by Dana Mentink
“All right, Noodles,” Trinidad said with a defeated sigh. “Let’s get ourselves eight birds, posthaste.”
It took more than an hour to rustle the rest of the chickens, except for one that they simply could not find anywhere until Noodles sniffed it out from its hiding spot under the front wheels of Mavis’s truck, where it had been the whole time. When the flock was contained and the crate tied carefully back in place, Mavis shook hands with his poultry wranglers and patted the dog before he drove away.
Trinidad and Quinn returned to the car with Noodles and found Doug in the backseat again.
“It’s four-forty,” Quinn said, consulting his watch.
Trinidad groaned. “We’ll have to wait for tomorrow now.”
She felt like smacking her head on the wheel. “But I’ve got that open house at noon. I still haven’t even borrowed the coolers. I don’t think I can get to the photo place until after that’s all cleaned up.”
“I’ll do it.” Quinn pointed at his cell screen. “They open at ten. I’ll get there first thing and meet you at the open house.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yep. Mondays are quiet at the farm. Doug can handle things until I get back. Right, Doug?”
Doug nodded and Trinidad noticed that Noodles had scooted over until he was pressed against Doug’s leg.
“You two are the best,” she said. “What would I ever do without you?”
“Somehow, you would survive. Oh, and that reminds me. Hold off on borrowing any coolers. We have a surprise for you. Can you drop us at my truck and follow us to the farm? We’ll show you.”
“The surprises are coming fast and furious around here. Can I take anymore?”
“I think you’ll like this one.” He paused. “How do you feel about oatmeal, anyway?”
Oatmeal? “Have you been cooking?”
Quinn mimed zipping his lips and tossing away the key.
Though she poked and guessed and pestered, Quinn would say no more about the surprise. Back in town she waited while Quinn and Doug changed vehicles, and then she followed Quinn’s truck until they rolled onto the grounds of Logan’s Nut Farm.
“All right,” he announced after parking the truck. “You stay right here with your eyes closed until Doug and I come back. No peeking, promise?”
“I promise,” she said, thinking maybe the two had whipped up a batch of oatmeal cookies or something. Sitting there with her lids pressed closed, her thoughts returned to Juliette. Had her photos captured something precious? Something that might have gotten mistakenly sent to the flea market? An item that had fallen into Kevin’s possession and resulted in his murder? The notion of having to wait to find out made her stomach twist. Every day that passed was another eternity in jail for an innocent young woman.
An ahooga startled her. Mouth agape, she beheld a sight that her brain could not at first decipher. Quinn sat in the driver’s seat of a boxy delivery-type truck painted a vibrant teal. On the top was a fiberglass mass about four feet across adorned with two dark, eyelike spots. It looked like an animated shower cap. Quinn honked the horn again and disappeared from the driver’s seat, a moment later prying open a side window and peering out. “Can I take your ice cream order, ma’am?”
She got out of the car, mouth still open in shock. “What in the world…?”
Now she could see that there was writing stenciled on the side. “Orville’s Oatmeal,” she read aloud.
Quinn and Doug climbed from the truck. “Guy who buys nuts from me used to be in the food truck business, but it was a flop.”
She gaped. “He tried to sell oatmeal from a food truck?”
“Hence the flop part.”
Her gaze traveled to the shower cap. “Oh, wait. That’s a bowl of oatmeal, right?”
“Supposed to be. Orville was pretty skilled with oatmeal, but I don’t think he exactly blazed a trail in high school sculpting class. Anyway, the truck is refrigerated, and he said you’re welcome to use it to transport your ice cream for the open house.”
She felt tears pricking. “He would really let me do that? For…for free?”
“No,” Quinn said.
Trinidad sighed. “How much does he want?”
“Two.”
“Two hundred?”
Doug shook his head.
“Two thousand?” she squeaked.
Quinn laughed. “Two pints…one chocolate and one vanilla.”
She gasped. “He will let me use his food truck in exchange for two pints of ice cream?”
“Well, I told him your ice cream was the best in the world.”
Her cheeks went hot. “I hope you didn’t oversell me.”
“Nah. His wife’s been on him for years to get rid of the truck anyway, so he figures it would be good to fire up the old vehicle and get all her juices flowing in preparation to sell her.”
She pressed a hand to her wildly beating heart. “That is just the nicest thing ever.” She wanted to continue to thank Quinn and Doug and the kindhearted ice cream–loving Orville, but Quinn was pulling her toward the inside to show her the setup.
The interior was all shiny stainless steel with a stove and oven on one side that she would probably not require. The other boasted a sink, ample refrigerator space, and most importantly, a large chest-type freezer.
Doug pointed to the front of the truck.
“Oh,” Quinn said. “Up in the driver’s area there’s plenty of room for Noodles to sack out in the passenger seat near the air-conditioner vent. Doug checked on that first.”
“It’s perfect,” she said.
“I dunno about perfect, since there’s that weird oatmeal man on the roof, but at least we can make sure they get the name right.” He handed a scroll to Doug, and they unrolled a hand-painted vinyl sign that read SHIMMY AND SHAKE SHOP.
“How lovely,” she breathed, fighting back tears.
“I only did the stenciling. Doug was the painter.”
Ducking his head, Doug looked at his shoes.
Trinidad could not wipe the smile off her face. “How can I ever repay you two?”
“Keep cranking out the vanilla, and we’ll call it even.”
“Deal,” she said, blinking back the tears.
“We’ll drive it over to your shop right now.”
“Excellent. I’m on my way there. I hired the twins to work a couple of overtime hours tonight.” She shivered. “I can’t believe opening is only days away.”
“And those fireworks,” Quinn said with a wince. “Doug doesn’t like them, either.”
“Noodles is right there with you. Anyway, I’ll pop in the coffee shop and tell Stan about the delay in picking up the photos.” She walked a step towards the car and then turned. Before she could second-guess herself, she gave Quinn a hug.
Then she touched Doug lightly on the arm with one finger. He did not react, but neither did he pull away.
“I never thought I would meet such amazing friends,” she said.
Quinn’s smile was sweet and wide. “Welcome to Sprocket,” he said. “There are some really good people here.”
Something warm and comforting filled her soul. Maybe she really had picked the right place to settle, murderers aside. Trinidad felt like she floated in a cloud of excitement as she drove back to Full of Beans. She spotted Stan through the front window of the coffee shop, wiping down the tables. A wave of guilt washed over her. Here she was celebrating the loan of a food truck when Juliette was languishing in jail enduring who knew what, and the photos that might help get her out were locked up until morning. She hustled inside, enveloped by the comforting aroma of coffee.
Stan drew her into his office and pulled the door closed. When she told him about the photo excursion delay, he listened, face grave.
“Did you see Juliette today?” she inquired.
He nodd
ed. “Yes, and I’m afraid this jail situation is wearing on her. She hasn’t been eating or sleeping.”
A plate of brownies flashed into her thoughts. Who wouldn’t be buoyed by nature’s most perfect food? “Can I…?”
He held up a hand. “No outside food, I’m afraid, otherwise I would be plying her with banana squares and pecan tarts.”
She slumped. “What can we do? There has to be something.”
“I’ve read the full police file. Juliette says she visited Kevin a few times at Popcorn Palace, and he let her stir the kettle on a lark. That’s how her fingerprints came to be on the murder weapon.”
“Well, that’s plausible, isn’t it? They were dating.”
“It would help if we could provide an alibi. So far, we have only one other witness reporting that she was arguing with Kevin at her office Wednesday morning.”
“Who said that? Who was the witness?”
“Warren Wheaton.”
“Did he explain why he was at the office at that time?”
“Says he was out for a drive and stopped, intending to see if he could use her bathroom, but he heard the yelling and decided not to.”
“Did anyone see him there?”
“Apparently not. Don’t trust him?”
“Not really,” she said, relating how she’d seen him driving past Store Some More when Noodles had bolted. “He just seems to turn up all over the place. I think he’s been skulking around Store Some More. He might have been the one trying to pick the lock the night before the auction.”
“What would his motive to murder Kevin be?”
She thought about Warren and Tanya together in her front yard. “I’ve heard he’s a gambler. He and Kevin used to play online poker together, according to Vince’s mother.”
Stan drummed his fingers on the desk. “Greed is a ‘one size fits all’ motive. Perhaps Warren owed Kevin a sum that he could not repay?”
“Might be, but I can’t shake the feeling that this has something to do with whatever was in Lupin’s storage unit.”
“Except that Juliette, Sonny, and Candy have all said it was nothing but junk.”
“So did Donald at the flea market,” she said with a groan.
“Right, so how would Kevin get his hands on something valuable when everyone else missed it? We need to pray that the photos Juliette took of the storage space contents will shed some light on the situation.”
“Exactly. Quinn’s going to pick them up as soon as Be Well opens tomorrow.”
“All right. I’ll continue to prepare her defense as best I can.”
She heaved herself out of the chair. “Thank you, Stan. See you in the morning.”
Reaching for the door, she saw a flicker of shadow, as if someone had been standing there, listening. Finger to her lips, she alerted Stan. Immediately he came to her side. She yanked open the door. No one was there. Hurrying down the hallway, she entered the main room of the coffee shop. It was empty except for Meg who was counting the money in the till, a pencil behind each ear.
“Did anyone come by here?” Stan asked.
Meg stopped counting. “Don’t think so, love, but I wasn’t paying much attention. They could have slipped out the back way.”
Trinidad and Stan hurried to the door that opened into a parking lot. The space was still and quiet, no sign that anyone had passed by recently. They listened in silence to the song of the cicadas.
“Is it possible you imagined it, Trinidad?”
“Anything is possible.”
The pause that expanded between them told her that Stan did not believe she’d imagined it, either.
He walked her to the curb and prepared to watch while she crossed the street to her shop. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.” His smile was confident, warm.
But with Juliette in jail and no way to prove her innocence, there seemed like an awful lot to worry about in Trinidad’s book.
The pictures would help.
They had to.
Chapter Eleven
After finishing up some computer orders, Trinidad heard Quinn arrive with the repurposed food truck. He showed her how to hook it up to the electricity and left with a jaunty wave. He’d gone to so much trouble…for her. It gave her a warm, fuzzy feeling as she set about churning new batches of vanilla bean, double chocolate, and strawberry flavors. She figured she’d stick with the ice cream trifecta for the open house. That was bound to please everybody. Her flyer would highlight the Freakshakes and the other more exotic choices like the key lime currently ripening in her freezer. She breathed in the luxurious smell of cream and sugar. The tiny spark of excitement about her fledgling business burned brightly, warring with her angst about Juliette. Waffle cones, she thought suddenly. That’s how she would serve the open house ice cream. Much cozier than paper cups.
“It’s time for you two to learn to make waffle cones,” she told Carlos and Diego when they showed up for their extra hours. “And how would you like to ride in my food truck tomorrow and help me scoop? Noon to three.” She saw the calculation in their shrewd teenage eyes.
“Normally we get done at 2:00,” Diego said.
The time had arrived to wheel and deal. “I’ll pay you extra for more overtime, and you can take the leftover ice cream home to share with your friends.”
Carlos gave her a thumbs-up. “Done.”
“Sweet,” Diego said. “Lead us to the waffle cone maker, Coach Jones. I know I’m gonna be amazing at this. Batter up!”
Laughing, she fired up the griddle. She and the twins donned aprons and hair nets, and she showed them how to make the dark batter, which was sweetened with local honey and a scoop of brown sugar. She demonstrated how to pour just the right amount of the mixture onto the heated griddle and let it cook before unsticking it with a plastic knife and quickly wrapping it around the cone mold. Only two overflows and one misshapen cone later and Diego was a pro.
She showed Carlos the chocolate recipe. Under her supervision, he prepped the next container of batter. Soon the shop was redolent with the delectable smell of crunchy, golden waffle cones. The twins happily sampled one of each.
“Awesome,” they both said at exactly the same moment.
When the cones had cooled, Carlos stacked them gingerly into cartons and carried them to the food truck.
He frowned as he examined the vehicle in the growing twilight. “It’s fine and all, Miss Jones, but why’s it got a bowl of sawdust on the top?”
“I think it’s scrambled eggs,” Diego corrected.
“Actually, it’s oatmeal,” she said, earning a sharp look from both of them.
“Should have gone with scrambled eggs,” Diego said with a solemn nod.
“Probably,” she agreed. “But it’s just a loaner, and it’s all we’ve got. Let’s get her buttoned up for tomorrow.” Rolls of paper towels, a half dozen ice cream scoops, packages of paper napkins, kitchen cleaner, and Doug’s trimmed fliers were stocked when the twins left. By then her body was clamoring for a rest.
In an effort to soothe her complaining feet, she eased down on the floor next to Noodles. She scratched him behind the ears until he fluffed his lips in pleasure. “You’re really patient to sit here for so long watching the world go by, Noodles. Other dogs would be demanding coffee breaks and vacation days.”
Noodles offered his tummy for scratching. As she stroked his velvet belly, a white piece of paper peeking from underneath his bean bag caught her attention. She pulled out an electric bill. “Oh, dear.”
Reaching in deeper, she retrieved four more envelopes. “So that’s where the mail’s gotten,” she groaned. “I thought the bill collectors were taking the week off.” She sighed and rubbed his head. “You’ve been helping again, haven’t you?”
He swiped a tongue across her cheek.
Noodles would often assign h
imself random jobs. When she’d first adopted him, he would cheerfully abscond with every writing utensil he could find, secreting them behind a potted silk ficus without her knowledge. When she’d finally cry out, “Where have all the pencils gone?” Noodles would magically produce one with Houdini-like aplomb. Possibly, he was ensuring his own job security.
In this case, he had been efficiently collecting the mail that had been slid through the slot and packing it away under his dog bed. Perhaps he’d picked up on her tension when she perused the bills. If only the debts could just be shoved under a cushion and forgotten. She thumbed through the half dozen envelopes politely demanding payment for services rendered. “Thanks, Noodles, but it’s harder to make bills disappear than pencils.”
He offered a lick to her wrist and she reciprocated with a chin scratch.
Underneath the bills was a postcard capturing a colorful hodgepodge of houses edging a cerulean sea. She flipped it over to read the message from her mother.
“Off to cruise the Greek Isles with Aunt Frida. The plumbing on the ship is in primo condition. Your father would have approved. Love and hugs, Mother.”
Trinidad laughed out loud. Her father had earned a living in his early years apprenticing as a plumber on various cruise ships. It was how he’d met her mother Claudia. Opposites did indeed attract and held the two together until her father passed away. For all his days, her father had never lost his zeal for his craft, nor had her mother’s passion for travel subsided. Even on their thirtieth anniversary cruise to France her mother had insisted on, her father had managed to meet the lead plumber and score himself a tour around the belly of the floating beast while his wife enjoyed a facial and massage. Their marriage was a study in contrasts, but the one thing they had in common was complete devotion to each other.
She sighed, wondering if she would ever experience such a thing. An image of Quinn flashed in her mind, but she promptly squashed it. There was no room in her life for anything but friendships. “Just you and me and a truckful of ice cream. Right, Noodles?”
The dog shook his ears.
On impulse, she pulled her cell phone from her pocket and dialed. Three rings, then four. Papa Luis did not answer, and neither did her brother Yolo. Last time she’d called, Papa had worked overtime to convince her to come back to Miami. He wanted to introduce her to Len the fishmonger. “A real man who pays his taxes and changes his own oil. He smells a little like fish, but happily you like seafood, right? It is fortuitous.”