“Danvers said that he was following Sabine because someone else was following her as well. They wanted to find out who was following her and why.”
I was a tad skeptical of the story, but I let it slide. “So what he did learn?”
Land shrugged. “The car was stolen, and the plates were faked. So they don’t know much about the car. They took a few photos. They’re trying to enhance them now and then they’ll try some facial recognition software to see if they can identify him.”
“It’s a guy then? It can’t be Carona?” I asked, wondering who would think that Sabine played a large role in this problem. She’d taken part in the Friday the 13th surveillance, but from her own account, she’d not seen anything that applied to the case. Carona had been at the Black Cat with us.
Yet someone was interested in Sabine’s movements. It was curious since they knew where she worked and what time she arrived each day. I wasn’t sure what the purpose was. Were they afraid that she had figured out where she knew one of the Croatians from? Their motive couldn’t possibly be that she was likely to stop anywhere at that time of morning.
“No, it can’t be her,” Land said, and I had a sudden hunch that I knew what Land would be telling me about the body in the river.
I waited for him to speak again. It didn’t take long. “Danvers is somewhat certain that the body in the river is Carona,” he said breaking the silence. “The body is disfigured. No face and no fingerprints. So the identification can’t be certain at the moment, but he doesn’t have any missing persons that match the body, so he thinks it might be her.”
I thought about the force and planning needed to remove a person’s fingertips and the methodical nature of bashing in someone’s face to the point where it was unrecognizable. The image made me cringe.
“That’s a standard procedure for the Croatians, so Danvers had another small confirmation there that this might be her.”
“Aren’t they still in jail?” I asked, thinking back to the chaos at 101112.
“Yeah, but those two are not the only Croatians who do bad things. There are plenty where that came from. Not to mention that the ambassador is from the Baltic area. That’s a lot of coincidence.”
I thought of how they ruthlessly had shot up a restaurant and been ready to massacre innocent bystanders there. I was more used to criminals who had a specific target in mind, not violence for its own sake.
“So what’s next?” I asked, thinking of how the leads dried up without the search for the missing woman. She had provided us with the clues we’d needed to chase her, and without that, we had very few pathways to follow.
Land leaned down and gave me a kiss. He pulled me tight and for a second, I forgot why I was here or what we were discussing. “I love you. Setbacks never stop you.”
I grinned back at him. “Just for a second, and then I’m back at it.”
“I thought that we should take a divide and conquer strategy on this one. I’m going to follow whoever is following Sabine. That’s going to be a tricky one for me. First, I have to follow someone who is presumably good at tailing. Plus, I can’t be seen by Sabine, who would recognize me following her in an instant.”
“You could borrow the Buick?” I suggested. “She wouldn’t be looking for that car.”
The Buick had been inherited from my aunt along with the food truck, and my parents had owned it before giving it to my aunt. Despite being fairly prosperous with the business, I was more focused on reinvesting profits into new trucks and a bigger enterprise. I wasn’t the type of person who was into cars or what they were supposed to say about the driver. So as long as it ran fine, I was good with it. Land, however, had a newer sports car, which could not have been hidden in a parking garage. That machine stood out.
While Land had driven the Buick on more than one occasion, it physically pained him to have to be seen in it. The thought of him tailing Sabine in it made me smirk.
“That’s fine. You can drive my car home.”
I was shocked. He was apparently very serious about the matter if he was willing to drive my car around town for a few days.
He wasn’t finished. “You can’t tell Sabine that you’re driving my car, and you need to keep a very low profile with the car. You don’t want to do anything that’s going to tip her about our plans.”
I nodded. “So what am I supposed to do?” He’d delineated his plan fairly well, but I wasn’t ready to spend the time at home, counting RSVPs or writing thank you notes.
“I want to know more about that warehouse and the fire. I have a suspicion that it wasn’t an accident that Carona named that as her mailing address. Either she was a part of that operation, or she wanted someone else to pay attention to the operation. In either case, we can find out what she was up to exactly.”
While looking into incorporation papers and DBAs was definitely more my style, I also knew that with the wedding in a few days, Land was going to be more protective. While I had worried that Land’s past would come between us in the last days before the wedding, he apparently was more worried that I would come to harm before we said “I do.”
Since the work fell more into the arena of what I was qualified to do, I couldn’t really object, any more than I could object to Land following his sister. He had far more experience in stakeouts and tailing people.
“Okay,” I agreed after thinking it over thoroughly.
Land seemed to let out a deep breath as if he’d been expecting a fight. However, I had too many things to do before arguing with him. The wedding details were beginning to fill my mind. My mother called daily with a list of things to do. From deciding on flowers to ensuring the cake was there on time, all of the specifics kept me far busier than I’d like. I had thought that a small wedding would be easier to handle, but apparently not.
So I agreed to look into the corporation papers to see what I could find. He kissed me again, more chastely, and we swapped keys. I headed back to the other food truck where Sabine was looking at me expectantly.
“From what Land understands, there’s a good chance that the body in the river is Carona. So, without her, we don’t have much to do go on.” Land had told me to encourage her to stay away from the case, since someone felt that she was a vital part of what was going on here.
She sighed. “That’s too bad. I would have liked to have met my other sister-in-law.”
I reminded her that Carona was not a real member of the family and had only played one for the sake of a case.
“I know, but at the same time, anyone who puts up with my brother for any length of time deserves a medal.”
I didn’t agree with that sentiment. I thought I was lucky to have him, but I didn’t want to go into that with her at the moment.
I took a deep breath. “Did you ever figure out where you knew that shooter from? The Croatian?” I asked.
“Yeah, I hadn’t mentioned it, because it was a little embarrassing.” She turned her head away from me as she spoke.
“What happened? Who is he?” Now I wanted to know more. Sabine was rarely embarrassed.
“He was a guy from one of my classes at university.” She held her hands up as if apologizing for the letdown.
“That’s it?” I asked, feeling somewhat surprised.
“Yeah, here I made a big deal out of it, and it turns out that we shared a math class together. Not quite the answer anyone was looking for.”
“How long ago was this?” I asked. I had thought that perhaps the man had only been here a few months.
“Two years ago, maybe?” she said. “It was definitely a math class, because he asked a lot of questions, and I noticed his accent.”
I puzzled over this for a few minutes. Again, I had thought this should have been a short-term assignment in Capital City for the Croatian gunmen, but it turned out they had been here for years. It brought back to my mind the idea that the entire Friday the 13th incident had been planned months in advance. However, if Carona was dead, it made no differ
ence to anyone when she’d planned the meeting. It had not been successful.
I assured Sabine that no one thought less of her for having such a boring story to tell. She smiled and got back to work.
Anxious to get the operations started, I hurried Sabine through the cleanup. I counted the money quickly. The totals were great, and I readied the deposit bag. I would drive the food truck back to the lot and head home. I wasn’t sure whom Land would get to cover his truck, since he was going to be busy following his sister, but I trusted him to find a reliable person to handle it. No one followed me at all, despite the fact that I was driving a noticeable car and carrying a bag full of cash. That’s just the way it is sometimes.
We agreed to meet after 8 p.m. to compare notes. I had the last run through with the florist, and I had to pick up my shoes from the bridal shop. They’d been colored a particular shade of cream for me, and the discussions over white versus cream had about made me elope.
I came home with my packages, which when added to the gifts I’d received in the mail, almost recreated the stack of boxes that Land had broken down for me the other day. I was amazed at how many people had thought to send gifts, even though some weren’t even invited. Gina, whose wedding I had catered, hadn’t been upset that she wasn’t in my wedding. Land and I had wanted to keep it simple as much as we could. Yet she’d sent a lovely platter for our dinnerware.
I put the boxes aside, and opened up my laptop. I was fortunate that Capital City had digitized all of their records, so I started there looking for information on Murphy’s Storage. I didn’t begin with Google or the usual places when looking for details on the site. I went to the tax record section of the Capital City website.
You can hide a lot of information about who owns a property, except when it comes to who pays the taxes on the property. A quick drill-down into the property showed that the taxes were paid by a shell corporation that went by the name of Murphy’s Storage. The firm had no employees, no website, and no income. Yet they kept a rather expensive piece of property.
I started looking into the information on the shell corporation, which led me to a second shell corporation. A series of shell corporations later, and I had a company that owned several different types of businesses in the Capital City area, but none of them had employees or income. I decided to take a minute off and stretch. My eyes were tired from reading the laptop for nearly two hours.
I looked up at the clock, and saw that it was a little after nine. I picked up my phone and called to see what was keeping Land. The phone went to voicemail, and I hung up. I was really hoping that he was on his way over, because I was starving. I hadn’t eaten since I had a hot dog around two that afternoon.
I tried again and got the same response. I left a second message. While I usually didn’t resort to tracking my future spouse, I brought up the find-my-phone app, and put in the password. Since Land and I had gotten the phones together on a business plan, we shared our data and online accounts.
Land’s phone showed on the map as being close to Murphy’s Storage, or what was left of the warehouse. I was suspicious from the start. First it had been an unidentified text asking me to meet someone at Murphy’s and now Land’s phone was there. It was likely that I would rush down to a deserted, burned out warehouse after dark and meet whatever punishment these people would mete out. Since last time it had been arson to the building, I wasn’t going to take my chance with whatever they had planned this time.
Instead, I did as I had done last time. I contacted Detective Danvers. He admitted that he hadn’t seen Land this evening, nor had he heard from Land in that time span. I explained the situation and asked Danvers to take a look at the location to see if Land was there, and if so, tell him that I was worried.
“What do I look like? An answering service?” he asked. I could tell that he was annoyed by the intrusion into his evening, but I didn’t want to go down there alone.
“Look, Land’s phone is there, and he’s not answering it. So, either someone took his phone and has it there, or Land is there but not in a position to answer it. Either of those scenarios worries me. I don’t want to go down there by myself, but I will if I have to.”
Danvers grumbled for a few seconds and said, “Fine. I’ll pick you up in twenty. I didn’t realize that best man duties included late night runs to crime scenes looking for the groom.”
He showed up about thirty minutes later. I was a bit surprised to see that he’d bought a new truck—a large model with the type of wheels that require you to hike up the side to get into it. I was surprised when I reached door level, because there was a woman in the truck with him.
I gave me him an odd glance, and he shrugged. “We were out having dinner, and I didn’t have time to drop Lenora off before I came over here. I imagine that this is all a big misunderstanding. You’ll see.”
Lenora held out her hand and said, “Nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.” She was a tall, leggy blonde wearing a fashionable pair of slacks and a blouse that had one too many buttons undone. She looked exactly like the type of woman that Jax Danvers would rebound with.
I wasn’t sure how long this thing with Lenora had been going on, but it seemed unlikely that I would have come up in the conversation. Granted, he was in the wedding party at my impending nuptials, but I knew that I wasn’t his favorite person. I’d shown him up too many times in the past for him to forgive and forget.
Then of course, the fact that I had asked his ex-girlfriend to be the maid of honor at the wedding opposite his gig as best man meant that he would have some explaining to do to Lenora before Friday arrived. He hadn’t included her on his RSVP, which made me assume that this relationship had not been going on for long.
We rode in silence to the site of the warehouse. The area was completely dark and silent, as though it was encouraging us to listen for clues. However, I heard nothing in the darkness. Danvers, who obviously wanted to get back to his date, flipped on the lights on top of the cab, and the area was suddenly illuminated. Danvers took a key ring out of his pocket and left the truck for a minute to unlock the gates. I guessed that he’d kept a copy of the key from the investigation into the fire.
My Buick sat in the parking lot to one side. There were no signs that people had been around here or that any sort of struggle had occurred. Danvers drove the truck close to the Buick, which was now bathed in light. No one was inside the car, though I could make out the keys in the ignition. This was definitely not the area to leave an unlocked car waiting to be taken. Had whoever had been involved with this wanted the car to be stolen?
I made a move to get out, but Danvers pressed the button for baby locks, and the door handle refused to budge. For a second, a cold chill ran through me as I remembered my thoughts about Danvers as the cop who was supplying information to the people trying to eliminate Carona. I was in the car with him and a woman I didn’t know, and I suddenly felt very vulnerable.
“What are you doing?” I asked, trying to pump the door handle again.
“Not letting you get out until I make sure that there are no people around here. I don’t want you walking into a trap. You do remember the last time you wanted to come here? Just chill.”
He put the car in drive again and did a slow sweep of the perimeter of the warehouse and its parking lot. I saw the destruction of the building up close. Just a few steels beams held the structure together now, and even those were warped from the heat of the fire. The parking lot was still surrounded by a tall fence with barbed wire along the top. There were no breaches in the chain-link. Whoever had driven the car into the parking lot had come in through the gates, which meant either they had picked the locks on the gates or had a key to enter. All of this led me back to the owners of the warehouse and the multiple shell corporations that I’d uncovered tonight. Now I wished I’d gone with Land to tail the car following Sabine.
We came back to the Buick, and now Danvers unlocked the truck door. All three of us climbed out of the
monster truck. I got out on the passenger side, and Danvers helped Lenora out on his side of the truck. We walked away from the spotlights on the truck and examined the Buick. Nothing was missing from the car, which meant that the old FM radio was still intact. Feeling paranoid, I looked for bloodstains or signs of a struggle inside the car, but there were none. I even looked at the rear window, hoping against hope that I didn’t see any bullet holes, but there were none. I breathed a sigh of relief at that.
I checked around the car, but there wasn’t any damage to the panels or the tires. Danvers shrugged. “What do you want to do?”
“Hold on a second,” I said, pulling out my phone. The find the phone app showed that I was approximately ten feet from Land’s phone. After a few false starts, I found the phone, lying on the ground just beyond the parking lot. It was face down and covered in mud and mire, but it was still intact. I wiped the phone off on my jeans and scrolled through the recent activity, but there was nothing that would indicate what had happened to him. He’d texted a number I didn’t recognize a few times, but had received no response. Nothing else had occurred today.
Realizing that there was little I could do at the moment, I took his phone and slipped it in my pocket. I thanked Danvers and headed for the Buick. I think that the mere fact that I was giving up scared Danvers. He began rattling off a list of things he could and would do after dropping off Lenora.
I just nodded, got in the car, and drove home. I had a long stressful night that night. I was scared. Land was always hyper-aware of his surroundings, and I couldn’t imagine the type of criminal who could have surprised him, overpowered him, thrown away the phone, and taken him away. My only consolation was that there were no signs of a struggle or bloodshed, which meant that he’d left the lot alive.
I was bound and determined to still work tomorrow. With Land missing, I knew that the other truck would be idle. We had a wedding coming up and we needed all the money we could earn to pay for it. If Land was harmed in any way, we might also need the money for healthcare. I worried that my mind went to the worst possible scenarios, but I’d never known a time when he’d not been in control, even when he’d been in jail for a crime he hadn’t committed.
FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books) Page 119