I thought about the letter, but if the killer had come here in search of it, either they now possessed it, or they had been fine with destroying it through fire. There was no time for me to search, which had likely been the entire reason for the fire.
I made my way back down the stairs. The rail was now hot to the touch, and I tried to guide myself down the stairs without any assistance. The only thing I knew for sure was that it was down. The rest of my journey was all guesswork.
By now, about every third breath was a cough, racking my upper body more as I made my way through the living room. I could see the flames above me as well as below me. I felt for a second that I was in hell, or that at the very least, this was what hell felt like. I walked quickly to the kitchen, and back out the rear door.
Once outside, I reached for my phone, but realized that it was still in the car. I walked to the street, stopping to cough every few steps. I made it to the car, where Land was still sound asleep. I was glad that he hadn’t seen my performance. I know he would have been pissed to think of me in there without the proper gear. I slid into my seat and grabbed my phone.
Either the smell or the movement woke him up. He looked up to the house where flames now licked the outsides of the windows. Some of them must have burst when I was on the bottom floor. I was glad to have missed it. I was tired of broken glass today.
I dialed 911 for the second time that day and explained the fire and then gave them the address for Mariel’s house. I realized that there was no one else for me to call. Andy Zoz’s phone number had died when she had. Now it would be up to the police to use that number and inform him of his sister-in-law’s death.
I debated driving away, but I’d used my cell phone to make the call, so they already had my information on the 911 call. It would look much worse for me if I fled the scene, much as I wanted to. The sight of another headless corpse was more than I could stand. The scene would not be forgotten quickly—if ever.
Land asked me about Mariel, and I explained the situation down to the beheading. “I’m beginning to think that there are two sets of people at work here. I wish I knew more about what they wanted, and then I could start pinpointing who did what. Right now, it’s just a jumble in my head.”
I nodded. “Well, these two killings are the same person. You can’t convince me that there are two sets of people out there who are chopping the heads off women.”
Land nodded. “It’s not a common murder method that’s for sure. I’ll ask around and find out if anyone has that as a MO. There can’t be too many of them.”
“Then the sniper would be the second group of people involved in this?” I asked, trying to use my brain to shut off the mental images of Mariel.
“Probably, but not 100 percent. They could be the same group, but the supposed sister is likely with one of the groups, and that group likes to use finesse more than butchery. That would likely mean that the drive-by belongs to the same group as the beheader.”
We kept this up until the fire trucks arrived. I stepped out of the car, coughed a few more times and pointed them to the home. They made some attempts to get inside the house, but the fire was too far gone. In the end, we just watched Mariel’s home burn to the ground while the firemen tried to contain the blaze from the neighboring homes.
I tried to keep back far enough from the blaze so that I wouldn’t be noticed by the police, but that was not to be. By the time that the fire was under control, a squadron of police cars had assembled around the house. I assumed that the firefighters had realized that they could not save Mariel, and as a result, they’d called in the homicide detectives to take over.
The EMTs had pointed to me, and good old Detective Danvers strode over to talk to me. His face set into a grimace as soon as he realized who his interview subject was. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said as he approached my car. “You’ve had a busy day in Capital City.”
“And yet none of it has been my fault,” I replied. “Someone came to see me about her sister, someone shot at me, and someone burned down a house. I haven’t committed a single crime.”
“Just another short friendly visit after being shot at today?” he asked.
I felt that at this point I could be honest. The last letter of Linda Zoz was now a pile of ashes, and there was no harm in telling him the truth. “I came over to look at a letter that Mariel had talked about. She said that shortly before her death, Linda had mailed Mariel a strange letter, seemingly normal but with odd word choices and such. I wanted to take a look at it.”
“And you didn’t feel a need to share this with the police?” he said with his volume rising.
“You could have asked her about Linda and learned the exact same information,” I pointed out. “I didn’t ask her to hide it or lie. And I had no idea if it was evidence or not. It was all a hunch.”
“A hunch that ended with a burned out shell of a house and another woman with her head cut off.”
“Was it done with the same weapon?” I asked, my curiosity piqued by the comment.
“The ME says most likely. It’s hard to know without something to compare it to, but how many weapons exist to cut off heads?” Danvers’ tone was gentle, but his expression still showed that he was angry. “So any idea where the letter might have been in the house?”
I shook my head. “No idea at all. I’m guessing that our chance of finding the letter is long gone. It’s another dead-end in this case.”
Danvers looked back at the house. “It depends. Some rooms are gutted. Others are only smoky. You saved a good number of papers and probably some of the neighboring houses.”
I nodded. “I’m glad that I could help.”
“You went in the same way? The EMTs said that the back door windows were smashed in. Were those the arsonist’s crimes or yours?”
“I broke out the window of the door when I realized that the house was on fire. You could see the light of the flames, and I could smell the smoke.” I gave a detailed account of my actions in entering the house and looking around. I glossed over the decapitated corpse, which Danvers didn’t challenge. Perhaps he remembered my reaction to the other corpse I’d found in the same condition.
“No sign of this letter from Linda?” he asked when I was done.
I shook my head. “I looked through some of the papers that were out, but I didn’t have time to do much of a search. The place was going up fast by the time I made it upstairs.” I coughed again, just thinking of the situation I’d discovered.
“Yeah, whoever torched the place used gasoline as an accelerant. They didn’t seem too concerned about the fact that it would be discovered. The arson squad will look around but the guys on the scene already told me that they were fairly certain about its use.” Danvers looked back to the trucks that were packing up now.
The EMTs were rolling a gurney out of the front door, and I was glad to be far away from the action. “I could smell gas in the house. So what about the woman—the sister?”
Danvers shrugged. “I guess her story will check out. We have a few follow-up questions, but she had a wallet for the woman and some ID. No one else has come forward to claim the body, so I’m guessing that she’s probably who she says she is.”
I looked to Land, who was dozing again. “And the fact that she’s Russian?”
Danvers gave me an odd look. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
I sighed. “Is there a Russian mob connection?”
Danvers sighed. “You’ve watched too many movies. I’d tell you to go home and get some rest, but you’ve probably got to go locate a kidnapper instead.” He turned on his heel and walked away with that statement.
Chapter 9
I had been tempted to close the food truck for the following day. As much as had happened to us in the past 24 hours, I felt that any reasonable customer would understand why I couldn’t get up at 4 a.m. to get to the truck by 5.
However, Land had insisted on starting as usual. I wasn’t sure
of his reasons; he didn’t offer any. When I managed to get to the truck by 10am, Land had prepared all the food, the coffee, and was taking orders. I found that our receipts from women always rose drastically when Land was the one taking orders at the window.
He smiled at me, as though nothing had happened last night. Land looked fresh and ready for a full day. I felt like someone had run over me twice and then parked the car on me. My back and neck ached from all the sharp motions, and my hands and legs had small cuts from the broken glass. I’d found a way to style my hair so that the stitches weren’t visible, so at least I had that much going for me.
As I put down my bag, Land pointed to the counter. “I brought you something,” he said.
I looked in that direction. It appeared to be a stack of papers. At first, I wondered if it could be the letter that Mariel had mentioned, but at a closer glance, it appeared to be a computer-generated report. I sighed and started taking orders.
Business was brisk all through the day, and it was nearly time to go home before I had a chance to look at the papers again. I did a quick skim and then went back to read it more thoroughly. It appeared to be a list of all of the food truck permits in Capital City. I found my aunt’s permit, now mine, and smiled to see “Dogs on the Roll” listed next to the permit name.
“Where did you get this?” I asked. I was pretty sure that wherever it had come from, it had not been obtained legally. My aunt had gone to the lengths of counting food trucks to learn how many permits were in use. She’d never had a report handed to her.
“Let’s just say that I have my ways of getting information,” he said with a small smile. “I thought that if your aunt was having trouble with getting a permit that you might find the list useful.”
I shrugged. “It’s hard to tell until I go over this carefully, but it has potential.” I tucked the list into my bag and returned his smile. I wasn’t sure what he was up to, but Land had rarely done more than be a physical presence during an investigation. Now he had moved to providing me with what could be a clue. I was impressed, but wary. I had to wonder what his motives were for getting involved.
We finished up. Since I’d come to the food truck late, I didn’t have to drive back to the secured lot to drop off the truck. I decided to grab a coffee at Starbucks and head home to look at this report from Land.
I pulled into the lot at Starbucks and noticed that a car that had been downtown with me was now at the same coffee emporium. I had a small shiver wondering if Starbucks would be the next establishment without a plate glass window.
Since I felt that I was being followed, I decided to drink my latte there and read the report under the scrutiny of seven other patrons. While it wasn’t a state militia, the company felt better than reading this at home in my first floor apartment.
I took a sip of my drink and pulled the account from my bag. The report was a listing of all the food truck permits given out in the last two years from the local government. I flipped open to the page with my truck on it, and proudly read my aunt’s name. Apparently they hadn’t updated the document to reflect my ownership. I wasn’t surprised. The speed with which local government moved was not rapid.
I also looked up the names and trucks I’d worked with on the reality show. I found most of them easily, though I had to go through the list twice to find Annabella’s truck. I wondered how the other drivers were faring at this point. I doubted that they were being shot at or finding headless corpses.
I wondered if there was something in the report that would help me with the case. So I started on the first page and started reading the names of the food truck owners. By the time I’d made it to page five, I’d counted no less than 14 trucks licensed to NBG trucking. I’d never heard of the company before that, but that wasn’t exactly surprising. Larger firms could probably use economics of scale to make more profit.
Yet as I went through the list again, I started to notice that the dates of the NBG permits matched the time period when my aunt had been denied her permit. I had to wonder why their permits had come so easily when my aunt had struggled. Was this a coincidence, or was there more to this story?
I ran through the report again, but there were no other food trucks issued a license during that time period. Only one company had received a permit during that time, and that was NBG. They had received five permits during that time.
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that competition had been stymied by a larger company. I wondered how I could find out more about any payments from NBG to Linda Zoz. Obviously Linda couldn’t tell me, and I was sure that NBG wouldn’t either. I thought about Linda’s family again and realized that Danvers hadn’t shared any information about the phone number I’d given him. Had the police been able to contact the family? What had the family said? I still had no idea where they were hiding, but I figured that they would know the truth about the money and its source.
I tried to call Danvers on his cellphone, but it went to voicemail. I left a quick message and hung up.
I looked out the door, but there was no sign of the person who had been following me earlier. I took a deep breath and headed out to my car. I had no trouble in getting home safely.
I decided to do some research on-line regarding NBG. At least at home, I was far from the prying eyes of anyone who might want to know why I was looking up information about this company.
Since they were a bigger firm, I started with the company website. It looked innocuous enough at first. I browsed through the information on the company profile. I wanted to learn more about its history, but that page was extremely vague except to say that the firm had existed since the 1950s and had experienced exceptional growth in the last ten years.
Of course they would, I thought. They stifled the competition.
I moved over to the page on personnel involved with the company. I started down through the list of officers when I stopped cold. Or perhaps dead would have been a better choice of words.
The woman who had been shot dead on government square. The woman who had been identified as a Slavic immigrant who had recently come to this country was the CFO for this food truck firm. Her listed name was Betty Montgomery, which seemed about as local as any name I’d heard.
I was shocked and puzzled. While I know enough not to believe everything I read on the Internet, I was fairly certain that her “sister” had been the one to mislead us rather than this website.
I took a screen print of the information and then sent it to the email address for Detective Danvers. My message to him was a simple “WTF?” I wasn’t really in a mood to deal with him more directly. I was annoyed about the kiss, but I was angrier about the way in which he was treating me. I was the innocent, and apparently clueless, center of a rather involved intrigue, and he acted as if I was the person behind it all.
I sent a copy of the screen print to another email address I owned, just to save it on the server. I wanted documentation of this for Land when I saw him tomorrow. I wondered if he’d known of the connection to the murder when he’d given me that report. I wouldn’t doubt it. Even with the little bit more that I knew about Land at this point, I still didn’t feel like I knew him well. This type of manipulation was similar to what I’d seen him do to others, especially Detective Danvers.
I was starting to see all of this tied together. The person who was coming to see me at the food truck was a part of NBG, which in turn had most likely been involved in keeping my aunt from getting her permits. My assumption at this point was that Linda Zoz had been bribed to keep the other permits at bay until such time as NBG had a lock on the market.
I wondered why none of the NBG trucks had been a part of the reality show, but I suspected that they had not wanted anything to raise their profile regarding who they were or what they wanted. No show would want an entire cast of food trucks from the same company. It would diminish the suspense over who would win.
I wondered again about the woman who had been killed by the sniper. Was she
coming to tell me something about NBG? Whoever had hidden her identity had gone to great lengths to keep it quiet. They’d hired someone or enlisted someone to pretend to be her sister and downplay any possible connection with the food truck company. I wasn’t sure what a fake sister ran for these days, but I suspected that it would be a rather substantial sum. A corporation would meet Land’s criteria of both having substantial funds and connections.
So far I knew that Linda and Mariel had been executed, because they knew that Linda had been bribed to stop giving permits. Mariel might have known more than she’d told me, or she might have just possessed a letter explaining the scam, which had been destroyed in the fire. The woman from NBG had also been killed, but the motive for her death was unclear. I wasn’t sure if she’d been coming to confess about the company’s role in the killings. For all I knew, she might have been coming to kill me, even though the police had not found any weapons on her or in her purse.
I knew that much because I’d looked in her purse. I’d also found a link between this woman and the Zoz family since she had Andy Zoz’s phone number on her phone. So the two issues were tied together through this woman, and I had no idea of the motive behind her murder or the reason she’d been coming to see me.
Land had suggested two groups being involved in the case so far: the sniper group and the beheading group. I shivered slightly thinking that I’d named the groups for their preferred method of killing people. Neither one sounded attractive.
I decided to stay inside that night, not even going out to get the mail. I thought it best, considering what I’d learned and what these people had done to others.
I was at the truck first the next morning, wanting to talk to Land about the report and what he knew. Of course, he was late given that I was anxious to talk to him. He strolled in a few minutes after six, much later than normal for him. “I had something to do last night,” he said enigmatically. Just like Land to not give me specifics. “I figured you’d be back to being early, and I could get the extra rest today.”
FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books) Page 37
