That story gave me some leads that I might be able to use. For starters, the more I learned, the more I suspected that the crime was just one of these money-grabbing schemes that Pohler had developed. I thought about it for a minute, and the man thought I was done with him. He made a move for the door, but I backed up so that my body was pressed against the doorway. He wasn’t going anywhere until I was ready.
“So, tell me about your qualifications to work on a food truck?” I asked. I had developed an idea that would likely earn me the ire of Land and Detective Danvers.
“You’re really putting me through a job interview? I passed bad twenties at your truck. Let’s get real. You’re not hiring me.” He crossed him arms as if to say that we were done.
I smirked at Thomas. “I don’t think that you’re giving yourself enough credit. You can sell yourself better than this.”
He rolled his eyes at me. “I’m not sure what game you’re playing here, but I don’t really like it.”
I cleared my throat. “I’m going to be honest with you here. I’m in a bind. My future sister-in-law was helping with Dogs on the Roll, but she has gone AWOL. So I’m running the truck by myself while trying to manage two other trucks. I need help.”
He furrowed his brows, almost as if he were struggling to hear my words. “But I don’t understand. I’m not —”
“You have experience with food trucks. You can cook. You also seem to know things about Ryan Pohler that I want to find out. I don’t understand why he took such a dislike to me that he would slash the tire on the truck and pass bad money at the truck, which had the police checking our cash.” I stopped only to catch my breath. “So tell me about your work experience.”
He nodded and took a deep breath. “I’ve been on my own for a few years. I had a family issue, and we didn’t talk for a long time. So I needed to make a living. I started out waiting tables, but that wasn’t for me. People are crazy. So I moved back to the kitchen and started cooking.”
“Why did you leave that job?” I asked, liking what I was hearing.
“The kitchen was about ten feet square. It was hard being in that confined space all day. The food trucks aren’t bigger, but you get to see the customers. You get to see daylight. Sometimes you even get to go to festivals.”
I asked him about the festival where we’d debuted the new truck.
“I was there too,” he said, with a smile. “But I didn’t get out much that day. The lines were ridiculously long.”
“You have all of the required skills, so why not work here? It wouldn’t be the first time in history that employees have been poached from other businesses. Besides, you don’t know what’s even going to happen with the food trucks now. The family might just sell them.”
Thomas shook his head. “No way. Pohler’s wife already sent us an email saying that we weren’t even going to miss a day of business. The trucks will run as they always have.”
I was a bit surprised. Usually families take a little time to decide what they are going to do with the family business. I wondered if the Pohler family was living on the edge and needed all the money they could get. It certainly had a whiff of desperation about it, and it made me wonder if Ryan was in dire financial trouble. He certainly shouldn’t have been, but I wondered if he’d expanded the business too fast and too soon. There wouldn’t even be a proper mourning period for the man.
I hoped that if I were to die, then people would wait a few days to move along with the food trucks.
“Would you need to give two weeks’ notice?” I asked, still thinking of my situation with Sabine. I wasn’t sure what she was doing, but breaking up with Danvers certainly had put her on the wrong path.
Thomas pressed his lips together tightly. I wondered if he would be in danger of being outed, if that was his secret, if he left without the proper waiting period. “No, I should be good. I don’t think Pohler told his family about all of his extraordinary means of making a profit. So I’d guess that my secret is safe for the meantime. She couldn’t blackmail me into staying.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Great. When can you start?”
He shrugged as he stared at me. “Um, tomorrow? Are you being serious here?” he asked. “This all seems like a hoax to me.”
“Dead serious. I need the help, and you need to get out of there.” We discussed salary and benefits, and just as Paula had predicted, he’d found them to be far more than he made now. I wondered what types of rules Pohler had used to get around the law about minimum wage and such. I was curious, even though I’d never do that. We offered good benefits and a decent salary.
He nodded, and I moved away from the door. “Be here tomorrow morning at five sharp,” I told him. “We fired the last person who didn’t show up, and she was my fiancé’s sister.”
His eyes widened, but he didn’t speak as he left the food truck.
I slumped up against the wall for a moment. I really wasn’t sure if this was my best decision ever. I normally kept the business aspects of my life away from the investigations, but now I’d moved a prime suspect in the case into my food truck. I cringed to think what Detective Danvers would say if he learned that the new cook was the same guy who had tried to pass the phony bills.
Land would be okay with the new hire. Thomas was obviously experienced in grill cooking, so he would be able to start with little training. He wouldn’t be alone with the money or the truck, so there was little chance of him sabotaging anything at the truck. If nothing else, he would be a great stopgap employee.
The bigger issue was telling Sabine about the replacement. While Land had fired her, I wasn’t sure that she would believe her brother. I wasn’t sure how I would handle it if she came back to the truck tomorrow. While I cared for her, we just didn’t have the money to support two more people working the truck with me.
***
Fortunately, I’d already made plans with Land for that evening. After he’d been so distant in the truck that afternoon, I was apprehensive about the discussion and the outcomes.
When he stopped by, he grabbed me in his arms and gave me a kiss that left me breathless and trying to remember what I’d wanted to talk about. Apparently, the bad mood from the afternoon had vanished. I was glad to see him in a better place.
When I could talk again, I smiled at him. “That’s certainly more like the man I’m marrying,” I said.
He grinned at me. “Yeah, I was out of sorts this afternoon. That’s my bad. My family brings out the worst in me sometimes.”
I shrugged. “On the bright side, you’ll never have to worry about my siblings bothering you.”
He pulled me into his arms again, and in a few minutes, I was certain that I didn’t want to talk business this evening even though I knew it was necessary. Thomas would be at the food truck tomorrow morning when Land arrived. It had to be this evening that I told him what I’d done.
When we broke again, he pointed to the bags on the table. “I stopped and got us some dinner. An apology of sorts.”
I walked to the table where the smells of Thai food enveloped me. My stomach growled. I’d been hungry. We loaded our plates and sat down at the table. I felt like a normal human, since most of my lunches were eaten over the sink in the food truck. Sit-down meals were a luxury.
“So what is it?” Land asked after finishing his portion of the spring rolls. “You have something to tell me, but you seem to be avoiding it. I can see it.”
While part of me enjoyed the fact that Land knew me so well, part of me was resentful that I was such an open book. I would never be able to hide my thoughts or feelings from this man. He knew me too well.
“I hired a new person for the food truck today,” I announced.
“That’s great. We needed one. So what’s the apprehension for?”
I went on to tell Land whom I’d hired. At first he just sputtered and wanted to tell me that I couldn’t do that, but in the end, he just had one question. “Are you certain that he’s not the
killer? I don’t like the thought of you being cooped up in a tight space with someone who may have killed his last boss.”
I told Land what I knew so far. Thomas had been blackmailed into passing the money. He’d been trapped in his job, and Land whistled when I told him how little he’d made at the Pohler truck.
“Let’s give him a trial period, and see how he does,” Land said. “The worst we can do is fire him.” I could see sadness in Land’s eyes.
“Are you sure about Sabine?” I asked. “We could always hire her back.” I said the words even though I knew that we couldn’t afford her and Thomas both. We made good money, but not enough for that.
“Yeah, I’m definitely sure,” Land said. “I talked to my grandmother today. Sabine has really lost it over this whole thing with Danvers. She’s worried about Sabine. I don’t think she’s ever had a relationship this serious, and I’m pretty certain that she’d never been dumped before. I’m going to give it a couple of more days, and then I’ll talk to Danvers.”
My mouth gaped. I couldn’t believe that Land was going to get involved in his sister’s love life. He was the ultimate in hands-off family members, but now he was going to talk to his sister’s boyfriend. This was definitely a first.
“Don’t look so surprised. I told you a long time ago not to trust him. This is exactly the type of thing that happens when he’s around. Since he didn’t get what he wanted immediately, he just decided to flush it down the toilet. He’s spoiled and petulant. You’re lucky to have missed all that.”
I looked at the man sitting across the table from me, and I mentally agreed. Danvers had seemed interested in me at one point, but when our interests diverged, he decided that he would like nothing better than to show me up in detecting. I was far better off with this man who had hated me at first but now was poised to marry me in a few months.
The conversation changed after that. We finished our entrees while talking about the food trucks and how things looked. I explained to Land how business had improved since Pohler’s death. I wasn’t sure if it was a coincidence or not, but I was glad.
The next morning dawned, but I was already awake. I was concerned about what I’d done. I thought that Thomas deserved a second chance, but at the same time, I knew what he’d done and with whom he'd been associated. I was taking in an unknown entity. He could be the innocent pawn in whatever Ryan Pohler was doing, or he could be an intricate part of that operation.
I was at the truck and had the cash counted long before he arrived. Thomas wasn’t late. I was just that early. I spent a few minutes showing him where everything was, and he started to work. He didn’t talk much except to ask questions about the location of particular items. I’d selected the menu for the day’s condiments since I wasn’t sure if he was familiar with all of the recipes. Over the next few weeks, I’d provide more of them to him and slowly introduce all the condiment recipes.
The day went smoothly for a first day with a new person on the truck. We ran out of condiments once, and Thomas had to hurry up and make more, but other than that, I had no problems with his performance.
At the end of shift, he waited around as if to seek approval.
“You did great,” I told him honestly. “It’s been very easy with you here.”
He beamed. “Glad to hear it. Thanks.”
I cleared my throat before speaking again. I hadn’t told Land, but I was going to see if I could get in touch with the suppliers who gave Pohler cheap food. I had no plans to use it, but I wanted to hear about the food truck owner’s relationship with the suppliers. I wondered if there were any issues there that could have led to Pohler’s death. “So do you suppose you could call your former boss’ suppliers and see if I could get some of their food?”
He stopped and stared at me. “Really? One of the things I’ve enjoyed today is using real ingredients. I hope you’re not going to try to get in with those crooks. They were not nice people.” He gave me a small grin as he spoke.
I took a deep breath. “Actually, no I’m not going to do business with them. I’m sure you’ve heard that I have a tendency to get involved with murder cases in Capital City, and I wanted to make sure that these suppliers weren’t behind the death. I just wanted to help try to rule out some of the possible suspects. There are so many that it’s hard to narrow it down.”
“Hand me your phone,” he said with a tone of exasperation. He punched in a phone number and waited. “Sal, hi, it’s Thomas. Yeah, my new boss is interested in your service. Here.”
He handed the phone to me. I’d somewhat expected a woman who was named Sal, but I’d been wrong there. It was an older man from the sound of his voice, gravelly and coughing every so many words. “What are you in the market for?”
“What do you have?” I asked, thinking I needed to see a list of selections. “Can you tell me what types of food you carry?”
The phone went dead in my hand. I looked at the screen to see that Sal had hung up on me.
“Yeah, maybe I should have warned you. Sal is suspicious as hell. He doesn’t provide a list of services to people. It would sound too much like entrapment to him. If he talks to you, then you have to lead with what you want from him.”
“Oh,” I said somewhat surprised. I’d expected more cooperation from a person who sold moldy cheese. I was annoyed that my first line of inquiry had been cut so short. I’d have to come up with another way to find out if any of them had been involved in the murder.
“I wanted to ask you one other thing,” I said to Thomas, seeing that he was still standing there and not running away as fast as he could.
“What’s that?”
“Did you know any of the other people who were passing the phony twenties?” I asked.
He laughed. “It’s not like we had social gatherings to discuss blackmail and counterfeit money, but there were two people I suspected of being involved.”
“Why?” I asked, wanting to hear more.
“Just the way that they looked. Defeated, like they had no choice in the matter. That type of look. Sort of like me.”
I nodded, feeling sorry for the guy. Whatever the secret, he’d been forced to work for someone he didn’t like or respect. I would have hated to have been in his shoes.
“Any idea how to get in touch with them?” I asked, holding out my phone. I was feeling at loose ends since I’d botched the questioning of the substandard-produce provider.
Thomas made a face, but he pulled out his own phone instead. “One was a little person named Bernadette, but I don’t have any contact information. I heard the number for the other man who was involved. I put it in my phone in case I ever needed it. I guess that’s now.”
I nodded, thinking that I would have likely called the number after my boss had been brutally murdered, but some people are less likely to become involved with crime.
He hit the call button, turned the phone on speaker and we waited. The call finally went to voicemail, and I got a name, Albert Ruschman. It was only a few clicks on my own device, and I had an address for him, which interestingly was only a few blocks from Ryan Pohler’s food trucks—and my new truck.
I had a suspect that definitely had the means to do this. I had no idea how Pohler had come up with the idea for blackmailing these people, or the things he’d asked them to do. “How did Ryan find out whatever it was that he found out to blackmail you? I mean…was it random that he learned it or was it something he set out to find?”
Thomas took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I’m going to trust you with this, but please don’t say anything.”
“Who I am going to talk to?” I asked, thinking that Danvers would be none too pleased to find Thomas working here.
“I filled out an application for the job on the food truck. There was a space for college education. It seemed to expect a college degree. I had dropped out in the last semester of my senior year, due to money problems. So I’d never finished. Ryan took a look into my background and he found out that I
had lied on my application. He told me that either I’d do the things that he wanted, or he’d make sure that every job I ever tried to get in the future would know that I had falsified my records. It’s one of those things that follow you.” He seemed to deflate as he finished the sentence. All the wind was out of him. I felt sorry for him, knowing several people who had not been able to finish their degrees because of the cost involved.
“You can go back and finish it now. You can’t have timed out of the classes yet. You have, what…five years?”
He took another breath, deep and loud, like it might be his last. “I know, but I couldn’t do that at Ryan’s food truck. He barely paid me anything. What was I going to do? Leave and find something better? I couldn’t. I was stuck and he knew it.”
I could see how the situation would put any of these people into an untenable position. They’d feel hopeless and that might lead to any of them—or all of them—taking the step to kill their blackmailer. It might have seemed like the only way out
“So there was a fourth person? An older woman?” I asked, remembering the information I’d been given. “Do you know anything about her?” Bernadette, Thomas, Albert, and an older woman. Those were the four people Carter had identified with his marked the bills. That left the older woman—and the person who had passed the fifth bill. We had nothing to go on for that mysterious individual. It could be anyone who came to the truck, since Carter hadn’t known that first day to look for phony money. That meant we didn’t know all the players, and I had a bad hunch that the unknown person was the one responsible for the death of Ryan Pohler. It would be just my luck not to have a description of that last person.
Thomas shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t know. Maybe? I doubt that we were the only three. I mean, he seemed to have this down to an art. He didn’t pause for breath or to think when he talked to me. It was practiced. He’d done this before.”
“How did he approach you?” I asked, wanting to know how this scam had worked. I still wasn’t sure why he was using such small amounts of cash. The process of developing plates and getting the materials was so labor intensive that it just didn’t make sense to do that work for so little return. He had to want something more.
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