FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books)

by Chloe Kendrick

  If Pohler’s business had been used to launder money, we just needed to find out whose accounts had deposits that closely matched Pohler’s cash withdrawals. Since Danvers had called it child’s play, I thought a quick scan might give me a hint. Just as incriminating, I found entries that indicated withdrawals from this company’s funds that corresponded to the money deposited in Pohler’s account, which had allowed him to purchase the three new trucks. This company, whatever it was, had been involved in Pohler’s business. He had allowed another organization, presumably one that was illegal, to use his company as a front for money laundering. In return, he’d been rewarded for his efforts with the money necessary to expand quickly. I was thrilled that I had at last come up with a scenario that made sense.

  I heard a noise behind me and turned. In my hurry to get through the cabinets, I’d totally forgotten that Thomas was here with me. The thought of someone coming back and finding us here, rooting through the drawers, would be hard to explain.

  When I turned, Thomas was standing behind me with a gun in his hand. It was pointed at me. “Don’t point that at me,” I said, failing for a second to realize what was going on. “It could go off.”

  Thomas laughed. “Even now, you’re used to giving the orders. Nice try.”

  At that moment, the reality of the situation hit me. I’d been operating under the assumption that the mysterious fifth person was the mastermind behind the operation for all that time. Then, when I found out there was no fifth person, I should have known that the mysterious organizer had to have been one of the four people I’d already talked to in the investigation. Bernadette was dead. Ruschman had left town. Mrs. Pohler was clueless, which left only Thomas as the logical suspect.

  I cursed myself for feeling sorry for people and for my own stupidity. I’d not wondered why Thomas was not included in the list of people investigated. I’d just assumed Pohler didn’t need to investigate Thomas because he’d already figured out the man’s deception.

  Thomas stood watching me puzzle this out. He didn’t speak for several moments, and then he said, “Have you finally come to the right conclusion? It took you long enough.”

  “You were behind this. You worked for Pohler, set him up with the cheap suppliers, fed him cash to buy more trucks, which meant more food to buy from your people, and then you got him into the counterfeit market.”

  “For starters, yes,” he said with a smirk playing on his lips. “I’ve been a bad boy. However, I can’t take all the blame here. Pohler took to the food scam without any kind of incentive needed. He was a natural.”

  “What kind of ‘incentives’ did you have?” I asked, wondering whom Thomas had used to find out information on the food truck owner.

  “For starters, he and Bernadette were an item. Just goes to show you that you’re never satisfied with what you have.”

  I thought that the maxim applied equally well to him, but I didn’t speak, since he had a gun pointed to my chest. “So how did you find that out?” I asked, wanting to keep this conversation going for a good 10-15 minutes.

  One of the business deductions I’d taken this year was buying new cellphones for Land and me. We shared a cloud account, and as a result, he can track my phone and vice versa. So I wasn’t as scared as I might have been. I had my phone in my pocket, turned on, and knew that he’d look for me. The way I had left without a word to him would raise his suspicions, especially since I left with my new food truck worker. As I’d said before, I was entirely too suspicious of new employees to do such a thing.

  “I just happened to be getting food at the Curry in a Hurry truck one day. The door was open, and I saw him kiss her. Trust me; it was not a kiss that married people give each other. I’d been looking for some new business possibilities, and food trucks looked like a good way to go. So I took a job there and got him interested in the food suppliers. Pretty soon, he’d made enough to think about new trucks. I kicked in part of the money, and the business grew.”

  “Then you blackmailed him into the counterfeiting?”

  “After I told him that the first beta testing would be at your food truck, he was in. I didn’t have to use much persuasion.”

  I was weirded out that a business word was being co-opted for use in the counterfeiting scheme. It sounded far too sophisticated for a guy merely printing twenties in his basement. I began to have a bad feeling about this. I’d brushed up against the mob in Capital City before, but they’d never directly opposed me. Now I had someone likely a part of that mob pointing a gun at me. I gave him a long look. “Your name isn’t really Booth, is it?” I asked.

  “No, it’s Borelli. You might remember that from the time you found Big Tony’s body?” he said, finger tightening slightly on the trigger.

  “I do,” I said. I wanted to say more—to keep the conversation going—but my mouth was dry now, and I was afraid that the conversation was coming to a close. “That’s how you could afford the trucks and had access to the printers and materials for the twenties.”

  “Absolutely correct, but Pohler wanted a bigger share of the business, as if ten percent wasn’t enough for him. So he had to go.”

  I tried not to gape. Pohler’s share was far less than what I’d expected. No wonder he’d been cheap with employees and other parts of the business. He could barely keep afloat on ten percent.

  “I can tell you think that’s not much, but it was more than I was willing to pay. I’d seen him talk to the police a few times, and it was time for him to go—just like it’s time for you to go, too.”

  A loudspeaker crackled to life. “This is the police. Come out with your hands up.”

  I took a deep breath, but didn’t move my gaze from the gun pointed at me. I didn’t want to die now that I was so close to being saved. I kept perfectly still watching him. I knew that Thomas was playing a game of odds. The longer he stood there, the better the chance that he’d be apprehended. However, he didn’t want to leave a witness who had heard him confess all. Yet shooting me and making sure I was dead would take a few minutes that he didn’t have. He’d be charged with murder, and there might even be eyewitnesses to corroborate the charges.

  Finally, after what felt like hours, but I knew was only a minute or so, he made a break for it. He slammed the office door shut on me, which was okay since I had no desire to chase an armed man around a warehouse.

  He didn’t make it very far. Apparently, he had been fooled by Land’s approximation of a police speaker. I knew from experience that police don’t use that type of stereotyped announcement. If Danvers were here, it’d be far more likely he’d have a SWAT team in place before making any sound.

  Land wasn’t alone, and I was surprised by his companion. It was Sabine, who was armed with two pistols and an assault rifle over her shoulder. Apparently she wasn’t afraid of some work after all.

  Thomas raised his pistol, but he was too slow. Sabine fired twice, hitting him in each knee, so that he crumpled to the ground. The pistol went off, missing everything, and then skittered across the floor as Thomas hit the ground hard.

  Sabine used her foot on Thomas to make sure he didn’t have any other weapons. Then she took a plastic zip tie and handcuffed him. She yanked him up only using one arm and sat him down on a chair where she used another, larger zip tie to secure him to the chair.

  Land grabbed the handgun that Thomas had used and then grabbed me. “Are you okay?” he asked, before kissing me hard on the mouth. It was probably one of those kisses Thomas had talked about, but I suspected that we would continue the hot kisses long after the wedding was over.

  When he was good and satisfied that I was all in one piece, he used his phone to call Detective Danvers. He would be pleased to wrap this up before the Secret Service arrived.

  Chapter 12

  Though I’d been slow on coming to the correct conclusions about Thomas, I knew immediately a few things about Land. He’d suspected a long time ago that one of Pohler’s workers had also been the source of the ph
ony twenties. Since Thomas had told us a story about being blackmailed over a relatively minor lie, Land immediately suspected him of being the culprit. Hence, he’d deliberately had Sabine fake a walkout at the business so a spot would be open for a new cook.

  I wondered if he really doubted her abilities to work a steady job, but given her proficiency with weapons, I suspected that she too had followed a similar career path to her brother. Though, given her age, I wondered how that could be. Sabine had kept away from me, knowing that I was far too suspicious to be fooled by an act. She was afraid that she couldn’t convincingly portray a woman with a broken heart, so it was easier to have Land meet with her instead.

  So, with only weeks left until the wedding, the food trucks would again be sufficiently looked after as we went on a honeymoon, which had been a major worry for me.

  Land and I discussed what to do about Ryan Pohler’s food trucks. Mrs. Pohler had been ecstatic with us when she learned that Thomas and the mob had no claims on the trucks. They couldn’t admit that they had bought the trucks for Pohler; that testimony could be used against them in the money-laundering case. It was easier to say good-bye to the money than to tack another few years onto a sentence.

  As a result, she gave us our choice of trucks. She was selling the rest through a food service dealer, but we took Curry in a Hurry post-haste. At the moment, we’re renovating the truck to make it up to Land’s standards. We’d discussed getting another worker, but we weren’t sure that we could handle another former employee of Ryan Pohler. So we’ve been talking to Paula Reyes about possible hires. She had some candidates who were not part of the Pohler team.

  Detective Danvers was incredibly happy with the resolution to the case. When the Secret Service arrived, he’d had Thomas Booth/Borelli all wrapped up and ready for delivery. He took full credit for the bust. I didn’t much care. I had what I wanted at this point, and despite Sabine’s subterfuge over quitting, she apparently was done with the detective.

  After this, I knew nothing would go wrong with the wedding. How could it?

  DEADLY BELOVED

  Chapter 1

  I found it hard to believe that my wedding day was almost here. I wasn’t one of those brides who wanted everyone to watch me on my “special day,” but I was anxious to be married and get this milestone out the way. We’d been focusing on the wedding every day for nearly three months, and as such, I hadn’t been able to focus on the business as much as I wanted.

  For those of you who don’t know, I own four food trucks in the Capital City area. Three of them are currently on the street, and the fourth will be as soon as my wedding day is behind me, which was even more incentive to have this event completed.

  We had chosen to wait to introduce the new truck because Land Mendoza, my soon-to-be husband, and I wanted to take a real vacation. We hadn’t had one since I first inherited my aunt’s food truck some three years ago. Since then, we’ve had plenty of adventures, but never a planned vacation. We had experienced a few days where we’d had to close the trucks for a day to attend funerals or wait for a crime scene investigation to play out, but those had been short and unexpected.

  Land and I were going to take a short trip to Europe, a place where I’d never been and where he’d grown up. I was more excited about the trip than the wedding ceremony. Of course, the best part would be marrying the man of my dreams: the tall, lean Basque man with the dark hair and brownest eyes I’d ever seen. When we’d first met, I found him frustrating, but since we’d finally talked, he’s been a great partner in love and in business.

  With two people out of our four-person team off on vacation, it didn’t seem prudent to add a new truck to the business. We were going to wait until we were home, and then interview for a new chef on the fourth truck. It would be one less stress that I would have to deal with before the wedding.

  That was not to say that I was having trouble getting organized for the events. I love numbers and spreadsheets, and of course, the list of things I needed to complete for the wedding were color-coded and listed over multiple workbooks. I was even impressed with my level of organization on the event. I had every reason to believe it would go off without a hitch.

  So I had no trouble making it to work early on that Wednesday morning, a scant nine days before the wedding. Sabine had come back to work with me at the original food truck, Dogs on the Roll; however, she normally didn’t come in until about 6 a.m. since she only needed to have the hot dogs and condiments ready before the first food customers.

  Typically, the early morning rush was all coffee drinkers, and given that Land had used his own special blend of beans, handed down from his Basque relatives, most of the customers were happy to order a large drink to go. It’s a rare customer who wants a hot dog before breakfast.

  I had about filled all of their orders when Sabine arrived. She got herself ready, putting her hair in a bun and net. She turned the grill on for the dogs, and she began cutting ginger for my favorite topping, Sweet and Sour.

  As I chatted with her, a woman approached the truck. She was dressed in a low-cut royal blue dress that didn’t really pass any corporate dress code that I knew of. I actually suspected that she was heading home after a night of hard partying. She had dark hair, which curled artfully around her face. I put her age a few years older than me, close to thirty if she hadn’t hit it already.

  She ordered a coffee and took her time paying, counting the bills out methodically. “Sorry, I find American money to be so awkward,” she said with a slight trace of an accent. I assumed that Sabine would recognize it and be able to place the woman. I didn’t have the ear for the different tones and pronunciations.

  She finally gave me a five-dollar bill, and I checked it for authenticity just out of annoyance with her. There was something I just didn’t like about her though I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  “Is Land here?” she asked. “Land Mendoza?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said with a phony smile. “He won’t be in until two this afternoon. He runs the second truck that we own together.”

  “How sweet,” she said. For someone who learned English presumably as a second language, she certainly had sarcasm down. She didn’t move, and two customers had lined up behind her.

  “May I take a message? I’ll make sure that he gets it when he comes in,” I said, trying to move her along.

  “Yes, please tell him that his wife was here.” With that, she turned and walked away. Her hips had a swing to them that spoke of seduction, and I wondered as I stood there agog if they’d worked on Land.

  Chapter 2

  I was too shocked to move. Given the fact that I was to be Mrs. Land Mendoza in a few days, I felt that a previous marriage, especially one referred to in the present tense, was probably a matter that should have been discussed earlier. I knew bits and pieces of Land’s early life. He’d worked for the police in Navarre, and later he had enlisted in the military and served there, presumably with Detective Jax Danvers, who had intimated as much and who now served on the Capital City police department.

  Since I didn’t know all of Land’s life, and he had knocked around Europe for several years, it was entirely possible that he’d met and married someone before we met. Yet it just didn’t seem like him. Land could be secretive at times, but I just couldn’t believe that he’d forget something like this; it was a personal matter that he would have shared. Certainly since we’d worked together for nearly three years, I would have known if he’d had a current wife. He’d spent many nights on stake-out with Detective Danvers, and a wife at home would likely have been mentioned in those late nights.

  I turned to Sabine who, as Land’s sister, was the most likely one to know such a thing, but she shrugged. “No idea. First I’ve heard of this. She has a Navarre accent, so it’s possible, but Land would never marry someone who wore a dress like that,” she said. “Land likes women who are more down-to-earth.”

  I looked down to my jeans and t-shirt with the food truck i
nsignia on it and wondered. Did I need to dress better? I couldn’t see me in something form fitting for a food truck, but at this point, I would have tried it.

  Sabine answered that question for me. “Don’t even think it. She’s not Land’s type at all.” She held up a finger. “I’ll call my grandmother and find out what she knows.”

  I faced the counter again, feeling deflated as I did. I took the orders mechanically and filled each one without really thinking about the task at hand. I tried to listen in on the conversation with Sabine and her grandmother, but her tones were too soft for me to hear much. I heard a few words that were definitely not English, and I suspected that they might be talking in another language just to keep me from listening to them. She knew me well. My curiosity had gotten me into trouble before.

  Before Sabine had even hung up, my phone rang. I checked the display. It was Land. Apparently whether grandmother knew something or not, she’d called her grandson and told him to do immediate damage control. This was no coincidence.

  I answered the phone as I poured the last cup of coffee from the urn. Sabine hung up and got to work on the refills so that I could talk.

  “Hey,” Land said, sounding concerned. “My grandmother said that some woman was at the truck and calling herself my wife?”

  “Yeah, she had an accent. Sabine said it was Basque. ” I was trying my best to keep it together, but the sound of the voice that I’d always counted on brought me nearly to tears. I turned away from the counter for a moment so as not to show my emotions.

  “Describe her,” Land asked.