Salami Murder: Book 8 in The Darling Deli Series by Patti Benning Page B

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