Corned Beef Murder: Book Two in The Darling Deli Series (3 page)

“Emilia?” she called out when there was no response after a few moments. “It’s Moira. Is everything all right?” She went silent, listening carefully for an answer. Nothing. Moira put her hand on the doorknob and paused. What if the older woman had had an accident of some sort and needed help? Trying not to feel guilty for trespassing on her friend’s privacy, she dug the key that Martha had given her out of her pocket and unlocked the door, which swung open silently to reveal the cold, dark interior of the house.

Calling out her friend’s name softly once more as she stood on the threshold, she listened for an answer. The old house was as silent as her own had been during the silent snowfall of the morning. There was an uneasy feeling in the pit of Moira’s stomach.
Maybe she ended up going with Martha,
she thought.
That could have been what the call was about
.

She decided to go the rest of the way into the house and take a quick look around before calling Martha. It wasn’t much warmer inside than out, but at least the air was still, and she could knock the rest of the snow from her boots.

“Emilia, I’m coming in,” she said loudly, trying to give her friend as much warning as possible in case she was sleeping or getting dressed. She had been in the house a few times before, and thought that the most likely place for the other woman to be was upstairs in her bedroom. She was probably napping; Moira couldn’t think of any other reason why Emilia wouldn’t answer her. Being careful not to track snow onto the beautiful hardwood floors, she made her way through the foyer and into the living room, where the stairs to the second level were.

At first, she didn’t know what she was seeing. A bundle of clothes lay at the bottom of the stairs for some reason. At least, that was her first thought. Then she saw the stockinged feet and puff of gray hair, and she realized the truth. That wasn’t a pile of laundry lying on the floor. It was her friend.

Moira rushed over, her heart in her throat. Trying to remember what she had learned during the CPR class that she had taken while she was pregnant with Candice, she felt for Emilia’s pulse. She realized she didn’t need CPR, though; a single touch of the other woman’s cold skin told her that her friend wasn’t getting up.

She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket with shaking fingers and dialed the three digits that everyone knew by heart. She realized that she was saying Emilia’s name over and over again and made herself stop and focus on what she was going to say when the police answered her call.

“Are you going to be all right, Mom?” Candice wrapped another blanket around her and set a plate in her hands. “You should eat. You didn’t have dinner.”

“I’m not hungry,” Moira murmured, looking down at the ham and cheese sandwich that her daughter had made. “Sorry. I just don’t think I can keep anything down right now.” She set it on the table.

“Do you want to talk about it?” her daughter asked.

“I don’t even know what I could say. I’ve known her for years. I can’t believe that she’s just… gone.” She closed her eyes, trying to push the image of her friend lying at the bottom of the stairs out of her mind.

“I know. It’s hard to think that I won’t ever see her again. I mean, she used to take me to my piano lessons.” Candice sat down next to her mother on the couch. “Are you going to have to tell Martha?”

“No, the police are handling that, thank goodness.” Taking a shuddering breath, she continued, “I feel so terrible for her. I wish there was something I could do.”

“Do you know what happened yet?” Candice asked.

“From what I could tell, she must have fallen down the stairs.” Moira buried her face in her hands and moaned. “If only I had gone over earlier. I should have left as soon as the first plows started to go by. I might have been able to help her.”

“I don’t think you should be making yourself feel guilty. There’s nothing you could have done. Plus it’s not what Emilia would have wanted.” Candice patted her shoulder gently. “Please eat something, Mom. I don’t like worrying about you.” Moira reached out a hand and picked up the sandwich. It was dull and tasteless in her mouth, but she chewed and swallowed anyway, her mind going over the scene at her old friend’s house again and again.

The next morning, she woke up sweltering under her pile of blankets. She kicked them off and noticed that the lamp in the corner of her bedroom was on. The power was back on, at last. Moira lay in bed for a few minutes, still feeling numb and fragile from the day before. She knew that she should call Martha and offer her condolences, but she dreaded the difficult conversation.

A familiar, delicious scent reached her nose, and Moira at last got up and padded down the stairs, into the kitchen, where the coffee maker gurgled away. She felt energized just by inhaling the rich scent. Candice was standing by the sink, washing the few dishes that had been sitting there since the power had gone out two nights ago.

“Thanks for starting the coffee, sweetie,” she said to her daughter, grabbing a mug from the dish drying rack.

“No problem; I thought you might be craving some.” The young woman grinned at her. “So, are you going to open the deli today?”

“I’d better, I want to go make sure all of the appliances restarted properly anyway.” She set the mug down on the counter and groaned. “I just realized… I forgot to call Dante and let him know not to come in yesterday. I hope he didn’t try to make it there through the snow. I’ll give him a call on my way to the deli and see if he can stop by today for training instead.”

* * *

She was relieved to find that her refrigerators and freezers were humming merrily when she got there. It took her a few minutes to reset each of the digital clocks, but once she was done and had taken down the ‘
Closed due to weather
’ sign, Darling’s DELIcious Delights looked just the same as it always had. She smiled fondly at her little store; just being here made her feel much better already. It seemed that good, honest work was the best medicine for her when she was upset.

She had just started browning the hamburger meat for the hearty chili that she planned for today when her new employee walked through the kitchen door.

“Thanks for coming in on such short notice,” she told him. “You don’t have to stay long if you don’t want to, but I thought it would be nice to be able to show you around a bit before we start getting busy.” She washed her hands and gestured for him to do the same, explaining that it was important to wash up whenever she’d been working with meat or handling money.

“We keep the meat and the vegetables in different refrigerators,” she told him. “It helps keep everything sanitary, and it’s easier to keep things organized that way. Usually we freeze vegetables if we don’t use them in the first few days. It’s okay to use frozen veggies for soups and stews, but always use fresh ones if you’re making a salad.” She went on to show him how she liked to keep the fridge organized, with the bigger things in back so nothing got hidden and forgotten about accidentally. It was a lot to take in, she knew, but Darrin would go over it all again with him later. She was impressed by how quickly he learned, and soon enough she had him crushing tomatoes for the chili. A quick glance at the clock showed her that it was almost time to open up for the day, so she slid a tray of cornbread muffins into the oven and stepped into the front room to unlock the door.

She had found relief from her thoughts about Emilia in the steady routine of the working day. It wasn’t until the evening, when she had relocked the doors and sent Dante back to the kitchen to clean up, that she let herself sit down and take a moment to grieve her old friend. It didn’t seem fair to her, that such a wonderful woman wasn’t in the world any more. It seemed like just yesterday that she had met Emilia, but somehow almost twenty years had passed.

A knock on the deli’s front door startled Moira out of her reverie. She looked up to see Darrin and Candice standing outside. After getting up to unlock the door and let them in, she hugged her daughter and looked at her other employee questioningly.

“Is everything all right, you two?” she asked, wondering if there could possibly be more bad news.

“Yep” Darrin said, giving her a grin. “We just thought that you could use some cheering up. Candice thought you might like to go out to eat at Arlo’s instead of bringing home leftovers from the deli. We can invite the new guy too, which will give everyone a chance to get to know him better.” Arlo’s was the local diner, owned and managed by its namesake, Arlo Hoffins. The diner was nearly as old as Moira was, and was almost as familiar to her as her own restaurant was.

“That sounds great,” she said, giving the two of them a grateful smile. “I’ll send Dante out, so you can invite him yourselves, and I’ll finish up the dishes really quickly, so he doesn’t have to. That young man has been working hard all day.”

She slipped through the door to the kitchen to find that the pile of dirty dishes was almost gone, and her new employee was up to his elbows in soap. She was impressed with his work ethic; even though she had told him he could leave whenever he wanted to, he had opted to stay the entire day, and had worked hard to learn the ropes of working at the deli.

“I can finish the dishes,” she told him when he looked up from the sink. “There’s someone out front that wants to talk to you.”

“Someone’s here to talk to me?” he asked, freezing mid-scrub. His wide-eyed expression looked scared to Moira.
What’s that about?
she wondered.

“It’s just Darrin and Candice,” she said quickly. “My daughter and our other employee. They were just going to see if you wanted to go out to eat with us. Is something wrong?”

“No,” he said quickly. “Sorry. It’s been a long day.” He shook his head and gave a small laugh. “I’d love to get a bite to eat. Thanks, Ms. Darling.”

“You can go get your things and get ready to go then; I’ll finish up here.” She watched her new employee leave the kitchen, unable to shake the feeling that there was something that he wasn’t telling her.

Moira had to admit that having dinner at Arlo’s Diner had been a great idea on Candice’s part. She was grateful to her employees for taking the time out of their day to make her laugh and smile instead of letting her go home and mope. She knew that she still had a lot of grieving to do, but spending time with the people closest to her was a great way to begin healing from the trauma of finding her friend’s body.

She kept her eye on Dante, but he behaved perfectly normally while they were at the diner, smiling and laughing at Darrin and Candice’s stories of odd encounters with customers and kitchen mishaps. Maybe she had just been imagining the look of panic on his face when she had told him that there was someone waiting in the front room to speak with him. After all, he had had a long first day at his new job; he was bound to be exhausted from the experience. She made a mental note to tell Darrin to go easy on him when Dante’s training continued tomorrow.

* * *

“Thanks sweetie,” Moira said to her daughter when they got home. “I had a great time.”

“I’m glad we made you feel better.” The young woman gave her mother a hug. “I know it’s hard to lose a friend like that so suddenly.”

“Did they figure out what happened yet?” Moira asked.

“Yes, Martha called the house while you were at work. I forgot to tell you, she said that she would stop in and see you tomorrow at the store. She told me that the police are ruling it an accident. She fell down the stairs, and must have died instantly. There was nothing you could do,” Candice said.

“That’s terrible,” she replied with a shudder. “I’m relieved that it was quick, though. I hate to think of her lying there, hurt and alone.” She sighed. “I’d better get to bed. Tomorrow will be a busy day, and it’s supposed to snow tonight, so I’ll want to get to the deli early to salt the parking lot.”

Despite Moira’s exhaustion, sleep didn’t come easily to her. She lay in bed for almost an hour, her mind going over the events of the past few days. There was the faint feeling that she had forgotten something important, but she couldn’t think of what it could be. Something about Emilia… something that the older woman had said…

She gasped and sat up, suddenly wide awake. She
had
forgotten something important—the phone call. Emilia had called her only hours before she had passed away, and although the connection had been bad, she was certain that her friend’s voice had been scared. Closing her eyes, she tried to remember the day before. What had Emilia said on the phone? She was almost certain that she had said that someone was watching her.

If someone had been watching her friend, then maybe there was more to her death than met the eye. Even though she knew that she was probably grasping at straws, Moira decided to go to the police station in the morning. If there was anything suspicious about her friend’s death, she vowed that she would get to the bottom of it.

She left her house early the next morning, wanting to get to the police station early enough that she would still have time to shovel snow and put down salt at the deli so that it wouldn’t be icy when her customers walked in. She also didn’t want to miss Martha’s visit; Emilia’s sister had a right to know about the phone call.

When she got to the station, she made her way straight to the front desk. She wasn’t sure who she should talk to, but she was certain that whoever was in charge of investigating Emilia’s death would want to hear what she had to say.