FIVE WILL GET YOU TWENTY (Food Truck Mysteries Book 9) (6 page)

I used a lull in the customers to try to call Sabine. It rang four times and then went to voicemail. I left a message, trying to sound calm and professional, even though I was thoroughly annoyed under that veneer. Land had warned me about Sabine’s attitudes and moods, but in our few interactions so far, she’d been respectful and punctual. Now she was missing.

I was debating a call to Land when I saw Detective Danvers in line for a coffee. So I decided to wait on any decisions about calling Land until I’d talked to the ex-boyfriend.

“Where’s Sabine?” Danvers said as his opening statement to me. He was obviously irritated as he looked around.

“She’s not here. She hasn’t shown this morning.” I said, being completely honest. “I’m not sure where she is.”

Danvers rolled his eyes. “Welcome to the world of Sabine Mendoza, who does what she wants when she wants.” His tone said even more than his eyes did at that moment.

“Is this why you broke up?” I asked, pouring him a coffee so that no one would look askance at us talking. Most customers don’t want their servers to be arguing with the police.

“No, but that’s not your business. Where is she?” I handed him the coffee, and he didn’t even make a pretense of going for his wallet today. I shrugged it off and poured two more coffees for the men behind him, who already had their cash out.

“I told you that she’s not here. She didn’t call in, and she hasn’t answered her phone.” When I relayed the story in those terms, it scared me a little. Whatever Danvers decided, I was still going to call Land when I was done with the detective.

Danvers moved over to the side and pulled out his phone. I went on serving customers as fast as I could while trying to keep an eye on him. Finally, he put the phone back in his pocket and walked back to the front of the line.

“She’s not answering, and none of her friends know where she is. I’m going to run over there and make sure everything alright,” he spoke quietly, but I could see a bit of fear on his face. Apparently, even if Sabine was gone, she usually let her close friends know. Today she had not.

“Why did you come to see her today? Are you getting back together?” I asked, wanting to try to understand all that was happening here.

“No, I found out that a very attractive woman with a very slight accent was asking questions yesterday at the café where Ryan Pohler was last seen alive. She called last night again to ask another question, according to the manager.”

“The manager called you about the message?” I asked, trying to keep him talking while I tried to make sense of the situation. Sabine and I had discussed our future plans, but from the sound of it, she’d called the café after we’d talked to Bernadette last night.

“No, we went there today. I recognized the background of the photos you took. We’re trying to get a lead on the people who passed the phony cash.” I thought about the fake twenty in my purse, but didn’t say anything. No reason for him to know that we were one step ahead of him. “You apparently already know about Bernadette Cravens, and I strongly suspect that the cute guy that Sabine was asking about was Carter’s QT and not a new date for her.”

I nodded. I was glad to see that he was taking the counterfeiting seriously. I had been concerned that he would ignore the details since only my food truck had been involved. That brought me back to my question of why. Why just my new food truck? Why not the other two? Why only one place in Capital City?

Was the counterfeiter lazy, or was there a particular reason why only Taco Inferno was involved? The criminals had to know that the bank would likely find the fakes and alert us. That would mean that only a few bills could be passed to the truck before we started looking into the matter. Did someone want me to investigate? After some of the cases I’d looked into, it was fairly well known that I was an amateur sleuth.

“You’re not even going to try to deny that you knew she’d called?” Danvers asked. I had been so lost in my thoughts that I hadn’t responded to him.

I shrugged. “She’d mentioned it. Do you think that’s related to her disappearance?” I asked. I was always willing to take a chance to help someone, but I never wanted to be responsible for putting anyone else in danger, especially someone close to my fiancé.

Danvers sighed. “I’m going over there now. I’ll let you know what I find. You’re going to be swamped in about thirty minutes.” He gave me a knowing smile, which likely indicated that he was glad I’d be too busy to investigate much today.

Danvers left, and I went back to my orders. A few men had started requesting hot dogs, so the wait time for each customer grew as I prepped the hot dogs and served them as well as took the cash.

In a very brief lull, I called Land and told him what was going on. He sounded tense, but he told me that he was going over to Sabine’s apartment as well. Since they lived in the same complex, it wouldn’t be a major trip for him. I hung up and started working again. Now that Carter ran the third truck, and Sabine was supposed to be helping me, I didn’t have a backup. So, I spent the rest of the shift manning all stations. I did fairly well, but I was beat by the time that 2 o’clock rolled around.

I hadn’t had a chance to call anyone during that time, and no one had called me. I was going to be left in the dark until Land drove the second food truck to its normal location.

Land was on time with the truck, so I wondered how bad the news could be. I shut the window quickly, leaving the prep area only partially cleaned, and hurried over to Land’s truck.

The greeting was far less than what I normally got from Land. He grunted out a few words and worked on his prep.

“Did you find her?” I asked, feeling my nerves buzz as I waited. Perhaps something really bad had happened.

“Yeah, she was at home. Just not in the mood to do anything today.” He turned away from me as he spoke, and I had a hard time hearing his words. I had to concentrate to hear each one. “And after Danvers came over to check on her, she was in an even worse mood. I doubt that she’s coming back to work. She’s talking about moving.”

I stepped closer to him. I understood now why he hadn’t called back. He’d warned me repeatedly that Sabine had her moods, but I’d not seen it. Now that I had, he was concerned that I would be angry with him. “She’s an adult,” I said. “She is responsible for her own decisions—not you.”

He turned and faced me. I could see the look on his face. Land wasn’t much for using his words, but I had grown to read his many expressions over the years. He was embarrassed—and something else. “Yeah, well, I kind of made a decision when I was at her apartment too,” he said with that same look. “I fired her.”

I almost had to bite my tongue. Today had gone okay, and I had made it, but the level of concentration and effort meant that I would not be able to investigate much until we found someone else to help out. I had no ideas for another chef. I was an only child. Land had other family members, but he’d be less than inclined to suggest another after Sabine. Carter had a husband, but Aaron had his own career. I was definitely on my own.

He took a deep breath. “I knew you’d be mad, but she wasn’t taking it seriously. She thought she was entitled to a day off since she’d worked with you last night.”

“We weren’t working. She wanted to investigate the phony money, and I let her go along with me. That’s not quite the same.”

Land shrugged. “She called it ‘comp time.’”

I thought for another moment, before speaking. “I wonder if we could hire someone from Ryan Pohler’s trucks to help out on Dogs on the Roll. That would kill two birds with one stone.” I made a mental note not to say that again since Pohler had been killed.

Land nodded. “That could work—if we knew any of them or even knew how to find out who they were.”

I had to agree with him. While I had the name and number of his widow and their daughter, it seemed in the worst of taste to ask one of them if I could poach an employee. I would have to think of another way.

“Why don’t you ask that girl? What’s her name?” Land suggested.

I automatically knew whom he meant. We’d certainly developed our own cues over the years. He was referring to Paula Reyes, who owned a truck near where Pohler had parked his original food truck. Besides being in a close proximity to him, Paula was something of a gossip. She’d be just the person to know the information.

I had her phone number saved on my phone, and I called her immediately. She answered. After a few greetings, I explained to her what I wanted.

“You don’t waste any time,” she said, chuckling.

“It’s something of an emergency. Land’s sister was helping out temporarily, but due to a family crisis, I need to find an experienced worker ASAP.” While I hadn’t lied to her, I hadn’t been entirely honest either. I had no desire to make Land’s personal life material for Paula’s gossip. One of the things that he appreciated about me was my ability to keep his personal life out of the investigations and the press.

She laughed. “I understand. It’s hard to rely on family for long, isn’t it?”

I wasn’t sure if she knew the truth or not, so I just made a small sound of grudging agreement.

“So you’d be looking for a cook, right? You do the cash and coffee. I think I have someone in mind for you,” she said without pausing. “It’s okay that it’s a man, right? The last cook was a guy, right?”

I agreed with her. “But what about the salary?” I asked. I was still concerned about the new truck and its viability. I didn’t want to hire another person for a large salary at this point.

She cackled into the phone. “After what Pohler paid them, your salary will seem like CEO pay.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked, wondering about her sources. I’d never heard of anyone talking about the Pohler employees.

“I hired someone away from Ryan. Boy, was he pissed about it. He came over and threatened me in a very ugly way. Anyway, when I got the paperwork on the girl, she had to list her last job and salary. My teeth almost fell out right there. It was obscene. Under minimum wage and no benefits at all.”

“I thought those were required by law,” I said, remembering my labor law classes.

“They are, but he had ways around picky little things like the law. I’m sure I could tell you all the details, but Thomas can tell you about it later today, if you want.”

She told me that she’d have him there in an hour if he was interested. I related all of what she’d said to Land, who looked relieved to hear about a resolution to the family issue. His decision had not hurt the business.

On the way out, he gave me a kiss that felt much more like what I was used to. I made it back to Dogs on the Roll with wobbly knees. I did my normal cleanup schedule first, counting money and prepping the coffee before I started on cleaning the kitchen and prep area. I was elbow deep in suds when I heard a knock at the door.

I shook off some of the suds and opened the door. I was sure that my expression said everything that I was thinking at that moment. There in front of me, applying for a new job was the guy that Carter had labeled QT. Up close, he was even better looking with his dark hair brushed away from his face and a thin, lean body. I would definitely have been interested if I wasn’t so clearly involved.

“You,” I said, grabbing his arm before he could sprint off again. I pulled him into the truck, and he came willingly, not wanting to be seen by the bystanders. This time I would scream my head off if he ran again, and his chances of getting away were far slimmer than the other day.

“Look, it’s not what you think,” he said. “I can explain everything. I don’t want any trouble.” He looked as if he might cry.

I stood there with my arms crossed and standing in front of the door. His options were limited. “I was forced to pass that bad money. I didn’t want to do it, but Ryan Pohler made me.”

“But he was your boss?” I said, wondering why a person would blackmail an employee. It didn’t seem like the way to get the best from them. It was another matter to blackmail someone you knew vaguely as was the case with Bernadette.

“Yeah,” the man agreed, “I’d worked there about a year before he did this, but that didn’t stop him from being a jerk. He pulled me aside one day and told me that I was going to go to Taco Inferno and buy things with money he’d given me. I was worried from the beginning. I thought he might to try to say that he found something in the tacos, but I saw him give someone else money too, and I knew that couldn’t be the case. No one would buy all that food and expect people to believe that one menu item was tainted.”

I thought of some of the hoaxes over the years with restaurants. Most of them had been shown to be false, but they always caused a big stink when they happened. A major chain like Wendy’s or MacDonald’s could likely weather such a storm. I wasn’t sure that a food truck could take a blow like that. “So why was he doing it?” I asked, wondering why my truck had been singled out in Capital City.

The man shrugged. “I don’t know. It wasn’t like I was in a place where I could ask. He was in charge, and I was the worker.”

“But he was asking you to do something illegal? Why not just quit?” I asked. I thought I already knew the answer to my question after talking to Bernadette.

“He was blackmailing me. He told me that I’d either do what he said or…” Thomas’ words trailed off. Given the way he’d been flirting with Carter, I had a good idea of what the hidden subject was. I decided to leave it for now. Like my deal with Bernadette, I’d only push the subject if it became important to the case later.

“He was blackmailing you and threatening your job. So you passed phony money for him.”

Thomas nodded. “Yeah, it wasn’t the first time that we’d done a few shady things.”

“Like what?” I asked, perhaps a little too eagerly. I’d wanted to know what shady things Pohler had been engaged in to get three trucks up in a year.

“We’ve had to get cheese that was moldy and scrape off the mold. Since it’s cooked, no one can really tell, but Ryan had us do that on more than one occasion. He was all about saving money.”

I thought of Land’s dish at the festival and how he’d thrown it away saying that the cheese didn’t taste right. I wondered if they’d been using the old cheese then too.

“What else?” I didn’t budge from my position, letting him know that I wanted as much as he could tell me.

“Some of his distributors were not on the up and up. We had to go to out-of-the-way places and pick up ingredients. It seemed more like a drug deal at times than a restaurant business. We picked up sprouts once on a pier by the river.” Thomas made a face as if to tell me he wasn’t in favor of such tactics.

That story gave me some leads that I might be able to use. For starters, the more I learned, the more I suspected that the crime was just one of these money-grabbing schemes that Pohler had developed. I thought about it for a minute, and the man thought I was done with him. He made a move for the door, but I backed up so that my body was pressed against the doorway. He wasn’t going anywhere until I was ready.

“So, tell me about your qualifications to work on a food truck?” I asked. I had developed an idea that would likely earn me the ire of Land and Detective Danvers.

“You’re really putting me through a job interview? I passed bad twenties at your truck. Let’s get real. You’re not hiring me.” He crossed him arms as if to say that we were done.

I smirked at Thomas. “I don’t think that you’re giving yourself enough credit. You can sell yourself better than this.”

He rolled his eyes at me. “I’m not sure what game you’re playing here, but I don’t really like it.”

I cleared my throat. “I’m going to be honest with you here. I’m in a bind. My future sister-in-law was helping with Dogs on the Roll, but she has gone AWOL. So I’m running the truck by myself while trying to manage two other trucks. I need help.”

He furrowed his brows, almost as if he were struggling to hear my words. “But I don’t understand. I’m not —”

“You have experience with food trucks. You can cook. You also seem to know things about Ryan Pohler that I want to find out. I don’t understand why he took such a dislike to me that he would slash the tire on the truck and pass bad money at the truck, which had the police checking our cash.” I stopped only to catch my breath. “So tell me about your work experience.”

He nodded and took a deep breath. “I’ve been on my own for a few years. I had a family issue, and we didn’t talk for a long time. So I needed to make a living. I started out waiting tables, but that wasn’t for me. People are crazy. So I moved back to the kitchen and started cooking.”

“Why did you leave that job?” I asked, liking what I was hearing.

“The kitchen was about ten feet square. It was hard being in that confined space all day. The food trucks aren’t bigger, but you get to see the customers. You get to see daylight. Sometimes you even get to go to festivals.”

I asked him about the festival where we’d debuted the new truck.

“I was there too,” he said, with a smile. “But I didn’t get out much that day. The lines were ridiculously long.”

“You have all of the required skills, so why not work here? It wouldn’t be the first time in history that employees have been poached from other businesses. Besides, you don’t know what’s even going to happen with the food trucks now. The family might just sell them.”

Thomas shook his head. “No way. Pohler’s wife already sent us an email saying that we weren’t even going to miss a day of business. The trucks will run as they always have.”

I was a bit surprised. Usually families take a little time to decide what they are going to do with the family business. I wondered if the Pohler family was living on the edge and needed all the money they could get. It certainly had a whiff of desperation about it, and it made me wonder if Ryan was in dire financial trouble. He certainly shouldn’t have been, but I wondered if he’d expanded the business too fast and too soon. There wouldn’t even be a proper mourning period for the man.

I hoped that if I were to die, then people would wait a few days to move along with the food trucks.

“Would you need to give two weeks’ notice?” I asked, still thinking of my situation with Sabine. I wasn’t sure what she was doing, but breaking up with Danvers certainly had put her on the wrong path.

Thomas pressed his lips together tightly. I wondered if he would be in danger of being outed, if that was his secret, if he left without the proper waiting period. “No, I should be good. I don’t think Pohler told his family about all of his extraordinary means of making a profit. So I’d guess that my secret is safe for the meantime. She couldn’t blackmail me into staying.”