“Any news?” he asked when he stepped up. After a pause, he ordered a coffee and fish entrée.
“Nothing really,” I replied as I rang him up. “Sam did stop by.”
“He’s the boyfriend, right?”
I was a bit annoyed by the phrasing, which could imply that he was my boyfriend as well as Janelle’s. So I just nodded as I passed him the food. The other officers ordered coffee and stew. Given that I’d made Danvers pay, none of them asked for a freebie this afternoon. That could come later when every piece of meat was less precious. It would be uniquely bad form to stop serving a crowd this size.
Danvers threw in, “I’ll talk to you later,” as he shuffled off with the other men. I wished that was not true, but I knew he would be by later to see what we’d learned.
The people kept coming, keeping all three of us busy. I kept watching Carter, thinking that if he was planning on sabotaging something, that today would be the optimal day for it. We had a huge crowd and bad word-of-mouth would travel far and wide. However, he showed no signs of treachery. Maybe I would have to give up my deep distrust of him and actually give him a key to the original food truck.
I was feeling somewhat relieved, when a young man approached the food truck. He had the same dusky skin and dark eyes as a person I’d talked to several times recently. I said, “You must be Janelle’s brother.”
He nodded. “I wanted to see what you’d done to her truck.” The words sounded accusatory, but he continued. “I’m glad that her dream hasn’t died. She’d be happy too.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m glad to hear that.”
He nodded. “I have to go.”
“Could I get a phone number?” I asked quickly. I handed him a pen. He scribbled something across one of the new napkins I’d ordered and handed it back to me. I wished I’d had more time to talk to him. I hoped he had something to offer, but I wouldn’t know today. The line continued to pour forward, pushing slightly to get our food.
I tucked the number in my pocket and moved on to the next customer. Henry, who usually stopped by at a time when we could talk, greeted us warmly and ordered the stew and a coffee. His basset hound sniffed the air and wagged his tail in response. I hoped that was a good sign for business.
By two o’clock, my body was ready to go home. However, we had another two hours to go. It was amazing to me that my body had adjusted so quickly to that new schedule that working until three p.m. or later was tantamount to torture.
I powered through as both of the men seemed to be having no problem at all. They looked happy and content to be cooking while I handled the money. By four o’clock, I was done. I was already dreaming of my nice comfy bed and a long, long sleep. Tomorrow would be an off day, so I could sleep in and indulge. I needed it. The last few weeks had been nothing but work for me.
I had just finished counting the money for the second time when Land cleared his throat. “What’s up?” I asked, trying to read his expression. “You look miserable.”
“We have a problem,” he replied, not telling me anything new. I wasn’t sure how to take his words.
“Tell me,” I whined, not wanting to wait to hear the latest issue. I was thinking along the lines of someone being maimed or poisoned by our food.
He handed me the bag for a shipment of frozen lamb. I looked at it, but couldn’t figure out why he was handing it to me. “Is something wrong with the lamb? It’s the same stuff that she’d been using. She must have liked it. She had a longer-term contract with the company.”
Land didn’t speak. He turned the bag inside out, and I suddenly saw the problem. Someone had taped papers to the inside of the frozen food wrappers. I couldn’t read the language but I had a hunch that I already knew what this was. “This is one of the messages being sent through Janelle, isn’t it?”
Land looked at the words. “It’s Berber, but I’m not sure of the exact dialect or some of the words. It has to do with government and some sort of explosion, so I’m pretty sure that it’s what everyone’s been looking for.”
Chapter 12
My day was about to get much longer. I called Detective Danvers on my cell. Without explanation, I suggested that he needed to get over here.
Since we were literally a five-minute walk from his office on Government Square, if you counted the time he spent waiting for the elevator, he was at the food truck in no time with an entourage of dark suited men of various sizes. There would be no crime scene here, since the truck had been cleaned and painted. The only thing he’d be interested in would be the frozen lamb packages. I was constantly vigilant that we wouldn’t give him any reason to shut down our operations.
All of them couldn’t fit into the small spaces of the food truck, so only Danvers came in. Land showed him the two bags he’d found with the writing inside of them. “And what did you say this was?” Danvers asked, trying to make sense of the writing.
“Berber,” Land said. I could almost tell his excitement at finally being able to tell someone about this language. “It’s a language of Upper Africa mainly, but there are people who speak it in Europe too. My uncle had a friend who was from Tunisia who spoke it. He taught me the rudiments of the language.”
I was trying to focus on the story, but I was also shocked. In all the time I’d known Land, he’d never mentioned his family—at all. Now he was chatting away about an uncle and friends—and the fact that he could speak even more languages than I’d originally thought. Wonders never ceased in my world.
Danvers looked skeptically at the writing again.
“Do you have a translator?” Land asked. “I can’t read enough to be useful, but the gist of it is that something is going to be blown up. That much I can read.”
Danvers shrugged. “I’m not sure to be honest. The need for Berber translators in Capital City is pretty small. Worst case scenario is that we have to involve the FBI and use one of their translators.”
Land handed the other package to him. “You’d better do something with this quickly. I have a feeling that our time is running out. These packages have been in storage for two weeks, which was not expected. Normally, they would have used the packages in less than a week. So we’re already behind.”
“Have you checked the rest of the packages?” Danvers wanted to know.
I had visions of the police barging into the truck and slicing up all of the lamb we had for the truck. We’d lose all of the goodwill built up today, when we had to announce the Basque in the Sun had no stew. I turned away from the rest of them to hide my emotions. I wanted to scream that it always seemed like other people’s problems got in the way of my success. Frustration built up inside of me, and I had to keep a tight lid on it or it would escape in some ugly ways.
“There are only two packages left. There’s nothing in them that I could tell, but you’re more than welcome to take them if you want.” Land held up two unopened bags of lamb. Danvers took them from Land.
I nearly wept tears of frustration as I saw Danvers hand those last two bags to one of the men outside the food truck. My chances for a successful career were going to be the victims of CSI.
Danvers looked at me with clear confusion on his face. He had no understanding of what the break in his case would mean for my business—and he likely didn’t care either. He could only see as far as the next solved case attributed to Detective Jax Danvers.
I cursed myself under my breath. Why had I agreed to take on a truck like this? I thought back to the tarot card reader. Maybe she did know something if she had predicted that this truck was haunted. It certainly had the ghost of Janelle Nolan lurking in its corners, wishing me ill will.
“Let us know if you find anything else,” Danvers said as he left the truck. “This could be a big break in the case.”
The men trotted back to their offices off Government Square, leaving me with no menu for Monday, a mere two days away.
Land looked at me. “You’re not upset about this, are you?” He seemed genuinely un
concerned. I wondered if this casual attitude would continue, now that he was part owner of this truck.
I opened my eyes wide. “Of course, I am. The last of our lamb just trotted off with the police. What are we going to do on Monday?”
Land waved a hand. “Do you think that the Basque only have three dishes? I was going to dump the lamb stew as soon as I could anyway. Lamb is an acquired taste, and not everyone likes it. I was going to pick some meats and sides that everyone would like. So I have half a dozen recipes ready to go. All I need to do is buy some ingredients over the weekend. Goodness knows we have enough cash to do that.”
Part of me wanted to hug Land for saving the day in this manner, but the other part wanted to yell at him for planning to change the menu without telling me about it—and spending profits to do so. I had a growing suspicion that minority ownership would end up being an issue in our working arrangement.
“Speaking of money, how did we do today?” Carter asked. “I mean relatively speaking, not exact figures.”
I smiled at him. “You can ask about the money. I’ll tell you if you’ve crossed any lines. From my counts, we did nearly triple what Dogs on the Roll would have done for a Friday. Of course, we can’t count on this all the time, but I think, overall, that we’ll do better here than my budgeted estimate of this truck just making as much as the original truck.”
Carter made a whooping noise. Despite the fact that we were about the same age, we certainly had a maturity gap. Perhaps it was because I was an only child that I related better to older people and had less in common with my peers. Or it could just be that I took this seriously because I wanted a new car. Even so, Carter, at times, acted much younger than his years.
Land smiled at me, which I assumed was shorthand for “I told you so.”
I put the bank deposit in my backpack and started back to Dogs on the Roll to head back to the lot. I had managed to secure a second spot for the new food truck, so I knew I’d be seeing Land shortly.
I was tired, happy, and planning not to think about Basque food or murder until Monday.
Of course, it was only 8:15 a.m. on Saturday when someone started pounding at the door. I said a few words that I would prefer not to repeat and threw on a robe over my nightclothes. It was for modesty purposes, since it was nearly 60 degrees outside already. I looked through the peephole and saw Jax Danvers there. Probably the last thing I wanted to see that early.
I threw the door open and asked, “What?”
He was slightly taken aback by the greeting. Apparently the fact that I might not be wide-awake and happy to see him had never occurred to Danvers. I pushed the door open so that he could enter, since he had not made any attempt to apologize or leave.
“I need to see the rest of your food,” Danvers told me.
“It’s in the fridge,” I replied as I poured water into the coffee pot. I measured out some of Land’s blend of ground coffee, which was one of the few perks of the job I allowed myself at home. I waited as the coffee brewed. I wasn’t up to answering questions or being nice yet.
Danvers gave me an exasperated look. “Not that food. We need to look at all the food for the truck. Those documents you gave us yesterday are dynamite. They’re part of a rather nasty plot that involves trying to overthrow the Moroccan government to install a hostile regime that would start a war with Algeria. So I’m not in the mood to joke.”
I tried to focus, but I had a hard time. Finally the coffee was done, and I poured a cup for me. Danvers looked stricken, and so I poured him a cup as well. Even on my off days I couldn’t get away from serving other people.”
After I’d finished half a cup, I felt like my brain functioned. “So you got an interpreter last night and the documents say they’re going to try to overthrow the government—so you want to look through the rest of the food on the truck. And I’m sure you have a warrant to seize all the property of a working food truck without any way of getting it back to us before we need to use it on Monday?”
He took a deep breath. “We didn’t get through with the translation until four a.m., and by that time it was too late for a judge. I thought I’d come over and appeal to your better nature. This is a matter of international importance.”
I drank some more coffee. “My better nature is still asleep for a few more hours. It’s the weekend, remember?”
He nodded. “What do I have to do in order to get to look through the food in the truck?”
I looked him dead in the eye. Maybe it was the hour, or the mood I was in, or just plain cussedness, but I took a deep breath and said, “Why was kissing me a mistake?”
His jaw dropped open. “You’re kidding? I have a multinational investigation into regime change and all-out war going on here that needs your help, and your price for entry is for me to talk about my feelings.”
I shrugged and refilled my mug. “It works for me. You want something from me, and I want something from you. Easy negotiation.”
“What if something happens? Do you want it on your head that you could have prevented it?”
I shook my head. “All I’m asking from you is for information. If you choose not to tell me, then it’s on you—not me.”
Danvers grumbled something that I couldn’t hear. I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be my explanation, but I doubted it. Finally he spoke, “I like you—some days—but from what I’ve seen, we’re going to working together often…way more often than I want. So I felt it was best not to mix business and romance. Because I thought, maybe someday, the fate of the world might be based entirely on my spilling my guts to someone about why I put a halt on the relationship rather than their trying to help me discover more information.” His voice rose on the last few words.
I was satisfied with the answer. I’m the type who hates not knowing, and for some reason, this was a plausible explanation for what happened. It wasn’t what I’d wanted, but it made sense.
“Let me get dressed, and we’ll go,” I said as the caffeine started to kick in. “But here are the conditions. First, we’re only going to go through the food that comes from vendors I haven’t done business with before. There’s no reason to suspect that my regular vendors would be a part of an international plot. I’ve met them, and they probably don’t even know where Morocco is, much less the political climate there.”
“Fine, this came from another vendor anyway, so that makes sense. Is that it?” he asked. Danvers seemed more relaxed now that we’d had our talk.
“Of course not. No food items are destroyed in the process. All of those items are bought and paid for, and they need to be handled with care. I have to sell that stuff next week, and I don’t want it damaged.”
Danvers shrugged. “Sure. Is that it, or do you have more conditions?”
I held up a finger. “Just one more. I’m going with you. I have keys to the storage locker, and I know the gatemen. They’ll want to know why we’re showing up on a weekend instead of Monday morning, so I’ll explain. I still have a reputation to maintain and being dragged into my food locker by the police on a Saturday morning doesn’t inspire confidence in others.”
I got no argument from him about that. I was a bit surprised, but that told me that he was desperate to learn more about the situation. I threw on some jeans and an oversized jersey along with a baseball cap to mask the bedhead. This definitely wasn’t going to be an outing where I’d be judged on my looks.
While I was dressing, I managed to text Land and tell him what was going on. If we were going through the provisions for Monday, he had a right to know, in case anything was damaged. He didn’t bother to respond, which meant that he was either still asleep, which I envied him for, or annoyed that he’d been excluded from continuing the hunt for what he’d originally discovered.
We drove to the freezer storage facility, which was essentially a series of refrigerated storage lockers. I explained the situation to the manager as best I could without hinting as to the reasons why we needed to search my food.
I told him that a recall of some products made it necessary for me to pull the food from stock before the packages had the chance to be used, and the policemen were just food inspectors.
From my backpack, I pulled out the inventory that I kept. Since I was the ultimate business school major, I had a full spreadsheet of all my products along with the vendors for the products in case I needed to quickly order something. I’d gotten the list of ingredients from Janelle’s truck prior to our opening, so I had already updated my inventory.
This had allowed me to combine our suppliers when necessary. I had sought the very best, yet most economical, vendors last year when the food truck opened, so I didn’t feel that I needed to repeat all of that this time around. The problem that I had was that Janelle had contracted for some of her materials over the course of many months, tying the truck to a particular amount and price for the foreseeable future. The frozen lamb had been one such item. While I’d thought it bad business practices before, now I wondered if she’d done that to ensure a pipeline for communications for the next several months. It suddenly seemed less capricious.
I began to run my finger down the list of ingredients. While gyros can be made with a variety of meats, Janelle had opted for lamb to be the primary ingredient. She had also contracted for some pork, but nothing in the same quantities as the lamb. So we started with the pork.
Since the meat sat on a rotisserie, it came in large slabs, packaged in opaque plastic. The communications that Land had found were located on the inside of the plastic. The policemen had sanitary knives and began slicing open the plastic. I had brought new plastic wrap for the meat, which meant that the process went slowly. I’d insisted that they repackage the ingredients as they searched. I wanted no freezer burn and no food losses to result from this search.
THE REAL GYRO (Food Truck Mysteries Book 4) Page 11