FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books)

by Chloe Kendrick

  I opened my eyes wide. “Of course, I am. The last of our lamb just trotted off with the police. What are we going to do on Monday?”

  Land waved a hand. “Do you think that the Basque only have three dishes? I was going to dump the lamb stew as soon as I could anyway. Lamb is an acquired taste, and not everyone likes it. I was going to pick some meats and sides that everyone would like. So I have half a dozen recipes ready to go. All I need to do is buy some ingredients over the weekend. Goodness knows we have enough cash to do that.”

  Part of me wanted to hug Land for saving the day in this manner, but the other part wanted to yell at him for planning to change the menu without telling me about it—and spending profits to do so. I had a growing suspicion that minority ownership would end up being an issue in our working arrangement.

  “Speaking of money, how did we do today?” Carter asked. “I mean relatively speaking, not exact figures.”

  I smiled at him. “You can ask about the money. I’ll tell you if you’ve crossed any lines. From my counts, we did nearly triple what Dogs on the Roll would have done for a Friday. Of course, we can’t count on this all the time, but I think, overall, that we’ll do better here than my budgeted estimate of this truck just making as much as the original truck.”

  Carter made a whooping noise. Despite the fact that we were about the same age, we certainly had a maturity gap. Perhaps it was because I was an only child that I related better to older people and had less in common with my peers. Or it could just be that I took this seriously because I wanted a new car. Even so, Carter, at times, acted much younger than his years.

  Land smiled at me, which I assumed was shorthand for “I told you so.”

  I put the bank deposit in my backpack and started back to Dogs on the Roll to head back to the lot. I had managed to secure a second spot for the new food truck, so I knew I’d be seeing Land shortly.

  I was tired, happy, and planning not to think about Basque food or murder until Monday.

  Of course, it was only 8:15 a.m. on Saturday when someone started pounding at the door. I said a few words that I would prefer not to repeat and threw on a robe over my nightclothes. It was for modesty purposes, since it was nearly 60 degrees outside already. I looked through the peephole and saw Jax Danvers there. Probably the last thing I wanted to see that early.

  I threw the door open and asked, “What?”

  He was slightly taken aback by the greeting. Apparently the fact that I might not be wide-awake and happy to see him had never occurred to Danvers. I pushed the door open so that he could enter, since he had not made any attempt to apologize or leave.

  “I need to see the rest of your food,” Danvers told me.

  “It’s in the fridge,” I replied as I poured water into the coffee pot. I measured out some of Land’s blend of ground coffee, which was one of the few perks of the job I allowed myself at home. I waited as the coffee brewed. I wasn’t up to answering questions or being nice yet.

  Danvers gave me an exasperated look. “Not that food. We need to look at all the food for the truck. Those documents you gave us yesterday are dynamite. They’re part of a rather nasty plot that involves trying to overthrow the Moroccan government to install a hostile regime that would start a war with Algeria. So I’m not in the mood to joke.”

  I tried to focus, but I had a hard time. Finally the coffee was done, and I poured a cup for me. Danvers looked stricken, and so I poured him a cup as well. Even on my off days I couldn’t get away from serving other people.”

  After I’d finished half a cup, I felt like my brain functioned. “So you got an interpreter last night and the documents say they’re going to try to overthrow the government—so you want to look through the rest of the food on the truck. And I’m sure you have a warrant to seize all the property of a working food truck without any way of getting it back to us before we need to use it on Monday?”

  He took a deep breath. “We didn’t get through with the translation until four a.m., and by that time it was too late for a judge. I thought I’d come over and appeal to your better nature. This is a matter of international importance.”

  I drank some more coffee. “My better nature is still asleep for a few more hours. It’s the weekend, remember?”

  He nodded. “What do I have to do in order to get to look through the food in the truck?”

  I looked him dead in the eye. Maybe it was the hour, or the mood I was in, or just plain cussedness, but I took a deep breath and said, “Why was kissing me a mistake?”

  His jaw dropped open. “You’re kidding? I have a multinational investigation into regime change and all-out war going on here that needs your help, and your price for entry is for me to talk about my feelings.”

  I shrugged and refilled my mug. “It works for me. You want something from me, and I want something from you. Easy negotiation.”

  “What if something happens? Do you want it on your head that you could have prevented it?”

  I shook my head. “All I’m asking from you is for information. If you choose not to tell me, then it’s on you—not me.”

  Danvers grumbled something that I couldn’t hear. I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be my explanation, but I doubted it. Finally he spoke, “I like you—some days—but from what I’ve seen, we’re going to working together often…way more often than I want. So I felt it was best not to mix business and romance. Because I thought, maybe someday, the fate of the world might be based entirely on my spilling my guts to someone about why I put a halt on the relationship rather than their trying to help me discover more information.” His voice rose on the last few words.

  I was satisfied with the answer. I’m the type who hates not knowing, and for some reason, this was a plausible explanation for what happened. It wasn’t what I’d wanted, but it made sense.

  “Let me get dressed, and we’ll go,” I said as the caffeine started to kick in. “But here are the conditions. First, we’re only going to go through the food that comes from vendors I haven’t done business with before. There’s no reason to suspect that my regular vendors would be a part of an international plot. I’ve met them, and they probably don’t even know where Morocco is, much less the political climate there.”

  “Fine, this came from another vendor anyway, so that makes sense. Is that it?” he asked. Danvers seemed more relaxed now that we’d had our talk.

  “Of course not. No food items are destroyed in the process. All of those items are bought and paid for, and they need to be handled with care. I have to sell that stuff next week, and I don’t want it damaged.”

  Danvers shrugged. “Sure. Is that it, or do you have more conditions?”

  I held up a finger. “Just one more. I’m going with you. I have keys to the storage locker, and I know the gatemen. They’ll want to know why we’re showing up on a weekend instead of Monday morning, so I’ll explain. I still have a reputation to maintain and being dragged into my food locker by the police on a Saturday morning doesn’t inspire confidence in others.”

  I got no argument from him about that. I was a bit surprised, but that told me that he was desperate to learn more about the situation. I threw on some jeans and an oversized jersey along with a baseball cap to mask the bedhead. This definitely wasn’t going to be an outing where I’d be judged on my looks.

  While I was dressing, I managed to text Land and tell him what was going on. If we were going through the provisions for Monday, he had a right to know, in case anything was damaged. He didn’t bother to respond, which meant that he was either still asleep, which I envied him for, or annoyed that he’d been excluded from continuing the hunt for what he’d originally discovered.

  We drove to the freezer storage facility, which was essentially a series of refrigerated storage lockers. I explained the situation to the manager as best I could without hinting as to the reasons why we needed to search my food. I told him that a recall of some products made it necessary for me to pull the food from stock before
the packages had the chance to be used, and the policemen were just food inspectors.

  From my backpack, I pulled out the inventory that I kept. Since I was the ultimate business school major, I had a full spreadsheet of all my products along with the vendors for the products in case I needed to quickly order something. I’d gotten the list of ingredients from Janelle’s truck prior to our opening, so I had already updated my inventory.

  This had allowed me to combine our suppliers when necessary. I had sought the very best, yet most economical, vendors last year when the food truck opened, so I didn’t feel that I needed to repeat all of that this time around. The problem that I had was that Janelle had contracted for some of her materials over the course of many months, tying the truck to a particular amount and price for the foreseeable future. The frozen lamb had been one such item. While I’d thought it bad business practices before, now I wondered if she’d done that to ensure a pipeline for communications for the next several months. It suddenly seemed less capricious.

  I began to run my finger down the list of ingredients. While gyros can be made with a variety of meats, Janelle had opted for lamb to be the primary ingredient. She had also contracted for some pork, but nothing in the same quantities as the lamb. So we started with the pork.

  Since the meat sat on a rotisserie, it came in large slabs, packaged in opaque plastic. The communications that Land had found were located on the inside of the plastic. The policemen had sanitary knives and began slicing open the plastic. I had brought new plastic wrap for the meat, which meant that the process went slowly. I’d insisted that they repackage the ingredients as they searched. I wanted no freezer burn and no food losses to result from this search.

  Their search into the pork was fruitless. There hadn’t been a long-term contract for the pork, which meant that it probably wasn’t a vehicle of communication between them.

  At the end of two hours, we’d gone through all the meat from that particular vendor with no results. I wasn’t sure how much more they wanted to do before admitting defeat on this project. However, Danvers came back with a second request. “Could we see all of the ingredients from the vendor that sent the lamb?”

  I nodded, knowing that there weren’t many items left. Most of the spices had been moved to our spice vendor, which had only left the garlic and the yogurt for the Tzatziki sauce on the gyros. I had strong doubts that anyone would put messages into a clove of garlic. The message could be traced repeatedly, just based on the smell.

  The police quickly went through the garlic. By the time they were done, most of them reeked of the pungent odor of garlic. All that remained between my nice soft bed and me were three cases of yogurt.

  Two of the men cut the plastic wrapping off the case and began to open the individual tubs of yogurt. I thought for a moment that they were going to stick their garlic-covered hands into the lumpy white substance, but instead they had long-handled spoons which were spun around the tubs. They’d gone through one case and had started on the next when one of the men found something.

  Danvers practically ran to the man’s position and together they carefully removed what appeared to be a flash drive. It was hard to tell because it was covered in sloppy white goop, but as Danvers wiped it off, it became more apparent.

  They rushed through the rest of the yogurt, but they found nothing else in the tubs. Danvers came over carrying the lone tub. “Can we take this one with us?” he asked more politely than I expected. “It could have some trace evidence on it, fingerprints or DNA, though I doubt it.”

  I nodded. I made a mental note to buy another tub of yogurt, but given the fact that we had three cases, I didn’t think I would need it soon. “I just want a receipt for it. I can take it off my taxes,” I said with a smile.

  He wrote up a quick note that indicated he’d taken one tub of yogurt from the locker at this date and time. I noted that it was barely 11 a.m. on a Saturday. Soon it would be lunchtime, and then I’d be expected to do something productive with my day. The plan to sleep in should have been given a receipt as well.

  I was one clue ahead of the police, however. When they had cleaned off the flash drive, a name had come up written in marker on the side of the drive. It read “Jeremy,” which was the name of Janelle’s brother. I wasn’t sure how long it would take them to realize that, and then determine whether Jeremy was involved, or Janelle had lifted one of his flash drives for her work.

  I had one way of finding out: the number that had been written on the napkin yesterday. While Danvers was prepping the flash drive for their IT division, I would be calling Jeremy to learn more.

  Fortunately, Jeremy had given me a cell phone number and he answered on the second ring. “Hello.” His voice was as soft as it had been yesterday. I had thought that it was just because he was nervous about talking to me, but my cell number only came up with the name “Capital City” so he must be that way toward everyone.

  “Jeremy, hi, this is Maeve Kinkaid. We spoke yesterday at Janelle’s food truck.” I hated calling my new venture by that name, but at the same time, I was trying to speed the process along. I didn’t want to be caught in the middle of our talk by the police.

  “Yes, hello. How are you?”

  “I’m doing well. I was wondering if you had time to talk today—now.” I figured that I had an hour or so to talk to Jeremy before the police would be on his trail. If I was going to learn anything useful about the family or about Sam, it had to be now.

  “Sure. Where at?” he replied.

  “How about downtown at the Government Square? I can be there in ten if you can. Obviously the trucks aren’t out today, but I know a nice little diner in the area we could go to.”

  “Nickleby’s?” he asked.

  “That’s the one,” I replied.

  “Let’s meet there,” he said, “it looks like it might rain, and we won’t get wet.”

  I was there with a minute to spare, and I saw Jeremy wave at me from across the restaurant. I liked Nickleby’s, because while part of it opened on to the square and was quite visible, the rest of the restaurant contained high-backed booths that provided privacy for those who needed it. I had a feeling that I needed some privacy as the police started looking for Janelle’s brother.

  I didn’t have to start the conversation. He jumped right in. “I wanted to let you know that I had nothing to do with Janelle and her plans. I only heard about them from eavesdropping on my parents after the police were at my house. They had a big fight, and I heard what she was doing.”

  I nodded. That settled the flash drive question. Janelle must have taken it from his apartment instead of Jeremy being an accomplice to the espionage. He confirmed that quickly. “I don’t keep very good track of them, so someone could have come in and taken ten of them without my noticing.”

  “Does she have a key to your place?” I asked, thinking of the locked food truck again.

  “No, but my parents do, and they’re not very considerate about my privacy. I’m sure she could have gotten the key from them.”

  “What can you tell me about your sister that could help me find her killer?” I explained about the monthly money sent to an unknown party and the money that had been put up front to buy the food truck.

  His face showed a look of disgust. “My parents told the police that they didn’t know where she got the money for the truck. Ugh.” He threw up his arms. “She got it from our uncle, Ben. My parents have quite a lot of money, but Ben has more. He also doesn’t have any children, so he tends to spoil us. Janelle had indicated that she wanted to buy a particular truck, and Ben wrote her a check for it.”

  I laughed with relief. I had thought that perhaps a foreign power had purchased the vehicle for her, and instead it was just family bickering. I could rest easier at night knowing that. “She wanted that truck, because I did. She had applied for a job with my truck, but it didn’t work out. So she decided to buy her own truck, and it turned out that she decided to buy the one I was interested
in.” I didn’t necessarily want to speak ill of the dead, but at the same time, I wanted to keep the conversation rolling. I knew my time was likely limited, and while I had already heard Jeremy’s denial of involvement, the police wouldn’t be satisfied with a one-line denial.

  He nodded. “That’s Janelle all over. If someone did her a bad turn, she turned around and did it worse to them.”

  “Did she ever do that to you?” I thought I heard a bit of complaint under his statement.

  He flushed a beet red under the dusky color of his skin. The effect was oddly disconcerting, as if he didn’t do that often. I wondered what Janelle could have done to him to evoke such a response. “Yes, she did, but I’d like to just leave it there.”

  “That’s fine,” I said, wondering all the more what she’d done to him. Likely it had nothing to do with the murder or the espionage, but it was intriguing to see a man blush like that. I doubted that all the secrets in the world could make Land turn red, and then I wondered what would make Danvers blush. Certainly nothing that we’d done. I had never really stopped to think about his other relationships. Who else had he dated? Had he been involved with someone from work that ended badly?

  I stopped these thoughts and tried to focus on the task at hand. “So any thoughts on where this desire to help Morocco came from? Do you have any ideas where she would meet people who wanted to be involved in that type of thing?” I left the wording vague, since I had no idea exactly what was going on. I thought if Jeremy knew, he could tell me more.

  Jeremy shook his head. “No idea at all. Like I said, Ben gave her the money for the truck, but he was never a part of any movement. He loved his country, but he is an American too. Such things like revenge are frowned upon here.”

  I nodded. So I wasn’t going to get much out of Jeremy today about Janelle’s involvement with this group. “I met a guy named Sam,” I said, hoping to change up the conversation and get some gossip. “Your mother said that he used to go out with Janelle.”