by Penny Pike
Aunt Abby frowned at me suspiciously, as if I’d just eaten all of her prized brownies. “Everything all right?” she asked, her pencil-thin eyebrow arched in question.
I nodded and stepped out of the bus. Okay, so I’d explain everything tonight, after I’d had a glass of wine. Or two. I knew I’d feel better after eating the chocolatey brownie I’d just tucked into my purse. Free food was one of the perks of being related to Aunt Abby. Through the open window of the bus, I heard her break into a rousing rendition of Disneyland’s “It’s a Small World.” The earworm would no doubt haunt me the rest of the day.
• • •
I stopped by the Coffee Witch and grabbed a Love Potion Number 9—a latte made with a melted 3 Musketeers bar—then enjoyed my sugary treats as I drove “home”: that being my aunt’s thirty-five-foot Airstream currently parked in the side yard of her Russian Hill home. It was the perfect location, close to the Marina District, Ghirardelli Square, and Fisherman’s Wharf. In desperate need of shelter after my breakup with Tool-Head Trevor, a reporter at the Chron, I’d moved into her rig “temporarily.” That was six months ago. Now, with no more money coming in, my plans to eventually move out would have to be put on hold.
My widowed aunt had lived in her small Victorian home for most of her adult life, ever since she’d inherited it from her parents. Today the house would be worth a fortune, but she had no intention of selling it. Although she was my mother’s sister, I’d hardly known her when I’d asked to rent the RV. She was considered the black sheep of the family, but no one had ever told me why. As I’d gotten to know her better, I found her charming, clever, and creative—and so different from my discerning mother and hippie father. My parents had divorced soon after I went away to the University of Oregon to study journalism, claiming they each wanted “new beginnings.” My dad moved to New Mexico to live in the desert and smoke dope, while my mom headed for New York in pursuit of culture and romance.
And Aunt Abby was supposed to be the crazy one?
I parked my recently purchased convertible VW Bug in her driveway and headed around to the side yard, where she kept the Airstream. A Disneyana fanatic, Aunt Abby had decorated the interior of the rig with friends of Walt. I wiped my feet on the Grumpy doormat, checked the Cheshire Cat clock on the wall inside, and dropped my purse on the sofa bed, which was covered with a Minnie Mouse throw.
Still depressed from the job news, I changed out of my black slacks and red blouse into khaki pants and an ironic “Life Is Good” T-shirt and lay down on the Tinker Bell comforter in the bedroom for a quick nap. As I dozed off, I hoped to dream up some ideas for extra cash until my fab book deal came through. With pending unemployment benefits meager and short-lived—and car payments coming due—I had a feeling food truck leftovers would be my staple for the next few months.
• • •
The theme song from “It’s a Small World” woke me from my nightmare—something about eating a poisoned apple. Probably heartburn from overdosing on sweets and coffees. I knew the call was from Aunt Abby. Dillon had programmed personalized ringtones to alert me to some of my callers’ identities. That way I could ignore my ex-boyfriend, who hadn’t given up on getting back together. His tune was appropriately “Creep” by Radiohead. I fumbled for the phone, saw Aunt Abby’s dimpled, smiling face on the small screen, and answered the call.
“Come in the house,” she commanded. “I want you to taste something.”
I checked the Cheshire Cat clock on the wall: four p.m. I’d slept for more than two hours! Craving another brownie, I fluffed my bed hair, then stepped out of the Airstream and walked across the patio to the back of the house. I entered the dining area through the sliding glass door and called out to her.
“I’m in the kitchen,” she yelled back. Passing through her cozy family room, I headed for her favorite place in the house and found her busily rolling small balls of dough in her hands. Basil, Aunt Abby’s long-haired Doxie, wagged her tail at my aunt’s Crocs-covered feet, no doubt hoping for a dropped morsel.
“I saw your car. You got off work early?” Aunt Abby asked. She’d changed out of her cafeteria-lady apron, khaki pants, and white T-shirt into a pink athletic suit that clashed with her curly red hair but matched her pink lipstick perfectly. The ensemble was covered by a “Cereal Killer”–emblazoned apron.
I nodded and glanced around for something to eat.
“Everything all right?” As a former cafeteria worker—she preferred the term “food service chef,” never “lunch lady”—she often bragged she could make sloppy joes for five hundred. Only problem was, she had trouble cooking for fewer than that. At the moment, it looked like she was preparing enough dough balls to feed the San Francisco Giants and all of their fans. I leaned over and inhaled a whiff of her current experiment.
“What is that—a cheesy cake pop?” I asked. I spotted a rigid foam block filled with round balls held aloft by lollipop sticks. Before she could stop me, I popped one into my mouth.
It took only one bite to realize this was not the cake pop I’d been expecting.
“Blech!” I said, spitting the contents of my mouth into the sink. “What was that?”
“A Crab Pop,” she said, grinning at my reaction. “My specialty for tomorrow’s festival. They’re tiny cheese biscuits filled with crab and dipped in white cheddar cheese.”
“Good grief!” I fanned my mouth as if it were on fire. “I need an antidote!”
“For goodness’ sakes, Darcy, it’s not that bad. I thought you liked crab.”
“I do, but not as a surprise when I’m expecting something sweet!”
“Have a brownie. They’re over there.” She nodded toward a foil-covered plate on the counter.
I picked up a square and stuffed it in my mouth as if it were chocolate crack. “That’s more like it,” I said as soon as I’d swallowed the delicious, chewy mass.
“So, now, tell me,” Aunt Abby said as she continued inserting lollipop sticks into the newly formed balls. I tried not to watch. “Why were you home early? Rough day of restaurant reviews?”
I decided to get it over with and tell her the truth. “You could say that. The Chron laid me off today. I’ve been reduced to a stringer.” Another wave of anxiety swept over me as the reality of the statement set in.
Aunt Abby stopped what she was doing and looked at me sympathetically. “Oh, Darcy. I’m so sorry.” An instant later she perked up again. “But you know what they say: ‘When your soufflé falls, turn it into a pancake.’”
My aunt was full of these crazy food sayings. Maybe that was one of the things that had driven my family members crazy.
Without missing a beat, she continued. “So why don’t you come work for me part-time? The food truck business is getting busier every day, what with all the local festivals popping up. There’s practically one every weekend.” She counted them off. “The Ghirardelli Chocolate Festival is right around the corner. Then the Gilroy Garlic Festival, the Santa Cruz Fungus Festival, Isleton’s Spam Festival, Oakdale’s Testicle Festival—there must be over two dozen of these fests every year. And I could really use the help. Especially since Dillon has been leaving me in the lurch so often. I’ll definitely need you tomorrow at the Crab and Seafood Festival. They’re expecting a hundred thousand hungry people at the two-day event.”
“As long as you’re not serving any oysters,” I said.
“Oysters are actually good for you,” Aunt Abby said, shaking her head at my resistance to all things mollusk related. “They’re full of zinc, iron, calcium, vitamins. They boost your energy. And your sex drive.” She raised an eyebrow at me.
That’s all I needed, a boost to my sex drive, after being boyfriendless for months.
“Just the thought of eating something that slimy is disgusting.”
“You don’t have to eat them raw,” Aunt Abby said, shaking her head. “You can eat
them smoked, boiled, baked, fried, steamed, or stewed.”
“No, thanks. I will not eat them baked or fried. I will not eat them stewed or dried. I do not like oysters or clams. I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.”
“Chicken,” my aunt said.
“I’ll eat chicken,” I replied, “but I refuse to swallow anything from the mollusk family. Besides, I heard oysters can contain bacteria.” I pulled out my cell phone and asked Siri to call up “death by oysters,” then read aloud an excerpt from the site. “‘In the past two years, thirty-six people have died after consuming oysters.’”
“You’re talking about Gulf Coast oysters that get warm and spoil quickly,” Aunt Abby said. “We don’t have that problem here in the cold San Francisco Bay. But don’t worry. I’m not making anything with oysters. Just crab.”
“You know I’m not much of a cook, Aunt Abby,” I said. “Besides, I’m planning to write a cookbook using recipes from food trucks and festivals. That should keep me busy for a while.”
Aunt Abby raised that damn questioning eyebrow again. It was her signature look. “Darcy, you just admitted you don’t cook and you’re planning to write a cookbook?”
“I’ll admit the art of cooking eludes me. Eating, on the other hand, is one of my passions.” It was true. I read food magazines and cookbooks as if they were romance novels. “And writing a book filled with popular food festival recipes doesn’t take any culinary talent.”
“Maybe not, but what are you going to do for money until your book is published?”
I slumped down onto a kitchen stool, feeling the lump of chocolate in my stomach turn to raw dough. She was right. I needed money. Now. I shrugged. “Work for you, I guess.”
“Work for who?” rumbled a low voice from behind me.
I turned around to see Aunt Abby’s son, Dillon, looming in the doorway. He towered over his five-foot-two mother. He was dressed in a threadbare “Zombies Ate My Sister” T-shirt and ridiculous Captain America flannel pajama bottoms. His curly dark red hair was in desperate need of a comb and some gel and scissors, and the two-day growth of stubble on his face looked more like an oversight than a fashion statement. He pulled a box of Trix from a cabinet and poured some directly into his mouth, dropping several colorful balls on the tile floor. They were quickly lapped up by Basil, who always acted as if he were starved.
“I asked Darcy to help us out in the food truck,” Aunt Abby said.
“Wait. What?” Dillon said, his open mouth full of fruity colors.
I didn’t relish the idea of working with a slacker like Dillon either, but I didn’t see much choice.
“Well, you keep disappearing,” Aunt Abby said to Dillon. “And with Darcy’s help, maybe we can get ourselves on that TV show The Great Food Truck Race and win fifty thousand dollars.” Her bright eyes twinkled.
Yeah, right.
“Seriously,” she continued, after seeing my disbelieving reaction. “My business is booming, thanks to all the work Dillon has done promoting us on Twitter and Facebook and those other sites. Right, son?”
“Yeah, but—” Dillon began, but before he could finish, the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” Dillon said; then he lumbered out of the kitchen for the front door, still holding the cereal box.
Seconds later, he yelled out, “Mooooom!”
“I’m coming!” she yelled back. “That boy. Can’t he even sign for a delivery?” She wiped her hands on a towel, untied her apron, primped her curly hair, checked her lipstick in the microwave oven reflection, and headed for the door.
Moments later Aunt Abby returned to the kitchen. Her Betty Boop smile drooped, the color had left her Kewpie-doll face, and even her pink lipstick seemed to have faded. Dillon appeared behind her, frowning.
“Aunt Abby?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“That was the police,” Aunt Abby said, sounding dazed and staring at her clasped hands.
“The police?” I repeated. “What did they want?”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure. They want me to come down to the station with them.”
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “Why?”
Aunt Abby looked up at me but her eyes were unfocused. “Oliver Jameson is dead.”
Chapter 2
“What?!” I blurted when I heard the news.
Aunt Abby shook her head woefully, her perky curls barely bouncing. “I don’t know why they want to talk to me, but there are two cops waiting outside to take me to the station.”
I flashed back tp the scene I’d witnessed earlier—and the knife my aunt had been wielding in her hand.
Uh-oh.
“Mom?” Dillon said, staring at his mother.
Aunt Abby shifted her glance out the kitchen window. “Oh, I . . . may have said something to Oliver Jameson that could be taken as a threat.”
“Like what?” Dillon asked, his mouth hanging open.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Something about a knife . . .”
She’d been so furious with the chef from Bones ’n’ Brew that she’d actually threatened him with that ginormous kitchen knife.
“Mo-om!” Dillon whined, his face looking whiter than his usual indoor pallor. “A knife? Seriously? You didn’t hurt him . . . did you?”
“Of course she didn’t!” I answered for her.
Another impatient rap at the door interrupted me from defending her further.
Aunt Abby shook her head. “I told the two officers to give me a few minutes so I could change clothes. I can’t wear this loungewear to the police station. And my hair’s a mess. I need to freshen up.”
I could tell she was trying to keep her tone light, but her voice cracked, giving away the stress that lay beneath the surface.
“I’ll need my purse . . . and a sweater . . . maybe a bottle of water . . . and a snack. . . .”
My aunt was rambling. She was probably in shock. I wrapped an arm around her.
“Don’t worry, Aunt Abby. Dillon and I will go with you.”
“Darcy, they’re not going to let us ride in the cop car with her,” Dillon said, the voice of doom.
“We’ll take my car and follow her,” I said, then asked Aunt Abby, “Did the police say when Jameson was killed?” I wondered if she had an alibi for the murder. Hopefully she was in her School Bus serving comfort food to the city’s starving citizens.
“I don’t know. . . . He must have been killed sometime after I . . .” She hesitated.
“After that fight you had with him?” I said, finishing her thought. “But I took you back to your bus and you stayed there the rest of the day, right?” I turned to Dillon for confirmation, hoping he’d shown up after I left.
Dillon shot a look at his mother that told me all was not well in food truck land.
“Dillon! You did come back, didn’t you?”
He nodded, but there was something he wasn’t telling me. And then it dawned on me.
“No!” I said, glancing back and forth between Aunt Abby and Dillon. “Aunt Abby! Tell me you didn’t leave the bus after Dillon returned.” I could feel the adrenaline rushing through my body and grew more alarmed.
Aunt Abby pressed her lips together, then shrugged. “After Dillon came back, the lunch crowd had died down, so I told him to hold the fort while I . . . did a few errands.”
“What errands?” I heard myself sounding more and more like a police interrogator. Why didn’t I just throw in “Do you have an alibi for the time of the murder?”
“Just stuff I had to take care of,” she said simply.
“Mo-o-om?” Dillon said. His concern for his mother was evident in his rising voice and furrowed brow. “You went over there and saw him again, didn’t you!”
“No! . . . I mean, well, not exactly. . . .” Aunt Abby looked away.
“
Who? What are you talking about?” I asked, confused.
“What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?” Dillon continued, ignoring me.
“Well, I might have gone to the restaurant, just for a minute. . . .” Aunt Abby said.
The restaurant? Uh-oh. “You went to Bones ’n’ Brew?” Had my aunt gone over there to confront Oliver Jameson again? Not good. “Why? What were you thinking?”
“I was . . . looking for something,” she said evasively.
“What could you possibly have wanted from Bones ’n’ Brew?” I asked.
“Something,” Aunt Abby said. “Anything to shut him up and get him to leave me alone. I was tired of him hassling the food truckers, especially me. I figured if I could find something to hold over his head, maybe I could get him to back off.”
I dropped my head in my hands, stunned at this possibly incriminating news.
Dillon frowned. “Like what?”
“Like some health or safety violation . . . or rat poop. Bones ’n’ Brew has been around practically since the 1906 earthquake. It’s got to be riddled with violations. I figured Jameson was probably paying some government official to look the other way so he could stay in business all these years. I thought he might even have hired someone to help him pester the food trucks. So I went to his place to look for something I could take to the authorities.”
I shook my head at how naive she’d been. The police could arrest her for any number of reasons—illegal trespassing, corporate spying, theft. Who knew what the SFPD would throw at her?
In addition to possibly murder.
A question flashed through my mind: Where had Oliver Jameson been killed?
This time there was a pounding, not a knocking, on the door. A voice called out, “Mrs. Warner?”
“I’ll be right there,” she called back in a singsongy voice. “I’d better get my things.”
We followed her into the bedroom, where she picked out a pair of yellow slacks and a ruffly yellow blouse covered in a floral print. Completely inappropriate for a visit to the San Francisco Police Station.
“Did you see him?” I asked my aunt as she stepped into her bathroom to change.
