MURDER TO GO (Food Truck Mysteries Book 1) (12 page)

Danvers used the crate that Land had brought with him to enter the truck. I pulled myself up as well, but he indicated that I shouldn’t come in. He walked around the inside of the food truck. I pointed out where I’d hidden and how my refuge had kept me safe from the bullets. I told him of my bullet count, and he wrote all of it down.

Of course, since the food truck had been the scene of a crime, it was shut down for the morning. I had the shame of having to point my regulars down to Land’s new truck, Meat Treats. The crowd down at the competition was even larger than it had been when I’d poached the spot.

I had to accept the fact that Land would not be coming back. I had harbored a small hope that Meat Treats would crash and burn given that the truck had been the scene of a murder, but apparently caffeine-craving brains had short memories. Given that the competition—my truck—had now been the scene of an attempted homicide, the choices were about even again.

By the time the crime scene investigators had finished with the truck it was nearly 11:30. The damage was relatively small, given what had happened. I had lost some ingredients and a few bowls. The rest of the kitchen area was intact.

They’d taken all of the gun casings as well, hoping that they could get some information about the gun from the shells, but I didn’t hold out much hope. The people behind this had been smart enough to fool the police so far. I figured that they hadn’t become sloppy at this point.

I called it a day and drove the truck back to the lot. However, I didn’t go home. I went back to Elm Street and parked my car. I was going to get some answers. Meat Treats had closed up, but the truck still stood in its lucrative spot. I knocked on the door and waited.

Land opened the door wide and looked at me. I was a bit surprised. Given what had happened to me this morning, I would have thought that he would have been more careful, but he likely had the notion that I’d done something to deserve bullets under the door. “Kinda busy here,” he said, walking back to the sink area.

“Here’s my deal. I’ll help you clean up this week at the end of each day and, in return, you’re going to give me the answers to any questions that I ask. Not half-truths, not lies, not omissions, but out-and-out nothing but the truth. Deal?”

He stared at me for a good minute before he answered. “What makes you think that I’m not telling the truth?”

I chose my words wisely. “Experience. Two women are in a truck for hours at a time with you, and you don’t learn anything and you don’t hear anything? I find that very difficult to believe. At some point, one or both of them had to slip and say something that could be a clue to what’s going on here.”

“So why should I tell you anything?” he asked. He folded his arms across his chest as if he’d already made up his mind to tell me nothing.

“First, I offered to help you for the first week. You have to admit that’s a sweet offer. I can bet you that Tony Samples didn’t offer to swing by and wash for you.” I raised an eyebrow to remind him that I did this every day when we worked together.

“True, but that’s hardly enough to give up everything I know.”

“Don’t tell me that you’ve forgotten about my offer to take you back if this doesn’t work out? I gave you this chance, and you know it. I didn’t make that offer to get something in return, but what happened today changed the stakes here. I got shot at—repeatedly—and I don’t like it one bit. I want to put a stop to this.”

Land looked at me and uncrossed his arms. “I understand. I wouldn’t like it either. So what’s your first question? And don’t forget to scrub the outside and the inside of the pans. You tend to go too fast on your own pans. I won’t have that here.”

I went to the sink and began my extra duty. “So tell me about the relationship between my aunt and Shirley? What was it like?”

Land cleared his throat. He looked a little uncomfortable. I wondered if it was a cultural thing, talking about two women in a relationship, or if he was concerned that I wasn’t going to like what I was going to hear. So I waited.

Finally, he spoke. “Your aunt acted like a little schoolgirl around Shirley. That’s probably the best way to describe it. A schoolgirl with a crush. Shirley was definitely in charge in that relationship. If there was something shady going on with the food truck, Shirley would have been the instigator of whatever it was.”

I was a bit surprised. Everyone else had played the “maybe they are, maybe they aren’t” game, but Land was straightforward in his comments. I appreciated the candor. “So what do you think they were up to? Did Alice ever say anything about it?”

Land thought before he spoke. “They were up to something. I don’t think it was something that was totally illegal. Alice wouldn’t have done that. I believe she did have her limits, and Shirley knew that. But, I think that something was going on. They were always sneaking around and whispering. It was like a treasure hunt or one of those scavenger hunt things where you have to look at clues and figure out what they’re supposed to mean. I tried one of those once and hated it.”

I could easily see Land not enjoying something that was, at its heart, frivolity. I wondered what my aunt had been up to. Something that was not illegal, but still not completely on the up and up. While I wanted to believe the best of my aunt, my father had pointed out that the transaction would have likely been flagged if it were being scrutinized by a forensic accountant. So Shirley had convinced my aunt to do this. Love could take you down the wrong path sometimes.

“What else do you want to know?” Land asked, probably afraid that I would now take the information and skip out on the offer to help clean.

I started doing some dishes in the sink to show him that I was honest in my offer. “I still don’t know where they got the money to buy the truck and get it back into shape. The ‘before’ pictures aren’t very attractive.”

Land shrugged. “I asked them once, and they said it was a secret. After that, I stopped trying to figure out what was going on. After Shirley passed away, Alice told me that I’d get the truck, probably because she wanted me to keep my mouth closed about whatever they’d been doing here.”

I recalled the nephew of the previous owner and how he’d been caught trying to help a gang of thieves. I wondered if perhaps the truck had been used for something similar with my aunt. The food truck had been parked near the government buildings. Was there a particular reason for that beyond the foot traffic? Could they have been involved with a government plot in some way? I had to admit that even the most wild of plots seemed somewhat possible at this point. My aunt had definitely been in this over her head.

“I’m just curious. Why would Alice give it away to one of us rather than back to the person who had funded the effort? I mean, the mystery man paid for the whole thing. He should have had a rightful claim to the truck if they got the money from him.”

Land looked at me with confusion. “Maybe he wanted you to have it. You’re young and don’t have much of a reputation.”

I cringed, thinking that he had me pegged there. I was just known as the kid who sat on her parents’ couch. Someone wouldn’t have to go a long way to discredit me. A food truck of questionable origins was a step up on my social ladder.

“So you’re saying that it could be someone older. What about those two men who signed the will? Maybe it could have been one of them?” I was trying to think of old men who had been associated with the food truck.

Land sighed. “It would have to be the first one, Jones. He was old, but when people die in their 90s, no one asks questions. They just shrug and say that he was old. I could poison him six different ways and I’d get away with it, because no one would suspect his death was anything but natural.”

Before I could speak, he burst out laughing. “Listen to me. You have me talking about killing little old men. My family warned me that America was a violent place, but I don’t think this is what they had in mind. I’m glad that they don’t get to hear me talk like this.”

I liked the sound of his laugh. It was warm and throaty. I hadn’t heard too much of it when he’d worked for me, but now he seemed much more at ease with himself. I guess that running his own truck suited him.

“You have some good ideas. You would have made a great killer, no matter what your parents think.” I gave him a small nod as I finished the dishes and ran some water to wash out the sink. The action reminded me of my close brush with death earlier in the day, and a shiver ran through my entire body.

“Are you okay?” Land asked, approaching me.

“Just remembering my last close encounter with a sink,” I told him. For a change, I was honest with him. I left the sarcasm in my own truck.

He smiled down at me. His eyes twinkled, and his grin grew wider. “I’m glad you’re okay, and I’m glad I was able to help even if I did end up with a knot on my head.” Just as quickly as the moment had begun, it ended. His eyes grew distant and he stepped back from me. No explanation or excuse. He just moved back to where he’d started.

I was confused to say the least. I’d been feeling a little warm in that confined space with him grinning at me, which was a nice change and one I could indulge now that we didn’t work together. However, I had no idea what was going on in his head.

I went back to my normal routine from my truck with Land. I counted out the cash and receipts. I totaled the money for the day and prepped a bag to deposit. I got the cash drawer ready for the morning. All in silence.

Land didn’t look at me as he cleaned the prep surfaces. He went about his business as though he were wearing headphones.

However, I decided that if I was going to work this hard for someone else’s truck, I was going to get my money’s worth out of my questioning. “Why did my aunt go with hot dogs? I mean, business is good, but it’s limiting.”

He didn’t look up. “Allergies. Shirley was deathly allergic to peanuts. You’d be surprised how many foods contain traces of peanuts. They’re in oils and several entrees. Chinese food has them. It’s ridiculous. When we went to make a menu, we had to be careful what we chose. That was one reason I made several of the condiments myself. It was habit by the time you came here, and the customers expected it.”

I nodded. I remembered Alice having a similar condition. One time we’d gone to the movies and someone at the matinee had thrown shells on the floor. She’d swollen up like a balloon to my lasting horror. She’d been taken to the hospital in an ambulance, but she’d deflated once the peanuts were out of the picture. They still kept her there overnight. We’d been a DVD family after that.

“Do you think it’s possible that they were related? After all, they have a similar health condition that’s not too common?”

Land snickered. “No, they were not related. Trust me on this one. They were girlfriends. They might have both had the same condition, but that was a fluke—not a genetic link. You don’t have it, and you’re Alice’s family.”

He was right there. I was still trying to make a pattern of all I knew. However, there seemed to be so many things working at cross-purposes that I couldn’t get my finger on any one item and see that it pointed me in the correct direction. It was like ping-pong.

“So what do you think about a breakfast menu?” I asked, thinking back to my meeting with my father. If that was the only reason I was limiting myself on the menu, I could easily expand now.

“For you?” he asked. “I would be careful. I’d make sure that you stick to the menu you have for a few weeks. You’ve just added a lot of additional work to your load. You have to do everything that you did, and now you have to do everything that I did too. That’s a lot for one person.”

I nodded. I was actually glad to have a couple of days off until the police finished with the food truck. I knew that I’d be swamped as soon as I re-opened. I’d be coming in an hour or two earlier and leaving later than before. The food truck was going to consume my life, such as it was. “I just wondered. I was thinking about it the other day.”

“Stick to the basics for now. I’ve seen a lot of places go under because they want to keep messing with the menu. That’s a beginner’s mistake.”

“Are you sticking with the Meat Treats menu?” I asked. “It was a lot of fried food and bad coffee as I recall.”

Land laughed again. I tingled a bit at the sound of it, which was not a good thing in my book. Even if we were no longer boss and employee, I was pretty certain that he didn’t see me that way. No use getting my hopes up for something that wouldn’t happen.

“No, I’m changing things here. I’m improving the coffee, and we’ll be making a variety of meat recipes that don’t involve grease and lard. They still used that stuff; it’s a heart attack in a can.” He frowned as he continued to clean the surfaces. This was probably the most we’d ever talked during the cleanup portion of the day. I enjoyed the easy banter and the variety of topics. This is what I was giving up when I told Land I would let him go, and when I gave him the safety net of taking him back if something went wrong. I was sad for a moment, thinking I’d lost something I didn’t even know that I had. Still it was the right thing to do, and I knew it.

We finished the cleaning and I promised to be back tomorrow afternoon to help. The police had estimated that I wouldn’t be back in business for two more days, so I knew I could easily honor the promise for a few more days without breaking a sweat.

I drove home, wondering about the decisions that had been made with the truck. Someone had bought the truck, but it hadn’t been bequeathed to him. The truck had passed through multiple owners and no one seemed to have earned anywhere near enough profit to make the initial investment back.