I backtracked a bit, stopping at a fruit stand to check out some pears. Grabbing a plastic bag, I dropped a few into it and handed them to the man behind the counter to weigh. I did the same with some oranges and squash.
“You’re shopping?” Mom hissed. “Now?”
“It looks more natural than just barging up to the truck.”
“I’ll have to remember that.”
I couldn’t tell if the remark was serious or sarcastic.
Once the items were purchased, Mom and I slowly made our way to Comfort Foodies. The truck was large and shiny, painted in cheerful colors in a quilt motif. Facing us were two large rectangular windows through which food was ordered and picked up. There were two customers ahead of us, but by the way the nearby trash cans were overflowing, it looked like they had done a booming business earlier. The Asian truck’s trash was equally filled.
The menu was written in colorful chalk on a blackboard. I looked it over. Mom stepped closer to the board and viewed it along with me. “See what you want, Mom?”
“I’d love some macaroni and cheese, but I don’t eat fried foods.” She pointed to an item—fried mac and cheese balls. The item below it had been erased, a sure sign of a sellout.
“We can serve the mac and cheese unfried if you like,” said a voice behind us.
We both turned to see a young man of about twenty with an order pad in one hand and a pen in the other.
“Is it any good?” asked Mom.
“My mom’s mac and cheese is the best,” he said with confidence. “We sell out every time. Today we also had lobster mac and cheese, and it went like crazy.”
“Paulie,” called a woman’s voice from the service window. “We have one more order of the lobster mac and cheese left if she wants it.”
“Lobster macaroni and cheese,” Mom repeated with near reverence. She stepped closer to the window. “Is it made with real lobster or that fake stuff?”
“Mom,” I hissed. “Be nice.”
Mom scowled in my direction. “I have a right to know if I’m going to eat it. So much of it isn’t real now. Take crab, for instance. You can get real crab spelled with a C or fake crab spelled with a K.”
A woman’s head poked out from the window. Her hair was somewhere between silver and blond and pulled back tight from a wide face that resembled that of the young man waiting on us—minus the skimpy moustache. “She’s right,” the woman said. “A customer has the right to know.” She gave Mom a broad smile, showing uneven teeth. “Nothing fake anywhere in this truck, except maybe my boobies.” She gave us an exaggerated wink.
“Then I’ll take it,” said Mom with enthusiasm.
“Are you allowed to eat that?” I asked my mother. “Don’t you have a cholesterol problem, like Clark?”
Mom turned on me and said loud enough for the woman and her son to hear, “You don’t see me counting your calories, do you, Chubs?”
I swear, if there had been a bat close by, I would have been tempted to take a swing. I’m not sure at what, since I wouldn’t want to rot in jail for matricide, but surely I could find something to hit that would only result in a vandalism charge.
I stepped up to the window. “Make hers a double, extra cheese and butter.”
The woman shook her head and laughed. “Mothers. They always have a hold on us, don’t they?”
“Tell me about it.” It was the young man who spoke. Through the window, his mother shook her finger at him but was sending him a warm look of love while she did.
“And what would you like?” she asked me.
I looked back over at the chalkboard, then at my mother. “What’s the most fattening thing you have?”
“That would probably be the fried mac and cheese,” answered the woman, “although the lobster mac and cheese is no slouch in the calorie department. The meatloaf wrap will also put the pounds on.”
“I’ll take the meatloaf wrap,” I told her.
“Mashed potatoes and gravy are also in the wrap.”
“Even better.”
I turned to Mom. “What would you like to drink, Mom?”
“Coffee, if they have it.”
“We sure do,” answered the boy. “All the other drinks are lined up in this other window.”
I checked out the offerings. “Coffee for my mother and a lemonade for me.”
“I thought you usually drank iced tea,” Mom commented.
I took a deep breath. “I’m living on the edge today, Mom.”
The boy gestured to one of the plastic tables. “Why don’t you two ladies have a seat while Mom fixes your food.” He scribbled our orders on his pad even though his mother had already taken them. “We’ll call your name when it’s ready.”
“Put it under Odelia.” I paid him and followed Mom to the closest table.
While we waited, I checked out the line at the other truck. A couple customers were lined up to order food.
“Who knows,” said Mom, pointing at the customers. “That Bob Y might even be one of them. He could even be a she.”
“True, you never know, but from the wording in his reviews, my gut tells me he’s male, young, and more likely to hang out at the bigger food truck events like the ones held at night in trendier spots.”
A few minutes later, the woman from the truck came over with three paper boats of food. She walked with a noticeable limp on her left side. Behind her came her son with our drinks. They placed everything on the table in front of us. It smelled heavenly, and the portions were far from skimpy.
Mom leaned over her food and took a deep whiff. “My, that certainly smells wonderful.”
I pointed at the third boat. It contained a single golden, crusty orb the size of a golf ball. “Is that the fried mac and cheese?”
“That’s it, or at least a sample.” The woman wiped her hands on her food-splattered apron. “I thought you might like to try it.”
I nearly swooned. Macaroni and cheese is one of my favorite foods. I hadn’t ordered it because my plan was to pinch a bite of Mom’s. Meatloaf is one of my other favorite foods. So now I had both of my faves on one table. I was a happy girl, even if Mom did call me Chubs.
A shout came from the other food truck. They’d finished serving their last customers and were closing down their service windows. One of them was waving in our direction. “We’ll see you tonight, Heide. Later, Paul.”
The woman and her son waved back with promises to keep the deep fryers burning.
Heide turned to her son. “Guess we might as well wrap it up and get ready for tonight too.”
“We’ll take care of closing up, Mom. Why don’t you sit down a bit?”
“Yes, please,” I encouraged. “Grab a seat and join us.”
Just then another young man hopped out from the truck. He was a bit older than Paul and had darker hair. “What’s this ‘we’ business, little bro? I’m outta here.”
“Eric,” Heide said to him. “Can’t you stick around long enough to help your brother?”
“I’ve been slaving over a hot grill, Mom. Let pretty boy get dirty for a change.” He lit up a cigarette and blew out the smoke. “Besides, I’ve got people to see.” As Eric walked away, he pulled the hood of his navy blue sweatshirt over his head.
Paul yelled at his brother’s back, “Make sure you’re back in time for tonight’s gig—Mom can’t cook all by herself.”
Without turning around or changing his stride, Eric raised the hand not holding the cigarette and extended his middle finger high into the air.
“At least,” his mother called after him, “use that finger to give us a call if you’re going to be late.”
Heide plopped herself down into one of the plastic chairs at our table. Her shoulders sagged with weariness. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with him. Eric’s really a nice kid and a whiz in the
kitchen. I’m trying to get him to go to culinary school and become a first-class chef, but he won’t listen. He cooked the food you’re eating.” Mixed with Heide’s concern was pride.
Mom had a mouthful of lobster mac and cheese, so I made the introductions. “I’m Odelia Grey and this is my mother, Grace Littlejohn. She’s visiting from the East Coast.”
Mom swallowed her food. “New Hampshire, actually. I used to live in Massachusetts, but now I’m in an old folks’ home in New Hampshire.”
“I’m Heide van den Akker,” she said. “That’s my youngest son, Paul, cleaning up. The older boy is Eric.”
I took a bite out of my meatloaf wrap and wanted to swoon with meat and gravy bliss. It smelled so good, I wanted to dab some behind my ears.
“You like it?” Heide asked.
“Mffhmmfgff,” came out of my stuffed mouth along with a vigorous nod of my head.
“Mine’s wonderful, too,” added Mom.
“Glad you ladies are enjoying it.” Heide beamed with pleasure at having her food appreciated.
“We don’t have anything like this where I live,” said Mom after wiping her mouth with a paper napkin that had been provided with the food. “I’m blogging about my trip to California and thought it would be fun to see one of these things. Catering trucks are a lot different now than in my day.”
Blogging? I stopped chewing and stared at Mom through bulging eyes.
Heide leaned forward with interest. “You have a blog, Grace?”
“Yes, I do. It’s called An Old Broad’s Perspective.”
Heide laughed. I nearly sprayed mashed potatoes across the table.
“It’s nothing much,” Mom continued. “Just the ramblings of an old woman with time on her hands. At first a lot of the old folks where I live were the only ones reading it. Now I have about fifty or so regular readers. Sometimes more than two hundred people view it in a month.” Mom straightened in her chair with pride. “I thought it would be fun to blog about my trip. So far folks seem to be enjoying it. I’ve blogged about the flight, Thanksgiving Dinner, shopping—things like that. Even about Odelia here taking me and her mother-in-law to see The Nutcracker on Sunday afternoon.”
I was waiting for Mom to add finding a dead body to her list of What I Did On My Vacation, but she seemed to be staying off that topic. Maybe she was right—maybe I did get my defective fibbing gene from my father, because she was lying like a champ.
“And you wanted to blog about a trip to a food truck?” asked Heide.
“I’d seen trucks like yours on TV, so when Odelia asked me what I wanted to do today for lunch, I mentioned it.” Mom looked to me to pick up the thread of deceit. I guess she wanted to get back to her food. And, of course, I’d just taken another big bite of mine.
After nearly swallowing my food whole, I said to Heide, “I went on About Town to look up reviews on local food trucks and remembered seeing a story on the news about your truck and how you got started.”
“Odelia told me what happened to you and your husband,” Mom chimed in. “I’m very sorry.”
“Thank you.” As she said the words, Heide’s friendly face clouded. “But we’re doing fine now, as you can see. Doctors told me I might never walk again, so I’ll happily live with this gimpy leg.” She slapped the thigh of her injured leg.
“Odelia’s husband is in a wheelchair.” The way Mom said it, I wasn’t sure if she was bragging or looking for pity on my behalf.
Heide looked at me with similar confusion. “Really? A car accident?”
I shook my head. “It was an accident, though. A stupid stunt when he was a kid that almost turned deadly.”
“But he’s amazing,” Mom added as if writing a review of Greg’s skills for About Town. “Nothing stops him from doing what he wants.”
“That’s true,” I agreed. “My husband is very athletic and competitive. He can do almost anything a man with working legs can do.”
Heide gave me a lascivious wink. “Anything?”
“Anything,” I assured her with the blush of a schoolgirl.
Mom pushed her paper boat away. She’d eaten most of it, which surprised me. She loved to eat, as I did, but didn’t have a big appetite—unlike me. “Before we go, do you mind if I take a picture of you and the truck for my blog?”
“No, not at all, Grace,” beamed Heide, regaining her prior cheerful composure. “And if you don’t mind, could you e-mail me when it’s posted? You’ll find my e-mail on our website. But finish your food first. And don’t forget the fried mac and cheese.”
I cut the fried ball open with the side of my fork and popped half into my mouth, where it melted in cheesy goodness.
Mom looked at me with disgust. “Did you just moan?”
I nodded while the last bit dissolved in my mouth. “It’s fantastic,” I gushed to Heide. “My husband would have an orgasm over these.”
“Odelia!” snapped Mom.
“Don’t worry, Grace.” Heide laughed. “It’s not the first time someone has said that.”
I saw the perfect segue and grabbed it. “That reviewer on About Town was right about your food.” I speared a bite from Mom’s abandoned plate. The lobster mac and cheese was incredible, although I preferred the fried sample.
“Mom, you want a bite of my meatloaf?”
“Just a small one. I’m stuffed.” Using her fork, she picked up a mouthful of meatloaf and mashed potatoes from the end of the wrap and guided it into her mouth.
“Which reviewer was that?” asked Heide. “I know there are a lot, but we’ve gotten to know some of them over time.”
“His name was Bob Y.” I turned to my mother, playing the game she started. “Isn’t that right, Mom?”
Her mouth was full, so she simply nodded.
I turned back to Heide. Her face was cloudy again, but I couldn’t tell if it was because she was thinking or because she didn’t care for the person behind the review.
“He’s written several great reviews for food trucks, but he absolutely raves about yours. It’s like he’s addicted to your food.”
“And I can see why,” Mom squeaked out after swallowing.
“Do you know him?” I prodded when Heide remained silent.
“Can’t place him,” she said, putting her game face back on.
“He only reviews two things,” I continued. “Food trucks and secondhand stores.” I took a drink of my lemonade. “Odd combination, isn’t it? And as much as he loves food trucks, especially yours, he hates secondhand stores.”
Heide held up her hand in surrender. “Kids. Go figure.” She got up to go. “If you don’t mind, let’s take that photo now. I need to get back home and take a nap before tonight, and also get in some prep time in the kitchen. These nighttime events are usually jammed with customers.”
“I think Heide knows who Bob Y is.”
We were in the car, travelling on the 405 Freeway, heading back home.
“I think you’re right, Mom. Her face totally changed as soon as I mentioned his name, and she called him a kid. Either she made an assumption or knows him, but it still doesn’t tell us who he is or if he’ll be useful in helping us get the dirt on the stores.”
Mom was looking at the photo on her phone. I had taken it of Mom with Heide and Paul in front of their truck. “It came out great.”
“Do you really have a blog? Or were you making that up?”
“I do have a blog, just like I said.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” My voice sounded peevish in spite of my attempt to appear cool and relaxed.
“I didn’t think you’d be interested in the ramblings of an old woman.”
“Did you post anything about the murder on it?”
“Sure did,” she answered with enthusiasm. “Much more newsworthy than The Nutcracker.”
“But I thou
ght you liked the ballet Sunday.”
“I did, but let’s face it, Odelia: no ballet can stand up to a murdered guy in a storage locker. And the blog has received more views than ever before. It might even go viral.”
Did my aged mother just use the term viral ?
nine
Ina was still in jail, and it wasn’t looking good. Greg returned from the police department exhausted and frustrated the night of the auction. He informed us that along with the gun, inside Ina’s backpack the police had found a fake passport and a plane ticket for Paris. The plane ticket was dated for the day after the auction. When questioned by the police and her lawyer, Ina had clammed up.
“It’s as if she’s given up,” Greg said after the arraignment two days later. We had all gone—Greg, Mom, Renee, Ron, and I; even Buck had shown up, but no one else I recognized from the auction. Ina entered a guilty plea to the gun charge. Since it was her first offense and Ina didn’t have any other type of criminal record, we’d expected her to get released with just a stiff fine, which Greg was prepared to pay on her behalf. But the assistant district attorney effectively argued that since the gun was loaded when found and Ina was not the registered owner, that the charge should be elevated from a misdemeanor to a felony. He pushed for Ina to receive prison time.
The DA also stressed that Ina was a major suspect in a pending murder investigation, had been in possession of an illegal passport, and had proven to be a flight risk. Ina’s lawyer pleaded vehemently against that course, underlining how Ina had not yet been charged with anything in connection with her husband’s murder and likely had been fleeing the country to get away from her abusive spouse, not from a crime. Since her husband was now dead, there was no reason for her to flee the country. In the end, the judge took everything under advisement and set a sentencing date. He sent Ina back to jail without bail to wait until that time. When Ina was led away, she seemed reconciled to her fate; all her usual piss and vinegar drained from her like water from a bathtub.
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