Tomato Basil Murder: Book 7 in The Darling Deli Series by Patti Benning Read Free Book Online

more attention when Candice was talking about her father; any piece of information could end up being the one that would lead them to the person who had murdered her ex-husband. She could only hope that whoever had done it wasn’t going to target the rest of her family next.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Over the next few days, Moira found herself more and more distracted, to the point of giving one of her regular customers the wrong order. Mike’s death was frighteningly close to home, and the little information she had about what had happened just wasn’t enough. She was loath to push her daughter for more details, as Candice was still understandably distraught over what had happened. She wished she could be more of a comfort to her daughter, but she didn’t think her daughter felt very comfortable discussing Mike with her mother. She wasn’t able to share in many of Candice’s good memories of her father; over the past ten years she had been doing her best to forget her past with Mike and move forward. Discussing old times wasn’t very comfortable for either of them.
    “I wish Mike had never come back to visit,” she grumbled to herself while scrubbing at a particularly persistent spot on one of the bistro tables. If he had just stayed in California, chances were he would still be alive.
    “Here, Ms. D,” Meg said from behind her, making Moira jump. “Let me do that. We’re running low on soup in the back, and I don’t know how to make this recipe.”
    “Thanks, Meg.” She sighed and straightened up, feeling bad that her sour mood was even affecting her employees. None of them had been anything but helpful and supportive, even when she was distracted or short of temper. She really couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to work at the deli. Even Meg, the newest employee, was fitting right in. She had started dating Dante shortly after being hired, but Moira hadn’t had any complaints about their relationship affecting their work.
    The soup of the day was a bit more foreign than her usual concoctions. The light, sour tamarind base stock paired with bok choy and tofu was a healthy selection, and one that tasted surprisingly good paired with the sweeter flavor of the Asian milk bread sandwich. It didn’t take her long to get a new pot of the soup simmering away, but she was reluctant to go back out and deal with customers right away. Meg could use more practice at the register anyway , she told herself. I might as well get a head start on the lentils. The lentils, like the cannellini beans, would need to soak overnight to be ready for soup the next day.
    After the lentils had been rinsed and poured into a pot of cool water to begin soaking, she did the few dishes that were piled next to the sink, took a couple of loaves of bread from the freezer to defrost for the sandwiches the next day, and double-checked the coming week’s schedule to make sure no one was scheduled for an unfair number of hours. As Moira looked around the spotless, freshly organized kitchen and realized she couldn’t find a single thing left to do, she knew she had stalled long enough. It was time to go back out and face the world.
    “How can I help you?” she asked a few minutes later, back behind the counter even though she still didn’t feel like herself. Her mind kept wandering, no matter how hard she tried to force herself to concentrate. If I feel this bad, I can’t even imagine how Candice must feel, she thought.
    “Um, I guess I’ll have a bowl of your soup,” the young man said. He was wearing a tee-shirt emblazoned with the name of some band that she thought Candice might have listened to years ago, and his hands were shoved deep into the pockets of his cargo pants. His gaze followed Meg as she helped an elderly man figure out which type of smoked turkey he had bought on his last visit to the deli. Moira thought the young man looked vaguely familiar, but couldn’t make her foggy mind concentrate enough to place him. He