FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books)

by Chloe Kendrick

  Danvers went off to wake his future bride, while we went back to the room so Land could get out of his dripping clothes. I followed along just to have something to do.

  Our room, from what I’d heard, matched the rest of the cabins at the resort. Each had a king-size bed with down comforters and blankets. A large flat-screen TV sat directly across from it. On the wall next to my side of the bed was a fireplace with windows on either side, through which we could see the rapidly accumulating snow.

  Our cabin had a small fire roaring in the fireplace, but the blaze was fueled by gas and not wood, which made it safer for the guests. I plopped down in a chair in front of the fire and waited for Land to change.

  He talked the entire time about the cars and the snow and such as he prepared. My husband, who was well-known for his taciturn ways, was definitely worried about something. My new investigation would be to find the source of his concern.

  I stopped him midway through a story about a bunny in the snow to ask, “What’s up with you?”

  He paused to look at me. He was still shirtless and, while I seemed to be growing out and all over, he was still the same flat-stomached, fit man that I’d married. He had not heard of sympathy weight gain for men. “What are you talking about?”

  “Bunnies. You were chatting away about rabbits in the snow. You’re talking about trivial things, which means that you’re worried. What gives?”

  He smiled at me. “Nice to know that I’m so obvious,” he said. “The snow is getting deep. I know that we said we would leave tomorrow, but we’re about an inch shy of being stuck here a few days. The roads are impassible, and snow plows haven’t even touched the road to the resort yet.”

  I gave the news some consideration. Technically, we had no rush to get back to Capital City. The two-hour drive to town could wait a few more days, if need-be. Both of us worked for the food truck company, so we could remain closed for a few days during poor weather.

  The money would be nice, but the trucks were all holding their own at this point. Kamila and Carter would both still be in town, opening the trucks each day. Since Sabine worked in Dogs on the Roll with me, she would be off work as well. Two trucks would be working and two would not.

  Land seemed to be waiting for me to freak out, but I didn’t say a word. I just smiled and nodded.

  “That’s it?” he asked finally. “Just a smile? You’re not as predictable as I am, I guess.”

  I shrugged. “What was I supposed to say? I can’t change the weather, and I don’t want to drive home in a blizzard. We have to accept being snowed in for a day or two.”

  He gave me a kiss as he finished dressing. “Glad to hear you say so.”

  He slipped a nice button-down Oxford over his head without unbuttoning the shirt and tucked it in. We walked back to the main area and sat down for lunch. There was no sign of either Sabine or Danvers, so we opted to eat without them. We hadn’t made any plans with them for today, so we could eat when we chose.

  Since Danvers and Sabine had not shown up, the host put another couple at our table. While I met a number of new people every day at the food trucks, I never really got to stop and sit down to talk with them. As a result, I had realized that my circle of friends had shrunk over the past few years. With my weird work schedule that had me in bed by 9:30 p.m., my family and a few friends were all I had time for.

  This frequent pairing with other couples was extremely odd to me. Without exception, every one of the women wanted to tell me her own birthing story, some of which were beautiful and some of which made me want to cross my legs forever. The couples all wanted to bond over children and family, while I was happy talking about business and mysteries.

  I wondered if I would change drastically as soon as I gave birth, or if I would merely continue my merry way in life.

  The Laskeys were one such couple. The husband was tall and gangly, with a head that was quickly losing its hair. His glasses slid halfway down his nose. The wife was petite and altogether too perky. After we all ordered, they started a litany that began with the births of their three children and shared stories about the kids all the way up to their current age.

  The only time that I got to speak was when I ordered my breakfast. Although Detective Jax Danvers could be a pain who occasionally double-crossed me for the sake of his own career, at least I didn’t have to hear baby stories from him.

  They were still talking when the waiter set down a plate of French toast in front of me. I drenched the meal with syrup and dug in. I chose to ignore any more stories as I concentrated on a meal where I wasn’t being asked to serve or make change.

  I was about halfway done with my breakfast when we heard a scream. Not a short yelp, like when someone scares a person, but a long, plaintive scream that promised to continue until someone stopped it.

  I looked at Land, who had a pained look on his face. In the four months since I’d told him that I was pregnant, we’d had no criminal activity occur around us. Life had been quiet and law-abiding. This scream hinted at something shocking, and., with our luck, someone had just committed a crime.

  Land threw his napkin down in his chair to indicate we’d be back in a minute. He moved around and helped me up. I didn’t need the assistance, but he had said that he wanted to be a part of the process and his small efforts made me smile. The Laskeys didn’t move as we bade them farewell.

  To show my husband that I was still in good shape, I took off down the hall at a fast pace, making him hustle to keep up. I followed the sound and went down two of the hallways before I found the source of the scream.

  One of the maids at the resort was standing in front of an open door. Her nametag read Carletta, and her mouth was stretched to the breaking point as she continued to shriek. Her dark brown eyes were wide, and obviously frightened. Her dark hair was a contrast to the snow I could see from the windows past the door open in the hallway. She was younger than me, and she looked like this was a part-time job while she was in school, even though I logically knew that she was working full-time.

  The manager of the resort was there, trying to get her to calm down. We were the only other people in the hallway. I wondered how Sabine and Danvers could have missed the screaming, but maybe Danvers took his vacations more seriously than Land and I did.

  “Everything’s under control,” said Jonathan Wayne, the manager. We’d met him briefly when we arrived. He was a large, florid man, with sweaty palms, a too-tight dress shirt, and a tie that barely covered his stomach. As a business owner, I wasn’t sure that he would be the face I’d want for my business. He didn’t exude trust; he felt more like he was going to succumb to anxiety at any moment. Considering that the maid had stopped screaming only to catch her breath, I wasn’t quite sure that this wasn’t true.

  “What happened?” I asked, craning my head around to see inside the room. However, from my viewpoint, I couldn’t see anything that would have evoked such a reaction. “Let me get you a drink,” I said, trying to seem motherly to the younger woman.

  Before Wayne could answer, I went to the door, in a pretense of getting her some water. I stopped at the entrance, because now I could see everything, and I had no desire to spoil a crime scene.

  The room had been upended. The furniture was turned over; the sheets had been pulled from the bed and ripped to pieces. What I assumed were his clothes had been thrown across the room. A pair of pants hung over the curtain rod, and a shoe lay on top of the television. Given that the room was attached to the main building by a long hallway, I figured that anyone could have trashed the room without being heard.

  On the floor was a dead man, fully dressed for an outing. I recognized him immediately from encounters around the resort. He still had on a parka, and wore one glove. The other glove lay on the floor next to the body. Goggles were perched on top of his head, and his light brown hair curled around the edge of the toboggan on his head. I couldn’t tell immediately if he had been coming back from an outside trip, or going outside, whe
n he was permanently interrupted.

  I knew that yesterday he had spent most of the day on a nearby cross-country ski trail. We hadn’t discussed his trek with him, but he was the rather loud type, especially after a few drinks, that made him hard to ignore. Another couple had been saddled with him at dinner, and his voice had carried to our table.

  Land stood by the manager, talking in low tones. The maid had slumped to the floor, but neither of them had seemed to notice. Her face was covered by her hands. I walked back out to where she rested and bent down awkwardly.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  She nodded. “I’ve never seen a dead body before. He is dead, isn’t he?” Her face was blanched, and her lower lip quivered.

  I shrugged. “I didn’t check, but I’m pretty sure he is.” There was a dark stain across the front of the parka, and the man was an ashen gray, so death was a logical conclusion. The hole in the parka looked like it had been caused by a bullet, so even if the room hadn’t looked like a tornado had been through it, I would have suspected murder.

  The manager strode off, and Land stepped over to where I stood. “I sent the manager to phone the local police.”

  From the window, I could see the snow still falling heavily. Land had said an inch would keep us here, and from my assessment, we were getting close to that now.

  “Do you think that they can make it up here?” I asked, feeling that I already knew the answer.

  “I doubt it. The access road hasn’t been touched. The manager thought they would have been here by now.”

  I turned to face Land. “So what happens, then?”

  “You’re going to love this,” he said. “There’s a policeman in the hotel who can secure the scene and ask some questions.”

  I closed my eyes for a second. “You mean that they’ll let Danvers take charge of the case.”

  “Yeah, at least until the local police get here. He’s better than nothing,” Land said with a small smirk.

  “What will the manager tell them? You already suggested it, didn’t you? The resort has no idea of anyone’s professions unless they are told. So only Sabine, you, and I could have told the manager. It wasn’t me, and Sabine was still in bed, so it had to be you.”

  “Then why ask?” Land said, with a small smile playing on his lips. He didn’t trust Danvers any more than I did, but Land was probably one of the most law-abiding men I’d ever met. He wouldn’t allow a crime scene to be contaminated just because it would ruin our trip or involve us with Danvers. His personal moral code was far stronger than inconvenience.

  I groaned. Well, if Danvers was going to be in charge, I needed to ask a few questions before he tamped down on everything here. I wouldn’t touch the crime scene, but I certainly could ask the staff what they knew.

  I looked over at the maid, who was quietly following the conversation between us. She sat slumped against the wall. Her face was slightly less colorless than it had been a few minutes ago, so I thought I could ask her a few questions.

  “Are you feeling okay?” I asked her. There was no way that I was going to attempt to get down to her level in my condition, so I bent over in a very awkward position.

  She sniffed loudly, which I took for assent.

  “Do you clean these rooms at the same time every day?” I asked, trying to get to the heart of the matter before our companion and surrogate police officer got involved.

  She sniffed again. “I did them a few hours earlier than I normally do. The rooms in this hallway are typically the last rooms I do, but today I finished the other rooms a bit earlier than normal so I came here and found—that,” she finished, pointing at the dead body on the floor.

  I let my mind wander. If the man had been in the room since his death, then I was trying to find out if the killer had wanted the body found at a specific time. There didn’t seem to have been any attempt to clean the room, which would have raised a red flag. My guess was that the murderer knew the body would be found at some point, and most likely the killer had planned to be far away before then.

  However, the weather had changed the killer’s plans. I wondered why the murderer had not thrown the body in a snow drift or found a suitable hiding place. Then the coast would have been clear to leave before the body was discovered. As it was now, everyone would be under suspicion, and the police would only need to find a person with a connection to the dead man.

  “What time do you normally clean?” I asked, wanting to learn more about the timeline.

  “3:00 p.m., but today it was 1:15. Like I said, I finished the other rooms earlier. Three rooms had the sign up to leave the towels and sheets, so I only had to tidy up, and another had the do-not-disturb sign out. So I was done quick.”

  “Was the door unlocked or locked when you found it?” I asked. Perhaps the killer could not have gone back inside the room if he or she did not have access to the room.

  “The door was shut and locked,” she replied. She shivered and began to look ill again.

  “Is there anyone in the other room in this hallway?” I asked.

  She nodded. “A married couple from out of town,” she said unhelpfully. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen them before. I usually don’t know the guests’ names. I just know room numbers.”

  If my guest count was correct, the dead man was the only single male in the resort. All of the other guests were coupled off. It made me wonder about the man’s motives. Being in the same resort with several married couples would not have been my first choice for a fun singles weekend.

  A voice I knew all too well said, “Get away from her. You’re not supposed to be interrogating witnesses.”

  I looked up and saw Detective Jax Danvers standing a few feet away. His mouth was pinched, and his arms were folded across his well-defined chest. He didn’t look like he was having a good time on his vacation.

  Sabine was with him now, and she gave me a wave, much more in line with the idea of a family trip. Her hair was perfect, and her make-up was flawless, which suggested that she’d been up for a while, but enjoying her own solitude.

  “I was just making sure that she was all right,” I replied. “She’s had a bad fright.”

  He snorted. “I just bet you were. More likely you were asking questions that I should be asking her—not you.”

  I didn’t answer, because he was right, and I wasn’t sure if the maid would cover for me or give me away.

  Danvers motioned to Land. At first, I thought the detective was encouraging Land to get me under control, but in reality, he wanted my husband to follow him into the dead man’s room. The angle of the doorway didn’t let me see much beyond a few feet inside the room, but my husband, who knew me well, slightly increased the volume of his voice so that I could hear all that was being said.

  I waited a few minutes while the two men took photos of everything that they could think to record. I knew that Danvers would not ask Land to surrender his phone, so my husband would likely email the photos to Danvers while sharing them with me as well. After photographing the scene, they began to investigate.

  Danvers started with the body. He unzipped the parka and looked for the source of the blood. With all the clothing still on the man, it was difficult to locate, but Land soon found the wound. The man had been shot once near the heart. Land and Danvers speculated on the type of weapon used to make that particular size of bullet hole. Danvers talked about small caliber weapons, and I wasn’t sure I knew what one looked like. I wondered more about the noise that would have been made by a gun during the night.

  The killer would also have needed to be a good shot to aim for the heart under a coat, flannel shirt, and long johns.

  The body was somewhat stiff now, and Danvers estimated a time of death from eight to fourteen hours ago. Since it was now 2:00 p.m. that meant that the man had died between midnight and 6:00 a.m. I cursed under my breath, because normal sleeping hours would reduce the number of people who would have been up and about in the resort at that hour. Howe
ver, it was not uncommon to hear the sounds of couples wandering the halls at all hours of the night. Since I was starting to have to sleep on my back, I had woken more than once a night to their noise.

  I was so wrapped up in the conversation that I didn’t notice that Sabine had moved closer to me. She now stood a few inches away from me and easily realized what was going on.

  “My brother has always been a sneak,” she said, rolling her eyes. “So what has he said so far?”

  I held up a finger to let her know that I would tell her in a few minutes. Sabine was never above getting involved in a murder case if the reasons suited her.

  A few minutes were spent discussing where the body would be placed until the police could arrive. The autopsy and its results would not be available to Danvers any time soon. I knew that neither of the two men knew enough about human anatomy to complete a successful autopsy, and any efforts that they did make would likely destroy all physical evidence.

  “There’s a shed outside that would work,” Sabine said. “You can see it from our room. You’d just need to keep the key, and the body would remain intact for ages. I don’t think we’re in danger of a heatwave anytime soon.”

  I nodded, and went back to listening to the two men in the room. They’d moved on to looking around the room. Two things came to light immediately. The first was that the man had had very little luggage with him. He’d brought a small overnight bag, which seemed to only have a few pieces of clothes in it. While a few garments had been thrown around the room, even when they were collected, the evidence was slim.

  The second thing that they noticed was that the man had no ID on him. He had a wallet, but no driver’s license or credit cards with his name on them. I was certain that the manager of the resort would be able to give us an identification, but it was odd that the man himself was somewhat anonymous.