“I told her that I wasn’t interested. I’m very happy here, and frankly, I had some doubts about the long-term viability of her truck; so I said thanks, but no thanks.” Carter wasn’t meeting my gaze at this point, and I had to wonder if that was guilt from talking to the competition or if he was lying to me. I didn’t know him well enough to tell the difference. I’d hoped to ease the suspicions I had about Carter, but I’d just managed to bring more doubts to mind.
The rest of the shift went without a hitch. We had a few people ask about the pineapple salsa, and we promised them more tomorrow. Carter was beaming with excitement at the opportunity to introduce new condiments. Land had added a few new condiments, like ginger scallop sauce, over the year as well, and now we had some of the most distinctive fare in the center of Capital City despite being a hot dog vendor at heart. I was glad to know that our tradition of trying new things wouldn’t go away when Land got the second truck running.
I finished counting the money and got a few things ready for tomorrow. I noticed that the ground coffee was running low, and I would have to talk to Land to make sure we had some for tomorrow. That was our single biggest sales item. Plus it would give me a chance to either see him again or talk to him on the phone and find out what was going on.
Carter and I closed up. I put the deposit for the day in my backpack and locked up as he left. “You’re not driving back to the lot?” he asked, surprised.
I shook my head. “I have something that I need to do first,” I told him and started walking to Holding out for a Gyro, Janelle’s food truck.
Carter trotted along behind me, saying, “This isn’t about me, is it? I don’t want to cause any trouble.”
“No trouble. I’m just going to make sure that Janelle and I are clear on a few matters.” I kept up the quick pace with Carter practically running to keep up. I was frustrated on many issues, but this was one that I could openly deal with—and I planned on doing so. If she was going to try to mess with my business, I wanted her to know that it wouldn’t be taken lightly.
I stopped short when I got to the truck. Despite it being a little past two o’clock, the truck window was down and closed tight. I couldn’t hear any signs of activity inside. I wondered if Janelle had gone to the restroom—which was an occupational hazard when you work alone—or just parked the food truck here and left. It made no sense to put the truck here and not be open for sales. I knew enough about the business to know that no one could close up for very many days without it affecting the bottom line. Food trucks could make a good living, but it required a lot of time and planning. A good portion of my business was repeat customers, who knew where I was parked and that I would be available every day for coffee and a hot dog. Janelle couldn’t build up that loyalty if she pulled stunts like this.
Some trucks drove around or traveled on a schedule throughout the city. However, many of these trucks had to rely on first time customers all day or people who made a note to stop at a particular truck on a particular day. Being stationary meant that you could build up a following, even if it was not quite the open road that some food truck owners desired.
I knocked on the door to Janelle’s food truck, but there was no response. I walked around to the front of the truck, but the keys weren’t in the ignition either. I circled the food truck twice, wondering if Janelle had closed her window just to avoid talking to me. I had been rather obvious, storming over there with Carter in tow. She would easily figure out what I wanted and how I felt. She could have just closed up to avoid a confrontation.
I was about to start back to my food truck and save my rant for another day, when I noticed a dark stain under the truck. At first, I thought the truck might be leaking oil or some other fluid needed to drive the truck, but as I approached, I noticed the dark coppery tone to the fluid. I’d seen that stain before—at crime scenes.
There was nothing wrong with the truck, but I suspected that there was something wrong with its owner.
Chapter 3
As much as I didn’t want to interact with him, I called Detective Danvers. While he was currently annoying me with his secrecy and his attitude toward our moment, he was a good detective who knew his way around a homicide scene. I had to admit to myself that I thought this was likely the scene of a murder, and he was the man to call about it.
I knew my way around a crime scene too. I stood back and motioned for Carter to step away. Then I dialed Danvers’ number and waited. He picked up with a charming, “What?”
I explained the situation, and after he finished calling me the Typhoid Mary of homicides, he said he would be right there.
Given the locale, he was being literal. Within two minutes, he was striding across the government plaza. He saw us standing by the truck and walked up to where we stood. “Well?” he asked, almost accusing us of ruining his day in one word. I knew that he had to be tired, so I cut him some slack about his attitude.
“There is some fluid leaking from the truck. I thought it was oil, but it has the color of blood to it. The truck’s closed up, and I don’t see the keys, so I called you to check it out.” I pointed to the spot on the ground where I’d seen the liquid. The pool of dark liquid had grown since I’d looked at it last. Given that we’d heard nothing from inside the truck, a growing pool of blood was not good news.
Danvers knocked on the door, identified himself, and waited. No response came from inside. He walked around the truck, tugging and yanking on doors and windows, trying to get the truck open. No luck.
He checked above the visor and under the floor mats. He slid a hand into the pouches in the door and looked in the console of the dash as well. All of those places did not have keys in them.
He repeated the process again before he motioned to Carter. “If this is like Maeve’s truck, two men should be able to yank hard enough to get the window to pop up. I don’t see any external locks, so it’s relying on a single latch lock inside.”
Carter nodded, and on the count of three, they tugged on the window. It moved but didn’t break free. I looked up into the truck from the sliver of an opening between the counter and window. “There’s a padlock on the inside,” I said.
Danvers sighed and called for backup. “I was really hoping not to have to do this,” he said. “I’m really hoping that there’s a simple explanation for this. I don’t think I can deal with this.”
“There is a very simple explanation for what’s going on, but you’re not going to like it,” I responded.
He snorted. “Locked rooms only occur in your mystery stories. People don’t go to these lengths in real life.”
“We’ll just have to wait and see,” I replied. And we did. A crime scene crew showed up in about ten minutes. There was some haste to the matter, since Janelle or someone else could still be alive in the truck, though incapacitated. The faster they could get inside, the quicker she could get treatment.
The team took a crowbar to the door and pried it open. They hadn’t needed to hurry. Janelle was lying in the middle of the prep area floor, shot through the forehead.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to look at her in that state. I got the message from the crime scene crew who came out of the truck. One of the women shook her head in my direction. Carter was turning a dangerous shade of pale, and I suggested that we go sit down on one of the benches that line the perimeter of the plaza.
He didn’t speak as we sat down though he watched the crime scene squad begin their routines. I tried to make small talk with Carter, but he merely stared off into the distance as if he didn’t hear me. His actions told me that whatever he and Janelle had talked about, it wasn’t just a job offer he’d declined. Carter seemed genuinely upset that she was gone.
I decided to call Land. I wanted to hear his take on the subject, and a part of me wanted to ensure that he had an alibi for today. Normally he was the non-suspect when a murder occurred. He was either at the truck or with me. Today he’d been sleeping, and I wasn’t sure if he’d been at his place
alone.
He picked up on the third ring. His voice was thick with sleep, so I deduced that he’d been there alone. Anyone else in his place would have answered the phone for him. So much for having an alibi. “Yeah?”
“Sorry, Land. You know I wouldn’t call unless it was an emergency, and this is.” My voice sounded strained—even to me. I guessed that I was more upset about this than I was letting on.
“What happened? Are you okay?” he said, sounding much more awake.
I appreciated his concern. It was the first time since this had started that anyone had questioned how I was doing. “I’m fine. I just discovered the body, or rather the blood, when I went to talk to Janelle about something.”
“What were you talking to Janelle about?” Land queried. His voice sounded alert and interested now. I wondered what about Janelle had evoked such a response. He had been worn out a few minutes ago.
“She was trying to poach Carter. I wanted to tell her that he was off-limits.” I had nothing to hide from Land, though he didn’t feel the same about me. For once, I didn’t care. I just needed someone to talk to.
He just grunted. “Give me 20 minutes and I’ll be there, okay?”
I agreed and hung up. Carter was still looking off into the distance. “Are you doing okay?” I asked him, putting my hand on his arm.
“Huh? Yeah, it just wasn’t what I was expecting when you came over here. I can’t believe she’s really dead.” Carter looked at the food truck, where a covered gurney was now being removed from the truck.
I knew that if the body was being removed, that Danvers would have little reason to stay. He’d leave the rest of the work to the crime scene people. I was hoping that Land would get here before Danvers started in on me. He had been none too pleasant lately, and I was more upset than I’d like to admit about this. Janelle had annoyed me, but I had never wished her dead. Still Danvers would likely try to make a case against me, just because it was the easiest route at this point, and he was bone-tired.
Danvers came out of the truck about the same time that Land arrived. He was unshaven, but he looked much better than he had for days. His eyes were open, and the dark circles under his eyes had receded. He had very apparently been using his sick time to sleep.
Detective Danvers barely nodded at him as Danvers approached. I wondered again what would bring these two men together to work on a case. Was it espionage or a serial killer? It had to be something important if they had put aside their personal animosity to join forces.
“So why were you pounding on Janelle Nolan’s truck today?” Danvers asked without preamble. He stared at me as if he was really thinking of arresting me for this. “It wasn’t like you two were friends.”
I explained the situation briefly. Janelle had tried to poach my new employee. I was just telling her to back off and leave my business alone.
Danvers nodded. “So you were angry with the victim?”
“Angry is a strong word. I’d say annoyed.” I took a deep breath and tried to forget that he was putting words into my mouth.
“You’re not a thesaurus. This is a murder investigation,” he said with force. “You went inside of the cab, right?”
I nodded and explained that we’d wanted to open the doors, but we couldn’t find the keys. About halfway through my narrative, a thought began to dawn on me. The keys were not outside the truck when we looked for them. “Did you find a set of keys on Janelle? Did she have them?”
The look that I received from Danvers told me all I wanted to know. The keys had been inside the prep area with Janelle. That meant that I had stumbled across a locked room murder, an enclosed place where all the points of entry were closed and locked from the inside. This case would be a struggle for the police, who liked a good shooting where the shooter and the gun were still standing over the victim. Something this complex was likely to stump them, meaning that Janelle’s murder would go unsolved.
Even though I really hadn’t liked her, I didn’t want the woman to die without closure, especially for her family’s sake. I hated to think that she would be marked up as a statistic in the unsolved murder category. No one’s life should be dumped in the trash heap of crimes.
“What about duplicates of the keys?” I asked. It seemed the most reasonable explanation for the exit of the killer, assuming that Janelle had not killed herself. She didn’t seem the type of remove herself from the world.
“It’s possible,” Danvers conceded, “but who else would have a copy? She worked alone so there was no other person who needed them.”
I thought of my own circumstances. I needed multiple copies of the key, so that Land could keep a set. My parents had another set, in case they ever needed to get inside or if I managed to lock myself out somehow. The need for that level of security was minimized by our use of a secured parking lot where we stored our truck overnight. I wondered where Holding out for a Gyro had been stored at night. If it was outside or on a street, then a more secure key system would have been needed.
“I don’t know. I didn’t know her that well. Carter?” I asked, thinking that she might have made another set of keys for an associate.
“Huh?” he managed. He still didn’t look good. His pallor and demeanor suggested that he wasn’t cut out for what had become a way of life around the food truck.
“Did Janelle mention a second set of keys when she interviewed you?” I asked again.
“Like I told you, she really didn’t interview me as such. She just offered me a job based on the fact that you’d thought I was a worthy candidate.” He only looked at Danvers as he spoke. I could see a few beads of sweat on his forehead. It was late spring, but nowhere near sweating weather. I wondered what he was so afraid of.
Land raised an eyebrow at me, and I nodded to let him know that I already knew this. He turned and looked at Danvers, “So what’s your next step here?” His tone sounded like a superior talking to an underling, and again I wondered what their relationship had been in the past. Why Danvers took orders and this tone from him?
Danvers sighed. “We’re going to start looking at known associates. I want to know more about how she got this food truck. Maybe she bought it in a police auction,” he said, throwing a look my way. My aunt and her partner had bought the food truck at a police auction and refurbished the truck to become their business.
I ignored Danvers’ jab at me. I had wondered how Janelle had gone from wanting a job on my truck to having her very own food truck as well. It seemed like a large leap from entry-level work to owner of her own business. I didn’t know if she had family with money or if she’d financed the business. I had doubts that a bank would loan a young unemployed woman the cash to purchase her own truck, so the money had to come from somewhere.
“Sam,” I said to Danvers and Land.
They both looked at me strangely, and given the fact that I hadn’t made much sense, I could understand. I explained the situation with the fix-up date and how I’d seen Sam talking to Janelle the next day. “Maybe he knows something that could help explain her death,” I suggested.
I wasn’t much help beyond that. I didn’t have a last name or a phone number for the man, just a first name. I told Danvers that I would call my mother and find out his contact information. Danvers went back to the crime scene to talk to the medical examiner, who had been taking notes while sitting on another bench closer to the food truck.
“Sorry to have to wake you up,” I said to Land. “Are you feeling better? Will you be at work tomorrow, or will you be up all night again tonight?”
He gave me a strange look, probably puzzling over how I knew he’d been up all night. I thought it a valid assumption, given how tired he was. Land didn’t need to know that he’d been followed. “I’ll be at work tomorrow. No problem.”
I smiled. “Good. Are you sure, or should I have Carter as a backup?”
Land didn’t speak for a moment, looking at me in an odd manner before he spoke. “I won’t be having any more late n
ights. I was on a surveillance team, keeping an eye on Janelle Nolan with Danvers, but I don’t think we’ll need to follow her anymore.”
Chapter 4
My eyes went wide and my mouth dropped open. “What? Why?”
Land gave me that characteristic smile of speaking to a small child. “I was asked to be a part of a team to keep an eye on her. There were some rumors about her political affiliations outside of this country, and the police wanted to keep an eye on who she met with.” He rubbed his eyes as if the conversation had brought to mind those late nights, and then ran a hand over his thickening beard.
“So Janelle was a spy?” I knew that I hadn’t liked her, but I had no idea that she’d been an enemy agent.
“Nothing at all like that. You have a very odd notion about how certain things work in real life. She was most likely a courier who passed information back and forth to other parties; parties that are trying to do damage to the sanctioned government in her country. She was only a conduit, and likely had no idea about the bigger plans of the people involved.”
I nodded. I could see someone becoming involved in what they thought was good work with a country only to learn that they were supporting terrorism. “Do you think that’s why she was killed?” I asked, intrigued by the intrigue. “Her involvement against a government?”
Land shrugged. “It seems pretty convoluted for a political killing. They’d be more likely to have slit her throat in an alley or hired a sniper. This doesn’t fit their normal pattern. A bullet at point blank range seems to indicate a more personal killing, which is why Danvers was asking all those questions. He’s looking for a motive that’s more close to home.”
I looked over to where Danvers was conversing with the ME. “Does he know that you’re telling me all this? I doubt that he’d approve of your sharing spy stories.”
Land sighed. “Again, not spy stories, and yeah, he knows. I called him after you called me and told him that I was going to tell you everything. He objected a little, but I think only because his job demands that he keep civilians out of the way.”
FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books) Page 46