by Penny Pike
“You mean that time she burned her soufflé on her TV show?”
“No, the time she was convicted of obstruction of justice and went to prison!”
“Darcy, I can’t tell him I was lying! I’ve worked too long and hard making a go of my business and I’m not going to the slammer just because of some small fib about where I was when.”
Small fib? I was sure that’s what Martha Stewart thought too.
Before I could argue, I felt the equivalent of a 4.5 earthquake rock the bus. A deep voice at the door said, “What’s all the commotion?”
Apparently Aunt Abby and I had been shouting loud enough to attract the attention of the chef next door. Chef Boris Obregar stood in the doorway, his round face flushed, his large head topped precariously with a tall white toque. Boris was the owner of the Road Grill food truck, which was parked next to my aunt’s bus. Her bus had listed the moment he’d hoisted his sizable weight onto the lower step. This man loved his own cooking.
Boris was loud and crude, and I didn’t care for his menu selections. He served what he called “exotic meats,” but what I’d call “road kill” food—burgers made from possum, hot dogs from ground snake, and something he called “gator balls,” which I only hoped wasn’t a literal label. Aunt Abby called him Boris Badcook behind his broad back. No doubt he had his fans, but I had a feeling a lot of the male customers came to get an eyeful of his attractive assistant, Cherry Washington. She tended to offer up a pair of ample boobs when taking customers’ orders. With her long mocha legs, short-shorts, low-cut tops, and halo of tight black curls, she could have gotten a job at any Hooters in the state. Why she chose to work with Boris and his freaky food was a mystery to me.
Just the thought of eating wild animals made me almost consider becoming a vegetarian, like Sierra and Vandy, the vegans who ran the Vegematic truck. But Boris’s food was wildly popular with a diverse crowd, and the man himself was a jovial guy with permanently rosy cheeks, a cropped white beard, and caterpillar eyebrows. While he reminded me of Santa Claus, his red face wasn’t from the cold, and he was jolly. More likely his coloring came from the vodka I’d seen him drinking behind his truck during breaks. He’d even offered me a hit one time when I spotted him having a snort.
“I could hear you two arguing way over to my place,” Boris said, a remnant of his Slavic accent punctuating his words. “You want to drive the customers away? Bad enough there’s been a murder in the neighborhood.”
Odd. We had only just learned that Oliver Jameson’s death was a possible homicide. “Why do you think Oliver Jameson was murdered?” I asked.
Boris shrugged his beefy shoulders. “What else could it be? The guy was asking for it. Everybody around here hated him. He hassled Willow, the vegans, Jake, everyone. He used to send me poison-pen letters, threatening to shut me down, just because I serve exotic gourmet fare to my patrons.”
Gourmet?
“He threatened you?” Aunt Abby asked, perking up.
“Sure. About half a dozen times,” Boris said, wiping his sweating brow with the bottom of his heavily stained apron. Were those dark streaks human blood?
“Where are the letters?” I asked, thinking Aunt Abby was on to something. The police would want to know about this.
“I tore ’em up,” he said, gesturing with his hands.
“What? You should have saved them,” I said.
“What for? I didn’t plan to reread them.”
“You could have turned them over to the police,” I argued.
“They were poison-pen letters. They weren’t signed, ‘Love, Oliver.’”
“But the cops might have found fingerprints or something,” Aunt Abby added. “And they could have been used as evidence, in case he did something else to you. Something worse.”
“Oh, pah!” Boris said. “I got my revenge.”
That caught my attention.
Boris laughed. “No, I didn’t kill him. I ripped up the last note he sent me, went into his kitchen, and threw the pieces all over the food. Ha!”
“What did he do when he found out?” Aunt Abby asked, wide-eyed.
“Nothing. I told the woman chef working there to tell him, ‘Nobody messes with Chef Boris.’ I’m sure he got the message, because he didn’t bother me again.”
“What did the letters say?” Aunt Abby asked, her frown deepening.
I turned to her. “Aunt Abby? Did you get letters too?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I’m just curious.”
Chef Boris lifted his toque, revealing a bald pate, and scratched an itch with a sausage-sized finger. When he was done, he replaced the hat. I hoped he washed his hands frequently.
“Mostly crap like, ‘Stop the slop, you pig!’ and ‘Serving rat soufflé, you rodent?’”
Hmm. Aunt Abby had mentioned she suspected Oliver of planting a rat in her kitchen a week or so ago. Coincidence? Too bad Boris had destroyed possible evidence that Oliver had been threatening him. It might have taken the focus off Aunt Abby.
“I gotta get back to work,” Boris said. “Just thought I’d check on you when I heard the shouting, what with this murder and everything. By the way, I’m serving a fried eel omelet today for the festival. Stop by for a sample.”
Just the thought of putting a piece of eel—dead or alive, raw or cooked—in my mouth made me want to heave.
As soon as the XXL chef stepped off the bus, the vehicle leveled itself, but a small aftershock followed, causing a teetering spoon at the counter’s edge to fall. The spoon hit the floor and slid under the stove. I bent down to retrieve it.
And screamed.
“What’s wrong?” Aunt Abby said, startled by my reaction.
I reared back, shaking my hand as if something was stuck to it. “There’s a rat under the stove!”
Aunt Abby grimaced. “That rat bastard!” she mumbled, then asked, “It’s dead, right?”
“I don’t know! I didn’t check its pulse!”
“Jameson!” Aunt Abby said, venom in her voice. “I’m sure he planted it there. I don’t know how he got in here, but it had to be him. Talk about vermin. He’s the epitome of the word. Rodenticide is too good for that rat bastard.”
Stunned, I looked at Aunt Abby as if she’d just confessed to murder.
Aunt Abby read my mind, as she often seemed to do. “You can relax, Darcy. I didn’t kill Oliver Jameson with rat poison, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
I blinked.
“I didn’t kill him with anything!” she added.
“Do you keep rat poison on the bus?” I asked.
“Of course. But I only use it in the bait box.”
Hmm. I wondered if the police would look for rat poison in Aunt Abby’s bus. “Where do you keep the actual poison?”
She nodded toward a high cupboard door at the far end of the bus. “Check for yourself,” she said. “Meanwhile, I’m gonna get rid of the body.”
For a moment I thought she meant the body of Oliver Jameson. Then I remembered the rat.
While Aunt Abby slipped on disposable gloves and knelt down on the floor, I pulled the box of rodenticide from the cupboard and read the label.
“Contents: Bromethalin. Warning: Highly toxic. Can cause paralysis, convulsions, and death. . . .”
Death.
“It is illegal and unsafe to use rodenticides in any area where food is being prepared or served unless it’s contained in a bait box. . . .”
I wondered if it was illegal to keep the package of pellets in the cupboard.
I read on: “Use bait stations and traps filled with rodenticide pellets and place them outside the building to prevent vermin from entering. Check with local authorities for correct usage in your area.”
Would the local authorities be knocking on the door any minute?
Aunt Abby stood up,
holding the trap by her gloved fingertips. A dead rat the size of a small lobster dangled from it. I turned away, nauseated. “Get that disgusting thing out of here!”
The lifeless pest didn’t seem to bother Aunt Abby as much as it did me. Holding the trap at arm’s length, she stepped out of the bus and headed for the community Dumpster a few yards away.
How had that rat gotten inside Aunt Abby’s bus? Was it dead or alive when it entered? And would the police wonder what other rat my aunt Abby might have disposed of lately?
• • •
After we finished preparing the first batch of crab mac and cheese cups—a dish Aunt Abby was calling Crabby Cheerleader Mac and Cheese—she and I worked on the other popular comfort foods that were my aunt’s specialties—the Fire Drill (eye-watering chili), the Field Trip (BLT wedge salad), and the Science Experiment Spaghetti. By the time the gates opened at eleven a.m., we were amped and ready to rock. Thoughts of rats, poison, and murder were the furthest things from my mind.
I braced myself as the stream of crab lovers swarmed into the area. The constant rush kept us both hopping, me mostly at the service window, Aunt Abby with the cooking. By two p.m., when the crowd had died down a bit, I was more tired than I’d ever been working at the newspaper. Interviewing people for a story was a piece of cake compared to working in a food truck. The small kitchen was in shambles, I reeked of fish, and my sleek brown hair had been steamed into bushy waves. How my aunt did this every day at age sixty-plus was mind-boggling. I wasn’t sure I’d last another hour, let alone a week.
I really needed to write—and sell—my “Food Truck and Festival Cookbook” proposal to a publisher. Fast.
“Take a break,” Aunt Abby said after handing a straggling customer the last in a third batch of her Crabby Macs. “You deserve it. You did a great job. I couldn’t have done it without you, seeing as how Dillon didn’t stick around for very long.”
“Yeah, where is he, anyway?”
Aunt Abby shrugged as she donned a fresh apron and tied it around her waist with experienced hands. “I don’t know. That boy. He’s been acting strange lately.”
I wanted to say, “You mean stranger than usual,” but I bit my tongue. “Well, thanks for the break. You sure you’ll be okay?” I was grateful for a chance to catch my breath—and get a breath of fresh air. I’d been nibbling on mistakes and leftovers throughout the morning and early afternoon, so I wasn’t hungry, but I badly needed another jolt of caffeine.
“Go! I’ll be fine.”
I wandered over to the Coffee Witch, ordered a magical potion called the Alchemy—a double latte with one pump of Belgian chocolate—and sat down on a nearby bench. Sierra Montoya, the thirtysomething woman who co-ran the Vegematic truck, joined me a few minutes later, holding some kind of blended green drink. She looked more like she’d come from the gym than her truck, wearing tight shorts and a tank top on her toned body. Her face was bare of makeup and her short brown hair looked salon cut and easy care.
Aunt Abby had filled me in on most of the food truckers during serving lulls. She said Sierra owned the veggie truck with her partner, Vandy Patel. They’d named their business the Vegematic as a sort of homage to an old I Love Lucy episode. Both were avid supporters of PETA and protested regularly at various demonstrations around the city, bringing along signs that said things like MEAT IS MURDER!, CARROTS ARE COOL!, DRINK YOUR VEGETABLES!, and WHO KILLED BAMBI? They’d even set out signs in front of their Vegematic truck, just to irritate Chef Boris. Aunt Abby said the two women had argued frequently with the Road Grill chef, and he’d taken to ruffling their feathers with his own signs, for instance, RABBIT FOOD IS FOR RABBITS, PLANTS HAVE FEELINGS TOO!, and PROUD TO BE A CARNIVOR! (misspelling the word “carnivore”). Unfortunately, their food trucks were parked right next to each other, and Aunt Abby said the heated glares between the two factions could fry an organic egg.
“Hi,” Sierra said after a long drag from the straw in her green drink. She glanced at my coffee.
Did she just wince at my less-than-healthy beverage, loaded with fat and sugar? Or was that my imagination?
I smiled and said, “Hey. Busy day, eh?”
She took another sip, then said, “I saw you helping out at Abby’s bus.”
I nodded. “This food truck business is a lot harder than I expected.”
She snickered. “Tell me about it. Luckily it’s not this crazy every day. But we need the business. New food trucks seem to be setting up shop all over the city. Competition is getting stiff.” She nodded at Chef Boris’s Road Grill rig. “If only we could get rid of a few of the less desirable trucks, like that one. His food is disgusting! Alligator, black bear, elk, kangaroo, turtle. Meat like that should be illegal. And he should be locked up. Along with that guy from Porky’s. What a stupid name.”
Uh-oh. I had wanted to sip my coffee quietly, but her mini-rant had piqued my interest. “Selling exotic meats isn’t illegal?” I asked, curious.
“Fair game,” she said, adding finger quotes to the word “game.”
“Wow. Are there any animals that aren’t legal to cook and sell, besides horses, dogs, cats?”
“Actually, there’s no real ban on dog and cat meat—they’re just frowned upon.”
Oh my God.
I thought of Aunt Abby’s little dog, Basil.
“You can’t sell haggis,” she continued. “It’s made out of sheep’s lung. You can eat the stomach, heart, and liver of a sheep, but not the lung. Go figure. Pâté is now illegal. And you need a license to sell fugu.”
“Fugu?”
“It’s puffer fish—the stuff they use to create zombies, if you believe that sort of thing. Apparently it can paralyze you.”
Whoa. I was sorry I asked. Where did she get this morbid information?
“That’s what’s so crazy about this business,” she added. “It’s not illegal to cook and eat antelope or buffalo, or even lion meat, but it’s just plain wrong, you know? Boris should be strung up by his prairie oysters for crimes against nature.”
Prairie oysters? I had a feeling she meant balls.
Sierra stood up and tossed her empty recyclable cup into a “green” bin. “Gotta get back to work and hopefully keep a few more customers from practicing animal cannibalism.”
“No crab dishes at the Vegematic truck?”
“Nope. We’ve got a great Seaweed Stew though. You should try it.”
I was beginning to feel guilty for enjoying the occasional burger and hot dog. While I ate my veggies like my mother had always told me, I just couldn’t wrap my mouth around tofu wieners, cauliflower burgers, or seaweed stew.
“Sierra?” I called out to her as she started to head back. “I guess you heard about the death of Oliver Jameson. The chef from the restaurant across the street?”
She nodded. “Bones ’n’ Brew? Who hasn’t? Not sorry to see him gone. He was always hassling us about our vegetarian menu. I’m sure he felt threatened by us—thought we were converting people to vegetarianism and causing him to lose business. I doubt he served a single vegetable beyond decorative parsley.”
“Why do you think he felt threatened by you?”
“One morning our signs had all been torn down. I immediately thought it was Meathead Man—Boris—but the next time it happened, I’m pretty sure I saw someone in chef’s whites running toward Bones ’n’ Brew. I swear, if I’d caught him, I would have beat the crap out of him.”
“Sierra!” a voice called from across the food truck area.
We both looked in the direction of the Vegematic. Sierra’s partner, Vandy, stood outside, hands on her hips, scowling at us. From a distance she looked like Sierra’s sister. Both had warm latte skin and dark hair and eyes. But Vandy wore her hair long, and makeup enhanced her dark eyes. When I thought they were related, I was surprised to learn they were a couple. I smiled and waved at Vandy; she did
n’t smile or wave back. Either the sun was in her eyes, or she was dissing me on purpose. But why? I wondered.
As I watched Sierra walk back to her truck, I didn’t doubt she could beat the crap out of Oliver Jameson or anyone else. Those muscles in her biceps and triceps hadn’t come from eating her veggies. She’d been working out and was probably strong enough to strangle an ox. Not that she would, of course, being a vegetarian.
Then again, you didn’t need muscles to poison someone. Boris and Sierra, and perhaps scowling Vandy, all had a reason to dislike Oliver Jameson. Enough to kill him?
Chapter 6
Unrest among the food truck community? I wondered as I headed back to Aunt Abby’s Big Yellow School Bus. Were there too many trucks invading the city, as Sierra had said, providing a glut for gluttons? Or was it just competitive jealousy—too many cooks spoiling the profit margin? All I knew was, things were heating up now that murder had been added to the menu.
One thing was clear: Oliver Jameson had more enemies than just Aunt Abby. Boris, the weird-meat guy, had had run-ins with him. So had Sierra and Vandy, the vegetarians. Willow the Coffee Witch didn’t care for him either, even though he had frequented her truck for his morning jolt. I wondered if Jameson’s coffee had tasted a little bitter of late, perhaps with a hint of almond?
All this speculating was getting me nowhere. None of these people seemed like killers. But the cops still had Aunt Abby on their list of suspects, thanks to that public fight she’d had with the Bones ’n’ Brew chef. Jeez, she’d even brandished a knife at him, in front of witnesses, no less. Now that Oliver Jameson was dead, the cops seemed to be taking her threats seriously. Were there other suspects on Detective Shelton’s list besides my aunt?
Boris, Sierra and Vandy, and Willow might have had strong enough reasons to murder Chef Jameson. But it could have been another one of the several food truck owners parked at Fort Mason. Then again, someone close to Jameson could have done it—a disgruntled employee? A jilted fiancée? A former friend? A secret stalker turned killer?
