilty of breaking and entering into a lawyer's office, but the tiniest part of her wished that her aunt had been arrested. She wasn’t proud of it, but it would certainly have solved all of her problems for the time being. All she wanted was to run her pizzeria in peace, but the way things were looking now, those days were long over.

  With Russell coming over for dinner for the first time in weeks, she decided to make something other than pizza. She had gone to the grocery store a couple days
before, and still had all of the ingredients to make lasagna. It was a simple dish, but one that everyone loved. The best part was, it wouldn't take her long to build the layers of pasta, meat sauce, and ricotta cheese and put the dish in the oven. Once it was cooking, she could simply forget about it until her fiancé arrived.

  By the time Russell got there, she had helped herself to a couple of glasses of wine and was feeling much more relaxed. She knew that the horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach would take a while to go away. Eventually, she was bound to get used to the idea of sharing ownership of the pizzeria with her aunt. She had to keep reminding herself how lucky she was. The pizzeria wasn't the only important thing in her life. She had her grandmother, Russell, Shannon, and all of her pets. She is about to get married, for goodness sake. She still had a job, and really, things at the pizzeria weren't that different.

  The three of them sat down to a comfortable dinner in the kitchen. Bunny, as usual, was under the table waiting hopefully for tidbits to drop. Nonna, who had been in an understandably sour mood since Marietta’s appearance, seemed to cheer up. Unusually, Russell was the one who seemed to be in the worst mood. After a couple of long silences, Ellie finally asked what was wrong.