Unfortunately, it didn’t matter.
We were short fifty dollars—a pretty substantial amount in the general scheme of things—and I wasn’t about to leave the Slice until I knew exactly what had happened to the missing money. I trusted my three employees implicitly, but money is money, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep until I figured out what had happened.
They didn’t take the news very well.
“Could Maddy have borrowed it without telling you?” Greg asked.
“No, she always asks me first when she does that,” I said.
“We didn’t take it,” Josh said, just a little more defensively than I would have liked.
“I never said you did,” I said. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation for it, but I’m not leaving until I know what it is.”
“How about if I put fifty bucks in the till myself?” Josh asked.
“That depends on one thing,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Did you take fifty out?”
“You know I didn’t,” Josh said.
“Then it won’t work.” I chucked my keys to Greg. “Would you mind moving my car for me, after all? I might be here awhile.”
He took them, and then hesitated at the door.
Before he could say a word, I said, “Greg, I mean it. Just do as I ask, okay?”
He finally understood that I was in no mood to mess with. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and then turned to Josh. “Are you coming?”
“No, I’m going to wait right here until you get back,” he said.
After Greg was gone, Josh said, “Listen, I know you and my dad have had your share of troubles in the past, but if you need him, you should realize that he’ll come running and ask questions later.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I know that.”
“Just don’t wait too late to call him,” Josh said.
I grinned at him. “I appreciate your concern, but how am I going to know when it’s too late, until it already is?”
“That’s a good point,” he said.
Greg pulled into the closest spot to the Slice, but it was still a fair distance away. It didn’t seem that far in the daylight, but at night, it could be intimidating. At least the promenade stayed lit for most of the night.
Greg waved to Josh, and he turned to me before he left.
“Be careful, Eleanor,” he said.
“Right back at you,” I replied.
He waited until I dead-bolted the door; then he gave me a ‘thumbs up’ sign, which I returned.
After they were gone, I turned the radio off and started working on the report. I counted the cash three times, but the number stayed off by the same amount. What happened to that fifty dollars? I was about to call Maddy to ask her—date or no date—when a thought occurred to me. I pulled the till all the way out of the register, but I couldn’t see anything in the expanse. I was almost ready to shove it back in when I decided to have a closer look. Taking a flashlight from under the counter in back, I turned it on and peered into the opening.
Something was jammed in the back where the drawer slid in, and after some maneuvering that barked up one of my knuckles, I was able to extract a bit of paper from the opening.
Unfolding the money, I saw that it was a fifty-dollar bill, no doubt the missing culprit that had thrown off my balance for the night.
It felt good knowing that there was a simple explanation for the missing money, but even better that I hadn’t jumped to the conclusion that someone had been stealing from me. I would rather have lost a hundred times that amount than think bad of one of my employees, and I was glad my faith in them had been justified.
I filled out the next day’s deposit, slid the cash and change into the bag, then deposited it all into my new safe. It felt good knowing that I wouldn’t be walking around at night all by myself with money in my hands. The robbery was still too fresh in my mind. I saw the dart gun on the counter, and I thought about returning it to Slick in the morning. It had been a silly impulse purchase, and I already regretted making it. I slid the dart gun and its packaging back into the bag it came in, and tucked the whole thing under my arm. As I walked back out front, I turned all of the lights off as I went.
As I walked to the Subaru in the silent night, I was glad that I’d asked Greg to bring my car around front. There was no way I wanted to walk by myself in the dark tonight. There was something in the air, something unsettling, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I made it to my car and drove back safely to my house.
I’d barely taken my jacket off when there was a pounding at my front door. I put my keys and the bag from Slick’s on the table, and then I wondered who was trying to get my attention so urgently.
Peeking out through a side window, I saw Sandi Meadows standing there beating on the door, begging me to let her in.
A stream of blood was trickling down her face.
“Help me!” Sandi screamed. “Katy’s after me, and she’s got a knife.”
My fingers trembled as I unbolted the door and let Sandi in. She stumbled into my house, and I latched the bolt behind her as quickly as I could.
“Go into the living room,” I ordered. “We can call the police from there.”
I helped her into the other room, and as I reached for the telephone, Sandi said in a hard voice, “Put that down, Eleanor.”
And at that second, I knew. There was something in Sandi’s voice that made me doubt everything she’d told me before. I suddenly realized that every shred of evidence I thought I had pointing at Katy had come from Sandi. It had all been just a little too convenient, and with the will she thought she had, and the scene Wade had made with Katy, it gave her a double whammy of a motive for murder.
“I have to call Kevin Hurley,” I said without looking at her. I wished I’d thought of retrieving Joe’s shotgun, but the key to the gun case was in the other room, and I didn’t have any time left.
I felt a nudge on the back of my neck, and I wondered if I was about to die, too. When I’d turned my back, Sandi must have picked up the baseball bat I kept by the door for protection. A bat was always my weapon of choice. At least she didn’t have a knife or, worse yet, a gun.
I was beaten, and I knew it. I put the receiver back into its cradle and then slowly turned around as the pressure of the bat eased.
“I can’t believe the way you played me,” I said hoarsely.
“Don’t act so surprised,” Sandi said. “It’s pretty clear you were onto me, so there’s no reason to play dumb now.”
“Did you actually cut yourself to convince me to let you inside?” I asked, still having a hard time wrapping my mind around what I now knew had to be the truth. I should have seen it sooner, but she’d fooled me for so long with her act of helpless innocence. Once I got past the fact that she’d been playing me from the start, I could see patterns start to emerge. Why hadn’t I realized that I had only Sandi’s word that Jamie had seen Katy going into the pizzeria after hours? Sandi had been the one to plead with me not to say anything to anyone else right away. She was buying time, and I’d let her. The motive was clear enough, after the fact. She’d been under the impression that she was Wade’s lone beneficiary. The murder was a way to exact her revenge for his dalliance with Katy Johnson, and she managed to make herself rich in the process.
Sandi wiped the crimson smudges away from her forehead with her free hand. “It’s novelty blood. I got it at a joke shop. It looks pretty real, doesn’t it?”
“Why would you want to hurt me?” I asked. “I’m not a threat to you.”
“Sadly, you are. You have to understand my confusion. I told you to let me handle things on my own, but after we talked today, you went to Greg’s apartment, talked to Art Young, and then had a long conversation with the police. What was I supposed to think? I had a perfect suicide/confession planned for Katy, and then you had to go and ruin it. I had a hunch you wouldn’t leave well enough alone. It was a good thing I followed you
today.”
“You were watching me the entire day?”
“It wasn’t all that hard—you’re not exactly the most observant person in the world. You looked right past me when you were talking to Chief Hurley on that bench out in front of your shop. Believe me, it wasn’t hard to get Jamie to kiss me, and it made for perfect cover.”
I suddenly remembered the couple making out on the promenade, and I was surprised to realize that I hadn’t identified two of my suspects. The fact that their faces were both obscured still didn’t count for much. I should have been watching a little closer, and seeing them kissing would have sent warning bells sounding in my mind, if I’d only noticed.
Sandi waved the bat toward my head, and I felt a shiver run through me. I hated the thought of being bludgeoned to death like Wade had been. I had a hunch Sandi wouldn’t take care of me with just one blow. If I let things run their course, I was going to suffer before I died. Panic was starting to sweep through me, but I had to fight it back if I was going to have any chance to survive. But what could I use as a weapon? Since I didn’t have the key on me, the shotgun in its sturdy case was as inaccessible as if it had been back at the Slice.
That’s when I remembered the dart gun sitting on the table just a few steps away.
It might as well have been on the moon.
There was no way I could get to it without getting past Sandi first.
Unless I could trick her into letting me over there.
“Okay, I give up,” I said. It was time for some serious lying. “I’ve known all along that it was pretty clear that you’ve been setting Katy up to take the fall.”
“Wrong again,” Sandi said with a grin. “I originally planned to use Greg, but when he got out of jail so quickly, I decided to make Jamie the killer. Then Katy started acting like an idiot, and I realized that it was time to improvise. I didn’t give up on Jamie, though, in case Katy managed to beat the rap, so I’ve been busy working up solid motives for each of them.”
“When did you plan to kill Wade, and why did you do it at my pizzeria?”
Sandi frowned at me. “Why should I tell you anything?”
“Wouldn’t it feel good for someone to know how brilliant you’ve been in manipulating events? It’s not like I’m going to be around to tell anyone.”
“You’ve got a point. Dear old Wade decided to cheat on me, and he honestly thought he could get away with it. Come on, with Katy Johnson? Honestly? He had to be kidding. The fool didn’t think I’d find out, but when I did, he came crawling back to me on his hands and knees. He begged me to forgive him, but I had that image of him kissing Katy burned into my brain. How could I forgive him—let alone forget what I’d seen? He had to pay for what he did.”
Then, much to my surprise, she started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“He paid in more ways than one, didn’t he? The idiot confessed to me that he loved me so much he’d named me in his will so I’d get everything if anything happened to him. Can you believe that? I didn’t even know it until the day before I killed him. He thought it was a grand romantic gesture, but it wasn’t going to wipe out that memory. Without realizing it, Wade sealed his own fate by telling me that. He didn’t have much money before, but when he finally settled his grandparents’ estate with Greg, Wade was suddenly worth a lot more to me dead than he’d ever been alive. He signed the settlement, and I witnessed it. I’ve been waiting for somebody to get arrested for his murder before I filed the paperwork. What a fool Wade turned out to be.”
“Why kill him at the Slice, though?” I asked as I started slowly moving toward that table where the dart gun was resting. Sandi didn’t seem to notice it; she was so caught up in bragging to me about how smart she’d been.
“Greg was always my first choice to frame for the murder, so what better place could I have picked? His apartment was too hard—I could have never gotten Wade to meet me there. But your pizza place was perfect. Wade would have done anything to put something over on his brother.”
“How’d you even get the key to the place? It was locked when you got there, wasn’t it?”
“There are more keys to this place floating around than you know. Wade stole one from your office when he was there fighting with Greg about the will while you were on one of your lunch breaks, and you didn’t even know it. He bragged to me that he could come and go as he pleased, and no one would know.”
“So you got a pizza from one of my competitors and used it to lure Wade there.”
She nodded, clearly pleased with my deduction. “I was wondering if anyone would catch that. I had to get Wade to the pizza place if I was going to implicate Greg, and what better way to do that than to offer him a romantic dinner so we could make up? He thought it was bold and daring, which made me that much more attractive to him. I ordered the pizza, and then I got rid of the box before I went into the Slice. Everything would have been perfect, if you hadn’t kept butting in. You were eliminating my frame-ups as fast as I made them.”
“You had to know I wouldn’t stand by and let Greg go down for it.”
“Why not? He’s just an employee, Eleanor.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. He’s family.”
If I survived this, I was going to have to change the lock to the pizzeria’s door, but at the moment, that seemed like a very small problem that was very far away.
I was two steps from the table where the dart gun was hidden when Sandi said, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I feel like I’m going to pass out,” I said as I pretended to feel dizzy. “I need to lean against the wall.”
“Don’t worry, Eleanor, you’re not going to have that problem for very long,” Sandi said with a smile as she lovingly stroked the bat. “I just love a blunt weapon, and the fact that it’s yours will prove that the little break-in I’m about to stage wasn’t premeditated.”
“You don’t have to do this—you know that, don’t you?”
“If you’re waiting for reinforcements, you’re just wasting your time. No one knows we’re here. By the time anyone finds you, I’ll have a new alibi all ready for the police.”
She was probably right, but as long as I could keep her talking, I still had a chance. “Did you put Wade up to the robbery, too?”
Sandi laughed. “Please don’t give me that much credit. He must have come up with that one on his own. I wouldn’t be surprised if Greg told him about the late-night deposits one time, and Wade realized it would be an easy way to come up with some fast money. He was a fool to borrow from Art Young.”
“Why did he? From everything I’ve heard about Wade, he wasn’t stupid.”
“Don’t count on it,” she said. “First he stole from his boss and some of their clients, and when he borrowed money from Art, he had to have a way to pay it back. I still can’t believe he had the guts to rob you.”
“But why did he need so much money in the first place?”
Sandy looked pleased with herself as she answered, “Can I help it if I have expensive tastes? I warned him when we started dating that it wouldn’t be cheap keeping me happy, but he didn’t believe me.”
“So he’d commit armed robbery just to keep you happy?”
“He would have done anything for me,” Sandi said. “He was willing to walk through fire, if I asked him to.” She shook her head. “Wade never suspected a thing. The second we walked into the kitchen, he turned his back to me and I hit him with the rolling pin. It was amazing how fast he went down.”
Was that a smile on her face as she described the murder? She’d actually enjoyed killing him! I liked my chances of surviving the confrontation less and less.
“I’m getting tired of this, Eleanor. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt much. At least not for very long.”
Sandi started to move toward me with the bat—swinging it back and forth like she was going for the fences—but I wasn’t close enough to the dart gun to grab it yet.
“D
id you ever love him?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I’m not even sure love’s real. When Wade wouldn’t settle his grandparents’ estate with Greg, I told him he needed to come up with some other way to buy me something nice if he expected me to stick around. I was getting bored with him, and the only reason I stayed was because I kept hoping that he’d settle the estate with Greg, and I’d get that money for myself.”
“How many people have you hurt along the way? How many times have you lied?”
“That’s not very smart, Eleanor, making the girl with the baseball bat angry.”
She started toward me, so I pretended to cower, not that it took that much acting. “I’m just trying to understand,” I whimpered, edging closer and closer to the hidden gun.
“Pay attention, then. I planned to get my hands on that money, one way or another.” She grinned as she added, “He laughed when he told me about robbing you. Wade said it was amazing how fast you handed over your money when he held that gun on you. You’re nothing but a coward, aren’t you?”
Sandi looked around the room, and then said, “There’s not much of value here, is there? If I’m going to make this look like a robbery, I’ll need to grab some goodies along the way.”
“I have money in the kitchen,” I said. I had, too, at one time before Greg had depleted it. Still, if I could distract her long enough, I might be able to get back to that dart gun.
“It’s back here,” I said, leading her toward the kitchen. I thought about lunging for the gun as I walked near it, but Sandi was closer. I was going to have to wait.
I reached for the cookie jar and realized there were just a few singles I’d recently added to it. I had to make sure Sandi didn’t know that. Doing my best acting, I glanced furtively over my shoulder as I looked inside it, and I could almost feel her hot breath on my neck.
“What else do you have in there?” she asked with sudden suspicion.
“Just the money,” I said, trying to make my voice sound like I was lying.
“There’s a gun in there, too, isn’t there?”
Pepperoni Pizza Can Be Murder Page 27
