FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books)

by Chloe Kendrick

  Brianna was just about to say something when I heard a choking noise from behind me. I turned and saw Rachford’s face redden as his lips grew blue.

  He started to speak, but the words were only garbled sounds in his throat. The noises continued for a few seconds and then he hit the floor. He didn’t get back up.

  I started to bend down to give him CPR, but my dress was too tight to make for a delicate descent to the floor. Before I could even gracefully bend down, Land had yanked me to my feet and away from the CEO.

  “What are you doing?” I protested. “That man needs help.”

  Land squinted his eyes at me. “I just saved your life. If you’d put your lips on his, you’d probably be lying on the floor next to him. I’m not certain, but I am pretty sure that he just died of cyanide poisoning.”

  I looked to where the man was now lying dead on the floor and thought of my close call. I wondered if the poisoner had wanted to take out more than one person tonight or if Rachford had been the sole intended victim.

  Now that I was safe, Land was on his phone. I didn’t have to ask any questions or make any deductions to figure that one out. I knew who he was calling.

  Chapter 3

  The first round of Capital City police arrived within a few minutes. The closest police station, the one that Detective Danvers worked out of, was less than a mile from the gala. The patrol cars had their lights flashing and the sirens loud. I could hear them from the time that they turned them on.

  The EMTs showed up as well, but I could have told them that, even with the very short elapsed time, it was too late. The redness had drained from Rachford’s face, but the blue ice color of his lips remained.

  I did a quick Google search of the properties and results of cyanide. The powder could be mixed into a liquid, which fit the case tonight. I was assuming that Land was correct about the cyanide being put into Rachford’s glass, but I wasn’t sure how that could have been managed without a roomful of people seeing it. Yet at the same time, I knew that the crowd had been tight, and anyone could have easily bumped into another person and dropped something in a glass, especially at waist-level.

  The article went on to talk about cyanosis, which explained the bluish color that comes with the poisoning. The body doesn’t get enough oxygen to the blood and the organs and death occurs within minutes. So my guess was that he had been poisoned while I had been standing within feet of him.

  I was still in the group standing closest to Rachford. The EMTs had covered the body, but we all still knew what was underneath of it. Land, on the other hand, had left with the police officers. He informed them that Detective Danvers was on the way. One of them looked visibly pained at the news, which I was amused at. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who found him to be annoying most of the time.

  The EMTs said something to Land, who then responded. They nodded and talked to the police officers again. I assumed that Land told them of his suspicions that the man was poisoned. The uniformed officers got on the phone, while standing near the body to keep the guests at arm’s length.

  I assumed that they were calling for a crime scene team. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but from experience I knew the steps taken in processing a sudden and unexpected death.

  Land came back over to me and smiled. “Well, so much for a quiet maternity leave,” he said. “This death will be anything but peaceful.”

  I nodded. My mind was already trying to determine what had happened and why.

  Had Rachford’s death precluded him sharing anything he knew about the procurement of formula for his stores? His death seemed to indicate that he was not behind the formula swap, and someone else had killed him either to get him out of the way so that he wouldn’t tell what he knew about the swap, or they were concerned that he would investigate the matter and stop what I could only consider to be a very profitable sideline.

  This now left me with two mysteries. Who had been behind the formula switch, and who had killed Rachford in front of so many other people? Presumably the crimes were the work of the same person, though that was not certain. Multiple crimes could be going on at one corporation, but it was the less likely option.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of Detective Jax Danvers and some other detectives that I didn’t recognize. Since Land had called Danvers to let him know about the death, our presence was no surprise to him.

  He was dressed in a form-fitting shirt that showed off a physique that kept him in the gym on a daily basis. He wore a dark blue jacket over jeans, which made me wonder what he’d been doing tonight before he’d been called in. Perhaps he and Sabine had been working out the details of the wedding.

  “I thought having a baby would slow you down,” he said. “But, no, here you are right in the middle of another murder case. How do you do it?” His tone oozed with the sarcasm that I’d grown accustom to from him, but I wasn’t in the mood to talk.

  I gave him a wan smile. For all the times I’d been involved in a case, I’d only actually seen someone killed in front of my eyes a few times. Most times, I got brought into the matter after the fact.

  Seeing a man that I was standing next to fall over and turn blue had made me want to run home and stay there, but I had made the decision to remain at the gala and find out what happened. I knew that other babies might not have the same fortune regarding the use of substituted formula. I needed to help them as well.

  Not getting an answer from me, he turned to Land, “So that thing you were telling me about? The substituted formula? That’s a real thing? You can’t be serious.”

  Given that I’d actually seen it in action, I wasn’t surprised, but apparently, Danvers was. The cases of formula added up. When each canister cost $30, a case of 48 canisters ran to over $1400. Five case would be more than $7000. That was the single instance that I had known about.

  When I started adding up the number of fake canisters we had seen yesterday at the Bargain Baby stores, I could easily calculate a six-figure fraud. No wonder Bargain Baby appeared to be so profitable. I wondered if the formula was an isolated event or if it was part of a larger fraud upon the customers.

  Land spoke up. “Yeah, you’d be surprised. Formula is relatively expensive. It’s often required, and if you need something other than the typical formula, you pay out the nose for it. Andy prefers goat’s milk formula.”

  “I’m sure your grandmother loves that,” Danvers said with a laugh. “I’m having someone pull the records for any shoplifting of bulk amounts of formula or shipments of formula. I’m sure that there will be records,” Danvers replied. To him, this was like a drug case where an ordinary item was being used illegally.

  I cleared my throat. “Don’t be too sure that you’ll find the records. New mothers are somewhat skittish. They want to protect their babies from everything. If a baby store called the police to come in and make a full report on a regular basis, the mothers would not want to shop there. No one wants to be asked questions about what their babies eat. It’s unnerving.” The silence would allow the scam to continue unabated, which played into the counterfeiters’ hands.

  Danvers started to say something and then just nodded instead. Perhaps he thought that I was more likely to understand how a new mother behaved.

  “So exactly what happened?” he said finally. “Where were you when the vic went down?”

  I let Land take over, since I was studiously observing the various faces around the room. I didn’t see anyone crying copious amounts for Rachford, so I had to wonder if he was single or between wives. He had worn a wedding ring, but I had seen no signs of a wife, and had also notice his roving eye. I wondered who would benefit financially from his death.

  For the most part, I saw pale or ashen faces who were watching the crime scene techs do their jobs. No one would be allowed to leave yet. I knew that we would be here for a few more hours, and I was glad that Land’s grandmother had agreed to watch Andy. I felt more comfortable knowing that I wasn’t on a tim
e clock to get home.

  I turned back to Land and reminded him to call his grandmother, so that she would know why we were late. He nodded and then went back to talking to Danvers.

  “Who exactly were you talking to besides Brianna Preston?” Land asked.

  “No one. There was a man standing next to Rachford who looked familiar, but other than that, I didn’t recognize anyone else.”

  Danvers rolled his eyes. “Exactly what were you two doing here? First you call me about formula, and now you’re at a gala for some guy. What are the odds that this vic is going to be someone involved with baby formula? You just can never leave things alone.”

  I started to bristle at the question. A man had just been killed here. We were not under any suspicion, and yet I knew that I would be in for a certain amount of questioning, just based on my history with this officer.

  Land spoke first. “He was the head of the company, Bargain Baby. There was a reception here for him tonight. Maeve and I have gone to these things a few times. Nothing special.”

  “I’m confused. The call I got from you was about BabyRama, not Bargain Baby. Who thinks up these names anyway? You’ve moved on to another chain store? Are you going to tell me that this is an epidemic?”

  “My mother’s friend’s daughter brought me over some formula. It was in the correct canister, but it wasn’t the correct formula. In looking at the canister, I noticed that the bottom of the can had been tampered with. It appeared that someone had opened it, replaced the formula with something cheaper, and then crimped the can shut again. From what I can deduce, someone is replacing more expensive formulas with the run-of-the-mill stuff, but selling the lower-cost products at the inflated price.”

  Danvers pulled out a piece of paper and pen. “I’m going to need the name of the person who bought that for you. Your mother’s somebody’s something.”

  I winced. I had been trying to keep their names out of the investigation, which was why my mother and I had been so circumspect in going to the first Bargain Baby store. Now I would be giving their names to the police as part of a murder investigation. I didn’t think that was the way to make friends.

  “I honestly don’t know the daughter’s name—the one who bought the formula. My mother’s friend’s name is Hilda Green.”

  “Hilda? That sounds lovely,” Danvers said in one of those shallow pronouncements that annoyed me no end.

  “Do you really have to talk to them? I mean, it was a gift gone wrong. I’m not sure how they would be able to add anything to the story.”

  He took a deep breath. “Everything is relevant to a murder case. That’s just the way it is. If you’re that concerned, I’ll go to them. I’ll be respectful and pleasant and not arrest them. I can even tell them that this is related to a formula fraud racket, rather than a murder.”

  I felt somewhat mollified by his statement, but now I was curious. Why was he being so nice? Normally, he instilled fear into the people I knew when he demanded they come downtown to see him or announced himself as a homicide detective.

  I wondered if Sabine had anything to do with it. I wondered if they’d set a date, and Land and I were slated to be the best man and matron of honor. He would need our participation until the wedding was over. I certainly didn’t think that Danvers had just suddenly become a nicer person.

  “September third,” he said as if to answer my unspoken question. “But I’m not sure I would survive if I told you anything else. Sabine wants to tell you herself.”

  I waited to hear more, but true to his word, he didn’t tell me more details. “I’m not saying anything about Sabine’s choice. That’s her business. She’d kill me if I asked you for her. She wants to do it herself in a big way.”

  While he had pretty much just spilled the beans, I knew what he meant. I wouldn’t have wanted Land to ask his sister for me. I wanted to do it myself, thinking this would be the only time I ever asked a friend to be my maid of honor.

  “So now that we have all that out of the way,” he said, “how did the cyanide get in his glass?”

  I gave a start. “You haven’t even talked to the techs yet. How can you know?”

  He shrugged. “Land saw the guy. He’s seen enough people killed by cyanide to know what it looks like.”

  Of course. My husband had served in the military and in the police forces in Europe before coming to America. While he rarely talked about the missions he’d been on or the things he’d done, I was never surprised these days to hear that he’d done something else I didn’t know about. However, I had to wonder how he’d seen “enough people” killed by a deadly poison. He had been involved in more murder cases than I had.

  I wondered if he’d been undercover for the Borgias or worked in a cyanide factory. Those or any other remarkable stories would be equally possible, knowing my husband.

  “Okay, so what do you want to know?” I asked as Land shrugged his shoulders at me, as if to say he would explain later.

  “The cyanide would need to be poured into the glass and probably stirred. It would be crystalline in nature and would settle if not stirred. So when could that have all happened?”

  I gave it some thought, but I couldn’t come up with a time that I’d seen the glass out of his hand. “I don’t think he set it down,” I said. “I remember him holding it in his hand. The champagne was sloshing out a little bit, but he didn’t seem to mind. I don’t think it was his first glass, if you know what I mean.”

  “Did he drink much of the glass in front of you? Did he get a new glass?”

  I thought back to the scene. He’d sloshed out some of the previous glass of champagne before he’d picked up a new glass. “His glass was knocked around, and he got a new glass of champagne, but I didn’t see anyone tamper with the glass. It was terribly crowded and anyone who could have gotten close enough for a minute could have dumped it without much notice.”

  Danvers sighed. “That’s how most of these things go. It keeps the waiters busy and the police guessing.” He walked away without another word.

  “Where’s he going?” I asked, wanting to know what steps Danvers would likely be taking without us.

  Land gave me a small smile. “I would imagine that he’s getting a list of the wait staff along with telling the techs that they’ll need to test all the bottles of champagne that are here. He’s going to have a lot of work ahead of him to find out how the poison was put into the champagne. I’m fairly certain it was introduced to the glass, but there’s nothing to say that it couldn’t have been added to an open bottle.”

  I thought about this as I watched the techs at work. One of them was by the body, collecting small samples of the champagne on the floor. Rachford’s glass had gone down when he did and the stemware had exploded on impact, leaving shards around him. The tech had collected as many of the pieces of glass as she could find, and now she was gathering samples of the champagne for screening.

  The one question that wouldn’t be answered by the police was whether or not Rachford’s death tonight had been related to our decision to attend the gala. Had someone wanted to prevent Rachford from talking to me? It seemed highly unlikely.

  Few people knew that I was investigating the formula, and fewer still knew that I was attending tonight. My choice had been made on the spur of the moment. I’d emailed the organizer to say that I’d be attending only a few hours before the start of the event.

  If Rachford had been killed because of that RSVP, then the killer had only had a few hours to prepare and execute the plot. However, it could be equally likely that the man who was selling fraudulent baby formula under another brand might have had a few other schemes underway. To uncover one might lead to uncovering them all. The fraud at Rachford’s stores might have been the reason for his death tonight, and nothing to do with me.

  Having watched the tech in silence, I turned back to Land. “We need to find Victoria Albrecht,” I said quietly to him.

  “Who is she and why?”

  I exp
lained that I had emailed the RSVP to Victoria only a matter of hours before the gala started. Either she or someone she told or allowed to read her emails could have known that we’d be attending. Certainly I had not told anyone other than my husband.

  “You’re taking a lot for granted here,” Land said. I rarely got upset when he corrected my logic. He saw things from a different perspective, based on his experiences with the police, and I valued the fact that he reined in my imagination at times. “Do you really think that Rachford had to die just because we were attending tonight? He could have been cheating on his wife or in a fight with his neighbor or any of a million other reasons.”

  Put that way, I had to agree. I felt a little self-aggrandizing to think that he had to die merely because we were showing up. If the fraud was that easily detected, another person in the company or a consumer might have latched onto it by now. Yet I still couldn’t come up with a reason to kill him in a public place if time wasn’t of the essence.

  “So what happened that he had to die tonight?” I asked, modifying my thinking.

  Land shook his head. “I’m not sure. Who takes the risk of tampering with someone’s drink at a party? It’s dangerous, and the chance of being discovered is astronomical. The best bet would be to cause some sort of distraction and then slip the poison into the drink. That would likely mean more than one person was involved.”

  “The one to cause the distraction and the other to put something in his glass. This case is getting more complicated all the time,” I said. I knew several of the members of Capital City’s small business group by name, but I didn’t know many of them to a point where I knew what motivations would drive them. Mostly they were just people listed in the newsletter, which gave me news and updates, little more.

  “Besides, when you work with someone on murder, the chances go up that one person will sell out the other. It’s not a good position to put yourself in.”

  “Who made a disturbance during his time in that little circle of people?” Land asked.