“I doubt that anyone had been murdered at the store. It was probably a case of shoplifting. Somebody wanting to get a new diaper bag without paying for it.” My mother shrugged, as if this happened all the time. She was probably correct. Having a child could be quite expensive.
I nodded, knowing her to be right. It had not been a homicide because the detectives had not been called in. A beat cop had handled the entire situation with only a pad and paper. It seemed tame, compared to what I was used to.
Still, I wanted to hear back from Land about the criminal situation. It had me intrigued, and while I’d been busy having a baby, nothing of a criminal nature had happened to our family since our stay at the ski resort last winter. That had been nearly six months ago, one of the longest stretches without a crime that I could remember. My brain was perhaps adding crimes where none existed.
My mother stayed until Land came home. She informed me about my father’s latest business dealings, hoping that some forensic accounting stories might take my mind off of other people’s crimes. We chatted about her memories of me, which were incredibly vivid. Granted, I was her only child, so there were no other children to crowd out her memories of my infancy, but even so, those recollections had been almost thirty years ago.
Land gave me a kiss, picked up Ander, and carried him around as he put the evening meal of Chinese take-out on the kitchen counter. I went out to help him and brought the plates to the table while he was still carrying the baby.
We ate in silence for a few minutes until he said, “I spoke to Danvers today. He looked up the call. Shoplifting, apparently. Somebody took five cases of formula from the store.”
That made sense, if someone had walked off with their entire inventory of goat’s milk formula, yet it seemed incongruous that someone could walk out with five cases. That would require a lift of some kind, and a truck. This was no snatch-and-run.
“Did they catch whoever did this?” I asked, wondering if I could go back to BabyRama for my next formula run.
“Nope. No idea how it was done or who did it. Danvers told me to tell you that the case is all yours if you want it.” Land gave me a quick half-smile.
I didn’t find it as funny as Land did. Danvers had made the suggestion only because he would not be involved in any way. He was a detective who mostly worked homicides, and I would be snooping around a shoplifting case, which was about the bottom of the barrel in the world of police work. I was almost surprised that the beat cop had even bothered to record the incident.
“Was baby formula the only thing that was stolen?” I asked, still not exactly willing to let this go. “Nothing else?”
Land nodded. “That was it. I thought it was kind of weird, because there’s some high-end items in the store. The cribs and strollers go for hundreds of dollars, and they’re way more portable than a case of formula. Five cases would be difficult to carry out without dollies or a hand truck.”
Land was right. A box containing a crib would be easily moved into a car without garnering much attention. Moving five cases of formula would likely involve using a dolly to cart the product around the store. What would be the purpose in that?
I picked up the plates, as we’d polished off the meal in no time. Even staying home all day, I was still not a great chef. I was fortunate to have found wonderful cooks for the food trucks, because that was not my forte.
I finished the clean-up while Land made up a bottle for Andy. Normally, Andy ate well with his father, who was patient and quiet with the boy. However, tonight Andy took one sip and then refused the nipple. He cried and made noises that I’d never heard from him before and never wanted to hear again.
I took him in my arms and attempted to feed him, but the same thing happened. I looked at the canister of formula on the counter that my mother had bought from the discounted store. I tried to sniff the bottle, but I couldn’t t if anything was wrong. This was not a bottle of fine wine that might have gone rancid. Formula all smelled funny to me.
Land took Andy back for a minute and paced with him while I took out the canister of food that I’d purchased. I made up a second bottle and gave it to Land. Andy stopped crying immediately and took to the bottle in a second.
“What is wrong with the stuff your mother bought?” Land asked with a certain amount of exasperation that I rarely heard in his voice. He was protective of his son and his needs. Land felt a certain amount of responsibility for the baby’s desire for goat milk formula.
“I don’t know. Hold on.” I made another bottle of the goat’s milk formula.
I was going to regret my next move, but I decided to taste test the two bottles. The goat’s milk formula that I’d purchased had a stronger taste and I made a face as Land laughed. “That stuff isn’t made for you,” he said helpfully.
Then I tried the second bottle, the one that Andy would have nothing to do with. While I couldn’t have described the taste as similar to anything I ate, the formula tasted different. If I could taste the change, then I was sure that my child could as well.
“Can you tell anything?” Land asked, watching my face.
“There’s a distinct difference in the taste. They taste nothing alike.”
Land sniffed both bottles. “I wouldn’t say anything to your mom about this. I know she was just trying to help.”
I paused for a second. My mother was an inveterate shopper. She valued a bargain above all else, but at the same time, I knew that she would never want to put price over quality. The cost was not a concern if Andy refused to put the formula in his mouth.
The larger concern was that the canister had been mislabeled. For Andy, the formula was merely a matter of preference. However, there were a number of babies that couldn’t eat regular formula; it was a matter of life and death that they received the product that was promised on the label. The issues with soy-based formula tended to go hand-in-hand with milk allergies.
“I am going to tell her,” I said, after thinking the situation through. I explained my reasoning to Land, who had to agree regarding the health issues.
Since he was still feeding Andy, I took a look at the canister. Had the canister been tampered with so someone could put the wrong label on it? Or had the contents been changed to replace a more expensive product with something that I presumed was cheaper?
I took a pair of scissors and sliced the label off down the opposite side from where it had been glued together. The paper fell to the counter, and I spent a minute examining the seam. Nothing had been done to the paper. The seam looked factory-sealed, and I couldn’t find any signs that it had been tampered with in any way.
That meant that the canister had been emptied and refilled. I took the now-bare tin cylinder and picked it up. I studied the top, and nothing appeared to be wrong with it. I had removed the pull-top lid to feed Andy, but now I went back and actually looked at it. It had been firmly sealed in place.
I couldn’t imagine many consumers who would purchase or use a product that had the top partially removed or missing. The days of small amounts of consumer protection were long gone. We were more than willing to pay for extra packaging.
I lifted the canister so that I could look underneath it. The seam around the circumference of the bottom was not factory standard. The difference was not immediately visible, but in studying it carefully, I could see signs of a less-than-machine-perfect crimp around the edges.
I walked the canister over and held it aloft so that Land could see it as well. I pointed to the edge. “See how the crimp here looks cheap? I think someone might have done this by hand.”
He nodded. “It’s not machine worthy, at least not by a factory. You can buy machines that will do a crimp like this.”
I wasn’t sure where Land had obtained this information. I never was, but I was certain that he was right. He was always surprising in the pieces of trivia he knew. I wondered how an individual could go about getting a machine to fake a seam like this.
For the moment, Andy was fed, a
nd we tucked him in for a few hours of sleep. Land and I made use of the time to talk and enjoy each other’s company.
***
I was up at 4:00 a.m. with Andy, who had decided that he liked an early morning bottle.
I called my mother the next morning just as soon as it was decent. She mumbled a greeting that told me she had not consumed enough coffee yet. However, I was feeling that familiar buzz of uncovering a crime, and I wanted to get started on the matter.
In a few short sentences, I explained what had happened yesterday and the crimped canister.
“Well, I never. I mean, you know that I would never have done that on purpose. I have half-a-mind to go down there and talk to them now,” my mother sputtered, finding her words suddenly.
“I actually would like to go down there and look around, if you have time today,” I suggested, wanting nothing more than to find out what scam was being pulled on innocent children. It felt good to be productive in this manner.
“Of course, dear. What time do you want me to come and pick you up?”
We settled on a time, and my mother hung up the phone to call her friend who had suggested the place. I warned her not to explain our interest yet. I wanted to learn more about the operation before giving away our knowledge to the owners.
My mother was five minutes early to the apartment. She made some excuse, but given that she spent the entire time smooching Andy, I suspected her motives. As an only child, she had already begun to enjoy having grandchildren. I didn’t tell her that we planned to have three when the time was right.
We packed up the car and headed out. I was glad that she offered to drive. It allowed me the time to gather my thoughts before we entered the store.
I needed a plan to find out what I wanted to know without showing my hand. I wasn’t sure how intimate my mother’s friend’s daughter was with the place, but I didn’t want to make any accusations that could get back to the friend—or the store. I just wanted some information at this point. How widespread was the sale of the fake product?
My mother pulled up outside of the Bargain Baby store and parked. We certainly looked the part with the baby in the car seat-slash-carrier and a huge diaper bag. My mother seemed to have her own plan in mind as she began to traverse the aisles. She stopped and picked up a few items. A particularly adorable stuffed animal got a test run from Andy, who approved.
Finally, we made it to the formula aisle, and again my mother walked along the corridor with a practiced purposelessness. She picked up a few items and read the ingredients to me. I was getting a touch antsy, wanting to move to the offending formula and see if the other cans were crimped in the same manner.
As she slowly made her way down the aisle, we finally found the cans of goat’s milk formula. I let my mother do her magic. She picked it up and looked at it from several angles as she read the ingredient list. Andy and I already knew that the canister was a fake, but my mother put on a wonderful performance.
When she went to put the canister back, several of the cans of formula fell to the floor. She made a clucking sound, and I moved over to help her with the clean-up. Andy sat in his carrier, amusing himself with the noises of the store.
My mother stacked a few of the canisters in the wrong direction, so that the bottoms of the cans were visible to me. I nodded. In each case, the canisters’ bottom seal had been crimped back into place. My mother muttered under her breath, something about the cans not being right, and set them back in place, so that the display looked much like it had before.
We finished up with a few more rows. I thought we were going to leave empty-handed, but my mother went back and picked up the stuffed animal that Andy had liked so much. We paid and headed out to the car.
“Every last one of them,” my mother said as soon as the doors closed. “They all had the same crimp markings on them. What is going on?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure, but I’m going to investigate this store as soon as I get home.” I wanted to learn about the operations of the store and its history. I had never heard of any scandal associated with the store, but I would be reviewing any news stories about Bargain Baby.
We made our way home, and with my mother’s help around the apartment, I was able to spend a few minutes online learning about the store. The company was relatively new to Capital City; the firm had opened up less than two years ago.
Bargain Baby currently had three stores in the area. The first was the one that my mother and I had visited today. Another was downtown, and a third was in the northern suburbs of Capital City. I would be content to verify the fake formula at two stores. It seemed to be overkill to visit all three.
The owner was Tom Rachford, who had started the stores on his own. They had been popular with the local people, and he had prospered from the company. I read about his history. He had started a number of companies in his life. Some he’d sold for an enormous profit, while others had gone belly up in a matter of months. He seemed fine with taking risks if there was a chance of making a profit.
The news for the stores indicated that tomorrow night would be a gala for the CEO of the Bargain Baby Company. I read the article with interest. The gala was being held by a local community group that honored small businesses in the Capital City region. I was a member of the same group, and I scoured back through my emails to see if I’d received an invitation to the gala. Sure enough, there was an email with directions on how to attend. Of course, the date to RSVP had long passed, but I wrote anyway to Victoria Albrecht, the executive director of the group, explaining that I’d just had a baby and wanted to come to the gala if they could fit me in. The text sounded plaintive enough that I thought it might work. She ran the group with an iron fist, and I was never sure how she would behave in any given situation.
With that done, I went back out to the living room, where both my mother and my son had crashed out on the sofa. I sat down in the chair next to them, and soon I was fast asleep as well.
***
We had barely woken up from our collective nap when Land returned home that evening. Fortunately for me, Andy had inherited my ability to sleep almost anywhere. Land came home with the leftovers from his shift at Basque in the Sun. He heated up dinner, and we ate as my mother played with Andy.
I got a bottle ready for the baby. My mother wanted to do the honors, and I was happy to let her so that I could tell Land about my experience at the store.
“Apparently, this isn’t a one-off thing. All the canisters in the store had the same crimping marks on the bottom of the container. This is endemic to their supply,” I said, enjoying the soup of the day. “This is a fairly large operation.”
Land gave me a smile. “So how are you going to handle this? Just return it, or are you taking this to the next level?”
I answered him with my next statement. “I asked if we could attend a gala for the owner of the stores tomorrow.”
Land said quietly, but with a small smile, “We’ll need to get a babysitter.” I liked the way that our relationship was always “we,” even though I knew that I’d be the one to call. I was glad that he was amenable to going out tomorrow. Both of us had the jitters of first-time parents who had never left their child without them before. I knew that I would likely call home while we were out, but the experience would be good for us too.
“Do you think your sister would do it?” I asked, trying to think of a quick fix who could be trusted. I knew that we weren’t going to leave Andy with a stranger for the evening. It would be a relative or nothing. Since my mother had spent the day with us, I thought that I would let the Mendozas have a chance for tomorrow.
“She’d be more likely to go to the gala and ask questions. I’m sure she’d be happy to go shopping with you for a new dress, but I’m not sure about babysitting. What if she brings Danvers with her? Are you going to tell him that you’re actually following through on his shoplifting case? I don’t think he’d let you live it down.”
Land had a point. I didn’
t want to have to hear any grief from the police officer about how as a mother, I was reduced to biding time and looking into petty thefts at the baby store. I had come down from stopping multiple murders and spies to looking for a company that cheated on its formula production.
I tried to go through my mind and come up with a suitable candidate, but I wasn’t able to think of another person. My mother had spent the entire day with us, and I hated to ask her again to give up more time for us. On my family’s side that only left my father, who would bring my mother too. I didn’t know how long we would be at the gala. Non-parents could stay out until midnight or beyond.
“What about my grandmother?” Land asked. He squinted as he asked, meaning that he wasn’t sure of what my response might be. While she loved Andy very much, I half-suspected that she was teaching him the Basque language when she watched him.
“Would she be up for it? It wouldn’t be too late for her?” I asked, thinking again of the reasons I wouldn’t ask my own parents.
“She’s 70, but she takes care of kids all the time. My cousins use her for a daycare, practically. I know she’d be thrilled to take Andy for the night.” He lit up at the thought.
While Land’s parents were still alive and well, they had remained in the Basque region of Europe. Land had come to the US after many years with the police and the armed services. He wanted to get away from that life and had started over as a chef when I met him. Sabine had come over for school, and their grandmother had come with Sabine to ensure that the baby of the family did not get into trouble in the decadent American culture. When Sabine had chosen to stay after graduation, Grandma Mendoza had opted to stay as well.
Though I wasn’t a traditional bride from Basque, Grandma had taken to me. She didn’t speak much English, which made our relationship pleasant but superficial. She and Land always reverted to Basque when they wanted to talk about something that I wasn’t to be involved in.
FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books) Page 158