I cleared my throat and called for Land. He walked toward the window, wiping his hands on his apron as he did. He didn’t speak, waiting for the other man to say something.
“Hello, Land. Fancy meeting you here,” Jax said.
Chapter 2
“Wait, you two know each other?” I asked after a long pause. My neck was growing tired from the frequent turns between the two men. I couldn’t fathom a way in which my cook and this homicide detective knew each other.
The policeman nodded. “Yeah, Land and I go way back, don’t we?”
Land still didn’t say a word. He just glared at the officer much the same way he glared at me on a regular basis. He was a man of few words, but many stares.
“So, Land, what exactly did you see this morning? Anything that could help us in breaking this case?”
“Negative,” he replied. For a moment, I thought that would be his only word, but finally he continued. “I was in the back of the truck with the window down. So I couldn’t hear a thing. If it’s any help to you, I didn’t hear a scream or a gunshot. It was pretty quiet here this morning.”
“Not surprised that you didn’t hear a gunshot. The man had his head cut off. What time did you get in?” Jax was scribbling in his notebook. I tried to read what it said, but his hand and wrist covered most of the page. I knew that maneuver was not an accident. He continued to scribble as I tried to catch a glimpse of anything.
“Five a.m. or so. I had to make up some more brown mustard, and we do the salsa fresh each day.”
Detective Danvers snorted. “No reason to give me the menu. I’m just trying to get the facts down. Did anyone see you in here? Was anyone in here with you?”
“Negative. I didn’t see anyone. No one saw me.” Land turned and went back to his station to chop more things into little pieces.
“Is he always this way with you?” Danvers asked with another small smile.
“Pretty much. He keeps to himself. So do you have any idea who did this to poor Fred?” I asked, wanting nothing more than to sate my curiosity by discussing Land Mendoza. However, given the way in which I’d been cut off earlier, I knew it was a lost cause. I’d have to find out the connection on my own.
“None. It’s pretty early. I just thought I’d ask around at some of the other trucks and the coffee places, anyplace that might be open at the time that Fred was killed.”
I nodded. I suggested the Starbucks up the street and a small diner that was over one block on Walnut. Let the competition deal with the questions for a while. “I understand. Is there anything else? I have to start getting things ready for lunch, if you’re done.”
He smiled again, revealing another dimple. “Not yet. Let me know if you learn anything or hear anything that might be helpful.” He pushed a card across the counter and I picked it up. I slid the card into my pocket and got back to work.
I spent some time in silence cleaning the grill from the morning shift and started heating up some dogs for lunch. My aunt had made the decision to serve only the breakfast and lunch crowd. Most of the business folk downtown left at 5 p.m. to head home to the suburbs, so the dinner crowd was light and was mainly geared toward business dinners that were typically more upscale than food truck fare. So, once I cleaned up after the lunch crowd, I would be done for the day. I was still getting used to the schedule; late nights were now a thing of the past. I couldn’t handle five people shouting coffee orders at me when I’d only had two hours sleep the night before. Trust me; I’d tried it a few times before I gave up.
It was nearly 11:30 before the first of the lunch customers arrived. I took orders, rang up the sales and then collected their meals from Land and served them. I also decided to try a little snooping.
Most days, customers wanted to talk about sports or weather, today everyone was talking about Meat Treats and the murder. I kept my ears open, hoping to learn some information so that I could call Detective Handsome later on. Of course, I would only be doing my civic duty. If he wanted to take me to dinner to discuss what I knew, that would just be the reward for my good citizenship.
Most of what I heard was a rehash of what I’d seen and been told by the police. The customers gladly chatted about severed heads while munching merrily on their dogs. For me, it turned my stomach slightly, and I had no desire at all to eat. Hell of a way to start a diet, I thought.
With Meat Treats out of commission, we did very brisk sales that day. The regulars were in line along with a few customers that I recognized from Samples’ food truck. I wasn’t certain if the other truck would ever be deemed fit for food service again. The inspectors would have a field day with human remains in the serving trays. The truck would have to be scrubbed and disinfected to remove the blood and other contaminants from the surfaces. Some inspectors used black lights to examine a truck; and I knew from my crime dramas that blood showed up on those tests.
Land kept up with the orders and the faster pace. He didn’t speak to me at all during the lunch rush, but I could feel his eyes on me every time I slowed down to relax for a second. I wondered if he had something on his mind or if he was just pensive from seeing the same gore that I had.
I did hear one customer expressing his opinion. “Yeah, Samples and his kid were having a huge fight last week about the truck. The kid wanted to move the truck to a more trendy location to see if they could pick up some additional business. Old Fred wanted to stay here. It got pretty heated before they realized that they had customers.”
His friend recommended that he stay out of anything related to police business. I wasn’t going to take that advice—I planned to tell the good detective what I’d learned from listening.
By the time that the customers were trickling off, I had a suspicion that Land knew something that he wasn’t telling me. He knew the detective, which made me wonder how that had happened. It wasn’t as though they’d gone to school together. Land had been quite clear that he’d lived in the Basque Country until he’d graduated from high school. Since that was only eight years ago, there were few chances for a friendship between two such different people.
Land cleared his throat as he finished with the wipe down of the kitchen surfaces. “You need to stay away from Danvers,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Yeah, about that… How do you know him?” I shot back. We’d never had the most collegial relationship, and his desire to suddenly tell me what to do was out of line.
“Around.”
“Wow. That was helpful. So why do I need to stay away from him? He seemed like a perfectly nice guy.” I was feeling feisty because he was telling me what to do, and because he was ruining a perfectly good dinner fantasy for me.
“He’s not. He’s a good cop, and if you have anything to hide about this murder, he’ll find it out and he’ll use it against you. So you just need to stay away from him.”
I turned swiftly, threw my hands on my hips and stared at him. “Exactly what do you think I had to do with this murder?”
He gave me a look that I’d never seen before. I was shocked to see an expression that wasn’t disgust or outright anger on his face. It was a mixture of surprise and concern. I hadn’t even known that he had such a look. “I don’t know you. But I do find it curious that your aunt died and you inherited this truck. You own it three months, and now the guy with the prime location turns up dead. Two deaths with one beneficiary. That would make me suspicious, and I’m not even half as jaded as a cop.”
I hadn’t thought of it that way. I wondered about Aunt Alice’s death for the first time. To someone who is 25, everyone above 60 is about to kick the bucket. However, I knew logically that 63 was fairly young in the scheme of things for someone to die without a sudden or terminal illness. I wondered what Alice had died from. I’d only heard the platitudes of ‘gone too soon.’ I made a mental note to ask my mother.
However, at this moment, I was staring down Land Mendoza who had just practically accused me of double homicide. I needed my wits about me. “I d
idn’t kill anyone for a food truck or a location. That’s absurd.”
“Sure, because you were doing so well before this. Alice and I talked. I knew about you. You weren’t having a lot of luck in business, and you spent a lot of time planted on your parents’ couch,” he said. I could almost feel the eye roll even though he hadn’t stopped staring at me. I could see his chest expand and contract as he stood there in front of me and, for once, I was painfully aware of how attractive he was. His dark eyes were surrounded by skin that was smooth and darker than my own. His lips were full and pink. I knew that I was just feeling the emotion of seeing a decapitated murder victim, but it was hard to keep my mind focused on what Land was saying to me. This was the second time today that I’d noticed the attractiveness of a man. I hadn’t even thought about dating in the first weeks after taking over the truck. I barely had time to sleep.
“I wasn’t doing so badly that I needed to kill people. What about you? How exactly do you know Detective Danvers? ‘Around’ isn’t exactly a real answer.”
He raised an eyebrow, which told me that I wasn’t going to get a better answer. “You come in here and don’t ask a thing about me. You barely know my name. Now that you want to hit on a cop, you’re all about asking me questions. Forget it.”
I looked at him in surprise. When did this macho guy get feelings? “I’m sorry. You’re right,” I said softly. “I don’t know you, but I have to start somewhere I suppose.”
He snorted. “Nice try, but I’m still not talking about your detective. Just stay away from him. Trust me.”
This conversation was making me very uncomfortable. I shifted from foot to foot, and finally said, “Did you know Samples and his son didn’t get along?”
Land rolled his eyes again. He was more dramatic than a teenage girl, I thought. The eye rolls and sarcasm had been my first lines of defense not too many years ago.
“Everyone knew that they didn’t get along. You could hear them yelling from here sometimes. They weren’t shy about it.”
“What about?” I asked. If I couldn’t get the scoop on Danvers, then maybe I could just get information to pass on to him. “I heard some customers talking about it today.”
“Everything. Fred ran an old-fashioned food truck, the type that went to construction sites in the 1970s. He didn’t care for trends and fusion fare and hipsters. His son, Tony, is younger and wants to grow the business. Fred hated that phrase and told Tony to forget about it. Fred’s fine with the status quo, but Tony wants to make a profit to presumably win the ladies.”
I looked at Land. He worked side-by-side with me. He knew all of this information, and I knew nothing. Perhaps I’d been too self-absorbed lately to see past my own worries. “Was he successful with the ladies?”
Land winced. “Fred looks better than Tony—even when he’s headless.”
The thought of seeing Fred Samples’ head in the serving tray appeared again before my eyes. My stomach roiled, and for a moment, I thought I might hurl on Land. Finally, I got my stomach under control again. Maybe looking into this matter to score points with the detective was not such a great idea.
“Duly noted. So do you think that Meat Treats will be back soon?” I thought of what he’d said about the truck’s location and our site. We could keep our own customers who would only have to walk a couple of blocks and pick up the customers from Meat Treats.
Land shrugged. “I don’t know. I do know that the inspectors will go through the truck thoroughly, and I do mean thoroughly, to ensure that it’s safe after the amount of blood that was in that truck. Cleaning to get rid of all that is going to take days, if not weeks. We won’t be seeing that truck any time soon.”
A thought passed through my head. “So they won’t be at their location tomorrow?” I asked, thinking of the extra profits from being next to the government buildings downtown. I knew that Fred had to have been pulling down 30–40 percent more sales than we were. Even if Tony had wanted more, Fred was doing exceptionally well. Additional profits meant that I might even get to buy a new car and get rid of the Buick. I started thinking of sexy car models.
“Seriously, you’re going to take his spot tomorrow?” Land seemed surprised. I was too. I would have thought that he would have jumped at the idea. Maybe I didn’t know him at all. He seemed downright mournful about Fred. I had put him down as heartless, because he hadn’t attended my aunt’s visitation or funeral. Not even a card. I knew he’d been pissed about not getting the truck, but not paying your respects to the dead was steadfastly disapproved of in my family.
“Yeah, why not?” I could only see the additional profits, and perhaps a new MINI Cooper for me. I was thinking of yellow as the color for it.
“If you have to ask, I’m not going to tell you. Do what you want.” With that, Land opened the door and jumped down.
As was my afternoon ritual, I drove the truck to the secured parking lot a few blocks away. Since the truck was the entire business, Alice had found a parking lot with more lights than a stadium and enough cameras to focus one on each parking spot in the lot. It optimized my idea of a safeguarded lot. I found my car and headed for home and a nap.
I got to the truck early the next morning. Both Land and I had keys to the truck so that neither of us had to wait for the other to get in and start the daily prep. We texted each other when we picked up the truck, so that the other one didn’t go to the secured lot unnecessarily. I drove to Fred’s spot and parked the truck in the exact spot.
I was a bit jumpy considering that I was parking on a deserted city street at four in the morning—without a single soul in sight—at the location of a brutal murder. Every sound on the street made me jump. I was glad to see Land enter the truck about 40 minutes later. He didn’t say a word about the truck’s new location. In fact, he didn’t say a word at all.
I had just gone out to prop open the panel to start service when another food truck pulled up. It was a Taco truck that I hadn’t seen before. The man behind the wheel threw an empty can at the Dogs on the Roll truck. “Hey, get out of Fred’s spot,” he shouted, so loudly that it echoed up the street. “You have no right.”
I shrugged. “There’s no rule about spots. We all tend to stay where we’re at, but Fred’s truck won’t be back for ages—if ever. So why should a good spot go to waste?”
The man glared at me. His face was red from his ears to his plump neck. “You’re a vulture, you know that? A vulture. I hope you’re next.”
The vision of Fred came back to me, and I shivered as a cold wave ran down my spine. I did not want to be next by any means. I wondered if the location of Fred’s truck had been a factor in the murder. Had someone else wanted this spot badly enough to kill for it?
He drove off and I looked out at the vista from my new location. The entire front of the government building faced the truck, so that everyone coming in and out of the structure got a clear view of the logo and the truck. We would be hard to forget after a few weeks of this.
The questions were put out of my head by the start of the morning rush. I had been right. We probably served another 50 customers on top of our regulars. Land grumbled because his usual number of servings was less than what we needed, and he had to go back twice to make more salsa and horseradish mustard. He went on for a good 20 minutes about why anyone would want horseradish at 7 a.m., but he made the mustard with the same precision and taste as he always did. I kept the coffee pots filled and handled the increased flow of dollars into the till.
The rush had trickled off by 9 a.m., and I had begun the prep for the lunch shift when a knock came at the door to the truck. I hadn’t seen anyone approach, which meant that they’d come from the street and not the building. I opened the door just a few inches and peered out.
Detective Danvers stood there with his badge out for me to see. I wasn’t sure why I was getting the official treatment, but I opened the door and asked, “What can I do for you?”
Danvers motioned me to step down from the truc
k. I alit gently, rather than with my usual thud as I hit the ground. I stood there, waiting for him to respond.
“So this is your new location?” he asked finally. It seemed like an innocuous question, but I immediately saw the implications behind it. Land had been right. The man was canny.
I nodded. “It seemed a shame to leave the spot empty.”
He looked at me for a moment and then spoke. “I need you to come to the station with me for a few minutes. We have a few questions for you.”
“What?” I asked, feeling like I was on one of the myriad cop shows on TV. He probably would have said “come downtown” except we were already there. I wasn’t sure why I was being asked to answer some questions. “Can’t I answer any questions here?”
“Are you refusing to come with me?” he asked, scribbling in his little notebook again. I knew that I was under suspicion and that my refusal would only make things worse. I wondered if I needed a lawyer, but I had no idea how to find a criminal lawyer. Mr. Huff was a wizened little man who had handled Alice’s estate, but I doubted that he would know the first thing about bail and hearings.
“No. I’ll go, but I’m curious as to why I’m being asked to come in for questioning. That’s a fairly simple request.”
He closed the notebook and shoved it into his pocket. “We got an anonymous tip naming you as a possible suspect in the homicide. Among the issues that were raised was the fact that you jumped into the lucrative spot that was used by Meat Treats before today. I came to investigate, and at least the bit of information that you took over this location is accurate. So I want to ask you a few more questions.”
I leaned back into the truck and told Land to manage without me for a while. He looked out the door, saw Danvers and nodded. I wondered if he was mentally saying, I told you so. I know I would have if our roles had been reversed.
The station turned out to be inside the government building that we faced across the plaza. We walked across the square and into the front doors. We had to submit to a security search before entering the lobby. I noticed that Danvers was able to skip the check, which only served to highlight the difference in our statuses. Danvers punched a button for the elevators and soon we were shooting up to the ninth floor.
FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books) Page 2