Corned Beef Murder: Book Two in The Darling Deli Series by Patti Benning

the person who did this?”
    “I hope so,” he replied. “We’ll look around a bit, if that’s okay with you. You can start taking an inventory of what’s missing.”
    “Go ahead,” she said. “Do whatever you need to track him down. I do have insurance, but some of what was taken was stuff that belonged to my parents and my sister.” She bit her lip, tears rising to her eyes again. “Now I don’t have anything else to remember them by.”
    Moira followed her friend into the apartment, keeping her eyes peeled for anything the burglar might have left behind, but at first she didn’t even see any signs that there had been a burglary at all. She had been envisioning chaos; clothes and papers tossed everywhere, broken plates, maybe a tipped-over chair or two. But, just like Emilia’s house, the apartment was neat and tidy, with only a few small clues that someone had recently been there.
    It wasn’t until she followed her friend to the bedroom that she saw the empty jewelry hooks on the wall and the cleaned-out medicine cabinet. Just like in Emilia’s house , she thought.
    “That’s odd,” Martha noted. “The burglar took the photograph that was hanging there. It did have a nice frame, but who steals someone’s family picture?”
    “You didn’t keep anything behind the photograph, Ms. Washburn?” Detective Jefferson asked. “Sometimes people hide important papers or money behind photographs. Especially if they don’t have a safe.”
    Martha shook her head. “No. Nothing like that. It was just a picture of Emilia, our parents, and me.” She began to tear up again. “Why couldn’t they have left the picture after seeing there was no money in the frame? That’s the only picture I have of the four of us.”
    After Martha’s tears slowed, they walked around the apartment together, Moira lending moral support while her friend made a list of her missing items to give to the police. When she was done, she took a picture of the list with her phone to keep for the insurance claim, then gave the paper to Detective Jefferson.
    “Here’s everything that I noticed missing. It’s everything important at least. I really hope you catch the guy,” she said.
    “We’ll do our best,” he assured her.
    “Have you found anything yet?” she asked. “How did he get in?”
    “We aren’t sure,” the detective said with a frown. “The door doesn’t have any signs of forced entry. Are you sure you locked it before leaving?”
    “I’m positive,” Martha said. “And it was locked when I got back.” The detective’s frown deepened, but he didn’t say anything else.

     
     

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    Moira met David at the deli again that evening, after making sure that Martha was comfortable being left alone at her apartment. She was worried about leaving her friend alone, but needed to talk to the detective.
    “Do you think it was the same person?” he asked her as he warmed his hands over a steaming bowl of creamy ginger carrot soup.
    “Definitely. Just like at Emilia’s house, there wasn’t a mess, plus, the two women are related. It must be someone that knows them both,” she said.

“That won’t help us much. In a town this small, everyone knows everybody else.” He sighed. “Do you have any suspects?”
    “No… not really. I mean, there’s that maintenance guy that Emilia hired… he would have had access to her entire house.” She paused, considering the suspect that she had just named. “He would also have known that Martha was going to be out of town for a few days; I’m sure he’d have overheard her and Emilia talking about it.”
    “And he would have had a chance to steal the key,” the private detective added. “If you can get his name, I’ll do some digging.”
    “All right,” she said. “I’ll ask Martha tomorrow.” She was interrupted by Dante stepping through the swinging door of the kitchen. He had volunteered to come in earlier when she had unexpectedly had to leave to go