Salami Murder: Book 8 in The Darling Deli Series (7 page)

“That’s good.” She smiled to herself, shaking her head in exasperation—whether at herself or at her daughter, she wasn’t sure. Would she ever stop feeling like a mother hen? “Does Adrian know about him?”

“My social life is none of Adrian’s business,” Candice said flatly. “We broke up, and I plan to keep it that way this time. Everything was drama with him. At least Eli is easygoing, and doesn’t try to tell me how to run the candy shop.”

“I’m glad for that,” Moira said. “Though it might be a good idea to ask him for some advice, if you ever need help with anything. I’m sure he’s gone through a lot of the same issues with the ice cream shop that you will with the candy shop. Maybe even more so, since no one buys ice cream in the winter.”

“Yeah, he said winters are hard,” Candice admitted. “But the fact that the ice cream shop has managed to stay in business all these years gives me hope. If a business whose season is only really six or seven months out of the year can do that well, then the candy shop should do all right.”

I’m sure the candy store will do well,
Moira thought.
If it ever opens, that is.

“You’ll do fine, sweetie,” she said instead, trying to sound reassuring. It wasn’t that she doubted her daughter’s ability, but it seemed like outside forces were conspiring against her. Part of Moira wanted to tell Candice to give up, to just come home and stay out of Lake Marion. After all, her daughter had never had so many bad things happen to her when she was living in Maple Creek.

But we’re Darlings,
she thought firmly to herself.
And Darlings don’t give up.

“This is the life,” she said, reclining against the lawn chair’s pillowed headrest. She wouldn’t get a tan lying out in her yard like this—there were too many trees around—but the shade and soft breeze were pleasant all the same. Maverick was sniffing around at a pile of leaves a few feet away, and she could just hear the gentle burbling of the creek in the woods behind her house. Somehow her worries seemed less important and further away while she was out here, glass of wine in hand, with nothing on that day’s must-do list.

The relaxing moment ended abruptly when her phone rang. She answered it reluctantly; lately it seemed to just be one bad thing after another.

“Mom, I need your help,” came her daughter’s panicked voice. Moira sat bolt upright.

“What happened?” she asked, her mind flicking between scenarios that only seemed to get worse.

“The pipes in the kitchen are leaking. The whole place is flooded. I don’t know what to do.”

“I’ll come right over. Have you called a plumber?” Moira closed her eyes in relief for a moment then stood up. At least Candice wasn’t hurt. No one was hurt; burst pipes were a piece of cake compared to a dead body.

“No, everywhere is closed.” Her daughter took a shuddery breath. “Just hurry, please?”

Moira did hurry, rushing to put the dog inside and grab her purse and keys. A burst pipe wasn’t life threatening, but it could cause serious—and expensive—damage to the candy shop.
Burst pipe?
she thought to herself.
How would a pipe burst in the middle of summer? I’ve only ever heard of that happening if the pipes freeze in winter.
She shook her head; the details didn’t matter now;
something
was obviously going on, and Candice needed her help.

On her way to Lake Marion, she found herself reaching for her phone to call David. Biting her lip, she forced herself to put the phone down. She had been asking too much of him lately; she and Candice could handle this on their own. The private investigator was still her friend, but she wouldn’t consider him to be anything more until she cleared the air with him.

When she pulled into the parking lot behind Candice’s building, she saw that the back door was propped open. She had only taken a few steps inside when she realized that the carpet was sopping wet. Dreading what she was going to see when she walked into the candy shop’s kitchen, Moira braced herself and pushed through the door.

The kitchen was completely flooded, with a half-inch thick layer of cold water that made Moira wish that she had worn something other than sandals. One of the copper pipes near the ceiling seemed to have split at the joint, and was spraying water all over the far wall. Candice was standing on a stepladder, futilely trying to hold the water back with her hands.

“Did you try turning the valve off?” Moira asked urgently, rushing over to the broken pipe, her eyes following it to the joints where the copper pipes came out of the wall. The knob that usually controlled the water flow seemed to have vanished—all that was left was a hunk of ugly metal.

“It broke somehow,” Candice said. “I already tried. What do we do?”

“Do you have duct tape?” the deli owner asked, looking around wildly as if she expected to see a roll of it sitting on the counter.

“Yeah, it’s in the bathroom. Under the sink. Hurry!”

Moira rushed out of the candy shop’s flooded kitchen and hurried down the hall to the small bathroom. She grabbed the large silver roll of tape and hurried back, already tearing off a strip. She joined Candice on the stepladder and eyed the pipe. The edges of the break looked suspiciously smooth and pinched together, almost as if the pipe had been cut. Now wasn’t the time for any sort of investigation, though; water was still spraying out at a tremendous rate.

Candice held the two broken sections of pipe together whole Moira wrapped strip after strip of duct tape around them. The roll of tape was noticeably smaller by the time they managed to get the spray of water under control. Drips still oozed around the edges of the tape, and she knew their makeshift repair wouldn’t last for long, but at least the room wasn’t flooding any more.

The two women leaned against the counter, tired, cold, and wet from their struggle with the pipes. The puddle of water in the room was no longer growing, at least, but the damage had already been done.

“How do we get all of this water out of here?” Candice asked.

“Is there a drain anywhere?”

“Under the sink—but whoever laid the foundation didn’t do a great job. The water is just pooling in the middle of the floor, not flowing to the drain. Look.”

It was true. The drain under the sink remained conspicuously dry, and the large pool of water in the middle of the floor didn’t seem to be making any moves towards it.

“Do you have a mop?” Moira asked.

“Yeah, in the supply closet by the bathroom. I’ve only got one, though. It’s going to take ages.”

“Well, we’d better get started then.” She sighed, thoughts of her comfortable lawn chair under the trees behind her house flashing through her mind. If only this hadn’t happened, she could still be lying there and enjoying her glass of wine.
Relaxing
. “If you’ve got fans, set them up in here and turn them on high too. I’ll make sure both doors are propped open so we get a cross breeze. You start mopping, I’ll look up an emergency plumber.”

Moira stepped outside to make her call to a local twenty-four-hour plumber, closing her eyes and turning her face to the setting sun as the line rang. When he answered, she explained the situation to him, gave him the address, then thanked him and hung up. She had no idea how much the repair would cost; they would just have to find some way to make it work.

When she stepped back inside the first thing she heard was the sound of angry voices coming from the flooded kitchen.

“Adrian, just go,” came her daughter’s voice. “I wasn’t asking you for help, I was just letting you know what happened. You didn’t need to come over.”

“You might not have been asking for help, but you definitely need it,” came the reply. Moira recognized the speaker as Adrian. “This place has been nothing but one disaster after another since I stopped helping you.”

“It’s not
my
fault, I think someone is trying to keep me from opening the store.”

“Let me come back as your business partner, and they won’t dare to mess with you,” he said. Candice laughed, her voice pitched high with stress and anger.

“What are you going to do, chase them away? Go Adrian, just go. We’re over. I won’t make the mistake of texting you again.”

Moira stepped out of the way as Adrian, his face red with anger, brushed past her. He ignored her completely as he stalked out of the building and disappeared around the corner. Frowning after him, she hurried the rest of the way back to the kitchen to make sure her daughter was all right.

Moira hung out with Candice after Adrian left until the repairman got there. The duct tape held, sort of. A steady stream of water still dripped from the pipe joint, but it was nowhere near as bad as the spray had been. There was a certain satisfaction in having held off the flood themselves, without help from either Adrian or David.

“Yep, it was definitely cut,” the plumber said once he had managed to get the water shut off. “Looks like you’ll need a new valve, too. Any idea who did this?”

“No,” Candice replied despondently. “None. This is just one of many bad things that have been happening around here lately.”

As Candice told the plumber about finding Matt dead in the kitchen—just a few feet away from where they were standing in fact—and the incident with her brakes, Moira walked around the kitchen looking for damage. Everything looked fine, other than the fridge which was sitting in a puddle of water and was suspiciously quiet. She opened it and sighed when she saw the melting ice in the freezer. Looking behind it, she saw that the plug was out of the wall and resting in a pool of water. There was a dent in the side of the fridge as if someone had kicked it.

“I’ll take a look at it once we get the floor dry,” the plumber said, following her gaze. “Best not to have it plugged in with the floor flooded anyway. Wouldn’t want to get electrocuted.”

Moira and Candice continued working on the floor as the plumber began taking measurements for a new pipe. The puddle of water was slowly shrinking, but the going was slow. If they had more than one mop, it would have gone much faster. As it was, they took turns mopping and using towels from Candice’s apartment upstairs to soak up what water they could. Once the towels were sopping wet, they took them outside and wrung them out.

It wasn’t long before Moira was exhausted. She was soaked to the bone and alternated between being too cold from the constant blowing of the fans inside, and too hot from the afternoon mugginess; the moist heat did nothing to dry her off when she went outside. She was relieved when she ran into Eli on one of her trips outside to wring.
Candice must have called him
, she thought.
He must really like her if he came to help.

“She’s inside,” Moira told him. “Thanks for coming. We’ll be happy for your help.” He looked puzzled for a moment, but then nodded, following her indoors.

“Eli!” Candice exclaimed when she saw him. “What are you doing here?”

Moira gave the young man a sharp glance, surprised and suddenly suspicious. Candice hadn’t asked him to come help? How had he managed to show up at the perfect time?

“I saw the plumber’s truck and the candy shop’s doors open and thought you must be still here doing some sort of repairs. I thought I’d stop in and say hi.” He looked around the flooded room. “What on earth happened here?”

“Someone cut through one of the copper pipes,” she said. “We have no idea who, but as you can see, it flooded the whole room.”

“Wow. Yeah. What did you do to make someone so mad?”

“Nothing.” Candice gave a frustrated sigh, leaning on the mop. “All of this bad stuff keeps happening for no reason. It’s like someone really doesn’t want this candy shop to open.”

“Do the police know about this?” he asked, concerned.

“Well, they know about Matt, obviously. And my brakes. I haven’t reported this yet, though.” She glanced up at her mother, and Moira guessed she was wondering if she had told David yet. She gave a small shake of her head.

“You should report it as soon as possible,” Eli told her. “If someone is really trying to stop you from opening the candy shop, there’s no telling how far they might go.” He looked at the broken pipe with worry. “I wish I had stayed longer after lunch. We might have caught the person who did this.”

Moira looked at him sharply. He had been here earlier? If he and Candice had eaten lunch in her apartment upstairs, he could have made an excuse to leave at any time and simply walked in to the candy shop on his way out and cut the pipes. Candice likely wouldn’t have noticed it for hours. The candy shop was bound to take business away from Eli’s ice cream parlor. Would he really be foolish enough to return to the scene of his crime, though? And if he didn’t want the candy shop to open, why had he been so welcoming and helpful to Candice?

“Did you check the security cameras?” she asked. The question was directed towards Candice, but she kept her eyes on Eli.

“Not yet. I haven’t had a chance.”

“Let’s do it now,” Moira said. “If whoever did it did get caught on film, every second we wait is a second he—or she—has to get farther away.”

She hadn’t brought her tablet, so the three of them, Eli included, crowded around Candice’s phone. She brought up the security footage and played around with it until she found the right time. A hooded figure walked through the camera’s view field and disappeared, reappearing a few minutes later. The figure walked out of the building as casually as if he or she lived there, without a trace of hesitancy or guilt.