Killer Crust (A Pizza Lovers Mystery)

by Chris Cavender

  He just laughed ruefully. “If it makes you feel better saying it, go right on believing it. Surely that’s all you uncovered. It hasn’t been that long since we last spoke.”

  “You might want to talk to Jeff and Sandy from Asheville,” I admitted, though it pained me to do it. “It’s pretty clear they have something they want to tell you, but you’re probably going to have to drag it out of them.”

  “Any idea about what it might be concerning?”

  “All I can say for sure is that it has to be about Luigi. Sorry, we tried to find out more,” I said, “but that’s all we could get.”

  Kevin finished his last note in his booklet, and then looked at us in turn. “You’ve both done phenomenally well today. If I could, I’d put you on the short-term payroll.”

  “Forget the money. I want my own badge,” Maddy said with a grin.

  Kevin laughed dryly. “Not on your life. Now go ahead. You can ask me three more questions tonight.”

  “That is pizza sauce, right?” I asked as I pointed to the stain.

  “It is. We’re going to analyze all of the sauces of the pizzas submitted since that was really the only thing you were allowed to use that’s unique to each pizzeria, but we’re pretty sure which pizza it came off of.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Have you managed to eliminate any suspects yet?”

  “We’re working on it. What’s your suspect list look like?”

  “It’s shorter than yours, I know that.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Neither one of our names are on it,” Maddy said, laughing.

  “I meant besides the two of you.”

  It was a fair question. “So far, we’ve got Kenny and Anna from Charlotte, the twins from Raleigh, Jeff and Sandy from Asheville, Jack Acre, Frank Vincent, and a woman named Mrs. Ford, whoever she might be.”

  Kevin opened his notebook, flipped through several pages, and then read from it, “Helen Ford, owner of Flippin’ Great Pizza in Greensboro. She was here at the complex until the afternoon session started, checked out, and headed for home.”

  “Wow, that’s thorough,” I said. “How do you know that she’s still not in Timber Ridge? Just because she’s not staying here doesn’t mean that she actually left.”

  “Good point. She received a speeding ticket just outside Hickory at four thirty-nine. She didn’t have time to dose the pizza and drive that far, either up or back. She’s in the clear.”

  “Thanks. It’s nice to be able to actually pare ours down,” I said.

  “You’ve still got a pretty long list. Do you have motives for all of them yet?”

  “We have a few,” I admitted, “but we aren’t ready to share them just yet. We’re still digging into it, and you know better than anyone that these things take time.”

  “Fair enough,” the police chief said as he started for the door.

  “By the way, just out of curiosity, which pizza had the poison on it? After all, we’re entitled to one more question, aren’t we?” I asked, almost as an afterthought as we all started to leave the greenroom.

  “Actually, that’s one of the reasons I was looking for the two of you. I hate to have to tell you this, but the doctored slice and the one jammed down Luigi’s throat after he was dead were both slices from one of your pizzas.”

  That was just about the worst thing he could have said to us. When word got out around town, and I knew that it would, sooner rather than later, a great many fingers would be pointing in our direction.

  “We almost ate some of that pizza ourselves,” Maddy said loudly.

  “Well then, all I can say is that you might have dodged a bullet by skipping it,” Kevin said.

  “You do know that we’re not that stupid, right?” I asked. “If we were going to poison Luigi, we never would have used any of our own slices.”

  “Unless you were trying to be too clever to mislead me,” the police chief said.

  “You don’t believe that for one second, do you?” I asked him.

  He shook his head. “No, not really. Just be careful, okay? It’s pretty clear that someone’s trying to set you up and pin this murder on you.”

  “Like pulling our power cord, only a thousand times worse,” Maddy said.

  “What’s this about a cord?” the police chief asked, clearly interested in her comment.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” I explained. “The cord to our oven was pulled out of the outlet during the first round.”

  “It was no accident,” Maddy insisted. “Somebody wanted us to fail.”

  The chief just shook his head. “No offense, but killing your chances to win a contest and killing the sponsor are two entirely different things.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more,” I said. “That’s why I didn’t mention it.”

  Kevin thought for a few seconds, and then said, “If anything like that happens again, even if it doesn’t seem related directly to the murder investigation, let me know about it, okay?”

  “Why?” I asked, curious about why it would matter to him.

  “Somebody wanted to get rid of Luigi, and they succeeded admirably. If they perceive the two of you as a threat, either in the contest or to their freedom, they might take action again.”

  “Don’t worry about us. We’re already watching our backs,” I said. I thought about telling him that I’d moved into Maddy’s room so we could watch over each other, but I didn’t want him to think that I was overreacting. He might ask us to stop our investigation, and that was something neither Maddy nor I was willing to do. “Thanks for the updates, Chief.”

  “Thank you. Now if you two ladies will excuse me, I’ve got a few more interviews to carry out before my night’s over.”

  “Is there any chance that we can tag along with you?” Maddy asked.

  “What do you think?” Kevin asked her with a grin.

  “Hey, it never hurts for a girl to ask.”

  I smiled. “Just ignore her. Good hunting tonight.”

  “You, too. And I meant what I said. Don’t go splitting up and heading off digging on your own. Together, you two make a pretty formidable team.”

  “Hey, we’re not all that shabby when we’re apart,” Maddy said.

  “No, but sometimes the whole is greater than the components that make it up.”

  I whistled. “Wow, a police chief and a philosopher.”

  “Tonight it’s a ‘buy one, get one free’ sale.”

  After he was gone, Maddy said, “You didn’t tell him about our new roommate arrangement. Is there any reason in particular why you decided to hold that back?”

  “I felt silly saying it after assuring him that we could take care of ourselves. I didn’t want to send any mixed messages. Was I wrong not to tell him?”

  “Honestly, I don’t even want Gina to know,” Maddy said.

  That was an odd comment from her. “Why not?”

  “The fewer people who know what we’re up to, the better. If we tell Gina, the room will open up again, and then her entire staff will know where we are. Let’s just keep this between the two of us for now.”

  “Do you honestly believe that someone on her staff might be the murderer?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t say it’s all that likely, but I’m not sure there’s any reason to tempt fate by spreading the news that we’re both in the same room. We can tell Bob and David, but no one else should know.”

  “Heck, let’s keep them in the dark, too,” I said. “It should be on a need-to-know basis, and I don’t think it should matter to either one of them.”

  “And what they don’t know won’t hurt them,” Maddy crowed. “I like the way you think, Sis. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “Honest to goodness, I think I might have been hanging around too much with you lately,” I said with a smile.

  “I knew there was a reason you were getting so much cooler to spend time with,” she said. “That begs the question, though. What do we do next?”
/>   “I’ll let you know as soon as I think of it.”

  Chapter 10

  In ten minutes, I had an idea for another avenue of inquiry, but we couldn’t pursue it until the next day. “I might just have something,” I told Maddy as we headed back to the lobby through the auditorium.

  “What is it? You’ve certainly got my attention, because I haven’t been able to come up with anything on my own.”

  “It means getting up early tomorrow. I want to talk to the maids who work on our floor before they get started. If anyone’s got scuttlebutt around here, it’s got to be them. Think about how much they must know about all of us after cleaning our rooms. Can you imagine what they must find just taking out the trash every day?”

  “Why is this line of questioning suddenly making me so uncomfortable ?” she asked.

  “You don’t have a problem talking with the cleaning crews, do you?”

  Maddy shook her head. “Are you kidding? I admire them now more than ever. I’m just afraid what they might have learned dealing with my trash cans even after just one night.”

  “Hopefully no one’s asked them about the two of us, so our secrets should be safe with them,” I replied. “That covers part of tomorrow morning, but it still leaves us with an hour tonight, even if we plan to get to sleep at a decent hour. Since the competition doesn’t start until tomorrow morning, we’ll have plenty of time to snoop before then if we get up early enough, but I hate to let an opportunity just pass us by. Who would you like to talk to next?”

  “That depends,” she answered.

  “On what?”

  “If I believed for one second that there was the slightest chance either one of them would tell us the truth. I’m not ashamed to admit that I don’t trust the Raleigh twins. There was nothing innocent about that exchange of something we saw earlier, and I’d love to get to the bottom of it.”

  “Do you really think they were paying someone off?” I asked.

  “I do, though I can’t prove it.”

  “I’d love to find more out about the man in the shadows,” I admitted.

  “Me, too, but I doubt the twins will tell us anything useful, and we can’t just go around accusing people of taking gifts from the twins without any reason to suspect them.”

  “Why not?” I asked with a smile.

  “Just come out and ask him about it? I’m assuming we’re both talking about Jack Acre, right? As the new sole judge, isn’t he the next logical choice in line? If the twins found out what Kenny had done with Luigi, what would keep them from trying to replicate it with Jack, since he’s running things now?”

  “From what we’ve learned about the duo so far, it makes perfect sense that they’d try to bribe Acre,” I agreed. “I’ve been thinking, do we really have to admit that we didn’t get all that good a look at him this evening?”

  “No, I suppose not. It might backfire on us, though. After all, now that he’s suddenly the judge we have to please, we need to watch our step, since this contest has never even made an effort to be fair by making it all blind taste-testing.”

  “Why is that, do you suppose?” Maddy asked. “Wouldn’t that have at least smacked more of fairness than the way they’re running this thing now?”

  “If the contest was never meant to be anything but crooked, they’ll need to know which way to throw it, wouldn’t they?”

  She nodded. “I wish that we’d asked for a blind-tasting provision in the contract you signed before we agreed to do this.”

  “You’re not second-guessing me, are you?” I asked.

  “Not a chance. If you hadn’t signed just about anything Luigi put in front of you, I would have been furious with you. This was just too good an opportunity to pass up.”

  “Even if it’s still rigged?”

  Maddy shrugged. “Hey, like the man said, even if they’re cheating, it’s still the only game in town.”

  “I have a feeling the only two people winning tomorrow are Greg and Josh,” I said. “We probably should have gone skiing with them and dropped out of this competition from the start.”

  She hugged my briefly. “Well, that’s spilled milk now. Let’s go tackle Jack and see what he has to say for himself.”

  “Do you have a second?” I asked Jack Acre as he opened his hotel room door.

  “That depends. Is this about the contest?” Jack asked. His trousers were wrinkled, I could see through the open door that his suit jacket was draped over a chair, and his shoes were haphazardly slung near the bed. It was clear that he’d had a long evening so far, and it probably wasn’t going to get any shorter for him, either. “I don’t feel comfortable discussing anything with the two of you while the other contestants are absent.”

  “I understand,” I said. “This will only take a second. My sister and I were just wondering what the twins gave you earlier in the parking lot.”

  Acre took a second to react, and then his puzzled face quickly shifted into an angry one. “What are you talking about?”

  “This evening. The envelope in the parking lot with the twins from Raleigh. We saw the entire thing,” Maddy said.

  “I don’t know what you think you saw, but I can assure you that I’ve been too busy trying to take over for Luigi to have time to meet with anyone who doesn’t work for me.”

  “You mean the dough company, right?” I asked.

  “Of course that’s what I meant. Now I must insist that you go. This conversation is entirely inappropriate.”

  “Don’t worry. We’re leaving,” Maddy said, and she let us be forced out into the hallway.

  “What was that all about?” I asked her. “You gave up awfully fast in there. Are you really afraid that we might not win if we get him mad?”

  “You’re kidding, right? Tell me that you saw it, too,” she said excitedly as we moved back down the hall.

  “See what? You’ve lost me.” Whatever Maddy had noticed I’d missed completely. That was just one reason the two of us made such a good team. It was tough to get something past both of us when we were working together.

  “His shoes,” Maddy explained. “The soles were as slick as a skating rink.”

  “Did you happen to see any dirt on them?” I asked.

  “No,” she admitted, “but I’ve got a feeling that if we go over to where the mystery man was standing when we saw him talking to the twins, we might be able to check the prints and see if it was really him.”

  “Good spot. We’ll do that first thing tomorrow morning,” I said, proud that my sister had spotted something that I’d missed.

  “Eleanor, we can’t wait until then,” Maddy said.

  “Well, the parking lot may be bright, but we’re going to have a tough time seeing anything at all in the shadows.”

  “That’s why we’re calling Hank White. I’m willing to bet that he owns a serious flashlight with the job he has. What do you say? Are you up for it?”

  “Let me give him a call,” I said. At first he didn’t pick up, and when he finally did, he was a little out of breath.

  “Is this a bad time?” I asked. Why did my calls lately always seem to interrupt someone?

  “No, I’m good. What’s up?”

  “Maddy and I need a big flashlight, the industrial-strength kind that doubles as a club. Can you help us out?”

  “Absolutely. I’ve got one in my trunk. Do you mind if I ask what it’s for?”

  What could it hurt to tell him? “We want to check out an area in the far parking lot. We saw something there a while ago, and we want to see if we can find any evidence of what happened.”

  “It sounds intriguing,” he said. “You can count me in.”

  That was a little awkward. “Actually, we don’t need an escort. We just need your flashlight.”

  “Then it’s your lucky day. You’re getting two for the price of one. Give me three minutes and I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

  “Okay,” I said, and then hung up.

  Maddy asked, “What was that a
ll about? Why on earth does it take that long to ask someone for a flashlight?” She paused, and then added with a frown, “Don’t tell me. He wants to come with us, doesn’t he?”

  I nodded. “Gina must have asked him to keep an eye on us, and I couldn’t just say no. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Why not? The more, the merrier,” Maddy said.

  Two minutes later we were in the lobby, but there was no sign of Hank yet. How long did it take him to retrieve his flashlight from his vehicle? Or maybe he’d decided to go look around a little by himself.

  The only problem with that was that I hadn’t told him what we were looking for. He’d have to check with us before he started nosing around, and then we’d all go hunting for footprints together.

  Sure enough, I looked outside and saw him heading straight for us in the bright lights of the parking area. “Come on, Maddy, let’s go meet him out there. Clearly he didn’t wait for us.”

  She whistled softly. “What good did he possibly think that he could do? He doesn’t even know what he’s looking for.”

  “True,” I said as we got closer. A crazy thought just struck me. “What if Hank’s somehow involved in this whole thing?”

  “The murder?” she asked. “Why would he want to kill Luigi?”

  “I don’t know, but we know for a fact that his key was coded into that room,” I said.

  “Don’t forget. Ours was, too,” my sister reminded me. “But that doesn’t mean that we killed Luigi, even if our pizza was used as a murder weapon.”

  When we got close enough to him, I asked Hank, “Why didn’t you wait for us?”

  “That’s near where my car is parked. Besides, I figured if I looked around a little myself, I might be able to keep you two out of trouble,” he admitted.

  “Good luck with that,” Maddy said. “Better men than you have tried and failed before, and I’m sure they will again.”

  “Well, it would have helped to know exactly what I was looking for,” Hank said. “I’ve just been wandering around, but I didn’t see anything that looked out of place to me.”

  “That’s funny, because you were closer than you ever realized,” I said. “May I?” I asked as I held my hand out for the flashlight.