Parmesan Pizza Murder (Papa Pacelli's Pizzeria Series Book 16)

by Patti Benning

  “Relax,” she said, chuckling. “I don’t mind if you do want to open a restaurant here in Kittiport. I’m not afraid of a little competition. Of course, if you work here, you will learn some of our secret recipes. My grandfather’s crust recipe, especially, is important to me. I would ask that you don’t use it if you do end up opening your own restaurant down the road.”

  “Of course not,” he said. “If you want me to sign something or…”

  “We can talk about that later. Right now, why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself.”

  “Here’s my resume, and I also printed off a cover letter.” He chuckled. “Sorry. My dad is in business himself, and he always tells me that it’s better to be too formal than too casual.”

  “Thanks,” she said, taking the folder. “I’ll look at it later. Right now, just tell me about who you are. How long have you lived in Kittiport?” If he was going to be doing any deliveries, he would need to know the town pretty well.

  “Well, I moved here with my parents three years ago, and finished up my last year of high school here. I’ve been taking college classes online. It’s easier that way and my mom, well, she has some health issues and needs help sometimes. My dad travels a lot. You probably don’t want to hear about my family’s life, though. I’ve been working at that gas station on the road between here and Benton Harbor since I graduated. My manager is pretty cool, and I would be leaving on good terms with everyone there. I just want to start doing something that is more relevant to the career I want, if that makes sense. I want to be creative, and not just work behind a counter for my whole life.”

  “It does,” Ellie said. “Now, as you know, we lost one of our employees recently. I don’t think I’m ready to make a new hire quite yet, but what I’ll do is I’ll take a look at your resume and if everything checks out, you’ll be the first on the list when I am ready. Does that sound okay? I’m sorry that you won’t have an answer right away, and I understand if you find something else in the meantime.”

  “I’m willing to wait,” he said. “Thank you for considering me, Ms. Pacelli. It means a lot.”

  He rose and shook her hand before leaving. Ellie looked at the folder he had left behind, feeling too tired and sad to go through it just then. She stood up and tucked it away in a drawer, getting back to work. The pizzas wouldn’t cook themselves.

  CHAPTER NINE

  * * *

  “Just a little over to the right,” Ellie said. “Perfect.”

  She stepped back to admire the soft glow of the white lights. The effect was beautiful. She had seen the community center dressed up for quite a few different occasions, but Sabrina’s memorial had to be the most significant. She was glad that she was able to be involved in it. Yes, it was more work, but it was worth it. The more she thought about everything that was going on, the more she was sure the crime was somehow connected to the pizzeria. With the mysterious business card floating around and the second pizza box as the crime scene, she was certain that there was something going on that none of them were yet aware of.

  Shannon still hadn’t been able to find the business card. Ellie didn’t blame her – with her pregnancy, she had a lot of her own things going on. Ellie had kept her eyes out for anything suspicious over the past few days, but hadn’t noticed anything. Other than the lingering mystery of the young woman’s death, things were slowly returning to normal in the town. She knew this memorial would be cathartic for all of them.

  Her employees had been handling most of the decorations. Rose, Iris, Pete, and Jacob were happy to spend their Sunday morning putting up lights, setting up the table of photos and memorabilia from Sabrina’s life, and putting together the playlist for the coming afternoon. She was handling the catering. Not pizza – she thought that the memorial called for something a little bit more refined. She had contacted the White Pine Kitchen, and they were supplying catering for a steep discount in honor of Sabrina.

  Everything was going smoothly, and the memorial was set to start in just a couple of hours. She knew that most of the town would come through the doors before the event was over. She hoped that the experience wouldn’t be too painful for Sabrina’s parents. She hadn’t heard from them since the meeting the week before.

  “Oh, Ellie, it’s wonderful,” Shannon said, walking over to stand next to her. “James will be here in a little bit. Is Russell coming?”

  “Yes,” Ellie said. “He’s going to be here for the last half of the memorial.”

  “Are you going to be here for the whole thing?”

  “I feel like I should stay,” she replied. “I told her parents I would handle everything, and part of that means being here. I don’t know how long they will be able to stay for. This is going to be pretty hard on them.”

  Her friend nodded. “Of course. Well, James and I will stay until Russell shows up. I wasn’t feeling well this morning, but it seems to have passed – for now. The joys of pregnancy.” She chuckled.

  Ellie gave her a small smile. “You’re in for an adventure,” she said. “I can’t really say I envy you, at least not this part. Morning sickness sounds like something that I would not want to deal with.”

  “I just have to keep reminding myself it’s temporary,” she said. “Supposedly it goes away later in the pregnancy.”

  “Sorry I don’t have any sage advice to offer you,” she said. “I–”

  “Hi Ms. P.,” someone said. Fighting back annoyance at the interruption, Ellie turned around to see Sadie standing behind her. She smiled at the young woman, reminding herself that this was Sabrina’s best friend. She must have been hurting. “Hi Sadie, can I do anything for you?”

  “I was actually going to ask you that,” she said. “What can I do to help?”

  “How about you go help Iris with the flowers? People sent a lot of them to her parents, and they dropped them off here this morning so we could set them up around the memorial. There are a couple of extra tables in the storage area if you need any more space.”

  “I’ll do that, thanks.”

  Ellie watched the young woman walk away. Shannon shook her head.

  “Man, I keep forgetting just how many lives poor Sabrina’s death impacted. Her parents, everyone at work, everyone that she went school with, her best friend… Her killer is the most hated person in Kittiport. Hopefully Russell finds them soon. If the suspect’s name gets slipped before he’s arrested, a riot just might break out as this town hunts him down.”

  “I don’t think there’s any danger of that,” Ellie said with a sigh. “They still have no idea who it is. They can’t find anyone who would have had a motive to kill her. Nothing was stolen, she hasn’t had any recent breakups – she didn’t even have a boyfriend. I just keep thinking of that second pizza box that shouldn’t have been there. That’s the only thing that was out of place at the crime scene, but Russell still hasn’t found out anything about it.”

  It was frustrating, even though she knew that these things took time and everyone was working as hard as they could on the case. If only Shannon had been able to locate the business card, they might be able to get to the bottom of this.

  The memorial went smoothly. Sabrina’s parents thanked her profusely when they got there. Ellie spent most of her time standing on the sidelines, not wanting to intrude too much. People came and went, paying their respects to the memory of the girl who had died too early. Ellie was relieved when Russell arrived. He sought her out, and stayed by her side for the rest of the afternoon. She was glad to have him there. The day had made her feel emotional, and she didn’t want to be alone.

  As it was beginning to wind down, he invited her over to his house for the rest of the evening. She was glad to accept. They had a lot to talk about. Hopefully between the two of them, they would be able to crack the mystery of Sabrina’s death.

  CHAPTER TEN

  * * *

  It was good to be at Russell’s house after the busy day. She had spent the last few hours constantly surrounded
by people, and the peace and quiet was soothing.

  Grabbing a can of diet soda from his fridge, she sat on the couch and leaned into the soft cushions, enjoying having the freedom to relax at last. “Thanks for coming,” she said.

  “Of course. Even if you hadn’t been so involved in the memorial, I would have made an appearance. Sabrina’s death has affected the entire town,” he said. “Being there did make it all the more frustrating that I’ve been unable to crack this case. I want so badly to be able to give her parents the closure that they need, but without physical evidence or even a motive, what can I do?”

  “What have you found out about the pizza boxes and the business card I told you about?”

  “It seems to be a dead end,” he said. “If we had the business card, I could track down the person who owns the phone number on it, but without it, I don’t know what I can do.”

  “What about the pizza box?” she asked.

  “What about it?” He gave a dry laugh. “It’s just a box from your restaurant, like any other. It’s weird, but it’s not going to send anybody to prison on its own. Sorry, I’m just getting fed up with this whole case. I hate that I’m so powerless.”

  “Can’t you, I don’t know, dust it for fingerprints or something?”

  “I tried that,” he said, shaking his head. “First of all, cardboard isn’t exactly ideal for taking prints anyway. There were a couple of oil smudges that held good quality prints, but nothing that raised any alarms. Even if I found prints that weren’t from anyone at the pizzeria, unless they were already in the system, it wouldn’t help.”

  “Do you think whoever did this is an experienced killer?” she asked, giving voice to something that had been worrying her. With the lack of evidence, she was frightened that this was someone who was used to killing and getting away with it.

  “Honestly, no,” he said. “I think it was something that happened in the heat of the moment. I don’t think it was premeditated at all. Whoever did this wasn’t hiding in a dark alley waiting for his next victim to come along. He was on Green Street at nine at night – it’s not exactly the ideal place for a would-be killer to lurk. I do think that the killer must have been someone she knew, and he or she must have had a motive. And unless they had access to the list of deliveries, they would only have come upon her by chance. I already cleared your employees, so since they were the only ones that would have been able to see the deliveries scheduled for that night, I’m leaning towards the encounter being happenstance.”

  “You suspected that one of my employees may have been the killer?” she asked, upset even though she didn’t know why.

  “I asked them all for alibis,” he said. “While I don’t think any of them did it, it wouldn’t make sense to ignore them as possible suspects. You know as well as I do that most homicides are committed by someone the person knows. It makes sense to check out the people she was working with.”

  Ellie nodded. It hadn’t even crossed her mind that the killer might be someone that worked at the pizzeria. She trusted them all.

  “Hey,” he said, sitting down next to her. “We’ll find this person. I know it’s taking longer than we wanted, but something’s bound to come up.”

  “If only we could find out what they wanted,” she said. “Why would anyone want to kill Sabrina?”

  “Well, we’ve already gone over all the possible motives I could think of, but maybe we should go over them again. We know she didn’t have a boyfriend,” he said. “There’s nothing on her social media pages about it, nothing in her phone records that would indicate that she was seeing someone secretly, and her parents confirmed that she wasn’t seeing anyone, as did her best friend. She hadn’t had any recent breakups, either. I would say that love probably isn’t the motive here, unless she was seeing someone whom she was keeping very secret.”

  “Okay, so this wasn’t a lover’s quarrel,” Ellie said. “What else? It wasn’t money; whoever killed her didn’t take the cash out of her wallet, they didn’t steal her credit cards, and they didn’t take her jewelry.”

  “It wasn’t money or love,” Russell said. “How about jealousy?”

  “Well, she had a good relationship with her parents, a job at the pizzeria, she was pretty, she was all set to get her bachelor’s degree in a couple of years… so maybe.”

  “Next we would have to determine how killing her would benefit the suspect. Either he was acting out of anger, or he was hoping to manipulate things with her death to get something out of it. Who would benefit from her death?”

  Russell was gazing off into the distance now, working through the problem in his own mind. Ellie didn’t bother answering him. Instead, she thought about what he had said. Who would benefit from her death? If they didn’t stand to gain love or money, what would they gain?

  Russell’s previous words came back to her. Sabrina had a job. A job that someone Ellie knew wanted very badly. She frowned. Kyle didn’t seem like the killing type. And who would kill for a pizza job? Yes, she could give him the experience in a working kitchen that he needed to jumpstart his career as a chef, but there were a couple of other restaurants around town that would likely be willing to do the same thing for him. She knew that Joanna would be hiring new employees eventually, and while heating up hot dogs wasn’t exactly the same thing as making a pizza from scratch, it would at least give him something cooking related to put on his resume. There is also the Lobster Pot, and the White Pine Kitchen, both of which would likely let him start as a dishwasher and work his way up. It was hard to see a spot in her kitchen as being motive for murder, but now that it had occurred to her, she couldn’t keep silent about it.

  “Russell, there is this kid who has been interested in working for me,” she began. “He stopped by a couple of days before Sabrina died. I told him at the time that we weren’t hiring just then. He stopped in again while I was at the pizzeria on Friday talking to the employees. I told him to come on Monday, with a resume and I’d take a look at it, and he did. He seems very interested in the job, and now that Sabrina’s gone, we obviously have a spot. Do you think that he could have done it?”

  “I suppose he could have,” Russell said, frowning. “Did he know her?”

  “I don’t think so, but it’s a small town. What I don’t understand is how he would know that she would be there on Green Street at that specific house, at that specific time.”

  “Maybe he didn’t. Like I said, it seems like it was the impromptu decision. Could you do me a favor and get me his contact information?”

  “Of course.”

  “Thank you.” He leaned over and kissed her. “Do you want to take a walk? I’ve been inside all day, I’d like to get some fresh air before it gets too cold this evening.”

  As they set off down the sidewalk a few minutes later, Ellie was struck by a memory, something she had almost forgotten. The last time she and Russell had walked down this street she had seen the mysterious late-night pizza delivery car. At the time, she had thought it belonged to a pizzeria from another town that had decided to begin encroaching on Papa Pacelli’s territory, but now she wasn’t so sure. Those three things – the pizza delivery car that was where it shouldn’t have been, the second pizza box, and the mysterious business card Shannon had found – they all pointed towards a bigger mystery. The only question was, what was it?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  * * *

  The first thing she did when she got to the pizzeria the next day was to open Kyle’s folder, which contained his resume and cover letter. She had yet to look at it, now that she took the time, she saw something that made her breath catch. Kyle’s address. He lived on Green Street.

  She took a photo of the file and emailed it to Russell, then called to let him know what she had done. “I can’t believe I didn’t realize this sooner,” she said. “If only I had looked at his resume when he first gave it to me, I would have seen it. It’s him, it has to be. I can’t believe I interviewed him, was even considering hiring him,
and all along he was her killer.” She was disgusted. She had spent so much time hating Sabrina’s killer, but when she had come face-to-face with him, she hadn’t recognized him.

  “I’ll bring him in for questioning,” he said. “I’m on my way out the door right now. I’ll let you know what happens.”

  She shoved her phone in her pocket and stared at the folder. She was in shock. She knew that she should be glad that they had likely just solved Sabrina’s murder, but she was so horrified with herself for not noticing sooner. It seemed obvious now. Kyle had a motive for murder, and he would be easy to place near the scene at the right time.

  Wondering if his cover letter would tell her anything about what sort of person he was, she began to read it, but found nothing to satisfy her. He seemed like a normal young man. It made her skin crawl. How could someone capable of taking a young woman’s life seem so normal on paper?