FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books)

by Chloe Kendrick

  I looked at Land for support, but he nodded instead. That led me to wonder what his plan was. I knew he wasn’t just in favor of me cleaning. It wasn’t the idea of hard work. It was the idea that I was the only one being asked to do manual labor.

  “Fine,” I said after a pause. “What will you be doing in the meantime?”

  “I need to call the local police and start working on the crime scene investigation angle. They might have some ideas for me, based on what they’ve been able to see.” Danvers nodded at his phone and the photos of the crime scene. “Land will go with you, so that there’s no chance of any physical harm being done.”

  ***

  Fortunately, the resort didn’t have any dress code, so I was able to select a comfortable outfit to clean the resort. I surreptitiously slid the master key back into a compartment on the maid’s cart. That was one crisis averted.

  I knocked on the door to the first room, but there was no answer. The memory of the other room where no one answered made me shiver. “Housekeeping,” I shouted.

  No one replied, so I unlocked the door. The room was tidy, with only a few pieces of clothing on the floor. I wasn’t sure exactly what my duties were. So I determined that I would change towels, provide new glasses and paper products, and make the beds. Any other work could be requested by the guests to the front desk.

  I went about my duties quickly. Land stood right outside the door, so that we could chat while I did the work. “So what should I be looking for, exactly?” I asked as I moved around the room. “Bloody knives, guns, confessions?’

  Land laughed. “I think that would drive Danvers crazy if you did. It would be tantamount to a confession of guilt. I was thinking about what we could hope to find. I would start looking for a large empty suitcase or bag.”

  “Every room is likely to have those,” I muttered.

  “I’m thinking of a piece of luggage that could hold all of the money. Just like we can’t tell if Gardner was coming or going out of his room, we don’t know for sure if Gardner was receiving or giving that money. In either case, the other person would have to have had a means to transport it. So the bag would be a good clue for us.”

  “Okay, so what else?” I asked.

  “Bloody clothes,” Land replied. “That last set of murders sent blood all over the room. Some of it had to get on the killer’s clothes as well. And, of course, a gun. If you find one, don’t touch it. I’ll take some photos of it, and make a notation of the make and model.”

  “And the identification from Gardner,” I added, thinking of the items that had been stolen, presumably at the time of his death. Those items would be proof of theft and likely strong evidence of the killer’s identity.

  I also needed to go through the dressers and drawers. Even traces of blood with no clothing would be evidence. I couldn’t imagine anyone just leaving blood-soaked clothes in the dresser.

  After doing the cleaning, I quickly looked through the drawers and closets. Nothing stood out. I did learn that the guests were the Laskeys, the people I had met early. Nothing that they had brought told me about their life or their chances of being a killer.

  I walked back out to the cart with an armful of dirty linens, dumped them into the cart, and headed to the next room.

  By my chart, the Staceys had this room. I opened the door and was smacked in the face by the smell of potpourri. Someone had been using it in heavy doses in here. I doubted that the hotel was responsible, since some guests had asthma trouble that might be aggravated by the smell.

  In my pregnant state, it made me sick. I ran to the bathroom and threw up. Land was by my side in a second and rubbed my back while I vomited. I could look at dead bodies all day and be fine, but a bag of potpourri could make me violently ill.

  “That’s a new twist,” he said after I finished.

  “Smells do that to me,” I said. I grabbed a tiny bottle of mouthwash from the cart and gargled over the bathroom sink. After that, I felt somewhat ready to restart the task. Land opened the window a crack so that I could feel the cold, fresh air rushing in.

  After a short break at the maid’s cart in the hallway, I felt well enough to continue on with the cleaning. I ran over the list of linens to provide the room with, along with other supplies. When I finished, I went through the drawers quickly and thoroughly. Again, there was nothing to be found that seemed suspicious in the least.

  I wondered why the Stacys were so heavy into potpourri. I looked for signs of illegal activities being masked by the scent, but I couldn’t find any signs of marijuana or other scents that should be reported to the police. I was glad to finally leave that room. The smell had begun to give me a headache.

  I closed the door, and we continued throughout the rest of the resort. We found nothing in the rooms. Two rooms were occupied, and we couldn’t do our search. On one door, the do-not-disturb sign hung from the knob. I checked the room off the list and continued on.

  Once we were done, Land helped me push the maid’s cart back to its resting spot. I needed a nap, so we walked back to our own room with him softly rubbing my back.

  As soon as I stepped in the door, I knew that something was wrong. It’s not that I was a meticulous housekeeper, but I had age-old habits with my belongings. I always pushed my shoes under the bed, and always hung my clothes in a single direction.

  When I saw that the alarm clock had been moved from facing the bed to facing straight ahead, I knew that someone else had been there.

  I started searching for evidence in the bathroom, which was the easiest room to survey. I found nothing there that appeared sinister. So I walked back out to the living area and began to pull open the drawers of the dresser. It was in the bottom of the second dresser that I found it. The missing bloody clothes were in my room.

  Chapter 5

  I motioned for Land, who came running. He looked at the bloody pieces of clothing and pulled his phone from his pocket. I knew that he would be calling Danvers. These items had to be the clothes worn by the killer.

  Land hung up the phone and went to the door to wait for Danvers. I stared at the clothes, wanting to pick them up, but knowing that it would be best to wait. My first priority was getting them out of my room. I wasn’t certain if hiding the clothes here was a threat or merely a diversionary tactic. In either case, the clothing creeped me out.

  Danvers arrived with Sabine right behind him. He walked over to the drawer. I was glad to see that he had latex gloves on. He carried a plastic bag as well. This all told me that he planned to remove these items and bag them as evidence, most likely in the safe.

  He pulled out the first item, which was an over-sized T-shirt with a set of skis and the name of another local resort across the front of the shirt. The background was white, though now the shirt had thick, dark stains across it. I guessed the shirt was an extra-large. I didn’t think any of the men at the resort were bigger than that, so the size excluded no one. I wondered for a second about Jonathan Wayne, who had a stomach, but even so I thought he could fit into the shirt.

  So much for identifying marks. The killer had apparently worn clothes that could not easily be traced. I still hoped for more from the pants, but as Danvers pulled the pants from the drawer, it was obvious we would find the same to be true. The pants were actually sweatpants with a long inseam. The legs had been rolled up, but we couldn’t be sure if this had happened before or after the killings. The killer was of an indeterminate height and weight and had worn generic clothing to stab two people to death.

  I saw no signs of the wallet or other identifications which had been stolen from Danny Gardner. Those items were still presumably in the possession of the killer.

  I had a few questions running through my mind. First, there was only one set of clothing here. With the exception of Danny Gardner, everyone else here during the snowstorm had come as a couple.

  There were two possibilities. The first was that the couple had acted together. This seemed most likely to me. Land and I did no
t spend every moment together, but we knew where the other was going most of the time. I would definitely have noticed if he’d come home covered in blood. With a single hotel room to share, it would be hard to miss.

  The other possibility was that the killer had acted alone, which meant that the other spouse had been distracted and unaware of what was happening. They’d missed the late-night visit to Gardner’s room and the blood in the shower and sink from washing up after the second set of murders. I thought of Veronica Stacey and her endless stories about little kids. Would she be that naïve?

  Another thing that bothered me was that the killer obviously knew about us. The local police knew. The resort’s manager knew. The four of us knew. The killer might not have known about the other three people in our group but even so, leaving the clothes here was a bold move.

  The last thing I noticed that no one else was discussing was the positioning of the two bodies. From what I could tell, the bloodstains were spread across the carpet. This meant that the two people had been dragged just after death.

  The question remained, why? What purpose was served by moving them? The bodies could still be seen from the windows and the doorway, so it had not been done to hide the crime.

  Moving the bodies was an arduous task. The male victim had been taller than average, so it was likely that he weighed more than 200 pounds. That was a lot of dead weight to haul around a room for no good reason. The woman had been smaller. However, both had been arranged methodically by the killer.

  All of these musings left me with few plans of action. The three things would all be important to the crime, but I couldn’t determine any way to follow up on any of them. They were trails that might be crucial to the solution, but just as the snow had covered the ground, circumstances had left me with no trail.

  I decided that it was still early in the hunt for the killers. Danvers had his questions out to the local police and to Capital City’s finest. He would have information soon, but in the meantime, that left me with little to do. Instead of fretting, I picked up my book and started to read again, looking for clues to the fictional crime. However, before I’d read ten pages, I was fast asleep.

  ***

  When I awoke, the sun was starting to set. Land was in the room with me, lying on the bed and reading a magazine. His eyes met mine when he realized that I was back among the living.

  “Figure out who did it?” he asked, looking down at my book.

  I shook my head. “No offense to the author, but I fell asleep.”

  He smiled at me and leaned in for a kiss. “I’m sure you needed it.”

  I leaned forward for the kiss and then sat up as soon as our lips had parted. “So what else has been going on here while I’ve been out?” I asked. “Any progress on the matter?”

  Land shook his head. “Not much. The police called back. Their preliminary reports don’t show any connections between the Danny Gardner and any of the guests. They went through the basics of housing, family connections, and work. Nothing. So that’s a dead end.”

  I sighed and looked at him. “You do know that Danvers said that those connections would be the ones which were most superficial. If the connections were buried deeper, the police wouldn’t be able to find them so quickly.”

  “Right. So how are you going to accomplish what a full police force can’t do?”

  “I’m going to talk to the guests. I’ll start with the ones who live in Capital City. They’d have the most likely connection to Gardner. Then from there, I can find out if they knew Gardner. I can bring up his name or the jail escape and see what happens.”

  Land furrowed his brow. “That sounds like an idea, but how are you going to get all these people to talk to you? It’s not like you can go door-to-door, asking questions. Danvers would have your head. You’re not even supposed to be questioning the guests at all.”

  I pointed to the book on the bed. “Well, in the book I’m reading, the detective has a party where he brings all the suspects together and reveals the guilty person. I was thinking perhaps we could host a small getting-to-know-you party. We’ll be here a day or two, so it would seem somewhat natural.”

  Land looked at me before speaking. “How can he bring everyone together to reveal the guilty party if you’re only halfway through the book?”

  I grinned. “I looked at the ending after the second chapter. I wasn’t sure I’d have a chance to read the whole book, so I looked ahead.”

  “So you cheated? Is that your plan on this case too? Cheating?”

  I shrugged. “If I need to, yes.”

  ***

  Nothing happened after finding the bloodied clothes in our room the evening before. We had a quiet dinner, room service provided by Land, who ordered and brought the meal to the room. This quiet time was much more along the lines of what we had wanted the trip to be. We talked about the murders a little, but the topic didn’t dominate the discussions that evening. We talked about names for the baby, coming up with the funniest and most hideous names that we could conjure.

  A fire roared in the fireplace, and for a short time, I forgot that three people had been murdered by an unknown person. It was hard to remember that danger was just outside the door when our room looked like the image from a Christmas card.

  The snow had stopped falling, which was a blessing. Now that the accumulation had ceased, the road crews could begin their clean-up efforts. I suspected that it would only be a day or two, at the most, until we were able to leave. I wanted there to be one last solved case before I went back to the last trimester of my pregnancy and the birth of my baby. I knew I would have to work fast to solve the case before Danvers and the local police.

  When Land returned the dishes to the kitchen, he talked to the staff about the chances for a small party for the guests. With the manager’s approval, we scheduled the party for brunch the next day. We talked to Jonathan Wayne about what would be served. Land suggested a few items that would be likely to tempt most of the guests to attend. Before we went to bed, we made sure notices were posted in the hallways and on the cabin doors.

  ***

  The morning sun shone brightly in the room by the time I awoke. I could hear some of the guests in the hallway, and I thought back to yesterday and how the quiet morning had been shattered by Carletta’s screams. I wondered if anything else would happen, or if the killings had stopped because the murderer had achieved his or her goals.

  Surprisingly, I’d heard next to nothing about the death of the Blaines, the couple who had been found murdered and posed in the room next to Danny Gardner’s. I wondered if their deaths were just some sort of collateral damage because they had heard or seen something that they weren’t supposed to.

  The couple had not been found with a large sum of cash in their room, which meant that the motives pointed to the man with the cash, rather than the couple. Yet the money had still been in the safe when we searched the room and now it was in the resort’s safe. How was the killer any better off now than before the murder if the cash had been the goal all along?

  I thought back to the crime he’d been accused of. Danvers had yet to ensure that the crime had been the theft of money. I suspected that it had to be since Gardner had few other ways to accumulate that much cash so quickly.

  Had he stolen the money and held on to the cache? That would likely suggest that he’d had a hiding place for the cash. It would have to be somewhere that the police would not think of watching

  If he had safeguarded the cash with a friend, then the killer had to be someone outside of his close family and friends. Who among my acquaintances would I trust with $100,000? Even though I was more likely to know upstanding citizens than someone with a long rap sheet, even my loved ones might still be tempted by the presence of that much money. Gardner couldn’t exactly report it missing if someone did take it.

  Even if the acquaintance had returned the money to Gardner, what then? Why would he come all the way to a resort carrying such a large sum of money?
It seemed awkward to pull open a bag and pay the resort bill with a wad of $20 bills.

  I got ready and went out to join Land, who was already putting the finishing touches on the brunch party. I saw no signs of Danvers, which surprised me. I knew Sabine would be unlikely to attend a party that started before she was out of bed, but Danvers certainly would want to be a part of the festivities.

  The Laskeys were the first to arrive. Since they’d always introduced themselves as a unit, I went out of my way to find out their first names, which were Albert and Zadie. A perfect A to Z. We chatted for a few minutes while they sipped mimosas and smiled. They seemed content to be stuck at the resort for a few more days. Their jobs had agreed to extend their vacations, and all was well with the world. The only strong indicator of guilt was that they were from Capital City. Neither of them worked with the city, so they weren’t likely to have been involved with the jailbreak, though. The possibility of their guilt seemed rather nebulous.

  The Laskeys had heard of the jailbreak, but only as a new story, and not as a part of their lives. After a few minutes of chatting, they headed off to the buffet and I reported in to Land.

  “Nothing on the Laskeys. They seem perfectly innocent.”

  “Or they’re just good liars,” he pointed out. “We can only go on what they tell us.”

  I nodded, wondering again how detectives had done this prior to the Internet.

  “Any luck on your side?” I asked. “And why isn’t Danvers here?”

  “I’ve been busy with the details of the brunch, so I’ve left the polite interrogations to you,” he said with a grin. “And as to the police detective, my sister promised to keep him busy for a few hours so that we could question people in peace.” He made a face that let me know he hadn’t wanted to know the methods of Sabine’s trickery. While she was marrying a police officer, her loyalties often rested with the Mendoza family, of which I was part now.

  I had a chance to look out the window again. The snow was still accumulated to waist-high depths, and it was bright with the snow acting as a reflector. I knew that the snow would start melting when the temperatures rose into the mid-twenties or so, and I was glad to think of going home.