The Chicken Burger Murder

by Rosie A. Point

  Divorce papers.

  And Mario the creep had been convinced that Bella had done it. But done what? Was I even sure it was the murder he’d been referring to? If only I could have asked him outright. Pfft, that was never going to happen.

  “Miss? Hello?”

  I’d already put myself in far too much danger by snooping on that laptop. I highly doubted Liam and his partner, Arthur, would fingerprint the laptop, if they hadn’t done so already, but the potential made me antsy. I should’ve brought a pair of latex gloves with me to the service.

  Because that wouldn’t have been suspicious at all. Me whipping out my gloves and snapping them on before I excused myself to go to the bathroom.

  “Hey!”

  I jerked upright and dropped my tray. I caught sight of one of the customers, standing next to his table in the center of the restaurant.

  “Shoot, sorry,” I called out, and got off the stool. I’d told Grizzy I wasn’t good at the whole waitressing deal, but I’d definitely undersold how bad I was. I hurried over to the customer, putting up a smile that definitely didn’t look right on my face.

  “I’ve been calling you for five minutes,” the man said, and lowered himself back into his chair. He gestured to his empty milkshake glass. “I wanted to order?”

  “I’m so sorry, sir. What can I get for you?”

  “I’d like a chicken burger, please,” he said. “You got any sauces to go with that? Something like a cheese sauce?”

  I rattled off our list of sauces.

  “Gimme the spicy relish,” the customer said. “And another of these choc shakes.”

  “Coming right up, sir.” I lifted his empty glass off the table. “And sorry about that, again.”

  He flicked his newspaper open by way of dismissal.

  I carried the glass into the kitchen then gave Jarvis the order. Griz was out this morning—she’d decided to take Curly to the vet for a checkup—and I was in charge of the slow time between brunch and lunch. It was meant to be easy, and the restaurant was relatively quiet, but it was near impossible to concentrate on anything but Sal.

  It didn’t help that the locals who came through kept talking about it, even asking me questions as I served them food.

  Ten minutes later, I served the significantly less grumpy customer his burger, fries, relish and shake, then seated myself at the counter again, with my back to it so I could keep an eye on my tables. There were only three of them, currently, though I expected Missi or Vee to come in soon.

  I checked my watch, sighing.

  My shift ended later this afternoon, and I’d already allocated the time for research on Mario, Bella, and the Russo clan in general. It was odd to me that Sal had been from New York and Mario from Boston.

  Somerville Spiders.

  Heavens, I had to stop thinking about that. And obsessing over the fact that this case might be related to my mother’s.

  The bell over the door tinkled, and Nelly from the florist’s crashed into the restaurant’s interior. She wore a pair of reading glasses, skew on her face, and her hair stuck up on one side. Hadn’t had the chance to tie it up, properly? Left the house in a rush.

  Why?

  “Nelly.” I waved her over.

  She gasped and practically ran at me. The customers in the restaurant looked up from their tables.

  “Whoa, slow down.” I put my hands on her shoulders. “What’s going on?”

  She slumped against me, fat tears welling beneath her glasses. She removed them and wiped her cheeks with the loose sleeves of her sweater. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know where else to go. It’s not like I can talk to F-Fran anymore.” The words made it out past the tears, but barely.

  “Here, come on. Sit down.” I guided her to one of the barstools.

  She didn’t have a handbag or anything with her.

  I checked my tables one last time, found them eating or drinking or reading the newspaper, then circled around to the back of the bar.

  “I didn’t know who else to turn to.”

  “I hear they have a confessional booth at The Mother Mary Church?” I flashed a grin at her. It fell flat.

  Another tear escaped.

  “Sorry,” I said, “I’m not good at the emotional stuff. Grizzy’s the one who’s good at that kind of thing.” I searched around for a method of helping her. “Oh! Can I interest you in a milkshake? They always cheer me up.”

  “Yes, please,” she said.

  I didn’t have my trusty Kleenex in my handbag, thanks to the last woman who’d burst into tears in my vicinity. What was it with everyone and crying this week? I grabbed a pile of napkins from the dispenser and handed them to Nelly then set about preparing a vanilla milkshake.

  Nelly dabbed at her cheeks, swallowing every other second.

  “You want to tell me about what happened?” I asked, as I brought out the ice cream.

  “The police have just pulled me in for questioning. They came right into the florist’s. They made me close up shop and everything.”

  I nearly dropped the tub of ice cream. “What?”

  “Yeah. I had to stop halfway through changing the water for the roses,” she said.

  “Wait, Nelly, they questioned you?”

  “Yes, and they took my spit.”

  “Pardon me?” I coughed. “Your spit?”

  “Yeah, you know. They took one of those cotton bud things and put it in my mouth and they collected—”

  “Oh, a swab. They swabbed your cheek for DNA?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  I shouldn’t have been shocked. Nelly was a suspect. Just about everyone in Sleepy Creek who hadn’t liked Sal was on the list at this point, but the detectives knew more than I did. What did it mean if they had a warrant for Nelly’s DNA? Surely, that they believed she was higher on the list than the other suspects?

  Why?

  What had she done? What else linked her to the crimes?

  I stared at her, blankly, and she stared right back. “I didn’t do it,” she sniveled. “I can see you’re thinking that I did it, but I didn’t. And now, everyone else is going to—”

  “It’s OK,” I said, and continued making the shake. “Please, don’t cry.” I couldn’t stand it when people cried. It made my chest feel weird. Like an elephant had decided it was a good place to chill out.

  “I don’t know what to do. I told them everything I know, but I don’t think they believe that I’m telling the truth. They think I did something to Franny. That I poisoned her.”

  “Why on earth would they think that?” I asked.

  “Because they found my fingerprints on the pizza boxes in her home,” Nelly said. “The same pizza that she ate just before she died.”

  I kept my expression blank, but my stomach did a little hop, skip and a leap.

  Another clue! So both Francesca and Sal had died after eating pizza from Sal’s own restaurant.

  “And how did that happen?” I asked.

  Nelly hiccupped and pressed her napkin to the end of her nose. “I didn’t do it, I swear.”

  “Nelly, please, calm down. I’m not interviewing you or interrogating you. I’m just talking to you.” I tried not to sound too stern.

  “Right, of course. Yeah. Oh. Oh my gosh, I’m just so freaked out about the whole thing. You have no idea what it’s like to have one of those … swab thingies stuck in your mouth.”

  And I’ll keep it that way.

  “Why were you touching the pizza boxes?” I asked.

  Nelly’s watery eyes focused on me. “I went over to help Francesca prepare for the Food Fair tasting a few nights ago,” she said. “I’d been helping her a lot over the past week before the … well, you know.”

  “Helping her?”

  “She was struggling to keep up with the orders. You know Franny was one of the chefs at the pizzeria. Sal made her work late hours, and she’d been so upset lately, what, after finding out what she find out.”

  “You lost me. What
did Francesca find out?” Listening to Nelly was like following the twists and turns of a white water rapid. This was what emotion did. This was why I kept it out of my investigations and my life—for the most part.

  “That Sal was having an affair,” she whispered. “With Bella.”

  “Bella.” My eyebrows rose. “The friend? The long-lost friend?”

  “Yes. She came here from Boston shortly after Mario, and, apparently, she hit it off with Sal. Things hadn’t been right in Franny and Sal’s relationship for a while, but finding out that he was cheating … I think that was the last straw for Fran.”

  “She knew for sure?” I asked.

  “Pretty much.”

  “How did she find out?”

  “She never told me, she just said that it was definitely happening. She’d been unhappy for so long, I just—I told her she should get a divorce, and that she deserved better, but she never listened to me. Sal had some type of hold over her. He had her thinking that she needed him.”

  It sounded to me that Nelly didn’t know for sure whether there was an affair going on. But it was still an interesting lead. And Bella was from Boston. From Boston, but didn’t sound like she was. What did that mean?

  “What do you know about Bella?” I asked.

  “Not much. Just that she was a friend of Franny’s from high school, and that she moved away a long time ago.”

  Moved away to Boston? What had that timeline looked like? Once again, my thoughts had wandered from the current case to my mother’s. I had to speak to this Bella woman the first chance I got.

  “Nelly, did you tell the police this? All of this?”

  “Yeah, I did. I told them everything I knew,” she said, having paled at the mention of the cops again. She lifted her napkin and tore strips from it. “Do you think it’s going to be all right, Christie? I’m innocent. Surely, they can’t arrest me for what happened?”

  I didn’t want to give her false hope. “How about that milkshake?” I asked, and set to making it, without meeting her eye.

  Another suspect had been added to the list. I had two incidents that now pointed toward Miss Bella Surname Unknown. It was time to take a closer look at the beauty from Boston.

  14

  “This type of thing makes me nervous,” Grizzy said, as we parked her car outside the Russo house.

  “What, driving? I know we usually walk everywhere, Griz, but you’ve got to give the old girl’s engine a rev once in a while.” I patted the dashboard of her Kia.

  “You know what I mean.” Grizzy unclipped her seatbelt. “Coming here under the guise of being a friendly neighbor, when really, we’re here to find out if Bella decided to murder them both.”

  “Hmm. But would she murder Sal first? And why?” Had she flown into a rage? Poisoning by pizza, which was my assumption since there’d been no gunshots or stab wounds, didn’t exactly fit the ‘crime of passion’ profile.

  “Christie, that’s not what I meant.” Grizzy reached over and took the sealed pot from my lap. “I’m worried that this will come back to bite us in the butt.”

  The setting sun sent orange-red light streaking across the sidewalk and into the Russo’s messy front yard. “I don’t think they have a dog, didn’t see one the last time we were here, so I think butt biting will be at a minimum.”

  “I mean Karma.”

  “Karma’s a strange name for a dog.” I paused, lifted a finger. “Actually, no, that’s a brilliant name for a dog. Better than Curly Fries.”

  “Don’t start with me,” Grizzy replied. “Now, can we focus on the problem at hand?”

  “There is no problem at hand, Griz. We’re just here to be friendly Sleepy Creekers.” I blinked. “I can’t believe I just called myself that.”

  “I can’t either,” Griz said. “If Missi heard you she’d have a hissy fit. You, a Sleepy Creeker? In your dreams.” The corners of my friend’s lips turned upward.

  We got out of the car and made our way up the front path. The grass hadn’t been cut in weeks, it seemed, and there were faded lawn ornaments lying on their sides here and there—a withered looking gnome missing the top of his red hat, and a flamingo that didn’t have a leg to stand on. Compared to the other houses in the street, the Russo’s place stuck out like a tired cliché.

  “What did you make, Griz?” I’d sprung the surprise visit on her at the Burger Bar this afternoon, and she’d insisted she’d have something ready to take with by this evening. Whatever it was, it smelled amazing.

  “Lentil soup,” she said. “It’s a belly filler and even though it’s not exactly a spring flavor, I thought they might appreciate the comfort food. And a break from eating pizzas.”

  Did anyone ever need a break from eating pizza? It sounded counter-intuitive to a happy life. But lentil soup was delicious too. Anything Grizzy made was delicious.

  We tramped up the front steps, and I knocked on the door then rang the doorbell.

  “I hate it when people do that,” Grizzy said.

  “What?”

  “Both. Knock and ring. It should be one or the other.”

  “Shush you, or I’ll do it again,” I said.

  The latch clacked, and the door swung inward. Bella stood on the threshold, her makeup done to perfection, and her dark glossy hair piled atop her head in a hairdo that had probably taken copious amounts of hairspray.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, airily.

  Yeah, no Boston accent there. If anything, it smacked slightly of New York. But faintly.

  “Hi,” I said, “I’m not sure if you recognize us, but we were here for the memorial service the other day. For Sal and Francesca?”

  “Oh. Right.” She nodded, but recognition didn’t exactly spark in her expression. “What do you want?”

  Tough crowd. I struggled for something to say that wasn’t a command or a question or too Christie-ish.

  “We came to offer our condolences,” Grizzy said.

  “You did that at the service, didn’t you?” Bella asked.

  “Yes, of course. But we know how difficult this must be for you, Bella. You’re new to town, and you’ve lost your friend. We wanted to offer you this.” Grizzy put up a smile and extended the pot. “Don’t worry, it’s not hot enough to burn your hands.”

  Bella examined the proffered pot like the lid might pop off and reveal a spider or a nest of snakes or Curly Fries. That would be my worst nightmare. Opening a pot, believing I was about to eat, only to find Curly Fries had gotten there first.

  “It’s lentil soup,” Grizzy said.

  “Thanks.” Bella finally took the pot, then stood awkwardly on the front step. “I suppose you want to come in.”

  “Thanks,” I said, ignoring Grizzy’s scandalized stare.

  Bella shuffled off down the hall, dragging her feet in fluffy slippers with bunny ears. She wore a black, fitted dress—different from the one she’d worn at the memorial service—and bar the slippers, seemed ready for a night out on the town.

  Not that there was much to do here.

  We entered a kitchen, and Bella showed us to the kitchen table. “I don’t have much time to talk,” she said, and glanced past us at the kitchen door. “Mario will be back soon.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Is that a problem?”

  Bella’s gaze flickered toward me as she took her seat at the table. “No. Just he needs my help with something.” It seemed like a lame excuse. I didn’t take it at face value.

  “So,” Grizzy said, “how are you holding up?”

  “I’m fine. I’ve been better, but I’ll be fine once I leave this town.”

  “Leave?” I asked.

  “Yeah, of course. I only came to visit Fran, and now she’s gone, I don’t see any reason why I’d stay.” Bella hadn’t offered us coffee, and her attitude was still brash. Like she didn’t care what we thought of her. It was a far cry from the begging and pleading I’d heard at the service.

  My suspicion inched upward. Bella who had done something. Be
lla who wanted to leave. Bella who might have been having an affair with Sal.

  “Francesca was a lovely woman,” I said. “She’ll be missed, greatly. And such a terrible way to go.”

  “Yeah.” Bella glanced at the doorway again. “Thanks for stopping by, but you should leave. Mario will need my help, soon.”

  Griz and I exchanged a glance. There was definitely something weird going on here.

  “You two are managing the pizzeria together, right?” I asked, without rising. “That must be challenging.”

  “No, not the pizzeria. He, uh, he wanted me to help him deal with the mice. Here. Not at the pizzeria. The pizzeria’s fine.”

  Grizzy jerked upright and looked around. “Mice? I don’t like mice. I got a cat for this exact reason.”

  I hinged on telling Bella that they were also good at eating dead bodies, but that might’ve been a step too far. “We could stay and help you if you need it,” I said.

  “No, thank you. The soup is more than enough. I’m sorry, but I don’t feel like talking about Francesca.”

  “And what about Sal?” I asked, in a last ditch effort to get something, anything from this. “Did you get on well with him?”

  Bella opened her mouth to answer, but the slam of the front door came. She scraped her chair back, immediately, and pointed to the back door. “Out,” she said. “Now.”

  “What? Are you all right? Bella, is something going on that we should know about?” Grizzy asked, rising from her seat.

  I got up too, the temptation to walk into the hall and see who’d entered the house nearly overwhelming me.

  “No, nothing’s wrong. But I don’t want you here. You’ve overstayed your welcome, you’re asking me strange questions, and I don’t like it. So I’d like you to leave now, thank you.”

  That was that. It wasn’t as if we could force her to let us stay. Grizzy and I filed out of the back door, and it slapped shut behind us. We stood on the step, shaking our heads. Grizzy went so far as to scratch hers.

  “What was that about?” she whispered.

  “Either she’s guilty or she’s scared or she’s both,” I said. “But we won’t find out more standing here. Come on, let’s go home.” If we were lucky, there would be a car parked out front to clue us in on who had arrived at the house.