“What are you talking about?” Ellie asked. “You're leaving?”
“Well, I have no reason to stay in town anymore,” the woman said.
Ellie just stared at her, utterly confused. “I don't understand. What about the pizzeria?”
“You really don't know?” the older woman asked, peering at her curiously.
“Know what?” Ellie asked.
“The pizzeria is yours, dear,” the woman said. “That fiancé of yours bought my half for you. He broached the subject when he stopped by to talk to me about that silly nail, and I called him yesterday to accept. The lawyer agreed to see us both to finalize everything.”
Ellie was floored. Russell had bought her half of the pizzeria? Why wouldn’t he have said something? She felt a surge of guilt. She wouldn’t have wanted him to spend that much money on her. She had been very petty about the entire thing, and she knew it. What must he think of her?
“I – I had no idea.”
“He is a real standup guy. Of course, I wasn’t in this for the money, but I figured it was a good compromise. At least I won't have to spend so much time around Ann anymore.”
“Aunt Marietta… thank you,” Ellie said. “I’m sorry for the way I acted.”
“We were both in the wrong. I shouldn't have expected to walk into your life and take over half of the restaurant without you being upset. I know I would be fuming if our positions were switched.”
Ellie didn't know what to say. She had so many questions, but most of them were for Russell. “Let me take you out for lunch after we see the lawyer tomorrow,” she said. “That’s the least I can do.”
“I don’t want to spend any more time than necessary around Ann. I know it may seem silly to you, but the two of us just don't get along.”
“I can see if she'll stay home,” Ellie said. “She shouldn’t need to be there to sign the papers anyway. You are my aunt, after all. I want to talk to you a little bit before you leave, without this whole pizzeria thing hanging over our heads.”
“Well, then, I accept the invitation,” the older woman said. “Thank you for giving me another chance. After tomorrow, we’ll start fresh.”
Ellie watched her go, full of conflicting emotions. If Marietta was telling the truth and the pizzeria was going to be hers again, that was wonderful, but she wasn't certain how she felt about Russell spending that much money for her. Why wouldn’t he have told her himself? But what could Marietta possibly gain by lying?
***
Ellie, Marietta, and Orson met at the lawyer’s office. The secretary greeted them with a friendly wave and told them that Pierre was expecting them. They found the lawyer at his desk, looking at a mess of papers spread around him.
“Come on in,” he said. “Sorry about all of this. I'm just trying to figure some things out. Not about your case, of course. This should be pretty straightforward.”
“Thank you for meeting with us,” Ellie said. “I’m sorry for this whole mess.”
“I’m always happy to have new clients,” he said. A frown appeared on his lips. “Though, I suppose I shouldn’t use the word happy in this case. Not since the reason you’re here is because of my colleague’s passing. However, it’s no inconvenience to meet with you. Do you have any questions before you get started with the paperwork?”
“After we sign everything, the pizzeria will go back to being legally mine?” she asked.
“Yes. Marietta will have no legal claim on it. It's only a matter of signing a few things, and then everything will be back to normal for you and your family. Are you ready to begin?”
Ellie exchanged a glance with her aunt, and they both nodded. He reached for a paper, frowned, then moved a stack of them out of the way. “It may take me a moment to find the right ones,” he said.
Ellie watched as he dug through his papers for a few seconds. Growing tired of gazing at the mess, she looked around the room instead. On the wall, she saw his framed diploma from a school whose name she was sure she had heard of before. His office was relatively sparse, underlining the fact that he was new there. Mr. Drescher's office had been filled with personal paraphernalia, giving it an almost homey feel.
“Aha, there it is,” he said at last. Ellie's gaze returned to the table. She saw him move a stack of papers aside and pull out a folder. Her eyes landed on something directly beneath the folder. It was another file, one that looked much older and had the last name Brown scribbled on it in pen.
To her surprise, it was the usually quiet Orson that spoke up, “why do you have that?”
The lawyer followed his gaze and Ellie saw him flush when he realized what the older man was looking at.
“Never mind that,” he said.
Ellie saw her aunt glance at her husband, whose face had gone pale. In a flash, Marietta’s hand darted out and she grabbed the folder from the lawyer’s desk. Before Pierre could react, she had opened it and was reading the contents.
CHAPTER TWELVE
* * *
“Marietta, let me explain…”
Before her husband could say another word, the elderly woman snapped the folder shut and turned her icy stare to the lawyer.
“Please continue,” she said. “After we finish this business with the pizzeria, I believe I’ll need to hire you for a more personal matter.”
“Ma’am, you really shouldn’t have that folder – it’s a violation of another client’s privacy.”
Marietta glared at him. Ellie saw the young lawyer falter, the hand that had been reaching for the folder falling slowly back down to the desk.
“I don’t understand,” she said, looking from her aunt’s expressionless face, to her uncle’s pale one. “What’s going on?”
In response, her aunt handed her the folder. Too curious to resist, Ellie opened it. She didn’t understand what she was looking at. Divorce papers?
“These are from over twenty years ago,” she said. “I don’t get it.”
“Please, can I have that folder back?” Pierre asked. “This is a horrible breach of confidentiality.”
Ellie shut the folder and handed it back to the man.
“Thank you,” he said, tucking it away in his desk drawer with a long, sour look at Marietta, who ignored him.
“Dear, it isn’t what you think,” Orson began, wringing his hands nervously.
“I saw the date,” her aunt snapped. “You had these drawn up the week before I found out about all of that money my cousin left me. I guess you decided not to leave after you saw how many extra zeros would be on the account balance in our bank account.”
“It’s been twenty years, my love. I was just being a fool back then.”
Marietta took a shuddering breath; the first time Ellie had seen her show any emotion besides annoyance. “The affair… all of it… everything I suspected, it was true, wasn’t it? The way she talked to you, I should have guessed.”
“I didn’t think you’d noticed that,” Orson muttered. “There was so much going on, with the body and all…”
“Wait… are you talking about Mrs. Lafferre?” Ellie asked, blinking. She remembered the older woman’s strange familiarity with her uncle, but like he had said, there had been so much else going on that she had hardly paid attention to it. “You had an affair with her?”
Marietta shot her a glance filled with her usual annoyance. “Yes, twenty years ago. I suspected it then, but your uncle managed to squirm his way out of it. They were just friends, he said. Nothing ever happened. And here we are with twenty-year-old divorce papers drawn up and waiting to be signed. You were going to leave me for her, weren’t you?” she said, turning back to her husband. “You only changed your mind because of the money. Oh, I bet she loved that.”
“Now, now,” Pierre said. “I don’t think this is really the place for this sort of personal discussion. Will you still be signing the papers for the pizzeria? If not, I really think you should go.”
Turning pointedly away from her husband, Marietta waved at th
e lawyer to hurry up. While she read through the papers he set in front of her, Ellie gazed at her uncle. The man looked pitifully unhappy. She felt a twinge of pity for him, then frowned. Why did she feel bad for him? He hadn’t denied any of the accusations that her aunt had made. Marietta might be an unpleasant person in many ways, but she wasn’t the one who had carried out an affair.
Orson’s eyes were glued to the drawer in which Pierre had put the old divorce papers. Ellie saw his fists clench. She had the feeling that if he could get his hands on the file, he would have ripped it up in an instant, even though the secret was already out of the bag.
“Ms. Pacelli? Your turn.”
As she reached for the papers that would once again give her full ownership over the pizzeria, something made her pause.
She remembered once again the slamming door the first night her relatives had stayed with them. Someone had left the house that night, she was sure of it. Maybe it hadn’t been her aunt, but her uncle. Her uncle, who must have been dreading seeing the lawyer who had helped him with the divorce papers he had never shown his wife.
No good lawyer would give away such private information about their client on purpose, but what if he had let something slip? Some hint of surprise that the two of them were still together, an off-handed comment about the divorce not going through… with such a sharp, already suspicious wife, it wouldn’t have taken much for Marietta to pick up on something.
She hesitated, the pen hovering over the paper. It all seemed to make sense. Orson had a motive, and he had no alibi for that night. Even Marietta’s fake nail could be explained by his presence in the office – stuck on his clothes, it could have fallen off when he went in to kill the lawyer, or when he returned to find the file that was hanging over his head.
Ellie put the pen down and looked up to find the other three people in the room staring at her.
“Is something wrong?” Pierre asked, staring at the documents. “I triple checked everything myself.”
“No, it’s not that,” the pizzeria owner murmured. She couldn’t take her eyes off of her uncle. She didn’t want it to be true, but she couldn’t ignore just how well the pieces fit.
Marietta followed her gaze. “Orson? What did you do? Have you done something to upset my niece?”
Her husband jumped. He glanced at her, then met Ellie’s eyes and licked his lips nervously.
“N-no,” he said. “I’m going to get a drink of water. You carry on.”
He rose, his eyes darting from Ellie to Marietta to Pierre, then back to Ellie’s face. She stood up suddenly, convinced that she shouldn’t let the man out of her sight. He might have been old, but if she was right, he was still a killer.
“What on earth is going on?” Pierre asked, exasperated. “All I need is one signature, Ms. Pacelli. Just one! I have another client coming shortly, and I have to say, this has been a rather stressful morning so far.”
Ellie ignored him. Instead, she looked at her aunt. “That first night you stayed with us, did you go somewhere around midnight?”
“Me?” Marietta said, looking surprised. “No. That was Orson. He went to a convenience store to pick up some ginger ale for his stomach – your grandmother never did like the stuff, and I told him not to bother checking the kitchen because she wouldn’t have any. What does this have to do with Papa Pacelli’s?”
“Nothing,” Ellie said. Her gaze was focused on her uncle, who was now as white as a sheet. “It’s about the murder of Zane Drescher. Pierre, I need to use your phone. I think I know who…”
She had never seen someone more than twice her age move so quickly. Orson had yanked the office door open and was well down the hallway by the time Ellie had made it across the room. She cursed herself under her breath. She should have pretended to be clueless, but it had all happened too quickly.
“What is he doing now?” Marietta said. “What you said, Ellie – you don’t mean that he killed that man?”
“I think he did,” Ellie said, fumbling through her purse for her phone. “He must have been terrified that you would learn about the divorce somehow now that you were back in town. I don’t know how things escalated to murder, but if he was innocent, why would he run? Got it.” She pulled her phone out and quickly dialed the number to the sheriff’s department. With Russell on the line, she hurried through the building. The puzzled secretary pointed out the front door when Ellie asked her where her uncle had gone.
His original burst of speed hadn’t lasted long. Ellie made it outside just in time to see him start his car’s engine and back out of the parking lot. When he turned the car onto the main road, she read the license plate numbers to her fiancé. Even before the car vanished from sight, she heard the howl of a siren. She felt a grim sort of satisfaction as she watched the car turn the corner. It wouldn’t be long before Orson was behind bars, which was exactly where he belonged.
EPILOGUE
* * *
“I can't thank you enough,” Ellie said to Russell for what felt like the millionth time.
“I told you, you don't need to thank me,” he said. “You would have done the same for me, I’m sure, if our positions were switched. I could see how miserable you were with your aunt trying to dictate your every move at the pizzeria. If you have to, look at it as an investment into our future together. The pizzeria is a good source of income, and if you have to give half of the profits to another person, well, that's a lot of money out of our pockets over time. I'm sure it will more than make up for what I spent. Besides, that money was a nest egg for if I ever eventually decided to buy another house. Since your grandmother will be giving us the Pacelli house, which we’ll have to ourselves while she's in Florida for six months every year, that's not something we’ll need.”
“Why didn't you tell me when you did it?” she asked.
“I was going to,” he said. “I was just waiting for the right moment. I was planning on getting dinner with you tonight, and I would have revealed the news to you then. Of course, that didn't quite work out.” He chuckled.
“No, it didn't.” She smiled, finding that most of the bad feelings towards her aunt were gone, replaced by pity. True, the woman had made a terrible business partner, though if Ellie was going to be honest with herself, so had she.
Marietta might not be a warm, friendly person, but she was a decent human being with her own set of principles. She hadn’t deserved the lies her husband had told her, or to spend so many years married to someone who had stayed with her primarily for her money. They might not be rich, but at least Ellie knew that she and Russell were in love.
As if Russell’s mind had gone along the same path as hers, he asked, “So, why did your grandmother hate her so much?”
A small smile came to Ellie's lips. “It’s because of a very, very old family grudge. You see, my grandfather’s mother gave him her engagement ring to give to my grandmother. As the eldest child, Marietta had been expecting to get it. After that, she did everything she could to break up the two of them. My grandmother never forgave her for interfering with their relationship. I can't say I blame her. The two of them have been fighting ever since, and I don't think that it’s a rift that will be healed anytime soon.”
“It must have caused a rift between Marietta and her brother as well,” Russell mused.
“I think it did. Arthur stayed in contact with his sister, but didn't speak to her very often. I think when he called her for help with the pizzeria, he was reluctant to admit it to his wife because he was too proud. Neither of them would have liked the thought of going to her for help, but in the end, she did come through for him, and he did follow up with his promise to put her in the will. Deep down, they were loyal to each other, even though they had issues on the surface.”
“If only he had told your grandmother about the will, all of this could have been avoided,” Russell said shaking his head. “We should promise each other now, that we will never keep secrets of that magnitude from each other.”
�
��Agreed,” Ellie said, taking his hand. They were sitting together at the Pacelli house, sharing a plate of fresh cookies that her grandmother had made. Bunny was between them on the couch, and they could hear Marlowe singing to herself in the other room. Ellie was happy. She was surrounded by those that she loved, and she knew that whatever happened in the future, she would have someone at her side. She and Russell would face the world together.
Pretzel Pizza Murder Page 6
