A Pizza to Die For (2 page)

“Is the owner around?” I asked.

“He just stepped out,” the mason said. “Excuse me, but I’ve got a window of opportunity here before the grout hardens, and it’s closing fast. If I don’t get to it, I’m going to have some nasty chisel work ahead of me.”

After he was gone, Maddy asked, “Now what do we do? We’re not going to just leave, are we?”

I looked at my watch, and saw that time was running out. I wasn’t exactly sure how long the owner of Italia’s would be before he showed up, and I couldn’t wait around all day. We might just have to come back on our lunch break, but I wasn’t all that pleased about doing it that way. I was ready and primed, spoiling for a fight, and I was afraid if I waited, I’d lose some of my fire. On the other hand, I couldn’t afford to alienate any of my customers by opening the Slice late, especially with this place opening up so soon.

I was about to tell my sister that we were going to have to go back to the Slice when a tall, elegantly dressed man came in.

He took one look at us and sneered as he asked, “Are you the wait staff? I told the agency that you need to dress up for the interviews.” He took in our apparel once more, and before I could say anything, he added, “It doesn’t really matter. I’m not sure you’re what we’re looking for, but thank you for stopping by.”

“I’m not here for a job interview,” I said, the blood beginning to roar in my ears. “I own A Slice of Delight.”

The man frowned as he shook his head. “Then you shouldn’t be back here in my kitchen. So sorry, but you’ll have to wait for our grand opening celebration before you can come spying on me.”

“We weren’t spying,” Maddy said, despite my warning. Oh, well. It wasn’t as though I actually expected her to abide by her agreement to remain silent. I knew in my heart that it was just too much to ask of her.

“Funny, that’s what it looked like to me.” The pizzeria owner walked us toward the back door, and Greg looked at me questioningly before he allowed himself to be moved. With Greg’s size and strength, I would have loved to see the man try to physically remove him, but that wasn’t the way I wanted to fight this battle.

I wanted to make one try at being nice, even though I felt little good will toward the man. I put out a hand and tried to give my best smile. “It appears that we got off on the wrong foot. I’m Eleanor Swift.”

He looked distastefully at my extended hand, then he refused to take it. “I’m Judson Sizemore,” he said. “Pleased, I’m sure.”

“Not as much as you might think,” Greg said, nearly growling out his words.

I had to handle this fast, before things got ugly. “What made you decide to open a restaurant in Timber Ridge?” I asked.

“Do you even have to ask? It was clear that this town was in desperate need of some authentic cuisine,” he said.

“What we serve is good enough for the people around here,” Maddy said with a frown.

“Perhaps they believe that now, but I daresay their tastes will change when they sample what we offer.” He offered me a slight smile with a hint of condescension in it. “Perhaps you’ll find another niche in the marketplace.”

“Okay, I tried being nice,” I said. “Clearly that didn’t work. It looks like it’s time to go to Plan B.”

“And what might that be?”

“Don’t worry. You’ll find out soon enough,” I said, since I had no idea what I’d meant myself. I turned to Maddy and Greg, and then said, “Come on, we’re leaving.”

“Fine by us,” Maddy said.

As we walked out the door, I saw that Judson Sizemore had followed us.

Once we were outside in the alley, a delivery truck was just starting to unload when Judson called out a question to me. “Was that a threat you just made, Ms. Swift?”

“No, I wouldn’t look at it that way. Think of it more as a promise,” I said.

As we walked back to the Slice, I stared at the blue brick exterior. I’d been saving enough money to get it repainted to a more appetizing color, but that money was spoken for now. It was going to have to go into a war chest in a life and death struggle for my restaurant.

I was about to enter a battlefield, and I couldn’t afford to be cash-strapped when I went to war.

“I can’t wait to hear what you have in mind. What’s Plan B?” Maddy asked me as I unlocked the front door of the Slice and we walked inside.

“I have no idea,” I admitted as we moved back into the kitchen. It was officially one minute past opening, but no one had been waiting to get in, and we had things to talk about. Flipping our CLOSED sign to OPEN could wait a few more minutes.

“Not even a clue?” Greg asked. “Come on, I know you better than that. I can think of a thousand things we can do about this, if you need any suggestions.”

“It can’t be illegal,” I said.

Greg nodded. “Got it. Then that narrows it down to a hundred, but that should still be enough to run him out of town.”

“I won’t stand for anything unethical, either,” I added.

Greg frowned at me as he asked, “Then what am I supposed to do if you keep taking away all of my options?”

Maddy looked at me as she said, “Eleanor, this is no time to be squeamish. We can’t let Mr. High-and-Mighty back there get away with it.”

“I agree,” I said. “But if I drag myself down to his level, I don’t deserve to have a business. There has to be a way we can beat him fair and square. Don’t we have loyal customers?”

“I would certainly like to believe that,” Maddy said with a shrug. “But do you really want to bank on that?”

Her answer surprised me. “What do you mean?”

“Come on, Sis, I love the Slice almost as much as you do, but Judson’s offering a wood-fired oven and a guy who tosses the crust in the air like it’s some kind of show on the
Food Network
. Our sad little conveyor stashed away in back can’t compete with that, and you know it. We need to upgrade to the big guns.”

“We can’t,” I said, some of the fight going out of me. “If we have to do that, we’ve already lost. I just don’t have that kind of money.”

She frowned. “Then we’re out of luck.”

Greg said softly, “I can finance it, and we all know it. If money is all that it’s going to take, trust me, it’s not a problem.”

I’d actually forgotten how much money he had; Greg had been living hand to mouth for so long that it was hard not to still think of him as a struggling college student. “Thanks, but I can’t let you do that.” It was time to open the restaurant. I couldn’t delay it any longer, and besides, I needed to defuse the bomb Greg had just hurled.

He clearly wasn’t all that pleased with my reaction to his generous offer. “Why not? I’ve got more money than I’ll ever need, and if you can use some of it, I can’t think of a better way to spend it.”

I stopped in my tracks, twenty feet from the Slice’s front door. “Greg, I cannot express how much I appreciate your generous offer, but I can’t accept it, and we both know it.”

“If she won’t take it, I will,” Maddy said.

“What do you need money for?” Greg asked, clearly concerned about my sister’s well-being.

“
Need
might be a little strong, but I saw a new sports car on television the other day that I’d look just darling in.”

I knew that Maddy was trying to ease the tension in the air, but it wasn’t going to work by joking about money.

“I’m sorry, Greg. Win or lose, I have to do this within the limits of my own financial resources. Joe and I never believed in mortgages. That’s one of the main reasons we bought a house that was such a wreck and fixed it up ourselves. In a world full of credit, we’ve always believed in paying as we go, and I can’t change the way I do business now just because things are getting scary.”

He shrugged. “I’m sorry, Eleanor. I didn’t mean to offend you. I just thought it might help.”

I gave him a big hug, and was quickly joined by Maddy. I wasn’t sure what it would do to his reputation around town to have two women in their thirties embracing him so publicly near the Slice’s front window, but if he minded, he didn’t show it.

Maddy ran a hand over his buzz cut as she said, “You’re not half bad; you know that, don’t you?”

“Can you get her to accept the offer?”

My sister laughed. “I wouldn’t even try. She’s absolutely right. It’s her place, good or bad, sink or swim.”

“Then if we go down, we go down together,” Greg said.

“But we still have some fight left in us,” I said, suddenly buoyed by the show of support. “Let’s figure out a way to beat him fair and square.”

“I guess we could always try,” Maddy said, and then added with a grin, “even if you are taking all the fun out of it by not letting us fight dirty.”

I answered with a grin. “How about if we keep those ideas on the back burner in case things get really desperate.”

“Really?” Maddy asked.

“Of course not,” I replied. “But that doesn’t mean they aren’t fun to think about.”

Chapter 2

“E
leanor, do you have a moment?”

I had been in the back making pizzas for the last hour, happy that at least for the moment, we still had customers who loved what we did. I looked up to see Bob Lemon, local attorney and Maddy’s steady boyfriend, standing at the door between the kitchen and the dining room as if it were no-man’s land. Bob was a distinguished man, older than my sister’s usual love interests; I couldn’t have chosen someone better for her if she’d given me the chance, which we both knew she never would have dreamed of doing.

“You can have all the time you want, as long as you don’t mind if I keep working. You don’t even have to ask.”

“Maybe you should wait until you’ve heard what I’ve got to say to decide that,” he replied sheepishly.

“What did she do, pull you into this?” I asked. I had a sudden suspicion that Maddy had enlisted Bob in our fight against Italia’s, and I wasn’t going to allow it.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, counselor, I know how smart you are. My sister has dragged you into our battle with the new pizzeria, hasn’t she?”

Bob struggled to look offended by my accusation, but he couldn’t bring himself to sell it even halfheartedly. “What can I say? You know me. I’m a weak, weak man,” he answered with a smile.

I had to laugh at the expression of contrition on his face. “Go on and have your say. I know it’s not entirely your fault. My sister can be very persuasive. No one in the world knows that more than I do. What did she ask you to do, try to shut them down with some kind of injunction?”

“No, nothing as dramatic as that,” he said. “But she did ask me to do a little research about the property. I was already at the courthouse, so it was no problem to see who holds the lease on the building where Italia’s is going.”

“I’m sure it’s no big secret. His name is Judson Sizemore, and he introduced himself to me.”

Bob shook his head. “From the way the lease was set up, I’m not entirely certain that he’s in charge.”

“Why do you say that?” I had to give Bob a great deal of credit. He had a way of commanding attention wherever he was, which must have come in extremely handy in the courtroom, and he surely had mine at the moment.

Bob frowned as he answered, “It appears that a corporation called Mountain Properties and Trust holds the lease.”

“So, who owns them?”

“That’s what I’m having trouble tracking down. Ownership in these groups is usually fairly easy to establish, but the owners of MPT seem to have made a real effort to hide their true identities. In a town the size of Timber Ridge, that’s no small feat.”

“I’ll agree with you that it sounds odd,” I said, “but I’m not exactly sure how the information is going to help me, even if you’re able to get it.”

Bob raised a finger in the air. “Don’t kid yourself. Knowing your opponent is half the battle in these situations.”

“Well, thanks for trying,” I said. “How would you like a specialty pizza on the house for your efforts?”

“Believe me, I’m not finished yet,” Bob said. “I just wanted to let you know where things stand as of right now. I was doing this as a favor to you and your sister, but now I’m personally intrigued. Trust me, I’ll sort out the paper trail and know who the real leaseholder is soon enough.”

“What are you holding out for, two pizzas?”

He smiled at me. “As good as that sounds, I’ll have to take a raincheck for both of them. I’m due in court in ten minutes, and I can’t be late.”

“What’s so urgent?” It must be an exciting life, but it wasn’t one for me. I had enough on my hands making pizza
and
keeping my employees out of trouble. Either option would have been a full-time job on their own.

“I really can’t say what it’s regarding,” he said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

“Thanks, Bob. I appreciate it.”

“I know you do, but we both know that’s not the real reason I’m doing it. When it all comes down to it, I just seem to have lost the ability to tell your sister no. See you later, Eleanor.”

“Good luck, Bob.”

Soon after he left, I finished an order and walked into the dining room with it myself. I handed it to Maddy so she could deliver it to the proper table, and as I did, I asked her, “You just had to drag him into this, didn’t you?”

“Are you crazy? I’d never do anything against your direct and express wishes. He volunteered.”

As she delivered the pizza, I chuckled. “Do you honestly expect me to believe that?”

When Maddy came back, she said, “You’d better. When push comes to shove, he’s got his own self-interest at heart.”

“Do you mean he’s willing to do all this work just to keep you happy?”

“Think about it, Eleanor. There’s more reason than that,” she said as she walked back into the kitchen with me. “What happens if you have to shut down?”

I’d never really given it much thought. “I’m not quite sure,” I admitted.

“As much as I love you, Eleanor, you can be a little thick at times. If there’s no pizzeria for me to work in, there’s less reason for me to stay in Timber Ridge. Trust me, Bob’s not doing this for you. At least that’s not the only reason.”

“Would you leave town again, Maddy, if I had to shut the restaurant down?” I’d grown so accustomed to having her there with me that I couldn’t imagine my life without her again. I’d leaned heavily on Maddy when Joe had died, and I was just beginning to realize that I needed her more than I’d ever imagined.

“Let’s not worry about that right now, okay?” she asked. “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

I wasn’t all that pleased with her reply, but there was nothing I could really do about it. “That’s fine with me. But Maddy, you should know one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“All things being equal, no matter what happens with the pizzeria, I want you to stay.”

She gave me a quick hug, and smiled at me. “I know you feel that way, but it’s nice to hear it every now and then.”

Greg came into the kitchen, and when he saw we were hugging, he started to back out.

“Come on in,” I said as I broke free from my sister.

“I don’t want to interrupt,” Greg said.

“You’re not,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

He looked at my sister and said, “Maddy, if you’re finished wrapping things up in here, I could use a hand out front.”

“Why, have we suddenly gotten crowded?” she asked.

“You tell me,” he said as he held the door open. Coming into the restaurant was a long stream of people, each one sporting a green baseball cap with blue and cinnamon stripes prominently featured.

“Who are they?” I asked.

Maddy laughed. “Can’t you tell by their caps? They’re fans of the Sparrows. Did you know they were coming, Eleanor?”

“I don’t even know who they are,” I said. “How could I know they were on their way here? I assume by
Sparrows
you don’t mean actual birds.”

Greg shook his head. “How long have you lived in Timber Ridge, Eleanor? They’re the middle school soccer team.”

“I can’t keep track of every sports team and group in town,” I said in my defense. “But at least they look hungry.”

“Then we’d better get busy,” Maddy said as she and Greg went out to face the crowd. I wondered how long I could count on getting so much patronage from the townsfolk with a competing pizzeria just down the promenade, but I was determined that no matter what, I was going to enjoy it while I could.

A dozen pizzas later, all of us were worn out from the intensity of the Sparrows fan-club visit. I glanced at the clock and saw that it was nearly two, the start of our own lunch break, before we had to get ready for our dinner crowd.

“Why don’t you go ahead and lock the door,” I told Greg as our last customer paid his bill. “We could use an extra few minutes to get a jump on things.”

I didn’t have to tell him twice. He flipped the sign over, engaged the lock, and stood by the door until our last customer left. Greg never said anything, but it could be a little unnerving for him on sentinel duty there. Even so, it was better than the way Josh reacted when I’d ask him to close a little early. He’d been known to make up stories just to run off any diners he felt were moving a little too slowly for his taste. At least I would be saved from having to deal with his teenage temper reacting to the new pizzeria for the moment. Josh wouldn’t be in until later, since he was scheduled to work the evening shift, and I wondered how he’d react to the news. At least I had a break before he’d arrive and I’d have to deal with his outrage at the news.

Once the last customer left, Maddy looked around the dining room and said, “I can’t believe how much of a mess they made.”

“Don’t think of it that way,” I said as we all started getting the place back in order. Greg was on table duty, Maddy helped him bus, and I retrieved food and napkins from the floor so I could clear enough of a path to get the vacuum.

“How should I think of it?”

“As dollars in our register,” Greg said before I could reply. He looked sheepishly at me and said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to speak out of turn.”

“It’s not a problem. You said exactly what I was thinking myself,” I answered as I picked up an errant soiled paper napkin from the floor. Sometimes I wished I wore gloves, but my hands would be in scalding water soon enough as I washed dishes, and I wouldn’t touch anything else until they were clean again. I liked to keep my restaurant clean, and I’d do whatever it took to make it happen.

Like most messes, it wasn’t as bad as it had originally looked. We had the dining room in good shape in short order, and Greg took off, with my blessing.

As soon as he was gone, Maddy turned to me and asked, “What do you want to do now? Should we do all of the dishes, or should we forget about them for the moment and do a little more digging into Mr. Sizemore’s life?”

I was tempted, but I wasn’t all that certain that I could focus on anything else with a sink full of dirty dishes, and more waiting to be washed. “Let’s go back and see just how bad it really is. With both of us working, we might be able to knock them out in no time.”

Maddy shrugged. “Hey, it’s your place. I’m just your number one employee.” She looked at me and added, “I am number one, right?”

I laughed at that as I opened the door to the kitchen.

“What?” Maddy said. “Does that mean you aren’t going to comment?”

“I thought my reply was on the nose,” I said with a smile.

We walked back into the kitchen, and I looked at the mess. If anything, it was worse than I had expected.

I turned to Maddy and said, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I can face another dirty dish.”

She grabbed my apron from me and threw it onto the counter. “Let’s leave them for Josh, then.”

I took my apron, sighed, and put it back on. “We both know that I can’t do that, no matter how much I’d love to. I can delegate most things, but I can’t make anyone else do something that I’m not willing to do myself.”

She grinned. “I can always hope otherwise, but how can I say that I’m surprised by that reaction? Let’s get to it, then. You wash, and I’ll dry. We’ll be out of here in no time.”

“Why don’t we make something to eat while we’re working? That way we won’t have to deal with it later.”

“That sounds great to me. What did you have in mind?” she asked.

“Surprise me.”

As I started on the dishes, I could see Maddy pulling pizza dough out of the refrigerator.

She was just starting to knuckle the dough into the pan when she caught me watching her. “Hey, no peeking.”

I turned back to the dishes and, after a few minutes, she rejoined me and started drying the rinsed items from the rack.

I kept waiting for her to tell me about her latest concoction, but when she didn’t say anything about it, I finally broke down and said, “I give up. You win. What kind of pizza are we having?”

“I honestly don’t know what I would call it,” she said, “because I’m not entirely sure anyone’s ever made one quite like it before. But I’m hoping it’s good.”

“That makes two of us,” I said.

Whatever it was, it smelled delicious. I found my gaze drifting back to the conveyor oven, wondering what she’d put together. I knew our operation wasn’t fancy like having a wood-fired oven and pizza dough flying through the air would be, but our place was friendly and functional and, at least so far, it had allowed me to make a living doing something I’d grown to love. I couldn’t imagine my life without A Slice of Delight, any more than I could envision living in Timber Ridge without Maddy.

I was going to have to do something to make sure that the pizzeria stayed open regardless of anything that happened outside its doors, and whatever I finally came up with was going to have to be good.

“So, are you going to try some, or just sit there staring at it all afternoon?” Maddy asked me as I plated a piece of her pizza concoction. We’d knocked the dishes out as the pizza had been cooking, and I had no problem with leaving the few dirty dishes we’d created for later. Now we were sitting in a booth out front looking outside. We’d decided to sit there as we ate and discussed possible plans to combat Italia’s. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my kitchen, but I spent enough time back there working during the course of a day to want to get out of it now and then. We kept the lights off and the sign switched to CLOSED, and no one bothered us.

I got my nerve up and took the first bite.

“It’s interesting,” I said. “I’ve had pineapple and ham on a pizza before, but never combined with spicy sausage, mushrooms, jalapeno peppers, and Tabasco sauce. If you had to give it a name, what would you call it?”

She grinned at me as she said proudly, “I don’t know about you, but I kind of like ‘the Volcano.’ Should we add it to the menu?”

I thought about it and realized that updating the menu, and what we offered to our customers, might not be such a bad idea. “Why not? We can create a whole new section on our menu and update our prices at the same time,” I said.

Maddy stared at me for a few seconds, and then she finally burst out laughing. “It’s really not that bad, is it? I made it as a joke to perk you up a little, but honestly, I kind of like it.”