Pastrami Murder: Book One in The Darling Deli Series by Patti Benning Page B

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