Bushel Full of Murder (12 page)

“Wait, you put pineapple on hot dogs?” I said to Peyton as I held a spatula in one hand and a piece of laminated paper with her hot dog preparation instructions in the other. She’d hastily tied an apron around me and pointed me toward the paper before I could even tell her hello.

I’d been late to the market, but the medium-sized crowd hadn’t arrived until late morning/early afternoon anyway. None of my customers seemed to have been looking for me, and I sold out a few hours later, with no complaints regarding my tardiness. The sheer routine of the day had been a welcome respite from the recent interruptions and catastrophes.

It was after I’d closed my stall, about midafternoon, that for some unexplained reason, the trucks’ popularity suddenly took off. It was as if the entire county had at once
heard about Bailey’s temporary culinary treats on wheels, and everyone wanted to come see and sample every single item. A number of the market vendors had been recruited to help with the trucks. I’d volunteered to help Peyton. How hard could hot dogs be?

“Yep, it’s really good,” Peyton said as she turned a hot dog on the grill. “But my best seller is the Tsunami. It’s the one I make with my special sauce.”

The recipe you allegedly stole?
I thought as I inspected her for any sign of guilt. I saw none.

“Can I help you?” Peyton said to a customer.

The space was tight, so when I took the step to my right to help with the hot dogs she’d already put on the grill, we were directly next to each other. Two people could work in the space, but it would take some time to choreograph the moves well.

I donned some gloves and lifted the end of a hot dog with a fork to inspect its underneath parts. Peyton didn’t make just hot dogs on buns. All of her hot dogs were open-faced sandwiches, made with two grilled hot dogs, cut and butterflied, and one thick piece of homemade white bread. The hot dogs had to be grilled to just the right doneness, and she’d mastered it. It might take me a time or two, but I was ready to give it a shot.

“That’s going to be a Greek Dog. It’s ready,” she said when she saw what I was doing. She held out a paper boat with a slice of bread. “Feta cheese, olives. Really good.”

I forked up the dogs and placed them on the bread. Peyton added the toppings, explaining the proper amounts to me, and then handed the plate out to a customer whose eyes were big with anticipation.

“Go ahead and get started on a Tsunami. That’s what was just ordered. I’ll get the next couple orders and then help you at the grill. The Tsunami is really easy. Just the dogs, the bread, the sauce, and some sautéed onions. I always make a bunch of onions, because I use them for a few of the dogs. The Tsunami is not only my best seller, it’s also the the easiest one to make.”

I looked at the instruction sheet and tried to follow it and watch the dogs on the grill. I was slow, but not too terrible. As I worked on one sandwich, Peyton worked on two or three more. By the time I started my third dog, though, I’d sped up enough to think I might be more of a help than a detriment.

We served a few market vendors, who all cheered me on. Hank, Mel, and Basha also ordered Tsunamis, each of them stopping by when the lines outside their trucks slowed. Both Hank and Mel tried to flirt with Peyton, but it was a waste of their romantic energy. We were too busy for Peyton to notice. In fact, I wondered if Peyton even recognized them as other food truck vendors. She’d been the last one to arrive, and I didn’t know if proper introductions had taken place, or if in her eyes they’d just been a couple guys who’d helped set things up. Introductions weren’t going to happen with the line of eager hot dog customers continually growing behind them.

By the time the rush of customers dwindled down to something manageable for one person, I decided that Peyton and I could work together just fine if we had to again. We’d nailed the choreography.

“Thanks for your help, Becca. I don’t think I could have done that without you. Some people would have walked away,” she said.

“My pleasure.” I leaned my hip against the outside frame of the grill. “How are you doing, Peyton? You okay?”

She forced a smile and shrugged. “I’m okay. It was really good to get to work today.”

“You’ve been in Arizona for what? A while, I think,” I said.

“A couple years now.”

“Did you originally go there for a job?” I knew the answer, but I had to start somewhere.

Peyton laughed. “No, I went there for a boy. Bad idea.”

“Oh,” I said. I was genuinely surprised. I thought she’d just been in search of herself. “It usually is. Didn’t work out?”

“Didn’t even last a week when I got there.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No matter. But that meant I needed a job very soon after I got there. I never went to college, Becca. I’ve worked with food a long time. I hoped for a chance to
really
work with food, perhaps go to culinary school, but things haven’t worked out that way. I found a job in a great restaurant down there. I made it into the kitchen and got some real training and some management experience. I know so much more now.”

“Why didn’t you stay at the restaurant?”

Peyton shrugged and I was struck again by how pretty she was. I wondered if she was tall enough to be a model. She continued, “The truck. I thought it sounded like a cheaper way to have my own restaurant. Now; not down the road after I actually made it to and completed culinary school. That seemed like something that was so far away.”

“You glad you got it?”

“Yeah, except that I left the restaurant poorly since they
think I stole their sauce recipe.” She nodded at the container of Tsunami sauce sitting beside the grill.

“You mentioned yours was
like
theirs, but not exactly. It’s okay to try to copy something using your own tastebuds and experience.”

“Yeah, I guess,” she said. “This is my recipe, Becca. I never even knew their recipe. The owner of the restaurant was the only one who made it. Top secret. He made it in the middle of the night when no one else was in the place. I couldn’t have known the recipe if I wanted to. I made my own. Granted I got the idea because of theirs, but this isn’t theirs.”

“I get that, but maybe you can understand their position?” I said.

“I worked hard for them. I created a new dish that they’re selling very well. I might have liked their sauce enough to create one of my own, but I was good for them, too.” She sounded bitter.

“That’s good to know,” I said. “They were
that
upset about the sauce? Accusatory?”

“Well, there was more, but cross my heart, Becca, I did not do what they think I did.”

“What was that?”

“They thought I stole some money.” She wouldn’t look at me as stress or strain or something pulled at her voice. Even with her head down, I could see the corner of her eyes pinch.

“Oh. That’s a terrible thing to be accused of,” I said.

Her head popped back up. “I didn’t take the money. I didn’t hurt anyone. I wouldn’t. In fact, I think I was set up.”

“Set up?”

“Yeah.” Peyton looked at me as if she was struggling with whether I was a good guy or a bad guy. I waited for her to remember she could trust me. “Before the manager left for vacation, she told me to keep all the deposits in the safe, not to take anything to the bank until she got back.”

“That seems like a bad idea,” I said.
And not something any manager in their right mind would ask of one of their employees
.

“I know. I thought so, too, but when I questioned her about it, she just said that she didn’t want me out of the restaurant during the bank’s hours, that she needed me in the restaurant more than the money needed to be in the bank, that it would be okay in the restaurant’s safe for a week.”

I squelched a sarcastic chuckle. There is no way I would have done what Peyton is claiming the manager told her to do. I would have found a way to get the money into the bank account, particularly considering the large amount I knew we were talking about. But, again, my cousin was young, so either she was lying or had been terribly naïve. It could be either one.

“I see,” I said. “But I still don’t understand how you were set up.”

“The day the manager got back into town, she was taking the money to the bank. She got attacked and the money was stolen.”

“That’s awful. They blamed you for that?”

She nodded. “They think I’m the one who took it. They think I attacked the manager and took the money from her.”

“What does she say?”

“She could see the face of the person who attacked her. They had a scar, she thought, but other than that, she thought
they looked like me. The police have a video that shows a little of what happened, and even I have to admit the attacker looks a little like me. Kind of. But it wasn’t me! I didn’t do it.”

“Do you have an alibi for the time of the attack?”

“I was on my way in to the restaurant. I walked down that same street a few minutes after the attack. I was on the other side of the street and no video cameras captured my image.”

“Not the strongest of alibis.”

“No, but that’s why I think I was set up. I think the manager took the money herself. I think the police will find it with her if they look hard enough. Think about it. She wasn’t hurt badly. She knew there was someone she could pin the crime on, at least divert the police away from thinking it was her. Doesn’t that make sense? It’s kind of a perfect crime.”

She had a point, but it was still a stretch. Ultimately, it was about the money. Was the money that Peyton used to buy her truck the same money that was stolen from the manager? If it wasn’t, where did it go? Someday that question would surely be answered. The money trail would ultimately become clear.

I wanted to just come out and ask how she’d paid for the truck, but I had a sense that if I did that at this moment she might shut down. I would get an answer, but not right this second. I needed to build a few more layers of trust first.

“I think the police will figure it out,” I said.

“That guy who followed me here to South Carolina is pretty sure I’m guilty. I can tell that much.”

Harry was a good friend, no matter how quickly our friendship had been formed. There were valid reasons I liked him so much. Some of them had to do with saving my life.

But Peyton was my cousin. And family was always family and always came first.

Except I just couldn’t be sure.

“Probably,” I said because there was no point in lying. “He wouldn’t have followed you here if he hadn’t thought you might be guilty.”

“I’m having a lot of ‘wrong place at the wrong time’ moments. I was at the bank before anyone else yesterday morning so I could get business things taken care of early. How was I supposed to know there would be a dead body by the Dumpster?”

“Unless you put it there, I guess there would be no way for you to have known.”

“Exactly.”

I thought it was a strange response, but not necessarily suspicious. Her current overriding concern was about her issues in Arizona. Mr. Ship’s murder seemed either less important or maybe less real to her. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I hoped it was because murder was so far away from something she could fathom doing.

“Right, well, I’m sure everything will be fine. It will work out, Peyton. But I gotta say, if you can offer Harry, the officer from Arizona, anything that might show your innocence, I suggest you do so. Quickly. Or if you know something about some small part of it, jump in and tell him. Or just tell me. We’ll figure something out before we go to the police.”

Peyton got busy straightening and cleaning. Most of the motions were unnecessary, but I’d been known to move empty jars from one table to another one just to have something else to focus on for a second or two.

“Dinner at your parents’ house tonight?” she said as she brushed some invisible crumbs off the counter.

“I hadn’t heard about that.”

“Oh. Shoot. I think Allison told me I was supposed to tell you. There was something else, too.” Peyton stood straight and bit her bottom lip. “You’re supposed to bring something.”

“I can call Allison,” I said as I pulled out my phone.

“Lavender oil. Does that make sense? Your mom wants to make something with lavender oil. Allison said you could get it from one of the vendors in the market.”

Allison had probably told Peyton about the oil early this morning. If she or anyone had mentioned it to me, I could have called Ian and asked him to bring some into the market if he was coming in today. Considering the time, I was now going to have to either find lavender oil someplace else, or go out to his farm. Even when he spent time at Bailey’s, he was never here this late.

I’d also been terribly remiss about visiting George, and as time had passed, my embarrassment over that oversight had grown. Maybe it was time to take care of that.

Besides, there was nothing wrong with going out to an old boyfriend’s farm to pick up some lavender oil, even if a small sense of discomfort did buzz in my chest for a second.

Which, I realized, was silly and immature.

“Thanks, Peyton,” I said. “I’ll take care of
it.”