Killer Crust (A Pizza Lovers Mystery)

by Chris Cavender

  “She has allergies,” I said, remembering Sandy’s sneezes on stage.

  “I still think they’ve been fighting,” Helen said, sticking to her guns.

  “What about the twins?” I asked.

  “Those boys from Raleigh are heavy drinkers, and they smoke by the window even though it’s not allowed. It’s foolish of them to try to mask it with air freshener, because I can smell it in a second when I walk in, but they are guests of the management, so there is nothing I can do but have the entire room steam-cleaned once they are gone.”

  “Why are they sharing the same room?” I asked, curious about that development, even though Maddy and I were doing the same thing.

  “It was their request, that’s all I know.”

  “And what about the two contestants from Charlotte?” Maddy asked.

  Helen shrugged as she said, “They have separate rooms, but only one bed has been used while they’ve been here.”

  I tried to imagine Kenny and Anna together that way, but I just couldn’t wrap my mind around it. “Are you sure about that?”

  “I’m pretty sure,” she said simply. “Just like I know that you two are sharing one room yourselves.”

  “I thought it might be prudent if we stayed together since there was a murder here,” I said. “But how did you know?”

  Helen said, “I could make something up and tell you that it is maid’s intuition, but this morning the kitchen staff told me that you’d ordered enough food for two people, but had it all delivered to the same place.”

  “We could have spent the night apart and breakfasted together,” Maddy said, clearly amused by Helen’s explanation.

  “You could have, but then why would you need extra towels as well? The front desk noted that you requested them earlier this morning.”

  “I didn’t. Did you?” I asked as I turned to Maddy.

  My sister nodded as she explained, “I didn’t even think about that. Yes, while you were in the shower I called downstairs.” She turned to Helen and said, “We’d appreciate it if you’d keep that fact under wraps for now. We’re trying to present as narrow a target as we can while we’re here.”

  “Completely understandable, given what’s happened recently. I’ll have a word with Steven, so no one needs to know.”

  I wasn’t sure if Steven was the chef or the room service attendant, but it didn’t matter. I knew that Helen would indeed make sure that our secret was safe.

  “Is there anything else I can help you with?” she asked.

  “No, nothing I can think of.” I took a paper napkin from one of the shelves and jotted my cell phone number down. “If anything comes up, will you call me?”

  She tucked it away in her apron. “I will.” Almost as an afterthought, she smiled slightly as she added, “I’ll be in for that pizza soon, too.”

  I laughed easily. “I’ll be disappointed if you don’t.” I dug into my pocket for my wallet, but I saw that she was frowning as I did it, so I quickly explained, “Helen, you’ve done us a real service answering all of our questions so frankly—whether you were ordered to or not—and we want to reward you for it.”

  “Answers for you are free, so I won’t take money for them,” she said, and then added with a grin, “However if you’re pleased with your maid service at the end of your stay, I’d suggest you might show it at that time by telling the management that you enjoyed your visit here. We are not expecting, nor will we accept, a tip from you, but I appreciate you making the offer. I’m sorry, but that’s an order I will not disobey.”

  I knew that Gina was just trying to make it a nice stay for us, but I couldn’t let it go at that. Then again, the last thing I wanted to do was to get Helen in trouble with her big boss. I thought of a solution though, and acted on it instantly. “That’s fine, but you’ll just have to accept this as my thanks instead.”

  I hugged her briefly, and was happy when she returned it.

  Maddy just laughed at us both. “Don’t let her fool you, Helen. She knows that she just got off cheap. My sister is good for more than that.”

  Helen just smiled. “Do you really think so? I myself consider it payment in full.” She got a mischievous look on her face, and then said, “Now you’d both better scat so you won’t be late for the contest. I’m pulling for you today.”

  “Does that mean that you weren’t yesterday?” Maddy asked her with a grin.

  “Let’s just say that the staff on this floor was split on who they were pulling for the night before the contest got started, but we’re all behind you now.”

  “Why the change of heart?” I asked.

  “You have Gina’s backing, we’ve met the other contestants up close and personal now, so that’s all we need to know. We’re all on your side.”

  “As much as I appreciate hearing it, it’s not going to do anything to help us win the contest,” I said.

  “Don’t sell our support short. You’d be amazed by what good wishes and prayers can do,” Helen answered.

  As Maddy and I turned toward the elevator to go to the auditorium, I found myself hoping that it was true.

  My sister pushed the down button again. “Where is that elevator? We’re going to be late if it doesn’t get here soon.”

  “We can’t wait any longer. Let’s take the stairs,” I said. “It’s not that far.”

  Maddy wasn’t a huge fan of stairs in general if an elevator was available, but after watching the display stay frozen on the main floor for another full minute, she finally gave in. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  As we hurried down the steps, I put a hand on her shoulder. “Slow down, we’ve still got plenty of time.”

  Maddy slowed her pace, and then she said, “It’s odd that the elevator chose that moment to get stuck, isn’t it?”

  I considered it, and then said, “There are coincidences in this world, whether we like them or not.”

  “I’m just saying. Think how bad it would have been if we’d gotten trapped between floors on that thing? The rules are pretty specific. Anybody not at their station at the appointed time is automatically disqualified.”

  “You could be right at that,” I said as we finally got to the main floor door.

  I pushed it easily, expecting it to swing open for us, but it wouldn’t budge.

  It appeared that someone had jammed the door, and we weren’t going to make it to the stage in time after all.

  Chapter 12

  “Push harder,” Maddy said as I hit the release latch again.

  “I’m shoving the handle as hard as I can,” I said. “It’s stuck.”

  “What are we going to do?” she asked. “Even if we go back up to the second floor, we still won’t be able to get down the stuck elevator. This is the only way out.”

  “Start pounding,” I said as I banged on the solid metal door with both fists.

  “Help!” I shouted, and Maddy soon joined me. Instead of asking for help like I was though, she started screaming, “Fire!”

  “What are you doing?” I asked as I caught my breath, but continued to pound.

  “I read somewhere that if you’re in trouble you should shout ‘fire’ instead of ‘help.’ People are more likely to respond.”

  “By pulling the alarm, maybe,” I said. “Keep pounding.”

  We both hammered at the door, and I was about to give up when I realized something. I stopped, pulled out my cell phone, and called Hank’s number.

  “Are you on the main floor?” I asked the second he answered.

  “Where are you two? They’re about to begin.”

  “The elevator’s jammed, and someone’s jimmied the door in the stairwell so we can’t get out. We’re trapped in here.”

  “I’m on it,” he said, and hung up before I could say another word.

  In less than a minute, I heard someone working at the door from the other side. After the briefest of pauses, the door swung open suddenly. “Someone jammed a folding chair under the handle,” he said. “Go.”r />
  “Thanks,” I said as Maddy and I took off toward the auditorium.

  We broke through the doors and raced for the stage. I was in front, and the second Maddy’s back foot hit the stage, the clock ticked down to 00:00. Thank goodness I was two steps ahead of her.

  “Cutting it kind of close, weren’t you?” Jack Acre asked from the podium. “We were about to disqualify you both.”

  I looked over at the twins and said, “Don’t look so disappointed that we made it.”

  “What are you talking about?” one of them said.

  “You know the answer to that question without even having to ask it,” Maddy answered.

  “You’ve both lost your minds,” the other twin replied. “I don’t know how we ended up being cast as villains in your lives, but honestly, neither one of you is all that interesting to us.”

  Everything suddenly got quiet, and I looked up to see Jack Acre quietly staring at us. After he knew that he had our attention, he turned to the crowd and said, “Contestants, today’s pizza is going to be deep dish, using our new dough formula guaranteed to give you the best, chewiest dough imaginable. I know that the folks from Chicago might disagree, but we think it’s the very best.”

  Clearly someone in back was from the Windy City, or maybe just a fan of the original deep dish pizza. They booed for a few seconds, and there was a smattering of claps spread throughout the room approving of the sentiment.

  Acre put the mike close to his mouth and said, “Thank you for your comments and applause, but we ask that you reserve your participation until we announce the winner for this part of the competition.” Acre reset the clock to ninety minutes, and then turned to us all and said, “Good luck.”

  I grabbed the dough from our small refrigerator while Maddy started working on the toppings. The deep dish we preferred making was heavy on green peppers, mushrooms, onions, two kinds of pepperoni, and three kinds of sausage. It was going to be a battle getting everything ready in time, and we didn’t have a moment to lose.

  I helped her out as the dough warmed up. I wished that Luigi had let us use our own recipes for the dough, since I’d come up with a pretty good one as I’d learned to make these pizzas for one of my eccentric customers, but I supposed that if he’d done that, it would have been too tough promoting his own types of dough to the audience and the rest of the world. Still, it was going to be tight time-wise. I checked the oven, made sure that it was warming up, and that it was still plugged in. We didn’t want any repeats of what had happened the day before, and I meant to keep an eye on it this time myself. Maddy was the star of this particular show with the deep dish, and I was going to do my best as her support.

  “What can I do?” I asked as she feverishly chopped on her board.

  “Start the fry pan and cook the sausage blend,” she ordered. I did as she asked, and then set it aside to cool. Without asking, I started sautéeing the mushrooms in butter, added the onion and pepper, and then gave everything a quick cook.

  “Done. What next?”

  “Make the cheese blend,” she said, and I took the cheeses we used for our deep dish and began grating it all at a fast pace, though still slow enough not to kill my knuckles. After that was finished, I glanced at the clock. “I have to get the dough ready.”

  “Go for it; I’m fine,” Maddy said.

  I knuckled the now-loosened dough into a round, and then made another one as a backup just in case the first one failed. That left one ball in the fridge, but barring a major catastrophe, we should be fine without it. After I had the dough spread out in the pan and had rimmed it all the way around, I reached for the cheese.

  “I’m going to start building,” I said.

  She just nodded, putting the finishing touches on the rest of her toppings.

  I added the cheese directly to the crust, then the cooked sausage and pepperoni. After that, a light dusting of Romano cheese touched everything. I kept building, adding the veggies and mushrooms I’d sautéed before, then the sauce, and finally our own blend of Romano and Parmesan cheese.

  “How’s it look?” I asked Maddy.

  “It couldn’t be any prettier,” she said.

  I slid it into the oven, relieved that it was still on and hot.

  “Whew, that was intense,” I said as I slid the spare crust back into the fridge. We wouldn’t need it after all. I took a moment to look at the other teams, and though the Asheville couple had barely beaten us to the oven, the Charlotte team was lagging, and the Raleigh team appeared to have fallen apart. The twins were arguing about the order of the toppings, and I could see a handful of spectators watching them raptly, as though they were watching a chess match.

  They finally agreed on their toppings, and ten seconds after they slid their pizza into the oven, the back doors burst open and Kevin Hurley planted himself in the aisle.

  “You all need to leave in a calm and orderly fashion right now,” Kevin announced loudly.

  “What’s going on, Sheriff?” Jack Acre asked from the judge’s table.

  “It’s Chief,” Kevin corrected him. “And I don’t have time to explain. Let’s go, people. Move. Now.”

  No one in the audience was exactly sure why they were leaving, but that voice didn’t leave any room for debate. As people started quickly filing out, Kevin gestured to a few other officers and motioned for them to keep the crowd moving.

  Nobody had left the stage yet, though.

  “I’m afraid you’re all going to have to leave as well,” Kevin said as he approached us.

  “But what about our pizzas?” I asked. “They’ll be ruined if we just leave them.”

  “I’m afraid we have a more important situation than that at the moment.” He motioned to one of the maintenance men in back and said, “Cut the power to the ovens, and then get out of here.”

  He nodded, and I saw the light go from red to dark on our oven.

  Kevin looked at us and said, “Let’s go! There’s been a bomb threat called in, and we have to assume that it’s serious.”

  I grabbed Maddy and we headed for the exit, but the aisles were still full when the fire alarm went off. If we’d been trapped in that stairway, I don’t know what Maddy and I would have done. I had to be sure and thank Hank once this was all over. David and Bob had lagged behind to wait for us, not knowing why we were all leaving but both looking concerned when they heard the fire alarm.

  “Is there a fire in the hotel?” David asked when we finally caught up with them.

  “No, but it might be a whole lot worse,” I said. “Someone called in a bomb threat to the complex.”

  “I doubt there’s really a bomb here,” Bob said as he looked around. “There rarely is.”

  “Do you want to hang around and find out the hard way?” I asked.

  “Come on. Let’s go,” Maddy said, taking her fiancé’s hand. “We don’t need any heroes today.”

  “But what about your pizza?” David asked. “I couldn’t believe how great it looked. Eleanor, it was a work of art.”

  “Thanks, but if we did it once, we can do it again,” I said. “It’s not even on my top-ten list of things that are important enough to save.”

  “Where do I rate?” he asked as we finally started making progress as we headed for the doors. “Did I crack the top ten?”

  “Barely,” I said as I tugged on him as well.

  Once we left the auditorium, I saw that many folks were exiting the building, and not just those who had been watching the competition. Gina was there by the main door along with Hank, ushering folks out in as orderly a manner as possible.

  “Is there anything we can do to help?” I asked Gina.

  “No, we’ve trained for this. I’m just sorry that we had to use it.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “I’m sure the complex will be fine.”

  “This can all be rebuilt,” Gina said. “But I won’t be able to forgive myself if anyone’s hurt. Hank has his staff checking every room for anyone dragging his
feet, but I hate to leave any part of my staff in the hotel any longer than I have to.”

  I didn’t have any encouraging words for her, since she was right on the money. If there was a bomb on the premises, it was hard to say how much damage it might do.

  I just hoped that everybody got out in time.

  It felt like forever, but just a bit over two hours later Kevin came outside and announced, “We’ve swept every building in the complex, and it’s all clean. You can return inside now in an orderly fashion. Sorry for the trouble.”

  There were shouts from the crowd wanting more information, but clearly the police chief wasn’t going to be giving any out. I doubted he knew anything more than what he’d already told us, anyway.

  I started toward Gina, but she was already inundated with guests demanding to check out immediately. The hotel was going to lose a fortune because of somebody’s stupid prank, but there was nothing that could be done about it now. I hoped that Kevin caught the idiot who called the threat in, and not just because of my ruined pizza. Flogging was too good for them, if you asked me.

  “What does this do to the contest?” David asked as we all walked back inside.

  “Well, we happened to overstock our veggies and toppings, so we should be fine. I can’t say the same for the other competitors, though. I imagine they’ll most likely just have to delay the competition.”

  I was wrong, though.

  Jack Acre met us at the foot of the stage and waited until all eight of the contestants were back together. Once we were, he said, “Okay, gang, sorry for the interruption, but we’re pressing on. If you’re low on any of your supplies, let me know; the restaurant has agreed to provide whatever you need.”

  “We’re actually going to continue?” Sandy asked. “What about the bomb threat?”

  “You heard the man. They searched everything and didn’t find a thing. We need to keep moving forward, but if anyone is afraid for their lives and wants to drop out of the competition, I completely understand.”

  It was clear that no one had the least bit of interest in quitting, though, not when we were all halfway to the final prize.