He flushed again. “Yeah, Sam went out with Janelle. Is that relevant here?”
“I don’t know for sure. Sam showed up at her food truck a few times, and apparently they argued. He hasn’t been forthcoming with me about the reasons for that.”
Jeremy looked down at the table, not meeting my eyes for a second. “No, that has nothing to do with this whole spy thing. It’s hard for me to even say that. I can’t believe that she was involved with something like this. It doesn’t sound like her.”
My eyebrows went up. “Your parents said that Janelle was very headstrong, and in my experiences, she could be pretty forceful about getting what she wanted. And you don’t think she could have been involved in something like this?”
His brow creased, and now he looked up at me. His dark eyes were sad, and I finally felt sorry that Janelle had died. She had been so annoying that I hadn’t much felt sympathy for those who were touched by her death.
“I highly doubt it. My parents were disappointed with Janelle because she was too American. I think she’d only been to Morocco once with the family, and that was maybe two or three years ago. It was a family trip. I’m not sure where she would have met the people who would be involved in this.”
“What about your Uncle Ben? He was instrumental in getting her the truck that led to this situation. Could he have introduced her to the people who are fighting in Morocco?”
Jeremy twisted his lip. “I highly doubt it. You could certainly ask him, but I doubt that he is involved. He’s also pretty American these days. He’s involved in some financial investment group that is betting heavily on fossil fuels being around until they all run dry. It’s pretty cynical, but he’s making a fortune.”
That didn’t sound helpful, but Jeremy pulled out his phone and gave me the man’s contact information before I could form an opinion one way or the other. He seemed genuinely helpful in wanting to solve this murder.
I paid the bill, since I’d waylaid him. We were just walking out of the door when Detective Danvers strode over to us. “Fancy meeting you here,” he said to me. His eyes definitely told me that he wasn’t pleased about this. I ignored the sarcasm and just stood there.
“Jeremy Nolan, I’m Detective Jax Danvers. I need you to come to my office for a talk.” Of course, the line “I need to take you downtown” wouldn’t work, since we were less than 100 yards from his office.
“What’s this about?” Jeremy stammered. His face had gone pale, and he trembled slightly.
“They found a flash drive with your name on it. The one you told me that Janelle must have taken,” I blurted. I honestly didn’t see Jeremy as a force in this plot, and I didn’t want to see him shaken by the police tactics. He was too shy and gentle to be a spy.
Danvers growled. “You’re coming with us too,” he said to me. “You can’t just blurt out answers to potential suspects just because you feel like it. That happens to be called obstruction. You should know about that. You do it constantly.”
So I was escorted to the police station just off Government Square. Jeremy was taken, presumably, to an interrogation room, and I was left to sit at a desk near Danvers’ office to wait.
Danvers finally came over to me and looked down at where I sat. “I don’t get you. You say that you want to help, but then you totally ruin an interrogation of a suspect by blurting out some bullshit that you know he’ll repeat to us.”
I shook my head. “That’s what he told me. He had nothing to do with Janelle, the food truck or the espionage. The only things he heard were his parents arguing after you’d been to see them.”
“Oh, and witnesses never lie about things that could put them behind bars. No criminal has ever said that he’s innocent. I can’t believe how fucking naïve you are sometimes.”
Wow, Danvers had reamed me before, but I’d never heard him raise his voice and curse this way. I wondered if the pressure of the case was getting to him, or if I had really crossed a line with him. I wasn’t fond of the name-calling, and I resented being called naïve. I knew that people lied to me. I just didn’t believe that Jeremy had—at least about the espionage business. I thought that there was still something going on with the Nolans that I didn’t know about, but that could be any secret. Families kept plenty of those.
I felt the emotions start to seethe out of the tight container I usually kept them in. “Let me tell you how I spent my morning. I let you traipse through all of my food inventories without a warrant, because you were probably so sure that you could charm a search out of me without having to go through the proper channels. I opened a food truck this week. I have to work without help next week, and you thought it would be easier to drag my ass out of bed than to bother a judge for a warrant that you probably wouldn’t have even gotten. So when you yell at me for helping a witness, you need to remember that you wouldn’t have even had that witness had it not been for me.” I took a deep breath, but I could already feel the tension leave my body. Apparently I’d needed to blow off some steam.
Danvers stormed off, and since I was not being held, I left as well. I’d wasted enough of my weekend on this case, and I wanted to be able to relax.
Chapter 13
The rest of the weekend passed without incident. I didn’t hear a word from Danvers—or from Land. I wasn’t sure if he was celebrating his success at managing his own food truck or if he was just beat from all the work. Knowing Land, he probably just wasn’t taking calls.
Naturally, I’d heard nothing about what was on the flash drive. I figured that yelling at the police would likely get me excluded from the information on the ongoing investigation. I didn’t mind. As Land had said before, I could still cover the personal side of the investigation with more skill than the police could.
After giving myself Sunday to rest, I was back at the food truck again on Monday morning. I watched as Land rolled up later in the morning and opened up. It was great knowing that things were going so well for me professionally. I had actually started thinking about a new car, knowing that the big Buick couldn’t last forever. I wasn’t ready to commit to a luxury car, but I also knew that I wasn’t going to be limited to a subcompact either.
Even though I was alone, the morning flew. I took orders, did the cooking and rang people up. I didn’t have the luxury of keeping an eye on the truck across the square from me. Danvers didn’t stop by, and I wondered if those visits would stop because of our fight or because Land, whose services he needed, was at the other truck. I’d have to ask Carter if the detective stopped by. Henry and his basset hound stopped by again, and they each ate a hot dog before he threw away the wrappers and left. I felt sorry for him. I just couldn’t spend the time talking to him now that I was running things alone.
I put the day’s deposit into my backpack and looked up to see little puffs of dark smoke coming from the other truck. Black smoke in a food truck was never a good sign. I slammed the window shut, locked it, and ran to the other truck. The smoke was not a full-blown fire. I could tell that at 10 yards, but it still freaked me out.
Land gave me a grin when I arrived. “Now I know how to get you over here quickly. Just burn a piece of meat, and you’ll be here in no time.”
I rolled my eyes. “Is that what happened?”
Carter spoke up. “Yeah, I left the meat on one side too long. It got overcooked.”
Land said, “Beginner’s mistake. How did your day go?”
I told him about sales for the day—which were steady—and about my plans for the afternoon, which included a visit to Jeremy and Janelle’s uncle.
“We’ve been looking for a man with money. That uncle could be it. Be sure to find out if Janelle was making payments to him as well,” Land said.
“The truck doesn’t smell too bad for having had a little smoke issue,” I said, taking a long sniff of the air. You could detect a small hint of acrid air, but not what I would have expected.
“Yeah, there’s a better ventilation system in this truck, not to mention
the air holes at the top.” He pointed to the two-inch diameter holes around the perimeter of the top of the truck. “You need this if you do a lot of cooking in the truck. Hot dogs are pretty easy to cook—the chances of overcooking a dog are pretty slim.”
I nodded. I looked at the holes again, thinking of ways for things to get out—or in. “Hey,” I said, “you don’t think.”
Land shook his head. “I already thought of that, but you can’t see inside the truck. So it would be entirely random. You wouldn’t be able to aim at all. There had to be some precision in the shooting, because the killer only took one shot. You’d have to unload a magazine through a hole to be sure you hit someone.”
I nodded. He had a point, as much as I hated to admit it. The holes made an intriguing entrance point, but the shooter lacked the capability to make an accurate shot. If the truck had been shot up, then it would make sense. However, it had not been peppered with bullets. One shot had killed Janelle Nolan, right through the head.
Land put a hand to his forehead. “I forgot to tell you. Danvers told me yesterday that the gun in the truck didn’t kill Janelle. It’s the same make and model, but not the same gun. It apparently was a plant to make them question the ballistic results. I know that the CCPD did four different tests just to be sure. Both guns had been fired and the markings were similar, just not the same.”
I was torn between two facts. First, the gun was not the same one used to kill Janelle. That meant the killer had deliberately wanted to make it look like the killing had happened inside the truck. If the killer wanted to make it look that way, then most likely, it had not happened that way. People liked to use misdirection to prevent people from seeing the truth in front of them. So we were probably looking for a way that the killer committed the crime from outside the truck.
Secondly—he’d spent the day with Danvers? I was dying to ask Land about anything the detective had said about me during the day, but I didn’t want to set off any alarms with Land. He already suspected that something had happened between us, and I didn’t want to add more fuel to that fire.
Land was staring at me when I looked back at him. He chuckled. “Yeah, and he told me all about your fight on Saturday. You two need to learn how to talk to each other. It’s not that hard.” I was rather frustrated that the man who still had never as much as mentioned that he had parents was telling me about how to communicate.
“Says the man who didn’t bother to call me back all weekend,” I quipped. I didn’t want to be that direct with him, but I wasn’t about to let him get away with that statement either.
He shrugged. “I was busy until about nine last night. I have a whole new life now that I don’t have to go to bed at dinner time anymore.”
I smiled. “Don’t rub it in. I was in bed by 8:30 last night.”
“Yeah, he’s feeling bad. He knows you’ve been a lot of help, but he was pissed that the brother is just another dead-end. He was really hoping to pin it on a family member, so that the espionage case could continue without interrupting the flow of information.”
“Thanks. I’m glad to hear that. I’m off to talk to the uncle in an hour, so I might know more then. It could still be personal instead of political.”
With that, I left Basque in the Sun and went back to the original food truck to drive it to the secured lot. The bank transaction only took me a few minutes, and I called Janelle’s uncle on my cell.
He answered on the first ring. “Hello?”
I explained who I was and what I wanted. I liberally used Jeremy’s name and mentioned how I’d known Janelle and bought the truck from the family.
He indicated that he was at his office and that I could meet him there in an hour. That gave me just enough time to go home and change before heading to his office. Fortunately, he worked not too far from my apartment, and I managed to be there with time to spare.
I had to admit that he had a plush office. I sat in a waiting room that was bigger than my apartment. Multiple dividers split the space into multiple meeting areas, but since they were all glass, it still gave the illusion of being a single space as well. I plopped down in a comfy chair and waited. I had to focus not to drift off as the speakers piped out mellow music. I hadn’t been getting enough sleep lately with this case going on.
A large man appeared from the hallway. He had the same dusky features as his nephew, but was perhaps twice the size. He was taller than Jeremy by about four or five inches and weighed significantly more. Even so, he was dressed impeccably in a suit that cost more than three months of my rent. No wonder he could afford to help Jeremy and Janelle out financially. He could have sold a suit and put both of them in business.
“Ms. Kinkaid?” he asked as he approached. “Exactly how can I help you?” He didn’t move as he spoke, which made me wonder if we’d be conducting our business out here. I’d hoped for a more private setting where I could ask more detailed questions regarding the food truck. Perhaps that’s why he chose not to move.
“I had a few questions about the purchase of the food truck. I explained on the phone that we bought the food truck from the Nolans last week.” I was using every point of access I could to get information.
He nodded. “Why don’t we go back to my office? It will be more comfortable there.”
We walked back a long carpeted hallway to an office. He stood aside so I could enter it. I noticed that he closed the door as he entered, which made me a bit worried. If he was the killer, I had just stepped into an office where the walls were probably thick and soundproof. I had already eliminated him as the person who had knocked me down to get the financials. This man couldn’t move that fast…unless he was putting on a very good show for me.
“So how exactly can I help?” he said.
I explained to him about the review of the financials, the attack on Land, and the theft of my copies. In all the worries about this international plot, I still had not come to any conclusions about the theft of my documents—or Land’s attack. However, he had nothing to do with either one of those things. I told him that we’d come across two particularly worrying details, the payment for the truck and the monthly payments to the unnamed account.
He cleared his throat. “If you’re asking if I helped Janelle purchase the truck, the answer is yes. I gave her sufficient funds to buy the truck outright.”
I whistled. I tried to think of a time when I would have that much cash lying around. The truth was that I would likely never be in that position.
“If that was meant to imply that I was extravagant with my brother’s children, it’s true that I have a habit of being rather generous. My brother has complained about it over the years, but it’s my money so he ultimately can’t stop me from doing what I want with it.”
I supposed that was true. My aunt had left a food truck to me. Given the amount of trouble it had landed me in, I felt that my parents wished that my aunt had left it to someone else. “Did she come to you about it?”
He nodded. “Both children asked me for money from time to time. Most of the requests are not outrageous. That was the largest one Janelle had ever made, but on the other hand, it was to open a business, which would generate her own money, so I didn’t object. Is there a problem with the transaction?”
I shook my head. “No, but obviously given the fact of the death of the owner, I was concerned about any transaction that wasn’t easily explainable. I want to ensure that I don’t inherit any liabilities related to the death of your niece.”
He sniffed and for a moment I thought he might cry. “Sorry, her death has been very hard for me. I can’t imagine how she could have possibly gotten involved in anything so ugly as to lead to her murder. That’s just not like her.”
“What do you mean?” It was helpful to hear other people’s opinions of Janelle. Her parents seemed to have made a saint of her, and Jeremy had not been very helpful other than to suggest that she’d snatched a flash drive from him.
“Janelle just couldn’t have been
involved in a plot like what I’ve heard. That’s just not her style.”
I was a bit shocked. The news about the espionage and couriers had not been reported on the news. So either he’d heard it from Janelle’s parents or he’d just told me that he knew about that. “What was she like? I mean, I only knew her very casually.”
He took a deep breath. “She was impetuous. She could be spiteful. She was focused on the short term. I truly hoped that Janelle would have continued with the food truck as a career, but it also would not have surprised me if she’d have dumped it in six months to do something entirely different.”
“So she didn’t have the drive to run some enterprise?” I thought about what I knew of Janelle. She’d bought the truck to spite me after I hadn’t hired her, which matched her uncle’s opinion of her. She’d tried to hire Carter away from me, or so he said. These were all minor annoyances to me as revenge for not taking her on.
“I love my niece and nephew dearly, but they are not burning up the world with their drive. Janelle had worked at exactly one job before this. She’d been a clerk at a convenience store for two weeks, and then she got bored and quit. She was being forced to work now, because her parents were threatening to throw her out on the street. She didn’t date, and she spent most of her time at home with a few close friends who were just like her.”
“Weren’t you concerned about your investment?” I asked. “Two weeks at a convenience store doesn’t seem like good training.”
“Our arrangement was that she had to buy a truck that met certain standards. Once she bought such a truck, she could run the truck as long as it was profitable after the second year.”
“What standards?” I asked. I thought about the small holes around the top of the truck, and wondered if he’d demanded that. If so, the family certainly knew about the ability to stick a gun’s muzzle into the slots to shoot Janelle—though it did nothing to explain how it was done without a clear view inside.
FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books) Page 55