While I’d been a shade nervous about Carter’s suggestion about a slider truck, now that Land was in charge of the food, the doubts began to fade. I could easily see this being another fast meal option, similar to the hot dog truck, but perhaps with more choices available to the customers.
All this time and food and paperwork meant that I hadn’t spent much time on the murder investigation. While I wanted to find out what Collier had been up to and how close I’d come to being swindled out of my business, the new food truck took priority. I had even forgotten about Sabine’s dalliance with Detective Danvers.
A phone call from my lawyer was the only thing that interrupted my focus on work. “Maeve, I wanted to touch base with you as soon as I could,” his message said in a harried voice. “Do not sign this contract. I repeat, under no conditions should you sign this contract.”
I responded to his voicemail and set up a time to meet him about the papers. I was able to make the appointment for the same day, since he felt it was of the utmost importance.
I greeted Ryan Smith as I entered his office. “So was it as bad as all that?” I asked, sitting down in the leather chair opposite his desk.
“Worse. I can’t believe that he would try to get anyone to sign something like this.” He paused. “Well, actually I can believe that someone would get you to sign this, but it would be the end of your company.”
I took out a pen and some paper. “Tell me exactly what it does. I want to be sure that I understand it clearly.”
Smith cleared his throat. “Well, in a nutshell, when you sign the papers to sell, you agree to put the trucks into an escrow account, which is done from time to time, especially if the seller might be tempted to sell off some assets prior to closing and pocketing the cash. However, this escrow is very different. The buyer gets majority control of the escrow account, which means that the buyer can then do anything he wants with the escrow account as soon as the papers are signed. Banks do this sometimes, but they’re not individuals. The buyer could clean out the escrow account and leave the seller with nothing to sell. The buyer could then renege on the deal and still walk away with the entirety of the property.” He put the papers down and looked at me.
I remembered what Emily had told me. Collier had swindled her using a remarkably similar document
“Who is the lawyer who drew these up?” I asked, thinking back to the idea of meeting with that lawyer and finding out more, even though I had started to suspect a more personal reason for the killing. I had a name for Collier’s lawyer, but I wasn’t sure if any other legal professionals were involved in the matter.
“Wayne Sizemore. He’s not even really a lawyer these days. He was disbarred several years ago for writing contracts similar to these and stealing people blind. I guess he’s still doing the same thing, but without the status.”
“Think you could set up a meeting for us to meet with Sizemore?” I wanted to have a witness to what I was going to ask this former lawyer. He would either be talking to me or the police about this crime. While the shyster didn’t have a motive to kill his partner in crime, I wasn’t naïve enough to think he would help me out of the goodness of his heart.
I thought that a few threats backed up by a respected member of the bar might be more persuasive than going in alone. I knew Land would approve, because he’d wanted Sabine to go with me. Having a member of the legal system with me would be even better.
Even with the back-up, I was hesitant to move forward on Collier’s lawyer. I knew that I would likely not receive the answers that I wanted, and it was my last lead on the case, save the mysterious caller who had warned me away from Brent.
I allowed myself two more days to work on the new food truck before setting up the appointment with Brent Collier’s disbarred lawyer. When I used Brett’s name, the lawyer was exceedingly excited to meet with me. I assumed that was because he would get to keep all the profits from the contract if his partner wasn’t around to collect his share.
My lawyer and I went to the offices of Rodney Pringle, Inc. No mention of Wayne Sizemore on the door or anywhere else, for that matter. The maneuver added another layer of deceit between the disbarred lawyer and Collier. The door also said nothing about being a lawyer or a law firm. I wondered if they had a particular law firm name, like something picked from a video game. The man stood to greet me, but sat back down without shaking hands with either of us—once he saw my lawyer there. Rodney apparently recognized him, since he greeted my lawyer by name.
“So, what can I do for you?” he asked, sitting back in his chair.
“We’re here to talk about that contract you gave my client. It was very harsh, considering it was being offered to her through a fraudulent company and a disbarred lawyer.”
Rodney started to sputter and then just stopped. He sat very still and didn’t speak for a moment. If we could have opened his skull, we definitely would have seen the wheels moving inside his cranium. I knew that whatever came out of his mouth would not move the investigation any further.
I was tempted to get up and leave when he finally spoke again. “Is that why you killed him?” he asked. “Were you that upset?”
My lawyer motioned me to stand. “I’ll be filing a few charges. It appears as if you’re representing yourself as an attorney, when you are clearly not.”
“Just don’t kill me,” the man shouted as we walked out the door. “I don’t want to end up like Brett Connor.”
I spun on my heels. “You mean Brent Collier.” I stared him down.
“No, Brett Connor. I thought you just had a pronunciation problem during our earlier conversation.”
I was wary about anything this man said. He’d lied so many times that I wasn’t sure when to believe him. I looked to my lawyer, who nodded. Apparently, the matter of a name was not an issue that he was worried about delving into.
“Sorry, but he went to school with me as Brent Collier. His college records are from the same business school I went to. He was known as Brent to the professors and staff there. The police have a record on him as Brent.”
He shook his head sadly. From the amount of pathos he was exuding, I suspected that this too was more stage dressing. “I only knew him as Brett. If he had another name, then he duped me as much as he did you.”
I knew then that this was all a rehearsed scene. He now had plausible deniability and would be able to claim that he too had been the victim of Brent’s machinations. He was going to pretend that he had no idea about the alias. If he didn’t know about the alias, then he could blame Brent for everything that had happened, leaving himself more or less in the clear.
We left without another word. My lawyer was appalled by the performance. He thought that his profession was a sacred duty.
“So, I still need a list of names of other people who might have been duped,” I said when we’d hit the parking lot again. “I want to talk to some more people, though I suspect their stories will sound much like Emily’s plight.”
“I can try to look up contracts filed by Sizemore and this Rodney Pringle firm, and see what I can find. It shouldn’t take me that long to see if he’s listed on any business contracts. They’ll be online, since they’re relatively recent. I can have a clerk do this in a day or two, if that works for you? I could do it, but you wouldn’t like my bill.”
I told him that was great, since I was already back to thinking about the new food truck and the sliders.
Since my day was already finished, I went home. Land had thought I would be working late with the new truck, so there were no planned taste-testings this evening. That was fine. While I loved the menu so far, four straight nights of eating sliders was getting to be a bit much
I flipped open my laptop when I got home and reviewed figures for a few hours. After the confusion and vagueness of the past two hours, I wanted some firm answers, which came from numbers. This case was getting me nowhere fast, and I opted to work on the food truck instead.
It was about 7:00 p.
m. when the phone rang. I thought it might be Land seeing if I was in the mood to have dinner brought home. My answer would always be “yes.”
When I picked up the phone, the same mysterious voice said, “Stay away from Brett Connor. He’s dangerous.”
“He’s dead. He can’t be dangerous,” I blurted out, angry at the continued hints and wanting to get the words out before the other party hung up.
There was a long pause at the other end of the line. For a second, I thought the caller had hung up. Then, he spoke again. “He’s still dangerous—to you and to others. Be careful in any dealings with him.”
The phone went dead. I felt better for having spoken my piece, but I had gained no answers at all. Apparently Brett (not Brent, I noticed) menaced people from beyond the grave. I wasn’t sure how that took place. Perhaps he had a zombie-styled revenge or he struck people with the Ouija Board. In either case, it felt like a stretch to call him a menace now that he was gone.
The long pauses in the conversation had given me a clue, though I still wasn’t sure what to do with it. Normally, when talking on the phone the background noises are not all that audible, but if you stay silent, the ambient sounds can be heard. I would have expected the background noises to be minimal, given that these were supposed to be anonymous calls. Yet I’d heard sounds.
I replayed them in my mind. I couldn’t place the sound, but I knew them from somewhere. I tried to push it out of my mind for the moment, knowing that the answer would likely come back to me at some point in the near future. That was the way my brain worked. It kept processing even when I was focused on other matters.
Just then, Land came in the door carrying Chinese take-out. I hadn’t expected him to bring me anything, but I drooled at the sight of a prepared meal. We sat down to a feast and I told him about the lawyer and the lack of any concrete details. Then I mentioned the phone call and my actual dialogue with the caller.
Land took his time in responding, partially because he had a mouthful of General Tso’s chicken. I had to be in the mood for the hotter foods, but Land liked spicy food any time.
“Whoever it is thinks highly of Brent’s abilities. They must have been burned badly, or seen him burn other people. So I’m guessing that the names your lawyer comes up with might bear some fruit there.”
I nodded. I felt satisfied that my lawyer would uncover other contracts quickly, if they existed. However, I was still thinking that the crime was not premeditated. The details left at the scene of the crime tended to point to a crime of passion, which pointed more towards a personal relationship gone wrong.
“Why can’t it be both? Can you imagine a bigger disappointment than finding out that the guy you were dating had stolen your entire business? That would be devastating to most people.”
Land nodded, trying to hide the fact that he had another mouthful of food. He waited until he’d finished to speak. “It would, which would give them ample incentive, but we have to look for more than motive in this crime. Collier burned more than enough people to leave a line of potential killers in his wake. We have to find a person with motive and access to the silver Audi—or another piece of evidence to shore up the case.”
I knew Land was right. Motives would only be the first step in finding out who had killed Brent. In the back of my mind, I still wondered about Aaron and their silver Audi, but I didn’t mention it. Land had not wanted to consider him as a potential suspect, and honestly, I didn’t want to either. Yet the car just seemed like too big of a coincidence for me. Danvers had told me that only 2000 cars like that existed in the Capital City area, and one of the truck operators had access to a car like that.
Land read my mind and shook his head. “You’ll see. It’s not Aaron. There are plenty of other similar cars out there which could have done this.”
Finishing the meal and taking the plates to the kitchen, he caught me in a soft embrace and kissed me. I wondered if this was supposed to take my mind off of Aaron and the car; if that was his plan, it worked.
***
The next two days flew by, and I nearly forgot the murder and the questions about the car as I prepared the new truck for its grand opening. We had decided to give a mini-opening party, nothing too fancy, but enough to get the word out. We decided to have it at the Elm Street location, even though the slider truck would not be operating there. Most of our customers had visited either the hot dog or Basque trucks in that area, and we would supplement the word of mouth with some marketing.
My lawyer called me back on the third day. He had a list of names of people who had dealings with either Sizemore or Brent. The list was long, so he promised to send it to me via email at his first chance. Since I was in the middle of the lunch rush, I was glad to be getting a virtual copy.
When I had a chance to take a breath, I checked my email and found a rather long list. Most of the people had been burned by the lawyer. My lawyer had even listed them in chronological order, thinking that a recent grudge might be more likely to lead to murder than a more ancient one.
Sizemore had been busy both before and after his disbarment. I could still see a discernable slack in his practice after losing his license. I imagined that the quality of his clientele had dropped. Two of the names were familiar to me. I’d gone to business school with Adam Alberts.
I would not have been able to come up with his name if I’d thought about my college days, but I remembered the name as soon as I heard it. He’d been a tall, good-looking guy who was more interested in women than he was in his studies. We’d been in the same group for a project, and he’d spent most of the time talking about irrelevant matters while the rest of us had toiled away. I wasn’t surprised that he’d been reduced to dealing with shady lawyers and sketchy deals.
If the first name was not surprising, the second name shocked me. Neve Smith had been at the top of our class. Emily had striven to be the teacher’s pet. Neve had just wanted to be the best student in the class. They had similar aims, but very different methodologies for going about it. I wasn’t surprised that a people-pleaser like Emily could have fallen for a scam, but it surprised me more that Neve was involved in some manner.
Neve had aced every test during our year and blew every curve we should have received. She had a beauty that came from self-confidence and certainty that was particularly attractive to the men at school. I’d heard that she’d taken a job with the largest consulting company in Capital City, so I wasn’t sure how she’d gone from that to Sizemore in a matter of a few years.
The last name I couldn’t place. Edward Keith was highlighted as someone who had attended my business school, but I didn’t recognize the name. Perhaps he had been a few years before me or slightly after my time there. I would ask Emily if she had known him.
My plan, such as it was, consisted of inviting all three of them to the opening of the new food truck. The event would seem somewhat innocuous. I would be celebrating a business success by inviting some people I had gone to business school with. The notion seemed much less pointed than if I were to visit them after five years and start asking questions.
I knew that alcohol would be served at the event and hoped that a little social lubrication might bring some answers to why these people had dealings with Sizemore or Collier. Lily’s story had been understandable, if a bit naïve. Were these stories the same? I had a hunch that Adam Alberts might have found a kindred spirit, but the other two seemed less likely.
I did a quick Google search, and then added their names and addresses to the guest list for the party.
Sabine kept shooting glances at me. “What are you up to over there?” she asked finally.
“Just working on the guest list for the opening of the new truck,” I said, leaving out a few details. I still wasn’t sure where things stood with Sabine and Detective Danvers, but I didn’t want him to learn that I was inviting potential suspects to my business event. I wasn’t sure if she could be trusted at this point.
“Are you inviting Jax?” she
asked. I noticed that she used his first name, instead of his title. I was tempted to ask how things were going, but at the same time, I was leery of learning more about their on-again-off-again relationship.
“Are you expecting a murder?” I asked, trying to play it off as innocent.
“If you plan on attending, then it’s possible,” she replied. Sabine had seen more than her share of murders since starting to work at the food truck. Indeed, I’d first met her through Land in the midst of an investigation, when she’d worked at the secured parking lot that we used to store the food trucks. I shivered for a minute remembering that case and the member of the crime family who had attended our wedding. Nothing had happened as a result of that, but just his presence was enough to make me worry.
“Well, I want this to be a relatively low-key opening. Just customers and a few friends. Nothing murderous there.” I gave her a smile to show that I was being sincere.
“Speaking of which, how are you doing on the case? Have you found out anything about Brent Collier?” she asked. While her question seemed genuinely interested, I had to be wary of the answer. I wondered if Danvers had asked her to find out what we were doing. Technically, we weren’t supposed to be involved in an open murder investigation, but I hardly felt that inviting college friends to a food truck opening constituted a third-degree of a potential witness or suspect. They would get to eat good food and chat with people they’d gone to school with. I hardly considered that to be anything out of the ordinary.
“I’ve been too busy to do much,” I said, almost truthfully. “I won’t have a chance to breath until the opening.”
Sabine looked at me suspiciously, but said nothing. I would tell Land about her questions later. Given that he’d told me on multiple occasions not to trust Danvers, I didn’t think that he would disagree with my decisions to keep the detective in the dark.
FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books) Page 130