JUSTICE Is SERVED (Food Truck 7) (4 page)

“The truth – that you tend to find a lot of dead bodies, but that you’re not involved in any material way in any of the cases and that you posed no threat to her or to her case.”

I sputtered. “But I helped –”

Danvers grinned at me. “Yeah, that’s exactly the impression I don’t want her to get about you. Conniving, scheming, wanting to put your nose where it doesn’t belong. Police detectives do not find those to be endearing character traits. You don’t want to get on her bad side from the start.”

“I just help out as needed and make sure that justice is served.” I whined. I was thoroughly annoyed at the description and the other detective and the way in which Danvers had totally sold me short to this woman.

“Look, if you think that I’m hard-nosed, you haven’t seen anything yet. This woman is one tough cookie. She is strictly by the books, and you will definitely need to be on your best behavior for her. She’d have no problem locking you up for obstruction if you get in her way. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said with resignation. I didn’t like it, but I would keep my distance from this woman at all costs. “Will you tell Land the same thing when you see him?”

“Good. I already talked to Land last night. He had a few questions about the case and the effects of certain poisons. He also had questions about different strangulation techniques. I told him what I told you. Steer clear of this woman and this case.”

I nodded and turned around to go, but Danvers apparently wasn’t done.

“So what’s this about a hot dog in his pocket?” Danvers asked. “It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

“Apparently he liked to make sure that he didn’t go hungry. He didn’t look obese, but he wasn’t starving by any means.”

Danvers looked at me. “Green asked a number of questions about your business. I’m going to keep an eye on this situation, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised from the questions if she thinks he was poisoned by something you served him. I’ve seen how you do business. It would be nearly impossible to poison just a few jalapeno slices or an ounce of a glaze. It would have to be a special order with unique ingredients and from her account, that didn’t happen last night.”

I sputtered again in frustration. This conversation was not at all what I wanted to hear on a Monday morning. “That’s absurd. The only people we knew at the event were the bride and groom. Everyone else was a stranger, so why just kill a random guy?”

“That’s the one thing holding Green back right now. She has no motive for either one of you to kill anyone at a friend’s wedding. Heaven help you both if she finds something that points to one of you.” Danvers turned and walked away on this statement.

I took a moment to regain my composure and went back to the truck. Carter raised an eyebrow at me, but in concern. “I’ll tell you later,” I said as I went back to work.

I threw myself into the shift with all my intensity. I didn’t want to think about any of the past two days and the possible damage to the business – not to mention our freedom. I bristled at the thought of that woman thinking I’d been involved with a murder and checking out Land. Both of those things worried me.

At 2pm, Land pulled up at his normal station, which was about a block from me, though it was clearly visible from our truck. I told Carter that I’d be right back, which was probably a lie. I had some discussions to have with Land first.

I entered the new food truck, only to be greeted with a frown and furrowed brows. “I suppose you’ve talked to Danvers by now.”

I was a little pouty. I had gotten used to these rendezvouses, which usually began with a few moments of passionate kissing. Today I had not received even a friendly hug. “Yeah, he stopped by early to tell me to stay away from this case. I guess he talked to you too.”

Land nodded, barely looking at me. “Yeah. He called me last night. He’s worried. He thinks that Detective Green is out for blood, and I seem to be the target.”

“What?” I almost shouted. “Why you?”

“I’m the one who made the condiments. I mean, you helped, but I knew the recipes, and I bought the ingredients. I’d have the best chance to put poison in a hot dog condiment. So that makes me the prime suspect, I guess.”

I was boiling faster than some of Land’s recipes. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t see how she could even think that.”

Land shrugged. “Apparently she does. Danvers is worried about it, and so am I. I think she’d the type to make the evidence fit her theory, rather than the other way around. I’ve seen police officers like this, and they’re hard to work with.”

I tried to settle down, but it was not an easy task. Of all Land’s faults, he was brutally honest and law-abiding. At some point, he’d been in the military, and I knew that he’d helped law enforcement in Capital City at other times.

I was much more likely to bend a few rules to get what I wanted. The idea that he’d been behind a murder at the wedding after his comments to me and holding my hand while they repeated their vows was just beyond my comprehension.

“So Danvers told me that she doesn’t have a motive, so why would she suspect you? You didn’t even know this guy.”

“I’d never met him before,” Land agreed. However, I was immediately worried. While Land was honest, he was not above sins of omission, especially when it came to his past. By stating his claim in this way, I had to wonder if he and David had talked on the phone or on the computer at some point. That made me think that the motive could be there, but just buried deeper than the police had looked so far. That definitely was something to be worried about. If Detective Green found out something that Land neglected to mention, it would look damning to him.

“Then we just need to find someone with a better motive and no alibi,” I declared, trying to make it sound easy. I knew that the girlfriend would be a prime candidate. From Gina’s comments, I knew that he’d treated his girlfriend poorly, so she had a good motive. No one had thought it terribly odd that he’d skipped out on the wedding and his date, which typically spelled infidelity. So there would likely be some former flings around too, and possibly the flings’ boyfriends and husbands. There were just a number of people who could have been involved. I just needed to find one at the wedding and show that they had access to poison.

“Do the police know what type of poison was used?” I asked. Access to the appropriate drugs would be key. I wasn’t sure how to get my hands on the poison, but I figure that there had to be some way.

“You promised Danvers that you’d stay out of it,” Land said. Apparently, he’d talked to the policeman after Danvers had talked to me. That only made me worry more since I was concerned that Land wasn’t telling me something – and he was telling Danvers.Plus, the number of phone calls going back and forth between these two men was worrying. Usually Land kept Danvers at arm’s length, saying that he didn’t trust him at all. Now I could count at least two calls and a visit.

“That was before you said ‘never met’,” I retorted without thinking. I was beginning to think that Land was holding some piece of information back. If that something had anything to do with the murder, then I could easily see Detective Green making him the prime suspect.

Land bit his lip, but didn’t say a word. I guessed that I had hit the nail on the head. “What would you want me to say? That we had met?”

I sighed. “No, right now I’d just like to know the type of poison used. You’d mentioned cyanide the night we found him. Is that what the coroner said?”

Land took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “The coroner should be doing the tox screen fast, because cyanide dissipates after the first 24 hours, but I don’t know if they will or not. But yeah, if I had my guess, I’d call it cyanide.”

I didn’t want to know how Land knew this. Likely he’d seen a man die from cyanide poisoning before, but I’d never learn the details of that story. He tried to keep the seamier sides of his life before the food truck away from me.

“So where would someone get cyanide?” I asked again. I wanted to know how easy it would be to get poison if you wanted it.

“First place to look is the Internet. They have everything there, but I wouldn’t guarantee that it would be the real thing. The stuff they send you could be salt, sugar or baking soda. Anything white and powdery. It’s not like the seller is going to get sued for not letting someone poison themselves or others.”

I made a note on an order pad to check out any sites that offered cyanide in any form. “What else?”

Land shrugged. “A number of companies use it in their work. Some types of art, some types of mining. I don’t know all of professions off the top of my head, but cyanide is not exactly difficult to get a hold of.”

I groaned. More methods of getting the drug meant more suspects and more motives. I wanted a swift resolution to this case, in order to get away from any claims that our hot dogs killed David and to keep whatever Land was hiding from hurting him.

“On the other hand, only a few people knew the victim well enough to put the stuff on his hot dog. I’m going with the idea that the entire tub of brown sugar and vinegar wasn’t poisoned. He wouldn’t have been the only victim if that was the case. So someone had to put the stuff on his food.” The police will have to be able to prove how the killer introduced the poison into the product.

I nodded. I was particular about who I let touch my food. It wasn’t a random crime at all. Someone had wanted David dead in a very premeditated way. Once again, this pointed to Christie as the main suspect. She could easily have poisoned his food if they’d sat together or dined together.

Land agreed. “Of course this was planned. I would even go as far as to suggest that it was someone who knew that we would be there. Not everyone knew the catering details before the wedding. So we can narrow down that 100 people to just those who knew what was going to be served. They would have had to go an entirely different route if it was a sit-down dinner or a buffet.The sit-down dinner would be the easiest, since you knew where the victim was sitting. The buffet would be the most difficult. You’d have similar problems, but again it would come down to who could poison that one dinner for that one person.”

I nodded. A different plan would have been needed to poison David if the dinner had been delivered to his seat. “What do you think I should do about the tablecloth?” I asked Land. I’d put it in the food truck after I found the body, and in the melee, I had forgotten to mention to the police or the rental agency. I worried that telling the police about it now would look suspicious.

Land groaned, probably because his thoughts were along the same lines as mine. “Tell the police – soon,” he warned me.

I nodded. My afternoon was filling up quickly. I checked my phone to see that Land had to get back to work. I needed to do a few things this afternoon.

He gave me a quick kiss, but I knew he was definitely worried about something. I had to determine what that was.

My first stop that afternoon was at Christie’s place. One of the easier aspects of a murder at the wedding was that the bride had a list of everyone’s addresses. Christie and David had not lived together, so I would not be confronting too many reminders of the man in her apartment. David had kept his own place, presumably to allow him the room to cheat.

Fortunately, she lived in the same area of town that I did. Capital City only had a few areas in town where apartment buildings predominated and the Hill, as it was known locally, was one of those areas. She lived about two miles from my own apartment.

I rang the buzzer to Christie’s door and waited. Gina had indicated that Christie had called off work for the week, so I strongly suspected that she would be home. Finally, the buzzer rang, and I opened the door. She stood on the second floor landing and motioned me upstairs.

Her apartment was large, an open floor plan with vaulted ceilings. She’d decorated it with what I knew were this year’s hottest colors and styles – which I mainly knew from Pinterest. I wondered where she got the money to do all of this decorating. She motioned me to the dining room table where she offered me a cup of coffee.

I declined, partly because I would have to go to bed in six hours and also because I was investigating a poisoning. Christie sat down opposite me and waited.

“I was hoping to get a better idea of David,” I started off. “Someone hated him enough to kill him, and I am trying to find out who. I’m concerned about how his death would impact our business. I’m sure you know that we had nothing to do with the murder, but the police don’t know that.”

“David was the most wonderful man ever,” she said, her eyes stealing over to a table where a makeshift shrine had been made to the man. Suddenly I had a feeling that this was not going to be an easy interview. I remembered my mother telling me to not talk ill of the dead, but I thought that this woman had taken it to extremes. They’d fought often during his life, but she was going to hide all of that now that he was dead.

“So there was no one who wanted to kill him?” I asked. “No one who was angry at him or hated him?”

She paused for a long moment, obviously struggling with a way to phrase the truth and still maintain the aura of the wonderful dead boyfriend. “Even wonderful people have troubles with others. I’m sure David had people who didn’t like him.”

I nodded, admiring her tact in the matter. “But murder isn’t about not liking. It’s about someone who wants the planet to be rid of you. There’s a big difference in those two things.”

She nodded. “Perhaps there were people that angry with him. David could be difficult at times. He was wonderful, but he rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.”

“How so?” I kept the questions short, letting her talk as much as she would. I could still sense a strong reluctance to speak ill of the dead, but she was warming up to the idea of hating David again. I strongly suspected that if the stories were true, she wasn’t the only one who had a grievance against the man.

She dabbed at an eye. “Women were always throwing themselves at him. Then they got angry – when he turned them down. They said the most awful things about him.”

“Gina told me that,” I affirmed, knowing no such thing. Gina had indicated that David had never turned anyone down. In fact, he’d done much of the propositioning.

Christie nodded. “It was sad to see those women try to tell me stories about David. They expected me to believe them.” Her voice caught like she was going to sob. She was a damned good actor for playing this part.

“Were there any people in particular that seemed upset or angry? Any that kept coming back to David – or you?”

“There was one woman. Her name was Felicity something. She called him repeatedly. She even called here a few times and tried to tell me about her love affair with David, but I just hung up on her.”

“How long ago was that?” I asked, feeling hopeful. The quicker I found a suspect, the better.

“A few weeks ago. I haven’t heard anything from her recently.” Christie sniffed to let me know that it had upset her. I was doubting all of her emotions at the moment. Gina had told me that she’d willingly gone home alone, thinking that David had left without her. That was not the type of man that you built a shrine for. “I mean, she had her own boyfriend. You’d think that would be enough for her, but apparently she wanted other people’s boyfriends too.”

I asked for the woman’s phone number from her cell, and Christie handed over her phone to me. I scrolled through the contacts, until I got Felicity’s number. I typed it into my own phone and clicked on the save. I desperately wanted to check her phone for her emails and texts, but since she was watching my movements, I merely handed the phone back to her.

I decided to change gears. “Tell me about the hot dog in his pocket,” I asked. “What’s up with that?”

Christie sighed. “David liked to eat. He was always putting things in his pocket to eat later. Candy, meals, you name it.”

“Tell me about what you two ate at the reception,” I asked, hoping to get a better feel for exactly what David had stuffed into himself. I wanted to be able to narrow down the possible poisoned ingredients to as few as possible.

“I didn’t eat much. I’m on a diet. I had a Mexican dog, I think, and that was it. David had four of those sweet and spicy dogs. He loved them. He asked the other guy at the truck if he could have the recipe, but the man brushed him off.”

I paused for a second. Land hadn’t mentioned that he’d talked to David at any point that day. Did he not realize that the man asking for the recipe was the same person as the murder victim? He’d had a good look at the body afterwards, so I suspected that he did know, but wasn’t sharing for some reason. My stomach had an icy pit inside of it. Maybe this was what Land was hiding from me and the police.

“Did David try the other dogs?” I asked, wanting to get some other ideas for a poison delivery system. The sauce for the sweet and spicy dogs would definitely mask the taste of cyanide (or anything else for that matter.) Yet, it was a liquid that was coated on the dogs, meaning that the cyanide would need to be in liquid form as well. That spoke of preparation. I wasn’t sure who could have known that David’s taste would just lean towards one of the many hot dog varieties that day. Most likely someone who knew him well.

Christie shook her head several times. “Just those. I wasn’t surprised at all that he had one in his pocket. He was probably going to go home and try to copy the recipe – if he didn’t eat it first.”

Knowing that I wasn’t likely to get much more out of her, I thanked her for talking to me and left.

I wasn’t done for the day. One of Trent’s other friends who had been in the wedding had agreed to talk to me. I was hoping to learn what David had said, if anything, during the ceremony or after it. He’d been at the head table for the reception, so the groomsmen would likely have heard anything he said.

Gina had suggested Rick Stewart as the one most likely to gossip. She’d wanted to come along to help investigate, but I persuaded her to wait for my next interview, which would likely be her aunt Eunice. I had a feeling that I’d need the help with someone else’s crusty relative.

I had a hunch that Rick would be more open and honest about what the “guys” said if the bride wasn’t around. Any hint of discord would never be mentioned in front of the bride, especially if they didn’t know her all that well.

Rick agreed to meet me downtown. So I headed back downtown from the Hill, basically retracing my path from earlier. I pulled into the same lot I used when Carter picked up the truck. I hustled and found myself at the bar he’d selected five minutes before we were supposed to meet.

I was a bit nervous about this discussion. I hadn’t really gained much from the talk with Christie. She’d been too tied up in deifying a man that she’d obviously had problems with. Giving me motives for his murder was not in her plans.

I wanted to get this case wrapped up, if not to get the food truck out from under suspicion, then for Land who I suspected was more involved than he let on.

Rick was only a few minutes late to the appointment. He came in, walking quickly and picked me out from the crowed. I vaguely remembered him from the wedding, but I doubt if I would have noticed him on the street. He had that type of non-descript face that went through life not being noticed.

“So, what’ll you have hot dog lady?” Rick said as an introduction. He hailed the bartender over.

I was sure that Rick would have no trouble telling me everything if that was his opening line. He definitely wasn’t smooth enough to lie to me without any tells.

“I’m fine,” I said, pointing to my water. “Thanks for agreeing to meet me.”

“Gina said that you look into murders sometimes. What’s up with that?” He furrowed his brow as if he’d never heard of any amateur detectives. I wondered what he did with his time if he didn’t understand the desire to see justice done.

“I try to help the police come to the correct solution,” I said, trying to put it simply. I didn’t want to share my fears about Land’s possible involvement in the case with a stranger.

“Yeah, I understand. So what can I do to help?” His beer appeared, and he took a long swallow of it. He took the mug away, leaving a small foam mustache on his upper lip.

“I want to know what David was talking about that day. Everything he said or did that might be of interest. Did he give you any indication that he was having trouble with anyone else at the wedding?” I looked at this guy and was fairly certain that I wasn’t going to get anywhere with his testimony. He was probably loaded at the wedding and hadn’t paid any attention to what David had said.

He surprised me. “David was pretty crude that day. I’d met him at the bachelor party. David and Trent went way back, to like when they were kids. I knew Trent from college, so I’d heard stories about David and his antics in college, but he was just a story, not a real person. Trent used to tell me how David would like hook up with two or three girls on the way to a date with whoever was supposed to be his girlfriend. You think that’s cool when you’re 18, but not when you’re 25.” He made a face like he’d have been happy to leave David as less than real. “I heard him make a comment or two, but the other groomsmen were indicating that he’d been ridiculously crude throughout the event.”

“Crude how? Gina said something about him possibly going home with someone else that day. That’s why no one looked very hard for him at the end of the reception.”

He shrugged. “Rating every woman at the park. The guests, the bride, women walking by the park, – you.”

I nodded. “Yeah, nothing I haven’t heard before. If you’re a woman working with hot dogs, you’re going to get some wiener jokes. I ignore them.”

He nodded. “Yeah, it was like that all night long. He insulted one of the other ushers’ sister, and for a few minutes, I thought there was going to be a fight.”

He gave me the information on the usher, so I could talk to the man later. From the sound of David, it would appear that the motive would be personal and possibly romantic. I was out of my element here. I usually handled cases where the crimes were financial. I’d had finances class in college and knew plenty from my father on the subject.

Yet no one had provided any classes on romance and dating. I would have taken a few electives. While I enjoyed my time with Land and felt good about the future, I wasn’t always sure I knew what I was doing in the romance department. For all of his lack of communications skills, he was still the more romantic of the two of us.

“So what else?” I asked. “I want to know who all he pissed off that evening. This could be important.”

“Besides the thing with the usher, he danced with two women, one of whom had brought her boyfriend with her. So there’s another guy who wanted to clock him. Then he and Christie got into a fight.” Rick said.

I nodded. I knew that she had been overcompensating with her shrine and perfect dead boyfriend routine. “I hadn’t heard that before.”

“Yeah, that’s probably because it was behind the bathrooms. They were pretty far from the action, so I doubt that many people would have heard them. I think Christie had caught him back there making out with some girl.” Rick looked pained to be talking to me like this. I was shocked to see such chivalry, compared to the heavy horn dog that was David. I was surprised that he was that popular, given that he had not been model handsome. I wondered if what he had, since I was hearing that his personality was even less appealing.

“That sounds great. Nothing like romance in the stalls,” I replied. It struck me that the location might be important. Either Christie for arguing with him there or for either the girl or her date for making out with the woman there. I’d have to learn more about that incident and who was involved, since Rick didn’t seem to know any names.

“So what next?” Rick asked, now that he seemed to be getting into the swing of things. “What will you do now?”

I tried to explain to him what I’d do with his information, but since I didn’t have any names, I couldn’t ask these people any questions. I’d have to go back to Gina, find out their contact information, and then either ask them questions myself or pass the information along to Detective Green so that she could follow up.