MURDER IN THE SPOTLIGHT (Food Truck Mysteries Book 2) (13 page)

He let the words linger in the air, like I was supposed to ask questions of him. I just watched him and wondered why he’d really come. Was there something about the box that I needed to know? Had
my
fingerprints been found on the box? This prankster definitely had the wherewithal to manage a trick like that.

Finally I looked him in the eye. “And?”

“The only prints on the box were hers. What are we supposed to do with that? It’s not like we can even accuse her of being the prankster, much less the murderer, based on her own fingerprints being on the box.”

I thought about this for a moment. “So the box was wiped clean before they were handed out?”

“Not necessarily. We watched the video of the distribution of the boxes. She touched the box where you would expect her to touch it. On the top, holding the sides and such. But when we dusted the box, we found her prints inside the box, on the hinges and other places that she didn’t touch it during the show.” Danvers’ eyes sparkled, and I wondered exactly what he was trying to say.

“Are you telling me that you think that she did this to herself? What’s the purpose in that?”

Danvers shrugged. “From all accounts, she was getting a lot of flak because she’d been the only one not to have a prank pulled on her. So she pulled this prank to stop that.”

I frowned as I tried to process this information. I was somewhat distracted because Danvers was sitting very close to me now on the sofa.  He was turned half way to face me, and his lips were slightly parted. He was making it very difficult for me to concentrate. I wondered if this was his plan: distract me enough so that I’d forget about investigating what had happened in the green room.

“So this just shows that she perhaps pulled this prank. That doesn’t mean that she’s involved in anything else. This just shows that she was involved in one incident.”

Danvers’ eyes squinted at me. “Do you really think that there are multiple people out there who are pulling pranks on the contestants? Was the whole show made up of people who were trying to spite each other?”

Danvers’ remarks had been sarcasm, but I gave it some serious thought. It made sense in a way. If Marsha had been responsible for some of the pranks, as I suspected, she would definitely be a liability should someone else join in the troubles. Should Marsha come clean on her part—or the part of the producers—then the only pranks left would be the ones perpetrated by the other person. That would make things much easier to solve. The other person would be less inclined to let Marsha announce those pranks and leave a path to their door.

Danvers looked at me, wondering where I’d gone and what I was thinking. However, I wasn’t about to share my ideas with him. I wasn’t sure that I’d share them with Land either. This was something that I’d uncovered, and I planned to do my own investigation into the matter. These men were not helping me all that much in looking into the pranks.

“You’ve thought of something,” he said finally. “What is it?”

I smiled at him. “Just that it’s getting late, and I need to get up early in the morning to get to the truck on time.”

He stood up. I looked at him again.  I now saw those tight-fitting jeans as a way to pry information from me. I had to give him credit. He wasn’t above using his own charms to get the information he wanted. I wondered if this was what Land had meant by his warning about Danvers. The man had a lot of charm and looked damned good in those jeans. He knew it and was willing to use it in order to question someone.

I stood up as well. Given that I was dressed comfortably for an evening alone, I was a tad provocative as well. I stretch, knowing that the yoga pants were giving him a complete view. I could play this game just as well as he could. I noticed that he was taking in the view. Maybe I would be able to keep him from asking anymore questions that I didn’t want to answer.

I walked him to the door. We stood there awkwardly for a second. Just when I thought he was going to leave me thinking about him, Danvers leaned in and kissed me. It was a gentle kiss, almost a brushing of our lips without tongue, but it made a shiver run up my spine. That was probably his intention.

The moment was over as quickly as it had begun, and I leaned back to get a good look at him again. He was smiling. He opened the door and left without a word.

The next morning dawned early. I’d managed a few hours of sleep between the tossing and turning. Damn Danvers and his stupid kiss. I had dreams of faceless men kissing me, and I tried to forget about the entire incident.

However, I couldn’t let it go that easily. On the bright side, I knew that he didn’t consider me a suspect in the murders or the pranks. However, I had just complicated matters immensely. I wasn’t the type to kiss at random. I tended to be the one who only kissed when it meant something. So now I was trying to figure out what this meant. Was he really interested in me, or was this a ruse to make me spill what I had deduced about the pranks?

So I dragged into the food truck slightly later than normal that following morning. Land had beaten me to the truck and it was already parked on Elm Street when I arrived. I started my morning routine of counting the cash when Land said, “So, you and Detective Danvers, huh?”

My first reaction was shock. Danvers had left my apartment and had immediately called Land to gloat or brag? I couldn’t see a purpose in that—other than competition, and I didn’t think that Land considered me something to fight over. They were much closer than I thought if this type of braggadocio went on between them.

“What are you talking about?” I asked quietly. I was trying to determine what he knew and how many details he knew. Did he just know that Danvers had come over, or did he know more? I couldn’t tell from his face, eyes or expression.

“Danvers came over last night. What did he want?” Land turned back to his chopping of vegetables as he spoke.

“He wanted to tell me that Tracy Jones had gotten her fingerprints all over the box with the dog poop in it. Given the location of some of the fingerprints, he is assuming that she’s the one who is behind the pranks.” I went back to my work as well. Land didn’t seem to know about the kiss, and I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him. For some reason, I was glad of that.

“I’m guessing from your tone that you don’t agree with him?” Land put the chopped veggies into a bowl. I knew that he was making one of his condiments for the hot dogs, which was the last item in his daily prep. I wanted this conversation over before he was done. Then he could turn his full attention to me. I wanted to occupy him with other things rather than my evening activities.

“Not really. I think that she was just suffering from peer pressure. She was the only one who had not had a prank played on her, and I’m thinking that she did it just to fit in.”

Land laughed. “This isn’t high school, you know?”

I grunted, thinking back to my own unfortunate high school career. “Sometimes all of life seems like high school. Who likes whom? Do you fit in? Do you want to fit in?”

Land put the condiments out on the prep table for use in a few minutes. “You’re putting way too much thought into this. You’re ascribing all sorts of motives to this woman, and we really know nothing about her. She could just be doing this for publicity.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. When I went to her house, she already has it all. The house, the kids, the whole lifestyle. She doesn’t need publicity too.”

Land looked at me and twisted his mouth. “You don’t know much about people. What’s enough for one person is just an appetizer for another. She could be the type who always wants more. Trust me, I’ve seen it often.”

I suddenly felt very young next to him. I know that I was only 25, but I was running my own business and profiting, albeit by inheritance. I was an adult, just like he was. I bristled to think that he was talking down to me. “I talked to her once, but she slammed the door on me. I don’t see her as the type to beg for attention when she didn’t even want to hear my comments when I finally put the pieces together to see that she was the only member of the cast who had not been pranked.”

Land shrugged. “Maybe.” I wasn’t sure if he was deliberately being difficult, or if he just did this naturally. Perhaps he was trying to get me riled up since he knew that Detective Danvers had been over last night. I wondered how Land had known that Danvers had been over. I sure hadn’t told him, and I highly doubted that Land had spent the evening keeping surveillance on my apartment. On the other hand, I really didn’t like the thought that Danvers had run home and called Land to let him know about our evening. It was entirely creepy.

“I think I’ll go over to the Jones’ house again this afternoon and ask her about the fingerprints. Maybe this time she’ll talk to me.”

Land smiled. “Or Danvers could have already taken her in for questioning. She could be across the way in the government building as we speak.”

“I doubt it. He probably would have sent for coffee. It would be the ultimate slap in the face to serve her the competition’s coffee.” I tried to return his smile, but I wasn’t sure I was effective. It felt very forced and artificial.

Land rolled his eyes. “This isn’t a torture facility. They’re not going to mess with her mind just to get some answers about some fingerprints. I can think of at least two other ways that her prints could have ended up in those places.”

“You’re on. I want to hear this.”

Land counted off on his fingers. “First, someone could have planted the prints there. It’s not impossible to believe. We’ve all left our fingerprints on the set. Someone would just need to lift the prints and then put them on the box. I think it’s very telling that no one else’s prints are on the box at all. That means that even the intern didn’t touch it or wore gloves. How doubtful is that.”

“Okay, so that’s one.” I held up one finger to show him the total of his summation so far. “What’s the other?”

He smirked. “She had an inside track somewhere. The people who run the contest or someone associated with the contest let her get an early peek at the mystery ingredient, and she found it was poop. She grabbed the box or dropped it, and had to pick it up and put the contents back in it. So her prints would be all over it.”

“Which still means that someone wiped the box clean after they loaded it with poo,” I sighed. I wasn’t getting anywhere with this, other than Tracy Jones had finally been pranked, only hours before she’d been kicked off the show.

With that statement, Land opened the window, and we started our day with the early morning customers. It was very suspicious that Detective Danvers, who usually put in an appearance before breakfast, was nowhere to be seen today. I wondered if he was legitimately busy with the case or if he was having a case of buyer’s remorse after last night. I was voting for the latter, but I was always cynical when it came to men and their responses. However, the entire day passed without a visit from the detective.

The day went by quickly, and when we were done, Land dropped the food truck off at the secured lot. I grabbed my car out of the parking garage off Elm Street and decided to head out to the land of the McMansions again to see Tracy Jones. I wanted to give her a chance to tell her side of the story. If Detective Danvers wasn’t going to include me in his case, I would do the same to him. It wasn’t exactly mature, but it worked for me.

Just as before, I found three cars in the driveway at the Jones’ house. I knocked on the door and waited for Tracy to come and slam it in my face again. However, no one came to the door. I knocked again and then some more after that. It was obvious that someone was home from the number of cars in the driveway, but they weren’t answering the door.

Being the law-abiding citizen I am, I wanted to make sure that everything was okay inside the house. I went to one of the side windows. I couldn’t see much of the house from that angle, but there were no signs of movement in the house. I decided that I might look like a burglar to the neighbors, so I opted to walk around back and try the windows there. The backyard was private with a huge fence surrounding the property. The gate was open, so I walked in casually. From these windows I saw things that made it clear that there were problems in the house.

Some of the furniture in the kitchen had been overturned. Chairs were tipped back and the contents of the table had been thrown across the floor. I could see signs of damage in the hall, including what looked like a hole in the plasterboard. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed 911.

After that, despite what my mother had once told me about calling boys, I called Detective Danvers and told him what I’d seen through the window. Once I’d done that, I leaned up against the brick and took deep breaths. The sight of the altercation had brought back all the memories of the double murder I had discovered. I was more than a little creeped out to have to wait for the police and discover whatever violence had happened inside. In the pit of my stomach, I believed that Tracy Jones was dead in the house.

Danvers arrived moments after the first police car. I’d explained to the officers that I worked with Tracy and that I’d stopped by to see her. I pointed to the cars and told them that her car had been here, but she hadn’t answered the door—so I went snooping. They walked with me around to the back of the house and looked in the same window I’d peered through earlier. From what they saw, they decided to enter the house from the nearest door.