FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books)

by Chloe Kendrick

  He shook his head. “You’ll have to ask Carletta about that. We don’t mark that down on our charts. It would just be her recollections.”

  Land spoke for the first time. “Do you remember anything in particular about Gardner? Things he did, people he talked to?”

  Yuri paused for a moment. “He seemed to want to sit near the front desk for some reason. Every time that he came out, he ended up within feet of the desk. It was weird. Most people want to sit by the fireplace or the windows or where there are enough chairs to accommodate a bunch of people.”

  “So he wasn’t sociable?” Land asked.

  “Not really. I mean, he wasn’t rude, but he didn’t mingle with the other guests and go out of his way to talk to them. It was odd seeing a single guy up here. Most everyone else comes up in pairs.”

  I nodded, thinking that we’d already covered that material. “When will Carletta be back on shift?” I asked.

  He looked at his watch, a big Rolex that made me wonder how well housekeeping paid. “I’m not sure. I’d guess 4:00 p.m. or a little later.”

  I checked my watch. It wasn’t even 3:00 yet. We had a while to wait before she would be available. We thanked Yuri for his time and headed off for lunch.

  I grumbled a little that we were missing some time from investigating to eat, but I was hungry—far hungrier than I used to be. Land smiled as he grabbed a couple of menus and walked to a partially occupied table.

  The couple who had been arguing that morning was sitting there, and Land shot them a huge smile. “Hi there. Mind if we join you?” he asked in a tone that I knew was pure trickery. Land could be social and charming, but more often than not, he preferred his small group of friends and family.

  The sitting couple didn’t look overly thrilled to have company, but what were they supposed to say? They made a motion which Land took for acceptance, and he held out a chair for me. The husband looked like he had recovered from his hangover, if he’d had one. The man was tall, well-built and keen eyed. He watched us sit down like he was remembering every detail for a later story.

  The wife looked custom-made for him. She was shorter, but looked like she was ready for a 5k after lunch. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she only pushed the food around on her plate, eating little of it.

  We sat down and smiled at them expectantly. Silence was always one of my best weapons in getting people to talk. So many people are not used to quiet, and they feel a need to fill the void, even if it means sharing things that they would otherwise hide.

  We waited for a good thirty seconds before they started with introductions. They were Ted and Veronica Stacey, also from Capital City. I perked up a little when I heard that, not because we lived there, but because Danny Gardner had escaped from the same city.

  I explained that we also lived in Capital City and talked about the food trucks and their locations near the police station and jail on Government Square. I left the door wide open, but didn’t push the couple through gate. However, they chose to ignore the mention of the jail and went on to discuss their own lives and careers. Ted was a lawyer, but an estate attorney, so he likely had nothing to do with Danny Gardner.

  Veronica was a preschool teacher, who seemed to only want to ask me questions about my pregnancy. Apparently, they were trying, but had not yet conceived. There was a hint of over-eagerness in her voice as she asked more questions. I complied with the details, but tried to come up with ways to discuss current events or the jailbreak.

  From what I could tell, the couple had not even heard about the murder in the hotel. I was somewhat shocked, but I didn’t tell reveal the crime to them. They would find out soon enough. I wonder if the hotel had clamped down on any stories about the killing, or if the couples had not been in the common area enough to hear the story from others. It had only been a short time since we’d discovered the body.

  They finally excused themselves, and I took a deep breath. “That was taxing,” I said.

  Land looked physically pained. This overt socialness had to be wearing on him. “It has to be done,” he replied. “We need to find out who could have been involved in this case. The only way to do that is to ask a lot of questions.” He blew out his breath, almost as if to calm himself.

  “Well, on the plus side, the Staceys live in Capital City. They could know Gardner from anywhere in the city. The husband is a lawyer, so maybe someone in the firm could have handled Gardner’s case. I’ll make a note to ask Danvers about that.” I ticked off the possibilities on my fingers.

  “But they seemed too hopelessly suburban to know anything about stolen IDs or grand theft or escaping from jail. I just don’t see them as potential killers.”

  “Not for the reasons we have now. Maybe over sex or jealousy or children, but not over money.” I too drew a heavy sigh; however, mine was more from being tired after a big meal.

  “So what now?” Land asked. “Meet all the other couples in the resort?”

  There were eight other rooms, which meant hearing the life stories of 16 more people. The thought of grilling that many other people really didn’t appeal to me.

  “Why don’t we find Danvers and see which of Gardner’s family and friends are not in Capital City in this lovely weather? Then we can hunt down the maid and see what she has to say for herself.” I checked my watch. “She should be up by now.”

  Land pulled out my chair and we went in search of the police detective. We found him in the resort spa, of all places. He and Sabine were getting facials at the same time.

  I raised an eyebrow when I saw them, and Land tried to hold back a snicker. Neither of us was against male grooming, and we all knew that Danvers prided himself on his appearance and physique, but catching him in the midst of a show of vanity was amusing.

  “Sabine’s idea. She read that couples should groom together. It’s very intimate,” he said as soon as he saw our reaction. I wondered what threat Sabine had employed to get Danvers to submit to such an activity.

  I’d always known Danvers to be insanely vain. He was a very attractive man, with classic good looks and a nice body. Yet you had to get past the ego to appraise him objectively. Land was darker and had an incredible body that seemed to only need daily activity to stay that way. He was much more to my taste, never preening over himself. I always wondered what Danvers had missed early in life to make him so insecure about his looks and personality. The ego had to be masking some deep apprehensiveness.

  “We were just wondering if you’d heard back from the police,” I said, biting the inside of my mouth to keep from bursting into laughter. Danvers was always so pompous that it was amusing to see how far the preening went.

  “Yeah, they called before we started the facial. They might as well have not bothered, for the little information they gave me.” He paused while a woman buffed his fingernails.

  “What about the people who might have helped him? Are they all accounted for?” Land asked.

  “Three of the five are. His sister is missing. No one has seen her in several days. She’s not an active suspect in helping him to escape. However, she believes that he’s innocent. She made a fuss at the trial about how he was framed. She would be a sympathetic ear for him to vent. She might even go as far as helping him out, given her feelings on the matter.”

  “Who’s the other person?” Land replied. I was fine with letting Land take the reins on this, since he had a better rapport with the detective.

  “His mother. She’s older, so we doubt that she was actively involved in the escape either. She has some trouble getting around. It’s unlikely that she’d be on the lam with him. She would slow him down.”

  “So what does that mean for us?” Sabine asked, admiring her nails.

  “Just that the people who helped him escape are likely to still be in Capital City and they can’t get up to the resort to help him in any way. He was probably on his own.”

  Sabine leaned back in the seat. “So this isn’t a matter of a falling
out of thieves. This had to do with something other than the theft.”

  “Maybe,” Danvers replied. “Outside of the money, I can’t really think of a strong enough motive to kill someone when you would be trapped with the dead body and the staff for the next several days.”

  I finally got a word in. “That just means that he had a powerful motive, and the person or persons who did it were fairly certain that no one was going to figure out their connection with the dead man.”

  “I gave the list of guests to the officers back in Capital City. It’s going to take a while for them to get back to me, and even then, I’ll only get a summary. So if the motive is too well hidden, I won’t get to see it from the synopses they return.”

  “So why was Danny Gardner up here?” I asked. “It’s not normal for him to go to a resort after escaping. He should have been moving constantly to keep from being found.”

  Danvers shrugged. “Presumably to meet someone and get whatever he needed to get away.”

  “Like $100,000,” Sabine said wistfully. I had a small suspicion that she was thinking how far that money would go to throw a wedding.

  That took us back to someone who might be here now, who had met with Gardner and helped him. Yet I had a hard time understanding how things could have gone so far off track in such a short amount of time. Gardner had been here just over 24 hours when he was murdered. The money had not been taken, so either the killer had not wanted it, or had not been able to gain access to the cash. The killer had presumably had had hours to work on the safe, given that Gardner was killed around 11:00 p.m. and he wasn’t discovered for over 12 hours.

  That made it all the more intriguing for me to meet with the people who had been next door to Gardner when he was killed. Perhaps the couple had heard something during the night or had seen someone entering or leaving the only other room in that hallway. Their statements could prove valuable.

  I assumed that we’d be focusing on the female half of each couple we met. Three of the people who had worked with Gardner—his mother, his sister, and the woman who escaped with him—all fit that category. There were no older men as guests, though a few of the resort’s employees could be called older. I wondered if Danvers had asked the police to look at the employees of the resort as well, but given his current perturbed manner, I felt it best not to push my luck.

  Despite the money still being in the room, the killer had taken the victim’s other forms of identification. Given that this was a resort, the attempt to hide the victim’s identity was a futile move. We’d found out the guest’s name and address from the registration data within minutes. That made me deduce that the killer was not likely to be a member of the hotel staff, who would have been familiar with the workings of the front desk and reservation process.

  Even so, that identity theft would make it significantly easier to apprehend the killer, when we found out who possessed those items, but given the relatively small size of them those items could be anywhere. Had the killer disposed of the items after we’d learned who Gardner was? Did the killer even know that we’d discovered the body yet? This investigation was in such an early stage that not all of the guests knew about the situation. The Stacys had shown us that.

  So perhaps the items were still in the killer’s room. I wondered if Danvers had considered an entire building sweep to find them, but without a staff of hundreds to do such things, he was in practically the same place I was in terms of searching.

  It felt odd to think that the killer had to be a couple or half a couple. Who would bring a significant other to a killing? The additional people made me feel like the crime was not premeditated and that the killer had probably done away with Gardner in the heat of the moment.

  We left Danvers and Sabine to their ministrations and walked back to our room in silence.

  Chapter 4

  After a lovely nap, I was up again and ready to find out more about the other guests at the hotel. I went back to the hallway where the murder had occurred and knocked on the door to the other room. However, there was still no one at home, or they had chosen not to answer again.

  For a second, I wondered if they had been slaughtered too, but that would be a matter for Danvers to investigate. I couldn’t just barge into their room and look around.

  That thought reminded me of the maid who had found the body. I thought that she would likely be expected to return to the job after a few hours. There was no way to replace her on a shift, given that no one could arrive to relieve her. Until the roads were cleared, she would have to be the housekeeper for most of the resort.

  It only took a few minutes to wander the halls and find the familiar maid’s cart outside of our room. Land was standing in the doorway and speaking to her. I stopped at the bend in the hallway and moved back slightly so that I could listen to them without being seen. If he was questioning her about the murder, I didn’t want to interrupt.

  As I approached, I could hear their words. Land was making small talk about how Carletta was feeling and how she’d found the body. Her words were less audible, and I strained to hear her. My curiosity got the best of me. I finally just moved closer so that they could see me, and so that I could join the conversation.

  I tried to be nonchalant about the entire manner in which I approached, even though I had every reason to be in this hallway. For some reason, the hallway was much longer than the others, though the number of rooms in the corridor was still only two. I wondered what had created the difference.

  “Carletta was just telling me about her day,” Land said with a smile. The fact that he was giving me a big grin probably indicated that he’d been charming her to get the information. While I was never jealous, I was aware that other women found him irresistible. Perhaps the killer would just confess if Land flirted enough.

  “How has your day been?” I asked, adding “You know, since that happened …” I let the words trickle off, hoping that she would take the opening.

  “Busy,” she said. “The other shifts can’t make it past the snow, and so they’ve asked me to stay on and do all three shifts. I told them that I’d do two, but that was the limit. The front desk can handle the night shift on their own.”

  It disturbed me that the situation on the roads had not improved any. I would have hoped that, at the behest of the police, road crews would have been working to clear a path to the resort faster.

  “I would think that would be grueling,” I said. “At least the morning went fast—until you got to that room.”

  “Yeah, I’m not sure why that happened. Maybe just the world being kind for a moment before it slapped me in the face.” Her face appeared pained, and I assumed that she was reliving those moments where she’d found the dead body.

  “Does that happen often?” I asked. “Not the dead body, but the easy morning?”

  She shook her head. “Hardly ever. Maybe once or twice in the five years I’ve been here. Everyone at a resort wants to be pampered. So there’s never a moment of peace.” The mention of five years made me increase my mental estimate of her age. Her youthful beauty had initially suggested someone just out of high school.

  “Did the other guests say why they didn’t need service this morning?”

  “No, the first couple was busy, if you know what I mean. Then the next couple left early, so I did their room. Then I did two more rooms that only needed towels, and then I came to that hallway. The people in the other room had put out the do-not-disturb sign. So I skipped that room and went to the room with the dead body in it. I was pretty much ahead of schedule. When you’re snowed in, most people clean up after themselves, because the staff is overworked and even the basics have to wait.”

  I nodded vaguely. My mind was on the couple in the same hallway that had not answered their door and had their do-not-disturb sign out earlier. What was going on with them? Were they so in love that they couldn’t be bothered to leave the room? They would at least have to leave the room to eat occasionally.

  As usua
l, my mind went to the worst possible scenario. What if something had happened to the couple in that room? What if neither of them came to the door because they couldn’t?

  The maid looked anxious to get back to work. Either Land was losing his charm, or my presence put a damper on the flirting.

  “You cleaned the dead man’s room yesterday, didn’t you?” Land asked, giving her another smile. “Was there anything out of the ordinary there when you cleaned?”

  She stared off into the distance for a moment as if she was trying to remember the room from yesterday. “Sorry, they all seem to blend together after a while. Not really.”

  “Was he in the room when you arrived?” Land continued.

  She nodded. “He was on the phone when I got there. He talked for a few more seconds and then hung up.”

  “Did you know who he was on the phone with?” I asked, hoping that we’d found a break in the case already.

  “No, but I got the impression that he was talking to another person at the resort,” she said, biting her lip.

  “What gave you that impression?” Land said, forgetting to smile now that we’d come across something relevant.

  She shrugged. “I wasn’t paying all that much attention, but he said something like see you soon. Something that made me think that the other person had to be at this resort—given the weather and all that.”

  She excused herself, and we both waited until she was out of earshot to speak. “Did you hear what she said?” I asked, bristling with concern and excitement.

  Land said, “I was standing right next to you. She heard someone from the hotel talking to the victim. That just verifies what we were thinking. He came here to meet someone.”

  “That other couple, the ones who are trapped in town, worry me too. It’s so convenient to be miles away when a murder is located.”

  Land nodded. “The Richardsons don’t have an alibi for the time of the murder. One of the staff mentioned that they’d left too early, so they couldn’t have killed Gardner, but they couldn’t have known when he was killed, right? Given the timeframe for the murder, it’s entirely possible that they could have killed Gardner and still had plenty of time to catch the shuttle. I have no idea how we can talk to the Richardsons about it, though.”