I could easily tell Carter to pay more attention to the people who bought small orders with large bills. That would reduce his workload, since he wouldn’t have to look at all the twenties involved. He would just be interested in certain orders and certain transactions.
His truck didn’t open until about nine since it was parked downtown among a number of trendy shops and boutiques. Capital City had been trying to entice more people downtown with the trendy stores to match the new places to eat, and Carter’s truck sat in the middle of this refurbished area of town. He opened early enough to get the employee business, and then stayed open until nearly dinnertime. I had several hours before I could call him with my ideas on the matter.
The shift went fast. I called Carter around 9a.m. and he didn’t answer. I tried again at 10:30, and he picked up on the first ring. “What’s up?” he asked cheerily.
I explained my reasoning and told him to keep an eye out for counterfeit twenties especially on small orders. I also told him that Danvers would likely be over today to check the cash drawer.
“I suppose he doesn’t trust me?” Carter said. “Goodness knows, I’ve been suspected of worse by him.”
I agreed with him. Of course, there had been a few times when I’d been suspicious of Carter and his actions—like now, for instance. I was dying to know why he hadn’t answered at nine but was ready and available at 10:30. While I wasn’t checking up on him, I was calling with a good purpose at an early time. So why hadn’t he answered?
Carter had always been a bit on the lax side when it came to start times, and I wondered if he’d kept that same attitude even when he was the only one in the truck. I cringed to think that we would be missing sales because the truck sat in the secured lot instead of on the street.
I didn’t mention the incident to him though. I trusted Carter, even though I was concerned about the fact that he hadn’t answered the phone. I knew that I’d be able to see for myself in a day or two when I worked at the new truck.
I worked the rest of the morning shift with Sabine in silence. She hadn’t mentioned her argument with Detective Danvers, though I could see it was serious. However, she didn’t mention it, and I didn’t ask. I’d learned to wait for the Mendoza family to tell me things in their own time—or to have it blow up in their face in a bad way—but I tried not to pry.
Land pulled up in the other truck at two that afternoon, and Sabine gave me a knowing smile to say that she had things under control. I walked over to Basque in the Sun and entered the truck. Per our tradition, Land pulled me into a hot kiss. I never got tired of this routine, which left me tingling all over.
“How are you today?” Land asked, keeping an eye on me.
I told him about Detective Danvers showing up at 5a.m., the scene with Sabine, and calling Carter and receiving no answer.
Land shrugged. “I’m actually surprised that we don’t get more counterfeit bills, given that none of us check the bills as they come in. It’s more common than you might think.”
I told him that I’d ordered enough markers for all the trucks and they would be here in the next day or so. I also told him that I’d be working with Carter for a few days until we fixed this issue.
“You’re okay leaving Sabine with the truck by herself?” he asked, furrowing his brow. Land was of the firm opinion that she was not the type to be trusted with a major operation. When I’d first met her, she worked as a guard at the secured lot where we kept the trucks—and Land thought that position had taxed her level of commitment to a job. He shared a few stories of her irresponsibility, but the tales were years old and sounded more like teenaged hijinks rather than adult carelessness.
“I’ll be at our truck until 9, then I’ll go over to the other truck and come back after lunch to help with clean up and counting the money. She’ll only have three to four hours by herself.”
“But those hours are the lunch rush,” Land pointed out. “If she screws up, it could be a bad day for sales. I know you’d be upset with that.”
I nodded. “But we have to come up with a back-up plan for operating all three trucks without us before the wedding. I want a few days off, and I’d rather not spend it selling hot dogs.”
Land pulled me close again. “That sounds fantastic.” His lip brushed my ear and I shivered.
“Who knows?” I added. “Maybe Danvers will come help her out.”
He laughed. “You’re not going to let this go until I say something.” He took a breath. “Fine, Jax asked Sabine to move in with him, and my grandmother got wind of it. She can be very old-fashioned, and she put her foot down. No ring, no cohabitation. Jax balked at that, and Sabine had one of her famous fits. So now they’re not talking.”
I looked up at him. “Thank you for telling me.”
He leaned down to kiss me gently. “My pleasure.”
“Did you know they were that serious? Moving in together is a huge step.” I wondered how Danvers would handle a relationship with his rules and schedule. It wouldn’t be easy. I’d known him to work all night when there was a big case that landed on his desk. He was always trying to get ahead and didn’t mind long hours to get that.
“Yeah, I did. I tried to warn Sabine, but of course, she didn’t listen.” Land looked frustrated with his sister, wanting to spare her some of the heartaches that go with relationships. I knew that as much as he tried, there would always be trouble when two people came together.
Land had warned me on several occasions not to trust Danvers at all, which seemed peculiar, since they were friends of a sort, but Land had been proved right on more than one occasion. Danvers could be friendly, but he was ruthless when it came to advancing his own career. The idea that Danvers wanted to look at the cash in the register was the type of thing that Land warned me about. He seemed to want to bust me for various offenses at times.
He gave me another kiss and told me that I had to leave or help. I took the hint and headed back to my food truck. Sabine was nearly done cleaning the prep area.
I sat down and counted the cash twice. I prepped the bag for deposit.
“Detective Danvers called for you. He wants to see you at Taco Inferno as soon as you can make it.” Sabine said the man’s name with enough venom that it made me a tad nervous. She wasn’t the type to forgive or forget. Detecting crimes might be a bit more difficult after this.
“What? When?” I asked. I looked at my phone. It was a little before two, and I’d hoped to close the truck and go home but that didn’t look like it would happen.
Sabine shrugged. “Maybe a half hour ago? I wasn’t watching the time. It wasn’t long after you went to visit my brother.” Her use of “my brother” made me worry a little as well. Normally, she was more than happy to give Land to me, but today the words seemed proprietary.
“Can you—?” I started.
“I’ll put the truck back and deposit the cash. No problems. Just don’t make me go over there with that egotistical gasbag.”
I assumed she was talking about Danvers, and I told her that would be great. I handed her the deposit bag and the keys to the truck. I’d have to get those back tonight or wait for her to arrive the next morning to get in. I texted Land to ask if he could pick them up later. That would give me a good excuse to see him again this evening.
Walking as fast as I could without mowing people down, I arrived at Taco Inferno in about 10 minutes. I was nearly out of breath by the time I arrived. I had imagined Carter in handcuffs or the food truck being towed off to the forensics lab. However, nothing like that had happened at all.
Danvers and Carter were chatting amiably in the truck. The lunch crowd had thinned out, and Carter distributed free coffee to patrons who asked for it. For the first two weeks, we were giving away the last urn of coffee each day to promote sales at the new food truck.
Given the line of people waiting to pick up a cup of coffee, I would call the promotion a success. Since we would have dumped the coffee out anyway, the only cost was the expense
of creamer, sugar packets, cups and stir sticks.
“What’s up?” I asked as I stepped up into the truck. “You called and wanted to see me?”
Danvers nodded and handed me four more $20 bills. “All fake,” he said with a certain air of resignation. At least, he wasn’t sorely pissed off like Sabine. I wondered if he would resolve this issue by proposing, or if he’d just drop her.
I explained the steps that we were taking to ensure that this was a very short-term problem. Carter looked at me strangely when I said that I’d be working with him for a few days in the new truck.
“I just don’t want to put too much on you,” I said. “It’s a lot to ask to cook, serve and detect.”
He nodded. “I had a system for today. I can’t identify them and ask them questions, but I know which customers passed bad bills.”
I looked at the bills again. In the corner of each one, there were ink marks, just letters that made no sense to me. The first one read “TDQT.”
I held it out to Carter. “What is this supposed to mean?” I asked. “Are you using code of some sort?”
“Sort of. I wanted a way to remember who had given me the currency without writing a story about them on it. So I wrote a few initials so that I could keep track of what came from whom.”
“So what the hell does it mean?” Danvers said. His annoyance radiated from his tone. “This isn’t a Nancy Drew novel. It’s an open police investigation.”
Carter flushed a little. “This one was tall dude, cutie. He was a little flirty, and I remember him well. He was 6 foot 1, about 175 pounds, nice arms, brown hair and brown eyes. I could probably do a police sketch if you needed.”
Danvers eyes widened. He looked like he wanted to say something, but he stopped himself and settled for a compliment instead. “That’s a pretty good description you just gave. Have you seen him before?”
Carter shook his head. “No, but this is only my second day at this location. He could be a regular with time, which is why I’m a little worried about giving out all the details on customers. They could all be the backbone of the business here.”
I was impressed. I might still worry about him being on time in the mornings, but at least he was thinking ahead to a long-term business plan of keeping the customers happy.
“And this one?” Danvers said, holding out a second bill. He was holding the bill by the corner which meant he had hopes of finding some fingerprints.
The inscription on the side of the bill said “LP.” I had no idea where this one could go.
“Little person,” Carter said without changing expression. “She could barely reach the counter. I had to lean down to get the twenty from her. I marked it on there in code, so she wouldn’t think I was being rude.”
Danvers rolled his eyes. “Well, at least we should be able to find her more easily. What about the other two?”
Carter took the bills and stared at them a moment. I guessed after marking most of the bills all day, he’d forgotten the code for some. However, finally he handed the GMS bill to Danvers. “This lady reminded me of my grandma Smith. I hope it’s not her. I would feel too bad about busting a grandmother.”
“And the other?” Danvers asked, pointing to the bill in Carter’s hand.
“I don’t remember this guy as well, but he was in a gray suit and blue tie, business type. Not much to look at though, which is why I just wrote about what he had on.”
They decided that Carter would go down to the police station off Government Square after his shift to work with the sketch artist. With that, Carter got back to work. Danvers left without speaking a word to me, and I caught a cab to the secured lot.
Chapter 3
“You know this has to be a conspiracy of some sort,” Land said after he’d dropped off the keys to me that night. Apparently, Sabine thought that it was less intrusive to return the keys through her brother rather than get up at 4a.m. I could easily see her point, but it worried me a bit that her enthusiasm for work had markedly worn off given her situation with the police detective.
“But why? How did this happen all of a sudden?” I said, trying not to trot out my favorite conspiracy theory. Land was not all that fond of my idea that Ryan Pohler was behind the scheme.
“Who knows? No one just announces that they’re going to start passing fake money. They had to have had the plates, special paper and a large set-up, and then they started passing bills.” Land looked through the refrigerator as he talked, trying to find something to eat. He would have to be a better detective than me for that to happen. The refrigerator was almost bare.
“But just as the new truck opens and only in that location,” I said for the second time in this conversation. Danvers had polled his peers, but no other cases of counterfeiting were ongoing in Capital City. That meant that our truck was being exclusively targeted to pass the money. I found this more than a little hard to take as coincidence. It felt like personal malice.
On the bright side, the highlighters had arrived and arrangements were being made so that I could work at Taco Inferno for a few days to try to learn more about the situation with the counterfeit bills. While Land wasn’t thrilled with the set-up, Sabine was going to take over the truck for two or three days by herself until I got to the bottom of this. I had more faith in her than Land did, which was a fairly low bar to hurdle.
Land gave me a long goodnight kiss, since I still had to get up at four to be at Dogs on the Roll before my shift at the other truck. It was going to be a long day, and Land’s affection made me feel better about it.
***
The next day started early, and I was at the truck first before Sabine arrived. She showed up around 5:30, which was earlier than Carter had usually shown up. However, today she didn’t look like herself. She had dark bags under her eyes and a sullen expression. I figured that this had something to do with Detective Danvers, but I didn’t want to meddle. Honestly, I did want to meddle, but given that she was running the truck for me, I chose not to. I couldn’t interfere and then ask for help.
The shift went quickly, and it was nine before I knew it. Sabine actually told me the time, and then ushered me out of the truck. “Things will be fine. You’re needed there,” she added as she handed me my purse. “I’ll talk to you after the lunch rush.”
I nodded, looked around one last time, as if I were taking an extended trip and walked down the street to the new food truck.
Carter was there, working on the day’s menu when I arrived. I wasn’t sure if he just hadn’t answered the phone yesterday or if he was there now simply because I had made it clear that I’d be here at nine.
I got into the truck and began my morning duties for the second time that day. It seemed odd to be repeating the same rituals, but at the same time, it felt comforting. I ran the highlighter over every twenty in the register, but they all turned up good.
By the time that I opened the window for the morning crowd, Carter was hard at work on the taco fixings. I hadn’t asked him for the day’s menu since I was nervous, but I figured he had it under control.
The first hour of the shift went well. I casually wiped the highlighter across the bills and the ink came up amber in each case. It took a little longer to inspect the bills, and in one case, I had to explain to the man that a counterfeit operation was in Capital City and certain protocols had to be followed. It sounded very official, almost like a police TV show.
Shortly before lunch, a good-looking man came up to the window and ordered. Carter immediately started chatting him up and winking in my general direction. I knew that this man had to be the QT that Carter had identified from yesterday. He ordered and handed me the bill.
When the man saw me run a highlighter across the bill, he turned and sprinted down the street. I looked after him, but I had no way of catching up with him. I stared helplessly as he disappeared into the intersection. The bill turned dark across the strip that had been highlighted. This was another fake twenty.
“He definite
ly knew something was up. Did you see the way he sprinted? He must do a lot of cardio,” Carter said. I wasn’t sure if he was giving an analysis of the man or his body. Carter was right. He was a very good-looking man, dark hair and eyes.
I wondered if he would tell the others who were passing bills here, so that we wouldn’t have any more incidents at the truck. In one sense, that scenario would be great, since the problem for us would be solved, but I had a bad feeling that some other issue would pop up involving the food truck. This was more of a situation where we would need to find the root causes.
However, the conspirators either didn’t communicate or were brazen. Just after noon, a diminutive woman approached the counter. I took her order, and she handed me a twenty. I wanted to check it for authenticity, but I didn’t want to alarm her. So I pretended to drop the money on the floor and swiped it while I was out of sight. I wouldn’t have been able to do that with a taller person, but the angle was such that she couldn’t see my actions.
The bill turned dark where I swiped across it. I palmed the bill and made change for her. Carter gave me an odd glance, but I smiled at him and gave the woman her food.
I kept an eye on her as she ate not far from the truck. I kept handling the orders and returning change until she started to walk off. I motioned to Carter as I shucked my apron and headed for the door.
I knew that this woman would not be sprinting off into the distance before I could reach her. She hadn’t even noticed me leave the truck. I took my time. Land had instructed me on the finer points of tailing someone earlier in our relationship, and now I tried to recall all of the things that he’d mentioned. I tried to look casual and stay back far enough that I wouldn’t be seen. She seemed purposeful on her walk and didn’t look behind her. So I wasn’t overly concerned about being spotted.
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