“No time,” Ellie called back, one foot out the door. “I’ll just grab a slice of pizza at work or something.”
She hurried to the store to buy all of the supplies that she thought she’d need. On her way to the pizzeria, she called a repair company for the broken neon sign in the front window and arranged to have it picked up that evening. It felt good to be making progress, even if it was only a few small things. By the end of the week the pizzeria would be squeaky clean. Then she could start focusing on other things—like improving the employees’ work ethic.
Just one small step at a time, she told herself as she got out of the car and started toward the pizzeria’s employee entrance. In no time at all, Papa Pacelli’s will be a place where people actually want to eat.
Her steps faltered as she neared the back entrance when she saw someone sitting, slouched, against the door. Kittiport didn’t have much of a homeless population as far as she knew, but there was a bar just a block away. Had someone passed out here, drunk, the night before and slept most of the day away?
“Excuse me,” she called, approaching the figure cautiously. “Is everything okay? This is a business; you really shouldn’t be—”
She broke off when she spotted the blood spatter on the brick wall behind the figure. She took one more hesitant step closer, leaning down to look at his face, certain that she recognized something about the person.
When she saw the open, blank hazel eyes, and the dark red stain on the front of his button-down shirt, she dropped her armful of cleaning chemicals and stumbled backwards, screaming. It was Ben, and he was very, very dead.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Calm down, ma’am, I just need you to go over your date with me one more time,” asked the sheriff, a man about her age, with short brown hair and the tanned skin of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. He tapped his notepad with his pen then frowned, rubbing his hand across his beard and mustache as he thought. “You said you last saw him at about eleven o’clock last night?”
“Yes.” Ellie sniffed, wiping her nose with a tissue that a younger female deputy had given her. “We said goodbye at my car, then he left and I drove straight home.”
She was a mess, and she knew it, but she couldn’t seem to care. Her brain kept replaying the image of Ben’s lifeless body slouched against the pizzeria’s back door. She had already called everyone scheduled to work today and told them to take the day off. The restaurant was crawling with police and forensic teams, and there was no way they would be able to open.
“Did he say anything during your meal to make you think he was in fear for his life? Did he mention being in trouble with anyone, or owing anyone money?”
“No, he seemed happy.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Ben was always a nice guy. This was the first time I’ve seen him in years, but I can’t imagine that he would have changed that much. He never had any enemies. I can’t imagine someone wanting to kill him.”
“Exactly how long have you known Mr. Elkton?” he asked. A frown creased his forehead. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around before.”
“We were friends when we were kids, and dated for a while in high school,” she explained. “I used to live here, but moved away in my junior year. Last night was the first time we’d seen each other in over twenty years.”
She realized with a chill that she was the stranger here. Everyone else at the crime scene seemed to know each other. The young deputy who had given her the tissues was chatting casually with a member of the forensics team. Another deputy was on his way over to the table where she and the sheriff were sitting, and greeted the sheriff by name.
“Russ, we’re taking the body to the coroner’s office. Is there anything you need before I go?”
“No, I think I’m about done here, Liam. I’ll join you shortly.”
“All right. Oh, Bethany found these crushed underneath the body.” The deputy put a pair of Polaroid photos on the table in front of Russ. “They’ve been taken in as evidence, but I thought you might want to ask Ms. Pacelli if she knows anything about them.”
The sheriff looked down at the photo, then slid it across the table to Ellie as his friend walked away. “Any idea why Ben would be hanging around outside the pizzeria with flowers? Did you have plans to meet here this morning?”
She looked down at the photos and felt her breath catch as another wave of shock and grief washed over her. One of the photos was of a beautiful red rose, the petals crushed and falling off. The other was a note: I had a really nice time. I can’t wait for Sunday.
“No. He… he knew I was going to come in before anyone else to clean. He must have been planning to leave them for me as a surprise.” She gazed out the window. It was a deceptively beautiful day. The ocean was just visible down the street, with the sun glinting off the gently rolling waves. None of it felt real. Was it possible that she was still sleeping, and all of this was some kind of terrible nightmare?
“What was supposed to happen Sunday?” the sheriff asked, jolting her back to reality.
“We had another date planned,” she told him.
He nodded and made a note with his pen. “Well, I think that’s all for now. Here’s my card, Ms. Pacelli. If you remember anything else, please don’t hesitate to give me a call. I mean it; day or night. I want to get this crime solved. People just don’t get murdered in Kittiport, and Ben was a friend. I’m taking this one personally.”
His eyes, a stormy grey, glinted with cold determination as he handed her his card. She glanced down to read it. Russell Ward, Sheriff. When she looked up, he was gone.
Ellie hung around the pizzeria talking to the young female deputy, who introduced herself as Bethany, while the forensics team finished up with their work. She learned that Bethany had just been hired on as a deputy two weeks before, although she had dreamed of working in law enforcement her whole life.
“I’m terrified of making a mistake,” she admitted once they got to talking.
“I know the feeling,” Ellie said. “At least you have had the training you need to do your job well. I don’t know the first thing about running a pizza place.”
She was glad for the conversation. It kept her from thinking of the gruesome scene behind the pizzeria. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with the rest of the day—somehow she didn’t think she would feel like scrubbing grease off the stoves with Ben’s death still so fresh in her mind—but it didn’t feel right to leave the pizzeria in the care of strangers.
“I used to love this place,” Bethany mused quietly, startling Ellie, who had been eyeballing some dust bunnies behind the soda fridge.
“Really?” she asked. The other woman nodded.
“My friends and I came here to eat a couple times a week after school. Of course, that was years ago, before it started going downhill.” She blushed, and backpedaled quickly. “I just meant… well…”
“I know what you mean,” Ellie assured her. “I never actually saw this place when it was doing well, but I know that things really started going downhill about two years ago when my grandfather officially retired from managing it. I’m hoping to fix it up while I’m here.”
“I hope you succeed,” Bethany said earnestly. “It’s always sad to see old businesses like this fall into disrepair. At least the pizza is still good, when it isn’t already cold by the time it gets to my door, that is.”
Ellie frowned. She would definitely have to tighten things up when it came to the pizzeria’s employees. In such a small town as Kittiport, there was absolutely no excuse for pizzas to get delivered cold.
“I hope you’ll give this place another chance, once I’ve made some changes,” she said to the deputy.
“Oh, I will,” the other woman assured her. “And I think you’ll find that a lot of people remember Papa Pacelli’s fondly, especially those of us that grew up with it being the best pizza place in town. You’ll have plenty of support from us locals.”
Ellie winced, but quickly covered it up
with a smile. She wanted to point out that she was a local too—she had grown up just down the street, after all. But she knew that after having been gone for over half her life, it would take a while for the residents of Kittiport to accept her again… especially now that her return had been punctuated with the first real murder that the town had seen in years.
CHAPTER SIX
Ellie spent the rest of the day at home helping her grandmother rearrange the kitchen and occasionally depositing a treat in Marlowe’s cage in an effort to befriend the intimidating bird. Bunny trailed along behind her wherever she went, seeming to sense that her owner was emotionally fragile.
While she would have liked to continue her moping the next day, she knew that the pizzeria wasn’t going to clean itself. The sign repairers had picked up the neon sign the evening before, but that was only one small thing on the list of improvements she had planned to make that week.
“At least scrubbing the walls should take my mind off of poor Ben,” she sighed as she parked her car behind the pizzeria. She was relieved to see that there were no bodies waiting for her at the door this morning. Finding Ben’s body had shocked her deeply, and she didn’t know if she would ever really get over it. It had been the worst experience of her life, and she had had a very bad year.
With only an hour before Xavier arrived to open the pizzeria, Ellie got to work. She began by sweeping and mopping both the kitchen and dining room floors, spending extra time waxing the wood flooring until it shone. The cleaning solution left a crisp, clean citrus scent in the air, which was indisputably better than the stale, greasy smell the place had had before.
By the time she had finished with the floors, Xavier had arrived, along with another employee whom Ellie hadn’t met yet. The young woman with bushy brown hair and startlingly green eyes introduced herself as Clara.
“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Pacelli,” she said, giving the older woman an enthusiastic handshake. “It’s cool that you’re taking over the store.”
Ellie grinned, an expression that faded when she saw Xavier’s face. He was glaring at them angrily, and when he saw her looking at him he turned and stomped back into the kitchen. Clara followed her gaze with a worried expression.
“He’s been in a bad mood ever since Ann—your grandmother, sorry, she told us to call her by her first name—spoke to us about you taking over the business,” she explained. “I think he’s just upset that he won’t get to be the head honcho anymore. Your grandfather just sort of let him do his own thing once he hired him.”
“I’m starting to realize that,” Ellie said. “He doesn’t seem to like me very much.”
“Oh, he’ll come around. You seem perfectly nice to me.” Clara beamed at her. “Now, do you need any help? Xavier’s on cooking duty today, so I don’t have anything to do until someone comes in or we get an order for delivery.”
“Sure. Grab a spray bottle and some paper towels and start cleaning off the tables, booths, and chairs. Some of them are a bit sticky. I’m going to get to work on cleaning the walls and getting the cobwebs out of the corners. If you get done with the tables before we get a customer, I’d appreciate some help in dusting off the light fixtures and vents.”
Between the two of them they managed to scrub nearly every inch of the dining room before Ellie decided to call it a day. The eating area, which had been grungy the day before, now shone.
“Wow,” Clara said in an impressed tone. “It looks almost brand-new. I don’t think the dining area has ever been this clean since I started working here.”
“Well, let’s try to keep it this way,” Ellie said. “It should be a lot easier to maintain now that we’ve got it looking good. I’m sure we’ll end up getting more sit-down customers too, since they’ll have a clean place to sit for once.”
The two of them retreated to the kitchen to wash up. Ellie’s hands were raw from spending hours using harsh chemicals to clean. She had forgotten to buy gloves, and was paying for it now. She was also hungry, and realized she had no idea how to make herself food at the pizzeria.
“We usually share a pizza,” Clara explained when she asked about it. “We each put whatever toppings we want on our portion, but you can also make a personal pizza if you want.”
“I’m happy to share a pizza with you guys,” Ellie said. “I want to help out and learn how everything works.”
Xavier grudgingly showed her how they made the pizza dough. He poured the ingredients in an automatic mixer, then to her surprise went and got a ball of already-made pizza dough out of the fridge.
“We aren’t going to use the fresh stuff?” she asked.
“You gotta let the dough sit in the fridge for a couple of days,” he told her. “It cooks better that way. Whenever we use up any dough, we have to make more to replace it. The balls farthest to the left in the fridge are the newest, see?”
She peered into the fridge and nodded. It looked like she would have to do some research on how to cook pizza if she wanted to be able to run this restaurant well.
“What about sitting in the fridge makes the dough better?” she asked.
Xavier shrugged. “Something to do with the yeast or something. I just follow the instructions on the recipe.”
He handed her a very old, laminated, yellow sheet of paper with a handwritten recipe. She recognized the handwriting from going through her grandfather’s files in his study. The sight brought a smile to her face. She was about to eat a pizza made from the very same recipe that he had come up with all those years ago.
After Xavier kneaded and spun the blob of dough into a mostly round shape, he put it into one of the constantly running ovens and told Clara to get whatever toppings she wanted out of the fridge. When the pizza dough came out of the oven, looking much less like dough and more like a real pizza crust, the three of them spent a few minutes slathering it with sauce, and covering it with cheese and bits of onion, mushrooms, green peppers, and bacon. It went back in the oven to cook for a few more minutes, then at last their masterpiece was done.
“Oh my goodness,” Ellie said, wiping a straggling string of cheese off her lip. “This is the best pizza I’ve ever had.”
Clara chuckled, and Xavier just smirked. The three of them were sitting around a small table tucked into the back corner of the kitchen, with the pizza on a tray in front of them. Ellie grabbed a second piece before she even finished her first.
The cheese was melted and goopy, the crust was perfectly cooked and just bursting with flavor, and the sauce—which Ellie discovered was yet another original recipe of her grandfather’s—was smooth and delicious, with the perfect amount of sweetness. Even though she burned her tongue on it more than once, Ellie couldn’t stop herself from wolfing it down. Papa Pacelli’s has its fair share of problems, she thought. But the quality of food sure isn’t one of them.
She had just finished with her second piece and was trying to decide whether or not she would be able to finish a third when she heard the bell in the dining room jingle, announcing the presence of a customer. Clara jumped up and waved a hand to indicate that the other two should continue eating. She hurried out of the kitchen—only to return a moment later.
“It’s not a customer,” she said. “It’s someone wanting to talk to you, Ms. Pacelli.”
Confused and curious, Ellie wiped her face and stood up. “Thanks for coming to get me, Clara. Feel free to sit back down and finish your meal.”
She left the kitchen, wondering if the sheriff or one of his deputies had decided to stop by to ask her some more questions. Instead of a frowning official, she was confronted with a woman who gave a squeal of joy and hurried around the counter to envelop her in a crushing hug.
“Ellie! I couldn’t believe my ears when James told me you were back.”
“What—Shannon? I can’t breathe—”
The other woman released her and took a step back, wearing an embarrassed grin. “Sorry. I’m just so excited to see you.”
“It’s nice to
see you, too,” Ellie said, returning the grin when she had finally caught her breath. She looked at the woman who had been her best friend growing up. Her friend had gained a few pounds, and her light brown hair was shorter now, but otherwise she looked almost the same as she always had. “You look good.”
“Thanks. So do you. The way James was talking, I was expecting to find you a mess.”
“Who’s James?” Ellie asked.
“He’s my husband, silly. I’m Shannon Ward now.”
Ward. Ellie frowned, trying to figure out why the name sounded so familiar. Suddenly she remembered the sheriff’s card. “Is he related to Russell Ward by any chance? The sheriff?”
“Yep. Russ is his brother. He’s a great guy—came over for dinner last night like he does every week. I heard about Ben, by the way. It’s terrible.”
“Yes, it is,” Ellie agreed. “Let’s sit down. Do you want a slice of pizza? We have a lot to catch up on.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Reconnecting with her friend gave Ellie the boost that she needed to get through the week. Shannon stopped in the pizzeria almost every day to tell her a new story about some mutual friend they had known back in grade school, or bring her a pastry from one of the small shops around town. She was also Ellie’s biggest cheerleader—more than any of the employees, she seemed to notice the daily improvement of the restaurant. With the neon sign repaired and the kitchen and dining area spic and span at last, Papa Pacelli’s really did look like an entirely new restaurant by the time the weekend rolled around.
Ellie was glad for the time off, but was surprised to find that she wasn’t dreading returning to the pizzeria on Monday. Besides spending her time cleaning, she had also learned how to make the pizzas and salads that the restaurant served, and was eager to try her hand at making a few pizzas herself. She already had an idea for a way to boost the employee morale during the week, and was planning on spending the next few days finessing it.
Pall Bearers and Pepperoni: Book 1 in The Papa Pacelli's Pizzeria Series Page 3
