Their search into the pork was fruitless. There hadn’t been a long-term contract for the pork, which meant that it probably wasn’t a vehicle of communication between them.
At the end of two hours, we’d gone through all the meat from that particular vendor with no results. I wasn’t sure how much more they wanted to do before admitting defeat on this project. However, Danvers came back with a second request. “Could we see all of the ingredients from the vendor that sent the lamb?”
I nodded, knowing that there weren’t many items left. Most of the spices had been moved to our spice vendor, which had only left the garlic and the yogurt for the Tzatziki sauce on the gyros. I had strong doubts that anyone would put messages into a clove of garlic. The message could be traced repeatedly, just based on the smell.
The police quickly went through the garlic. By the time they were done, most of them reeked of the pungent odor of garlic. All that remained between my nice soft bed and me were three cases of yogurt.
Two of the men cut the plastic wrapping off the case and began to open the individual tubs of yogurt. I thought for a moment that they were going to stick their garlic-covered hands into the lumpy white substance, but instead they had long-handled spoons which were spun around the tubs. They’d gone through one case and had started on the next when one of the men found something.
Danvers practically ran to the man’s position and together they carefully removed what appeared to be a flash drive. It was hard to tell because it was covered in sloppy white goop, but as Danvers wiped it off, it became more apparent.
They rushed through the rest of the yogurt, but they found nothing else in the tubs. Danvers came over carrying the lone tub. “Can we take this one with us?” he asked more politely than I expected. “It could have some trace evidence on it, fingerprints or DNA, though I doubt it.”
I nodded. I made a mental note to buy another tub of yogurt, but given the fact that we had three cases, I didn’t think I would need it soon. “I just want a receipt for it. I can take it off my taxes,” I said with a smile.
He wrote up a quick note that indicated he’d taken one tub of yogurt from the locker at this date and time. I noted that it was barely 11 a.m. on a Saturday. Soon it would be lunchtime, and then I’d be expected to do something productive with my day. The plan to sleep in should have been given a receipt as well.
I was one clue ahead of the police, however. When they had cleaned off the flash drive, a name had come up written in marker on the side of the drive. It read “Jeremy,” which was the name of Janelle’s brother. I wasn’t sure how long it would take them to realize that, and then determine whether Jeremy was involved, or Janelle had lifted one of his flash drives for her work.
I had one way of finding out: the number that had been written on the napkin yesterday. While Danvers was prepping the flash drive for their IT division, I would be calling Jeremy to learn more.
Fortunately, Jeremy had given me a cell phone number and he answered on the second ring. “Hello.” His voice was as soft as it had been yesterday. I had thought that it was just because he was nervous about talking to me, but my cell number only came up with the name “Capital City” so he must be that way toward everyone.
“Jeremy, hi, this is Maeve Kinkaid. We spoke yesterday at Janelle’s food truck.” I hated calling my new venture by that name, but at the same time, I was trying to speed the process along. I didn’t want to be caught in the middle of our talk by the police.
“Yes, hello. How are you?”
“I’m doing well. I was wondering if you had time to talk today—now.” I figured that I had an hour or so to talk to Jeremy before the police would be on his trail. If I was going to learn anything useful about the family or about Sam, it had to be now.
“Sure. Where at?” he replied.
“How about downtown at the Government Square? I can be there in ten if you can. Obviously the trucks aren’t out today, but I know a nice little diner in the area we could go to.”
“Nickleby’s?” he asked.
“That’s the one,” I replied.
“Let’s meet there,” he said, “it looks like it might rain, and we won’t get wet.”
I was there with a minute to spare, and I saw Jeremy wave at me from across the restaurant. I liked Nickleby’s, because while part of it opened on to the square and was quite visible, the rest of the restaurant contained high-backed booths that provided privacy for those who needed it. I had a feeling that I needed some privacy as the police started looking for Janelle’s brother.
I didn’t have to start the conversation. He jumped right in. “I wanted to let you know that I had nothing to do with Janelle and her plans. I only heard about them from eavesdropping on my parents after the police were at my house. They had a big fight, and I heard what she was doing.”
I nodded. That settled the flash drive question. Janelle must have taken it from his apartment instead of Jeremy being an accomplice to the espionage. He confirmed that quickly. “I don’t keep very good track of them, so someone could have come in and taken ten of them without my noticing.”
“Does she have a key to your place?” I asked, thinking of the locked food truck again.
“No, but my parents do, and they’re not very considerate about my privacy. I’m sure she could have gotten the key from them.”
“What can you tell me about your sister that could help me find her killer?” I explained about the monthly money sent to an unknown party and the money that had been put up front to buy the food truck.
His face showed a look of disgust. “My parents told the police that they didn’t know where she got the money for the truck. Ugh.” He threw up his arms. “She got it from our uncle, Ben. My parents have quite a lot of money, but Ben has more. He also doesn’t have any children, so he tends to spoil us. Janelle had indicated that she wanted to buy a particular truck, and Ben wrote her a check for it.”
I laughed with relief. I had thought that perhaps a foreign power had purchased the vehicle for her, and instead it was just family bickering. I could rest easier at night knowing that. “She wanted that truck, because I did. She had applied for a job with my truck, but it didn’t work out. So she decided to buy her own truck, and it turned out that she decided to buy the one I was interested in.” I didn’t necessarily want to speak ill of the dead, but at the same time, I wanted to keep the conversation rolling. I knew my time was likely limited, and while I had already heard Jeremy’s denial of involvement, the police wouldn’t be satisfied with a one-line denial.
He nodded. “That’s Janelle all over. If someone did her a bad turn, she turned around and did it worse to them.”
“Did she ever do that to you?” I thought I heard a bit of complaint under his statement.
He flushed a beet red under the dusky color of his skin. The effect was oddly disconcerting, as if he didn’t do that often. I wondered what Janelle could have done to him to evoke such a response. “Yes, she did, but I’d like to just leave it there.”
“That’s fine,” I said, wondering all the more what she’d done to him. Likely it had nothing to do with the murder or the espionage, but it was intriguing to see a man blush like that. I doubted that all the secrets in the world could make Land turn red, and then I wondered what would make Danvers blush. Certainly nothing that we’d done. I had never really stopped to think about his other relationships. Who else had he dated? Had he been involved with someone from work that ended badly?
I stopped these thoughts and tried to focus on the task at hand. “So any thoughts on where this desire to help Morocco came from? Do you have any ideas where she would meet people who wanted to be involved in that type of thing?” I left the wording vague, since I had no idea exactly what was going on. I thought if Jeremy knew, he could tell me more.
Jeremy shook his head. “No idea at all. Like I said, Ben gave her the money for the truck, but he was never a part of any movement. He loved his country, but he is an American too. Such th
ings like revenge are frowned upon here.”
I nodded. So I wasn’t going to get much out of Jeremy today about Janelle’s involvement with this group. “I met a guy named Sam,” I said, hoping to change up the conversation and get some gossip. “Your mother said that he used to go out with Janelle.”
He flushed again. “Yeah, Sam went out with Janelle. Is that relevant here?”
“I don’t know for sure. Sam showed up at her food truck a few times, and apparently they argued. He hasn’t been forthcoming with me about the reasons for that.”
Jeremy looked down at the table, not meeting my eyes for a second. “No, that has nothing to do with this whole spy thing. It’s hard for me to even say that. I can’t believe that she was involved with something like this. It doesn’t sound like her.”
My eyebrows went up. “Your parents said that Janelle was very headstrong, and in my experiences, she could be pretty forceful about getting what she wanted. And you don’t think she could have been involved in something like this?”
His brow creased, and now he looked up at me. His dark eyes were sad, and I finally felt sorry that Janelle had died. She had been so annoying that I hadn’t much felt sympathy for those who were touched by her death.
“I highly doubt it. My parents were disappointed with Janelle because she was too American. I think she’d only been to Morocco once with the family, and that was maybe two or three years ago. It was a family trip. I’m not sure where she would have met the people who would be involved in this.”
“What about your Uncle Ben? He was instrumental in getting her the truck that led to this situation. Could he have introduced her to the people who are fighting in Morocco?”
Jeremy twisted his lip. “I highly doubt it. You could certainly ask him, but I doubt that he is involved. He’s also pretty American these days. He’s involved in some financial investment group that is betting heavily on fossil fuels being around until they all run dry. It’s pretty cynical, but he’s making a fortune.”
That didn’t sound helpful, but Jeremy pulled out his phone and gave me the man’s contact information before I could form an opinion one way or the other. He seemed genuinely helpful in wanting to solve this murder.
I paid the bill, since I’d waylaid him. We were just walking out of the door when Detective Danvers strode over to us. “Fancy meeting you here,” he said to me. His eyes definitely told me that he wasn’t pleased about this. I ignored the sarcasm and just stood there.
“Jeremy Nolan, I’m Detective Jax Danvers. I need you to come to my office for a talk.” Of course, the line “I need to take you downtown” wouldn’t work, since we were less than 100 yards from his office.
“What’s this about?” Jeremy stammered. His face had gone pale, and he trembled slightly.
“They found a flash drive with your name on it. The one you told me that Janelle must have taken,” I blurted. I honestly didn’t see Jeremy as a force in this plot, and I didn’t want to see him shaken by the police tactics. He was too shy and gentle to be a spy.
Danvers growled. “You’re coming with us too,” he said to me. “You can’t just blurt out answers to potential suspects just because you feel like it. That happens to be called obstruction. You should know about that. You do it constantly.”
So I was escorted to the police station just off Government Square. Jeremy was taken, presumably, to an interrogation room, and I was left to sit at a desk near Danvers’ office to wait.
Danvers finally came over to me and looked down at where I sat. “I don’t get you. You say that you want to help, but then you totally ruin an interrogation of a suspect by blurting out some bullshit that you know he’ll repeat to us.”
I shook my head. “That’s what he told me. He had nothing to do with Janelle, the food truck or the espionage. The only things he heard were his parents arguing after you’d been to see them.”
“Oh, and witnesses never lie about things that could put them behind bars. No criminal has ever said that he’s innocent. I can’t believe how fucking naïve you are sometimes.”
Wow, Danvers had reamed me before, but I’d never heard him raise his voice and curse this way. I wondered if the pressure of the case was getting to him, or if I had really crossed a line with him. I wasn’t fond of the name-calling, and I resented being called naïve. I knew that people lied to me. I just didn’t believe that Jeremy had—at least about the espionage business. I thought that there was still something going on with the Nolans that I didn’t know about, but that could be any secret. Families kept plenty of those.
I felt the emotions start to seethe out of the tight container I usually kept them in. “Let me tell you how I spent my morning. I let you traipse through all of my food inventories without a warrant, because you were probably so sure that you could charm a search out of me without having to go through the proper channels. I opened a food truck this week. I have to work without help next week, and you thought it would be easier to drag my ass out of bed than to bother a judge for a warrant that you probably wouldn’t have even gotten. So when you yell at me for helping a witness, you need to remember that you wouldn’t have even had that witness had it not been for me.” I took a deep breath, but I could already feel the tension leave my body. Apparently I’d needed to blow off some steam.
Danvers stormed off, and since I was not being held, I left as well. I’d wasted enough of my weekend on this case, and I wanted to be able to relax.
Chapter 13
The rest of the weekend passed without incident. I didn’t hear a word from Danvers—or from Land. I wasn’t sure if he was celebrating his success at managing his own food truck or if he was just beat from all the work. Knowing Land, he probably just wasn’t taking calls.
Naturally, I’d heard nothing about what was on the flash drive. I figured that yelling at the police would likely get me excluded from the information on the ongoing investigation. I didn’t mind. As Land had said before, I could still cover the personal side of the investigation with more skill than the police could.
After giving myself Sunday to rest, I was back at the food truck again on Monday morning. I watched as Land rolled up later in the morning and opened up. It was great knowing that things were going so well for me professionally. I had actually started thinking about a new car, knowing that the big Buick couldn’t last forever. I wasn’t ready to commit to a luxury car, but I also knew that I wasn’t going to be limited to a subcompact either.
Even though I was alone, the morning flew. I took orders, did the cooking and rang people up. I didn’t have the luxury of keeping an eye on the truck across the square from me. Danvers didn’t stop by, and I wondered if those visits would stop because of our fight or because Land, whose services he needed, was at the other truck. I’d have to ask Carter if the detective stopped by. Henry and his basset hound stopped by again, and they each ate a hot dog before he threw away the wrappers and left. I felt sorry for him. I just couldn’t spend the time talking to him now that I was running things alone.
I put the day’s deposit into my backpack and looked up to see little puffs of dark smoke coming from the other truck. Black smoke in a food truck was never a good sign. I slammed the window shut, locked it, and ran to the other truck. The smoke was not a full-blown fire. I could tell that at 10 yards, but it still freaked me out.
Land gave me a grin when I arrived. “Now I know how to get you over here quickly. Just burn a piece of meat, and you’ll be here in no time.”
I rolled my eyes. “Is that what happened?”
Carter spoke up. “Yeah, I left the meat on one side too long. It got overcooked.”
Land said, “Beginner’s mistake. How did your day go?”
I told him about sales for the day—which were steady—and about my plans for the afternoon, which included a visit to Jeremy and Janelle’s uncle.
“We’ve been looking for a man with money. That uncle could be it. Be sure to find out if Janelle was making payments to him as well,
” Land said.
“The truck doesn’t smell too bad for having had a little smoke issue,” I said, taking a long sniff of the air. You could detect a small hint of acrid air, but not what I would have expected.
“Yeah, there’s a better ventilation system in this truck, not to mention the air holes at the top.” He pointed to the two-inch diameter holes around the perimeter of the top of the truck. “You need this if you do a lot of cooking in the truck. Hot dogs are pretty easy to cook—the chances of overcooking a dog are pretty slim.”
I nodded. I looked at the holes again, thinking of ways for things to get out—or in. “Hey,” I said, “you don’t think.”
Land shook his head. “I already thought of that, but you can’t see inside the truck. So it would be entirely random. You wouldn’t be able to aim at all. There had to be some precision in the shooting, because the killer only took one shot. You’d have to unload a magazine through a hole to be sure you hit someone.”
I nodded. He had a point, as much as I hated to admit it. The holes made an intriguing entrance point, but the shooter lacked the capability to make an accurate shot. If the truck had been shot up, then it would make sense. However, it had not been peppered with bullets. One shot had killed Janelle Nolan, right through the head.
Land put a hand to his forehead. “I forgot to tell you. Danvers told me yesterday that the gun in the truck didn’t kill Janelle. It’s the same make and model, but not the same gun. It apparently was a plant to make them question the ballistic results. I know that the CCPD did four different tests just to be sure. Both guns had been fired and the markings were similar, just not the same.”
I was torn between two facts. First, the gun was not the same one used to kill Janelle. That meant the killer had deliberately wanted to make it look like the killing had happened inside the truck. If the killer wanted to make it look that way, then most likely, it had not happened that way. People liked to use misdirection to prevent people from seeing the truth in front of them. So we were probably looking for a way that the killer committed the crime from outside the truck.
THE REAL GYRO (Food Truck Mysteries Book 4) Page 12
