FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books)

by Chloe Kendrick

  “This is the lab.”

  For a moment, the words didn’t register. Then I realized that it was the lab, calling about the formula I had submitted to them a few days ago.

  “Yes, how can I help you?” I said excitedly. “Do you have the results already?”

  “Yes, we wanted to let you know that the results are in. We’ve emailed you a complete list of the ingredients, but one of the women in the lab recognized a few of the ingredients and looked. It’s the ingredient list for Baby First infant formula.”

  I was glad to hear that the product was formula, and I knew the Baby First brand. Just as I had suspected, it was not the top-of-the-line formula. It was a generic that sold for significantly less money than what we fed Andy. There was no way that this product had magically landed in a canister marked for goat’s milk. Someone had put it there.

  I thanked him profusely and hung up. I told Land what the lab had told me. “At least it’s really formula,” he said. “It’s just someone pawning off a cheap product on consumers. It’s nothing lethal in and of itself.”

  I started to say something, but the outside door buzzed. When I went to the intercom, it was Detective Danvers who wanted to come in and talk.

  Chapter 5

  Detective Danvers entered our apartment with a curious expression. I began to worry about his odd behavior. Had he decided not to ask Land because he was planning on cracking down on my own activities? I hoped not, but when it came to ambition, I doubted anything Danvers said or did.

  “First things, first. This is an open investigation, and I don’t appreciate you parading around Government Square with a key witness. Why don’t you just take photos of you questioning persons of interest and text them to me? Two of my men watched you and laughed, presumably at my expense.”

  I had known that this was coming. While I hadn’t known that Francis Gage’s wife had been involved with the victim, once I had learned that, I knew that the fact would come back to get me. Danvers did not appreciate my interference, and while I’d technically been innocent, he would not see it that way.

  I tried to explain the situation, which only served to annoy him. “So you’re telling me that you didn’t know what he wanted when he came down to talk to you?” he said, with skepticism oozing out of his mouth.

  “It’s true. He came to me. I didn’t seek him out or ask for him to visit. He wanted to know what to do since he was now a person of interest in a murder case.”

  “And what sage advice did you give the man?” Danvers asked. “Hopefully you told him to confess?”

  I shrugged, and looked straight at him. “I told him to get good representation. I figured I couldn’t go wrong with that, since it was part of the Miranda rights.”

  Danvers didn’t look pleased, but at the same time, he looked less angry than when we had started. I wanted to keep him mollified until I could persuade him that Land was still his best choice for best man, even if Danvers was annoyed with me for some reason.

  “Anything of use in what he said?” Danvers asked grudgingly.

  “He said that he hadn’t been aware of the affair until he found his wife crying after she discovered that Rachford was dead. I can’t be sure, but I believe him.”

  He grunted. “And what about the baby formula?” Danvers replied.

  I paused for a moment. Had he really just asked me about the baby formula after mocking me about the situation no more than two days ago? I was intrigued by the change. I wasn’t sure what had happened. Were the facts of the case pointing to a business-related murder, or was he just running out of suspects and motives?

  “I spoke to a few people from the Bargain Baby stores, and I’m finding out what happened. It may be that the store just accepted a fraudulent product without knowing it. The one man was very convincing about the fact that the store doesn’t have the facilities or the privacy to pull it off. Just the switch-out of one product to another would take a small warehouse. And it would be messy. The kitchen is a disaster every time I try to make a few bottles up.”

  “So it wasn’t done in the store,” Danvers repeated. He didn’t sound convinced. “That’s hardly a solution to the problem.”

  “The formula is brought in on pallets and the pallets are wrapped with tight plastic. To do the exchange at the store would mean that the plastic would have to be removed from the pallet, and in many cases, the pallets are still wrapped at the time that the formula is stocked.” I gave him the name and number of Barb Yungbluth, the supplier rep.

  “Anything else you want to share with me?”

  I debated not telling him what I’d learned about the formula from the lab, but I decided to go ahead. I was still hoping that any good will I showed him would be repaid to Land.

  “How did you do that?” he asked. “Our labs are backed up for weeks, and you’ve gotten your results already.”

  Land perked up at this question. He suspected that I’d rushed the results, which had involved spending significantly more money than the slower results would cost. We were watching our money so that I could remain at home for a bit. Spending money on excesses like priority lab results were not in the budget.

  “Charm, I guess?” I played it off for Land’s sake. “Anyway, the formula is actually Baby First infant formula, which is significantly cheaper by the ounce than the goat’s milk version that we buy.”

  With that comment, Danvers finally seemed to acknowledge that there was another human life in the apartment. He talked to the baby for a second before he looked back to me. “So what does that tell me?”

  “It tells you that this is a financial scheme. Lower-cost items being sold in the place of higher-priced items. I would strongly suspect that this murder has a financial element to it, which means that you need to follow the money to find out who benefits.”

  Danvers rolled his eyes. I knew that he didn’t care for the cases where the corporate accounting and forensics of the cash flow were a major part of the motive. He preferred the easy cases where one spouse shot another and was done with it.

  On the other hand, I liked looking at the numbers and the motives for murder found in a spreadsheet. Those cases didn’t have car chases and bullets, but they could be complex and fascinating. I could be fairly safe behind a computer monitor.

  He didn’t look convinced, so I continued. “There are two main paths that could have been taken here. In the first case, Rachford was a part of the operation, and he had a falling out with members of this scheme, which encouraged them to kill him.”

  “Like he wanted more profits,” Danvers said.

  I nodded. “Or they wanted to shut it down and he did not. If that’s the case, then you should expect to see some outlays for a space where the transition could be made, along with paying some people to help do this.”

  Land cleared his throat. “Or the motive could be something else entirely. Rachford was sleeping with someone else’s wife, and Rachford’s wife was sleeping with someone else. I’m betting that if he knew, he wouldn’t have been happy with the situation, even though he was doing the same thing. Not to mention the fact that everyone is denying that their spouses knew about it. They’re not all that sneaky. Others were glad to mention it to me today during the interviews.”

  Danvers rolled his eyes. “That’s the problem with this case. I have a poison that is hard to get your hands on and more motives than the entire rest of our open murder cases. I’m thinking that a lot of legwork is going to be required to get this case solved.”

  I thought about volunteering my efforts, but I thought it best to remain quiet. I wasn’t sure what exactly Danvers wanted here. Had he come over to ask Land to be in the wedding or had he come to harass me for being involved in the case? His tone sounded slightly desperate.

  “What about the champagne?” I asked. “Did you find anything in the bottles?”

  Danvers shook his head, another clear sign that something was up. Usually he would have told me to mind my own business. “Nothing in any
of them. We were even able to find the bottle that we strongly suspect was the one served to Rachford, but no dice. It was clean.”

  “So then the drug had to have been added to the glass,” I said. “That just seems so risky. Could the waiter have been involved?”

  “Sure, if you can tell me which waiter served him the drink. There were three or four wait staff in the area, and of course, no one admits to giving him another glass. The men standing around Rachford had no idea who gave him the drink. So again, it’s not as easy as you think.”

  Land went to the kitchen and got out a tray. “A little experiment,” he said calmly.

  He poured two drinks, a regular Coke and a diet.

  Land held the tray for us to pick a drink. He tried to hand a drink to each of us, but the act felt awkward. Guests were usually allowed to select their own drink at an event. The drinks were taken from a bar or a tray.

  He then tried to maneuver the glasses so that Danvers was forced to take a particular glass. The situation was equally awkward. Land could put the glass on the side closest to the detective, but that didn’t necessarily mean that the drink would be taken. There were too many elements left to chance.

  We tried three or four different situations, and yet none of them were particularly satisfying. In each case, the person might or might not take the correct glass. It all boiled down to what the victim decided to do.

  Then Land used part of the opening between the kitchen and living room to simulate a bar. While I felt certain that Rachford had taken the drink from a waiter, it was equally possible that he’d picked a glass from the bar. Since I strongly suspected that he had downed several drinks in a relatively short time, any one of those drinks might have been poisoned. The most recent glass was most likely, but even then, I suspected that two or three glasses had been consumed in a matter of ten minutes. He’d definitely been making merry at the time.

  Given the confusion of the situation and the amount of alcohol flowing, the exact source of the poison would be hard to trace. I felt some of Detective Danvers’ frustration as we tried a second experiment with the drinks.

  Land poured a few more identical glasses of diet and regular, and set them on the counter. The natural reaction was to take one of the drinks in front, but almost always there was more than one drink in the front row. There didn’t seem to be any rationale as to which drink upfront would be taken.

  Finally, Land shrugged. “I don’t know how to do this unless the waiter walked up to the man and gave him the drink.”

  “Was that possible?” Danvers asked, watching Land clean up the experiment.

  I closed my eyes and tried to remember. I just couldn’t. It might be conceivable that the guest of honor might be able to get such service. If I had asked a man with a tray for him to bring me a drink, he likely would have tampered with it from annoyance.

  “Maybe?” I said finally. “It was all so noisy and distracting.”

  Land put the rest of the glasses in the dishwasher, which surprised me. Usually he was one to wash things by hand, after all, he did the same routine at work constantly. But I’d noticed a slight change towards conveniences since Andy had come along.

  I went to help him while Danvers stood there. He didn’t speak for a long time, and I truly hoped that the wedding situation was going to be addressed. However, when he spoke, he said, “So are you still convinced that the formula has something to do with this case?”

  I nodded. “I am. I am taking the most obvious aspect here. Typically, if a man is involved in something illegal, especially something like consumer fraud, it’s the major reason why he would be killed. Can you imagine all the mothers freaking out to find that they’ve been feeding their children bargain formula instead of the more expensive brands? There would be a riot on your hands. Someone might have decided to try to stop him personally.”

  “You’re the only one we can find who knew about the scam though,” Danvers pointed out. I had thought we were past the days when he accused me of every murder in Capital City, but I guessed that I was wrong.

  “It wasn’t hard to find out,” I said in my defense. “Andy didn’t like it, and I discovered as a result that the formula was a fake. You certainly can’t think that no one else in Capital City did the same?”

  “So how do we find out who else would know about this? I don’t exactly have cred with a group of new mothers,” Danvers said.

  I thought about pointing out that he would likely find some interest if he kept his sarcasm in check, but that didn’t seem to progress the idea.

  I shrugged in his direction, but already I was thinking of how best to contact new mothers in the area. I was sure that there had to be message boards where I could post questions about the formula and see who else had discovered this. Perhaps they had found out more information about the source of it. I certainly couldn’t buy formula from every baby store in the greater Capital City region. Andy would have enough goat’s milk formula to last him until college graduation.

  Danvers looked from Land to me, and then back, but neither of us spoke. It would be absurd to ask us to canvas the entire city to see who was selling the counterfeit brands or to see what other parents had discovered the fraud on their own.

  Finally, he took a deep breath and exhaled. “So I guess it’s up to CCPD to find out who else knew.”

  I wasn’t feeling particularly charitable, and within minutes, he was on his way out. Land walked him to the door. They stood there talking quietly for a minute. I wondered if Danvers was telling Land about the wedding. I wanted to get angry for Land on his behalf, but I said nothing. My husband had been dealing with his family for years, and he knew best how to handle them.

  Land came back to where I stood. His face belied nothing. “You were rather quiet tonight,” he said, pulling me into a long hug.

  “I just felt that he was asking me to do a lot of work and to cover a lot of ground for the police. It’s not easy to pack up everything for the day and take Andy with me for a full day of driving around Capital City.” I had visions of the diaper changes and feeding schedule during six to eight hours of hunting for more formula.

  “As long as that’s all,” he said, watching me. I felt now that he was putting me under the same type of pressure that Danvers had tried to put on me. Was he trying to find out if I knew about the wedding? In all fairness, I didn’t. I had made some inferences based on the curtailed comments of a few people.

  I already had an idea that I was going to check out tomorrow. Land would never approve, and so I kept it to myself.

  Chapter 6

  The next morning, I still had not heard back from Barb Yungbluth. From a business perspective, in most cases if you got a call from someone who mentioned one of your major buyers, you would call them back. If nothing more than a courtesy, the way to keep customers happy is do them favors when asked.

  In the meantime, I had two things to do. I used the laptop to find a few mommy blogs and I posted comments about the mix-up with the formulas at Bargain Baby and the apparent tampering that had occurred. I made sure to bookmark each one, so that I could find my way back to them this evening and see if I had made any progress on that front.

  The third thing, the one that I had chosen not to tell Land about, was more dangerous. A few years ago, we had solved a case that involved organized crime. I had solved one of their leaders’ murder and I had thought that they’d been pleased with my efforts; however, one of the men from their organization had shown up—uninvited—to our wedding.

  Given that the wedding had gone off without a hitch, I had to assume that they meant me no ill-will. So I was going to look up my friend, the wedding crasher, and ask him about tips or clues about the formula substitution.

  The man, Johnny Baird, had been in the news a few times lately. He’d been accused of some improper business dealings, and as a result, he was under investigation. The police had released information about his warehouse and the operations there.

  So I ha
d an address that I could visit. I packed up Andy, and we went in search of the local mafia.

  I pulled up in front of the warehouse. A few cars were strewn across the lot, with no rhyme or reason to the parking spaces; I hoped that meant that Johnny was here without too many sycophants behind him. I wasn’t sure the type of reception I would get here, but I knew from experience that no one suspected a new mother of being any threat.

  I walked to the door, where two overhead cameras watched my every move. I waved at the cameras, just to show I meant no harm.

  A large man, who ran to overweight rather than muscular, opened the door. His breadth ensured that I could see nothing inside of the warehouse.

  “What do you want?” the man asked, his face entirely impassive.

  “I was hoping to ask Mr. Baird a few questions,” I said. “He knows me. It’s Maeve Mendoza. I was Maeve Kinkaid before I was married. He came to the ceremony,” I added.

  He nodded, but he closed the door in my face. I waited there, looking down the long alleyway to the side of the building. The place was desolate, and at the same time, it was perfect to see who was coming in any direction.

  I talked with Andy and waited, trying not to think of all the things that might happen to me from meeting with the mob.

  Finally, the same man came back to the door. This time he pulled the door open and stood back for me to enter. Since I had no idea where I was going, I waited for him to push the door shut with an ominous click. I followed down a dingy hallway, lined with paneling and worn carpeting. I was thinking that crime truly didn’t pay if this was all they could afford.

  However, when we stopped at the doorway, the office inside was plush. The carpet was thick and cream-colored. The walls had been painted a dusky shade of blue that exuded peace and tranquility. The desk was huge, a mahogany affair with multiple drawers and room to file.

  Johnny Baird was sitting behind the desk. He was thin, with dark hair that had been slicked back, leaving a long forehead exposed. His brow was furrowed. I assumed that he didn’t regularly receive new mothers at his place of business.