Killer Crust (19 page)

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Authors: Chris Cavender

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #General

BOOK: Killer Crust
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We found Gina working at the front desk with a worried expression on her face. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Paul didn’t turn you down, did he?”
“What? No, as a matter of fact we’re having a late lunch on Friday.”
“Then why do you look so gloomy?” Maddy asked. “After all, that’s great news, isn’t it?”
“I just hope I still have a job by then,” she said. “I just got off the phone with my uncle, and he told me that if Luigi’s murder isn’t solved by this time tomorrow, he’s going to pull the plug on this entire operation.” She looked around the lobby as she added, “These people have become a second family to me. I don’t know how I’m going to tell them that’s it’s probably going to be all over by this time tomorrow.”
“Do us a favor and don’t say a word to anyone until you absolutely have to,” I said.
Her eyes brightened for a moment. “Does that mean you’ve discovered who the killer is?”
I lowered my voice as I explained, “No, but the good news is that we’ve gone from eight suspects to three. That’s some serious progress in this kind of situation.”
“I appreciate everything that you two have been doing, but it’s still not going to be enough. Is Chief Hurley any closer to finding the murderer than you are?”
I hated to have to say it, but I didn’t really have any choice. After all, she deserved to know the truth. “I’m sorry. We’ve been comparing notes all along, and we’re stuck on the same three people.”
Gina frowned, and then asked quietly, “Is there any chance you could tell me who your suspects are? I might be able to help if I knew who you were considering.”
“I can appreciate that, but Maddy and I hate dragging someone’s name through the mud if we’re wrong,” I explained.
“Eleanor, I’m not going to tell anybody. Whatever you tell me is safe with me. Hank found you earlier, didn’t he?”
“Yes, why? Did he tell you about the tape?” Maddy asked.
She laughed wryly. “Actually, I was the one who suggested that he study them. He was in his office all day checking every surveillance video we have during the time of the murder on my orders.”
It was interesting how the security chief had failed to mention that particular detail.
It was time to make an executive decision. “Okay, we’ll share with you what we know, but it would mean a lot to us if you’d keep this to yourself.”
“I won’t breathe a word of it,” she promised.
I looked at Maddy, and she nodded. We were in agreement. It was time to share. “Our last three suspects are Kenny Henderson from the Charlotte team, Jack Acre, and Todd Blackwell from Raleigh.”
“Todd? Why is his name on your list? I know for a fact that he couldn’t have done it,” Gina said.
“Why do you say that? We know that one of the twins was spending the time trying to pick up one of your waitresses in the restaurant, but Reggie said that he was the one, and your waitress confirmed it. He’s the only one we have on tape.”
“Todd might not have been where a camera could see him, but I know that he was doing something else the entire time when Luigi might have been murdered.”
“How could you know that?” Maddy asked. “You weren’t with him personally, were you?”
Gina frowned, and then got the implication of my sister’s question. “No, no, and ewww. I have better taste than that.”
“Then how could you possibly know that he didn’t kill Luigi?” I asked.
“He was right over there in our business center,” she said as she pointed to the door just off the front desk. “I’m surprised no one told you.”
“And he never left that room the entire time?” I asked.
“No, and I can prove it, too.”
“How can you be so certain?” Maddy asked her.
“Let me show you,” she said as we all walked together to the business center space. “You need my key to get in. We’ve had some trouble lately, so our sign-in policy is pretty strict. I don’t mind someone using our facilities, but one of our guests used the computer for some pretty depraved things, so I have to keep a close eye on it. No one gets in, or out, without signing my sheet. Todd walked in there right after you all left the auditorium, and he didn’t sign out until three minutes before you started back up again. He asked me to have something to eat sent in to him, so I contacted the restaurant myself. I was around this desk and in my office across the way from the business center the entire time, and he never left it. I’d swear to it under oath.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You’ve really been a help.”
“I just wish I could tell you something about the other two, but I’m drawing blanks on both of them,” she replied.
“Don’t sell yourself short. You’ve done plenty.”
I started to call Kevin Hurley’s number when I saw him walk into the hotel complex.
“I was just getting ready to call you,” I said as I put my phone away and spoke his name.
“What’s up?” he asked as he joined us.
“We’ve got an alibi for Todd from Raleigh,” I said.
“How’d you manage to do that?”
“Gina just told us,” I said.
Kevin looked over at the front desk, and then turned back to us. “Stay right here, both of you.”
After two minutes, he said, “Come with us,” to Maddy and me, and we all followed the police chief back to the business center. Gina swiped her card and unlocked the door for us, and then she sat down at one of the computers there. After tapping several keys, she brought up a log. “See? It’s right here. He was signed into the system the entire time.”
“But that doesn’t prove that he was here. He could have left, and then come back after he poisoned Luigi’s pizza. Were you here every second?”
Gina frowned, and then after she considered the question, she admitted, “No, come to think of it, I was gone for about four minutes.”
“It’s not much time,” Kevin said, “but he could have had enough time to poison the pizza and give it to Luigi without being caught.”
Gina shook her head.
“What’s wrong with my theory?” the police chief asked.
“Do me a favor. Leave the room for one second.”
“You aren’t keeping secrets from me, are you?” Kevin asked. “If you tell Eleanor and Maddy something, you need to tell me, too.”
“Just do it, okay?”
The chief of police wasn’t happy about it, but Kevin reluctantly did as she asked.
Once the door clicked behind him, she said, “Watch this.”
She gestured for Kevin to rejoin us, but of course, he couldn’t get through the door. Gina got up and unlocked it for him, and then she said, “It locks automatically every time anyone comes in or out.”
“What if he rigged it somehow?” Kevin asked. “He could have always blocked the door with something so it wouldn’t close all the way, and you’d never know it.”
“Let me show you something.” She turned back to the computer, tapped several more keys, and then she said, “Here’s the log for every time the door opened and closed during the period in question when Luigi could have been poisoned. If you study it closely, you’ll see that the door was never unlocked for more than the standard six seconds.”
“And there’s no way around this system?”
“None,” she said.
“Okay then, I’ll buy it. Thanks for letting us know about it.”
“Good luck catching the killer,” she said as we all walked out of the business center. “The way I see it, you’ve got a fifty-fifty chance now.”
“Thanks,” all three of us said simultaneously.
It was all I could do to stifle my laugh, but when I remembered that my pizza had been used as a murder weapon, the mirth died quickly enough.
“So, now we’re down to two,” Kevin said as we moved away from Gina.
“Yes, but which one is a killer?”
“I’m going to press both of them,” he said with conviction. “Now that our list is manageable, it won’t be long before we figure out which one is the murderer. Ladies, you’ve been a great help to me and the department in this investigation, and I won’t forget it, but my staff and I can take it from here.”
“You’re firing us?” I asked incredulously.
“Don’t think of it that way. Just realize that your part in this is over. I’m glad you won second place.”
“Does that mean that you didn’t want us to win the whole thing?” Maddy asked.
“What? Of course I did. I’m just saying that there’s no reason to hang your head coming in second.”
“We couldn’t agree with you more,” I said, “but we’re not ready to give up just yet.” I turned to Maddy and asked, “Isn’t that right?”
“It is,” she agreed.
Kevin clearly wasn’t all that pleased with our answer, and who could blame him really? Maddy and I were probably the only people he’d ever come across that would have the nerve to refuse to be fired by him. He said calmly, “I can appreciate how you feel, believe me, but like I said, there’s nothing left for you to do. I’ll interview our suspects again, and unless I miss my guess, one of them will crack by morning.”
“If you can even find them,” I said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“What makes you think that Kenny and Jack Acre are even still here at the complex?”
“Why wouldn’t they be?” Kevin asked. “Running away now would just make them look guilty.”
“Which we all believe one of them actually is,” Maddy reminded him.
“Don’t worry about that. There’s no place they can hide that we won’t find them. Good night.”
“I still think you’re making a mistake trying to fire us,” I said to him. “We aren’t finished with this yet.”
“I disagree. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“We understand,” Maddy said.
He studied her a moment, and then the police chief asked, “But you aren’t going to change your behavior, are you?”
She just shrugged.
Kevin said to me, “She’s your sister. Can’t you do anything with her?”
“Honestly, I wouldn’t if I could, since I happen to believe that she’s right.”
Kevin wanted to say something in response, I could see it in his eyes, but he finally decided not to and just gave up. As he walked away from us, he was on his radio, no doubt putting out an all-points bulletin for Kenny and Jack.
“Where does this leave us?” Maddy asked me as Kevin left.
“Do you honestly think we’ll have any more luck finding the two of them than Kevin will? He’s got a staff of trained investigators and more resources than we can even imagine. On the other hand, we’re just a couple of pizza makers who snoop on the side.”
“So, we’re just giving up?” Maddy asked.
“I didn’t say that. I’m just not sure where we should go from here. You don’t happen to have any bright ideas, do you?”
“I wish I did, but I don’t have a clue what we can do, either.”
“Then let’s go back upstairs, change into more comfortable clothing, and then we can keep hunting for our suspects. Who knows? We might actually find one of them first ourselves. Kevin may know criminals, but we know pizza makers, and more important, how they think.”
“Do you honestly believe that’s going to be an asset in any way?” Maddy asked.
“I don’t know, but at the moment, it’s the best I can do.”
“Then let’s go change and keep hunting,” she said.
Chapter 18
I
f felt good getting back into my jeans again. I had never really been a big fan of getting dressed up, which was one of the great reasons to own my very own pizzeria. I could wear whatever I wanted, and no one could tell me otherwise.
After Maddy changed as well, she plopped down on a chair in our sitting room. “Eleanor, until we get a solid idea about what we should do next, I vote we sit right here and see if we can figure out who killed Luigi without running around this complex like a couple of crazy ladies.”
I took the couch as I asked, “It’s not just because you’re tired of standing on your feet all day, is it?”
“No, it can’t be that. We do more time than this on a typical day at the Slice,” she said.
“Yes, but there’s no pressure there. We’re in our comfort zone in our own place.”
“That’s true. This competition was kind of grueling, wasn’t it?”
“Hey, we got a grand out of it, and a year’s supply of dough. By the way, they’re going to deliver the first installment tomorrow at eleven-thirty. I should probably call Greg or Josh and have them meet the delivery man at the Slice.”
“Does that mean that we’re not going to open tomorrow?” Maddy asked, clearly disappointed by the news.
“I haven’t really thought about it. Why, would you like to?”
She just shrugged. “If we’d won the grand prize, I was going to suggest that we take a week off. As it is though, I’m not sure we can afford to lose any more customers than we might have already. We don’t want any of them to get used to eating somewhere else, do we?”
“No, I see what you mean,” I said. “Okay, we’ll check out a little early, and then go straight to the Slice to get ready to open at noon.”
“That doesn’t give us much time to make fresh dough,” Maddy said.
“We could always just use some of the free supply that Luigi’s is supplying us with tomorrow. It’s really not half-bad once you get used to working with it.”
“Actually, I was thinking that we should donate that part of our winnings to a food bank,” Maddy said. “I don’t know about you, but personally, I don’t want to look at another one of Luigi’s crusts as long as I live.”
“I totally get that. I agree; I’ll take fresh, or what we’ve frozen or refrigerated, anytime. It shouldn’t be a problem, since I’ve got a good supply built up. If we have to, just in case we can’t do it otherwise, we’ll use that dough until I can make more.” I stretched, and then said, “But that’s tomorrow. What are we going to do tonight?”
“We’re going to find the killer,” Maddy said confidently.
“And how do you propose we do that?”
She thought about it, and then Maddy said, “We’re going to do what you suggested before. Kenny’s a pizza maker, and Jack Acre has devoted the last five years of his life to it, too. There’s got to be a clue hiding somewhere that Kevin can’t see.”
“The kitchens were still in place on stage at the party. Did you happen to notice that all they moved were the chairs in the audience? Do you suppose there’s a clue anywhere there that we might have missed?”
“It’s worth looking into,” Maddy said as she stood. “Let’s go see if Kenny’s kitchen is hiding any secrets.”
“I’m right behind you,” I said.
 
The auditorium was eerily empty as we walked in. The party remnants had been cleaned up, but the kitchens were still all in place on the stage. I started to hit the main lights when Maddy touched my arm. “Do we really want the entire place lit up? It might not be a bad idea to hide our presence here while we’re digging around.”
“Okay, I see what you’re saying,” I said. “I’ll just turn on the lights backstage, so it will give us some light to look around without announcing what we’re doing to anybody who happens to walk past the auditorium doors.”
I carefully walked up the steps to the stage and found the light switches in back. After flipping a few on and off, I finally found the ones that gave us a chance to see without letting everyone know our business.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Maddy asked in a hushed voice.
“Anything that’s out of place,” I answered.
“Should we search together or split up?”
“We only have one suspect left who was in the competition. Let’s check Kenny’s work space together.”
We looked everywhere in his assigned area of the stage, but if there was a clue hiding anywhere there, we didn’t find it.
“Well, that was a complete wash,” Maddy said as she idly played with one of the knives on the table where we’d done our own prep work.
“I’m not ready to give up. We’re not done searching yet,” I said.
“Where should we look next—at our own setup?” she asked, clearly joking.
“Sure, why not? Someone could have stashed something incriminating there to make us look bad, especially since we’ve been nosing around so much. That’s not a bad idea at all.”
“I think you’re being a tad too paranoid,” Maddy said.
“You’re probably right, but what’s it going to hurt to look?” I asked as I glanced inside our refrigerator. Maddy had been right; there was nothing there. Hang on a second. Or was there? I pulled out some of the supplies we’d gotten from the restaurant’s kitchen at that last second but hadn’t actually needed, and there in the back was a prescription bottle.
“What’s this?” I asked when I spotted it.
“I don’t know; I can’t see anything,” Maddy answered as she approached our station.
“Hand me one of those paper towels.”
She did as I asked, putting the knife down in front of her as she grabbed a few sheets from the roll. I took one, and then I reached in and used it to pull the bottle out of the fridge. “Maddy, you didn’t put this in here, did you?”
“Not a chance,” she said. “What’s the scrip for?”
I took it over to one of the lights and read the label. The bottle was still nearly full, and I wondered what condition Luigi had been taking it for. I read the name of the medication aloud, or at least as close as I could come to pronouncing it, and then I finished with saying, “It says it’s for the temporary relief of allergy and allergy-like symptoms,” I said.
“You didn’t say whose name was on the label, Eleanor. Who does it belong to? Don’t tell me. It’s Luigi’s prescription, right?”
“Well, technically it’s made out for George Vincent, but yeah, it belonged to Luigi.” Something was odd about that, though. I thought back to the conversation we’d had with Luigi on the stage. “Hang on a second, Maddy,” I said. “Do you remember when Sandy sneezed on stage and said it was because of allergies?”
“Yeah. Luigi made it a big point of saying that he’d never had them himself. Why would he lie to us about something as trivial as all that?”
“What if he was using this medication for something else?” I asked. I looked at the label again and asked, “Do you have your Smartphone on you?”
“You know that I never go anywhere without it,” Maddy said as she dug it out of her purse.
“Check out this name online, and tell me what else it could have been used for.”
She got online on her phone, and after she typed in the word exactly as I spelled it, she read the screen. “No, sorry; it’s just for allergies.”
“Are there any secondary uses for the medication?” I asked.
Maddy scrolled farther down the screen, and then looked at me in amazement. “What are you, psychic now?”
“Why? What does it say?”
Maddy read from the screen. “This drug can also be used for the temporary relief of a poor sense of smell or taste.”
Everything clicked then. “I knew it. Everything fits.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Luigi turned down a piece of pizza when he came to the Slice to tell us about the contest, remember? He accepted, but after he checked his pockets, he changed his mind.”
“Sure. Why bother eating something if you can’t taste it? That must mean that someone took his pills so he couldn’t taste the cleaner on the pizza when they tainted it. It was absolutely premeditated.”
“Not only that, but it could explain why he scored our pizza so well right before he died. Luigi couldn’t taste anybody’s entry.”
“Now we know how they got him to eat a pizza that was doused in cleaner. The real question is who would know about his condition?”
Maddy answered, “Well, there’s his brother, obviously, but we’ve already eliminated him as a suspect.”
“Who else could know about his condition? How well did he and Kenny really know each other? I’m guessing that it was not as well as someone who worked for him for years. Hey, Luigi sent Jack Acre to get his pills at the cocktail party, remember? He had access to them from the start. Are these even real?”
“I’m guessing that they’re just placebos. Jack must have swapped them out when he went to fetch them at the party. The only way Luigi would have eaten that pizza was if he couldn’t taste the poison on it, and the only person who had the means and the opportunity was Jack Acre.”
“We have to call Kevin Hurley right now,” I said.
“I’m afraid there won’t be any need to do that,” the murderer said as he stepped into sight from the shadows of the auditorium. I could clearly see the gun in Acre’s hand, reflected in the soft light from the stage.
“I can’t
believe
the police never found those,” Jack said as he smiled sadly at the meds. “How hard did they even search this place?”
“You tried to frame us, didn’t you?” I asked, staring at the gun in his hand as he walked up the steps to join us. How were Maddy and I going to get out of this one?
“Of course I did. Why else would I use your pizza to poison Luigi? I figured I had several ways to escape detection, but you were absolutely high on my list of people to blame if any of my other plans fell through.”
It was obvious that Acre wanted to boast, and I knew that the longer he talked, the better chance we had of someone coming into the auditorium and finding us.
I glanced down and saw the knife Maddy had been fiddling with on the corner of the table; I just hoped that Acre hadn’t spotted it yet.
“Go on,” I said, trying my best to distract him. “Brag a little. Who are we going to tell? You’ve got a captive audience.”
Acre nodded and smiled. “I do, don’t I? Why not? I figured that if I killed Luigi in Timber Ridge at this competition, there would be plenty of suspects around to dilute the attention of the police, and that was assuming that the local yokel cop was even smart enough to figure out that Luigi had been poisoned instead of choked to death accidentally.”
“The chief’s way smarter than that,” Maddy said in Kevin’s defense. In a way, it was a shame that he wasn’t around to hear it.
“So it turned out. If the police wouldn’t believe that it was an accidental choking, then I wanted them looking at you. I used your pizza to deliver the poison, and then I hid the prescription in your fridge. What else did I have to do, send the cops an admission of guilt from the two of you?”
“These are just placebos, aren’t they?” I asked as I held the bottle up. “You switched them with the real meds when Luigi made you fetch them from his room.”
“I see you were smart enough not to leave any of your prints on it. Well, that doesn’t matter. You’re going to both die trying to escape, and I’ll sadly inform everyone that you’d threatened me before.”
“How is anyone who knows us ever going to believe that?” Maddy asked. As Acre’s glance moved to her, I searched for anything I could use as a weapon that was within my reach. The knife was too far away to grab without giving myself away. I had an idea, and I realized the second I thought of it that it would be foolishly risky, but at least it was something that might work. I screwed off the childproof top and pretended to smell the pills inside. “How did you think you could fool him with these fakes?”
“That was the easiest part. The pills didn’t always work right away, or every time he took them,” Jack said smugly.
As I started to put the pill bottle down on the table, Maddy asked him, “But why did you want to kill him in the first place?”
“I didn’t know that the fool had changed our agreement behind my back,” Acre said with disgust.
“
You
were the one we heard arguing with Luigi in the hallway the night before the contest, weren’t you?”
“I figured you must have heard something, but I guessed that you wouldn’t even think to suspect me after I feigned sleep when you pounded on my door.”
“What were you fighting about? Control?” I asked.
“The man was insane. He warned me that he was going to change everything at Luigi’s, but he wouldn’t tell me anything specific about what he was going to do. I pushed him for more information, and I even tried to use something I had on him as leverage, but he shocked me and wouldn’t back down. I couldn’t believe it when he actually
threatened
me. If I’d known the truth at that point, I probably would have killed him on the spot. Can you believe he’s letting that moron brother of his run things? The guy gets a million bucks
and
control of the business. It was all meant to be mine, and now that idiot is going to ruin
my
company.”

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