Bacon Cheddar Murder: Book 2 in Papa Pacelli's Pizzeria Series Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  BACON CHEESE MURDER

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  Bacon Cheese Murder

  Book Two

  in

  Papa Pacelli’s

  Pizzeria Series

  By

  Patti Benning

  Copyright 2016 Summer Prescott Books

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication nor any of the information herein may be quoted from, nor reproduced, in any form, including but not limited to: printing, scanning, photocopying or any other printed, digital, or audio formats, without prior express written consent of the copyright holder.

  **This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons, living or dead, places of business, or situations past or present, is completely unintentional.

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  BACON CHEESE

  MURDER

  Book Two in Papa Pacelli’s Pizzeria Series

  CHAPTER ONE

  Eleanora Pacelli pulled open the oven and peered inside. What she saw made her smile.

  “Perfect,” she said, reaching for the oven mitt. “Nonna, come sit down… it’s done.”

  She took the pizza stone out of the oven and placed it on a rack, then pulled the pizza wheel out of a drawer. Expertly, precisely, she sliced the pizza into eighths, then transferred the entire stone to a trivet on the small table in the breakfast nook. Her grandmother Ann Pacelli had already taken her seat. The old woman, with her professionally curled white hair and turquoise reading glasses, eyed the pizza critically for a moment, then beamed.

  “It looks just like how your grandfather used to make it,” she said. “This was always one of my favorite dinners. Sausage and tomato pizza with real mozzarella… it was the first pizza he ever made for me.”

  Ellie smiled, glad that she had been able to bring back good memories for the elderly woman who had done so much for her over the past few weeks. It was a good start on the long road to making up for all of the years she had neglected to visit after moving away as a teen. Twenty-five years was a long time to go without seeing someone, though, and it would take a lot more than a pizza dinner to alleviate some of the guilt she felt about it.

  “Don’t compliment me just yet,” Ellie said, reaching for a piece. “Let’s see how it tastes first.”

  The pizza was just about perfect. The cheese was melted and gooey, the sauce was bursting with flavor, and the crust was light and airy. In the weeks since Ellie had moved back to Kittiport, Maine, she had had a crash course on pizza making. Taking over her grandfather’s pizzeria, Papa Pacelli’s, hadn’t been easy, but it had been rewarding—more so than any job she’d ever had. She took pride in creating something with her own hands, even if that something was only a pizza.

  They ate their lunch in a comfortable silence. Bunny, Ellie’s little black-and-white papillon, waited eagerly under the table for dropped tidbits. Ellie had the suspicion that her grandmother was sneaking the dog little bits of sausage, but couldn’t complain—she was saving her last pizza crust for Marlowe, after all.

  The large parrot was hanging on the cage bars when Ellie left the kitchen after finishing lunch with her grandmother. She greeted Ellie with a loud squawk, and the woman smiled. Marlowe, a green-winged macaw, had been her grandfather’s. The bird had been devastated after he passed away, and was just now beginning to show her normal, undepressed, personality. Ellie had never had a bird, and was still wary of that big, bone-colored beak, but was quickly learning just how much personality the parrot had. She was a joy to interact with.

  “I’ve got a treat for you, Marlowe,” she said as she opened the cage door. “Pizza.” She held up the pizza crust, watching the bird’s light gold pupils shrink to pinpricks as she recognized one of her favorite foods.

  With a smile, Ellie handed her the crust. The bird held it in one clawed foot, while nibbling small pieces off with her beak.

  “What do you say?” she prodded gently. Her beak full of pizza crust, Marlowe gave a garbled “thank you,” and Ellie smiled. The bird was smart, that was certain. She was nineteen years old, and had been raised since she was a chick by Arthur and Ann Pacelli. She was constantly surprising Ellie by saying something new, and often what she said was in context.

  “Well, I’ve got to go to work,” the woman said. “Goodbye.”

  She opened the front door, paused to scratch Bunny behind the ears, and smiled when she heard the bird call “Goodbye!” after a second. Between the bird and the dog, she knew her grandmother wouldn’t be lonely.

  Papa Pacelli’s was in downtown Kittiport, not far from the marina. The old brick building had housed the pizzeria for nearly twenty years, making the restaurant a real fixture in town. It had lost popularity over the last two years as her grandfather stepped back from managing it. The young man that he had hired as manager turned out not to be as trustworthy as he hoped. Xavier Hurst had spent his two years there stealing funds from the pizzeria, and had done little to ensure that the other employees completed their tasks. With orders often getting delivered late and cold, and the pizzeria itself falling into disrepair, the restaurant ended up losing most of its customer base.

  All that changed after Ellie took over. Once she found out that Xavier had been stealing from the pizzeria, she fired him and took over as manager herself. The other employees, Rose, Jacob, and Clara, had all done much better since she had made it clear that she wouldn’t allow any more fooling around at work… especially if it kept the customers waiting.

  She got to the restaurant shortly before Jacob and Rose were supposed to arrive. It was a good feeling to walk into a clean and organized kitchen. She opened one fridge and smiled to see neatly organized rows of balled pizza dough on the shelves. The top two shelves had Ellie’s favorite thick-crust pizza dough, and on the bottom was their dough for thin-crust pizzas. Although Ellie had grown up in Kittiport, the decades she’d spent in Chicago had made her a true lover of thick-crust pizza
. She considered the thin-crust pizza much preferred by easterners to be not much better than tomato sauce on crackers. The other fridge was stocked with all sorts of vegetables, cheeses, and meats, while the pantry held dry ingredients for various sauces, as well as the flour and yeast required to make the dough. Nearly everything they served was made from scratch, something that Ellie knew her grandfather had been very proud of.

  We really do make the best pizza in town, she thought as she fired up the ovens. To be fair, there wasn’t much competition… other than Cheesaroni Calzones. I still can’t believe that Jeffrey hired Xavier after I fired him. How can he trust him? It would serve him right if Xavier stole from him, too.

  She wasn’t usually a vengeful person, but the owner of the calzone shop had been nothing but rude to her ever since she arrived in town. She suspected that he and Xavier had been behind the sabotage that had taken place at the pizzeria a few weeks ago—in fact, she all but knew that they were behind it—but with no evidence against them, the best she had been able to do was to change the locks and keep an eye open for any more suspicious activity from the pair of them. She had the feeling that she hadn’t heard the last of them yet.

  “Hi Ms. Pacelli,” one of the employees said as she came in through the back entrance. “How was your weekend?”

  “Pretty good, Rose. Thanks for asking. How was yours?”

  “Great.” The young woman grinned. “I went down to Portland with some friends. We had pizza, but it was nowhere near as good as it is here.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Ellie said, smiling. “Take a moment to clock in and get settled, then will you start folding some boxes? I’m going to go unlock the front doors. Fold a few more than you usually do. If this week is anything like last week, we’ll need them.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was a busy day, and Ellie couldn’t have been happier. Her customers seemed happy too, and she was even beginning to recognize some local faces. Soon enough I’ll know the regulars by name, she thought as she scrubbed her hands before leaving for the evening. Hopefully they won’t consider me an outsider for too much longer. She had spent the first sixteen years of her life in Kittiport, after all. She had moved away in her junior year of high school after her parents got divorced. Maybe she hadn’t spent the majority of her life there, but she still felt like the small town was her home.

  By the time she returned to her grandmother’s house that evening, it was dark out. Marlowe gave her a sleepy squawk of greeting when she walked in the door, and Bunny danced happily around her feet. She bent down to pet the dog before she started barking—her nonna would surely be asleep by now.

  “Let’s go to the study, Bunny,” she whispered to the dog after grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge in the kitchen. “I’ve still got some work to do.”

  The dog followed her to her grandfather’s study, which was at the end of the front hall. It was a large room with bookshelves on the walls and two big windows, one of which looked out to the forest behind her grandmother’s house. There was a wooden perch in front of the other window, where Marlowe sat when Ellie was working in the office during the day; next to the desk was a plush dog bed for Bunny.

  The dog went straight to the bed when Ellie opened the door and spun in a tight circle before settling down. Ellie settled herself onto the old leather chair that still smelled faintly of cigars and opened her laptop. She opened the bottle of water and took a sip before rubbing her eyes. It was late, and she was tired. She promised herself she would only work for a few minutes, but if the cheese order wasn’t in by early tomorrow morning, the restaurant would miss that week’s delivery.

  ***

  She jerked her head up and blinked at the office around her. It took her a second to realize where she was; in her grandfather’s study. She must have fallen asleep after emailing the cheese order in. But what had woken her so suddenly? She glanced down and saw that Bunny was on alert as well, her triangular ears pricked and pointed towards the window that looked out into the back yard.

  Suddenly she heard a noise that caused goosebumps to rise on her arms. A scream. Bunny let out a sharp bark, and Ellie stood up and rushed over to the window, but with the lights on in the study, all she could see was blackness. She rushed over to the switch by the door, flicked it off, then hurried back to the window. Had the scream been human? It was impossible for her to be sure. She knew that there were probably all sorts of animals in the state park that bordered her grandmother’s property… but could any of them make a noise like that?

  Ellie pressed her face against the window, peering out. With the lights in the study off, the half-moon’s glow shed enough light outside for her to see the outline of the trees on the other side of the yard, but nothing else. The yard was empty.

  “It was probably just a fox or something,” she said quietly, trying to reassure herself. “Some sort of mating or hunting call.”

  She was just about to turn away from the window and go to bed when she saw movement along the tree line. She pressed her nose against the cool glass again. That’s no animal, she thought. That’s a person. And they’re coming this way.

  Ellie hurried towards the back door, where the person seemed to be headed. Her heart was pounding, but out of fear for whoever it was, not for herself. Judging by the scream, someone must have gotten hurt. She only hoped that whatever it was, she would be able to help.

  She had barely reached the kitchen when something hit the back door, making the wood shake. Ellie was horrified to see bloody hand prints on the glass. She hurried forward and yanked the door open. A woman stumbled inside, a woman that Ellie knew well.

  “Shannon?” she gasped, rushing forward to guide her best friend into a chair in the breakfast nook. “What happened? What are you doing out here?”

  “I think he’s hurt really bad, Ellie,” the woman said. She was pale and shaking; her entire front was covered in blood. “You have to come help.”

  “Who’s hurt? Shannon, are you okay? What’s going on?”

  “A guy I know, Anthony Reeves, he said he wanted to tell me something, a story he found out about. He didn’t want anyone to know… we were supposed to meet in secret… Ellie, we have to hurry. He needs help.”

  “Shannon, I need you to calm down and tell me what’s happening,” Ellie said. “Should I call an ambulance?”

  “No, they won’t get here in time. Tony needs help now! The attacker might come back. It could already be too late. Please, Ellie, just help me get him somewhere safe.”

  As her friend started to cry, Ellie fretted. She didn’t know what to do. Waste valuable time calling the police? Go and try to help someone who was gravely injured on her own? And what was this about an attacker?

  “How far away is your friend?” she asked at last.

  “Just in the woods,” Shannon said, getting the words out between sobs. “He’s not far…”

  “All right,” Ellie said with a sigh, throwing her common sense to the wind and deciding to trust that her friend knew best. She was the one that had seen just how badly this Anthony guy was injured, after all. “Lead the way.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The forest was dark, and even with the flashlight that Ellie had grabbed from a drawer in the kitchen it was difficult to see more than a few yards ahead of them. Nothing outside of the beam of light was visible, and she was beginning to wonder just how her friend knew where they were going when they broke free from the undergrowth and found themselves on a trail.

  “He’s not too much farther,” Shannon whispered. “We were meeting at the crossroads of Eight Mile and Windy Bluffs trails.”

  This meant nothing to Ellie, who hadn’t stepped foot in the state park since moving back. She was already regretting her decision to forgo calling the police—surely she could have spared a couple of minutes to call the emergency line before hurrying out here? To make matters worse, she had been in such a hurry to follow Shannon that she hadn’t even thought to bring her cellphone. Wh
at if Anthony, when they found him, was injured badly enough that they weren’t able to get him out on their own?

  “Just a few more feet,” her friend whispered. “There’s the marker for the trail.”

  Suddenly the beam of the flashlight swept over a pair of shoes. Ellie felt a chill as she slowly ran the beam up the pair of legs, revealing a bloodstained torso. She could sense already that something was wrong. No living person could be that still.

  At last the beam revealed the pale face of a man with scruffy facial hair and blank, unmoving open eyes. Shannon gave a cry and rushed forward, falling to her knees beside him. Ellie hung back, shaken and feeling sick.

  “He’s not breathing,” Shannon said, her voice high pitched. “Oh my goodness! Ellie, you have to help me. He’s not breathing!”

  “Shannon…” Ellie said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Shannon, he’s dead.”

  “He can’t be. He was alive when I left him. We just… we just need to give him CPR. Do you know how?”

  “He’s lost too much blood, that won’t help,” she told her friend gently. She took a step closer and laid a hand on the other woman’s shoulder. “He’s gone, Shannon. We have to call the police. Hand me your cellphone, I left mine in the house.”

  Fumbling, Shannon pulled a phone out of her back pocket and handed it over. She was clutching Anthony’s still hand, crying softly. Ellie turned the phone on and punched in the emergency number. The phone tried to send the call through, then flashed a no service notification across the screen.

  “Crud,” Ellie muttered. “Shannon, we have to go back to the house. There’s no cell service out here.”

  “I’m not leaving him,” her friend said. It came out almost as a shriek. “It’s my fault he was here in the first place.”

  What do I do now? Ellie thought. I’m not strong enough to drag a hysterical woman back through the woods. We need the police.