Pastrami Murder: Book One in The Darling Deli Series (7 page)

There were two things that didn’t make sense to him. If Moira had committed the crime, why had she left so much evidence behind? She must have known that the police would be able to track the to-go bowl back to her; it had her deli’s logo on it, after all. And if his client was guilty, then why had she hired him?

He knew that his little business had a good reputation; he wasn’t some hack investigator trying to make an easy buck. No, he was a professional, and his track record showed it. He also knew that his services didn’t come cheaply. Why would she pay to have someone prove that she was guilty?

Maybe he was overthinking things. His first mentor had always told him that the simplest explanation was usually the right one. Chances were, there wasn’t some big conspiracy to make Moira look guilty. If he were to think about this case logically, then the answer was obvious; the deli owner was the murderer. But for some reason, his gut still told him that she was innocent.
If Moira didn’t poison the soup, then who did?
Suddenly the answer was right in front of him, so obvious that he didn’t understand how he hadn’t seen it before. Someone at the deli
had
killed Henry Devou, but it wasn’t Moira. There was someone else that had a motive to kill Henry, someone that he had overlooked so far. Someone that Moira trusted and confided in… someone that had been doing their hardest to pin the crime on someone else. David grabbed his overcoat and keys and rushed out of his office.

Moira carefully wrapped the deadly little plant back up in the bag and slipped it into her pocket. Her new soup could wait; right now she had to find a murderer and clear her name.

“Darrin, something came up. Can you handle the store on your own for a few hours?” she asked as she strode out of the kitchen.

“Sure, Ms. D. Not a problem, it’s not like we’re busy right now.” He looked at her with concern on his face. “Is everything alright?”

“Not yet, but it will be,” she said grimly. “You just hold tight. I’ll explain everything later.”

Moira got into her car before taking out her cell phone and dialing David Morris’s number. She tapped the steering wheel impatiently as it rang. When the call went to voicemail, she left a quick message asking him to call her back and then hung up, frustrated. She wanted to tell the private detective about her find, and ask him what she should do next. Going straight to the police probably wouldn’t be a good idea; there was no way that they would believe her story about her just happening to find the hemlock in her fridge.

Putting the car into gear, Moira drove out of the parking lot and turned down the road that would take her to Lake Marion. She would keep trying to get David on his phone while she drove, and if it came to it, she would try to find him in person at his office. Maybe she should have taken Candice’s initial advice and gotten herself a lawyer; someone was definitely trying to frame her for murder, and she was beginning to feel out of her depth.

After a few more calls to David’s phone went to voicemail, Moira groaned in annoyance and put her phone down. Where had the detective gotten to? She needed him now more than ever, but he was proving impossible to get in touch with.

You don’t need him,
she told herself.
You’re a smart woman. Figure it out yourself.
Well, what did she know so far? Someone had bought a bowl of soup from her store, poisoned it, then had given it to her business competitor. Then someone, presumably the same person, had planted a clipping of hemlock in her refrigerator at the deli. Moira figured it was safe to assume that Henry Devou had died from hemlock poisoning, even though there was no way for her to confirm that now.

So whoever had murdered Henry had also managed to get into her kitchen somehow, without her or any of her employees noticing. How was that possible? Most nights, she herself was the one to lock the building up, and she always double-checked the doors before going home. If she had somehow forgotten a door, or someone had picked the lock, then her employees would surely have mentioned finding an unlocked door the next morning.

It was unlikely that anyone had snuck into the kitchen during the day; there were usually at least two employees on staff: one up front to take orders and pack up the refrigerated items for customers, and the other employee in the back to keep an eye on the soup, to slice bread and cold cuts, and just generally to keep things flowing smoothly. If a customer had been found in the kitchen, she would definitely have been told.

So what was the answer? Moira gripped the steering wheel harder, frustrated by the whole situation. It looked like she was dealing with a professional, someone who could pick locks and was smart enough to re-lock the door behind them when they left probably wasn’t an amateur at this kind of thing. Was David right? Had Henry’s sister done the whole thing? When she had confronted Moira she had seemed genuinely upset. And from what she had seen of Henry’s sister, she wasn’t exactly the subtle type.

The big question was how this person managed to be so invisible. She and David had gone over all of the likely possibilities together, and she had asked each of her employees if they remembered seeing any of those people in the few days before Henry Devou had been murdered. Not a single one had been recognized by Darrin, Danielle, or Candice. It was like someone invisible had bought the soup and planted the hemlock in the fridge.

No, it’s not someone invisible,
she chided herself. She had to quit avoiding what was staring her in her face. Whoever had killed Henry Devou was someone that knew her well. Someone that had access to the deli, and that wouldn’t raise suspicion if they were poking around in the kitchen. The terrible realization unfolded slowly inside of her. The murderer was one of her employees.

She tried David’s phone once more, with no answer. She couldn’t wait to talk to him; she had to act now. It wouldn’t be right for her not to tell the police what she knew. What if the murderer was escaping right now? If they checked the fridge and saw that the hemlock was gone, then they would know that she had found out.

As she turned her car around and began making her way back to Maple Creek, there was only one question in her mind. Which one of the people that she worked with had killed Henry Devou?

She didn’t want to think that it could be true, even for an instant, but once the thought was in her head she just couldn’t make it go away. Part of her was horrified that she was even considering the fact that one of her employees could be a killer—they were her family, all of them—but another part kept going over the evidence in her head. The police believed that the poisoned soup had come from the deli because it
had
come from the deli. The poison might even have been added while it was still in the kitchen. All the evidence that they found so far pointed back to the store that she owned because that’s where the murderer had committed the crime.

Moira couldn’t believe that she was even entertaining this line of thought. As she had told David, she trusted each of her employees completely. But what if she had been wrong to do so? Everyone had poor judgment sometimes; had she made a fatal mistake when hiring Darrin or Danielle? It couldn’t be Candice; she couldn’t even consider the idea that her own daughter could kill someone. Besides, Candice would have had no motive. Her daughter was involved with running the business, and had seen their finances. She knew that the business was doing well. No, her daughter was not a murderer.

Not knowing exactly what she was going to say, but knowing that she had to get to the bottom of all of this, Moira pulled into her driveway. She was going to go to the police, but first she wanted to talk to her daughter. It looked like she would be needing that lawyer after all.

It wasn’t until he was more than halfway to Maple Creek that David realized that in his rush to get out the door, he had left his cell phone behind. He huffed out a breath of air in annoyance. Hopefully he would be able to catch Moira at the deli; she seemed to work constantly anyway, so chances were good that she was there.

When he pulled into the small parking lot outside of Darling’s DELIcious Delights, he immediately noticed that her car wasn’t there.
Should I look for her at her house?
he wondered. Then he remembered that the only place he had her address was on his cell phone.

Cursing how dependent he was on modern technology and deeply missing his old notepad, David slammed his car door shut and entered the store. Darrin, Moira’s young male employee, was at the counter chatting with Danielle.

“Hi Mr. Morris,” he said brightly. “I’m glad you stopped by. This place is dead today. I should have taken Ms. D’s advice and brought a book with me.” Danielle just nodded at him, her face expressionless.

“Is Moira here?” David asked, skipping the pleasantries. He glanced at the two employees, trying not to let his thoughts show on his face. If he was right, then one of them was a killer.

“Well no, she left about an hour ago.” Frowning, he asked, “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know,” the detective replied truthfully. “Do you know where she went?”

“No, but she didn’t look happy. She sort of rushed out of here. Is it about the case, do you think?” the young man asked.

“I’m not sure,” David replied, already partway through the front door. “But if you see her, tell her that I’ll meet her at the police station.”

The house was empty when Moira got there, and she groaned in annoyance. She wanted to go to the police as quickly as possible with her new evidence, but she didn’t want to put herself into their hands without talking to her daughter first. If the detectives at the police station didn’t believe her, they might end up arresting her, in which case she would desperately need her daughter’s help.

“Where are you?” she asked when Candice answered her call.

“I went to the mall. What’s up? You sound worried.” The mall was a good forty-five minutes away. Could she wait that long to go to the police? She would have to. She didn’t want to worry her daughter right before a long drive on snowy roads.

“I just need to talk to you. It’s not an emergency, but can you head back?” she asked.

“Alright, just let me pay for my clothes and I’ll be on my way.” Candice paused. “Is everything okay, Mom?”

“I think I made a break in the case,” her mother replied honestly. “And I need to talk to you about it.”

Just then, there was a knock at her door. Moira said goodbye to her daughter, and then walked to the foyer. She unlocked the deadbolt and let the door swing open, her mind on what she was going to tell her daughter when she saw her.

Her breath caught in her throat when she saw Danielle standing on her porch. Her normally cheerful employee had a tear-streaked face and eyes red from crying. Moira was about to comfort her when she looked down and saw the gun in her employee’s hand.

“Danielle? What are you doing?” she asked, automatically taking a step backwards.

“I’m so sorry, Ms. D. I don’t want to go to jail.” The young woman choked back a sob. “I thought that they would just arrest you and it would all be over, but you kept making things worse.”

“It was you. You killed him.” Moira backed up further, putting her hands up as she’d seen people do on TV. The entrance to the kitchen was right behind her. What could she do in there? Grab a knife?

“I just don’t understand… why?” she asked, trying to bide for time while she tried to come up with a plan. “Why would you throw your future away? Why would you
kill
someone?” Moira’s voice broke on the last sentence. She had never felt such hurt and betrayal, not even when her ex-husband had filed for divorce.

“What future?” the girl gave a short, harsh laugh. “I should have been the rich and famous one, not him. It should be
me
in all of the town papers, me who opened stores across the state. He took away my chance at success, so I took away his.”

“I don’t understand.”

“All of those soups that made the Soup Shoppe so famous? They were my recipes, Ms. D. I did all of the hard work, I poured my
soul
into cooking, and he claimed it all for himself.” Her face twisted with anger, Danielle continued, “every single time someone mentioned his restaurant, or his franchise, or how good his food was, they should have been saying
my
restaurant,
my
food.”

“He claimed all of the credit for the things that you did? I’m sorry, sweetie.” And she was. She knew how much went in to creating a new recipe, and how wonderful it felt when someone enjoyed it. But that came nowhere near excusing Danielle’s crime. Not in the eyes of the law, and definitely to Moira. “I don’t understand; why didn’t you just tell someone?”

“Who would believe me?” The young woman asked in a defeated voice. “I was just some kid that was good with soups. He was the rich businessman with a team of lawyers. When I finally got fed up with it and told him I was going to stop coming up with new soups for him, he fired me.”

“So you came up with a plan to kill him.” The level of hatred and resentment that had gone into this murder astounded Moira. Danielle had always seemed so sweet and quiet. “But why did you try to pin it on me?” She had kept backing up slowly, and now felt the back of her legs press into the kitchen cabinet. She didn’t dare look behind her for a knife or, better yet, her phone. Was there anything here that could save her? Her gaze drifted past Danielle’s shoulder to where her front door was still standing open. If only she could make it past her employee, she might be able to escape.