FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books)

by Chloe Kendrick

  “So you’re telling me to drop it?” I asked. I already knew the answer. Both Land and Danvers wanted the same thing here: me to stop pondering this death and get back to the food truck.

  Danvers sighed. He seemed to be aggrieved. “Yeah, I am, but I can see that’s not going to go over well. So why don’t I get you copies of the three failed health inspections. That’s what you were going to get from the inspector before she got killed and you got knocked on the head. So you can find out what you want from that and be done with it. Okay?”

  I had to admit that it was a good idea, so I nodded. Land watched all of this in quiet observance. He waited until Danvers left to speak. “What exactly is going on with you two?”

  “Nothing,” I said a bit too quickly. “Why?”

  “I told you when you first drooled on him that you needed to watch out for Jax Danvers. If anything, my warning to you would be twice as strong now as it was then. Stay away from him. He’s dangerous.” Land was washing pans as he spoke, but his eyes burned into me. I had thought it a gentle warning before, but now he was being very serious. Given that Land rarely spoke in full sentences to me, a second warning was definitely something to take notice of.

  “Why? What is going on with you two that you have to warn me about him?” I asked. Since Danvers and Land had some sort of acquaintanceship before I met either one of them, I thought that he should share more, even though Land was very closed mouth about his past. I had no idea where my aunt had met him even. He was a huge asset to the business, so I didn’t want to piss him off too much, but his lack of communication drove me crazy at times.

  “Just that I’ve done business with him in the past. He won’t hesitate to put him or his career in front of any personal relationships, so if you’re in the way, he’ll run you down. I’m thinking that he’s not going to like anyone second-guessing his police work, especially on a case that is at trial right now. It’s been on the news the last few nights, and so has he. I doubt that he would appreciate you making him look stupid on camera. He has ambitions” Land finished drying the pans and put them away as he spoke. We were almost ready to leave.

  “Thanks for the warning, but I know what I’m doing.”

  Land snorted. “I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re young and naïve. You have no idea what you’re doing.”

  His manner angered me. I finished counting the cash, completed the deposit bag, and started the food truck to drive it back to the secured lot for the evening. Land said his good-byes, and I headed off. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do after work, but I knew that I had two huge male egos to knock down a few pegs.

  The unfortunate thing about starting an investigation from scratch is that I had no idea how to go about starting it. What did I look into first?

  In the past, someone made a threat against me or tried to harm me, and that gave me the starting point for looking into a crime. Now that this case was technically closed, the police believed all the loose ends had been firmly tied up. There was no way for me to get a foothold in the wall that represented this crime.

  The only things I knew for facts were that my aunt had been denied a permit and then had failed the health inspection, despite others approving of it. Given that it had been an operational food truck before she bought it at police auction, I felt that perhaps there had been something else that spurred this behavior against my aunt. Maybe Linda was homophobic, not wanting to allow two women to open a food truck. Yet that answer seemed unsatisfying. The original permit had also been denied, which would mean that these women had colluded to deny my aunt her livelihood. That seemed too farfetched, so I knew it was likely another reason.

  To be sure, my aunt could be infuriating. My family is made up of strong-willed women, as anyone might guess. So I could easily see my aunt getting on the wrong side of the bureaucracy, and I could see them giving her a rough time in return. I decided to start with the permit, rather than the health inspection. If the department chose not to issue a permit for the truck, that seemed easier to look into. It was essentially denying her a living with the truck. I knew of business cases from my classes where lawsuits had been filed and won.

  The problem was that the decision-making process was gray enough that proving anything was extremely difficult. The permit would be easier to prove than the health inspections. The permit would be a matter of how many permits were available and who received them.

  Health inspections varied by what the inspector saw. I could imagine that anyone could find issue with something on a truck if they tried hard enough. I’ve done that with my boyfriends from time to time. It seemed that the definition of clean could be very subjective.

  So I knew that I could look into the permits and see what had held up the approval. The issue with that was that this was a bureaucracy, and Capital City was known for theirs. It held up routine matters for weeks and made the simplest requests into ordeals. So again, I was stuck with something that could be a conspiracy or just the typical workings of the city government.

  I decided that tomorrow I would go to the permit offices and the health inspector offices to learn more. I knew that I would have to tiptoe around, which would be difficult for me, because I didn’t want to give these departments any reason to do the same thing to me that they had done to my aunt. I had been sitting at home on my parents’ couch before I inherited the food truck. I had no desire to go back to that life. I was making money on my own and actually using the degree I’d obtained in college. It felt good to be independent.

  So all of my thoughts led me right back to the beginning. I didn’t have a clue as to how to start an investigation. Given my interactions with both Land and Detective Danvers today, I had no desire to have them explain how to do this to the little lady.

  So I went to bed frustrated that evening, but at least I had the knowledge that I was frustrated on my own terms.

  Chapter 2

  True to his word, Danvers brought the paperwork from the three health inspections to the food truck the next day. “I wouldn’t display these around here. People might get the wrong idea,” he said, flashing me with a brilliant smile.

  I wasn’t sure what idea anyone would get from this. I could get these on my own if I was willing to file the right forms. It wasn’t exactly top-secret information. Did he really think that he was doing me a huge favor here? It felt more like he was trying to placate a child, which did not sit well with me.

  I snatched the files from him. Everything in me wanted to read the files right then and there, but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction after yesterday. His attitude had been a bit too smug for me.

  So I tucked the files into my backpack. Normally I didn’t carry a purse to the food truck. I didn’t have the storage for it on the truck, and I didn’t have the time to watch it constantly. So I just carried a backpack that included my license, a few dollars and my keys. In that way, I had my essentials, but I didn’t have as much to worry about in terms of theft.

  Danvers was still there when I turned around again. “Something else?” I asked, wishing I hadn’t sounded as rude as the words had come out. I was frustrated that it felt like I was being indulged as a difficult child rather than treated like a thinking person. After all that I’d been through, I had certainly shown that I could handle myself in an investigation.

  Danvers didn’t appear to take it as an insult. He smiled and said, “Nope.” He took a drink of the coffee that Land had conveniently provided for him while I was putting away the files. “Have a great day.”

  He trotted off. Before I could get back to counting the cash, Land said, “You certainly are in a snotty mood with him. What gives?”

  “I’m tired of being treated like I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s frustrating. If I think that someone else killed Linda Zoz, then I should be able to ask some questions without Danvers making me feel like an idiot.”

  Land gave me a rare smile. “By all means, look into this. Find out who really killed the inspect
or.” He shrugged, indicating that he really didn’t care, but I knew on some level he did. In previous cases when I’d looked into something, Land was ultimately affected as well. Even if it was just to run the food truck for a few days by himself, he had a price to pay. I was glad to hear him say this, but I wasn’t quite sure I believed him.

  Last night, I’d finally come to the decision to talk to the Zoz family first. It had been months since Linda had been brutally murdered, so I hoped that I wouldn’t be intruding too much on their grief. I planned that I’d just drop by unannounced. I didn’t want them fretting on it—or having the chance to decline my invitation to come over.

  We finished at the truck. I took my backpack, the deposit bag and headed for the car. Land had arrived at the food truck first that morning, and so he had the duty of taking it back as well. I made a mental note to try to come in early tomorrow so that I’d drive it back.

  I pulled into the neighborhood where Linda Zoz had lived in life. The online phone directory showed that the family still lived in the same house. It was a bit disconcerting to see her name still listed as the person living at this address. I knew that the Internet wasn’t always up to date on such things, but it made a greater impact since I had seen the direct results of her murder.

  I got out of the old Buick that I still drove. I wanted to buy a new car. I had the money for a new car, but part of me still worried that all of my newfound success would evaporate as quickly as it had come on. I’d had the food truck for about eight months now, and everything was going well financially, but I still felt that it wasn’t real, and that it could be taken away in the blink of an eye. Perhaps my feelings stemmed from the trouble that had come with it, or the fact that I’d inherited the truck from my aunt upon her death, but my life felt almost surreal at times. I planned to use the Buick until I felt comfortable with my new status.

  I knocked on the door of the Zoz house, and an older woman opened the door. “Yes?” she said, acting as if I were a witness for some religion who had come to her door. Given that I was in the same clothes that I’d worn at the food truck, her assumption was highly unlikely.

  “Hi, my name is Maeve Kinkaid. I was hoping to talk to Mr. Zoz,” I said. I knew that using the name would set me apart from any solicitor who came knocking at the door. I honestly hadn’t had many visitors to my apartment, but then I was rarely home. They could have flocked to my door to sell me who-knows-what, and I would not be there to answer. Detective Danvers and Land were the only two non-relations who had visited my home so far.

  The lady nodded. “You mean the former owners. We just moved in last week.”

  The thought that the family had moved shocked me. I hadn’t even considered that as an option. Most people who lived in Capital City stayed there for life. “Do you have any kind of forwarding address?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what I would say if she gave me an address in Florida or Hawaii. I certainly didn’t have the funds to travel the country in search of answers. I had hoped to find the family here and willing to talk.

  “No, a lawyer handled the sale for them. All of their papers had already been signed and notarized. We didn’t even meet them at closing. They left all of their possessions, which was nice. We didn’t have to do any decorating when we bought it.” She began closing the door before she’d even finished her last sentence.

  “Thanks,” I said to the closed door. She’d taken no time to get away. I looked around as if the landscape were going to help me. I’d hit a dead-end on the only lead I’d been able to come up with regarding her murder—all in 10 minutes or less. This was not going to be an easy case to look into.

  I took a deep breath and decided to ask a few neighbors. I was hoping that Linda had been the type of neighbor who shared with the people around her. It was my only hope at this point, so I trod off to the first house on the right.

  No one was home there. And no one was home at the house after that—or the one after that.

  I realized that it was 2:30 in the mid-afternoon of a weekday, long before most people came home from work, but even so, I’d hoped for a stay-at-home mother or a retired person. Apparently most of the neighborhood was either all adults working or kids at school.

  I decided to try the homes on the left. I was on the third house on the left when someone finally answered the door. It was a man who looked old enough to be the new buyer’s grandfather. He stood stooped over and could barely make eye contact. “I was wondering if you’d make it down this far. What do you need?”

  Great. Now I was going to be known as the neighborhood stalker, I thought. I was sure that something would get back to the Capital City police and eventually Detective Danvers. I was not in a mood to be second-guessed by him at the moment. He thought that he’d solved my curiosity with the health inspection reports. I had hoped to gather information without interruptions or warnings.

  “I was looking for someone who knew the Zoz family. I was the one who found Linda’s—err, body, and now that the trial was over, I was hoping to get some closure with the family.” The first statement was true. The jury had convicted in less than an hour, which likely meant that Linda’s case would soon be closed as well.

  “Good luck with that. They moved away shortly after Linda passed.”

  I was a bit surprised. I wouldn’t have thought that they would have wanted to make huge changes so quickly after her death. They hadn’t even waited to hear the results of the trial. Since families typically didn’t testify at trial, they wouldn’t be needed until the sentencing phase of the trial, giving an emotional appeal to what they’d lost. So, none of the people in law enforcement would notice their absence until they wanted to contact the family for the next phase of the trial. By then the family could have effectively vanished—but the question was why?

  “Do you have any idea where they went?” I asked, feeling that I was just going to have to drop this and move on. Linda Zoz would have to become another unanswered question.

  “Not really, but I’m sure they paid good money for it. They certainly seemed to do that a lot lately.” He began coughing, and I waited until he’d finished to ask a question.

  “Lately?” This was the first thing that I’d heard which could be considered a clue. Spending a lot meant that you had ready cash, and I was pretty sure that mid-level clerks in the city government didn’t fall into the upper echelons here.

  “Yeah. A year give or take. They bought a boat, a Lexus, new phones. Every time there was a block party, that’s all we heard. We bought this. We brought that.”

  “A year ago?” I repeated. The timeframe was about right for the time that my Aunt Alice began to be rejected on her health inspections. While logically I knew that it was unlikely that the permits department and the health inspector had both decided to deny my aunt the proper certificates independently and at the same time, here was the first inkling that there might be another party behind the rejections. I had no idea why anyone would be against my aunt having a food truck licensed to sell, but stranger things have happened. Payments to the Zoz family would mean that an unknown entity had wanted to deny my aunt the permits. While I was interested in my aunt’s problems, I wondered if the delays had been focused on her or if it was part of a larger problem with all the food trucks.

  “Yeah, it started with a car. Then a new roof on the house, and then the boat, and I forget what else. Andy, that’s the husband, was very coy about where the money came from. He said something about a bequest, but they hadn’t gone to any funerals. Several of the neighbors called BS on the story, but what can you do?” The old man coughed, which lasted about twenty seconds. I knew I didn’t have much more time for an interview, so I kept it short. He would need to sit down and rest again soon.

  “I know you said that you don’t know where they went, but do you know anyone who would?”

  “Linda had a sister. Hold on.” He pulled a smart phone from his pocket. He punched a few buttons and then handed it to me. “That should help you out. She live
s on the other side of town, but if you can get in touch with her, she should be able to help.”

  I scribbled down the number on my hand, because I didn’t have a smart phone yet, just a plain old phone that I could afford. That was another luxury that I’d denied myself until I was certain that the food truck would become a permanent source of income.

  I said my good-byes and headed back to the car. It started up, and I headed home.

  Chapter 3

  Despite what I’d said about being gone most evenings, I decided to have a quiet evening at home. I picked up a burger and the daily paper and went home to enjoy some relaxation. That was spoiled the minute I opened the newspaper. The main story was about the guilty verdict for the defendant in the murder case I’d testified at. While I’d heard the news on the radio, the newspaper had more details about the verdict. Again they mentioned the fact that the killer had not copped a plea for the Linda Zoz murder and had steadfastly refused to admit guilt. Honor among thieves, I thought.

  There was a small piece about Linda, which talked about her life and her family. However, the article only mentioned that Linda’s family was unavailable for comment. They hadn’t made it sound like they’d run off in the night with a bag full of cash. I wondered what had ever happened to reporters who followed up on a lead. Did reporters not do that anymore?

  I downed my burger and read through the health inspection reports that Danvers had brought me. They weren’t of much help to me in solving this case. Linda Zoz had made notations on the rejections for each attempt. The first attempt had talked about grease pans and cutting surfaces not being up to standards, though she had not indicated which standards those were. The second attempt had talked about the floor being dirty and a temperature malfunction in the refrigerator on the food truck. The third attempt only said that the previous entries had not all been corrected. I guess that even the most creative of writers can have writer’s block at times.