Chapter 4
My first stop that afternoon was at Christie’s place. One of the easier aspects of a murder at the wedding was that the bride had a list of everyone’s addresses. Christie and David had not lived together, so I would not be confronting too many reminders of the man in her apartment. David had kept his own place, presumably to allow him the room to cheat.
Fortunately, she lived in the same area of town that I did. Capital City only had a few areas in town where apartment buildings predominated and the Hill, as it was known locally, was one of those areas. She lived about two miles from my own apartment.
I rang the buzzer to Christie’s door and waited. Gina had indicated that Christie had called off work for the week, so I strongly suspected that she would be home. Finally, the buzzer rang, and I opened the door. She stood on the second floor landing and motioned me upstairs.
Her apartment was large, an open floor plan with vaulted ceilings. She’d decorated it with what I knew were this year’s hottest colors and styles – which I mainly knew from Pinterest. I wondered where she got the money to do all of this decorating. She motioned me to the dining room table where she offered me a cup of coffee.
I declined, partly because I would have to go to bed in six hours and also because I was investigating a poisoning. Christie sat down opposite me and waited.
“I was hoping to get a better idea of David,” I started off. “Someone hated him enough to kill him, and I am trying to find out who. I’m concerned about how his death would impact our business. I’m sure you know that we had nothing to do with the murder, but the police don’t know that.”
“David was the most wonderful man ever,” she said, her eyes stealing over to a table where a makeshift shrine had been made to the man. Suddenly I had a feeling that this was not going to be an easy interview. I remembered my mother telling me to not talk ill of the dead, but I thought that this woman had taken it to extremes. They’d fought often during his life, but she was going to hide all of that now that he was dead.
“So there was no one who wanted to kill him?” I asked. “No one who was angry at him or hated him?”
She paused for a long moment, obviously struggling with a way to phrase the truth and still maintain the aura of the wonderful dead boyfriend. “Even wonderful people have troubles with others. I’m sure David had people who didn’t like him.”
I nodded, admiring her tact in the matter. “But murder isn’t about not liking. It’s about someone who wants the planet to be rid of you. There’s a big difference in those two things.”
She nodded. “Perhaps there were people that angry with him. David could be difficult at times. He was wonderful, but he rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.”
“How so?” I kept the questions short, letting her talk as much as she would. I could still sense a strong reluctance to speak ill of the dead, but she was warming up to the idea of hating David again. I strongly suspected that if the stories were true, she wasn’t the only one who had a grievance against the man.
She dabbed at an eye. “Women were always throwing themselves at him. Then they got angry – when he turned them down. They said the most awful things about him.”
“Gina told me that,” I affirmed, knowing no such thing. Gina had indicated that David had never turned anyone down. In fact, he’d done much of the propositioning.
Christie nodded. “It was sad to see those women try to tell me stories about David. They expected me to believe them.” Her voice caught like she was going to sob. She was a damned good actor for playing this part.
“Were there any people in particular that seemed upset or angry? Any that kept coming back to David – or you?”
“There was one woman. Her name was Felicity something. She called him repeatedly. She even called here a few times and tried to tell me about her love affair with David, but I just hung up on her.”
“How long ago was that?” I asked, feeling hopeful. The quicker I found a suspect, the better.
“A few weeks ago. I haven’t heard anything from her recently.” Christie sniffed to let me know that it had upset her. I was doubting all of her emotions at the moment. Gina had told me that she’d willingly gone home alone, thinking that David had left without her. That was not the type of man that you built a shrine for. “I mean, she had her own boyfriend. You’d think that would be enough for her, but apparently she wanted other people’s boyfriends too.”
I asked for the woman’s phone number from her cell, and Christie handed over her phone to me. I scrolled through the contacts, until I got Felicity’s number. I typed it into my own phone and clicked on the save. I desperately wanted to check her phone for her emails and texts, but since she was watching my movements, I merely handed the phone back to her.
I decided to change gears. “Tell me about the hot dog in his pocket,” I asked. “What’s up with that?”
Christie sighed. “David liked to eat. He was always putting things in his pocket to eat later. Candy, meals, you name it.”
“Tell me about what you two ate at the reception,” I asked, hoping to get a better feel for exactly what David had stuffed into himself. I wanted to be able to narrow down the possible poisoned ingredients to as few as possible.
“I didn’t eat much. I’m on a diet. I had a Mexican dog, I think, and that was it. David had four of those sweet and spicy dogs. He loved them. He asked the other guy at the truck if he could have the recipe, but the man brushed him off.”
I paused for a second. Land hadn’t mentioned that he’d talked to David at any point that day. Did he not realize that the man asking for the recipe was the same person as the murder victim? He’d had a good look at the body afterwards, so I suspected that he did know, but wasn’t sharing for some reason. My stomach had an icy pit inside of it. Maybe this was what Land was hiding from me and the police.
“Did David try the other dogs?” I asked, wanting to get some other ideas for a poison delivery system. The sauce for the sweet and spicy dogs would definitely mask the taste of cyanide (or anything else for that matter.) Yet, it was a liquid that was coated on the dogs, meaning that the cyanide would need to be in liquid form as well. That spoke of preparation. I wasn’t sure who could have known that David’s taste would just lean towards one of the many hot dog varieties that day. Most likely someone who knew him well.
Christie shook her head several times. “Just those. I wasn’t surprised at all that he had one in his pocket. He was probably going to go home and try to copy the recipe – if he didn’t eat it first.”
Knowing that I wasn’t likely to get much more out of her, I thanked her for talking to me and left.
I wasn’t done for the day. One of Trent’s other friends who had been in the wedding had agreed to talk to me. I was hoping to learn what David had said, if anything, during the ceremony or after it. He’d been at the head table for the reception, so the groomsmen would likely have heard anything he said.
Gina had suggested Rick Stewart as the one most likely to gossip. She’d wanted to come along to help investigate, but I persuaded her to wait for my next interview, which would likely be her aunt Eunice. I had a feeling that I’d need the help with someone else’s crusty relative.
I had a hunch that Rick would be more open and honest about what the “guys” said if the bride wasn’t around. Any hint of discord would never be mentioned in front of the bride, especially if they didn’t know her all that well.
Rick agreed to meet me downtown. So I headed back downtown from the Hill, basically retracing my path from earlier. I pulled into the same lot I used when Carter picked up the truck. I hustled and found myself at the bar he’d selected five minutes before we were supposed to meet.
I was a bit nervous about this discussion. I hadn’t really gained much from the talk with Christie. She’d been too tied up in deifying a man that she’d obviously had problems with. Giving me motives for his murder was not in her plans.
I wanted to get this case wrapped
up, if not to get the food truck out from under suspicion, then for Land who I suspected was more involved than he let on.
Rick was only a few minutes late to the appointment. He came in, walking quickly and picked me out from the crowed. I vaguely remembered him from the wedding, but I doubt if I would have noticed him on the street. He had that type of non-descript face that went through life not being noticed.
“So, what’ll you have hot dog lady?” Rick said as an introduction. He hailed the bartender over.
I was sure that Rick would have no trouble telling me everything if that was his opening line. He definitely wasn’t smooth enough to lie to me without any tells.
“I’m fine,” I said, pointing to my water. “Thanks for agreeing to meet me.”
“Gina said that you look into murders sometimes. What’s up with that?” He furrowed his brow as if he’d never heard of any amateur detectives. I wondered what he did with his time if he didn’t understand the desire to see justice done.
“I try to help the police come to the correct solution,” I said, trying to put it simply. I didn’t want to share my fears about Land’s possible involvement in the case with a stranger.
“Yeah, I understand. So what can I do to help?” His beer appeared, and he took a long swallow of it. He took the mug away, leaving a small foam mustache on his upper lip.
“I want to know what David was talking about that day. Everything he said or did that might be of interest. Did he give you any indication that he was having trouble with anyone else at the wedding?” I looked at this guy and was fairly certain that I wasn’t going to get anywhere with his testimony. He was probably loaded at the wedding and hadn’t paid any attention to what David had said.
He surprised me. “David was pretty crude that day. I’d met him at the bachelor party. David and Trent went way back, to like when they were kids. I knew Trent from college, so I’d heard stories about David and his antics in college, but he was just a story, not a real person. Trent used to tell me how David would like hook up with two or three girls on the way to a date with whoever was supposed to be his girlfriend. You think that’s cool when you’re 18, but not when you’re 25.” He made a face like he’d have been happy to leave David as less than real. “I heard him make a comment or two, but the other groomsmen were indicating that he’d been ridiculously crude throughout the event.”
“Crude how? Gina said something about him possibly going home with someone else that day. That’s why no one looked very hard for him at the end of the reception.”
He shrugged. “Rating every woman at the park. The guests, the bride, women walking by the park, – you.”
I nodded. “Yeah, nothing I haven’t heard before. If you’re a woman working with hot dogs, you’re going to get some wiener jokes. I ignore them.”
He nodded. “Yeah, it was like that all night long. He insulted one of the other ushers’ sister, and for a few minutes, I thought there was going to be a fight.”
He gave me the information on the usher, so I could talk to the man later. From the sound of David, it would appear that the motive would be personal and possibly romantic. I was out of my element here. I usually handled cases where the crimes were financial. I’d had finances class in college and knew plenty from my father on the subject.
Yet no one had provided any classes on romance and dating. I would have taken a few electives. While I enjoyed my time with Land and felt good about the future, I wasn’t always sure I knew what I was doing in the romance department. For all of his lack of communications skills, he was still the more romantic of the two of us.
“So what else?” I asked. “I want to know who all he pissed off that evening. This could be important.”
“Besides the thing with the usher, he danced with two women, one of whom had brought her boyfriend with her. So there’s another guy who wanted to clock him. Then he and Christie got into a fight.” Rick said.
I nodded. I knew that she had been overcompensating with her shrine and perfect dead boyfriend routine. “I hadn’t heard that before.”
“Yeah, that’s probably because it was behind the bathrooms. They were pretty far from the action, so I doubt that many people would have heard them. I think Christie had caught him back there making out with some girl.” Rick looked pained to be talking to me like this. I was shocked to see such chivalry, compared to the heavy horn dog that was David. I was surprised that he was that popular, given that he had not been model handsome. I wondered if what he had, since I was hearing that his personality was even less appealing.
“That sounds great. Nothing like romance in the stalls,” I replied. It struck me that the location might be important. Either Christie for arguing with him there or for either the girl or her date for making out with the woman there. I’d have to learn more about that incident and who was involved, since Rick didn’t seem to know any names.
“So what next?” Rick asked, now that he seemed to be getting into the swing of things. “What will you do now?”
I tried to explain to him what I’d do with his information, but since I didn’t have any names, I couldn’t ask these people any questions. I’d have to go back to Gina, find out their contact information, and then either ask them questions myself or pass the information along to Detective Green so that she could follow up.
I preferred to give the information to Detective Green, since it would make any case against the food truck or us less credible.
Deep down though, I knew that this was an effort in futility. This crime had been carefully premeditated. If indeed David’s food had been poisoned, then the killer had known enough to use a liquid cyanide compound to put over the glaze or with the vinegar. I wasn’t sure how someone would know which type of hot dogs that he would prefer in advance. That clue pointed back to Christie who would be the person most likely to understand David’s tastes in condiments.
Chapter 5
I barely made it home before my phone rang again. It had rung twice while I was on the way home. Carter had tried to call me both times. I figured that he was wanting a day off to deal with his mother and her health, so I saw no reason to risk driving on the phone. The old Buick that I drove had no hands-free driving unless you were also phone-free.
I answered the phone this time. “Carter, what’s so urgent?” I asked, hoping that the situation with his mother had not taken a turn for the worse.
“It’s Land. He called me. He’s been arrested.”
My heart stopped for a second. If there had been any doubt about my feelings for the man, they were answered in that second when I seemed to freeze. “What? That can’t be,” I replied, not wanting to believe this.
“The woman detective stopped by the truck and took him in. He called me to come and get the truck and close up the food truck for the night.” Carter sounded almost as frazzled as I felt. “I kept it open for a bit and then just cleaned up and drove it to the lot. Aaron took me back to my car so I could drive home.” His detailed rendition of events had the effect of making it seem more real.
In all of the cases, Land had never been a serious suspect for a crime. On more than one occasion, my mouth and my temper had made the police take a second look at me, but Land’s even temperament made him appear too aloof to stoop to crime. Now this detective had arrested him for a murder.
I tried to quell the panic in my chest, but I was having a hard time focusing on this news. I wanted to run in a thousand directions at once to fix this problem, but I knew that it would take more than a few interviews to get him released. “What can I do to help?” I asked, not feeling up to any task.
“Land said not to worry and to keep out of trouble. He’s got a lawyer, and Detective Danvers is helping him with something. He wouldn’t say what it was.”
I tried to puzzle out what Danvers might be helping out with, but I couldn’t come up with any scenario where Detective Danvers helped Land over the county police.
I was about to ask another question when the doo
rbell rang. I told Carter that I’d call him back in a few minutes, and I buzzed the people in without asking who it was. For all I knew, the county police were coming for me as well. I opened the door, but instead of Detective Green, it was Sabine Mendoza, Land’s sister. Her long, dark hair flowed behind her, and I could easily see the resemblance to Land in the long, straight nose and the skin tone.
“What the hell have you done with my brother?” she asked as she entered my apartment without asking. “He’s in jail now. You realize that, right?”
I took a deep breath and then found that I couldn’t talk. Land was in jail, and I blamed myself. Gina was my friend, and I had agreed to cater the wedding, dragging Land into the matter.
Sabine looked at me and realized the state that I was in. She stopped yelling and took me in her arms. “I’m sorry. I’m just upset – and you have a bad habit of getting involved in murder cases.”
I nodded and put my arms around her too. I was glad to have someone to console me. My parents would have been more worried about my involvement with Land if they heard about this. Their concern for Land would have been secondary. They would be more concerned about me than him. Right now, I wanted to focus on undoing this mess.
“I know,” I finally said. “But I don’t know how I could be blamed for this? I don’t understand at all. There’s no evidence against Land or me or the food truck. I don’t know why that detective would hone in on Land when I was already finding suspects to David’s death.”
“If I understood Land correctly, you just pissed the detective off, and she’s taking it out on him. When Land called me, he was more worried about the food truck than the charges. He was pretty confident that you’d find something to get him off.”
I sat down on the sofa and told Sabine what I’d learned so far. The fight near the restrooms made her raise an eyebrow, a trait that I knew all too well from Land. She agreed that there were too many other likely suspects to have settled on Land so early.
FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books) Page 84
