Hot Dog Horrors

by Celia Kinsey

  Hotdog Horrors

  A Felicia’s Food Truck One Hour Mystery

  Book Four

  By Celia Kinsey

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Hotdog Horrors: A Felicia’s Food Truck One Hour Mystery (Book Four)©2019 Celia Kinsey. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Cover Art: ©Freepick.com

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  Find out more about Celia’s other books at celiakinsey.com

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter One of The Good, the Bad, and the Pugly

  Felicia’s Food Truck One Hour Mysteries

  Fit to Be French Fried

  Hamburger Heist

  Pizza Pie Puzzler

  Hot Dog Horrors

  The Little Tombstone Cozy Mysteries

  The Good, the Bad, and the Pugly

  Lonesome Glove

  Tamales at High Noon

  The Jane Carter Historical Cozies

  Peril At The Pink Lotus

  Room Seven

  The Missing Groom

  The Oblivious Heiress

  A Country Catastrophe

  Robbery at Roseacres

  Rogues on the River

  Mr. Fielding Goes Missing

  Complete Series Discounted Box Set

  Chapter One

  “When was the last time you cleaned out your hot dog vat?” Clarence Conroy demanded as he stood at the counter of the food truck, clutching his bottle of hand sanitizer in one hand and a baggie of ones in the other. Clarence is a relatively recent resident of Whispering Palms, the senior living complex three blocks away, but he never eats in the onsite dining room. Instead, he inflicts his business on a handful of local food service establishments.

  We get him three days a week for lunch. It could be worse. Café Tijuana downtown has him every weekday during the supper hour, and Mama’s Little Italian Kitchen has to put up with him every Saturday and Sunday evening. The rest of the time, to hear him tell it, he subsists on dry cereal and ham sandwiches.

  Clarence refuses to touch money. He claims—and it’s probably true—that the average piece of paper money carries more germs than the toilet seat in a bus station bathroom.

  Clarence is an expert on germs, just as he is an expert on efficiency and organization. He’s always making helpful little suggestions about how we could better streamline our system for preparing food and, especially, sanitizing our equipment. Before Clarence retired, he was a quality control manager for almost forty years. He worked at a chemical plant that produced cleaning compounds, so I guess a hypersensitivity to sanitation and order was an inevitable side effect.

  “We clean out the hot dog vat on a regular schedule,” I told Clarence. “I can assure you we are in full compliance with health department regulations.”

  That was not quite true. My cook, Arnie, and I try our best, but when you run a food truck with one side of it open to the elements all day, it’s hard to eliminate all contact with nature. Just the previous week, we’d had a mother bird trying to build a nest up on the shelf where we kept our extra paper supplies. I hoped Clarence never found out about that.

  “What can I get for you, Clarence?” Arnie asked.

  Clarence eats at our food truck every Tuesday (2 hot dogs, no pickle relish, extra mustard with a side of potato chips), Wednesday (chili cheese fries with a side of frankfurters cut into bite-size pieces, hold the onions), and Friday (bratwurst dog, potato salad and a side of sliced tomatoes).

  Clarence invariably orders exactly the same thing, depending on what day of the week it is, but he always insists on being asked what he wants, regardless. I guess he wants to keep his options open, even though he appears completely disinclined to shake up his strict routine.

  Shortly after Clarence’s arrival in the village of Bray Bay, Prue, one of our other regulars from Whispering Palms, had informed me that Clarence was a widower, and, despite his irritating eccentricities, had made quite a splash with the ladies.

  Prue’s friend Patsy had quickly pointed out that the qualifications for making a splash with the ladies at Whispering Palms only required a man to be (a) single, (b) breathing, and (c) still able to answer the call of nature without assistance.

  Prue’s other friend Flo had then chimed in that the male to female ratio of Whispering Palms residents was of 3 women to every man. The romantically inclined woman of mature years couldn’t afford to be picky, Flo insisted.

  “Surely men aren’t dying off at 3 times the rate of women,” I’d protested.

  Flo then admitted she’d been exaggerating. The male to female ratio at Whispering Palms was closer to 2 to 1.

  To hear Prue, Patsy, and Flo tell it, the social life of seniors was fraught with the kind of drama usually only witnessed in daytime television dramas of the less realistic variety.

  While Clarence was placing his order, Prue, Patsy, and Flo arrived and stood behind him. They, at least, did not appear to be among Clarence’s admirers. They ignored Clarence and stood chattering amongst themselves like a trio of tiny sensibly sneakered sparrows dressed in stretch pants and floral overblouses.

  I’d heard that there had been a frontrunner for Clarence’s affections, or at least that’s what the woman in question had gone around telling people.

  Marcella Edwards had gone around telling anyone who would listen that she and Clarence were an item, but then Marcella went around telling people a lot of things.

  If Marcella and Clarence had ever been on, they appeared to be off now.

  Marcella sat alone at a table while she sipped a small lemonade and kept a firm grip on the enormous straw beach bag she never went anywhere without. While she sipped, she glared at the back of Clarence’s head.

  Two tables over sat Randell Romer, a small diffident man in his eighties who always carried an umbrella regardless of the weather. Randell was watching Marcella watch Clarence and absently shredding paper napkins onto his empty plate.

  It was Tuesday, so Clarence ordered his 2 hot dogs, no pickle relish, extra mustard with a side of potato chips. Then it was Prue’s turn to order. For once, she knew what she wanted.

  “I’ll have a hot dog,” Prue said. “No, I’m worn out from water aerobics this morning. I’ll have two.”

  “What do you want on your hot dogs?” Arnie asked. “Our two-dog plate comes with your choice of one side.”

  Prue hemmed and hawed until Patsy elbowed her in the ribs and told Prue to step aside and let her and Flo order.

  I didn’t catch Prue’s final decision on her preferred side because a fistfight broke out.

  Chapter Two

  Sometimes Arnie’s old dachshund, Frank, gets riled up and spoils for a fight with a couple of local dogs he’s taken a dislike to, but we don’t usually have brawls involving humans on the premises. In fact, actual acts of violence at the food truck have been limited to the one time somebody wearing a Darth Vader mask held up Arnie and made him empty the till and give up his lucky silver dollar. Even then, the gun turned out to be fake.

  What I was witnessing now, however, definitely qualified as a brawl, or at the very least, a rumble.

  Clarence and Fitz, anot
her Whispering Palms resident, were facing off from opposite sides of one of the flimsy plastic tables we keep for customers who want to eat on the spot.

  Fitz was clutching at his left eye with one hand and the edge of the table with the other. He looked pretty wobbly on his feet.

  Clarence was trying to stanch the flow of blood from his nose with a wad of paper napkins. When he noticed that blood was getting on his shirt, he grabbed one of the plastic gingham tablecloths off the table, scattering his paper plate and the hot dogs on it all over the ground. He then managed to tuck the tablecloth into his collar like a giant bib, all the while keeping a wary eye on Fitz.

  Frank darted out from his habitual spot between the front wheels of the food truck to snaffle down the dropped dogs, then retreated under the truck and out of harm’s way.

  “You hit me!” Clarence yelled at Fitz. At least that’s what I think he yelled; it was hard to tell what with the entire contents of a tabletop napkin dispenser shoved up against his face.

  “You hit me first,” Fitz shouted back “You hit me right in my good eye.”

  “I wouldn’t have hit you if—" Clarence said, pulling the napkins away from his nose, just long enough to speak.

  “If what?” Fitz demanded. “I’m the one who has a right to be hopping mad.”

  Arnie had come down out of the food truck and inserted himself between the two, and I joined him.

  “Sit down,” I said. “Both of you. And use your words like grownups.”

  It was a terribly patronizing thing to say, and I’m not proud of saying it, but I did a stint as a preschool teacher at Happy Hearts Preschool and Daycare, back in my early twenties, so “use your words” just sort of popped out.

  Surprisingly, Fitz and Clarence did as they were told. Apparently, I hadn’t lost my touch.

  “Now, what seems to be the problem?” I said.

  Fitz took his hand away from his injured eye and pointed at Clarence.

  “He’s trying to get me kicked out of Whispering Palms,” Fitz said

  I turned to Clarence, who was trying to readjust his tablecloth bib with one hand.

  “Is that true?” I asked.

  “Is what true?” Clarence demanded. If we were all back at Happy Hearts Preschool, somebody would be heading for the thinking chair about now, as in, “think about what you did, and we’ll try talking about it again in a few minutes when you’ve had a chance to calm down.”

  “Are you trying to get Fitz kicked out of Whispering Palms?” I asked again.

  “I wouldn’t put it that way.”

  “How would you put it?”

  Clarence was never forced to explain himself because we were interrupted by a screech of horror from Prue.

  Prue had sprung up from her table and was shrieking and dancing up and down as she gesticulated wildly at a half-eaten hot dog remaining on her plate.

  “There’s a spider inside my hot dog,” she wailed.

  I rushed over to Prue and examined the remains of her spit-up hot dog on her plate.

  What with the hitting, yelling, bloody noses and spit-up food, I might as well be back at Happy Hearts Preschool instead of running a food truck. I’d heard of people referring to old age as one’s second childhood, but this was getting ridiculous.

  Prue was not imagining things. It was most definitely a spider, although not a real one. I laid out the tiny black plastic spider (no larger than the size of a nickel) on a paper napkin and prodded it with a plastic fork, just to be sure it really was a toy.

  “You found this on your hot dog?” Arnie asked Prue as he peered over my shoulder.

  “No, it was inside the wiener.”

  “Inside?”

  Prue was adamant, but I was skeptical. I thought it more likely that someone had managed to slip the plastic spider inside the bun and conceal it within the condiments.

  “I thought you didn’t like mustard, Prue,” I said.

  Prue is the world’s most indecisive diner, but ironically, she holds very strong views on condiments. She loves pickle relish and ketchup, but mustard, as she colorfully puts it, makes her “want to toss her cookies.”

  “Did you put mustard on Prue’s hot dogs?” I asked Arnie.

  He shook his head.

  “Maybe you ended up with someone else’s order,” I suggested.

  Prue didn’t think so. I turned away from the table to continue questioning Fitz and Clarence, but they’d both taken off. Clarence had even absconded with our tablecloth, not that I wanted it back after he’d bled all over it.

  I picked up Clarence’s dropped plate—Frank had taken care of the contents—and put the incident out of my mind.

  The following day, Wednesday, at 11:38 sharp, I was reminded of the incident by the arrival of Clarence. Clarence had determined that 11:38 was the optimal time to arrive at the food truck if he wanted to avoid having to wait in line. Clarence has a strong aversion to waiting in line. According to him, the average American spends 5 years of their life standing in lines. He thought that was a terrible waste of human potential. I couldn’t argue with that kind of logic.

  Shortly after Clarence went up to the window to order, I was surprised to see Fitz come around the corner of the car wash. After yesterday’s incident, I’d expected that Fitz might lay low for a while. It should be easy to avoid Clarence. Everyone knew where he’d be at any given moment of the day, he was such a slave to his routine.

  Clarence was still at the window, but Fitz came right up behind him, bold as brass. When it was Fitz’s turn, he said, ”Chili cheese fries, extra onions, side of frankfurters cut in pieces.”

  Arnie looked over at me. Fitz had just ordered exactly what Clarence had unless you discounted the extra onions.

  Clarence has an onion allergy. He’s so afraid of getting the odd bit of onion that he insists we keep a dedicated cutting board stashed behind the counter just for him. He even put his request in writing, which he insisted we post in a prominent location.

  “Onions?” Arnie mouthed.

  I shrugged, and Arnie turned away to start on the fries.

  “Are you trying to irritate Clarence on purpose?” I asked Fritz. Clarence was too far away to hear.

  Marcella was back, sitting at a table near the truck this time, and Clarence picked a table as far from her as possible. Something had definitely soured between those two.

  Randell was back, as well. He was, again, watching Marcella watch Clarence. It was shaping up to be a repeat of the previous day, hopefully minus the fistfights and spiders.

  “Maybe I am trying to aggravate that old son of a gun,” said Fitz, “or maybe I’m not, but I don’t see that it’s any of your business.”

  Fitz’s eye was ringed in purple and green, and there was a cut on his nose that I hadn’t noticed the previous day. Clarence was looking a lot worse for the wear, too, but not nearly as bad as Fitz did.

  “What’s the deal with you two?” I asked.

  “Clarence is trying to get me kicked out of Whispering Palms.”

  “I gathered as much,” I said, “but why?”

  Fitz started to tell me but went silent when Marcella Edwards came up to the counter and started rattling around with the condiment bottles.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked Marcella.

  “Honey mustard.”

  “You’re also out of napkins,” said Randell over Marcella’s shoulder. “You look very nice today, Marcella.”

  For all the notice Marcella took of Randell, he might as well have been the empty napkin dispenser.

  We don’t usually keep honey mustard out front. It’s just not a popular item. If somebody wants it, we give it to them in little plastic squeeze packets we keep under the counter.

  When I emerged from under the counter, Marcella was still standing there, but Randell had disappeared. Fitz had wandered off to the water cooler we keep on one of the tables. I had a feeling Fitz was trying to avoid giving me any opportunity to be nosey about his beef with Clarenc
e.

  “Here’s your honey mustard,” I told Marcella. She took it absently. All her attention was absorbed by watching Clarence, who’d sat down at a table with three ladies from Whispering Palms.

  Patsy and Flo, who were sitting at the next table, looked over at Clarence and his groupies and then back at me and rolled their eyes as if to say, “See what we mean?”

  “Orders up!” said Arnie, “for Clarence and Fitz.”

  Fitz practically sprinted over and grabbed his plate from the counter, but Clarence took his time. He was clearly enjoying his role as resident Romeo of Whispering Palms.

  Fitz sat down at the table with Patsy and Flo. Halfway through his chili cheese fries he sprang from his seat, bellowing in pain.

  Chapter Three

  “My tooth!”

  Arnie and I rushed over to his table. Fitz opened his mouth to reveal that his bridgework was, indeed, damaged.

  “What happened?” Arnie asked.

  “There was something hard in my cheese fries,” Fritz said.

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  “Right there,” Fritz said, pointing to his plate. “I spit it out.”

  For the second time in as many days, I found myself combing through spit-out food with a plastic fork.

  “Is this it?” I said. I held up a small hard white object.

  “I think that’s a part of his bridge,” said Patsy.

  “I’ll keep looking.”

  This time it wasn’t a spider. It was small bolt. No wonder it had ruined Fitz’s bridgework.

  I held it up.

  “I’m going to sue you!” Fitz said, still holding his hand to his mouth.

  “Onions!” bellowed Clarence from the next table. When I looked over at him, I forgot all about Fitz’s tooth.

  Clarence had broken out in hives, and his face was starting to swell.

  “I think we should call an ambulance,” I said to Arnie.

  “I don’t think I need an ambulance,” Fitz said.

  “Not for you, you old fool,” said Flo, “for him.” She pointed over at Clarence.