FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books)

by Chloe Kendrick

  “Can you limit to ones that were accessed by someone in a truck or van who looked vaguely like that sketch?” I was trying to keep an open mind that old-fashioned police work could solve the crime.

  “If they have someone there, sure. If they have a keycard system, then you can only tell who came and went that day. If they have video, then you can watch hours of videos to look for a van, and even then most of them have the doors closed, so you have no idea of what they were carrying in the back.”

  I nodded. “So do you want me to stop looking into this or what?” I really couldn’t tell today what he was after. Maybe just a sounding board for his ideas. It was just that my business school mind wanted to solve problems, not just listen to laments.

  “Not at all. You seem to have stirred something up, and Longhill is finally coming up for air. If he’s going to react to what’s going on, we have a chance of finding him, which would at least take this case off the books.”

  I stood up. From this vantage point, I could just see the food truck, looking like a toy at this distance. I smiled, thinking that the truck was my livelihood. I shuddered to think that I could have been trapped in an office like this all day long. While I’d been thrilled with the idea of business and making money, I now began to wonder how well I would have functioned in an office. Maybe the interviewers had sensed this as well, which is why I had not received any job offers – or it could just be the poor economy. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

  Carter was holding down the truck just fine when I returned. He gave me another knowing smile. “I stand by my words. He likes you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “So much so that we spent the whole time talking about dead guys in freezers.”

  I paused for a second and then continued. “Listen, I have some news about Aaron’s uncle. Would it be better for me to tell you so you can tell him, or would it be better to tell him personally?”

  “That’s hard to say unless you tell me the news, and then you’ve already made your decision. Good or bad news?” Carter asked, eyeing me cautiously. He was certainly protective of his maybe-boyfriend.

  “Mostly ambivalent. There’s been a hit on his credit cards, but they don’t know if he actually used them or if it’s someone else charging things. They also don’t know where he’s at. So it’s vague, but hopeful.” Answering the question took away the need for him to answer my question. If I shared it with Carter, then he’d know either way.

  “You can tell him if you want. He’s really appreciative that someone is finally taking an interest in the case, even if it’s just a detective’s kind-of girlfriend.”

  I sighed. I knew both of their feelings on the issue of Detective Jax Danvers, but I didn’t feel up to discussing it again today. “Great. They’ll know more later. They’re trying to get copies of the signatures and the locations of the transactions, but of course, it’s all slow.”

  “But it’s hopeful, as you said,” Carter replied. He went back to making the condiments. The Sweet and Spicy Onion Relish had been a big hit, so Carter was preparing another batch again today. The summer rotation of condiments seemed to be going well. Even Land, who was not impressed with the cooking skills of many people, was impressed with Carter’s selections. It seemed as if we’d chosen well with Carter, which was a blessing to the business.

  The rest of the shift went without issue. I stopped by Land’s truck at the end of the shift to see how he was doing.

  “Hey, how are those walls?” he said by way of a greeting.

  I shook my head “You tell me.”

  “I took the speaker to my friend who works in electronics.” In Land’s terms that meant that the man likely was a receiver of stolen goods who knew his merchandise or the head of communications for some spy organization. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear more.

  “He got the thing working again. It just synchs up with a phone or device and plays music for you. Nothing too suspicious about that unless it’s not your phone.” He gave me a smile that I suspected was a clue that I should be looking into this device more carefully. It certainly lent credence to the possibility that one of the neighbors was involved in this matter. If the speaker had picked up some illegal activity, the neighbor might have gotten rid of Murray rather than face the consequences. But why not take it when you left rather than stuffing it in the wall for anyone to find? The choice of locations was just odd.

  I thanked him. We talked for a few minutes about food truck business and then the orders for the evening rush started picking up. I went back to my original food truck and drove it to the secured lot.

  Aaron had given me the name of Murray’s ex-wife. I wondered about the reasons for the Longhill’s divorce. Perhaps he’d been done away with out of revenge, or maybe he’d skipped the country to avoid paying alimony. People had done stranger things.

  I rolled up to the woman’s apartment about 3:30 p.m. She lived on the outskirts of Center City in a neighborhood that screamed wealth. I’d been surprised when Aaron had given me that address. I had assumed that Aaron’s family was in the same dire straits as Carter’s family, who suffered from his mother’s medical expenses. However, there was nothing dire about this neighborhood.

  The apartment building put my current residence to shame, and my previous home could have been an outbuilding for one of the units here. Each building had two units to a floor and three floors in every building. The outer door held a security buzzer, intercom and camera, but I looked inside before buzzing. A chandelier hung from the upper ceiling, and the carpet in the foyer looked brand new. It could have been a space for entertaining all by itself.

  I ran my finger down the nameplates, but didn’t see a Longhill. Fortunately, Aaron had given me the unit number as well, and I found that the unit was rented to someone named Avery. I knew that wasn’t Aaron’s last name, because the alliteration would have made me smile. I wondered if she’d remarried since the divorce or if she’d hated him enough to return to her maiden name.

  Only one way to find out, I thought as I pressed the security buzzer. I waited several seconds, but there was no response. I pressed again and waited, but there was still no response. I had wanted to use the element of surprise to see if I could get an honest reaction from the woman. If I’d called and scheduled something, she could have planned out polite, but noncommittal answers. I wanted to get some raw emotion, if Murray had provoked any.

  I turned to walk away and almost ran into a larger woman wearing slacks and an expensive blouse. I wondered if they had a dress code here.

  “Pardon me,” I said moving to get around her.

  “Who are you looking for?” the woman asked, turning slightly. She had a pretty face with blonde ringlets cascading from a part in her hair. She wore petite glasses that gave her a studious look.

  “Mrs. Avery,” I said, now wondering why I hadn’t thought to ask this woman about the ex-wife.

  “Good timing. You’re speaking to her,” she said, giving me a smile. “Unless you’re a salesperson, and then you can just go away.”

  “No, I’m not selling anything,” I said truthfully. With what I wanted to know about her private life, she was likely to prefer a salesperson to me.

  “Then how can I help you?” she asked as she unlocked the security door and motioned me to follow her. She was trusting; I wondered if a feeling of security came with money. It could certainly insulate you from the criminal elements. She might think that because she lived here, people would not drive this far to harm her. I thought of my first apartment and the few brushes I’d had with violence there. Money by itself could inspire violence or keep it at bay.

  I made a face as I started. “I’m here to ask about your ex-husband, Murray Longhill.”

  She laughed. “That was not at all what I was expecting.” She punched the button for the elevator. “I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but that was not it. Why? Has he done something to you too?”

  I explained quickly how I lived in his former apartment and t
he situation with the freezer and the speaker in the wall. She listened carefully without interrupting. When I finished, she looked at me and smiled again.

  “I can’t believe any of this nonsense about Murray. He was the most boring man I ever knew. Disappearing was the most fascinating thing he ever did. We hardly ever went out of the apartment. He’d cook, and we’d stay home. I thought I was going to go crazy there. Finally, I told him that we needed more of a social life, and he told me no. Flat out, just like that. So I got my things together and left.”

  We’d made it to her apartment by then, and she motioned me to follow her as she unlocked the apartment door. The unit itself was as nice as the foyer had been: vaulted ceilings, an open floor plan, and views from the balcony. I sighed.

  “Yeah, if you’re in that apartment, you don’t have a view like this, do you?” She put her bags down and went into the kitchen. She showed no signs of booting me out the door, so I stood in the dining room and waited for her.

  “Not even close,” I admitted. Her unit overlooked a manmade pond with a fountain and what appeared to be a golf course in the distance.

  “So what can I tell you to help you here? I don’t know anything about dead bodies in freezers or stuff in the wall. I could tell you about the TV shows he watched or the computer he played with constantly. Those I could tell you about – in detail.” She put away the few things from the bags and returned to the dining room. “Sit down. Would you like some tea?”

  I nodded. It was such a nice feeling to have someone else wait on you after serving others all day. I sat at one of the chairs around the glass-topped dining room table. “I’d guess that’s where the majority of information would be – that damned computer, but I bet the police have that by now. You should check with them if you want more information on him.”

  She poured the tea. She’d heated the water in the microwave, which would have made Land or Carter blanch, but for me, it was fine. I wasn’t the chef in the operation. They oversaw that piece. I would have been more upset to see her use scrap paper to balance her checking account.

  I steeped the tea bag and enjoyed the pampering. I’d want a nap after this, but I knew that would have to come at home after a few more things were completed. “So what do you – since you knew him so well – think happened to Murray?” I asked after I’d made my tea drinkable with lemon and honey.

  She sighed deeply. “Honestly, he had no desire to leave the place when I lived with him. He was perfectly content to go to work and come home and sit and do nothing. Skipping town like that would have taken too much effort. I just can’t get my head around the fact that he could have done that much work to go missing.”

  I understood. It would be hard to believe that a couch potato had put together a scheme that had left the police stumped for months. He would have had to stash a significant amount of cash to keep him solvent for a few months before using the card. It still didn’t explain how he’d left the apartment that quickly after the scream. I had to look into that some more.

  “He left a sizable portfolio of stocks and bonds,” I said. “Did you know about that?” I didn’t want to start something with her, but I wanted to know the source of these funds.

  She shook her head. “No, he didn’t. Trust me, if he’d had any funds, I knew about them at the time of the divorce. He couldn’t have had a sou that I didn’t know about.”

  I told her about the portfolio I’d found in his papers. “The dates on the statements were relatively recent. It could be new income?” I offered, trying to stem her anger.

  “Like hell,” she replied. “He hid assets from me. Who would have thought that – that slug could have hidden things from me? Since he’s not here, I’ll have my lawyer go after them. That bastard.” Her face was red by the time that she’d finished. I was a bit uncomfortable, and thinking that perhaps I was better off without a date than to experience these emotions. However, she realized all that she’d said and changed the subject quickly to ease the tension.

  As she prepared the tea, she talked about her own career – now that she was on her own – and her family.

  Over tea, Mrs. Avery wrote down two names. “These are people who knew him well at work. The one thing that Murray would never do is leave things a mess at work if he knew he was leaving. He was convinced they were all idiots there.”

  “Were they?” I asked, thinking how lucky I was to have Land and Carter.

  “I don’t know. I never got to meet them,” she reminded me. “Speaking of meetings, how did you find out about me? I deliberately changed my name after we divorced, so that I wouldn’t be associated with him. I was so glad I’d made that decision when he disappeared. No one connected me with his disappearance at all.”

  I explained that I knew Aaron, though I specifically left out how I knew him. I wasn’t sure if he was out, and I had no intention of surprising family members, even ex-family members, who didn’t know about him. That was for him to decide, not me.

  She smiled. “Just to make sure you are who you say you are. What is the name of Aaron’s boyfriend?”

  “Carter. He works on my food truck, but I wasn’t sure if you knew, and I wanted to play it safe.” I was relieved that it was out in the open. I didn’t know how people could walk around keeping secrets like that all the time. Just this small interaction had worn me out, dancing around the topic of his orientation.

  “Be sure to tell them both that I say hello,” she said, and I took that as my cue to go.

  At the door I asked her, “Do you know what happened to Spike? I know he was close to his dog, but I haven’t heard a word about what happened to the dog after he disappeared.”

  She sighed. “I took him in for a while. He’d been ours before the divorce, and Murray wanted to keep him, which was fine with me. He’d always preferred Murray to me, since they sat on the couch together and watched TV. About three months ago, the poor guy developed cancer and had to be put down. It was all very traumatic. It was at that point that I knew Murray wasn’t able to come home. Either he was out of the country permanently, or he was dead. He would not have missed seeing Spike before he had to be put to sleep. I began to think that Murray was gone for good after that.”

  I thanked her and headed back to my car. While I hadn’t learned much about Murray from his ex-wife, I’d gotten a few more leads that needed to be checked out. That gave me some hope that I could figure this out yet.

  Chapter 5

  I called Danvers as soon as I got home from the luxury apartment. Of course, my place looked drab in comparison to the home of Mrs. Avery. However, I also knew that I was paying only a fraction of what she paid a month.

  To my great surprise, he answered on the third ring. “What?” he said, leading me to believe that none of the men I knew had social graces.

  “Would it be possible to see Longhill’s computer? His ex-wife said something to me that made me believe that it could be important.” I kicked off my shoes and plopped down in a chair.

  “Hold on,” he said. He must have just set the phone on the table, because I could hear the sounds of voices in the background. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hear exact words, but they all seemed busy in their investigations.

  Danvers came back on the phone. “There was a laptop, but no desktop. We went over it, but the browsing history didn’t have anything in the three weeks prior to his disappearance.”

  I paused. While Mrs. Avery had not specifically stated that the machine had been a desktop, her comments on how he’d focused only on it seemed to fit a desktop more than a laptop. I began to wonder if perhaps she was right. Something on-line might have had a role in his disappearance.

  I got off the phone and called Aaron next. “Hey, did you see a desktop computer in the storage units? I think your uncle’s desktop might have gone missing, and I’d like to know where it’s at if possible.” I said, wanting to see if it had been left at the apartment for some reason.

  “Don’t I wish! I kept an eye out for a
computer in the storage unit. If I’d found one, I would have given it to Carter, who has limited access to a computer at the moment. I thought my uncle could do something good for me, even beyond the grave.”

  I hadn’t realized that Carter’s situation was quite so difficult. Though I used my phone ten times more than a desktop, I did my accounting for the business and all the spreadsheets on an older HP machine. I figured I’d use that computer until it died before replacing it.

  “So is this a clue?” Aaron asked, sounding way more excited than he should in the circumstances. “Who would take a computer?”

  “It’s possible. I don’t know yet, but if he spent as much time on the computer as your former aunt said, then it’s likely to have some connection to the case. Either to point to the fact that he took it with him or that someone else took it.” My mind was already racing with possibilities. The police had checked the banks to see if Longhill had been on any his accounts – but they hadn’t been checking his emails. If he was that digitally connected, it could be hard to go cold turkey. That would fit with the description that Mrs. Avery had given of her former husband. Plus I was still concerned about that portfolio. I wondered if it had been accessed in the past few weeks as well.

  “How is she? What did she tell you?”

  I recounted the conversation as best as I could. I finished up by telling him that Carter had been the answer to her quiz to see if I really knew Aaron.

  He laughed. “That’s just like her. I’m glad she’s doing well. I honestly would have preferred to keep her and get rid of Murray in the divorce.”

  “She gave me some names at his work to contact too. Maybe the work computer will have something that I can look at as well.” I counted off the things that I had to do with this case. I was going to have to start another spreadsheet just to keep track of the clues that were being thrown at me.