Free Spicy Lasagna Murder: Book 13 in The Darling Deli Series by Patti Benning Page B

and healthy, and when she stroked them they made small sounds as their mouths nuzzled her hand.
    “Mom will be back soon,” she murmured to them. “She just has to go outside to potty really quick.” She picked up the runt and gave her a quick kiss on the head before checking that the heating pad was still on. Satisfied that the pups were warm enough, she opened the back door and let their mother out. She was so glad that Hazel had found a home with Karissa; letting her go once the puppies were weaned would be so much easier knowing that she would still see her pretty often.
    After letting Hazel back inside, she went to the front door and let Maverick and Keeva out to go to the bathroom. It was a pain not being able to let them go out the back door the way she used to, but she didn’t want to disturb the puppies. Besides, both of her dogs were big and prone to clumsiness; she didn’t want to risk one stepping on the pups.
    She had just gotten them back inside when she saw Candice’s sleek silver convertible pull up the driveway. She stood on the porch waving as her daughter and Eli got out of the car.
    “Thanks for agreeing to come here for dinner,” she told them. “I don’t want to leave the puppies alone if I don’t have to.”
    “No problem, Mom,” Candice said. “I hope you didn’t go to too much trouble. You know we would have been happy to pick something up on our way over.”
    “I know, but I’m just getting back into the swing of cooking. I made a nice homemade lasagna, which should be ready to come out of the oven in just a few minutes.”
    “I bet it’ll be amazing, Ms. D,” Eli said, sniffing the air as they walked inside the house. “It sure smells great.”
    “It will be better than the frozen ones you can buy at the store,” she said. “Beyond that, I make no promises.”
    The two of them settled in with the puppies while Moira got the lasagna out of the oven and put the finishing touches on the meal. First she sprinkled a hearty layer of parmesan cheese over the pasta dish, which she then put on a trivet on the dining room table. Next, she went to the fridge and took out the bowl of fresh greens that she had bought at the farmer’s market yesterday. With one hand, she added cherry tomatoes, shredded carrots, sliced almonds, and diced cucumbers before putting it on the table and getting a variety of dressings out of the fridge. By then the dinner rolls—the one pre-packaged dish at her table—were done, and she gingerly took them out of the oven and transferred them to a basket. All that was left to do was put the butter and drinks on the table, and they were ready to eat.
    She called Eli and Candice to the table, and was hit with a sudden flood of nostalgia as they clambered back over the gate to the mudroom and headed to the kitchen sink to wash their hands. For over eighteen years she had made most of the meals for her daughter, and it was something that she missed. Cooking for one just wasn’t the same, though she did eat with David quite often. She missed having her daughter in the house, and deliberately tamped down on her sadness at the thought that the young woman would probably never live with her again. Of course she was glad for Candice’s sake that the young woman was independent now and was making her own life choices… but Moira missed having somebody to cook for.
    “This looks delicious, Mom,” her daughter said as she slid into her seat at the dining room table. Eli sat next to her and agreed.
    “I can’t wait to dig in.”
    “Well, help yourselves. There’s plenty to go around.”
    They began eating, spending a few minutes in silence until their initial hunger pangs were silenced. Once the deli owner finished her first serving of piping hot lasagna, she put her fork down and looked at the pair at the table across from her.
    “So, what was it that you wanted to talk about?” she asked.
    The three of them had had dinner with Eli’s grandfather only a few