FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books)

by Chloe Kendrick

  “I suppose. My grandmother is all for her marrying Danvers, but I’m still wary.” Land’s grandmother was a force to be reckoned with. She had interfered with more than one murder case we’d been involved in. She had no concept of boundaries, so I could imagine all the things she would do to marry off her last remaining single granddaughter.

  “So what did the autopsy show?” I asked, wanting to go back to the murder again. “Anything of interest?”

  Land took a small notebook from his pocket. “We already knew that he was run over by a car. They were able to get a make and model from the paint chips left on the corpse,” he said. “The murderer was driving a silver Audi.”

  “How many of those can there be in Capital City?” I asked, feeling hopeful.

  “About two thousand,” Land replied. “Enough that the police will wait to look at the car if they find a suspect, rather than finding a suspect through looking at all the cars. Know anyone who drives an Audi?”

  Despite the fact that I’d known Brent was struck by a car, I hadn’t been paying attention to anyone’s ride over the past two days. Now, as I continued the investigation, I would have to keep an eye out for particular car models.

  “I don’t think I do, but then, most people arrive at the food truck on foot, or park in the lot to visit here. They don’t drive up. Anything else?” I asked, trying my best to keep the conversation about the deceased and not about his sister. I was an only child, just like my father was an only child, and my mother’s sister had passed away several years ago. On holidays and celebrations, I wished my family was larger—is the more, the merrier. However, Sabine’s antics of late, especially around her love life, made me happy to be a drama-free only child.

  “The usual. He died immediately. The skid pattern showed that the driver didn’t slow down until after impact, which strongly suggests that this was not an accident. There were no witnesses, so they police will have to rely heavily on the circumstantial evidence in the case.”

  “That should be good, if they have enough.” I thought of our previous investigations where the circumstantial evidence had pointed to us, rather than to the real killer.

  Land shrugged. “Could be. I’ve seen innocent people railroaded by circumstantial evidence. It’s dangerous stuff.” I assumed he was thinking the same thing that I was.

  “Doesn’t Aaron have a silver Audi?” I asked suddenly, reviewing the cars of people I knew. Aaron was Carter’s husband. Carter ran our taco truck, and Aaron earned more at his work. They needed the money since they were raising Carter’s younger siblings. Another bonus, I thought, for only children. You didn’t get stuck with a houseful of kids if your parents passed away.

  “I think so, but you’re stretching. Aaron has nothing to do with this case. Carter has been very sedate since we’ve been back.”

  I had a sudden panic that hit me in the stomach like a weight. Tomorrow, I would call Carter and find out what was going on with him. Normally he texted me to tell me that he had arrived, followed by a daily total at the end of the shift. He deposited the funds just like I did, and then went home to deal with his siblings. Had he just gotten out of the habit since we’d been gone? He still deposited daily, as I saw the transactions clear the bank. However, he hadn’t as much as wiggled an eyebrow at me while asking about the honeymoon.

  Why did I feel worried now? There was no way that Carter could have been involved in the crime—except that his husband’s car matched the one in two thousand odds of running over Brent Collier. My thoughts ran to Danvers, who, despite his current attitude of making nice with everyone, would arrest Aaron in a heartbeat if it would raise his arrest average and give him a better shot at a promotion.

  There were a million possible motives to kill a con artist like Collier, and I hoped that Aaron didn’t have any of them.

  Chapter 5

  The next morning, I was up before I needed to be. I hadn’t slept well with the worries about Sabine and about Aaron. I was at the truck early and was well into the morning coffee rush before Sabine showed up.

  We didn’t speak much about her dating habits or the fact that she’d told her fiancé that she was with me, and told me that she was with her fiancé. I decided that I would leave the situation to Land. While I cared and worried about Sabine, I had no desire to get involved. So I chose not to ask her any questions about last night. Let her make the assumptions on what I knew and what I was missing.

  At the end of the shift, I waited to see if she would cancel on me, but she arranged a time with me and left. I called Carter as well and invited him to come and talk about the new food truck. He seemed eager to visit, so I was pleased that I could kill multiple birds with one stone.

  ***

  The evening came around, and Carter arrived first. I had drinks and some snack foods out. Both of them knew better than to expect me to feed them a gourmet dinner. That’s what Land was for.

  Carter plopped down on the sofa and smiled at me. “You can’t believe how nice it is to have an evening to myself.” I knew that while he and Aaron were good together and they wanted the kids to have a good home, the strife of walking into a ready-made family had taken its toll on both of them. The carefree easy life of a young couple had been lost to them, since they’d be middle-aged before the youngest was in college.

  I thought of my own life, which was slowly creeping along. I went to bed early and rose before most people were halfway through a night’s sleep. Would I wake up one day and wonder where my life had gone? I shook the thoughts out of my head. I loved what I was doing, and I wanted a full life with Land—but to be honest, the thoughts of having a child scared me. Did anyone ever think they were ready for children?

  Carter talked for a few minutes about his brood at home and checked his watch. “I thought Sabine was supposed to be here,” he said politely.

  I checked my phone and saw that she was ten minutes late. Not terribly behind schedule, but I had only intended the chat to take about an hour, so she was holding us up. I tried to call her, but it went directly to voicemail.

  “Oh, well, let’s get started,” I said. “Any thoughts on the new truck?”

  Apparently Carter had spent a lot of time thinking about the truck, its cuisine, and name. He pulled a stack of Post-it notes out of his back pocket and held them out to me. “I have to admit that I went crazy on Pinterest after you called. They had so many ideas. I just pulled the ones that I thought you might like. They’re organized by cuisine. Each type of food is a different color. Blue is for sandwiches, green for Asian …”

  The doorbell rang, and I was spared the chance to hear what orange was. Sabine was at the door, and while she wasn’t as self-assured as she had been since the dance, she seemed pretty full of herself, though she was very casually dressed in a T-shirt and skinny jeans.

  I had invited Carter so that I could dig around about Aaron and his car and so that he could help ask the questions about Sabine’s personal life. That way, I wouldn’t have to prove that Land and I had been talking about her. She came in, sat down next to Carter, and took a cracker.

  “What did I miss?” she asked without apology. She took the stack of Post-it notes and started separating them into two piles. “Who got crazy with the office supplies?”

  I pointed at Carter. “What are you doing to his stack?”

  “I’m taking out the ones that I think are stupid names—no offense intended, Carter. Then we can work on the ones that are left. It’ll save us some time.” Her fingers riffled the notes quickly as she worked. Colorful Post-it notes flew like a rainbow of autumn leaves.

  I had to wonder why she was in such a hurry to get this done. Combined with the fact that she’d been ten minutes late, I wondered what was so important in her life at the moment. I had suspicions that she was planning something—some scheme to get even with Danvers after she’d been shamed into going to the dance.

  She finished her sorting and handed me a much-reduced stack of papers. “Now we can get thr
ough these faster,” Sabine said with a smile.

  I took a look at the first few, which all had to do with an Indian food truck. I wasn’t sure about the need for another ethnic truck. Land did fine with the Basque truck, but I wasn’t sure how an ethnic truck would work, especially if the operator was not of the same ethnicity. I put that stack down and picked up the next stack of Post-its.

  The next stack dealt with a sandwich truck. This was one of the ideas I’d been toying with, but I wasn’t convinced. I knew of two other trucks that sold sandwiches, with a possible third truck on the way. Subs, deli-styled, BBQ, all of them were available. I wasn’t keen on starting a new truck to take on a slew of competition. Could Capital City handle four sandwich trucks? The food truck would either have to do something very different with the offerings, or watch the truck fade into the woodwork against other more established trucks.

  The third stack only had a single Post-it note. “Let it Glide” was the name of the truck listed on the paper.

  “What’s this one?” I asked, turning it over and seeing nothing else.

  “It’s for a sliders truck,” Carter said, as though everyone should have assumed that.

  Sabine looked at him and then me. “Sliders?” While both Land and Sabine had impeccable language skills, at times, there were gaps in their pop culture references.

  “They’re little miniature sandwiches on a bigger type bun, like White Castles and places like that,” I explained.

  “You could make different types of sandwiches. They wouldn’t have to be hamburgers. They could be any type of sandwich.” Carter was in selling mode now. “Think about the possibilities.”

  “Are there any slider food trucks now?” I said, getting a little excited as I started to think of the variety.

  Carter shook his head. “Not a one. I’ve done the investigating. No one has one, and better yet, no one is thinking of one.”

  Those words made me worry. What if there was no interest because there were no customers? I tried to think about the pros and cons of such a limited sandwich market. Sliders were cute. The barriers to entry were low, as it appeared that only a few types of sandwiches would be available, and like the hot dog trucks, the condiments could be varied to keep things interesting.

  Sensing an opening, Carter pulled out his phone and started typing. He soon brought up multiple articles about the sandwiches and the market. I sat and read them as Sabine tried to talk about the remaining Post-it notes. The idea of an English fish shop was not appealing. I could imagine the overbearing smell in the enclosed spaces of the food truck on a sultry summer day. I wouldn’t be able to leave after work and go anywhere but straight home for a shower to try to remove the smell.

  Carter had also come up with a few BBQ food truck names, but I knew of one in Capital City already, and I wasn’t sure that the time spent cooking the meat could be done well. With BBQ, if the meat was sold quickly, that was it for the day. There was no chance of throwing a few more meals on a grill like with hot dogs or tacos. You’d be done for the day. Make too much and you’d lose money. Make too little, and you’d lose money again. I nixed the idea after a few minutes of thought.

  I finished the last of the articles on Carter’s phone and started to hand it back to him. When I clicked off the article, his messaging app came up. I wasn’t in the habit of reading other people’s texts—especially not those of the people I worked with, but my eyes couldn’t help but be drawn to the photo that Aaron had sent to him. It was obviously the front end of their car, the silver Audi, and the front end had damage.

  “What happened to the car?” I asked, handing the phone back to Carter.

  He looked at the phone and then at me. “Aaron ran into a pole downtown. Our insurance rates are through the roof because of this.” He moved his finger across the screen and showed me two other photos of the accident. “Just look at this.”

  My stomach churned as I looked at the photos of the Audi as they flew by my eyes. I hadn’t given too much credibility to the possibility that Aaron had been involved with Brent Collier’s death, but now I had a car that was similar to the murder weapon—and damaged around the same time. I knew that I’d have to hunt down Aaron and have a heart-to-heart with him about the accident and what had happened.

  Just then the door opened and Land came in. I jumped up to greet him, so that the others would not read my expression at looking at those photos. I gave him a long enough kiss that Sabine made a rude noise behind us.

  “I think we have a cuisine for the new truck,” I said, explaining the idea of a slider and the potential there.

  He smiled. “I’m glad to hear that it’s settled. What about a name?”

  I shook my head. Given that Land and Sabine were both from the Basque region, the chances of them knowing idioms and plays on words was fairly slim, though both were excellent with English—better than I was, at times.

  So chances were that the name would be up to me. However, I was too distracted by the contemplation of that accident, and the ramifications of looking into Aaron weighed heavily on my mind. The name would have to wait for another time, though Carter’s suggestion of “Let it Slide” worked well and might be the winner by default.

  Sabine jumped up, sensing a lull in the evening. “I have to get up early,” she said as she headed out the door. Given that I got up earlier than she did, I was suspect of the excuse—especially since the clock had barely passed 7:00 p.m.

  “That was odd,” Carter said. “What’s up with her?”

  I shrugged. “Man issues, I think.”

  He smiled. “They’re all trouble. On that note, I think I’ll head home, but I’m not going to bed yet, that’s for sure.”

  He gave me a quick hug and headed out the door as well.

  Land looked at me. “What’s up with you? You look like you might cry.”

  I told him about the research on the truck and the photos on Carter’s phone of the damaged silver Audi.

  “First, you know logically that Aaron has no part in this case. It’s just a distraction that you have to investigate. You’ll jump down this rabbit hole, and then come back up in search of another.”

  I gave him a long hug. “Thank you. What comes after ‘first’?”

  “Get Danvers to pull the police report.”

  I stood there, stunned to silence. Land had stated that Aaron had no part in the case, but then wanted me to point a finger of suspicion right on to him. I couldn’t do that to Aaron or Carter or their family. Even if I was 95% certain, I wouldn’t want to be responsible if it turned out to be the 5% that remained. Danvers would not show the couple any mercy at all.

  I stood there until Land spoke again. “You’re not going to do it, are you?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t bring any more drama down on that family. They’ve had enough to last a lifetime.”

  “You’re overreacting. To be honest, both men work for other people. So there’s no chance that Collier would buy a business from them. We know what we pay Carter, so we know they don’t have money to invest. So what relationship could they have with the dead guy?”

  I had to agree with him about the money. Collier would want nothing to do with people who were just scraping by.

  “What if Aaron ran down Collier in a fit of rage—or jealousy?” he asked. I knew now that he was just trying to get me riled up. However, the mention of jealousy did make me want to find out who Brent Collier had been seeing. He didn’t seem to be married, from his records, but certainly a man in his late twenties should have developed a few relationships over the years. The act of driving a car over someone seemed more like an act of passion than a premeditated crime.

  The hit-and-run left too many physical clues. The police had already determined the make and model of the car as well as the color of the paint. That was a fairly specific calling card for a murder. The potential killers had been reduced from the entire population of Capital City to a mere two thousand drivers. After the more detailed autopsy t
ook place, they could easily have more information on oil leaks, and the tires on the car and other details that would reduce the pool even further.

  A premeditated crime would not have used such an easy identification. That left a crime of passion, which suggested involvements, girlfriends, and dates. I had to find someone who was close enough to Collier to tell me what I needed to know.

  So far, I hadn’t found anyone who knew him other than in a professional capacity—and most of those wanted to keep their distance from him. Emily, the professor, the lawyer we had yet to speak with, and the mysterious caller, all seemed tied to his work life. I wondered who I could talk to about his personal life.

  I decided to read a few of the newspaper accounts of the killing. If he had family in the area, they would likely be quoted for the story. I could use that information to contact the family and learn about more personal motives.

  I told Land that I would not be informing Danvers about the Audi, and changed the subject by giving him a long and inspired kiss.

  Chapter 6

  Having made the initial decisions about the fourth food truck, I suddenly found my plate overflowing. Just for my sanity, I’d gone with Carter’s name of “Let it Slide,” so I could start the paperwork. I had permits and licenses to obtain. While I’d had trouble in the past with the various government departments, by now they knew me, and the entire process went quickly and easily. By the end of the week, I had all the paperwork I needed.

  Land was taking the time, as he found it, to work on new recipes. He hadn’t needed recipes for the Basque cuisine; it was his heritage, and he’d cooked for his family for years. He’d created recipes for the hot dog condiments when my aunt still ran the food truck. So this was my first time watching him.

  After he came home every evening, he made a batch of sliders, using different combinations of meats and condiments, trying to find ones that would be most tempting to the customers without breaking our budget. I played the role of customer, so I went to bed filled with some of the best sandwiches I’d ever eaten.