“The problem we have is that I have ingredients coming for the next month or so. I wouldn’t know what to do with all of this if we don’t serve at least some of the original menu,” I’d argued. Indeed, Janelle had made some standing orders for six months, which seemed overly optimistic given that many restaurants close up in the first few months. It locked me in at a particular rate, which seemed reckless, given that the price could easily decrease over the next half year.
“I can work around that for now. I know I can.” He began rattling off a list of recipes that I’d never heard of, so the argument was somewhat lost on me. I half-suspected that he did that on purpose.
His arguments came down to three points, which were all valid. Since we were tied into these contracts for certain food items, we had to either keep the existing menu, shift it to something that could use lamb and some of those spices, or attempt a new and unfamiliar menu that used those items. He made an obvious case against the entirely new menu. No one wanted to learn how to cook dishes at the same time you were serving them for the first time. Word of mouth about uncertain dishes would be the death of a food truck.
So the debate came down to either keeping the original menu or moving to Basque cuisine. I argued that I wanted to change as little as possible, but he argued how well the menu had been received when he’d done a special prep of Basque food for Dogs on the Roll. I hated to admit it, but he was right. That day had netted us one of our highest volumes of all time.
In the end, I let him try the Basque cuisine. I knew he had nothing to do with it, but Basque food was all the rage in the market these days. So mixing trendy with the wholesome fare of Dogs on the Roll seemed like a good fit. Both would serve similar coffee, which would cut into the profits somewhat, but the main fare would be different enough not to pull clients from our existing truck.
I was pleased with the decision, though I put up a tough fight so that Land wouldn’t think I was a pushover in matters of business. He knew the cooking side far better than I did, but I wanted to ensure that I kept control of the business end of the food trucks. He would have gladly spent all the profits in order to make the dishes just so.
We did both agree on Basque in the Sun for the name of the renovated food truck. People might groan a little over the pun, but clever wordplay was often well received in the food service industry. The truck was quickly repainted to have a giant sun on the side along with the new name.
Finally the new food truck was ready to open. Given the truck’s rather bloody recent history, we decided to do a cold opening first. So, on Monday morning Land rolled the truck up to the place where Janelle had parked before her demise and set up shop for the day. It was odd to watch it open, knowing that I owned it.
Even though Carter had been hired to work with me, we decided that he would be better suited to work with Land for the first two weeks. Land would need help in getting over any particular bumps in the road, whereas things at Dogs on the Roll were fairly steady. Carter could fetch things from the original truck or run to the store if need be.
However, that meant that I had to get the truck, do the prep work as well as my own work, and both serve and take money. Over the first few days of that first week, I felt more exhausted than Danvers and Land had looked during their surveillance.
Basque in the Sun had a different schedule than Dogs on the Roll. I was still on the early shift, bringing in the early commuters and people in need of a caffeine fix. The other food truck opened around 10 a.m. and stayed open until four. Land counted the money around the end of my shift, and the remaining cash, from late sales that day, was left in the drawer for the next day. Basque cuisine was not particularly mouth-watering at eight a.m. People can wolf down a hot dog as breakfast, but a lamb stew or fish entrée was less likely to be eaten before lunch. They stayed open long enough to catch the people leaving work that wanted something to take home with them.
Yet every day when I took approximately double the amount of money to the bank, I felt refreshed. The new truck was doing well. It had exceeded my estimates for the first month—or any of the first twelve months—of being open. The food was delicious. Carter was doing well at both cooking and taking orders.
The only issue was that we still had not come up with any information on the espionage ring or the murder of Janelle Nolan. I wasn’t allowed to just bask in the glory, pardon the pun, because Detective Danvers stopped by every day to ask where things stood. When he didn’t get the answer he wanted from me, he sauntered over to the other truck to ask them as well.
To be honest, no one had approached Land at all regarding documents or being a courier for the Moroccan people in regards to the situation in North Africa. All was quiet on the food truck front.
I still hadn’t learned anything else about the financials either. It frustrated me to think that the answers to these questions were just a few interviews away, if I knew whom to ask, but other than the Nolans, I had no one to query. I couldn’t even get in touch with Janelle’s brother. His number was unlisted, and I couldn’t think of a good reason to ask the Nolans for his number. All of the participants in this were in the shadows, and I didn’t have a way of learning anything about them.
Finally on that first Friday, we had an opening celebration for the new food truck. I had promoted the new truck heavily in the newspapers and on the TV news, hoping to get more people to come and see us. I had some hope that if I ratchetted up the profile of the food truck, then someone would take notice of us.
The day went as planned. The food truck had a line halfway down the block, and the orders were done quickly. Some of my customers even went over to the other truck and tried the cuisine. I wasn’t too worried about most of my customers defecting because they still thrived on the coffee I provided at 6 a.m. They’d have to wait until 10 for the other truck’s coffee, and most of my customers would have killed three people if they had to wait an additional four hours to get their fix.
I closed up a bit early and left a sign suggesting that anyone could find me at the other truck. I didn’t plan on making a habit of leaving this food truck unattended. I had no desire to see my income drop back down to its previous level. We had opened the second truck so that we could double the income, and even though the work was tough, I wanted to succeed.
Yet I was also human, and the thought of being left out of all the excitement at the other truck finally got to me. I headed over there to see what was going on.
Land was the first to spot me in the crowd. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the other truck?” he chided. He was more concerned that I would stop working on our original truck and return to our old arrangement of me boss, him employee.
“I told the customers to come over here. It’s just for today. I thought I deserved a day to enjoy the fact that this dream had finally come true.”
Carter looked out the window at the line. “I think we have a success here.”
I nodded. The line was growing as we spoke, so I hopped up into the truck and took over the customer end of the business so that both men could cook. I was almost giddy from the sales we were making. The cash register rang constantly.
The success was all I could think about until Sam stepped up to the window. “Hey, Maeve. I didn’t expect to see you here. How have you been?”
I was more than a little annoyed at the fact that here was the man who had been telling me he was too busy to see me, waiting in line for some Basque food at noon on a Friday. However, he was a customer, followed in line by 50 other customers, so I had to keep it pleasant. “Well, I told you I had a food truck, and we’re expanding.”
He half-grunted a response. “Wasn’t there some guy in the interview I saw?” There was almost an implication that if he’d seen me, he would have skipped this opening. I knew that he wasn’t the one for me, but even so, I wondered what I’d done to get the cold shoulder like this. I’d run through our encounters several times, but I couldn’t think of any moment that would have evoked this react
ion.
I still had to play it sweet. “That’s Land. He’s the cook and minority owner of this truck. He’ll be running it while I take care of the original truck.”
Sam stuck his bottom lip out as if he was thinking—or pouting. “I’d heard that this was Janelle Nolan’s truck before you guys bought it.”
Now things were getting interesting. None of the interviews had mentioned that, and I certainly hadn’t played up the dead owner angle when I sent out the print ads. I decided to play dumb and stammered, “Yeah, but how—?” I let the sentence trail off.
Sam paused for a moment. I had apparently caught him in a story that he hadn’t prepared for. “I think someone must have told me,” he replied, hoping to get out of it.
“The Nolans?” I asked blandly, not letting him know that I was privy to such information. “They’ve been very helpful about selling the truck.”
He nodded. “Maybe it was the Nolans. I can’t remember.”
The line was backing up, and Sam’s food was prepared, so I rang him up and moved on to the next customer. I did notice that he left a five dollar tip in the jar, but I wasn’t thrilled by that. I would much rather have had answers to a tip. The tip just reminded me that our relationship had gone from occasional outings to food service customer.
The line was still going strong two hours later. The police had turned over all the frozen food to the Nolans before it thawed, so we had plenty of provisions, which was a worry considering the crowd. Land had retrieved all of them from a freezer yesterday and put them back in the food truck.
I was surprised to see Detective Danvers and three other policemen arrive at the window. I’d been expecting a visit from them today. Danvers had been sure that the reopening of the food truck would reveal all to us by some magic. I was sorry that I was going to have to burst his bubble and tell him that I hadn’t learned a thing.
“Any news?” he asked when he stepped up. After a pause, he ordered a coffee and fish entrée.
“Nothing really,” I replied as I rang him up. “Sam did stop by.”
“He’s the boyfriend, right?”
I was a bit annoyed by the phrasing, which could imply that he was my boyfriend as well as Janelle’s. So I just nodded as I passed him the food. The other officers ordered coffee and stew. Given that I’d made Danvers pay, none of them asked for a freebie this afternoon. That could come later when every piece of meat was less precious. It would be uniquely bad form to stop serving a crowd this size.
Danvers threw in, “I’ll talk to you later,” as he shuffled off with the other men. I wished that was not true, but I knew he would be by later to see what we’d learned.
The people kept coming, keeping all three of us busy. I kept watching Carter, thinking that if he was planning on sabotaging something, that today would be the optimal day for it. We had a huge crowd and bad word-of-mouth would travel far and wide. However, he showed no signs of treachery. Maybe I would have to give up my deep distrust of him and actually give him a key to the original food truck.
I was feeling somewhat relieved, when a young man approached the food truck. He had the same dusky skin and dark eyes as a person I’d talked to several times recently. I said, “You must be Janelle’s brother.”
He nodded. “I wanted to see what you’d done to her truck.” The words sounded accusatory, but he continued. “I’m glad that her dream hasn’t died. She’d be happy too.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m glad to hear that.”
He nodded. “I have to go.”
“Could I get a phone number?” I asked quickly. I handed him a pen. He scribbled something across one of the new napkins I’d ordered and handed it back to me. I wished I’d had more time to talk to him. I hoped he had something to offer, but I wouldn’t know today. The line continued to pour forward, pushing slightly to get our food.
I tucked the number in my pocket and moved on to the next customer. Henry, who usually stopped by at a time when we could talk, greeted us warmly and ordered the stew and a coffee. His basset hound sniffed the air and wagged his tail in response. I hoped that was a good sign for business.
By two o’clock, my body was ready to go home. However, we had another two hours to go. It was amazing to me that my body had adjusted so quickly to that new schedule that working until three p.m. or later was tantamount to torture.
I powered through as both of the men seemed to be having no problem at all. They looked happy and content to be cooking while I handled the money. By four o’clock, I was done. I was already dreaming of my nice comfy bed and a long, long sleep. Tomorrow would be an off day, so I could sleep in and indulge. I needed it. The last few weeks had been nothing but work for me.
I had just finished counting the money for the second time when Land cleared his throat. “What’s up?” I asked, trying to read his expression. “You look miserable.”
“We have a problem,” he replied, not telling me anything new. I wasn’t sure how to take his words.
“Tell me,” I whined, not wanting to wait to hear the latest issue. I was thinking along the lines of someone being maimed or poisoned by our food.
He handed me the bag for a shipment of frozen lamb. I looked at it, but couldn’t figure out why he was handing it to me. “Is something wrong with the lamb? It’s the same stuff that she’d been using. She must have liked it. She had a longer-term contract with the company.”
Land didn’t speak. He turned the bag inside out, and I suddenly saw the problem. Someone had taped papers to the inside of the frozen food wrappers. I couldn’t read the language but I had a hunch that I already knew what this was. “This is one of the messages being sent through Janelle, isn’t it?”
Land looked at the words. “It’s Berber, but I’m not sure of the exact dialect or some of the words. It has to do with government and some sort of explosion, so I’m pretty sure that it’s what everyone’s been looking for.”
Chapter 12
My day was about to get much longer. I called Detective Danvers on my cell. Without explanation, I suggested that he needed to get over here.
Since we were literally a five-minute walk from his office on Government Square, if you counted the time he spent waiting for the elevator, he was at the food truck in no time with an entourage of dark suited men of various sizes. There would be no crime scene here, since the truck had been cleaned and painted. The only thing he’d be interested in would be the frozen lamb packages. I was constantly vigilant that we wouldn’t give him any reason to shut down our operations.
All of them couldn’t fit into the small spaces of the food truck, so only Danvers came in. Land showed him the two bags he’d found with the writing inside of them. “And what did you say this was?” Danvers asked, trying to make sense of the writing.
“Berber,” Land said. I could almost tell his excitement at finally being able to tell someone about this language. “It’s a language of Upper Africa mainly, but there are people who speak it in Europe too. My uncle had a friend who was from Tunisia who spoke it. He taught me the rudiments of the language.”
I was trying to focus on the story, but I was also shocked. In all the time I’d known Land, he’d never mentioned his family—at all. Now he was chatting away about an uncle and friends—and the fact that he could speak even more languages than I’d originally thought. Wonders never ceased in my world.
Danvers looked skeptically at the writing again.
“Do you have a translator?” Land asked. “I can’t read enough to be useful, but the gist of it is that something is going to be blown up. That much I can read.”
Danvers shrugged. “I’m not sure to be honest. The need for Berber translators in Capital City is pretty small. Worst case scenario is that we have to involve the FBI and use one of their translators.”
Land handed the other package to him. “You’d better do something with this quickly. I have a feeling that our time is running out. These packages have been in storage for two weeks, which was n
ot expected. Normally, they would have used the packages in less than a week. So we’re already behind.”
“Have you checked the rest of the packages?” Danvers wanted to know.
I had visions of the police barging into the truck and slicing up all of the lamb we had for the truck. We’d lose all of the goodwill built up today, when we had to announce the Basque in the Sun had no stew. I turned away from the rest of them to hide my emotions. I wanted to scream that it always seemed like other people’s problems got in the way of my success. Frustration built up inside of me, and I had to keep a tight lid on it or it would escape in some ugly ways.
“There are only two packages left. There’s nothing in them that I could tell, but you’re more than welcome to take them if you want.” Land held up two unopened bags of lamb. Danvers took them from Land.
I nearly wept tears of frustration as I saw Danvers hand those last two bags to one of the men outside the food truck. My chances for a successful career were going to be the victims of CSI.
Danvers looked at me with clear confusion on his face. He had no understanding of what the break in his case would mean for my business—and he likely didn’t care either. He could only see as far as the next solved case attributed to Detective Jax Danvers.
I cursed myself under my breath. Why had I agreed to take on a truck like this? I thought back to the tarot card reader. Maybe she did know something if she had predicted that this truck was haunted. It certainly had the ghost of Janelle Nolan lurking in its corners, wishing me ill will.
“Let us know if you find anything else,” Danvers said as he left the truck. “This could be a big break in the case.”
The men trotted back to their offices off Government Square, leaving me with no menu for Monday, a mere two days away.
Land looked at me. “You’re not upset about this, are you?” He seemed genuinely unconcerned. I wondered if this casual attitude would continue, now that he was part owner of this truck.
FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books) Page 53
