Thin Crust Killers Read online

  “That’s our mess, we’ll clean it up.”

  “You’re the boss,” he said. “You’re entitled to a perk now and then.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I had worried that Greg might quit working at the Slice after he’d come into some money, but it was happily unfounded. He’d shown up the next day, eager and ready to work, acting as if nothing had happened, and I’d been too glad to question his motivation. I relied on my sister’s help, along with a few high school and college kids, to make it, and so far, they’d rarely let me down.

  “Do I have time to fix myself a sandwich before we open for dinner? I skipped breakfast.”

  “I’d be happy to do it for you,” I said.

  “Cool. I’ll take a kitchen-sink sandwich.”

  “Coming right up,” I said. Greg liked his open-faced sandwiches covered with just about every topping we offered, and I wondered how he managed to eat it all, but he seemed to love them, and I’d been teasing him that I was going to offer it on the menu and name it after him.

  As Greg’s sandwich made its way onto the conveyor, Maddy came back to join me.

  “Kevin Hurley’s going to be back soon,” she said. “I thought we’d make that list of who we can remember came in yesterday while Greg eats his sandwich.”

  “Let’s do it out front so we can include him,” I said. “After all, he might have given out the menu himself.”

  As soon as Greg’s sandwich was ready, I plated it and carried it out to him. He already had a drink and a bag of chips in front of him.

  “Wow,” he said, “I feel special, being waited on by the owner and all.”

  “You should,” I said. “Greg, did you hand out any of the new menus yesterday when you made your deliveries?”

  He nodded as he reached for his sandwich. “There were only a handful of menus up front, so I decided against taking more than two or three.” Before I could say anything, he quickly added, “I know I should have asked you for more, but you were tied up, and I had pizzas to deliver. I dropped off the few I had at The Mountain Laurel.” The Laurel—as locals called it—was the only lodging in Timber Ridge, if you didn’t count Sophie Jackson’s bed-and-breakfast. That was exaggerating the fact, since Sophie hadn’t done anything different to her place before opening it, and you had to be pretty desperate to stay there with her. The Laurel had twenty rooms and a decent restaurant, and it was frequently on Greg’s delivery schedule.

  “There’s no problem,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure out who got the new menus yesterday.”

  “Because of the robbery.” Greg nodded as he took his first bite. I didn’t know how he could eat a sandwich with so many different and sometimes clashing flavors, but he seemed to really enjoy it.

  “You’ve heard about it already?” Maddy asked.

  Greg finished his bite, then he wiped his mouth and said, “It’s a small town. Everybody knows what happened to Hank, and they know about the menu robbery note, too.”

  He took another bite as Maddy grabbed a pad and a pen from behind the cash register. “Eleanor, do you still have the credit card receipts from yesterday?”

  “I can do better than that,” I said as I got up and walked back into my office. “I’ll be back in a second.” After tucking the hundreds into the safe, I pulled out our deposit bag and rejoined them.

  “I didn’t have time to make the deposit on our break, so we still have the checks from yesterday, too.”

  “Let’s see them,” Maddy said as she grabbed the bag.

  After she’d pulled out the sorted checks, I added the credit card receipts to the pile. “Do we really need to put the mayor’s name on our list? And how about Father Pat?”

  “If they were here, we need to write their names down,” I said. “You read them off, and I’ll add them to the list.”

  In short order, we had two dozen names on our list. I added Betsy’s son Chad to it, along with Ray Packer and Wyatt Nance, his dinner companions. Art Young, our local bad guy, had come by for a pizza too, but I hesitated to put his name on the list. I couldn’t see him being involved with a bank robbery that was clearly an amateur job, but I owed Kevin a complete list. I ended it by adding Grace Pine and Nancy Tolbert, though the former was a recent high school graduate heading off to Stanford, and the latter was an octogenarian retired librarian. By the time we were ready to open up again, we had forty-one names. It was hard to believe that one of them was a murderer.

  Chances were good that someone on that list was exactly that, though.

  It was a possibility I never dreamed I’d have to consider.

  Chapter 2

  “Don’t tell me. You two haven’t had time to make that list for me,” Kevin Hurley said as he came back into the Slice thirty minutes after we’d reopened. Maddy was handling the light load in the kitchen, while I made my presence felt out front. It was a custom we’d started a month ago, and it was still going to take me time to get used to it. Since our customer base was usually light for a few hours when we reopened, Maddy got to keep up her pizza-making skills, and I got out of the kitchen for a little while. By the time we started getting busy again around five, both of us were ready to switch back, and Greg came in to help out before he started making night deliveries. It was more important now than ever that my sister could handle everything on our menu. Once things settled down, I was determined to take the vacation I’d been promising myself for years. It would be a perfect present from my late husband, Joe.

  “I’ve got our list right here,” I said, clearly taking the fight right out of him.

  As he looked over the names we’d compiled, he nodded a few times, and as I’d expected, he commented on Art Young’s name. “Maybe now you’ll see how bad it is having a known felon in your restaurant all of the time.”

  “Has he ever been convicted of anything?” I asked, already knowing the answer. Art and I had developed an odd friendship of late, one that even Maddy had trouble understanding. I didn’t see what the problem was. He loved pizza, and I loved making it. That was normally where it began and ended. I’d done a few inadvertent favors for him over the past several months, and he kept telling me I had favors of my own coming to me in return. They were chits I never planned to cash.

  “You know he hasn’t,” Kevin said. “He’s been charged three times, but he keeps managing to squirm off the hook.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” I said, “but if what you’re saying is true, isn’t he a little too polished for the bank robbery? If he were going to do it, I’d expect something more elegant than using a pizza menu for a hold-up note.”

  “Maybe he did it on purpose to throw us off track,” Kevin said stubbornly.

  “And maybe Nancy Tolbert’s retirement money ran out and she decided to rob a bank herself.”

  “Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind,” Kevin said. “Has business fallen off any?”

  “So far, it’s been just the opposite. We’re like some kind of curiosity, I think. I don’t know how long it will last, though.”

  “Folks around here trust you.” He tapped the list again, then said, “Thanks for doing this.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “I want to see whoever killed Hank pay for what he did.”

  Kevin nodded. “Don’t worry, I’m going to make sure it happens.”

  After Kevin was gone, I picked up the phone and dialed Art Young’s number. It was private, a direct line, and no one else had answered the two times I’d called before.

  “Art, it’s Eleanor Swift.”

  “Good afternoon, Eleanor,” he said.

  I wasn’t thrilled about admitting what I’d just done, but I would rather he heard it from me before Kevin Hurley came to talk to him. “Art, the police were here asking about who came into my restaurant yesterday.”

  Before I could finish, he said, “And you gave them my name. I appreciate the notice, but you didn’t have any choice, did you? Half a dozen folks saw me there, and I’m sure they would all be delighted t
o tell the chief the same thing.”

  “I just didn’t want you to find out when the police came to your door.”

  He chuckled softly. “The concern is noted, but I’ve been waiting for his visit since I heard the details of what happened. Thank you for calling.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said, hanging up as Maddy walked out front.

  “Who was that on the phone?”

  “I was talking to Art Young,” I said.

  “Why is he calling here?”

  “As a matter of fact, I was the one who called him.”

  “Sis, have you lost your mind? The man’s all kinds of trouble, and you know it.”

  “You don’t feel that way when we need information from him,” I said. “Why should we act any differently towards him now? He’s never done anything to us except try to help whenever he can.”

  “Fine, it’s your place. I’m just trying to look out for you.”

  “I appreciate the offer, but I’m a big girl. I can handle it myself. What’s up?”

  “We’re running low on cheese,” she said.

  “Did you check the back fridge? We got some in last week.”

  “If it’s there, I didn’t see it.”

  I nodded. “Take the front for a second. I’ll go see if I can find it.”

  I went back into my kitchen, and I found the bagged cheese hiding behind a bag of lettuce. Without a word, I retrieved it and brought it back to Maddy.

  “Here you go.”

  Maddy shook her head as I handed her the cheese.

  “What’s that look for?” I asked.

  “You know your kitchen too well. I still say it’s time you got away.”

  I nodded. “I agree.”

  “It’s important that you... what did you say?”

  “I just agreed with you,” I said.

  Maddy looked shocked. “When are you leaving?”

  “I need some time to plan first so I can be impulsive,” I said.

  “Only you would say something like that,” Maddy said. “I hope you’ll excuse me, but I’ll believe it when I see you take off.”

  “Just wait.”

  She retreated back into the kitchen, but before she could go, I asked, “Did you happen to make a copy of that list I gave the chief?”

  “No, I didn’t think about it. Why, did you?”

  “It completely slipped my mind. We’ll have to do our best to recreate it, if we’re going to look into this ourselves.”

  “What happened to your vacation?”

  “First we solve the bank robbery, and find out who dragged us into it using one of our menus, and then I’ll think about going away.”

  “I’ll get right on it, then.”

  A few customers came in, and after taking their orders and supplying them with drinks, I walked back to the kitchen to give Maddy their requests. It was getting close to five, the time we normally switched.

  “Do you want me to make these?” I asked as I held the orders in the air.

  “That sounds good to me,” she said as she changed aprons. “You know I’m more comfortable out front. Greg should be here any minute to give me a hand if things get crazy.”

  “If he’s heard anything about the robbery, I want to hear it too, okay? Greg has more sources of information in town than anybody I know.”

  “Trust me, I’ll let you know the second he tells me anything.”

  Ten minutes later, Greg Hatcher walked back into the kitchen. “Hey, I heard you wanted to see me. You’re not firing me, are you?”

  “Why on earth would you ask me that? Have you done something that would make me want to let you go?”

  He grinned. “Not intentionally, but you never know.”

  I tried to match his smile. “No, I’m not firing you. What have you heard about the bank robbery?”

  “Eleanor, I’m insulted that you just assume I’ve heard something about it. That doesn’t speak very well about my character, does it?”

  “I’m not accusing you of snooping,” I said hastily. “I just thought you might have learned something.”

  “Of course I’ve been snooping,” he said with a grin. “Not that I’ve had to dig that hard. Everyone in town is talking about it. Whoever robbed the bank wasn’t very good at it, but they managed to get lucky.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “It’s the fifteenth of the month, and that means that the bank was loading up their tills to cash checks.”

  I hadn’t even thought of that. “What makes you think it was luck? This could have been planned for weeks, or even months.”

  “Then why use a pizza menu for the note? If the robbery were that well planned, the thief could have at least come up with a sheet of blank paper to use.”

  “Unless they wanted to implicate me, or someone else at the pizzeria,” I said.

  “Isn’t that being just a little bit paranoid?”

  “Hey, even paranoids are right some of the time. How much money are we talking about?”

  “I’ve heard it was upwards of five hundred thousand dollars,” he said.

  I whistled. “Could it possibly have been that much?”

  “Of course not. It’s probably under a hundred thousand, but you know how rumors go. By tonight it will be ten times that.”

  “Still, it’s a lot of money.”

  “Not enough to make it worth killing someone for,” Greg said. “I can’t imagine being that desperate for money.”

  “I hope neither one of us ever is. Have you heard anything about Hank’s family? How are they taking it?”

  “From what I’ve heard, they’re all pretty devastated. Knowing Timber Ridge, I’m sure they’ve been flooded with cakes, pies, casseroles, and chickens, and more side dishes than you could believe. You know how folks around here are when there’s a tragedy.”

  I did indeed. When Joe had died I hadn’t had to cook for a month, just eating around the edges of all of the food I’d gotten. That’s what we did in the South. When there was a reason to grieve, food appeared soon after the first tears.

  “Maybe I’ll take them a few pizzas this evening,” I said.

  “I’ll be glad to do it,” Greg volunteered.

  “I appreciate the thought, but I should do it myself. He was a good customer, and from what I could tell, a really nice guy.”

  Greg nodded. “It’s tough.” He drummed his fingers on the counter. “If that’s it, I’d better get back to work. I don’t want Maddy to fuss about me shirking my duties.”

  “My sister wouldn’t do that, would she?”

  Greg shook his head. “No, not Maddy,” he said with a laugh.

  Ten seconds after going through the door, he was back, and his smile had been replaced by a grim expression.

  “What’s wrong? Did something just happen?”

  “There’s too many of them,” he said. “See for yourself.”

  I walked through the door, wondering what had spooked Greg so badly. The noise started slowly, but built in a heartbeat as I crossed into the dining room. There were thirty kindergartners storming the pizza parlor, with two teachers and another two chaperones trying in vain to make them behave.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Maddy as I approached the register.

  She was laughing as she said, “Greg freaked out when he saw all of these kids. They’re hilarious, aren’t they?”

  Two couples that were starting to come in saw the crowd and immediately left.

  “I don’t know how funny it is,” I said. “This is going to cost us money.”

  “They don’t plan on getting their food for free,” Maddy said. “We’ll do okay.”

  A young woman who wore a badge that said i’m the teacher approached us. “I hate to do this to you, but I’m desperate. I’ve got thirty-four people, but I’ve just got a hundred dollars in my food budget. Our bus keeps breaking down, and we’ve already missed our field trip as it is. This is absolutely the worst day of my life.”

  Maddy started to
speak when I said, “How about a small Coke and a large slice of cheese pizza for everyone? Will that work for you?”

  “But—” Maddy started to say when I cut her off and changed her sentence to, “But we’ll have to make it quick.”

  “You’re an angel,” she said.

  After she was gone, my sister said, “How are you going to make any money giving our food away?”

  “Sometimes there are more important things than money. You get them all drinks, but tell them no refills, and I’ll get started on the pizzas.”

  “You’ve lost your mind. You know that, don’t you?”

  “If I didn’t, I’d always have you around to remind me,” I said.

  “You need to help Maddy,” I told Greg as I came back into the kitchen.

  “I knew I should have stayed home today,” he said.

  “They’re just little kids,” I said.

  “But there are so many of them,” he said as he reluctantly left.

  I started kneading pizza dough into our extra-large pans, adding sauce and cheese as I finished each one and slid it onto the conveyor. When the first one was finished, I cut it, bit my lip, and then carried it out into the dining room.

  To my surprise, it was as quiet as could be, and as I handed Maddy the pizza and Greg got paper plates, I asked softly, “What happened?”

  “I’ve got new respect for this gal,” Maddy said. “She told them there might not be enough pizza to go around, and if anyone was loud, they’d go to the end of the line. I’m a big fan of bribery myself.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, but then again, I didn’t have to deal with the mob of little ones she handled every day. As the pizzas slowly made their way out of the kitchen and into the hungry young tummies, I took a second to clean a little before I rejoined my employees after I was finished cooking. After all, rank had to have some kind of privilege.

  By the time I made it back out, the kids were gone, and the teacher was handing Maddy a fistful of sweaty singles. “Sorry, it’s the way they brought money from home.”

  “That’ll be fine,” I said.

  “But don’t come back, right?” the teacher asked with a smile.