MURDER IN THE SPOTLIGHT (Food Truck Mysteries Book 2) (5 page)

Finally with about 10 minutes left of our prep time, he declared himself ready. We opened for business. The early morning customers tended to just want a cup of Land’s coffee. The brew was fantastic and cheaper than the Starbucks down the street. It wasn’t until nearly 11 a.m. that people really started ordering the dogs.

I kept an eye out for anyone who looked like a judge. There was one older man whom I pegged for a judge, and I made sure to give him particularly good service. However, even knowing that each contest typically had two judges, I was unable to pick out the other candidate.

We finished the shift with strong sales. Detective Danvers stopped by and ordered a dog with everything. I doubted that he was a judge for the contest, given that he nearly inhaled the hot dog and then asked for another. He got them gratis, either because he was a public servant or because he and Land were friends. He didn’t mention our earlier conversation, and neither did I.

Land and I cleaned up the truck and drove back to the secured lot in silence. Finally, when we left the truck and headed to the car, he spoke, “How much did we make?”

I rattled off a number that was slightly more than our sales for the last challenge. The fact that we’d earned more with our normal fare than Land’s Basque menu made me second-guess myself on possibly changing the menu. If we could do this well every day, I would be able to maintain the business indefinitely.

“And the judges?” he asked.

“I think I saw one, but not the other. Too many people ordered the guacamole for me to know for sure.” I was still nervous about the challenge, and I felt the butterflies in my stomach.

“Did anyone say anything about the flavor?” he asked giving me a sideways glance.

I shook my head. “Not a word. So I’m guessing that the fake stuff was a hit. That should keep us out of trouble for this week.” I knew that even though we had immunity, it didn’t mean that we couldn’t be humiliated at the end of the episode, explaining why we’d made the choices we had in our ingredients. I had binge watched the earlier seasons of our show, and I had seen more than one chef with immunity be reduced to tears by Johnny Ruck.

We were one of the last ones back to the set. When we arrived, Marsha quickly maneuvered us into the set area where the lights already shone brightly and ten sets of eyes gazed at us. Johnny Ruck must have been waiting for our return, as he came out of the wings as soon as we were in place.

“We have the results of the challenge here, but first I’ll announce who can leave the set. The remaining food truck owners will stay behind to talk to the judges and await the final decisions.” He had the clipboard in front of him already this time, and he started to call off names.

“Wait a minute. Aren’t we going to talk about what happened here? I had ingredients taken from my truck. I don’t know how and I don’t know when, but someone was inside of my truck and stole things that made it nearly impossible for me to complete this challenge.” Annabella had her hands on her hips, and she looked ready for a showdown. Her nostrils flared as she spoke.

Jerry piped up. “I was missing two ingredients from my truck.”

Johnny Ruck looked at both of them with disdain. “The show is not responsible for your forgetfulness and lack of preparation. If you were missing ingredients for today, that’s your problem, not mine.” He went back to the clipboard list.

I looked to Land, but he said nothing. His eyes were squinting, watching the other contestants to see if they, too, were missing ingredients. No one spoke. After a long pause, the recitation of names continued.

We were on the list of people who were safe this challenge. That meant that we had completed the challenge and we hadn’t sucked. We were walking from the set when Land stopped me. “Who else has been the subject of a prank since the show started?”

He moved me toward the green room. He snatched a piece of yellow legal paper from the table by the door and began to scribble down names. Several of the contestants stopped and told us that they’d received a nasty anonymous note, or they’d been the victim of a prank that could have cost them a spot on the show.

As Land talked to them, I began to write down names and events. I might not be the best chef, but my business degree did help me with organizational skills. I sketched out a chart that showed the names going down the page and possible events across the top. I checked a box for each report that I received. Land managed to catch all of the safe candidates on the way out of the studio, and I began to see patterns in the pranks.

The other safe contestants left the building after they’d shared this information with us. Land sat down and crossed his legs. “Might as well take a load off,” he said. “We’re going to find out which of the others were pranked as well.”

“I already marked Jerry and Annabella on the list based on what they said earlier. Someone has been very busy since we’ve been here.”

We heard the announcement of the winner—Jerry had come in first place. I couldn’t hear the name of the person going home, but I knew I’d be able to tell from the people leaving.

The six truck owners came out shortly. Jerry was all grins as he walked through the double doors. He paused when he saw us standing there. “I would have thought you’d be long gone,” he said as he slowed up. “You heard the good news?”

I nodded. “Congrats. It’s a great feeling, isn’t it?”

His grin grew even wider if that was possible. “Yeah, I needed it after the week I’ve had and the stupid pranks.”

I took a deep breath and jumped in. “That’s what I needed to talk to you about. Can you be more specific about the pranks that you’ve experienced and the notes? I’m trying to cross-reference all of them into a chart, so that I can keep track. I’m hoping that we might be able to establish some sort of pattern. If we do find something, of course, we’d turn it over to the police.”

“Well, just today, I was told to do without sauerkraut. So fine, I was going to do a freshly made version of it with cabbage, vinegar and a few other things, sautéed in a pan. No trouble. But when I got to the truck, someone had taken all of my cabbage as well. So I was out of luck there. Fortunately, I had some green peppers, so I grated those and used them instead of cabbage. But if I hadn’t been thinking fast, it could have ruined me today. I could have been going home instead of winning.”

“Have there been any notes?” I asked, wondering if he’d received the same treatment as we had.

“Just one. It accused me of slipping some of my own cash into the till in an earlier round of the competition. I took it to the producers. They weren’t worried about it. They said that a bunch of these notes had been going around. So I tried to forget about it as much as I could.”

Annabella had been the last to appear from the doors, and I suspected she’d been one of the bottom three contestants. Her eyes were red and puffy. “Are you talking about the problems we’ve had here? I’ll be happy to share what that jackass did to me today.”

Without prompting, she went into a long story about how someone had taken her hard taco shells this morning, meaning that she had only soft tacos and burritos to sell. “Of course, the judges blamed me for not having them. They wouldn’t even listen to the possibility that the same person who peed on your pots and pans got into my truck to steal supplies. They had a fit when I mentioned the peeing incident on camera. You’d have thought that I said the f-word during a live performance. I can’t stand this frustration. I’m about ready to just quit the whole thing.”

I took some notes as she spoke, filling in my chart with what had happened to her. By my count, there were five truck owners who had experienced missing supplies this morning. Eight of the truck owners had received nasty notes to them about their behavior, their food or just general threats to their wellbeing.

On my chart, only one person had not received any notes nor experienced any pranks. Tracy Jones, one of the other taco truck owners, had been left alone.

The first thing that I did after making my chart was to make copies of my chart. There’s not an office anywhere in Capital City that does not have access to copy machines these days, and I quickly found the one at the network’s offices. I made about a dozen copies of the chart, thinking that I might share these with the producers and the police.

I wasn’t sure about sharing this piece of evidence with all of the contestants. Some of them were talking about leaving the show. On the one hand, it would be beneficial to me for that to happen, since we’d still be in the running. However, it could mean additional attacks, and I knew that the pranks were likely to escalate over the course of the next few weeks.

Land had no desire to do the follow-up with this. His attitude was that everyone should just suck it up and persevere. Great attitude, but I remembered how pissed he’d been when they’d taken his cilantro. He indicated that he was going to pick up some avocados and cilantro at the store on the way home, and that he would meet me at the truck tomorrow. I agreed and decided to start with the police.

Part of my decision was based purely on the fact that I found Detective Danvers attractive. I couldn’t help it. He was a good-looking man with a good-looking body underneath his suits. Given that I would have gone to him at some point anyway, I didn’t think my logic process was too far off base.

It felt weird to drive back to Elm Street downtown without the truck, but I found a place to park in the garage and made my way to the police station located on an upper floor of the government building downtown. While I’d been to his office twice before, I was immediately lost in the jumble of cubicles and offices that filled the small space. I had to ask directions twice to finally find his office.

Fortunately, he was at his desk. I looked around again, checking for photos, but he still didn’t have any pictures of a wife or children, two things that would have dampened my enthusiasm. There were a lot of files and papers on his desk, and I looked for a place to put my chart. Finally, I gave up and handed the paper to him directly.

“What’s this? And why are you here?” he said, eyeing me suspiciously. Even though he’d never said anything to the point, I got the impression that he saw me mostly as a nuisance rather than a fellow crime-solver or consultant. Land had very specifically warned me to stay away from him, and I hadn’t taken that advice. Part of me wanted to woo him and another part just wanted to know why he didn’t find me equally attractive.

“I’m here because you came to us first,” I said, clearing some papers off of a chair and sitting down, “and this is a list of the pranks at the studio and the notes sent to the various contestants in the competition. I think I’ve talked to everyone that’s still in the running, so it’s fairly complete.”

He studied the paper for a moment and then looked at me. “Of course you noticed Tracy Jones.” He pointed to the row for Tracy on the paper.

I nodded. “The only person with no nasty notes and no pranks. Seems rather suspicious, doesn’t it?”

Danvers sighed and put the paper down on his desk. From the tangle of papers there, I knew that it would soon be lost among all the other reports and papers. If something was going to be done about this, I heavily doubted that Danvers would be the one to do it. He would get caught up in the next call or the next murder, and this would become history to him.

“It appears suspicious at first glance, but I got to tell you. The person behind these pranks is smart. I can see that already.”

I looked at my copy of the list. “How so?”

He ran his finger down the column with the missing ingredients. “If you look at what was taken from each truck, it was crippling but not devastating. It would be obvious in the dish, but it was small enough to be considered a mistake by the truck owner. It was only done to a fraction of the trucks. It would have been too obvious to have done this to everyone at once. There’s a certain method and intelligence about these crimes.”

“So what are you getting at?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if he was telling me that my suspicions about Tracy Jones were wrong, or if I wasn’t smart enough to be handling this matter.

“Tracy Jones seems too obvious to be true. The real person behind all of this wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave their truck out of the mix. They’d be sure to let others know that they’d been vandalized too. Or you do realize that this could all be a publicity stunt from the production company to get higher ratings? A real life mystery behind the reality show. Be sure to watch this week.”

I studied his face for a minute. “You’re certainly cynical. So you think I’m on the wrong path here?”

He continued to study the paper. “Not necessarily. It could be that Tracy was just picked at random to be the fall guy—er, person—for these pranks or the person behind this could have a reason why Tracy was excluded. You could certainly look into that angle and find out what’s going on.”

I gave him a big smile. “Well, we’re done with filming for the week, so it would be next week before I could find Tracy again—unless that is, you’d want to give me her address and phone number.”

Danvers smacked his forehead with his hand. “Of course, now I see how I’m of use to you in this. It’s not a matter of sharing what you’ve learned with the police. It’s a matter of the police giving you the personal information on a suspect.”

“You could deputize me, and let me get to work,” I suggested. Since he had technically asked for our help, I thought it a reasonable request.

“That’s not happening,” Danvers replied. “I will give you the information you want, but I want to hear back from you on what happens in the interview. You might find out something that the police wouldn’t be able to get from a contestant on the show.”

I thought about that. “Are you sure? I’m the competition, and you’re the police. You’re more likely to be impartial than I would be. Tracy might think that I’m trying to pin the crimes on her because I want to win the contest for myself.”

Danvers looked at me with a new emotion that might have actually been respect. “Good point. You can still do the interview, but if you think I could have a different response, let me know, and I’ll try to follow up on it.”

I said my good-byes and headed back out of the station, only getting lost once on the way out.

Tracy Jones lived north of town in an area known for its ritzy homes. I was a bit surprised by the address. Food truck owners could earn a living at what they do, but it wasn’t likely to be so lucrative as to get rich. The address that Danvers gave me led to a McMansion in one of the nicer neighborhoods in that part of town. I let out a low whistle as I drove past several of the homes.

I pulled into the driveway. The mailbox did have “Jones” on it, so I thought I must be in the right place. I parked the car, and headed to the front door, which was an elaborate affair with sidelights on both sides of the door.

I rang the bell and waited, spending the time looking through the glass to the marble-floored entryway.

Finally, a young boy came to the door and opened it. He looked at me and slammed the door in my face. At first I thought I had been rejected, but I heard him shout, “Mommy, someone’s at the door for you.”

I heard some voices but I couldn’t distinguish what was said, and then Tracy came to the door. Tracy was nothing like me. She was a petite blonde woman who looked more like she should be on one of the beauty pageant shows than a reality show about food trucks. Her hair was flawlessly coifed, and she was wearing a blue dress that matched her eyes. She always looked perfect on the show. I just thought that she had an in with the make-up and wardrobe people. I doubted that I could remember the last time I wore a dress to answer the door to a stranger.

Her face went through several different expressions before she settled on surprise. “Maeve, what are you doing here? Is something wrong?”

I shook my head. “I’m kind of looking into all the problems the show has been having with the poison pen notes and the pranks. I was trying to talk to everyone about it and find out what I can.”

Her brows knit together, making a thin arched line. I noticed that her forehead didn’t move, and I wondered if she’d had Botox injections on her face. “Nothing like that has happened to me. I thought I told you that at the show.”

“You did, but I just wanted to make sure that I’d heard you correctly. It’s just that—” I let the sentence hang, hoping to get a reaction.

“Well, sorry that you had to come all this way, but you heard correctly. Nothing like that has happened to me. Either no one hates me enough to write notes to me, or they all just think that I’m going to be out in the next round and don’t even need to bother with me.” In the background, I could still hear a few voices, but I couldn’t place any of them. One sounded familiar, but I couldn’t put a face with it.

“That’s just odd. I mean…” Again, I let the sentence hang, but this time she took the bait.

“What’s so odd about it? The pranks have only been done on a few people. Not everyone is hated like you and some of the others.”

I widened my eyes for effect. “Well, that’s just it. Everyone else has either received a note or had things stolen or taken—or both. Everyone except you. Why do you think that is?”

I watched her face closely. I wanted to see if she would betray some emotion or give a tell that would allow me to figure out what was going on with this situation. But her face was stone. No emotion, no tells, nothing. Botox ruined another possible confession.

“Well, I guess you’d better find this person and ask them, because I don’t have the slightest idea.” She shut the door in my face.

I walked back to my car, wondering what to do now. I hadn’t gotten a single good answer out of Tracy. Not even a real denial, just the slam of a door.

I started the car and began the drive back to my place. I analyzed my next steps as I drove. For starters, I was going to review the security tapes for the studio, if they would let me, and see if I could find who had peed in our box of pots and pans. There had to be footage of the main hallway somewhere, if it hadn’t been removed or overwritten already. That would solve the mystery if I could see who was on tape. It seemed like a risky maneuver on the part of the prankster. There would be no logical way to explain why you were at the studio with your drawers around your ankles, taking a whiz in a box.

The other thing that I wanted to do was try to find out when and where our truck had been breached. We kept the truck in a secured lot. So the times when someone could have come in and removed a single spice were limited. We didn’t drive the truck to the studio, like some of the other truck owners did. We kept it in the lot until it was time for us to prep and serve.

That meant there were very few times when the truck was unoccupied. I thought that we could probably narrow down the timeframe to a fairly small window, allowing us to find out who was available and in the vicinity at the time. That, too, would allow us to determine who could have done it.

I decided to head back to the studio to see if I could look at the surveillance tapes. The show was done for the week, and I had no idea if the producers would be around or not. I figured that today was my best shot, given that we’d just finished an episode. Today was also a down day for the truck, meaning that tomorrow I’d be tied to feeding others until around 2pm.

I pulled into the parking lot and headed for the producers’ offices. I stopped cold in the hallway outside of their offices. I heard voices that I didn’t recognize. I moved a little closer, thinking that anything being said by the producers might be helpful in figuring out who was behind the pranks. I still had lingering doubts that someone who worked for the show might be behind the pranks. Drama on set always improved ratings, and nothing starts drama like pitting everyone against the others and then lobbing accusations about.

As I moved closer, I could hear Jim Jackson, one of the producers, say, “I can’t let you do that. I think this has gone on long enough. We need to end it before something bad happens.”

I couldn’t hear the other person. Their voice was muffled. I thought it was a woman, but it may have been a man. Without getting into the office, I had no way of telling for sure.

“No,” Jim said. “No more.”

I decided to see who the other person was. I had a valid request to make, and I thought that seeing who was in the room would be a bonus. I knocked on the door, and reached for the knob, but the door was locked.

Jim came to the door in a few seconds, unlocked the door and opened it. “Maeve, what are you doing here?”

I pushed past him and sat down in one of the chairs facing his desk. The room was empty of other people. So much for my first plan. I still had no idea who the other person was, though I very much expected that this conversation was tied to the nasty notes and pranks. “Sorry, I thought you had someone in here with you,” I said, trying to play dumb.

He shook his head “No, I was just editing some of the footage for the newest episode. You might have heard the audio from that.”

I decided to play along. Since I was about to ask a favor of him, I didn’t want to make him mad by telling him that I knew that the daily tapes were usually viewed without sound first. Not to mention the fact that I’d recognized the producer’s voice, who definitely would not be appearing in any episode of the show.