A THIEF OF ANY MAN (Food Truck Mysteries Book 6)

by Chloe Kendrick

  In the end, Danvers went back to work and ignored us.

  Chapter 6

  Danvers had no sooner left than Land opened his mouth to talk, but he was interrupted by his sister. “Maeve, finally. Land has been making me hide like a dirty secret. I’ve been dying to meet you. I want to learn all about you.”

  So apparently Land had been the one to keep me away from his family. I had to wonder if his reasons included the fact that I was American while he was Basque. Perhaps his family wanted him to be involved with someone from his own culture? Or perhaps he was equally secretive with his family as he was with me.

  She grabbed me in a bear hug before I could answer her. “Wait until you meet the rest of the family. They’re going to be so thrilled.”

  Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a desire to have him date someone of the same culture. Maybe it was just Land being his usual self.

  I wasn’t sure about being a part of a huge family immediately. For most of my life, family had meant me, my parents, and my aunt. After my aunt passed away, the definition narrowed to become just our immediate family. So holidays and other events were always small and intimate. The idea of being a part of a larger family freaked me out a bit.

  “So do you live in Capital City?” I asked, wanting to drop back and get the basics. I’d only just learned Sabine’s name an hour ago. Now she was inviting me into the family, and I was hoping to find out her name and age.

  Sabine laughed at my question. “Just like my big brother. Yes, I’ve been here about three years. I finished college six months ago, and got a job at the parking lot when I couldn’t find something in my field.”

  “What’s your field?” I asked, trying to keep things interesting but shallow.

  “Business management with a minor in marketing,” she replied. My mouth nearly dropped open. That had been my major and minor as well. Land knew that Sabine and I had this much in common, but had still kept us apart. I wondered what he was worried about.

  The most amazing part was that she’d been in Capital City throughout the entire time that Land and I had known each other. In all of the exploits and dangers we’d encountered, he’d never once seen fit to mention a sister in town. How could he keep a secret like that? I made a note that I’d be checking to learn about other family members in town. I hadn’t even bothered to look up the name “Mendoza” in the directory to see if there were others in the Capital City metro area.

  I shot Land a glance that spoke volumes about how we’d be talking later, but for now, I asked questions, and Sabine kindly answered them. She asked a few questions of me, and I returned the favor.

  Just as I had talked with Gina about the finances and the marketing of a food truck, Sabine was fascinated by the small business I’d built. It would have been a pleasant experience, except for the fact that we were at the scene of a murder.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve been in your trucks a few times. I’m fascinated by this whole eating out of a vehicle thing that’s going on here. Meals are more of an event where I come from.” Sabine gave me a smile, but Land was frowning. Apparently he hadn’t known about these forays into the trucks.

  Sabine looked over the police, who were starting to pack up their things. “I have to get back to work. The police are already asking questions about why I wasn’t at the gate that night you were all here before. Thanks to my brother, I could end up losing my job. It doesn’t look good when the guard disappears the night of a murder.”

  “I told you that there might be contingencies when you took this job,” Land stated blandly. Of course, it would make sense that he would try to get his sister a job where we did business. I was still surprised that no one had mentioned this to me in the years we’d been here.

  “So what now?” I asked, not sure of what to do about this family social event, or the fact that we’d discovered the body of a notorious criminal.

  “I thought we could hang out here,” Land said. “I want to make some coffee and wait for the results.”

  “Of what?” Sabine asked.

  “The cadaver dogs. They’re only kept in Merriville,” Land said. Merriville was only thirty minutes out of Capital City, which meant they could be quite close to arriving by now. “Want to stay for coffee, Sabine? I know how much you like the recipe.”

  I was surprised by the invitation from Land. He’d spent two years keeping me away from his sister, and now he was inviting her to hang out with us. I was still puzzling it out, when she said, “Yeah, that was me. I took the coffee.” She had the grace to blush slightly, which gave her tanned complexion an almost rosy glow. It made for a beautiful contrast with her dark hair. The Mendoza family had definitely produced gorgeous children.

  Land rolled his eyes. “I knew it was you as soon as Maeve told me that coffee was missing.”

  The pieces fell into place. Sabine had taken the missing coffee, and Land had figured out his sister’s crime before I had.

  Sabine laughed. “I knew you would, but damn. No one else has ever been able to make grandpa’s recipe like you do. It’s like a trip to Navarre without the plane tickets. Make me a cup and bring it up to the guard shack. Please.” She stretched the last word out into about six syllables.

  She went back to work, and Land went into the food truck to make coffee. He started prepping one of the coffee urns before he looked at me. “Go ahead and say it. Ask all those questions that you’ve been dying to ask,” he said. “I know I’m going to get peppered with them.”

  “Nope,” I said serenely, watching him work. “This answers a few questions – like who stole the coffee, but you’ll talk about the personal aspects more when you’re ready. You obviously weren’t ready, so why would I bug you about it?”

  Much to my surprise, he rushed to me, pulled me into his arms and kissed me. Not just a peck, but the type of lips-meet-lips that could have cooked the food without turning on the oven. My knees went weak as I closed my eyes. He stepped back and looked at me. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “That means more than you can know.”

  Who knew that killing curiosity could lead to a passionate embrace? I wondered what I would get if I gave up on investigating altogether. “Happy to help,” I said with a slight smirk on my lips. I wasn’t sure why the secrecy meant that much to him, but apparently it meant a lot – enough to stoke passion in him. I knew that I wouldn’t cross Land’s personal barriers until he was ready to let me in.

  “We can talk more later, but just know, it’s them, not you. They’re a lot to handle individually. In a group, it’s like a tsunami. I was trying to spare you.”

  I nodded in understanding. I wasn’t in a rush to be swamped with family. “So besides solving the case of the coffee thief, what do we have here? Is the murder of Big Tony related to the woman in the food truck?” I asked.

  Land shook his head and looked at me. “I don’t see how the two crimes can be related. Strangulation is a passionate crime. It indicates that the two are involved in a personal relationship of some sort, and the personal aspects to choking someone are what make it so intense. It would be an odd murderer who liked to strangle strangers.” I shivered as Land spoke. His voice was quiet, but the emotions he was evoking gave me the chills.

  “So one is a mob hit, and the other is a personal crime. I haven’t had any chance to look into Emma Creech. I stopped by her house, but no one was home. I don’t have any idea about her personal life.” I gathered the cups and packets for the coffee as he worked.

  “I’m not thinking that he’s a mob hit,” Land said after a moment.

  I started to ask why, but stopped. “Are you going to gross me out with details about the crime if I ask why?”

  He gave me a grin. “Maybe. I thought that’s what you liked about me.”

  “It’s not in the top ten,” I answered honestly.

  “Let’s just say that I would have expected a mob hit to be an execution-style shooting, behind the ear, which usually means that the victim was on his knees. This shoot
ing was a mess from a blood and guts perspective. Shot in the side of the head, and the bullet went right through. Too much splatter and mess for a professional. The last thing a professional killer wants is to wear the DNA of the victim.”

  I grimaced. “That’s not good for us, since we’re not professionals.”

  Land shrugged. “Unless you do something rash, we’re not involved in this murder case. We just found a dead body. The corpse was stinking up the place. It was only a few more days at most before someone would have reported it, and the body would have been found. We expedited that process only by a matter of hours.”

  The coffee was done, and I poured three cups. “I have no desire to get involved with that case. It could prove too dangerous.”

  Land kissed the top of my head. “When has that stopped you before?” he said with a smile.

  We took the cups up to the guard shack, where Sabine sat filling in a crossword puzzle. “This is the closest thing to Heaven. I wanted to tell you that I took some of the ground beans, but I wasn’t supposed to bother Maeve with details – like my existence.” She took a long sip of her coffee, and I watched her as she did. She was beautiful in the same way that Land was attractive. The full lip, the dark hair, the perfect nose. I could easily have picked her for his family member.

  “So what do you know about the car that the body was in?” I asked, trying to fill the silence with something other than talk about her brother.

  “The Corolla? It’s been here for months. I checked the records when you started making a fuss here. The owner has one space, and the Corolla seems to have been here the whole time. No in or out notifications for it. If I remember correctly, the guy has been in the Caribbean for the last few months.”

  I knew that the lot maintained records of the movements of the customers. Even though the lot kept a guard on site, the customers had to use a barcoded badge to enter and leave the lot. The badge triggered the gates to open. These scans were recorded and stored in their computer system. So ideally the records would show who had dropped off the body at the lot – if a time of death could be established. I knew that the range of potential times grew exponentially as the body decomposed.

  Even so, hiding a body inside a secured lot seemed like a large risk for the killer to take. I could understand Emma Creech, who had likely been killed here, but moving a body in would be tracked by the gates and the cameras.

  “So tell us about Emma Creech?” I asked, wanting to change the subject. I wanted to know why Land was keeping her a secret from me, but I’d already been thoughtful and gave him his time to tell me.

  “Ugh,” Sabine said as she put down the coffee. “She was not a nice woman at all. She reported me for doing crossword puzzles during work. Yet I had to run her out of other people’s vehicles at times. And she wanted to complain about me.” She rolled her eyes at the thought.

  I looked at Land. Sabine had just incriminated herself in the case. She had a motive for the murder, and of course, someone who worked at the secured parking lot had more than enough opportunity to commit the crime. Like Land, Sabine was physically fit. She could easily have strangled someone and moved their body if the need arose.

  Land shook his head. I supposed that he was going off of family bias and a knowledge of Sabine’s character, but I hadn’t seen anything that had helped her case any.

  “How tall is Emma?” I asked, remembering my deductions regarding the height of the killer.

  “I’m 5 foot 8,” Sabine replied, “and she was a few inches shorter than me. So maybe 5’5”?”

  So that wasn’t much help in reducing the pool of suspects. The majority of men would fit into that category. I wondered what else I could learn about the woman.

  Emma did not seem like a nice woman, if she’d been stealing from the truck and trying to break into other cars. I wondered if Emma’s trips into other people’s vehicles meant that she was the thief, but I needed more information to be sure. It made sense for the thief to be the killer, not to have multiple felons running around the lot.

  I tried to make sense of all the crimes going on, but my head hurt. I had expected a single murder to go with the theft, but now we had multiple murders and possibly multiple killers and thieves running around the lot. I took another sip of the coffee as we waited for Danvers.

  I heard the dogs barking in the background, and they were seeming to go crazy. The howling was loud enough that we stopped talking to just listen to the ruckus.

  “They’ve found another body,” Land said. “You need to get your story in order, Sabine. They’ll be asking you questions.”

  Sabine laughed. “I didn’t kill that kooky old woman. Jax knows it, and you know it.” She took another sip of coffee as if she didn’t have any cares in the world.

  I had to marvel at her familiarity with Detective Danvers. Mostly I still thought of him as “Detective” or “Danvers.” I’d never really gotten conversant with him on a first name basis, which might have been part of the problem of the one-time kiss. Sabine, on the other hand, called him by his first name and had seemed rather flirty when they talked before.

  She’d obviously met him before. This lent credence to my theory that Danvers and Land went way back. Perhaps Danvers had even served in the military in Europe. Sabine might have known him them. Yet all of this only gave me more questions about the link between Danvers and the Mendoza family.

  The barking seemed to die down, and we waited quietly. I was trying not to ask a million questions, so I just bit my tongue and bided my time.

  Detective Danvers finally came up to the guard gate. “Sabine, you’re the only one here who can give us a quick identification. Would you come with me?”

  She nodded. While I had seen more than a few corpses in my time, I was still squeamish about seeing another. Sabine, like her brother, showed no such emotion. She followed Danvers like he’d asked her to get a cup of coffee – stolen coffee, most likely.

  After she left, Land looked at me. “She’s been working here about six months. After she graduated, she’d been living with my grandmother. She needed a change, she said. I helped get her the job here, and she’s the one who identified Emma for me as the person being strangled from the video feed.”

  I nearly dropped my coffee mug. While Land and I talked often about work, feelings, and ideas, that was one of the longest admissions of family and history that I’d ever heard. I considered the discussion to be the result of my good effect on him. My mind spun around the fact that apparently more family members lived here, if Sabine had lived with their grandma.

  Before I could respond, a man strode up to the gate. “What the hell is going on here?” he commanded.

  I wasn’t afraid of his belligerence, but I was taken aback. It’s not fun to be approached by an angry man near midnight in a darkened parking lot, even a secured one. At closer look, he had dark hair, with the sides of his head shaved and the hair rather long on top. He was carrying a large cup of coffee and a book. I guessed quickly that this was Kristoff, the only one of the guards I had not met. I checked my phone to see that it was nearly 10pm, so he would be coming on duty.

  Before I could respond, Sabine was back. She took a long slurp on her coffee. She was not as poised as when she’d left.

  “A little bit of trouble, Kristoff. Emma Creech and another guy have been found dead on the lot. The police asked to talk to you when you got here,” Sabine said, looking down slightly at the man.

  Kristoff didn’t speak, but walked on back to the corner of the lot. “Kristoff can be a jerk,” Sabine said in a voice that could probably be heard by the jerk. “He’s writing a novel and reminds us daily that he’s only working here until it gets published.”

  I nodded. I was glad that I didn’t work with people like that. I knew that the food service industry was made up of people who were waiting to be actors, authors, or another dream. For me, the food truck was actually what I wanted to be doing, and I was glad of that.

  “So what hap
pened?” I asked Sabine. I didn’t look at Land, who was standing next to his sister.

  “That’s her all right. And another thing, she’s likely to be the thief too. They were taking a wad of bills out of her pockets. Looked like a few hundred dollars by my count.” Sabine pressed her lips together and didn’t say anything else. Perhaps I had underestimated her reaction to the crimes; she was suddenly sullen and withdrawn.

  “So robbery was not a motive,” I said. “That’s not helpful.”

  Land replied, “Getting the police involved will make this an open investigation. So you’re off the case now. Also not helpful, since I know this won’t stop you.”

  Before I could respond, Danvers was there. He looked enviously at the cup of coffee, but he didn’t mention it. “You got your wish, Maeve. Your food truck is officially a crime scene. It’s been sealed off for a few days until we can go through everything.”

  I hadn’t realized that my discovery would have that impact. It had been days since the strangulation had occurred in the truck, and Carter and I had scoured the entire truck looking for signs of a struggle or clues to the dead woman’s identity. After that, we’d cleaned the truck per health inspection regulations. Yet the police were still going to take it for crime scene processing after all this time.

  I looked at Land, but he shrugged, meaning that I had to just take the consequences. I wasn’t sure that Detective Danvers would like me to have that much time on my hands, but that would be his consequence for taking the food truck.

  Chapter 7

  With Dogs on the Roll out of commission for a few days, I felt like a new person. I could actually stay up past 9pm if I wanted to – and I did. When Land and I got back to the car, I suggested that we take an outing. I didn’t know if he was thinking about a nice dinner or a club or even a movie, but I suggested another look at Emma Creech’s home.