Peppered With Murder (The Darling Deli Series Book 26)

by Patti Benning

  She turned on the radio and spent the drive listening to music, humming softly to herself when a song that she recognized came on. She pulled into the deli’s parking lot with a good twenty minutes before opening, which would be just enough time to get the day’s soup on and open up the store before her customers started arriving.

  She grabbed her purse from the passenger seat and her keys from the ignition. Locking the car behind her, she strode towards the front door and unlocked it. The store had made a transformation since the week before. She had finally remembered to bring the box of decorations in, and had spent Saturday morning decorating the main area with her employees. She was glad that she had made the effort; it felt much more festive now, with fake bats and ghosts hanging from the ceiling and a bowl of candy corn on the counter.

  After flicking on the lights in the kitchen, she set her purse down on the counter. Her eyes landed on the garbage bin, and with a sigh she realized that whoever had closed the night before had forgotten to bring out the garbage. It was understandable; sometimes things got a little bit rushed on busy days, and Saturday evenings were one of their busiest times.

  She pulled a bag out of the bin and tied it off before pushing her way out the side entrance – or, at least, trying to. Something was on the other side of the door. She pushed again and it gave a little bit, but then stopped. Wondering if they had somehow gotten a delivery that morning — did any of their suppliers even deliver on Sundays — and the delivery person had just decided to leave the box outside the door, she put the garbage bag down with a sigh and pushed her way back through the door to the dining area. She would have to go around to see what it was. She didn’t want to risk spilling a box of produce or breaking a delivery of David’s craft beer bottles.

  She shoved the deli’s front doors open and marched around to the side of the building, grumbling under her breath all the while. Anyone delivering produce to her deli should know better than to leave a box of it just sitting outside. She couldn’t use food that had been left sitting in the sun for hours. She certainly wouldn’t be paying for it —

  She let out a sharp scream, then clapped her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide. The thing that had been blocking her door wasn’t a box of food. It was a body.

  Moira was frozen in place, her eyes wide and her heart pounding. There’s no way he can be alive, she thought. The man slumped against the side entrance to the deli was staring straight ahead. A rusted iron rod was sticking out of his chest, with a dark stain spreading out from it on his shirt. He was balding, and his hair — what was left of it — was white. One of his hands was half curled around the metal rod, as if he had attempted to pull it out of himself before dying.

  She heard the sound of a car door slam somewhere from the other side of the building, which served to snap her out of her horrified trance. The police had to be alerted, and before someone else saw the body. The fact that it was nearly Halloween was a small blessing; if any children saw the dead man, their parents would be able to explain it away as a decoration. They might even believe it themselves, unless they took the time for a closer look.

  The deli owner backed away slowly, then turned and ran into the deli, where her cell phone would be waiting for her in her purse. She had to call the police. She had no idea who the dead man was, but there was no doubt that she had just stumbled onto a murder scene.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  * * *

  “Moira, there’s nothing out there.”

  The deli’s parking lot was filled with police vehicles. An ambulance was waiting along the curb, its lights flashing. Despite the deli’s sign reading Closed, the little restaurant was filled with people. Detective Jefferson was behind the counter with Moira, leaning against the wall while she sat on the stool.

  “There was,” she said, not for the first time. “I swear there was. I’m not making this up.”

  After making the call, she had stayed inside, worried that she might inadvertently interfere with important evidence if she returned to the alley. It hadn’t taken long for the police to respond, and when the head detective had come to the front door instead of going straight to the body, she had been puzzled. It wasn’t until he brought her outside and she saw for herself that the dead man was gone that she had understood why he had asked her, “Where’s the body?”

  “I don’t think you’re making it up,” he said now. “Look, it’s getting to be the holiday season. After what happened with Candice and Eli, I’m sure you’re under a lot of stress. This isn’t the first time we’ve had a call around Halloween, where someone sees something they think is a dead person or a dead animal and it turns out to be a decoration.”

  “This wasn’t a decoration!” When everyone in the room looked over at her, she realized she had shouted. “I’m sorry. But I know what I saw. This was a real person, and he was dead.”

  “Then, where is he?” the detective asked. “Is it possible that you were mistaken about him being dead? He may have left to seek medical care for his injuries.”

  “I — I thought he was dead,” she said, beginning to doubt herself. Should she have gotten closer to him? She had thought that it would have been impossible for a man to survive that kind of injury, but what if she was mistaken? Was he wandering around out there right now, mortally injured, desperately looking for help? She felt a lump in her throat. “I didn’t check his pulse or anything. It’s possible he was still alive.”

  Jefferson turned and called his men over. After a hurried explanation, they left. “They’re going to implement a search for a potentially injured man. I’ll make calls to the local medical centers. If this man exists, we’ll find him.”

  She nodded, feeling terrible. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I should have stayed with him. I didn’t think… well, I thought that I might destroy evidence if I got too close. I was so sure he was dead.”

  “It’s not your fault,” he assured her. “Now, why don’t you start by giving me a description of the victim?”

  She did so, telling him what she could remember. The truth was, she hadn’t gotten close enough to see much besides the color of his hair and the extent of his injuries. She had been frightened, not only of messing up evidence, but also of the possibility that whoever had attacked him was still around.

  “And did you see anything unusual when you arrived?” he asked. “Other than the body itself.”

  “No,” she said. “But I was pretty distracted. My daughter is visiting, and just announced that she is going to be moving away for much longer than I thought, so I had a lot to think about. If there was something unusual about the deli, I probably would have completely missed it.”

  “How about in the past few days?” he asked. “Have any of your customers gotten into fights with each other? Have any of your employees been acting oddly?”

  “No,” she said. “Everyone’s been perfectly normal.”

  “And you have no idea who the victim was?”

  “None,” she said. “Trust me, if I knew, I would tell you.”

  “I know,” he said, sighing and running his fingers through his hair. “I’m just trying to get something that might help us. Listen, why don’t you take the rest of the day off? Go home and take some time to calm down. I’ll let you know if we find anything.”

  By the time she had locked the deli up again and was back in her car on the way home, the search for the missing man had moved from the immediate area to a town-wide manhunt. She passed a couple of patrol cars on her way out of Maple Creek and crossed her fingers, hoping that they found him. She couldn’t imagine that he had gotten far, not with how injured he was. With any luck, someone would pick him up soon and take him to the hospital, where he could get the help he needed.

  “What’re you doing home so early?” Candice asked from the couch when Moira walked in the door.

  “The deli’s closed for the day,” she said, then told her daughter what had happened.

  “Wow,” the young woman said when she was done.
“That’s insane. I can’t imagine getting up and walking around with a metal rod through my chest. I guess people do what they have to when they want to survive.”

  “The thing is, I could have sworn he was dead. The way his eyes were glazed open, the dried blood on his shirt… it looked like he had been there for hours. If I had seen anything that even hinted he was still alive, I would have gone closer.”

  “There probably wouldn’t have been anything you could do for him,” Candice said. “An injury like that… he needs a hospital, not CPR and some band-aids.”

  “I know,” Moira said. “Still… I guess I can’t get over the fact that he somehow managed to get up and walk out of there, and the police still haven’t found him.”

  “They will. No one could stay hidden for long with an injury like that.”

  Her conversation with her daughter only made her feel a little bit better. She knew that everything both the young woman and the detective had said was true, but something still didn’t sit right with her. She had been so sure he was dead. She had seen bodies before. This man looked like he had been dead for hours. He certainly didn’t look like someone who could jump up and, in the space of ten minutes, vanish so thoroughly that the police couldn’t find him.

  A dark suspicion occurred to her for the first time. Was this some sort of Halloween prank? Had someone taken the time to come up with a very convincing costume of a murdered man, then sat outside the deli until she arrived just to get a reaction out of her? It seemed like a lot of effort to go to, but it was the explanation that made the most sense, now that it had occurred to her. She knew that there was no way someone with a metal rod through his chest could move quickly enough to vanish like that.

  For the first time since she had found the body, she felt something other than sadness and guilt; anger. If this was a prank, then she wanted to make sure whoever had done it was caught.

  CHAPTER SIX

  * * *

  She wanted to talk to David, who was her go-to person whenever anything out of the usual happened in her life, but he had already left for the brewery. After pacing back and forth in her bedroom, with the dogs watching with concern from the bed, she decided that she wasn’t going to feel any better until she saw him. She didn’t want to concern her daughter too much with what had happened. Candice had enough to worry about without Moira concerning her about something that was likely nothing more than a Halloween prank.

  It wasn’t long before she was on the road again, this time with Candice in the passenger seat as they headed toward the brewery, and the old farmhouse that her daughter had bought only months before.

  Moira had mixed feelings about the house that her daughter had called home for a brief period of time. Its history included a trail of death and grief; something that, if she was more superstitious, she might have blamed the candy shop fire and Eli’s subsequent injury on. None of the house’s recent owners seemed to have escaped from the property without suffering some form of loss, and those were just the people she knew personally. Not every owner of the house had been met with an untimely death or severe injury, but over the years, many had. While she didn’t believe in ghosts, or in real haunted houses, knowing the history of the building was enough to give her pause whenever she crossed over the doorstep.

  Candice, on the other hand, wasn’t phased in the slightest. “It’s good to be back,” she said, smiling as she walked through the empty house, flicking on lights.

  “I dust whenever I stop by the brewery,” Moira told her daughter. “There’s some food in the fridge, and I know David and Karissa use the kitchen sometimes when they want a warm meal without going into town. We keep the pipes running and make sure everything is still working. It’s all set for you to move back in.”

  “Good, that will make it easier to rent out. Speaking of that, do you think Karissa might be interested? I know her dogs would probably love the extra space. She’s still in that little apartment, isn’t she?”

  “No, she actually just moved into a house in Lake Marion,” she replied. “David and I helped her last weekend. She has a fenced in yard for the dogs and this wonderful walk-out basement. I think she likes living in town.”

  “That’s too bad. It would be nice to rent the place to someone we know. It will be weird to have strangers here, but I’m sure we’ll manage to find some nice, normal people.”

  Moira turned to look out the window in an effort to hide her frown from her daughter. If she and Eli were serious about looking for renters, that meant they were planning on being gone for quite a while. She understood that their life here had been completely upheaved after the fire, but she had always expected them to come back, and for things to go back to normal once her son-in-law had recovered from his injuries.

  “I’m going to head over to the brewery and talk to David,” she said. “Feel free to come get me when you’re ready to go. Maybe we can go out to lunch together on our way back into town.”

  “That would be great,” Candice said. “Thanks, Mom. It’s really nice to be back.”

  She found David in the back of the brewery, preparing the boxes of clinking bottles for delivery. He was surprised to see her, but stopped what he was doing to give her a quick kiss and ask her if she wanted to try some of the newest draft.

  “I do, but not right now. I’ve got to talk to you about something.”

  With that, they retreated to his office and she told him about the man at the deli, along with her suspicion that the whole thing was some sort of prank. His frown deepened as she spoke. When she was done, he cleared his throat.

  “Has Jefferson been in contact with you since?” he asked.

  “No,” she replied. “He said that he would let me know when the man is found, so I figured that no news means that he is still out there somewhere.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to give him a ring and see what’s going on.”

  “Of course, go ahead.”

  Moira waited in the seat across the desk from her husband while he dialed the detective’s number. She listened to their conversation, not really gleaning much from it, other than when he said, “that’s what she thinks, too.”

  “What did he say?” she asked as soon as he got off the call with the police detective.

  “They haven’t found the man, or even anyone who’s seen him. You’d think someone walking around with something sticking out of his torso would have been seen by someone. It’s a Sunday; most people aren’t working, and there are plenty of pedestrians. He thinks it might have been a prank too. He’s going to keep an eye out for any similar calls. There’s such a thing as going too far, even on Halloween.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief. It was so much easier to think of the injured man as nothing but a prankster, instead of worrying that she had left someone mortally injured to fend for themselves.

  “Thanks for calling,” she said. “I feel much better.”

  “Whoever did this has a lot to answer for,” he said. “They wasted a lot of police time. I’m sure Detective Jefferson will be happy when he finally gets his hands on this prankster.”

  “I feel so bad for calling in when it wasn’t a real emergency,” she said.

  “Nobody is blaming you,” he assured her. “You are known well enough at the police station that nobody thinks you were doing this for the attention. Jefferson is worried that you’re overworking yourself, and he said to tell you to take it easy. And if you know of anyone who might have been involved with this prank, give him a call.”

  “Part of him still thinks I might have hallucinated the whole thing, doesn’t he?” she asked.

  “I think he knows that you really believe that you saw what you said you saw,” he said. “I’m mostly interested in finding whoever came up with this idea. Do you know anyone who might have done it? Do any of your employees take Halloween just a bit too seriously?”

  “None of my employees would do this,” she said quickly. “This was probably just some random person, I’
m sure he’s doing the same thing to everybody.”

  David frowned, but said, “Okay. Just be careful next time you go to work. If this is someone you know, they may have something else planned for you.”

  She nodded. Being careful she could do. She didn’t really think anyone was out to get her, but there wouldn’t be any harm in looking over her shoulder for the next couple of days. She would almost be glad when the holiday was over.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  * * *

  “This is nice,” Martha said. “I wish you still lived in town so we could do this more.”