FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books)

by Chloe Kendrick

  “Safety standards. I made her get one of those cameras that shows you what’s behind you, so you can back up without incident. Last year, Janelle was not paying attention to what she was doing and rear-ended my Lexus. So this seemed like a good choice to keep her from doing that again with a vehicle that could do far more damage.”

  I wasn’t aware of the back-up camera, but I would ask Land about it. Of all the luck, the man who could parallel park a food truck got the gizmos to help him drive. “Why two years? Many restaurants don’t turn a profit for several years.”

  “Honestly, I never suspected for a moment that she would last two years. She could be flighty. If the food truck was not profitable or she decided to quit and pursue something else, the truck reverted to me. I would have recouped most of my investment in that manner. I may be indulgent, but I’m not a fool.”

  Something dawned on me. “But I bought the truck from the Nolans. Was that a legal sale?” I had contracts, but I wasn’t sure how they would stand up in court if I’d been swindled. The Nolans had put it out there that they owned the truck. Had I bought the truck from the wrong people?

  The panic must have shown on my face as he answered quickly. “No, they inherited the truck as part of her estate. I should have put a clause in the contract about the possibility of Janelle’s death, but in all honesty, I thought that to be a very unlikely event. So I didn’t, and I lost all of the investment.”

  “Did you speak to your brother about the matter?” I asked. I didn’t have any siblings, but I couldn’t imagine taking something that didn’t belong to you in that way.

  He nodded. “He said that I should learn to cover all possibilities in a contract and that this would be a lesson to me.”

  My eyes went wide. The father was certainly not what I’d expected. He sounded unnecessarily harsh. However, there was a motive now for murder. If Janelle’s father had needed cash, killing his daughter and taking the estate would be a way out. I didn’t like it as a motive, because I would have thought that more money would be required to kill your own daughter, but people had killed many more for much less.

  I decided to change the topic, since I suspected that I wouldn’t get much more from this man about the very private affairs of his family. “What about Jeremy? Did he ever ask you for money?” It seemed like a safe question and one that covered less tragic territory.

  “If you’re asking if I always gave the children the same amount, no, I didn’t. However, I did give them what they asked for. Jeremy wanted to establish himself as a homeowner. So I gave him a down payment on a rather large apartment. It’s not the same amount of money per se, but the function was the same. It helped him get a start on his adult life.”

  I nodded. That seemed fair to me. “Did you have a set of keys to the food truck?” I asked, suspecting that I was running out of time with him. Billable hours did not come cheap, and I was a non-paying customer.

  “No. Janelle insisted that she be the sole driver of the truck and the sole owner. So she kept the only set of keys. I didn’t want to argue with her about something like that. I knew if she lost them, we could always get another set from a locksmith.” He stood up and motioned for me to follow him down the hall.

  I nodded. He’d given me a lot to think about. I’d thought that Jeremy and Janelle had lived in the same home, which would explain her use of his flash drive, but if Jeremy had his own home, then it was not spur of the moment thing to swipe a flash drive from him. I wondered if the flash drive had been a quick fix or a way to point the finger of guilt at her brother. I didn’t know, but I suspected the latter. It had been a premeditated act, which suggested a plan to point the finger of guilt at her brother.

  I wondered if there was anyone who would miss her.

  Chapter 14

  The following afternoon I dropped by the new food truck. I started looking over the exterior to see if I could find the cameras that Janelle’s uncle had indicated he’d made her buy. However, I couldn’t find any sign of them.

  Land came outside to ask what I was doing. “Janelle’s uncle told me that she was a terrible driver, so he made her get one of those cameras that allow you to see better behind you. But I haven’t been able to find it.”

  Land didn’t have to look around. “The truck doesn’t have one,” he said. “I would have known about it.”

  I stood there with my hands on my hips. I hate it when someone tries to cheat me in small ways in a deal. The truck was supposed to come as appointed from Janelle, not after it had been stripped of amenities.

  “I’m going to ask Danvers then. I’m going to try to trace this back to the source,” I answered.

  Danvers didn’t answer, but I left a message about the rearview cameras for the truck and hung up.

  “Do you think that those cameras could have recorded something that the killer didn’t want anyone to see?” I asked. I was trying to make sense of why a person would take one amenity off of a food truck.

  “They’re technically not cameras,” Land said flatly. “They’re more like mirrors that just help you see places that are blind spots on a big vehicle. So there’s nothing on it to record what was done.”

  “What about the possibility that she might have seen something that she wasn’t supposed to see? Someone could have been doing something illegal behind the truck or two people who weren’t supposed to know each other could have been meeting there.”

  Land took a deep breath. “That’s a whole lot of speculation. There are a million what-ifs that this could be, including mom and dad just wanted to sell it for more money that didn’t really belong to them.”

  I nodded. I was still a bit concerned over the fact the Nolans had sold the truck that Janelle’s uncle had bought for her, just because one clause was left out of the contract. It just didn’t seem like something that families should do to each other.

  True to form, I saw Danvers leave the government building and head across the square. He was aimed directly at the food truck, so I knew he must have got my message. He looked more like himself these days, so I had to assume that he was getting enough rest. Land hadn’t mentioned any more surveillance, so I assumed that it was done.

  Danvers looked at me as he approached. “There were no cameras on the truck when we released it to you. So that means they weren’t there when we did our crime scene evaluation. She probably got tired of it and took it off. She’d only put it on to please her uncle.”

  “So did you find it in her possessions?” I asked.

  I suspected that I already knew the answer, but Danvers confirmed it. “No, it wasn’t there either.”

  I looked at him. “This has to mean something. I have a hunch.”

  Danvers rolled his eyes at me. “By all means, let’s investigate your hunch. I’m sure I could get the honchos to pull all the men off of the espionage angle to this and look into your hunch.”

  I shrugged. “I’ll do it myself then.”

  “Fine. Have fun with that. Hopefully it will keep you out of our hair for a while.”

  I looked back at our food truck. Carter was busily selling to the customers, out of earshot from our conversation. “I have one more question for you. It’s about Carter. When you showed me all those photos of people who had visited Janelle’s truck, you didn’t include him in the stack of photos. Why?”

  Danvers had a very odd expression pass over his face before he gained control of his emotions again. I’d never seen that look on him before, and I wasn’t sure what it meant. Had I uncovered something that he was hoping I’d missed, or was this a clue that he didn’t want me to look into? “I wasn’t aware that he’d been to the truck. What did he tell you when you asked him? Because I’m sure that you asked.”

  I was growing peevish with him. I wasn’t sure why he got on my nerves in this manner, but he did. “Yeah, he said that Janelle had offered him a job, and he’d turned her down.”

  Danvers shrugged. “Then what’s the problem?”

  “It doesn�
��t explain why your team didn’t have him listed in the file of photos taken during their surveillance.” I studied the man, trying to read some clue into what he was saying. Was he suggesting that I drop this matter, or was he truly not interested in how Carter had gotten around the surveillance team?

  “I’ll be sure to take that up with our HR department so they can chastise the surveillance team and put something in their employment folders. I don’t think you’ll be satisfied until you’re running the entire police force.”

  Danvers left before I could throw back a retort. I wondered why he was so angry, but perhaps it was because nothing was coming together on this case. Every road that he followed ended in a cul-de-sac.

  Land had watched most of the conversation with a bemused expression on his face. “You two just need to date or stop,” he said finally. He’d never talked about the fact that he had seen all of the stops and starts of Danvers and me together. However, he’d warned me about Danvers many times in the past.

  “I thought you said that you didn’t trust him?” I asked. Those words had always made me reserve a part of myself in dealing with Danvers.

  “I don’t trust him, and you shouldn’t either, but you seem to be stuck in a rut here. Go another route or go forward, but move.”

  I looked at him. That was almost good advice from someone who rarely spoke of his own personal life. I wondered if he would follow it if he was in the same position.

  “Did you ever find anything from all that surveillance you did at Janelle’s place?”

  Land shook his head. “Not a thing. It all seemed to have dried up. Nothing was ever picked up. I mean, now we know why. The information was at the food truck, which was probably why they weren’t concerned with her apartment.”

  I had some ideas start to spring in my head about the matter. “Which way were the messages flowing?” I asked. “I mean, were the bags of frozen lamb intended for the person on this side, who we think was Janelle, or was the information being sent back to the people on the other side, the ones that we don’t know yet?”

  Land eyed me. “That’s a good question. Danvers hasn’t talked to me about this, but I’d think that the information would have to be coming from Janelle and going to the insurgents.”

  “But how would it work?”

  Land cleared his throat. Then he walked back up to the food truck window and asked Carter for two coffees. He told him that we’d be gone a few minutes and handed me a coffee. He led me toward the original food truck as if to make it look like this was every day truck business instead of speculation on the flow of inside information regarding North Africa.

  “The information would have to come through Janelle. She would cut open a bag of lamb and tape the information inside of the bag. I’ve tried it and it’s not too difficult once you get the hang of it. It takes 2-3 minutes to complete.”

  “Okay, but how does that information get to the other side? People typically throw away used meat bags. They don’t save them and mail them off for fun.”

  Land nodded. “I’m guessing that either someone is coming along after hours and picking through the trash, or the garbage men are involved with the plot. Either way, someone is getting the information from the trash in what looks like a pretty ordinary maneuver.”

  “Okay, so far so good, but what about the flash drive?” I couldn’t still make all the pieces fit.

  “My personal opinion is that someone was trying to make Jeremy Nolan the fall guy for this investigation. No one with half a brain would put their name on a flash drive that contained intelligence information being sent to another country. This was planned too well for me to believe that our big break is a flash drive that’s been conveniently monogramed by the man behind it.”

  We had arrived at Dogs on the Roll. I unlocked the door and stuck my head in to make sure no one was waiting for us. I wasn’t as trusting of locks and keys these days. They apparently didn’t keep out killers and spies.

  “So someone set him up, but who?” I asked, now that we were officially alone. I took a deep drink of the coffee. I was done for the day, but I still needed some energy.

  Land shrugged. “Obviously someone in the family, or who is close to the family, but we don’t know who. If Danvers knows anything, he’s not telling.”

  Chapter 15

  I had gone home still puzzling about the missing camera. Things did not disappear randomly, just as flash drives with names on them did not magically appear in the same shipment. Someone had taken the camera for a reason, if only to sell it.

  A quick call to Janelle’s uncle had got me the name and model of the camera. I went out that evening and picked up another camera. It hadn’t been all that expensive, and I wanted to see what was so important about it that someone had felt compelled to steal it.

  I decided to wait again until after my shift was over to look into the matter. My body was practically humming with excitement as I went about my normal duties. I felt that I was on the right track. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but I felt I was heading there.

  My shift ended, and I closed up the truck. I had been used to three people working at cleanup, and now I was doing it by myself. The work took much longer than it had before, and I didn’t get to the other food truck until nearly three o’clock.

  I showed Land the device and asked for his opinion. “No idea. It looks pretty standard to me. Why don’t you try it out and see if you notice anything strange?”

  So I spent the next half-hour trying to use it. The unit had two components. The first was the piece that worked like a camera phone, taking in what was in the lens perspective behind the vehicle. The other half, which was in the truck, showed the driver what the lens saw. I tried to get the camera to look at the closest trash receptacles, but that would have placed the camera in an awkward corner of the truck, near the top of the truck itself.

  I was thinking of what to try next when I looked at the screen and saw Carter mugging for the camera. He put it very close to his nose, and then his ear, and then he only showed me the top of his head while he hummed the music from Jaws. There was definitely a maturity gap between Carter and me.

  While I was trying to think of how to chastise Carter, I got an idea. I set the screen on the dash to try to figure it out. I wondered about a few things, but it made sense. I would have to experiment for a few minutes, but I think I’d answered a small part of the riddle of Janelle’s death.

  I grabbed a squirt bottle of mustard and took the stepstool from inside the truck. I went back for the video screen, and I was about ready. Land looked at me with intense curiosity. “You’ve figured something out,” he said.

  I nodded. “Give me a few minutes to see if this works, and we may have some answers in this case.”

  I shouted into the food truck. “Carter, put the camera on the counter and move to the middle of the truck.”

  He did as he was told. I knew that because I was watching him via the backup camera. It showed the entire inside of the food truck from that particular angle.

  I took the mustard bottle, slid it gently through the holes near the top, and aligned it to where I thought he was based on the camera. I could actually see the nozzle of the mustard bottle on the video screen. It was eerie for me to see myself in that fashion.

  Carter still had no idea what was going on, though Land had figured it out and had walked around to the window to watch the show. With my vantage point, I could see where Carter was and where I was. Aiming as best as I could, I squeezed the bottle. A large yellow stain appeared on his shirt.

  “Hey, what the—” Carter shouted as he realized what happened. Then he realized what had happened.

  Land walked back around to where I was and held out a hand. He took the mustard bottle and repeated my maneuver. His aim was far more accurate, and he nailed Carter in the back of the head.

  Carter sputtered, but before he could articulate anything, Land shouted. “Close the serving window—now.” Carter did what he was told w
ithout thinking. “Now lock it,” Land shouted through the metal now blocking the view.

  Carter shouted back that he’d done it. Land pulled the window out as hard as he could and threw the mustard container in through the opening. I could hear it hit the floor with a thud.

  “And that is how you do that,” I said, giving him a smile.

  “Not bad at all,” he replied. “But there is one more problem. We’ve figured out how it was done, but not who did it. That’s still a huge question mark in this case.”

  I held my hand out for a high-five, and he provided one. “Even so, now they won’t call it a suicide or accident. It’s a real live murder case.”

  We were still talking when Danvers came down to the food truck at a trot. “What’s going on down here?” he demanded.

  A realization hit me. He was having this food truck bugged somehow. There was no way that he could have heard Carter’s scream or the celebration we were having without knowing exactly what was happening here.

  I tried to think of how this could be. I’d done a fairly thorough search when looking for the video camera yesterday. I’d found nothing that looked like a recording device then. Had they recently installed it, or was I missing something?

  Danvers looked at me, seeing that I was firing on all cylinders. He didn’t want to say anything, knowing that I’d piece the puzzle together faster if he incriminated himself in any way.

  I looked at our newest hire. “Carter, I’m really sorry about your shirt. I think Land has another here somewhere. I’ll get it and you can change.”

  My guess had hit the mark. Danvers’ eyes had grown wide at my suggestion. However, I didn’t stop with just knowing I was right. I got one of the shirts out of truck and threw it at Carter. We all stood there as he stared at the shirt in his hand.

  Danvers finally said, “You might as well go ahead and change.”

  Carter stripped off the mustard-stained shirt. While I would have given him something else to wear since I’d nailed him with the mustard fake gunshot, I wouldn’t have insisted on the public change of clothes. However, given that Danvers had just told my employee what to do, I was fairly certain that I was right.