by Penny Pike
Hmm. Not a terribly nice or reputable guy. He apparently had anger-management problems, in addition to being a bully, a liar, a slob, and an arrogant SOB.
That certainly increased the list of possible suspects.
Well, at least Aunt Abby wasn’t the only one who’d had run-ins with Oliver Jameson. But how would I narrow the list down? That was the question.
Before I shut off the computer, one more link regarding tomorrow’s Crab and Seafood Festival caught my eye. Oliver Jameson’s name reared its ugly head once again, this time protesting the event.
“Enough with these pseudo food festivals that are attracting the wrong kind of people to our neighborhoods,” Jameson was quoted as saying. “These greasy-spooners calling themselves chefs could be selling all kinds of crap. Those questionable food trucks are littering our beautiful city. Send them to the zoo to feed the animals and leave this area to those of us who run reputable establishments, like Bones ’n’ Brew.”
Again, wow. If Aunt Abby really had put that knife in Oliver Jameson’s back, I probably wouldn’t have blamed her, nor would a lot of other people.
My cell phone chirped. I checked the text message. Aunt Abby had typed, Dinner ready.
OMW, I texted back, letting her know I was on my way. Before I turned off my laptop, I did a quick search for food trucks at Fort Mason. Yelp listed a dozen of the ones that claimed semipermanent spaces, like Aunt Abby’s Big Yellow School Bus. I recognized all of them and in fact had sampled from most. I did a quick scan of the various reviews.
“The Love Potion Number 9 from the Coffee Witch is incredible!!!” wrote Ann P. from the Mission.
“Loved the Sushi/Salsa Wraps at Kung Fu Tacos! I’ll be back!” wrote Janet F. from Pacific Heights.
“Try the Red Velvet Dream Puffs from the Dream Puff truck—they’re to die for!!” wrote Colleen C. from Noe Valley.
“I’m totally addicted to the Principal’s Potpies at the Big Yellow School Bus!” This one was signed Dillon W. from the Marina.
Dillon W.? Hmm.
The glowing reviews continued until I found myself nearly drooling on my laptop. But it was the last one at the bottom that really caught my attention.
“I was checking out the food truck scene at Fort Mason the other day and overheard some guy complaining there were too many trucks invading the city. Turned out he was the owner of a restaurant across the street. I guess he doesn’t appreciate the competition. Doubt his place will last long with awesome food trucks like this.” Signed, Food Truck Fan.
I had a feeling Fan was talking about Oliver Jameson.
• • •
I awoke at six thirty the next morning, temporarily forgetting I didn’t have a regular job anymore. I made myself a breakfast of yogurt, strawberries, toast, and one of those flavored, one-cup coffees, which would keep me going until I could get to the Coffee Witch. After I showered, I dressed in my uniform—khaki pants and a plain red top. I slipped on my red laceless Converse All Stars, said good-bye to the Disney gang, and headed over to Aunt Abby’s to help her prepare for today’s Crab and Seafood Festival.
While I’d never worked at a food festival before, I’d certainly gone to many of them in my capacity as a food critic. It was one of the better perks of the job. I loved the Gilroy Garlic Festival and the Ghirardelli Chocolate Festival, but the Crab and Seafood Festival was one of the best, in spite of my distaste for mollusks. The event was held at various spots along the marina, including Fort Mason, with views of the Golden Gate Bridge, the boats at the yacht club, and the expansive, grassy lawns. Various musicians played throughout the day, everything from indie pop to alt-rock, from blues to zydeco, adding to the celebratory atmosphere. You couldn’t help but hoist a few Guinness stouts to wash down all the fish fare. One of my favorite events was the Shuck-and-Suck Competition, where oyster lovers raced to see how many of those slimy things they could eat in a timed period. And although the festival wasn’t cheap, the proceeds benefited the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, so it was all for a good cause. Of course, being press, I always got in free.
I checked the time on my cell phone. Aunt Abby said we had to be at the School Bus by nine to prepare. The gates opened at eleven. This year the event was expected to draw more than a hundred thousand people. I couldn’t imagine serving such a crowd!
“Aunt Abby?” I called out after letting myself in the open back door.
“She’s not here!” Dillon yelled from the recesses of the house.
Surprised he was up so early, I followed his voice to his room, hoping he was decent. I peered in from the doorway. His bedroom was essentially unchanged since high school. The ragged Harry Potter comforter lay in a crumpled heap at the foot of the unmade bed. Clothes were strewn about the room as if the place had been burglarized. Piles of comic books, graphic novels, and computer magazines towered in uneven piles on every flat surface. A souped-up PC that Dillon had assembled from custom components sat on a desk, his gateway to the virtual gaming world. He also had one other desktop computer, three monitors, a laptop, two printers, and a couple of tablets. The only noise in the room came from the cooling fans that kept the big computers from overheating.
But it was his pet white rat, Ratty, that kept me from actually entering his room. It didn’t matter that the creepy thing was in a cage.
Dillon lay in his bed working on his laptop. A coffee cup that read “I Escaped from Alcatraz” sat overturned on the small table beside him, empty and dried up. He still wore his SpongeBob Squarepants pajama bottoms and a stretched-out Angry Birds T-shirt. His feet were bare and his toenails needed clipping. The room smelled of old food mixed with dirty socks and a hint of pot.
“Where is she?” I asked from the doorway. If the rat didn’t get me, I had a feeling hantavirus or some other hazmat disease would.
“Said she was going to work,” he said without looking up.
I checked the time on my cell phone: seven. “Already?”
He gave a one-shoulder shrug.
Huh. Apparently she’d left early for her “busterant,” as she liked to call it, no doubt anxious to get ready for the onslaught of festival customers. Odd that she hadn’t called or texted to hustle me along. I started to leave, sensing I’d better get over there quickly to help out, then had a thought. Maybe Dillon could do some online investigating to help take the heat off his mother.
“Dillon, I did some research on Oliver Jameson last night and turned up some interesting stuff. I thought maybe you could find out more about him.”
“Done that,” he said, continuing his typing.
“Really?” I blinked, surprised at his sudden display of initiative. “What did you find out?”
Still typing on his laptop, Dillon recited much of the same information I’d located on the Internet the previous night.
“Yeah, I saw all that. Anything else?”
He pulled his fingers from the laptop and met my eyes. “Did you know that Bones ’n’ Brew was in Chapter 11?”
“No kidding? How did you find that out?”
“Public record,” he said.
“Was the place about to close?”
Dillon shrugged again. “Chapter 11 usually means reorganizing in order to stay afloat. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.”
I knew that. “Anything else?”
“I’m working on a few leads,” he said coyly.
I rolled my eyes. “Well, I need to find out what really happened to Oliver Jameson and I could use your help, since you’re an expert in all things electronic.”
“Like I said, I’m on it.” He returned to his typing. The conversation was over. Dillon wasn’t the most social person on the planet. And when he was focused on his computer stuff, he was in another world. A touch of undiagnosed Asperger’s? I wondered.
I headed for the kitchen to grab any leftover chocolate goodies
for breakfast but found nothing to satisfy my sweet tooth. I hoped the Dream Puff Guy would be opening soon. I needed a shot of sugar to go with my cup of caffeine in order to survive this new job.
I got in my coffee-colored VW Bug and drove to Fort Mason, wondering if I had the stamina to make a hundred thousand BLTs, should the need arise. When I arrived, I drove my small car around to the back entrance, checked in with the security guard, and squeezed in behind Aunt Abby’s School Bus. About half a dozen of the food trucks at Fort Mason have semipermanent parking spaces, and Aunt Abby was one of the lucky ones who didn’t have to move her bus every day. Instead, she drove her Toyota back and forth and parked behind the bus.
Odd. Her car wasn’t there yet. Instead, her reserved space was taken up by the Meat Wagon delivery van. Where was she? Picking up last-minute ingredients for the festival?
I caught a glimpse of the van’s driver, a skinny, shaggy-looking guy wearing a Meat Wagon T-shirt, jeans, and ornate black cowboy boots with gold embroidery and silver toe tips, headed for the van. I’d seen him a few times before when I stopped by Aunt Abby’s bus in the morning. Tripp was a regular who delivered daily to Chef Boris Obregar’s Road Grill truck, parked next door to Aunt Abby’s bus. He spotted me, winked, bared a mouthful of crooked teeth, and spat out the toothpick sticking out from his thin lips. With a last leering nod, he jumped into the truck and drove off.
What a creep.
I got out, inhaled the fragrant air—a mixture of the salty San Francisco Bay, exotic foods, and strong coffee—and followed my nose to the Coffee Witch. If I was going to work this eight-hour festival, I’d need more caffeine than the one cup my little coffeemaker provided.
The Coffee Witch, owned and operated by a young woman named Willow something, offered a variety of bewitching concoctions, everything from Simple Spells (vanilla lattes) to Potent Potions (double-shot mochas) to Enchanted Espressos (triple-shot espressos). This morning Willow looked as if she’d had a few too many of her own cauldron-created coffees. She was moving at hyperspeed, serving the other food vendors who needed her magic mixtures to survive the day. Her hair, blond at the tips, black at the roots, and cut in jagged layers, only added to her frenzied appearance. Fast, perky, and full of energy, she was perfect for this job.
“’S’up, Darce?” she said to me when I finally reached the front of the line. “Heard about your downsizing at the paper. Bummer. Your usual?”
Boy, word spread as fast as an outbreak of ptomaine poisoning among these food truck vendors. I had to remind myself not to tell Aunt Abby any of my darkest secrets.
“Hi, Willow. Yeah, I’ve got to up the amperage today if I’m going to help out my aunt at the festival. How about one of your Voodoo Ventis?”
“Sweet,” she said, grabbing a humongous paper cup. “Heard you’re writing a book.”
Damn Aunt Abby!
“Uh, well, I thought maybe a book filled with recipes from food trucks and food festivals would be something that people might buy. Got a recipe you want to share with me?”
“Totally! How about my Fiendish Frap recipe? That’s my bestseller in the afternoon. Secret ingredient: Peppermint Patties.”
“Great! I’ll come by in the next day or so and follow up. I thought I’d add some background to the recipe, like how you came up with it—stuff like that.”
“Sweet.” She passed my steaming-hot drink through the window of her renovated postal truck, which now sported her witchy image and logo.
I paid her, sipped my coffee, and glanced around at the eclectic array of food trucks, thinking this cookbook idea was going to be easier than I’d thought. And why not? The food trucks would get their names and photos in the book, which was great publicity. And I’d get yummy recipes and make a ton of money.
“Heard about the murder?” Willow called out to me, leaning from the window after serving another caffeine addict. “Totally freaked me out.”
“I know! Weird, huh?” I hoped she didn’t know about Aunt Abby’s visit to the police station. “Did you happen to see or hear anything yesterday?”
“Besides your aunt taking on the dead guy with a knife?”
Great. If Willow knew, then all the food truckers knew.
I sighed. “Yeah, besides that.”
“Nope. Cops came by late yesterday, asking questions. Told them pretty much everyone around here has gotten into it with that jerkwad.”
“You too?” I asked.
“A couple of times,” she said, then took another order from a customer.
So Willow had been interviewed by the police too? But apparently not down at the station. I wondered if the cops had talked to all the food truck owners about Oliver Jameson’s death.
Had they found out anything that could take the focus off my aunt?
Or had they learned something that could make things worse?
After Willow was done with her customer, I asked, “What did Oliver do to you?”
“First he hit on me. I mean, seriously. Like I’d ever go out with a fat, old, bald guy like him. When I told him to go screw himself, he said he had friends at the health department, hinting that he could get them to shut me down. I just laughed at him, told him I had ‘friends’ there too, you know what I mean?”
“You told the police about that?”
“Sure. Like I said, it seems like all us truckers have had problems with that jerk. But the cops didn’t take me to jail, so I figure I’m in the clear. Maybe they already have someone in mind.”
Like my aunt Abby, I thought. The coffee in my stomach turned to acid.
“Let me know if you hear anything, will you, Willow?”
“Totally,” she said as another customer sidled up.
I watched Willow as she took the order. I hadn’t noticed how attractive she was underneath that crazy hair and with all those piercings and tattoos. But apparently guys were always hitting on her—even old fat guys like Oliver Jameson. Maybe they liked the idea of walking on the wild side.
I glanced around at the circle of food trucks, wondering if any of the other truck owners had seen or heard anything yesterday. I made a note to question as many as I could, later, after the festival crowd died down. Right now I wanted to get to Aunt Abby’s bus. Surely she was back and needing me to help prepare for the long and busy day.
I walked over to the bus, but when I arrived, I found the door still closed and locked up tight.
Huh.
I checked my cell phone. A quarter to nine.
It was getting late. Where was Aunt Abby?
I felt a sudden tingling at the back of my neck. Was Aunt Abby all right? Had something happened to her?
After all, there was a murderer on the loose.
I started to text her, then glanced over at the Bones ’n’ Brew restaurant across the street and felt another chill.
If this was a random killer, maybe none of us was safe.
Chapter 4
Ten o’clock rolled around like the wheels of a bus, with no sign of my aunt. I was really starting to worry. I tried her cell (no answer), called Dillon (no word), and paced around the food trucks to see if any of the chefs had seen my aunt. If she didn’t show up soon, I was calling the police.
After checking in at India Jones (sampling some Masala Nachos), then the Humpty Dumpling Truck (resisting the Polish, Swedish, and Chinese dumplings), I was just about to talk to the chef at Porky’s, when I heard, “Hey, Darcy!”
I turned to see the Dream Puff Guy waving at me from across the way.
Jake Miller stood outside his cream puff truck, wearing his usual sexy jeans and formfitting white T-shirt. In one hand he held a brick-sized metal box; he waved me over with the other. Maybe he had some news about Aunt Abby, I thought as I waved back and headed for his truck. He knelt down by the front of his truck and slid the box underneath. Then he rose, picked up a small b
ottle of antibacterial liquid from his outside counter, and squirted a glob into his large hands.
Good thing he was cleaning up. I knew what was in the box—rat poison. I’d learned from Aunt Abby that rodent infestation is inherent to the restaurant business, but making sure a food truck was free of vermin was a state health-and-safety law. Food trucks were a little easier to keep clean than, say, older restaurants where there are lots of nooks and crannies to hide, but it was still an issue. Aunt Abby did her best to keep the rats and other vermin at bay.
Unfortunately, she explained to me, you can’t use snap traps or rodenticides where food is being prepared or served, since the poison might accidentally contaminate the food. She and the other truckers used bait boxes—tamper-resistant stations—like the one I’d just seen Jake tuck under his truck. The idea was to keep the toxins away from the food and kill the rats before they got into the trucks. Apparently Jake Miller dealt with rats the same way.
“Hey!” Jake said, rubbing his hands together.
I blinked. In spite of the fact that I’d been to his truck almost daily since he’d pulled in to Fort Mason a couple of months ago, I had no idea he knew my name. Our conversations had pretty much been: “Piña Colada Dream Puff, please,” “Cappuccino Dream Puff, please,” and “Key Lime Dream Puff, please.” For someone who was used to asking serious questions for news articles, I’d found myself tongue-tied around him.
Maybe it was because he was so hot. And I hadn’t been with a guy since Trevor the Tool.
“Hi,” I said, then felt my brain turn into a cream puff. “Uh . . . are you ready for the big festival today?”
“Getting there,” he said. He grabbed a long rod from the side of his truck, inserted it into a small hole at the top, and twisted it, working his considerable muscles as he opened the awning overhead. When he turned to face me, I saw a little spot of white fluff on his cheek. I was tempted to wipe—or lick—it off, but I held my tongue.
