The warehouse had regular hours of 9-5, which meant that either Land or I would have to miss some work if we were to go there together. I wasn’t sure which seemed like the better idea in the run-up to the wedding. Both of us needed to be manning the food trucks to get the most hours in before the honeymoon.
“You can take a long lunch?” he suggested, after a moment. I liked his idea. He would not have begun work by then, and I could easily have Sabine cover Dogs on the Roll while I was gone. After all, our plan was to leave the truck to Sabine for the two weeks we were gone.
It was already too late for us to go today. Land had secured the help of Carter in order to come over to 101112 to see what had happened. So he had to go back and work until later this evening. The warehouse would be closed before he was off work.
We made plans to get together later tonight and talk about what Land learned from Danvers. He didn’t even consider that the detective would not come by and ask questions after the crime scene crew had begun. It would be a given.
Chapter 4
I had taken a long bath and relaxed by the time that Land arrived. While I wouldn’t have admitted it to him, I was still properly afraid of guns, and the afternoon’s events had left me a bit shaken. I felt better knowing that Sabine had my back in this investigation, but it appeared that the stakes might be higher than a simple murder or three. This was espionage, and clues hinted of something larger than I was used to dealing with.
I was wearing my footed pajamas when he arrived. I’d been curled up on the sofa, watching an old crime drama on Netflix. Land called these shows “primers” for me, but in actuality, I’d enjoyed solving crimes and matching wits with television detectives for a long time—before the food trucks and before Land.
I’d grown up on Nancy Drew, graduated to Agatha Christie by high school, and read hundreds of puzzle plots in college. Of course, I’d also faithfully watched Law & Order and other like shows in the free hours I’d had at school.
Land gave me a long kiss and a tight hug before stepping all the way inside of the apartment. I suspected that he’d been concerned about me—more than he was willing to admit, and this affection was his way of showing me how much.
Finally, we stepped back into the apartment and closed the door. He’d been later than I’d expected, which likely meant he’d spent some time with Danvers. “So how did it go?” I asked, jumping past the pleasantries and into the heart of the conversation.
He shrugged. “The usual. He ranted about you and Sabine for a bit. Well, mostly Sabine. He thinks that she did this to get back at him. I couldn’t tell him that she hadn’t. She’s still pretty mad at him.”
“She is. Do you think it was wise for us to pair them up at the wedding?” They were the best man and maid of honor respectively, and we’d pondered the walk down the aisle when they weren’t this angry with each other. I had a suspicion that the anger from both parties indicated that their relationship really wasn’t over. It had just been paused.
“They’ll behave like grown-ups at the wedding. My grandmother will see to that.”
I was glad for the older woman’s help on that matter. “On the bright side, it always helps to have a skilled knife wielding assistant with me when I dine out.” I tried to make the mood a bit lighter. I had a sense I was going to get a police warning to stay out of the matter.
“Yeah, she’s a terror with the knives. It used to scare our mother to death. She’d do these stunts with pets, people. She never missed, but she continually freaked out my mother.”
I smiled to think of a time when the two of them had been young and at home. I wondered if we would have some rambunctious children too. I certainly couldn’t see our children following along with the crowd. “So, what happened after the complaints were over?”
Land took a deep breath. “Those two guys are Croatian. They’d been sent here from Europe to deal with a problem. That’s their reputation. Since they were holding Carona at gunpoint, she’s either the problem itself or a key to the problem. So we need to find her and get her to the proper authorities. There’s no time to waste. We may have a few days to find her before whoever is behind this sends more people to take care of the problem.”
I dragged him over to the sofa, where I had popcorn and a movie waiting for him. “Well, we’ll check out the warehouse tomorrow and see what we can learn from it.”
“You were right about the phone number. Danvers was practically singing that stupid song when we looked at the phone number. He seems more inclined to think it’s the phone number again, since she gave us the clue as a phone number before. He’s running a list of people named Jenny who may have been associates of Carona in the past fifteen years.”
“And what do you think?” I asked, since I’d wondered the same thing earlier. I didn’t know this woman, but consistency would help point the men who could help you in the right direction. However, if the people chasing her were that clever as well, then she’d be better off changing her modus operandi from time to time.
“Did the Croatians have anything to say about how they found her?” I asked, thinking that it was entirely too providential that we’d all arrived at the same time.
Land made a face. “Danvers thinks they followed you. Carona made contact with you for some reason. Danvers was only a few hundred yards away at the precinct. She could have just as easily contacted him instead of you. He knows that and is spending a lot of brain power trying to figure out why.”
“She was an elevator, and a public lobby and a police station away,” I added. While the downtown police station where Danvers worked was on Government Square, it was also inside a high-rise that would have made entrance and egress more difficult. I was out in the open, and while a sniper could have picked her off from there, Carona had chosen an open space to increase the number of ways to escape.
Land left well after the movie was over that night. We’d spent a long time discussing the wedding with frequent breaks to discuss what we might find tomorrow. I expected nothing less than to find her shacking up there, but Land was less optimistic. He was fairly certain that this next level of trying to find her would be exponentially more difficult.
The next morning came entirely too early, but given that a well-deserved vacation slash honeymoon was in the offing, I dragged myself out of bed at 4:30 and drove the truck to its usual space on Elm Street.
Land showed up shortly before noon, and I excused myself to investigate. Sabine didn’t seem to have any issues with being left behind today. Perhaps she’d exceeded her allotment of excitement for the week.
She stepped forward and took the next order as I went out the other side of the truck. Land had brought his sports car today, so we headed to the warehouse in style.
The place itself, called Murphy’s Storage, was nothing special; however, it obviously was not anyone’s home. I wondered if other businesses didn’t bother to check out personnel information. I didn’t stalk a potential employee for a month before hiring her, but I did at least use Google Earth to see if there really was a house where the applicant said she lived.
Most simple background checks can be performed with a cellphone. If there was one thing I’d learned from Land, it was how to find out everything you wanted to know about a person in 10 minutes or less on a phone. He had a system that worked perfectly. Call their numbers, check Google Earth, and look at their previous companies on LinkedIn. The list was as simple as it was fast. Yet this new and trendy restaurant had done none of those things. They’d merely taken her word at face value and hired her.
So why hadn’t the restaurant even bothered to check to see if Carona had lived here? I wondered about their part in this business. Perhaps we should look into the trendy new restaurant to see if they were involved somehow. Was the restaurant somehow involved with the operation that Carona was involved with?
The warehouse’s only security was a chain-link fence about eight feet high with barbed wire around the top; however, given that it was
just after noon on a weekday, we drove through the gate and up to the door in the side of the building. No one was outside. No trucks were parked in the loading bays. Everything was preternaturally quiet there. It made me move a few steps closer to Land.
We knocked on the door, but there was no answer. Land counted to ten, and then opened the door. It wasn’t locked, and the door swung in. The deafening sound of silence struck us as we entered. The interior of the building was as silent as the outside.
We walked down the aisles, looking for someone to help us, but there was no one to be found. “Do you think it’s lunchtime?” I asked, trying to explain this situation. “They could all be out somewhere.”
“And leave the building open and unattended?” Land asked. He inspected a few of the boxes, but they were all filled with the types of food that was printed on the outside of the container. I had been expecting drugs or weapons based on the circumstances, but nothing like that was going on here. It seemed to be exactly what it purported to be. “Did you notice that all the food products are non-perishable?”
“It could be what they specialize in,” I suggested, thinking I understood Land’s thought processes.
“Or it could be that non-perishable foods can stay here for months without replacement, making it look like a real factory instead of a front for something else.”
We did a complete sweep of the building—each row and each aisle. No one and nothing was in sight. I did keep my eyes open, but there didn’t seem to be any signs of a person camping out there. So I’d been wrong. Carona was not using this as a hideout. She was living somewhere else—somewhere that we should be able to determine from her employment application.
Land pulled out his phone and pressed a few buttons. When the other party answered, I knew it was Detective Danvers. Land explained the situation and suggested that a more in-depth look at this warehouse was in order. He explained the situation as best he could and assured Danvers that we would share any information we uncovered.
We drove back to the city’s center, discussing other possibilities. Land now leaned toward the phone number as well, but the meanings of the song and “Jenny” kept us in discussion.
The song portrays Jenny as a person, but then it could refer to another restaurant or a bar. I did a Google search on the name and Capital City on my phone and found three restaurants and four nightclubs that had Jenny in their names. It seemed rather daunting, given that we could likely only visit one or two per day, even less if we insisted on going together, which seemed to be Land’s prerequisite at the moment.
In the end, as we were pulling up to Dogs on the Roll, Land suggested that we let Danvers handle this one. He’d been fond of his own idea, and he had the manpower and the weapons to do it efficiently.
However, that left us with no leads to follow. We had a mystery with no pathway to chart. Part of me was disappointed, but another part was glad because the wedding was fast approaching. I needed to have a rehearsal next week along with the final fitting of the gown and finding the right shoes. I envied men, who could get by with three pairs of shoes for life, brown, black and tennis. When you add in a rented tux, it becomes exponentially easier for a man to get married.
I kissed Land goodbye and hopped back into the food truck. Sabine had taken care of everything in my absence, which was a wonderful wedding gift since she would be staffing the truck by herself while we were gone. I had confidence in her ability to take care of things.
We finished out the shift without any issues. She had asked a few questions about the warehouse and Land’s ideas about it being a front for another business. For a few minutes, she looked like she might make a suggestion that we investigate the warehouse ourselves, but in the end, she left it.
I counted the cash and cleaned out the remaining urns of coffee as she cleaned the prep area. I kept my voice down when I responded to her, not wanting any potential clients to hear about shootings and knife battles.
I dropped the money at the bank, dropped the truck at the secured lot, and headed home. Land wasn’t coming over tonight. He’d vaguely said that he had something to take care of. With the wedding coming up, he could have been referring to a number of things, but I began to suspect that he would be talking to Detective Danvers again about the investigation. However, short of crashing that meeting, there was nothing I could do except get some much needed rest.
Chapter 5
Sabine and I were going to the dress shop after the shift the next day. She had agreed to be the maid of honor at the wedding almost as soon as I’d become engaged. I had thought about Gina, who had hired the food trucks for her wedding, but Sabine would be family. Plus, I saw her every day, which meant a certain level of ease with her. We worked together in tandem, which was what I needed for the wedding—someone who could anticipate my needs without having to express them.
After months of going back and forth, I’d finally gone with the dress of my dreams. It was so out of character for me that my mother gasped the first time she saw me wear it. I took that as a good sign that I’d chosen well. Sabine had seen me in it twice for the fittings.
I was trying not to be a bridezilla, so I’d let Sabine select her own dress. I was only having one person stand up with me, so the chances that she would agree with her own selection were pretty good. She’d chosen a rather demure dark blue strapless gown that still showed her off well.
At the time we’d become engaged, Jax Danvers had been dating Sabine, so it made sense for Land to ask him, rather than one of his ancient uncles or underage nephews. Now we privately speculated on how this would work when they had to escort each other up and down the aisle, not to mention the dancing afterward. While I enjoyed a good mystery, I had no desire to have a murder at my wedding.
Of course, we never mentioned those things to either one of them. The standoff had come to nothing between them, and Sabine was just as angry with Jax as she’d been the first week after he dumped her. I worried a little that she was still holding a grudge, but Land told me that the women of his family could hold a mean grudge when they wanted to. Since my family consisted of exactly three people, I had no such notions about how large families worked.
I’d come in for my final fitting, and I tried to forget all of those things—and the investigation—as I tried the dress on. It still fit perfectly, even though I’d done nothing to try and regulate my weight. Eight hours a day on my feet did that naturally.
Sabine had her dress on, and it looked spectacular. Words failed me, which was very rare. She was beautiful in it, subtle but unmistakably striking. She’d chosen well. It didn’t upstage the bride, but it did bring out her own best qualities.
We were in the dressing rooms when I heard a cellphone chime. I checked my device quickly, but it wasn’t for me. Sabine made a noise, and then held her phone over the divider wall. “What do you make of this?” she asked.
She had received a text from an unknown number. It read: “Meet me at Murphy’s Warehouse now.”
“Is that the place you and Land checked out earlier?” she asked, pulling the phone back over the wall.
“Yeah, it was. I’m wondering who is sending you a message like that. I mean, how do they know who you are and your phone number?” My mind could see how someone might know that Land had a sister, but getting her phone number was slightly more difficult. Cellphones weren’t always covered by directory services, meaning that someone had to find out in other ways. That did not bode well.
“Beats me,” she said. “Obviously not one of my contacts. Should we go?”
For the first time since I had owned a food truck, I decided to back away from a mystery. I wondered if this reaction came from having a beautiful dress on and not wanting to harm the body that went in it, or if I was getting older, or if I just smelled a pretty obvious trap. Whatever the reason, I took Sabine’s phone and texted Danvers that she’d received a text message instructing her to go to Murphy’s Warehouse immediately. I sent a second message that told hi
m that we would not be joining him. At Sabine’s request, I made sure he knew that I had texted him and not Sabine.
“Please tell me that you told that jackass that you were texting and not me,” she said, making sure I’d followed her instructions. “I don’t want him to think that we’ve started talking again.”
“I did,” I said with a grimace, thinking about how this would play out at the wedding. Calling him a “jackass” during the wedding would likely have to be dubbed on the video.
We swapped back into our day clothes and walked around the rest of the store. I didn’t want to say anything that would provoke Sabine. She already seemed on edge, so we talked about colors and possible shoes for the wedding. She found a pair of blue shoes that matched her dress and fit her small feet.
“And they’re on sale,” I said, warming to the purchase. “Nine dollars. I’ll pay for them.”
Sabine actually laughed. “I can pay for those. I’m doing pretty well, though my bosses could give me a raise. A single girl needs some running around money, you know?”
I shrugged. “That might be arranged, especially if we have you working the new truck.” Land and I had discussed the possibility, if all went well with Dogs on the Roll while we were gone. Then I could train a new person to work as the cook on the original truck with me. We’d had great success doing this with Carter and now Sabine. I wondered if a new person would bring along mysteries as Carter and Sabine had with them.
She smiled. “That would be great. Thanks.”
I handed the cashier a twenty, a real one and not a fake, and waited for my change.
FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books) Page 115