Pepperoni Pizza Can Be Murder (12 page)

“She thinks Greg’s her soul mate, he told me that once. If Katy believed that Wade ruined it forever, she could do it. It’s amazing what people will do when they don’t think they have any other choice.”

My cell phone rang, and when I looked at the number in my display, I was surprised to see that the chief of police was calling me. Had he already found out that I’d talked to Art Young? I was sure he wouldn’t approve, not that I cared what he thought one way or the other.

The phone rang again, and Maddy asked impatiently, “Aren’t you going to answer that?”

“I’m not sure,” I said as it rang once more. “It’s Kevin Hurley, and I doubt I want to hear what he’s got to say.”

“Give it to me, then,” she said as she snatched it out of my hand. “Eleanor Swift’s phone,” she said.

After a slight pause, she said, “Yes. Okay. Fine. I understand. Thanks. Good-bye.”

She handed the phone back to me without a word.

After thirty seconds, I finally broke down and asked, “Aren’t you going to tell me what he had to say?”

Maddy smiled at me. “The Slice is now officially ours again. We can reopen any time we’d like.”

“But you’ve got a date tonight,” I protested.

“Bob will understand,” she said.

“No,” I said suddenly.

“Of course he will,” Maddy replied.

“I mean, no, you’re not going to tell him. We don’t have any dough made, and I used the last bit in the freezer I’d been saving. Besides, we both deserve a night off. For tonight, we’re going to keep the place dark and see how the other half lives.”

“I’m going out on a date, but what are you going to do?” she asked.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll find something,” I said. “I can’t remember the last time I rented a movie, made some popcorn, and lost myself. I’m looking forward to having a night by myself. No offense,” I added hastily.

“And none taken. If you’re serious, that’s fine, but if not, I’m sure Bob wouldn’t mind if you joined us.”

I laughed at the suggestion. “I doubt you could be more mistaken. Don’t worry about me, Maddy. I’m a big girl. I can make it one night by myself.”

“I know that,” she said. “But we still have some time to kill before my dinner date. What should we do?”

“Let’s track Katy Johnson down,” I said. “I want to talk to her.”

I was about to pull away from the curb when a ham-fisted woman I’d never cared for slapped my windshield. I briefly considered driving away, but I knew Greg wouldn’t like it if I ran over his mother’s foot.

I turned the engine off, and then got out to ask Clara Hatcher what her problem with me was this time.

“What can I do for you, Clara?” I asked as I faced her. She was a dour woman who either didn’t realize or couldn’t care less that the clothes she wore would be better off in a Goodwill bin than in her closet. It wasn’t just that the styles were outdated. She carried thirty pounds more than the outfits could contain, displaying an odd set of bulges and rolls whenever she moved.

“Where’s Greg? I know you’re hiding him from me, but I have a right to see him.”

“I don’t have the slightest idea where your son is,” I said. “I’m sorry about Wade.” Greg had told me many times how his mother had thought that Wade was the perfect son, despite his troubled youth, while Greg was the outcast, even though he’d never done anything to give her a moment’s unease.

“Don’t talk about my son. You aren’t allowed to. You’re not doing Greg any favors, you know that, don’t you? He killed my boy, and he needs to face his punishment for what he’s done.”

“Greg’s your son, too,” I snapped. I could see Maddy getting out of the car, but I wasn’t about to stop. “He deserves love just as much as Wade did.”

Clara lashed out with a speed that stunned me and smacked me hard across the cheek. In a voice filled with more rage than grief, she snarled, “I hope he gets the death penalty.”

She turned away before I could say anything in response. I stood there rubbing my cheek, feeling the burn on my face where her hand had slapped me.

“We can’t let her get away with that,” Maddy said as she started after her.

I put a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t like Clara, either, but we’ve got to take it easy on her. She just lost her firstborn son.”

“And she wants to see her only other child put to death. I’m not willing to cut her any slack at all.” Maddy stared at my cheek. “That’s going to leave a mark.”

We got back into the car, and I checked my face in the visor mirror. There was an angry handprint still there, a glowing afterimage of the impact. “I always thought Greg was exaggerating about his mom, but if anything, he was holding back,” I said. “She lived and died by Wade, no matter what he did. Greg told me that when his brother was fourteen, Wade used to steal the family car and joyride. When he was fifteen, Wade started drinking, and by sixteen, he was doing drugs. All the while, Greg was getting straight A’s and going to Sunday school. He told me once that he had to hide his money in his Bible to keep Wade from stealing it, since he was sure it was the only place he knew his brother wouldn’t look.”

Maddy nodded. “Did you know that Wade stole Greg’s varsity-letter jacket and traded it to another kid for drugs, and Greg never got it back?” She paused, then said, “He never forgave him for that, either.”

“I can’t say I blame him. What a loser.”

“The mother or the firstborn son?” Maddy asked.

The cheek was starting to ache. “Right now, I’m not sure which one I was talking about.”

“Then let’s say a little bit of both.”

I rubbed my cheek, and then I asked, “Did you see her eyes? I honestly think that she’s a little insane.”

“It’s tough to be a little crazy. That’s like saying you’re kind of pregnant.” She sat there a moment, and then added, “I wonder if she could have done it.”

“Kill her own son?”

Maddy nodded. “It’s happened before.”

“I honestly think Wade could have burned down her house and she would have found a way to punish Greg for it.”

“Maybe she did,” Maddy said.

“I don’t follow.”

“Wade was in the pizzeria, and we don’t know why he was there yet. Who knows who else was there? It was dark, and the two brothers had the same build. What if whoever killed Wade thought they were getting rid of Greg? He was hit once from behind, remember?”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but then again, I couldn’t deny that it was possible Maddy was right, though not necessarily about the killer’s identity. “No matter how unenthusiastic she is toward Greg, I still can’t see her killing him.”

“What if she did it to protect Wade? I’m pretty sure that in Clara’s twisted mind, Greg was expendable.”

“I’m not willing to concede that, but it does shed a whole new theory on what might have happened.”

“What’s that?” Maddy asked.

“If it was a case of mistaken identity, Greg’s in more trouble than we realized. No matter who killed Wade, they could have been intent on killing Greg, instead.”

“We’ve been looking at this all wrong, haven’t we?”

I shook my head. “No, we just haven’t seen the entire picture. Maybe whoever killed Wade knew who they were hitting, but maybe they didn’t. Just because we’ve added Greg to the list of targets doesn’t mean we can ignore Wade as the intended victim.”

“So now we have to track down motives for murdering two people instead of one,” Maddy said.

“One murder, two possible victims,” I clarified.

“This whole thing just got a lot more confusing, didn’t it?” She looked at her watch, and then said, “I know we said we were going to go looking for Katy Johnson, but could it wait until tomorrow? We can track her down before we open the pizzeria tomorrow.”

“What else did you have in mind?” I asked.

She frowned for a second, and then Maddy said, “Would you drive me back to my apartment? Honestly, I want to take a long, hot soak in the tub and forget about this, at least for one night.”

“That sounds like a good plan. Are you looking forward to your date with Bob?”

As I started driving back to her place, Maddy paused, then said, “You know what? I am. It might be nice getting out again.”

“Even after Bob back-talked you?”

Maddy laughed. “Especially since then. I’ve been waiting for him to show some spine, and I’d just about given up all hope. I don’t like being ordered around, but I don’t like being around a sycophant, either.”

I smiled. “Men have to walk a fine line when they deal with you, don’t they?”

“I’m not denying it, but I’m worth it.”

We got to her place, and I didn’t even shut off the engine. “Have a good time. I’d say call me when you get home, but I’ll probably be asleep already.”

As she opened her car door, she said, “How are you going to be able to get to sleep wondering about what happened on my evening out?”

“Believe it or not, somehow I’ll manage.”

After she was out of the car, I called out, “Be good, Maddy.”

“Now what fun would that be?” she asked with a laugh.

I drove away, ready to spend a night at home alone. It was a rare treat for me, and I planned to take full advantage of it, regardless of the pall in the air from Wade’s murder. I couldn’t let a homicide investigation interfere with my temporary moment of solitude. For one night, I was going to emulate my little sister and think about me, instead of the rest of the world.

I got home and was unlocking my front door when I heard someone call out to me. I turned around and found Patty Louise walking down the sidewalk toward me, carrying a basket in one arm and a newborn strapped onto her chest.

“Hey, stranger,” I said as she approached. “I haven’t seen you in a while. How’s life been treating you?”

“I’m just about finished with my maternity leave,” she said, “and I wanted to come by before I went back to work part-time.”

I could smell the heavenly aroma coming from her basket, and it was all I could do not to openly salivate. I managed to restrain myself though, and asked her, “How’s Madison doing?”

She pivoted around so I could see that her baby was sound asleep. “She loves to sleep when I walk, which is wonderful during the daytime, but it drives me crazy at night. I must walk twenty miles a day.” Patty smiled at that. “It has helped with the baby weight, though.”

Patty was a runner, and I doubt she’d weighed more at nine months than I did all of the time.

Finally I couldn’t ignore the basket anymore. “I can’t believe you don’t weigh more, being around your wonderful bread all the time.” I normally bought all my bakery goods from the grocery store or from Paul’s Pastries, but my bread for home consumption was the single exception, when I could get it. Patty was a neighbor of mine who had two very special talents in life. She could work with numbers like nobody I’d ever seen, and she could make sourdough bread that would melt in your mouth.

“Oops, I almost forgot. This is for you,” she said as she extended the basket to me.

It took every ounce of resolve I had, but I didn’t lift the dishcloth to stare at my bounty. “I wish you’d let me pay for this.”

“I’d rather barter,” she said. “As long as you trade pizzas with me, we’re in good shape.”

“Consider this an open store credit, then,” I said as I hefted the basket.

“Well, I’d better be going,” she said as Madison started to wake up. “If I don’t keep moving, she lets me know her disapproval with a wail that makes dogs run and cats hide.”

“Bye, and thanks again,” I said as she quickly retreated.

I went inside, peeled away the cloth covering my gift, looked at the two lovely brown, crusty loaves of sourdough bread, and then I covered them back up. It wouldn’t do to start eating it the second I got it. A long bath didn’t sound all that appealing to me at the moment, so I took a quick shower, instead. After that, I was hungry, but going out somewhere was the last thing I wanted to do, and I’d promised myself that I wasn’t going to sit down with my fresh bread and a stick of real butter, one of my favorite indulgences in life. My jeans were getting a little too snug for that, and I didn’t like where that was going. Since I couldn’t order pizza, and nothing else I could have delivered appealed to me, I decided to get into my sweatpants and one of Joe’s old shirts and make myself an omelet. Honestly, the meal wasn’t nearly as classy as that. Instead of prepping a lot of ingredients—something Maddy and I did every day at work—I scrambled a couple of eggs, threw a bit of grated cheese into the mix, then searched until I found a couple of mushrooms in my fridge. There was a bit of ham there, too, so I diced that and added it to the mix.

It was wonderful, especially coupled with Patty Louise’s homemade sourdough bread. After all, I had to have some kind of bread with my meal, and I made a little butter last me the entire meal.

Even after I did the dishes, it was just past six, and I was beginning to feel like I had a long night ahead of me. It surprised me to discover that I was bored, something I rarely had the luxury of experiencing in the course of a normal day.

Maybe that was the reason I liked running the pizzeria. It kept me busy during the loneliest time of the day, and by the time I got home at night, I was so worn-out that I didn’t have time to dwell on the fact that I was alone. I missed Joe at night more than any other time of day. It had taken three weeks after he’d died for the scent of him on his robe to wear off, but I still found myself putting it on whenever I was especially sad.

Tonight was going to be a robe night for sure.

As I got it out of the upstairs closet, I wrapped myself up in it, able to put the sash around me twice. It was an old black fleece robe with images of cabins, moose, snowflakes, and snow-covered trees, and I’d begged him to let me replace it a dozen times. He’d refused, and now I was glad that he had. A new flannel robe would lack all of the character of this old thing, and if I closed my eyes, I could still see my husband walking through the snow in it toward our Charlotte newspaper in the mornings, the steam coming from his breath and his hair disheveled, though he never seemed to care.

That brought a few tears, but just a few. I missed my husband, but at least I was confident that we had enjoyed a good life together, a nearly perfect fit, though our time was cut a great deal shorter than it should have been. My sister had told me in confidence one night soon after the funeral that she’d been searching her whole life for what Joe and I had found, but she doubted she would ever manage it.