Ravioli Soup Murder (The Darling Deli Series Book 27)

by Patti Benning

  “Well, I know that at least two of the other neighbors love them, so I don’t think we have anything to worry about. We’ll just have to make sure that they never get out. I wouldn’t want him to hurt one of them.”

  “It would be wonderful if he moved away. He is the only thing I don’t like about living in that house. It’s so stressful having a neighbor that doesn’t like us.”

  “At least our house is a little way back from the road, and private. Imagine if we lived in town and he was our next-door neighbor? Anyway, I’ll get you the real estate agent’s number. It’s nice of you to help Allison and her aunt out. You are a great boss.”

  “It’s just about being a nice person,” Moira said. “I see no reason to treat my employees differently than I would treat anyone else I know just because they work for me.”

  She reached for her sandwich, mulling over what David had said. It really would be nice if Jonathan moved. Maybe she could kill two birds with one stone, and help both Allison’s aunt and herself at the same time. She would much rather have a neighbor that she might actually get along with. Now all she had to do is find out if his house was actually for sale.

  CHAPTER THREE

  * * *

  Moira pulled her car down to the end of the driveway, and looked across the street with a smile. It was really happening. At the end of Jonathan Goodman’s driveway, was a big, colorful sign that said For Sale: Open House today at 3 PM.

  Shay Youngs, the real estate agent who was married to one of David’s friends, had been a lot of help to her over the week. There were a couple of houses in the area that were for sale that Thelma, Allison’s aunt, was interested in, and Moira had been emailing back and forth with the three of them, giving Thelma her opinions on the part of town each of the homes were in.

  Between her own encouragement that stemmed from her eagerness to see the house across the street from her sold, and the wonderful pictures that Shay had taken, Allison’s aunt was most interested in Jonathan Goodman’s house.

  She couldn’t wait to meet Thelma in a few hours. The other woman was going to meet her at the deli before she and Moira drove over to the open house. Afterward, Thelma was going to go look at some of the other houses in the area with the real estate agent. Moira could only hope that she fell in love with Jonathan’s home.

  It felt good to be busy again. She had spent all day yesterday helping David out at his office. She had enjoyed sitting in on some of his meetings with clients. It was impressive how naturally he made the conversation seem to go, but he always managed to get the information that he needed. He had given her a printed-out sheet of questions that she should try to get each client to answer so that he would have a clear idea of what they wanted, but she didn’t think that she would be able to make the conversation move along as smoothly as he did.

  Not all of his cases were exciting. When she had first met him a couple of years ago, she had envisioned his life as a private investigator as being filled with many more chase scenes, gunfights, and kidnappings. In truth, he spent most of his time either tailing a spouse suspected of cheating, or looking information up on the computer. Still, he got to meet a lot of interesting people. She had started helping him at the office a couple of months ago, and at the time had been able to read through some of his case files. Now that she was back there again, it was neat to see what he was up to.

  She was dying to know what case Jonathan had been involved in, but hadn’t asked David. He knew that she and their neighbor didn’t get along well, and while she would never use any information he gave her against him, she didn’t want to put him in a position where he had to choose between client confidentiality and telling his wife the truth.

  Still smiling at the sign, she looked both ways then pulled out of the driveway. She had some work to do at the deli before taking a couple of hours off to join Allison’s aunt at the open house.

  Stepping out of the cold and into Darling’s DELIcious Delights warm, food scented air that afternoon made Moira’s heart swell with love for the little restaurant. It truly was her second home, and here she didn’t have any unpleasant neighbors to watch out for. In fact, she had owned the deli for longer than she had owned her house. She knew every inch of its walls, and had painted most of them herself.

  “Hi, Ms. D.,” Darrin said as she came in. “Do you think it might snow? The news said that there may be some flurries this evening.”

  “I hope not,” she said. “I’m not ready for snow. Not too long ago we had green leaves and sunshine.”

  “Some people have already started to decorate for Christmas,” he pointed out. Christmas was only a little bit under two months away.

  Moira sighed. It was still shocking to her how quickly the time passed. Holidays came and went before she even had a chance to enjoy them. Birthdays seemed to flash past her in the blink of an eye. She would be celebrating her second anniversary with David next year.

  “Well, we won’t start putting Christmas lights up here until after Thanksgiving,” she said firmly. “There is no reason to wish away the year. It goes by quickly enough as it is.”

  She walked by him into the kitchen and put her purse and coat on one of the hooks. Allison was back there, slicing a loaf of bread. She looked up as Moira came in and smiled at her.

  “Thank you so much for helping my aunt,” she said. “She’s really excited to look at houses today. I wish I could go with her, but I have to go right to the school after I leave here.”

  Allison was hoping to become a teacher eventually, and was getting work experience by helping out at the local elementary school. Moira admired her for following her dreams, though she was sad that her employee would likely leave within the next year or two. They had such a wonderful team now, and she didn’t want that to change.

  “I’m glad I could help,” she said. “It will be nice to finally meet the woman I’ve been emailing with for the past week. I hope she finds a house that works out for her.”

  And she really hoped that house was Jonathan’s. She could tolerate a lot of things, but somebody threatening her dogs without any good reason was just going too far. Maverick had saved her life more than once, and Keeva had always been there for her too. They were a part of her and David’s family. She couldn’t stand the thought of them being blamed for something that they didn’t do.

  She got to work, taking inventory in the pantry, the fridge, and the freezer, and figuring out what they would need to order for the next delivery. It was one of the more tedious parts of owning the deli, but she couldn’t complain. The fact that it had to be done every week meant that they were going through their food quickly. Back when she had first opened the deli, she had only gotten deliveries once a month. Now, they had trucks rolling in from various suppliers once or twice a week most weeks.

  Part of that was because she had begun using more fresh foods and fewer frozen goods as she got better at judging how much food they would need between deliveries. If she ordered too little, they would run out of something important, which was never good. Too much, and they would end up throwing food out, which she always felt guilty about.

  She smiled as she checked their stock of drinks. It was about time to get some more beer from David. Whenever she saw someone buy a six pack of one of his drafts, she always felt such pride. She was glad that he was able to pursue his passions. Not only that, but it was really working out for him. People loved the drinks that he and Karissa, his sister, produced.

  No wonder he wants to focus on his brewery, she thought. She wondered if it might be time to talk about him retiring from his private investigator business. Yes, he made more reliable money from that, but if his heart just wasn’t in it anymore, maybe he would be happy spending all of his time working with his sister at the brewery.

  She marked down the drafts that she would need to order from him on her clipboard, then looked through their selection of sodas. She wanted to get the inventory done before she left with Thelma. After she was done visitin
g the open house with Allison’s aunt, she would return here and spend another hour getting the orders in to the various vendors. Over the course of the next two weeks, the deliveries would trickle in. It took some planning ahead, but after all these years, she had a pretty good system for keeping on top of ordering the supplies that they needed at the deli.

  She had just finished marking off the last box on her clipboard, the one that told her how much cheese they were down, when from out front she heard Allison exclaim, “Aunt Thelma!”

  Smiling, she dropped the clipboard on the counter and pushed through the doors to meet the woman who would hopefully be her new neighbor.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  * * *

  “It’s nice to finally put a face to the name,” Thelma said, shaking Moira’s hand. “Thank you so much for helping me get some houses lined up to look at.”

  “It was no problem,” the deli owner said. “I actually had fun. I just bought a house pretty recently, so I won’t be moving anytime soon, but it is always enjoyable to look and see what’s out there.”

  Allison’s aunt was a middle-aged woman, her light brown hair beginning to go gray. Her eyes crinkled when she smiled, and she seemed to smile a lot. Even though she had just met her, Moira could tell that she was a woman that she would like to get to know better. She wasn’t surprised. Allison herself was a very kind, thoughtful young woman, and must have come from a great family. Her employee didn’t talk about her family much, and Moira realized that she didn’t know anything about them.

  “It’s so nice to see you, Aunt Thelma. We’ll get together for dinner tonight, I promise. Take plenty of pictures of the houses for me, okay?”

  “I will,” her aunt said. “I’m excited to hear all about your job, and the work that you’re doing at the school.”

  The younger woman beamed at her. Moira smiled, then checked her watch. She wanted to give Thelma plenty of time to look around the house before the open house ended.

  “We should get going,” she said. “You can follow me. I think you’re really going to like this house. It’s just what you told me you were looking for in your email.”

  The two of them went outside and got into their cars. Moira led the way out of town and towards her home. She really did think that Thelma would like Jonathan’s house. No matter how much she wanted him to move away, she wouldn’t have pushed the home on the woman if it hadn’t sounded just perfect for her. Still, it would be amazing to have a neighbor that she got along with for a change.

  She turned at the sign for the open house, pulling up Jonathan’s driveway. There were a couple of vehicles already parked in his yard. She was glad to see that others were interested too. If Thelma didn’t like the house, maybe one of them would buy it. As long as whoever moved in didn’t have an odd vendetta against her and her dogs, she would be happy.

  “Well, this is it,” she told the other woman as they got out of their cars. “What do you think?”

  “It’s nice and private,” Thelma said. “I like that a lot. How much land did you say it’s on?”

  “It’s listed as having just over three acres,” Moira said. “Most of that is trees, which means you won’t have to worry about mowing the whole three acres.”

  “This is across the street from your house, right? Do you know the person who lives here now? Would they have kept up with all the maintenance the house needed?”

  “The man who lives here now is Jonathan Goodman,” Moira said. “I don’t know him very well. He does seem to care about the property a lot, from what I can tell.” Every time she had come face-to-face with him, he had been complaining about something that he thought her dogs had done. She figured he must care about the house a bit, if he got so riled up about muddy pawprints and spilled garbage.

  “That’s good. When my husband and I bought our first house right after we got married, we were faced with a lot of unexpected repairs that needed to be done. I don’t want to go through that again, not on my own.”

  “Allison told me about your husband’s passing last year,” she said. “I’m very sorry.”

  “Thank you. It was difficult. It still is. He had lung cancer, and it progressed quickly. I suppose I should be grateful that he had time to set his affairs in order, but still didn’t have to suffer for long. It’s just so unfair. He never smoked, he exercised almost every day, he saw the doctor yearly, and still this happened to him. We should have had decades more together.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m still very angry and shocked at the whole situation. He wasn’t even fifty yet.”

  “I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult it must be for you,” the deli owner said.

  “I’m just trying to make the best of it now,” Thelma said. “I know that he wouldn’t have wanted me to spend the rest of my life moping around in our old house. I have to accept that this is the next chapter of my life, whether I want it to be or not, and for me that means a fresh start. Now, enough of this depressing chitchat. Let’s go see this house.”

  The two of them walked up towards the front door. Through the window, she saw Jonathan talking closely with the realtor, but thankfully he walked away before she reached the door. The house was brick, with a neat and tidy little garden out front that surrounded the porch.

  Shay met them at the door, her pale blonde hair pulled back in a bun. “Hi, Moira. And you must be Thelma. It’s nice to finally meet you. I’m Shay Youngs, the real estate agent that you’ve been speaking to.”

  “It’s nice to meet you too,” Thelma said, shaking her hand. “I’m excited to look at all the houses that you’ve found for me.”

  “I’m glad you decided to start with this one. I think you’ll like it. Why don’t the two of you take a look around, and come find me if you have any questions.”

  Moira and Thelma went further into the house. The furniture and paint on the walls seemed to be older, but the floors were in good shape and there were no signs of any leaky pipes or a leaky roof, at least to Moira’s untrained eye.

  The other woman led the way, and Moira followed. They went through the kitchen, where a young couple was examining the sink, and Thelma paused to look out the picture window in the dining room.

  “I like this house a lot,” she said to Moira. “I think I’m going to go find the bathroom really quickly, though.”

  Moira was about to respond when she heard an angry voice from behind her. “What are you doing here?” She spun around, to find Jonathan standing just feet away from her. His face was a grimace of anger.

  “I’m just here with my friend looking at the house. She’s thinking about buying it.”

  “I want you to leave.”

  “What’s going on?” Thelma asked.

  “You go ahead,” Moira told her. She turned back to Jonathan. “Why do you want me to go? I don’t have the dogs with me. They’re safely locked up at home. I know that you have some issue with them, but they have nothing to do with me being here right now. My friend is interested in your house, and I told her I’d come along to look at it with her.”

  “Your dogs aren’t the only thing I have an issue with,” he said. “When I got home last night, all four of my truck’s tires were flat. Did you honestly think I wouldn’t know it was you? Maybe I shouldn’t have threatened to shoot your dogs, but you shouldn’t have come over here to stab my tires. You’re lucky I didn’t call the police.”

  Moira blinked at him. “I didn’t touch your tires,” she said. “I’ve never even been on your property until today. Neither have my dogs.”

  “If anything goes missing or gets broken while you’re here, I won’t hesitate to call the cops. I’m going to be watching you. You and your friend better leave as soon as she’s done looking at the place.”

  Shaken, Moira hurried to find Thelma. What was going on? She didn’t think that Jonathan was making up the story about his flat tires, but she certainly hadn’t had anything to do with it.

  They spent the next fifteen m
inutes looking around the inside and outside of the house. She was glad to see that the other woman seemed to like the building.

  “There’s just one more thing I want to see. I think the basement is down here,” Thelma said. “I’m going to take a peek. Flooding was a big issue in my last house.”

  “I’m right behind you,” Moira said.

  She followed the other woman down the creaky basement stairs. Thelma paused at the bottom, flicking the light switch. The single dim light turned off, then back on.

  “I’ve got my phone’s light,” Moira said. “It looks like the other bulbs are probably out.”

  She turned on her phone’s flashlight and followed Thelma into the basement. It was dark and musty, but she didn’t see the telltale waterlines on the stone walls that would point towards frequent flooding.