MURDER IN THE SPOTLIGHT (Food Truck Mysteries Book 2) (4 page)

In return, Danvers listed the other incidents to date. Most of them were harmless. Grease left on a burner that ignited when the stove was turned on. While if it had been done on a larger scale, it might have been dangerous; since only a few tablespoons of grease had been used, it was just enough to cause consternation. All the spoons had been removed from Jerry’s truck. The change had been removed from another truck, which made for a sticky time until the truck had moved to charging a flat rate for their food.

The events seemed more like the work of a gremlin than a serious threat to the program. None of them were earthshattering or detrimental to the challenges. They were mainly nuisances that hurt the spirit and will power of the individual teams. I wondered what the purpose of the pranks was if not to give the person behind them a leg up in the competition.

We closed up the truck for the afternoon. I noticed that despite all of Danvers’ talk about helping out on the food truck, he made no effort to help us with the day’s cleanup. We finished the cleanup and put the truck away for the day.

The next challenge wasn’t until Friday, so I had three days to get my blood pressure back to normal. The daily routine was easy for me, and I tried not to think of what Danvers had said about the pranks. The thought of being caught up in someone’s sophomoric antics didn’t make me feel good about the competition or myself.

Business at our normal location had picked up. I counted about 50 new patrons to the truck. They asked about the contest, who was winning and about Johnny Ruck. I could answer the last question, but we were strictly forbidden from talking about the proceedings on the set or during each challenge. Nothing would kill a reality show like someone telling the results before people could watch it during the show.

However, Friday came much too early. Land and I returned to the set. Marsha was standing guard at the door. “Your new pots and pans are in your dressing room,” she said. She didn’t mention a thing about why we needed a new box of pans after the other day. I didn’t press the matter with her either. There was no explanation of who had done this or what steps might be taken to make sure it didn’t happen again. She was not the person in charge that should have been handling this issue. “Don’t forget the pre-challenge interview in the green room,” she said, pointing down the hallway to the door on the right.

I nodded, and Land acted as if she hadn’t said a word. I had noticed that on set his accent was far more pronounced than it was on a typical day. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to get out of speaking in public, or if someone had told him that the accent was attractive. In either case, he turned it up on days when we were on set.

We went into the green room and sat down. A button to operate the camera sat on top of one of the stools, and I turned it on. I always felt stupid when I was forced to talk to this camera. It felt so much like I was so overly impressed with myself that I needed to share my every thought with a camera. I made a few comments about having won the previous challenge and then went on to talk about how we had immunity for this week. “Though of course, we’ll do our best to win the challenge. I don’t want to sit on my laurels.” I’d heard this statement made on other reality shows, and now was my chance to use it.

Land muttered something with his accent running full-tilt. No one ever asked him to repeat himself, feeling it their own failing for not understanding the first time. He talked about his excitement with the new pots and pans.

Having done our duty, we went to the set where several of the contestants were already waiting. Jerry waved as we approached. He was talking to Annabella, one of the taco truck drivers. I’d finally pulled out the packet given to us when we started the reality show that had all of the other contestants on it. I thought that if I was going to be spying on them for Danvers, then perhaps I needed to know their names. Danvers would not be impressed with me identifying a suspect as Taco Owner #1.

Annabella was a large blousy woman who wore entirely too much make-up and too little clothing. Her typical outfit was a pair of dark shorts, a change belt, and a t-shirt that was at least two sizes too small for her. I don’t know if she thought that brought in business. I wasn’t sure, because I wasn’t the business she’d be likely to bring in with that outfit. She was talking with her hands, waving them in the air as if she had just twirled a pizza and was waiting for it to come down from its flight. Apparently, she was unhappy about something, and I decided that I needed to know what.

I motioned to Land, who had all the subtlety of a moose, as he moved toward them. I gave him a look, but he didn’t seem to care. He was more interested in getting as close as possible. Fortunately for him, Annabella found him very attractive and quickly turned so that Land could be a part of the conversation. “Have you heard about these nasty notes that have been going around? It’s just terrible. I’ve been looking forward to being on this show for ages, and now I just feel it’s spoiled. I wanted my win to be clean and fair, but now I’m beginning to think that whoever wins is going to be accused of being the nasty person behind all of this.”

She’d gone on long enough that Land didn’t think an answer was required. He just nodded and smiled.

Annabella continued. “I don’t like to complain, but frankly the show needs to do a better job of policing the contestants. Everything should be fair and square so the best woman wins.” She flashed a smile at Land to show him that her sentiments were meant with no hard feelings. I wondered again who had contacted Danvers so that he was now showing an interest in this case. I doubted that it was Annabella; for all of her talk, she didn’t seem like the type who could get the police to do her bidding.

Jerry looked at me. “Have you had any run-ins with the poison pen writer?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, he left us a little gift when we won the last challenge.” I went on to explain how the pots had been befouled and the note we’d received.

Annabella wrinkled up her nose. “That’s terrible. How horrible. These pranks are just getting worse. Something needs to be done.”

“Something is being done. Don’t worry about it.” Land’s words shocked the lady into silence for a moment.

“Well, I should hope so,” she said, but any other thoughts were cut off by the entrance of Johnny Ruck to the set.

“Well, hello, hello,” he said as the stage lights all went on. “Welcome back for a new week and another challenge. I hope you’ve all had time to rest up for what’s in store.” He flashed a smile at the camera. I knew that he didn’t care about our rest or the difficulty of the challenge.

Marsha handed him the clipboard, a moment that was sure to be edited out. His lack of preparation was legendary.

“Today’s challenge is something that you might find happening while you’re out on the road. You can’t prepare for every contingency, like the one that you’ll face today. Each of you will receive a single card. That card will contain one ingredient on it. You’ll have to make today’s menu, which will be the standard fare for the truck, without that ingredient.”

A murmur went up from the contestants. For the many truck owners who were on the road so often, this might not be a problem. However, for trucks like mine that parked and sat in an urban center, it was something that didn’t happen. If we ran out of hot dogs or relish, I could just jump out of the truck and run down the street to the nearby convenience store. Crisis averted. Making the menu without an ingredient was something that just didn’t happen in my world.

I braced myself for the worst. I had visions of us having to get by without hot dogs or buns. I wondered how that would work for a challenge. I was just glad that we had immunity for this week’s challenge.

“As always, two judges will be stopping by to taste your fare. You’ll be judged on how well you’ve improvised for the missing ingredient on your menu. The judges will rate you on taste, ability to tell that the ingredient is missing and, as always, how much cash you earn from today’s challenge—in that order.”

Marsha walked around to the various contestants and handed out cards to each one of them. She walked up to Land, handed him a card and gave him a smile. I had to walk over to him to see what we’d be working without.

The card simply read “avocado.” One of the things that the customers of Dogs on the Roll raved about was Land’s guacamole topping for the hot dogs. He made it from scratch every day, and he insisted that the recipe was from his grandmother. I wasn’t sure if the latter was true, but he spent time every day cutting and mashing the ingredients for the guacamole. I wasn’t sure how we’d make it without the main ingredient.

Land didn’t seem overly worried by the challenge. I was feeling a little panicky, not because I thought that we’d be thrown out of the contest. I knew that wasn’t going to happen, but I couldn’t envision our guacamole without it. My goal had been to get new customers out of the reality show, not lose customers because of off-beat foods and weird-tasting condiments.

Johnny Ruck made a few closing comments, and we were free to go. We had three hours in which to prep for today’s traffic and to find a way to get around our missing ingredient. Land and I drove to the truck in silence. We would be met on Elm Street by a camera crew who would record our every move so that we didn’t cheat. If there was any hint of shenanigans, then the tapes could be reviewed for fair play.

Once we were inside the secured lot, but outside of the truck, Land grabbed one of my arms. “I’m going to let you in on a little secret,” he said. “We have this in the bag.”

I squinted and stared up at him. “What do you mean?”

He sighed deeply. “I wasn’t going to tell you this, but the store was out of avocados last week, so I just replaced them with frozen peas. You didn’t even notice.” He gave me a smile.

My eyes widened. “What?”

“My grandma used to do that when we were little. If the avocado harvest was bad, we used peas. Everyone always has peas.” He shrugged as if this was no big deal. I was ticked that he’d not even bothered to mention that one of the favorite condiments for the truck had been substituted—and I hadn’t even noticed it. I felt stupid and undermined, which was not a great combination. I waited a minute before responding. In examining the news again, while I still wanted to be informed of changes to ingredients, this was good news for this challenge.

“So we’ve served this before, and we’ve not had a problem?” I felt a wave of relief wash over me. I’d thought that we would be ruined with the forbidden ingredient, but here Land was telling me that we’d done this before.

“Nope. You even had one for lunch and didn’t notice.” With that, he got in the truck and waited for me to join him. “I still have some in the freezer unit too. So we’re ready to roll.”

I got in the truck, and we drove to our regular location in silence. I didn’t want Land to know how relieved I was. I wanted to play at it as if I was annoyed, so that he wouldn’t make a habit of replacing ingredients without informing me. I was trying to run a business, and I couldn’t do my best if I didn’t have all the information. If nothing else, I could’ve researched a secondary source for avocadoes so that wouldn’t happen again.

We pulled into the space on Elm Street and began our normal prep. Land pulled out the peas and began to whip up the guacamole. I took the beans Land had selected for the coffee and began to brew that. Our coffee was also freshly ground and brewed. Land selected a mixture of beans that he ground himself each day. I knew that I depended on him quite a bit for the excellent fare that we had each day, which is why I was trying not to fume about the pea guacamole.

“Where’s the cilantro?” Land asked as he diced up some onion for the recipe.

I shrugged. I typically only handled the money for the truck and helped with cleanup. He was responsible for the ingredients and the prep of the daily condiments. However, I knew enough about cooking to know that his recipe for guacamole would be harmed without the taste of cilantro.

“Did you buy it at the store yesterday?” I asked, knowing that my questions were incredibly obvious. I’d taken the grocery bill out of the books, and I’d gone over the list of things purchased to make sure everything was needed. Cilantro had been on the list.

“Yeah, and now it’s gone.” I could tell from the tone of his voice that this was not good. The rules stated that once we were in place, we couldn’t leave the location until we were out of food or the time limit had been reached. That meant we had no cilantro and no way of replenishing our stock.

I lifted the window enough to see that the camera crew was already here and setting up. I couldn’t even cheat with them here. I cursed several times before getting myself together enough to start thinking.

Land’s composure was cracking. He wasn’t as blasé as he’d been before. He looked around the area again for the cilantro, even though we both knew it wasn’t there. This was the work of the prankster. We’d heard the rumors that someone had missed an ingredient during one of the challenges. I wondered if it had been the truck owner who had won the previous week. I’d have to look into that.

I pulled out my phone and began to Google replacements for cilantro. There was absolutely nothing in the rules that said I couldn’t look up information online. This was not a part of the challenge, since the challenge was to replace the avocado. So this was in bounds for what I was allowed to do. I found a recipe website that included replacements for ingredients and handed it to Land. “See what you can do with this,” I said, hoping for a way out of this. We still had about 45 minutes before we had to open for business, and no telling how much time before the judges came by to try our guacamole.

He scrolled through a couple of pages of text before he handed the phone back to me. “Okay, here goes nothing.”

Those words did not inspire confidence in me. Land pulled out some honey and parsley. He loved parsley as a garnish for the dogs, but I saw no use for it—until now. Apparently, parsley could be used as a replacement for cilantro, though it tasted a touch bitter. Land found some honey that he’d quickly gone and purchased last week when a customer had demanded honey in their coffee. One of the downsides to having a food truck is that when the customers get loud, everyone hears.

Now I was glad for the recalcitrant customer. He’d given us a reason to get a sweetener. Land started experimenting with the concoction. Occasionally, he’d ask me to taste the new dish, but other than that, I had to take over the rest of the prep work and leave him to the guacamole.