FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books)

by Chloe Kendrick

The clerk counted out the change into my outstretched hand. “Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and twenty,” she said. I was marveling at how she’d done that on an older register instead of one of the computerized machines that gave the exact change to the cashier as part of the display. My father liked to throw in some change at the last minute to confuse any clerk who couldn’t make change in their head. I wasn’t that mean about it though.

  Sabine poked me hard in the ribs. “Did you hear that?” Her face was drawn and tense.

  “She counted out the change,” I said, wondering what the big deal was.

  Sabine handed the change back to the cashier. The woman looked baffled, which was about how I felt as well. Had she cheated me?

  “Can you count this again for my friend?” she asked with pleading in her voice.

  To me, she said, “Listen carefully to every word she says.”

  “Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and twenty,” she repeated. And with the second utterance of the words, I knew exactly what Sabine was getting at. The next clue in the puzzle was not the phone number or address on the employment application. Though something odd was going on at the warehouse, the number thirteen was to be our next clue.

  “So what does it mean?” Sabine asked. I could tell from her expression that she’d forgotten all about Detective Danvers long enough to become interested in the mystery at stake. It was one of the best signs I’d seen that she was coming around.

  “Well, it could be a literal number 13 in the name of a bar or restaurant, though that seems unlikely. I’m thinking that perhaps Carona made it a more symbolic name, like something else that is unlucky—black cats, cracked mirrors. Something like that.” I felt a shiver run up my back. I hadn’t really wanted to delve into the land of bad luck with only a few days left before the wedding.

  “You know tomorrow is Friday the 13th. Maybe it’s related to that in some way.” Sabine said.

  I nodded. “How many Jason Voorhees could be in the phone directory?” I laughed.

  “Who?” she asked.

  I had one of those momentary shocks when I remembered that she had not grown up in this country, and my cultural references flew over her head at times. I explained the meaning of my comment to her while she played on her phone.

  “There’s actually a listing for him,” she said, showing me her phone’s screen. Sure enough, the directory listing showed a Jason Voorhees in Capital City.

  I took a gulp of air for good measure. I hadn’t expected that to be true. I’d just made up a snarky comment to her, partly because she’d been the one to come up with the idea—an idea that none of the rest of us had even thought to try.

  The coincidence of the name and the date being tomorrow were too much for me to believe it was an accident. Something was expected to happen, and happen within the next twenty-four hours.

  I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but I knew that this was probably our last chance with the numbers. With no offense to the next number in sequence, fourteen just wasn’t an exciting number. If we got another chance, and I wasn’t sure that we would, it would be in the form of a new communication with a new code and method of transmission. Such a code and means of getting it to us could take Carona a long time—perhaps too long—to establish and make happen.

  Once we were outside of the boutique, I called Land. “It’s a sequence,” I said, jumping in mid-thought and hoping he would catch up. “It’s a continuation of the last sequence. It’s going to be 13.”

  Land asked me to go slower, and so I went back over the events of the last five minutes, leading up to tomorrow being Friday the 13th and a number of clubs, restaurants, and stores with luck, bad luck, black cats, and such in their names. “It has to be. We asked why she would show up like she did when she did. Now we know. It had to be before the 13th, so if we needed a second meet, then she would have time to set something up at one of these places.”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. For a second, I thought I’d lost the connection, but then he spoke again. “I think you may be right about this. From what I remember, this was the type of puzzle she’d like, and this is the type of meeting she would set up.”

  “You should know,” I replied. “She was your wife first.”

  Land said a few things that I wouldn’t repeat, but then he laughed. “The thing is that this operation is too big for us to do alone. Even if we got Sabine and Carter and Aaron involved, we couldn’t cover all the places that might be a rendezvous for Carona. So that means we have to get the police. I think that was the idea all along. If we couldn’t help her without an armed guard at the restaurant, then we’d need to bring in the big guns in terms of the organized police force.”

  “I think we’ll need to split this up and figure out a way to handle it. Sabine should be involved somehow since she’s the one who figured out the pattern. Danvers will have to deal with it.”

  He told me to hurry home, and we’d work out something before we talked to Danvers.

  Land already had a list of businesses that might be considered to be related to luck and the 13th before we made it home. I’d invited Sabine into my apartment to work with us. She really didn’t get much chance to spend with Land these days. While technically they were considered co-workers, they worked in different trucks on different shifts, so they merely passed each other on the truck.

  He held out the list to me as I entered the door. Tonight, with Sabine here, there wouldn’t be any long, lingering kisses for us. It would be all family and strategy.

  I ran my fingers down the list, looking at the places he’d included. Two casinos that operated along the Lewis River, three clubs with luck in the name, one bar named Black Cat. I added tomorrow’s date to the list and the name “Jason Voorhees.”

  I had to explain the reference to him as well, but at least he knew who the hockey masked guy was from the films.

  “So what do you want to do?” I asked.

  Land pointed at the bar named Black Cat. “We’ll go there. Danvers would stick out like a sore thumb there.”

  “I’ll do a casino,” Sabine said with a smile. “The Horseshoe on a Friday night sounds nice.”

  I gave her a smile. “Yes, the company will pay for your drinks, if that’s what you want. No, Jason Voorhees?” I asked, thinking that she could easily charm the most deadly of serial killers.

  “Nah, I’m not in the mood for meeting new guys at the moment,” she said. “Just focusing on me and my work.”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t sure what she had planned, but I really wasn’t trusting this Zen moment with her. Sabine most likely had something up her sleeve.

  Part of me was curious as to what she had planned, but I was tired, and as much as I found the puzzles to be challenging, I was getting to the point where I’d just prefer a map with an X over where she was. I told this to Land.

  “Carona is only trying to keep herself safe. The people she’s dealing with are deadly, but frankly, they don’t have a lot of creativity to them. So that’s why she does this. It has to be of some importance if she’s going to all the trouble of this.”

  That reminded me, and I told Land about the text about the warehouse and how we’d forwarded that message on to Danvers,

  “You did the right thing,” he said. “It sounds like a trap. It would be like those less creative types to lay such an obvious trap, and then hold you until you tell them what the latest code means.”

  I felt a small cold chill run up my spine. I didn’t have to ask what would happen after we shared what we knew. I suspected that we would be collateral damage, and they would bury any parts of me that they might find over the years.

  “Have you talked to Danvers today?” I asked. Sabine made an immature sound at the man’s name.

  “Not yet. I’ll call him with this in a bit, and don’t worry, sister, I’ll tell him it was all your idea.” He shot her a smile, likely to remind her that he’d warned her against dating Danvers
long ago. He’d warned me about Danvers ages ago, and while I hadn’t understood his sentiments then, I had come to find out that Jax Danvers always put himself first—and sometimes he came second and third as well.

  “I’m sure he’ll be thrilled,” Sabine said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. You can give me some cash, and I’ll hang out at the roulette tables tomorrow night. I might get lucky even if Carona does not.” She closed the door as she left.

  “She’s planning something,” I stated without emotion. “I don’t know what it is, but she’s planning something.” I noticed that she’d left her new shoes. I put the box by the door, so I wouldn’t forget them the next day when I stumbled out at 4:30 a.m.

  “Sabine knows how to take care of herself,” Land said. “She better equipped in some ways than even I am,” he laughed. I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but I was tired and I didn’t want to pursue it. I knew that she could always throw a few knives to defend herself.

  Land decided to take care of the business with Danvers now, and so he called the detective and explained the situation. He put the phone on speaker, so that I could hear everything. Danvers was skeptical at first, but for some reason the mention of Jason Voorhees made him take notice.

  After several minutes of trying to convince him, Land finally sold him on the idea. He admitted that it sounded like something that Carona would cook up and that the police would take over the operation. Since Land had already said that the police would be needed to cover all the locations that might be alluded to by the clue, I didn’t take umbrage when Danvers warned us to stay away from the action.

  Land laughed. “Well, I think we are going out for the evening tomorrow,” he admitted. “It’s Friday night, and we like to live it up.” Danvers knew that this wasn’t true. Many weekends we barely moved from the couch. However, he didn’t try to fight us on the matter.

  It was an oddly peaceful conversation. There was no indication of animosity, threats of arrest, or warnings to stay out of police business. We’d been cooperative, even though Danvers knew that we would be at one of the locations tomorrow night, whichever one seemed to be the most likely by our decision-making process.

  Before we ended the call, I asked, “What happened at the warehouse today? I’m assuming that you got my text on that matter?”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line. I could hear Danvers breathing and the timer kept running, so I knew he was there. “You haven’t seen the news then?” he asked finally.

  He knew that we didn’t have cable and only checked the news on laptops and devices, but apparently I had to explain it to him again. So I did. However, as I spoke, Land pulled out my phone, tapped a few buttons and brought up some images.

  His face was grim as he passed the phone across to me. The story told of a warehouse fire that had ignited within minutes of an investigative team arriving at the scene. The men were unharmed, but the warehouse had been a total loss. The pictures showed fire shooting high into the sky, making for a dramatic image. The photographers had captured the blaze from every angle, and they all looked dangerous in the extreme.

  I knew that Land would not be happy with this development. It was one thing to have fun, trying to solve a puzzle from a distance or with his aid. The idea of these men knowing who Sabine was and how to contact her would not sit well with my overly protective soon-to-be husband. He wanted to make sure that the wedding party lived to the wedding, and I was pretty fond of life as well.

  Danvers didn’t speak during this time. He had let the phone go silent, even though I knew he was still there. He was giving Land, more than me, time to process this. I was mad, and now I wished that I’d found out more about the warehouse and its contents before I’d sent the text on to Danvers. I felt like I’d somehow missed an opportunity—not to get incinerated—but I still felt like we were missing an integral part of what was going on here.

  It was obvious that we were on a hunt to find Carona, who was in hiding from dangerous people. However, we had no idea what she was running from, who the men were, and why they wanted to kill her. If she was truly still an operative of some sort, she was working for someone other than herself. The fact that she had come to Capital City for help suggested either that the danger was so great that she’d run to Land and Jax Danvers, or the threat was in the Capital City area.

  The second idea carried more weight with me. She’d worked at 101112 as a cook of some sort. She’d then pointed us in the direction of a warehouse that was stocked with goods, but lacking in manpower. Someone had then tried to lure us to that warehouse, and it had exploded into flames shortly after we would have arrived.

  Now we’d come down to a complex operation that centered on the next number in the counting sequence, 13. Everyone had their own ideas about the meaning of the clue, though no one was debating that the clue was actually 13. So many people could be running off on the wrong path without knowing it.

  All of that manpower was being utilized—for what?

  Chapter 6

  Friday the 13th was a bright and sunny day that foretold that nothing bad could possibly happen today. The sunrise was a spectacular array of reds and oranges, following by the mellowest of blues. The food truck was busy, but we weren’t so swamped that I couldn’t appreciate a few minutes of time enjoying the sunrise. Perhaps the wedding was making me slow down, or perhaps my mind was just wandering, trying to avoid the dual stresses of a wedding and a stakeout for a foreign operative who had landed in Capital City.

  Sabine didn’t talk much about the wedding, but she did go on about her plans for the evening. She had picked out a dress that was likely to be anything but unlucky for her. She enjoyed having people stop and look at her. She was destined to be the center of attention, no matter where she went. I’d seen a few of these outfits, but I’d never witnessed the power of the particular dress she was describing.

  The rest of the evening was something Sabine must have seen in a James Bond film. She would be at the roulette tables, because apparently that was where all the good spies hung out. Then she’d make contact with Carona, whom she’d never met, and upstage Jax Danvers at his own game.

  It sounded like a great idea in theory, but I had doubts about her ability to bring in a spy all by herself.

  Land and I had settled on another plan entirely. He’d been more interested in the Black Cat, a biker bar. I had to admit that Sabine’s dream of finding a spy in a casino sounded like much more fun than dressing down for the evening. Land suggested that I could just wear my clothes from work, which stung for a second. I had always thought I’d dressed well for my profession, which is awash in produce and mustard.

  Land had made several persuasive arguments for his plan, which mainly consisted of the fact that he’d known Carona for years, and I’d only stumbled across her at a temporary place of employment. The biker bar would be dark and loud. The crowd would be much more likely to mind its own business than a well-lit restaurant or bar. It was hard to argue with that kind of logic.

  So, while Danvers would have a man staked out at the Black Cat with us, we would have some control over what happened there.

  The rest of the places that had been brainstormed by Land, me, and the better minds at the CCPD would all be covered by some form of law enforcement. I knew that Danvers was trying to keep the FBI and CIA away from his operation. He wanted to take the credit for assisting in a major espionage operation, but I wasn’t sure how a relatively modest police department could handle all of that.

  Despite Land’s advice, I did dress in nicer clothes than my daily garb for the evening out. Even though it was Friday, there were a number of recent weeks where we’d found ourselves on the couch at the end of the week. Now we were going out for the evening. I was a bit thrilled, thinking back to when I’d been in college and weekend evenings out were expected. I was sad to say that many Friday nights found me balancing the books for the week.

  Land dressed simply—jeans and a t-shirt. I managed
to wear a dark shirt and jeans as well. I wasn’t sure what to expect at the Black Cat, but I wanted not to stand out in the crowd.

  Land drove us there in his sports car. He felt it was the best mode of transportation to make a statement, and I had to agree. I’d hidden the Buick when I’d taken Sabine to 101112, and I didn’t want to have to hide it as well at the biker bar. I felt sorry for the car, being looked down upon by everyone. It still got me where I needed to go.

  We pulled up to the side of the bar and found a spot at the far end of the parking lot. Land looked like he was actively looking for a spot out of the way. I wasn’t sure why he was so insistent on it, but we walked all the way back through the lot to get to the bar. I wondered if he thought he could have a clandestine meeting with her away from the parking lights and the patrons of the bar.

  I could hear the rock music jamming as we walked into the bar. I knew it was the Eagles playing, though I would have had to ask my parents what song it was. A live band apparently was covering the songs of the 1970s. They were good enough that I could recognize the hits and tap my foot along with the beats.

  The bar was at the front of the venue. The band was on the left side, so that the right side was made up of tables and a long bar along the wall where you could stand, if you were so inclined. It looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in this century, so I was leery about sitting on anything or touching any surface.

  Land walked to the bar, and I followed along behind him. Being a new woman at the bar, I commanded a certain level of attention. I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. On the one hand, I knew that I would be seen by Carona, if she was waiting there. However, I wasn’t really used to being an object of attention. I always saw myself as a math nerd first and rarely thought of myself as a beauty.

  However, that was not the case tonight. I smiled to myself thinking that if I’d been single, nary a head would have turned when I entered the bar. Sporting an engagement ring seemed to bring me more attention from the men.