I opened the window as soon as the coffee was ready. We had three customers in line, waiting. I served them as quickly as possible and kept at it for the next hour. The coffee customers gave way to the lunch crowd. It was nearly 1pm by the time that lunch crowd began to thin out.
I knew it was no coincidence that Detective Jax Danvers of the local police managed to stop by just as the crowd died down. Even though he ordered a hot dog with salsa and onions, I knew there was an ulterior motive behind his actions. I had crossed paths with Danvers before, when food truck owners were being bumped off. I’d solved the crimes and managed to come out of the experience alive and slightly better known as a result. As a result, Danvers always kept an eye on me, as if I would try to butt into any of his other open cases.
“How goes the reality show?” he asked around a mouthful of bun and hot dog.
I shrugged. “It’s fine. We won the last challenge.” Land helpfully held up a pot that we’d won in the challenge. I neglected to mention why we were missing our third box of kitchenware. I didn’t want to give him any hint that things weren’t rosy in my world. He’d suspect that I’d be donning my detective gear to look around if that were the case.
“Congratulations. That’s pretty impressive.” He took a moment to fill his mouth again and chew. He didn’t seem in a hurry to leave, and the crowd had died down to the point that no one was rushing him out of line.
“Thanks. We served a Basque menu courtesy of my Basque chef.” I smiled, even though I knew that Danvers wanted something from me. For starters, I was proud of what I’d accomplished with the dishes. I’d been giving thought to a new menu and Basque cuisine had done well. Additionally, the smile always played around my lips with Danvers came around. He was attractive and muscular—and very single. Land had warned me about playing nice with the detective, but I figured that Land had said nothing about flirting, so I did. Land had never told me what, exactly, he’d meant or how he knew Danvers, so I chose to ignore his comments for the most part.
“I’m sure that brought out some hard feelings from the other contestants. I mean, the fact that you won and they didn’t. I’ve heard that those shows can get kind of cutthroat.”
And there you had it. Danvers knew something about the events of this morning or thought he knew something about it. So he was going to hint around.
“Yeah, they can be. Some of the contestants are over the top,” I agreed. If nothing else, I’d learned from experience that I wanted Danvers to put as many cards on the table as I did before I gave him any information. I wanted to know who had informed him about the situation on the set and what his role was in the matter. He typically worked homicide, and a nasty prank hardly rose to the level of his usual cases. I couldn’t conceive that the Capital City police would want to waste Danvers on a couple of cups of urine and some nasty notes.
“Yeah. Have you seen much of that on set?” he asked. He started telling me about another reality show where two contestants had been sleeping together and had plotted to tag team the others to knock them out of the race. I wondered if he was just making this up, or if he’d suddenly taken up watching TMZ. I tried to imagine Danvers sitting at home, trying to catch up on all of his reality shows.
“A little. Sometimes the strategy can be to eliminate someone from the competition rather than to win on your own merits, but I haven’t seen that in this competition yet.” I didn’t add that someone had eliminated all over my pots and pans, but sometimes silence is golden.
Danvers finished the hot dog and chewed. He took his time in responding. “I was just wondering if I needed to take a visit to the set. I’ve heard a few things that don’t sound good. I’d rather tamp down on this now, rather than wait until it becomes a real problem.”
Finally, I thought, he’s heard things, plural, which meant that our problem this morning was part of a larger pattern. No wonder he was here asking questions. Now I wasn’t sure if he’d heard about the incident this morning or not. I turned to look at Land. Even though I had yet to hear any details about the relationship, apparently Land and Danvers knew each other prior to my inheriting the food truck. While I couldn’t conceive of the situation, I sometimes looked to Land for help in dealing with Danvers.
“Someone peed on our prizes this morning,” Land said. “We had three boxes of pots and pans. They peed in one of the boxes this morning and left it for us.”
Danvers made a face.
“We left the box at the set. We just took the non-peed-upon cookware.” Land rolled his eyes like a detective should be able to figure this out without prompting.
“Any thoughts on who might have done this?” Danvers had dropped the pretense of coming for a bite to eat and had put on his official face.
“Betty Troxler came to mind. She lost the challenge yesterday and was booted off the show,” I added. If Land was telling all, I figured I might as well jump in as well. Danvers was a very attractive man, and I thought his attention should be on me rather than on Land anyway.
“Yeah, her name came up more than once,” Danvers said.
Noting that he’d indicated another set of incidents, I wondered why we hadn’t heard about these on set. Was I just out of the loop, or had someone at the production company kept a lid on this? I figured that unless I told someone in the competition, no one else would likely ever know about what had happened to me. The producers did not share any on-set gossip with the contestants.
“So how many incidents are we talking here?” I asked, figuring that the best way to find out something was to ask. At the very worst, he would refuse to answer; however, since he’d come here asking questions, he might indulge me.
“Seven so far. Eight if we include your urination.” He met my gaze for a second, and I wondered if we’d just had a moment.
I raised my eyebrows. “Wow, that’s a lot. We haven’t heard anything about it on set. I suppose they’re keeping it swept under the rug.”
Danvers looked at me. “Did whoever peed on your stuff leave a note? We’ve had a few other issues with threats and general nastiness.”
I handed over the note, thinking that Land had started this full cooperation tactic. I figured that if he wanted me stop that he would give me some kind of sign. Danvers read the note and put it in his pocket. “It’s a lot like the other notes,” he said. “Any idea how you’ll pay for it?”
I shrugged. “I just assumed that it was a cliché meant to scare us. I didn’t really think that anything worse than urine on the kitchenware would happen.”
“Yeah, it appears that someone, or some group of people, is pretty disgruntled on the show. The producers asked me to look into it.”
“A homicide detective?” Land asked. “Isn’t that a little extreme?”
“It’s a high profile case, and the captain wanted a detective on the case who might have an in with the cast or crew.” Danvers looked around to see if anyone was around. Since he’d already spoken, it seemed a little late for that.
“So you mean us?” I said. Danvers was going to use our food truck as a form of bait, apparently, to get a nasty poison pen writer to come out in the open. I didn’t like the idea of jeopardizing our place in the contest to help the police. Let them pick another food truck, and just let us sail on to victory.
“The captain mentioned you by name, so yeah.” Danvers tried to give me a smile, but I wasn’t having any of it. His flirting typically came when he wanted me to help him.
“Great. So what do you want to do? Review every piece of film that we’re in? Ask if we’ve seen anything unusual?”
Danvers shook his head. “No, nothing like that. For now, I’m just hoping that you pass on anything—impressions you have or anything you hear or see on the set. If it comes to it, I might want to be on the truck for an episode or two.”
I furrowed my brows and looked hard at him. “Are you sure that you’re not just doing this to get on television? You’re starting to sound like Betty.”
“Betty was an
aspiring celebrity?” Danvers asked as he pulled out his notebook. When the notebook came out, it was officially police business.
I told him of several of the encounters with Betty and her general behavior on set. He took some notes as I talked. In summarizing what she’d done, the events seemed minor compared to what Danvers was suggesting. I doubted that she would jeopardize being on the episodes just to get back at the other contestants. It seemed like overkill, even for her.
In return, Danvers listed the other incidents to date. Most of them were harmless. Grease left on a burner that ignited when the stove was turned on. While if it had been done on a larger scale, it might have been dangerous; since only a few tablespoons of grease had been used, it was just enough to cause consternation. All the spoons had been removed from Jerry’s truck. The change had been removed from another truck, which made for a sticky time until the truck had moved to charging a flat rate for their food.
The events seemed more like the work of a gremlin than a serious threat to the program. None of them were earthshattering or detrimental to the challenges. They were mainly nuisances that hurt the spirit and will power of the individual teams. I wondered what the purpose of the pranks was if not to give the person behind them a leg up in the competition.
We closed up the truck for the afternoon. I noticed that despite all of Danvers’ talk about helping out on the food truck, he made no effort to help us with the day’s cleanup. We finished the cleanup and put the truck away for the day.
Chapter 4
The next challenge wasn’t until Friday, so I had three days to get my blood pressure back to normal. The daily routine was easy for me, and I tried not to think of what Danvers had said about the pranks. The thought of being caught up in someone’s sophomoric antics didn’t make me feel good about the competition or myself.
Business at our normal location had picked up. I counted about 50 new patrons to the truck. They asked about the contest, who was winning and about Johnny Ruck. I could answer the last question, but we were strictly forbidden from talking about the proceedings on the set or during each challenge. Nothing would kill a reality show like someone telling the results before people could watch it during the show.
However, Friday came much too early. Land and I returned to the set. Marsha was standing guard at the door. “Your new pots and pans are in your dressing room,” she said. She didn’t mention a thing about why we needed a new box of pans after the other day. I didn’t press the matter with her either. There was no explanation of who had done this or what steps might be taken to make sure it didn’t happen again. She was not the person in charge that should have been handling this issue. “Don’t forget the pre-challenge interview in the green room,” she said, pointing down the hallway to the door on the right.
I nodded, and Land acted as if she hadn’t said a word. I had noticed that on set his accent was far more pronounced than it was on a typical day. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to get out of speaking in public, or if someone had told him that the accent was attractive. In either case, he turned it up on days when we were on set.
We went into the green room and sat down. A button to operate the camera sat on top of one of the stools, and I turned it on. I always felt stupid when I was forced to talk to this camera. It felt so much like I was so overly impressed with myself that I needed to share my every thought with a camera. I made a few comments about having won the previous challenge and then went on to talk about how we had immunity for this week. “Though of course, we’ll do our best to win the challenge. I don’t want to sit on my laurels.” I’d heard this statement made on other reality shows, and now was my chance to use it.
Land muttered something with his accent running full-tilt. No one ever asked him to repeat himself, feeling it their own failing for not understanding the first time. He talked about his excitement with the new pots and pans.
Having done our duty, we went to the set where several of the contestants were already waiting. Jerry waved as we approached. He was talking to Annabella, one of the taco truck drivers. I’d finally pulled out the packet given to us when we started the reality show that had all of the other contestants on it. I thought that if I was going to be spying on them for Danvers, then perhaps I needed to know their names. Danvers would not be impressed with me identifying a suspect as Taco Owner #1.
Annabella was a large blousy woman who wore entirely too much make-up and too little clothing. Her typical outfit was a pair of dark shorts, a change belt, and a t-shirt that was at least two sizes too small for her. I don’t know if she thought that brought in business. I wasn’t sure, because I wasn’t the business she’d be likely to bring in with that outfit. She was talking with her hands, waving them in the air as if she had just twirled a pizza and was waiting for it to come down from its flight. Apparently, she was unhappy about something, and I decided that I needed to know what.
I motioned to Land, who had all the subtlety of a moose, as he moved toward them. I gave him a look, but he didn’t seem to care. He was more interested in getting as close as possible. Fortunately for him, Annabella found him very attractive and quickly turned so that Land could be a part of the conversation. “Have you heard about these nasty notes that have been going around? It’s just terrible. I’ve been looking forward to being on this show for ages, and now I just feel it’s spoiled. I wanted my win to be clean and fair, but now I’m beginning to think that whoever wins is going to be accused of being the nasty person behind all of this.”
She’d gone on long enough that Land didn’t think an answer was required. He just nodded and smiled.
Annabella continued. “I don’t like to complain, but frankly the show needs to do a better job of policing the contestants. Everything should be fair and square so the best woman wins.” She flashed a smile at Land to show him that her sentiments were meant with no hard feelings. I wondered again who had contacted Danvers so that he was now showing an interest in this case. I doubted that it was Annabella; for all of her talk, she didn’t seem like the type who could get the police to do her bidding.
Jerry looked at me. “Have you had any run-ins with the poison pen writer?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, he left us a little gift when we won the last challenge.” I went on to explain how the pots had been befouled and the note we’d received.
Annabella wrinkled up her nose. “That’s terrible. How horrible. These pranks are just getting worse. Something needs to be done.”
“Something is being done. Don’t worry about it.” Land’s words shocked the lady into silence for a moment.
“Well, I should hope so,” she said, but any other thoughts were cut off by the entrance of Johnny Ruck to the set.
“Well, hello, hello,” he said as the stage lights all went on. “Welcome back for a new week and another challenge. I hope you’ve all had time to rest up for what’s in store.” He flashed a smile at the camera. I knew that he didn’t care about our rest or the difficulty of the challenge.
Marsha handed him the clipboard, a moment that was sure to be edited out. His lack of preparation was legendary.
“Today’s challenge is something that you might find happening while you’re out on the road. You can’t prepare for every contingency, like the one that you’ll face today. Each of you will receive a single card. That card will contain one ingredient on it. You’ll have to make today’s menu, which will be the standard fare for the truck, without that ingredient.”
A murmur went up from the contestants. For the many truck owners who were on the road so often, this might not be a problem. However, for trucks like mine that parked and sat in an urban center, it was something that didn’t happen. If we ran out of hot dogs or relish, I could just jump out of the truck and run down the street to the nearby convenience store. Crisis averted. Making the menu without an ingredient was something that just didn’t happen in my world.
I braced myself for the worst. I had visions of us having to get by without hot dogs o
r buns. I wondered how that would work for a challenge. I was just glad that we had immunity for this week’s challenge.
“As always, two judges will be stopping by to taste your fare. You’ll be judged on how well you’ve improvised for the missing ingredient on your menu. The judges will rate you on taste, ability to tell that the ingredient is missing and, as always, how much cash you earn from today’s challenge—in that order.”
Marsha walked around to the various contestants and handed out cards to each one of them. She walked up to Land, handed him a card and gave him a smile. I had to walk over to him to see what we’d be working without.
The card simply read “avocado.” One of the things that the customers of Dogs on the Roll raved about was Land’s guacamole topping for the hot dogs. He made it from scratch every day, and he insisted that the recipe was from his grandmother. I wasn’t sure if the latter was true, but he spent time every day cutting and mashing the ingredients for the guacamole. I wasn’t sure how we’d make it without the main ingredient.
Land didn’t seem overly worried by the challenge. I was feeling a little panicky, not because I thought that we’d be thrown out of the contest. I knew that wasn’t going to happen, but I couldn’t envision our guacamole without it. My goal had been to get new customers out of the reality show, not lose customers because of off-beat foods and weird-tasting condiments.
MURDER IN THE SPOTLIGHT (Food Truck Mysteries Book 2) Page 3
