Rest in Pizza (21 page)

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Authors: Chris Cavender

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To her credit, my sister smiled at me. “It won’t be the first time, and I’m willing to bet that it won’t be the last, either.”
As we drove to the hotel, Maddy said, “Eleanor, I heartily approve of your plan, but I just want to throw this out there. Should we call Kevin Hurley and tell him what we suspect?”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I said. “If we’re wrong, I don’t want Kevin witnessing it. Besides, it’s broad daylight. What’s going to happen to us in a hotel conference room surrounded by other people? This is the best place in the world to confront the women, if you ask me.”
 
By the time we got to the hotel, my nerves were as tight as banjo strings. “How do you want to play this?” I asked Maddy. “Should we try to get them alone, or should we brace them together?”
“It really depends on how we find them,” she said. “We should just play it by ear, in my opinion.”
I couldn’t find a reason to disagree with that. “Why not? It’s worked for us okay up to now.”
“Eleanor, in all fairness, we should remember that we only get one chance to be wrong here.”
“I still say we take our chances,” I said. “If we wait until they’ve both left town, we’ll never get this opportunity again.”
“If you say so,” Maddy said as we got out of the car and started for the hotel’s front door.
“You aren’t getting cold feet, are you?” I asked.
“They’re freezing, actually,” she replied.
“Maddy, we can call this off, turn the envelope over to Kevin, and be done with it,” I suggested. “It’s not too late.”
“Come on,” she said. “I’m just a little jumpy right now.”
“Don’t worry,” I answered. “I’ll be right there beside you.”
“Okay, let’s do this,” she answered.
 
“I thought you two were in meetings all day,” I said as we barged into the conference room and found Jessie and Patrice alone. They were sitting at the table in front of piles of paper, and I noticed that Jessie’s cell phone was in front of her.
“The publisher was called away for a teleconference,” Jessie said as she stood. “They’re having problems with one of their writers.”
“I’ve heard they’re all a little nuts,” Maddy said, and then glanced at Patrice. “Though I’m sure your husband was the exception.”
“He wasn’t a writer, and he wasn’t a chef,” Patrice said as she stood as well. “But if we can get one more book out of him, I’ll be happy.”
“You don’t seem as torn up as you once were,” I said.
“What can I say? I’ve grown accustomed to the fact that my husband is gone. We had our differences, enough that I wanted to leave him a time or two along the way, but there was still some affection there between us.”
Her story appeared to be changing yet again. Was she lying to spin what had really happened to soothe her own feelings, or was she trying to ease her conscience?
“What exactly are you two doing here?” Jessie asked. “I thought you had a pizzeria to run.”
“We do, but this was more important. We found a clue,” I said. “
The
clue, I suppose I should say.”
Jessie shook her head. “Are you two still playing detective? Why don’t you leave that to the police? They seem to know what they’re doing.”
It was time to spring the trap. “Look at this and see if you can say that it’s just playing.”
I handed them each a copy of what I’d found on the envelope, and tried to watch them both at the same time.
Jessie was the first to react. She threw the paper on the conference table and said, “So what? This could be easily be a setup.”
“It could also just as easily have been how he was murdered,” Patrice said. “You write notes in block letters just like this sometimes, don’t you, Jessie?”
“I didn’t do it until I saw your notes to Tony and decided that I liked the way the letters looked,” she said. “He told me he just started it himself after you took it up to make things clear, and then he decided he liked it, too. That was clever of you, though, trying to shift the suspicion onto me.”
“Why in the world would I do that?” Patrice asked.
“It’s time to stop playing games, Patrice. You’ve been setting up diversions since you showed up here,” Jessie said. “I bet you’re even the one who started the trash-can fire near the bookshop.”
“What are you talking about?” Patrice asked.
That was what I’d been hoping for. I said, “Jessie, I didn’t think you arrived in town until you barged into the Bookmark. How could you know about a fire that happened before you were supposed to even be in Timber Ridge?”
“I must have heard about it from someone else,” Jessie said. “After all, this isn’t all that big a town, and when something out of the ordinary happens, it feels like that’s all people want to talk about. Don’t let her convince you that she’s innocent.”
“I am,” Patrice demanded. “I’m no killer.”
“So you’d like us all to believe,” Jessie said. “You’ve been pretending to be drunk since Tony was killed, but I doubt you’ve taken more than a sip of alcohol the entire time you’ve been here. What’s the matter, Patrice? Are you afraid you might let something slip if you take a drink? That sounds like a woman with a great deal to hide to me.”
She took a step toward Patrice, and Maddy intervened while I reached for Jessie’s cell phone, still on the table. She saw me after I moved toward it, and Maddy caught it, too. Bless her heart, my sister pretended to have a coughing fit, and one that was so violent that both women had no choice but to look at her. I took the opportunity to look at Jessie’s phone. What a stroke of luck, it was just like mine.
I hit the section for call durations, and scanned quickly to the day of Benet’s murder.
Jessie had indeed spoken to her bosses in New York, but she hadn’t been on the phone for an hour. The duration was just three minutes, and in my mind, that left plenty of time to go to my restaurant, kill Benet, and then get back without being noticed. As I tried to slide it back where I’d found it so I could make an excuse to call Kevin Hurley, I glanced at the paper in front of her.
Every
S
had the same distinctive trailing hook I’d found on the note on the envelope.
And I knew at that moment who had killed Antonio Benet.
Chapter 20
N
ow was the right time to bring Kevin Hurley into our investigation. “Sorry we bothered you both,” I said. “Maddy, we need to go. I was way off base on this one. Someone else must have killed Chef Benet.”
My sister looked at me oddly. “What do you mean? Eleanor, you might not have realized it, but you were making real sense just then.”
I tried to laugh it off. “That’s my problem, isn’t it? I have too much imagination for my own good.” I glanced at my watch. “We need to get back to the Slice. I’ve got that sauce simmering on the stovetop, remember?”
It was the signal we’d created if one of us were ever in trouble, and Maddy picked right up on it. “You’re right. We don’t want to burn the place down. Sorry for the disturbance,” Maddy said.
We were almost to the door when Jessie said, “Nice acting, but neither one of you are going to win any awards. Lock that door, then turn around and come back. We’re not finished here just yet.”
I glanced back and saw that Jessie was holding a gun on us.
I’d figured it out, but it was probably too late to do any of us any good.
After I locked the door, Maddy and I walked back to Jessie. Patrice was in shock, just standing there with her mouth gaping open. “I don’t understand what’s happening right now.”
“You never were the brightest star in the sky, were you?” Jessie asked.
“You killed Tony?” Patrice asked incredulously.
“Of course I did,” she confessed. “He was going to ruin me, and if I couldn’t make him stay, I was going to make sure that he was finished, once and for all.”
“That still doesn’t make any sense to me,” I said. “You wrote the note for him to meet you on the envelope that held the letter saying that he wasn’t even getting a new show.”
Jessie looked really frustrated then. “I didn’t read the letter,” she snapped. “Tony told me what it said, and I believed him. What a liar he was. Oliver was right. The man couldn’t do anything right.”
If it had been a different situation, I would have loved the irony of the one thing that could save Benet’s life being in the killer’s hand before she committed the murder, but it was all just a little too sad for me. “You killed him for nothing, then.”
Jessie shrugged. “Sure, in hindsight I wish I hadn’t, but there was at least some satisfaction skewering him like that. You should have seen the expression on his pompous face when he realized that he was going to die.”
“How could you?” Patrice asked, and I saw Maddy reach into her bag. I knew she kept an assortment of things in there that could be used as a weapon, but I hoped she was using her cell phone instead. Jessie was clearly deranged, and if Maddy attacked her, I was certain that some of us were going to get hurt.
“What I want to know is, why didn’t you?” Jessie asked. “How could you live with him all of those years?”
“He had his good points,” Patrice said.
“Name them on one finger.”
Maddy glanced over at me, and I nodded. Whatever she was about to do, I had her back.
If she needed a diversion, she was going to get one.
“My heart,” I said as I clutched my chest and collapsed. It should buy her the time she needed, if Jessie would only react to it.
It had an unexpected result, though. My sister dropped her purse, and then knelt down beside me. “Eleanor, are you okay?”
“I’m faking it,” I whispered.
“Oh,” was all that Maddy could manage before Jessie was looming over both of us.
“Nice job, Eleanor. You were pretty convincing, too, until your sister took the bait instead of me.” As Jessie kicked Maddy’s bag to one side, she added, “Now, both of you need to stand up. I’ve had just about enough foolishness from all of you.”
What Jessie hadn’t counted on was Patrice finally finding her will to move. While Jessie had been occupied with us, she made the mistake of taking her focus off Patrice, and from somewhere deep within her, the widow finally found the strength to act. Before any of us were aware of what she was doing, Patrice had a conference chair in her hands, and as she lifted it above her head to hit Jessie, the producer swung around to shoot her.
But then Maddy and I stepped up and took control of the situation.
Acting as one person, we both reached out for Jessie’s legs and pulled her down to the floor toward us. The gun came clattering out of her hand, and Patrice stood over us with the chair, poised and ready to strike if Jessie tried anything at all.
 
Kevin Hurley got there thirty seconds after I called him, and as one of his officers led Jessie away, he said, “We were down to these two ourselves,” he admitted.
“Why didn’t you act on that?” Patrice asked. She was shaking now, as though the enormity of how close she’d come to dying was finally sinking in.
“You two weren’t going anywhere,” he said. “We were in the parking lot watching you so neither one of you could get away.”
“All the while, she was in here ready to shoot all three of us,” Patrice answered, her voice a ragged mess.
“It’s okay,” I said, doing my best to calm her nerves. “Jessie’s under arrest, and we’re all safe.”
“I thought that heart attack was real,” Patrice said.
“You’re not the only one,” Maddy added.
A paramedic came and looked hard at Patrice. “Are you all right?”
“Not really,” she said. “I think I’m going to collapse at any moment.”
“Let’s see what we can do for you,” he said as he led her out of the conference room.
Maddy, Kevin, and I were the only ones left.
My sister looked at me and said softly, “I can’t believe I bought your act. I’m sorry I didn’t do better.”
“Hey, you did what you thought you had to do. You believed that I was really dying,” I said. “I’m thinking that maybe I missed my calling. I might just have to join Timber Ridge’s Theatre Troupe now.”
“You’d be a natural,” Maddy said. “I was impressed.”
“What gave Jessie away?” Kevin asked.
I showed him the copies of the note, and then the paper in front of where Jessie had been sitting. “The
S
s matched on the rendezvous time on the envelope and her notes, and that’s when I knew that I had her. She also made a mistake about commenting on something that happened before she claimed that she was ever in town, and I had to wonder if she weren’t planning on killing him before he even showed up at the Bookmark. Something else must have happened, though, and she couldn’t do it when she’d planned to kill him. I showed her the letter in the hallway upstairs, but I never let her hold the envelope. I’m just lucky she didn’t kill me for it when she had the chance.”
“Got it,” Kevin said. “Officially, you both know that I have to scold you for the way you’ve been acting lately.”
“And unofficially?” I asked with a grin.
“I’d pin medals on both of you if I could,” he said. “You two need to come to my office later for some paperwork. I’m sorry, but you’re going to be tied up for a while, so you won’t be able to open the Slice this evening.”
“That’s fine with me,” I said. “After all this excitement, it might be nice having a little quiet time to ourselves.”
That wasn’t going to happen, though, as the door to the conference room burst open, and both Bob and David came rushing in.
“Are you two okay?” David asked as he took me in his arms.
“You could have died,” Bob added as he gave my sister the same treatment.
“We’re fine,” I said, though I honestly didn’t mind the attention that much.
“You both take too many chances,” Bob said.
Maddy pulled away, and then asked, “When we get married, you’re not going to be one of those overprotective husbands, are you?”
Bob started to shake his head, and then he stopped and looked at her carefully. “What are you saying?”
“Having a gun pointed at you tends to clarify your thoughts,” she said. “If the offer’s still good, I’d be happy to marry you. Why not? You’re probably the best I’m going to be able to do at this point.”
Bob laughed so hard that I thought the walls were going to shake apart as he pulled out a beautiful engagement ring and slipped it onto her finger. “Life with you is going to be just one big adventure, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Bob, you don’t know the half of it,” my sister said with that wicked grin of hers.
“We’re both so happy for you,” I said, but I doubted that either one of them even heard me. I took David’s hand and said, “Let’s give these two some privacy, shall we?”
“I can think of several ways we can accomplish that,” he answered with a grin.
Once we were outside, David asked me, “Can you believe that?”
“You bet I can,” I said. “That was the secret that I couldn’t share with you.”
“I understand,” David said.
“You know, I had a feeling that Maddy wanted to say yes all along, but she couldn’t come up with a good enough reason until we almost died a little bit ago.”
“That would do it, wouldn’t it? What flashed before your eyes when you thought you might die?”
I laughed at him, and then gave him a quick kiss. “I’m sorry, but I won’t indulge your desire to be complimented,” I said.
“Did I cross it at least once?” he asked, grinning broadly.
“You were there,” I admitted, “but I’m not saying anything more.”
I was about to kiss him again when Kevin Hurley approached us.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“You bet there is,” he answered, clearly upset about something.
“What’s changed since I saw you five minutes ago?”
“I just spoke to my son. What’s this nonsense about him staying in town after he graduates and working for you? Did you put him up to it?”
I wanted to laugh out loud, but then I realized that it wasn’t funny, at least not to Kevin. All I knew was that my life was back to the closest thing that could be called normal, and I was happier about it than I could express.
“Can we discuss this tomorrow?” I asked him. “Josh isn’t doing anything for months, so we’ve got that long, right?”
“I suppose so,” Kevin said, “But we are going to talk about it, make no mistake about it. What are you doing that’s so important that we can’t talk about it right now?”
“I’m taking my boyfriend out to dinner,” I admitted.
As Chief Hurley left, I looked at David and added, “That is, I am if you’re free.”
He pretended to think about it, and then answered, “Well, this is kind of sudden, but I think I can squeeze you in. What are you going to do about the Slice?”
“We’re closing, for one night only. After all, it’s a special occasion. My sister doesn’t get engaged every day.”
“Well, no, not
every
day,” David said with a grin.
“Tell her that joke,” I said with a smile. “I’d love to be around when you do.”
“No thanks, I don’t have a death wish. Seriously, I’d be glad to take you wherever you’d like to go. Bob and Maddy can come, too, if you’d like.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I have a feeling they’re going to be doing a little celebrating of their own.”
As David drove me home so I could change, I realized that Maddy hadn’t been the only one having an epiphany during the confrontation with Jessie Taylor. While I wasn’t anywhere near ready to consider getting married again, I was thankful that I had someone in my life I could share it with. I hoped we could find the same thing for Paul, but in the meantime, I was going to do my best to enjoy what I had.
And I knew in my heart that my late husband, Joe, would have heartily approved.

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