FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books)

by Chloe Kendrick

  We walked out to the parking lot. At first glance, we couldn’t see that any car had been touched since the snow. The thick inches of snow on top of each car seemed to be uniform. Sabine took the key fob and pressed down. The parking lights of one of the sedans flashed, and we headed to that car.

  The amount of snow on the car made our task look futile, but we brushed off enough snow to open the driver’s side door. The interior was empty. I quickly searched the seats, the floor, and any crevice I could find. Nothing was there.

  My car couldn’t ever have been searched so quickly. The old Buick would have taken a few hours to go, given the various things I’d accumulated over the years. I distrusted any car this clean.

  “Pop the trunk,” Sabine said. I leaned over and tugged on the latch. I went back to searching when I heard her say, “Maeve, you need to look back here.”

  I scrambled out of the car and met her behind the sedan. The trunk was full of supplies. There appeared to be rolls of plastic, tape, and industrial cleaners, all stacked neatly.

  “What do you think this is for?” I asked, already forming my own opinions.

  “Exactly what it looks like. A clean up for a dirty resort cabin, say like the one we were just in?” she responded.

  I had to agree that a similar purpose had been in my mind as well. I tried to discount it, thinking that we might have had a different response if we hadn’t just come from a crime scene, but it fit so well with the Blaines’ cabin that it was hard to resist jumping to that conclusion.

  We shut the trunk and locked the car again as we went back into the resort. I needed a chance to contemplate what we’d found. If I’d found these items in the trunk of a car belonging to a suspect, I would have immediately assumed them to be the killers. What did you make of the circumstances when those items are found in the trunk of the victim?

  Land was sitting at the front desk, and we stopped to talk to him. I didn’t tell him about the gun or the materials in the trunk of the car. I wanted to wait until we were somewhere more private to talk to him about what we’d found.

  “Any luck?” I asked, looking over his shoulder at the computer screen. He had scrolled down the reservations, going back a month or so in time. I looked for any familiar names, but nothing met my eye.

  “None. I’m about to give up. So what did you find out?” he asked, looking up and stretching to give me a kiss.

  Sabine started to say something, but I cut her off. “Let’s go back to the room, and we’ll tell you about our adventures.”

  Sabine smiled. “That’s fine. I’m sure that Jax is still on the phone with the Capital City police, trying to get somewhere regarding the Blaines. He’ll be forever.”

  We headed back to the room, and I got comfortable in the chair by the gas fireplace. For some reason, the cold affected me more now that I was pregnant. I found a thick blanket and draped it over me.

  “Want to borrow my coat too?” Sabine said, jokingly throwing it over me. “I could call room service and get you some more blankets.

  I sat up, and the blanket fell to the floor. I had forgotten about the cold for a minute. “I’m assuming that the resort has the same housekeepers do the same rooms every day, right?”

  Land looked at me with dawning realization. “I’m sure they do. This resort is small enough that they likely only have one or two housekeepers on duty at any time.”

  “So if I wanted to get the same housekeeper, I could ask for the same room each time?” I asked, feeling better about my supposition.

  “And request extra items so that the housekeeper could come back a few times to the room,” Sabine said, adding to the growing knowledge of what must have happened.

  “But you said early on that you didn’t suspect her,” Land reminded me.

  “I said that she would have to be a hell of an actor to fool all of us. I didn’t say it was impossible, just that it was unlikely. Maybe I was wrong about her.”

  “Wait a minute,” Sabine said. “I don’t want to miss this, but I have to put up with Jax. If you come up with a theory that he’s not a part of, I’ll have to hear about it all the way home.” She ran out the door, which clicked shut as it closed.

  “Are you sure about this?” Land asked.

  “Not positive, but I think it’s a good enough shot that if we concentrate our efforts on Carletta we can find out enough information to make a case. It’s always that there are so many different suspects you can never find out who is responsible. Once you have a main suspect, then you can find out the details that will help convict her.”

  A small knock on the door came, and Land let the couple into the room.

  Danvers looked at Land and then at me. He could easily see the look on our faces and knew that we’d come up with something. “What’s this about? Sabine said you had a solution to the case. So tell me what’s going on.”

  I started explaining. “Carletta is the guilty party,” I stated clearly, and then began to tell Danvers how the Blaines had been the intended victims all along. They had come back to the resort on multiple occasions and ordered fresh towels that went unused. I explained how that tactic would ensure that the same housekeeper would be responsible for the room each time, and the towels meant that they met with Carletta at least three times, despite her earlier protest that she’d never seen the couple before.

  The first crime had been silent, death by knife, so that the crimes would go unnoticed for a length of time. They had been moved and repositioned for some reason, which meant that she’d had time to commit the crimes and perform the other deeds in the room.

  She might have been committing the crimes in some form of self-defense. It appeared from the Blaines’ car that they had come prepared to wrap something large, perhaps a person, in plastic wrap and tape it shut. Those items made it look like Carletta might have been the intended victim.

  However, she’d gone above self-defense when Danny Gardner came out of his room while she was busy. She hadn’t known he would be there. His mother had put him in a guest room at the last minute. He would have noticed the housekeeping cart outside of the Blaines’ room during the window of time that they’d been killed. He’d be able to help put Carletta in jail, so he’d been killed as well.

  This crime had been sloppier. Carletta had used a gun which she’d found in the Blaines’ room. She hadn’t done anything with the room, which explained why she had not noticed the large sum of money in the safe. That wasn’t important to her; the identification of her for the crime did.

  Chapter 9

  Danvers let out a long whistle. “It all makes sense, but do you have any proof for this?” he asked. “The local police are going to want more to make their case.”

  I shrugged. “Not much. I’m sure the police can find a motive for the crimes. They had to have some sort of connection, and the police would be able to locate that.”

  Danvers sighed. “I’m going to call the local police from my room. Why don’t you three go to the common room and find out when the roads will be open? I don’t feel particularly comfortable knowing that this woman would kill just to keep the lid on things.”

  We saw Carletta before she saw us; however, something in our appearance must have told her that we knew. She scurried from the common room, out the front door, and into the parking lot.

  We followed.

  We had no real means of transportation. None of us had car keys on us, and she had a head start with a car free of snow. She jumped into her car, and backed up, slipping and sliding as she did. The ground was still frozen, and the parking lot had not been treated. At first, she pointed the sedan in our direction. However, the melting and freezing snow had created an ice covering, and the car skidded to the right when she hit the gas.

  She really needed to press the gas slowly to travel on ice, but I had no desire to instruct her on how best to run us down.

  Land motioned us between some parked cars. He brushed the snow from the roof of an older model car, and we watched C
arletta as she tried to turn the car in our direction again. The slippery blacktop didn’t help her gain traction, and the car slid again, barely missing a sports car that was covered in snow.

  Carletta’s car looked older, which might have been for the best when driving in this weather. The auto was a large sedan that would handle most of an impact with two or possibly three people, but the tires looked well-used and bald. Not the thing for winter driving.

  She put the car into drive, and the vehicle lurched forward. The back wheels spun a bit as she did, shooting snow and ice out behind the tires in an arc.

  “Do you think she can make it?” I asked, watching her car move with all the grace of a Zamboni machine sliding across the ice. She tried one last time to maneuver the car in our direction, but the vehicle would not cooperate.

  Land shook her head. “I doubt that she’s skilled enough to pull this off. She’s in for some trouble.”

  The words had no sooner left his mouth than her sedan began a slow drift to the left. She straightened the car and headed for the exit. The road went down some steep narrow roads that were not the best during the summer. I would not have tried to escape via that route in the midst of a blizzard.

  Carletta tugged on the wheel, but she overcompensated as she did. The car passed into the other lane of the road. The inside shoulder of the road was small and tight, covered with trees beyond that. The car picked up speed as it drifted further to the left. She tried to brake, but the action was quick and sharp. The tires only spun on the snow and ice. She seemed to pick up more speed as she did. The back end fishtailed, swerving back and forth in ever wider arcs. I gritted my teeth as I watched, hoping that the car did not go over the edge of the road to the valley some hundred feet below us. She must have wanted the same thing, because she attempted to straighten out the wheels again.

  She tried to accelerate, but the drift still had the car pointing to the left. The front end of the car pointed again to the trees just off the inside shoulder of the road. She tried to tug the wheel again, but this time the tires couldn’t catch on road. It was spinning out on the ice.

  The car sped across the remaining few feet of road and hit the trees hard enough to activate the airbags. They burst out of the car like rising bread in a pan.

  We watched, but could see no movement from the car. We stood there, not knowing what to do. If she was hurt, we needed to help, but she could still have another gun with her. We didn’t want to get within range.

  Before Land and I could devise a solution, Danvers ran from the resort. He saw the wrecked car and our hesitant expressions. With a gun in one hand and cuffs in the other, he approached the car with caution, ensuring that he didn’t give Carletta a clear shot. He didn’t need to worry. She had been knocked unconscious by the crash. As he pulled her out of the car, I could see that the air bag had broken her nose as little trickles of blood ran down her face. Danvers made the arrest without trouble.

  ***

  The local police were able to have the road cleared in under two hours. Since the resort was now the scene of an arrest, the police insisted that the resort be treated as an emergency route.

  Danvers delivered the suspect to the police, leaving us in the background. I was certain that the newspapers would carry the story, touting Danvers’ latest bust.

  Before we were able to head back to Capital City, the police were able to come up with a motive for the murders. The Blaines had been running a small drug operation where Carletta’s brother worked. She wanted him to be free of that business, but the Blaines wanted a steep price for firing him.

  We were heading home earlier than expected, which meant some Christmas time with the family. But, after the last few days, a family Christmas seemed like almost peaceful.

  A FORMULA FOR MURDER

  Chapter 1

  I pushed the stroller through the aisles of BabyRama, the latest infant and toddler products store to hit Capital City, looking for everything I needed on my list, but one item wasn’t there. I had the baby, a stroller, a diaper bag, and a list of ten things that I needed to find. The task wasn’t supposed to be too difficult, but in the first month after giving birth, every trip out of the house seemed like an ordeal.

  Ander Mendoza, the newest member of our family, had been born at the end of May, so I was at least blessed that we didn’t need to fiddle with coats and hats and gloves. Yet motherhood was still more than I thought it would be.

  I was on my third store, looking for a case of formula. Breast-feeding hadn’t gone all that well, so I was left with the option of bottles. After a short period where I felt extremely competitive about wanting to do more than the other mothers, I was fine with the circumstances—until today. I had thought that a baby superstore would be bound to have the formula I needed, but that wasn’t the case.

  Ander did not appreciate the run-of-the-mill standard formula that could be found at any of the stores. He preferred the more expensive stuff, a formula made with goat’s milk rather than cow’s milk. The alternative formula could be found at a number of stores around Capital City—at least until today.

  Of course, Land’s grandmother had been beside herself with joy at the news. It wasn’t enough that my child had his father’s dark eyes and deep brown hair. Grandma was certain that the preference for goat milk harkened back to her Basque heritage. I didn’t tell her that my mother ate goat cheese on her salads. Grandma had been even more delighted with the name Ander, a traditional Basque name, though we had taken to calling him Andy when we weren’t in earshot of her.

  I picked up the things from my list that I’d found here and headed to the register. I paid for the items and was collecting the bags when I saw a uniformed officer leaving the backroom of the store. His gun was holstered, but he did have his pad and pencil out. My curiosity was piqued. What exactly was going on here?

  I used my phone to figure out what other baby stores were near me. There were a few bargain warehouse clubs in the area including one that focused on small children. The fourth store was a charm, and I picked up enough goat’s milk formula to last a few weeks. I wasn’t taking any chances.

  When I got back to our apartment, I called Land. My husband had spent the first two weeks off with me, taking care of Ander with me. After that, he’d gone back to work at our food truck, Basque in the Sun. Sabine, my sister-in-law, had taken over Dogs on the Roll while I was on unpaid maternity leave.

  Since I was the owner, the time off was of my own choosing. Between the trucks’ revenue and Land working full-time, I really hadn’t needed to hurry back to work. Land and I had discussed when I’d return, but we hadn’t come to any concrete decisions yet. It would depend on finding daycare and our money situation.

  “I know you won’t know, but I was hoping that you could find out from Danvers what was going on in the BabyRama store today.” I quickly outlined the situation with the police and the curious amount of missing goat’s milk formula in Capital City.

  “I’ll give him a call later,” Land said. “Don’t be surprised if you don’t learn anything. It’s very unlikely that he’s going to hear about a theft from a beat cop. I think you need some adult company. Why don’t you call your mom for a chat?”

  I bristled a little at his statement. Part of me bristled at everything these days because of the post-partum hormones, but another part of me knew that Land was correct. I enjoyed using my brain, whether it was for planning for a new truck, an expansion which had been put on hold for a year or more, or solving crimes.

  The biggest mystery I had these days was what had happened to the formula, so it became my cause du jour. The notion did excite me. What could someone do with that much formula?

  We hung up, and I called my mother, who agreed to come over in about an hour. Ander had been sleeping since we’d returned home, and I decided to join him in a nap.

  ***

  We woke when the door opened. I forced the lids of one eye open and looked at my mother, who was carrying a number of pack
ages under her arms. Apparently, the ability to carry 20 things was a talent given to all mothers, which was never lost.

  She dropped a huge can of formula on the counter and set the rest of the packages on the dining room table. “I got the formula from a friend’s daughter. She ran across this place, Bargain Baby, that sells formula on the cheap. It’s like a discount store just for baby food and supplies.”

  I’d heard of the chain, but I’d never been to any of their three stores in town yet. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to shop at a place that sounded like it sold infants on the cheap. I’d heard enough to know that the company was locally owned and operated, which was usually a plus for me.

  “And they had the goat’s milk formula?” I asked, thinking that no two infants in the Capital City area could have the same palate. How many babies preferred the taste of goat’s milk to good old-fashioned cow’s milk?

  My mother nodded. “The daughter bought this for you, and I paid her back. Don’t worry about reimbursing me,” she said, waving a hand in front of her face. “I won’t have it. Andy is my little baby too.”

  With that, she picked up her grandson and began talking to him in baby talk. I took the moment of freedom to rummage through all the bags my mother had brought. It never ceased to amaze me that my mother could unerringly bring me all the things that I forgot at the store. I put everything in its proper place and then went back out to the living room to spend time with the pair.

  I told my mother the story about going to four different stores for the formula, and only having luck at the final one. “The police were at BabyRama,” I told her, feeling that old urge to investigate a supposed crime. Usually the crime was murder—and one that took place in my vicinity. But, in my bored state, I would take a case of shoplifting or parking illegally in a handicapped parking space.