THE REAL GYRO (Food Truck Mysteries Book 4) (5 page)

I was at the food truck a few minutes later than normal. I was a bit concerned because usually, if I was running late, Land would pick up the truck and take it to the location on Elm Street. However, I’d not heard from him that morning. I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Either he was going to call in sick again, which left me alone, or he was just running late.

I’d already begun the preparation of the coffee when he turned up. He looked better than he had, but he still had signs of sleep deprivation. His eyes were sunk in, and his pallor was grayer than normal. Even so, he still looked better than most of the well-rested men I knew.

“Good morning, sunshine,” I said in my best faux-cheery voice. After working together almost a year, Land knew that I was anything but cheery at that time of morning. He was usually more awake and articulate than I was at that hour. “You look better,” I added.

He shrugged, a common communication device on his part. “Danvers came over later in the evening, and he wouldn’t leave. He wanted to talk about the surveillance and the new aspects of the courier plan. I just don’t see what we have to go on now that Janelle is dead.”

“Did he tell you anything about the murder? What does he think happened?” I kept working on the coffee, but I wanted to stop and hear everything.

“The police already had information on her family and friends—from the other investigation—so they’ve been contacted. The family isn’t all that close, so they have no ideas about additional keys or ways into the food truck. From what I can gather from Danvers, they weren’t all that pleased with her choice of careers. As it stands, the only thing they have is a locked room. Danvers kept saying that the police only have so much time to figure out how this was done, or they might have to call it a suicide and move on to other cases.”

“Can they do that?” I asked. “Call it something if it’s not.”

Land chuckled. “They can. If they can’t find any evidence to point to homicide or they can’t find a way to explain the door, they’ll have to call it suicide. There’s no way that they could take it to court, and then have a lawyer ask how their client was supposed to get into the truck and back out without a key. The defendant would be exonerated in no time.”

“Was the ME any help?” I asked, hoping for something to build on. My night, while pleasant, hadn’t netted any new information on the case either. I wanted some leads to follow up on.

“One gun shot at close range. The murder occurred about two hours before you found her, so—give or take—noon.”

“Noon? How does that make sense?” I asked. “Her food truck should have been open and ready for business at noon. Instead the ME is saying that she was being shot, which almost assuredly means that the window was closed. I had a new line of inquiry as well. I would ask some of my customers if they’d noticed Holding Out for a Gyro that morning and whether or not the window had been open at some point before noon.

I was beginning to have a feeling that if I solved some of these other minor mysteries that I could clear up the question about the locked food truck. If Janelle had been killed earlier, then the window would still be down and locked. That might explain part of the issue. However, I wondered under what circumstances the ME could be mistaken about the time of death. I knew of ways to make a body temperature get cooler faster, but I wasn’t sure about how to keep it warm. It wasn’t as if the killer could have kept her in the oven on warm.

That line of thought made me jump to another topic. Perhaps I could better tell the time of death from the state of the kitchen. How far had she been in preparing the day’s fare? Those gyros wouldn’t make themselves. “That reminds me—did they find any food at the scene? Was she prepped and ready to go?”

“There was meat on the griddle, and some other prep work done. However, the meat had been turned off at some point prior to the murder. Danvers can’t know if it was before or after the crime.” Land’s eyes lit up, which told me that he was awake enough to see where my thoughts were heading.

“Why would the killer care if she was shot or she burned to death? Dead is dead, right?”

“If the meat had been left on the grill, the fat and grease would have caught fire at some point, and the smoke would have called attention to the murder. If the fire department had been called to the scene, they might not have looked around to see if the place was locked up tight. The killer wanted the body to be found later rather than sooner, and he had planned this out. He wanted the crime to be impossible. Like I said, at this point there’s no way it could come to trial, even if they find evidence of who did this.”

That fit in with my theory. If the body was discovered later, then it would be even harder to determine the exact time of death. The state of the kitchen could be a clue for me, or a way to throw the police off the track of the real time of death.

“Are you just being your normal sexist self or is there some reason you keep using the word ‘he’?” I asked, wondering about his thought patterns.

Land shrugged. “Habit. English doesn’t have a nice word for he or she.”

He was right, so I let it slide. It was amazing how sometimes he noticed things about English that I didn’t bother to see.

“What about the till? If she’d been open, there would have been money in the till, right?” I asked, hoping to find out more.

“Yeah, the till was full. So that means that either she’d been open at some point, or she had a very full drawer from the previous day. Danvers is having a forensic accountant look at it and see if the food truck was making money.”

“That’s good,” I said, “because I had an idea last night.”

Land raised an eyebrow, which signaled that he was interested in hearing more.

“With Janelle gone, I’m going to be looking into how and when she bought the truck. I was thinking that such an investigation could be considered due diligence for buying the truck, especially if the accountant says the food truck was making money.”

Land actually grinned at me, but the smile only lasted a minute. “Wait, don’t you think you’ll raise some suspicion if you buy a competitor’s truck right after that competitor dies under mysterious circumstances?”

I sighed. “That’s why I want to get this mess wrapped up quickly. We could have the truck running in no time, especially if we bought the permits with the truck. And after all, we’d already been looking at the truck until she outbid us in the middle of the process.” Permits had been a major pitfall in my aunt’s journey to get her truck up and operational. I really didn’t relish going through the same course.

Land looked thoughtful for a minute. “That might work. You’d have a way in with the family and could learn a lot more than we could without a subpoena.” I was a bit surprised that Land was talking like a policeman. He must be in pretty deep with Detective Danvers on this case if he was thinking in terms of legal documents.

“I was thinking that I’d run it past Danvers. I thought that might lift some of the suspicion off me, if I do this.” I wanted to let Danvers know that I was going to beat him to the punch in this matter and keep the credit for myself this time.

“Of course. He’ll just scratch you off the suspect list.” While Land grumbled about the English language at times, he had mastered sarcasm quickly.

In the end, Land texted Danvers, who came out after lunch. He approved the general plan that I was to approach Janelle’s parents—who had received everything since she had not created a will—about buying the food truck. That would give me an opportunity to review all the paperwork for the truck and possibly turn up something that might help the case. Danvers had been a little too interested in the fact that Janelle had taken the truck from under our noses, but I played it off as if it wasn’t something to care about.

After he left, Land looked at me. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Buy another truck? We’ve been talking about it for ages,” I said, trying to deflect the real question.

“You know what I mean. Get involved in a crime again,” Land said, his face looking stern.

“How are you at gyros?” I asked. “I can loan you Carter for a few days, if you need some extra help.”

Land snorted. “You can keep him. I’ll be fine. Maybe I can get Danvers to help me clean up the truck. It was a crime scene and all.”

I had to admit that the thought of Jax Danvers cleaning would be something new to behold. His hands and nails were far nicer than mine were.

The next couple of days passed quickly. The funeral for Janelle Nolan was held. We chose not to go. I hadn’t known her well in life, and the reminder that I was the one who found her would be an unpleasant thought on the day of her funeral. The press had taken an interest in the unsolved, impossible crime, and I thought it best to keep my distance. I did buy copies of the two Capital City newspapers and read all the articles on the murder. They had little in them that I didn’t know already.

On the Friday after the funeral, I decided to pay a visit to the family. The case had all but dried up. The Capital City newspapers had even stopped reporting on it. Land and Danvers wanted me to wear a wire, but I pointed out that my phone has an audio recorder so that I could tape the conversation if I thought it relevant.

I knocked on the door of the Nolan home after work. I’d gone home, taken a shower, and dressed in one of the suits I’d worn to interviews just out of college. I looked like the consummate professional. I was carrying a satchel, which mainly had empty folders and virgin notepads. Even so, I exuded business and money.

The Nolans’ home was exquisite from the outside. It was a large two-story home in one of the nicer neighborhoods of Capital City. I had been through the area a few times, but my friends certainly couldn’t afford to live there. We were all still struggling to make ends meet.

A woman answered the door, and I gave my explanation for visiting. After I was done, she told me that she was the maid, which meant I’d have to restart the entire spiel over again with the parents. The maid stashed me in the entryway and went off in search of someone who might care.

Another woman came into the entryway. She was exotic looking, beautiful with her dark hair and eyes. Her skin was a dusky color that I couldn’t place in terms of nationality. I remembered Danvers talking about Janelle’s involvement with a foreign government, and I wondered if Janelle’s mother hailed from that same nation. It would explain the loyalty to another country.

“How can I help you?” the woman said. Her voice was husky and soft. I thought there was a trace of an accent, but again I couldn’t place it.

I went into my spiel for real this time, explaining that I operated a food truck in the same vicinity as Janelle’s truck. I gave her the details about how we wanted to expand our operation and thought that we might be able to make a deal to help both of us. I handed her a business card and a brochure I’d had made to advertise Dogs on the Roll. She scanned the documents quickly and put them on a nearby end table.

Her eyes said nothing. “You want to buy my daughter’s food truck?”

I nodded. “Of course, I’d need to go through her financial records, the permits for the truck, and the information on the provenance of the truck first.”

She nodded. “My husband and I have just been discussing what to do with that boondoggle,” she replied. “The paperwork is all in order. I can give you a copy of the permits and the information on Janelle’s purchase of the truck. I don’t have the numbers yet for the truck since it opened.”

I nodded. “If I could get those, I could certainly get started on the due diligence for a sale. May I ask if anyone else has approached you yet about the truck?” One thought I’d had was that someone had killed Janelle for the truck. I remembered the card reader who said that the food truck was haunted. I thought now that she’d been close to the truth.

Mrs. Nolan rolled her eyes. “No. My husband and I weren’t sure that anyone would be interested in it, and we had no desire to continue a food service business.”

With the contempt in her voice, I wondered if she’d forgotten to whom she was speaking. She was practically insulting me to my face.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I’ll be right back with the papers.”

I took the time to snoop around. A long table by the window held a number of family photos, and I studied each one. If the number of photos was any indication, the Nolans were a close family. I saw three photos of Janelle with her parents. Her father had definitely had the dominant genes. He had the same perky smile and blond hair as his daughter.

There were a number of vacation shots on the table. I scanned through them, trying to identify the location, thinking that it might help me identify the mother’s nationality. A few of the photos had snowcapped mountains in the background, and one photo had a red flag with a single green star in the center—Morocco. A friend of mine had taken a college trip to Morocco during her senior year, and I remembered the rather subdued flag compared to our own. I could ask Land about Morocco and any type of unrest in Northern Africa.

I hurried to inspect the rest of the photos. Two more of the photos showed another man, who I assumed to be her brother. The man resembled his mother more than his father. He shared the same dusky complexion and dark hair. He wasn’t in the vacation shots, but there was a more formal portrait of the family with him. Janelle appeared to be in high school in that photo, and so I guessed it to be about a decade old.