MURDER IN THE SPOTLIGHT (Food Truck Mysteries Book 2) (3 page)

The next day we arrived at the studio to find all of the pots and pans waiting for us. I wasn’t sure how we’d manage to fit all of these in the truck and still have room for us. The set held over 20 pieces. Most of our pieces had come with the truck, which my Aunt Alice had purchase for the princely sum of $30,000. While they were adequate for the tasks at hand, they were not shiny and new like these pieces of cookware.

Each of the three boxes was plastered with a photo of Johnny Ruck and his name in big letters. I wondered if people really bought their cookware based on a celebrity. I knew that it worked for shoes and some items, but these were just household wares.

One of the boxes was open and I peered inside. I immediately wished that I hadn’t. Someone had peed into the box. I could smell the tangy odor as well as see the liquid swimming inside one of the large pans.

“Uh, Land, come here.” I was steadfast in believing that disgust should be shared. Besides, this gave me a rare opportunity to see if I could smash his composure.

He just rolled his eyes when he saw the gear covered in pee. “This is what you Americans do when you lose. There is no honor among those who strive to achieve. Sportsmanship is key.”

I bristled at the way he’d immediately turned this into a nationality issue. “You mean like it is in soccer?”

He gave me a rare smile. “No, not like soccer, but this does seem more like soccer and less like a restaurant competition.”

He reached down into the box. I was shocked, thinking that he was going to get his hand in that mess. I took a few steps back. I had a healthy regard for staying away from other people’s waste.

He smirked. “There was a note in here too. What do you think I was going to do? Use that pee in the next competition?”

I put on my best Marsha face and said, “Yes, Land, and what made you decide to use urine during this week’s challenge?”

He actually snorted with laughter. In the eight months I’d known him, he’d chuckled exactly once. I’d never achieved anything more. I didn’t know if I was really that funny or if the tension of the situation needed to be abated.

“Let’s go find Marsha and tell her about this.” Land pointed at the box.

“What did the note say?” I asked. He’d stuffed it into his pocket after he’d stopped laughing.

He pulled it back out of his pocket and read, “You cheated on the challenge and now you’ll pay for it. Piss off you liars.”

“So I guess that’s where the pee came from?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood. However, the note did exactly the opposite. I hesitated to show this to anyone. What if the judges or the producers took the note to heart and decided that we had cheated? I didn’t want to be known as the food truck owner who had been caught cheating on the show. That would definitely be the bottom of the basic cable hierarchy.

Marsha was in her office for a change, and we both sat down in the chairs opposite her desk. Her hair was up in a bun today that had seen better times. Several stray strands of dark hair fell out at all angles. “What can I do for you?” she asked, looking from one to the other of us. She continued to think that we were romantically involved, even though I had repeatedly told her otherwise.

I explained the situation to her, and Land offered her the note. She read it through twice and then handed it back. “I’ll get you a new set of pans. Sorry about that. Any idea who could have done that?”

I took a deep breath. “Betty would seem to be the obvious choice as culprit. She was pretty angry when we left last night.”

Marsha shook her head. “Not a chance. We took her to the gate and escorted her out. We took her badge and made sure to put her on the list of non-welcomed visitors. The pots and pans weren’t put out until much later.”

I grimaced. I had no idea who could have been that hateful if it wasn’t Betty. She’d been such an obvious choice, and her penchant for the dramatic gesture was well-known on set. I knew that she would have done most anything to stay in the contest.

“We’ll keep an eye out for anything else strange,” Land said. He tucked the note carefully into his pocket and stood.

I took the hint and headed out with him. We took the two unopened boxes of pans with us and drove to the lot in silence. Since this was an off-day for filming, we still had a truck to run. We started our daily routine, even though we were four hours late. We’d known when we started that the show would take some time from our truck schedule.

However, I’d taken the liberty of taking a few photos of Johnny Ruck from the Internet and making banners that showed we were on the show. The extra publicity from the banners hopefully made up for the fewer hours we spent at our location. Prior to the start of the competition, I’d been making a respectable living from the food truck. I wouldn’t be going on any round-the-world cruises, but I could certainly afford a weekend trip. Yet, there were reminders that until Dogs on the Roll had come along, I’d been an unemployed college grad. Not wanting to go back to that status made me work twice as hard at the truck. The hours away from our normal business routine always made me nervous.

I opened the window as soon as the coffee was ready. We had three customers in line, waiting. I served them as quickly as possible and kept at it for the next hour. The coffee customers gave way to the lunch crowd. It was nearly 1pm by the time that lunch crowd began to thin out.

I knew it was no coincidence that Detective Jax Danvers of the local police managed to stop by just as the crowd died down. Even though he ordered a hot dog with salsa and onions, I knew there was an ulterior motive behind his actions. I had crossed paths with Danvers before, when food truck owners were being bumped off. I’d solved the crimes and managed to come out of the experience alive and slightly better known as a result. As a result, Danvers always kept an eye on me, as if I would try to butt into any of his other open cases.

“How goes the reality show?” he asked around a mouthful of bun and hot dog.

I shrugged. “It’s fine. We won the last challenge.” Land helpfully held up a pot that we’d won in the challenge. I neglected to mention why we were missing our third box of kitchenware. I didn’t want to give him any hint that things weren’t rosy in my world. He’d suspect that I’d be donning my detective gear to look around if that were the case.

“Congratulations. That’s pretty impressive.” He took a moment to fill his mouth again and chew. He didn’t seem in a hurry to leave, and the crowd had died down to the point that no one was rushing him out of line.

“Thanks. We served a Basque menu courtesy of my Basque chef.” I smiled, even though I knew that Danvers wanted something from me. For starters, I was proud of what I’d accomplished with the dishes. I’d been giving thought to a new menu and Basque cuisine had done well. Additionally, the smile always played around my lips with Danvers came around. He was attractive and muscular—and very single. Land had warned me about playing nice with the detective, but I figured that Land had said nothing about flirting, so I did. Land had never told me what, exactly, he’d meant or how he knew Danvers, so I chose to ignore his comments for the most part.

“I’m sure that brought out some hard feelings from the other contestants. I mean, the fact that you won and they didn’t. I’ve heard that those shows can get kind of cutthroat.”

And there you had it. Danvers knew something about the events of this morning or
thought
he knew something about it. So he was going to hint around.

“Yeah, they can be. Some of the contestants are over the top,” I agreed. If nothing else, I’d learned from experience that I wanted Danvers to put as many cards on the table as I did before I gave him any information. I wanted to know who had informed him about the situation on the set and what his role was in the matter. He typically worked homicide, and a nasty prank hardly rose to the level of his usual cases. I couldn’t conceive that the Capital City police would want to waste Danvers on a couple of cups of urine and some nasty notes.

“Yeah. Have you seen much of that on set?” he asked. He started telling me about another reality show where two contestants had been sleeping together and had plotted to tag team the others to knock them out of the race. I wondered if he was just making this up, or if he’d suddenly taken up watching TMZ. I tried to imagine Danvers sitting at home, trying to catch up on all of his reality shows.

“A little. Sometimes the strategy can be to eliminate someone from the competition rather than to win on your own merits, but I haven’t seen that in this competition yet.” I didn’t add that someone had eliminated all over my pots and pans, but sometimes silence is golden.

Danvers finished the hot dog and chewed. He took his time in responding. “I was just wondering if I needed to take a visit to the set. I’ve heard a few things that don’t sound good. I’d rather tamp down on this now, rather than wait until it becomes a real problem.”

Finally, I thought, he’s heard
things
, plural, which meant that our problem this morning was part of a larger pattern. No wonder he was here asking questions. Now I wasn’t sure if he’d heard about the incident this morning or not. I turned to look at Land. Even though I had yet to hear any details about the relationship, apparently Land and Danvers knew each other prior to my inheriting the food truck. While I couldn’t conceive of the situation, I sometimes looked to Land for help in dealing with Danvers.

“Someone peed on our prizes this morning,” Land said. “We had three boxes of pots and pans. They peed in one of the boxes this morning and left it for us.”

Danvers made a face.

“We left the box at the set. We just took the non-peed-upon cookware.” Land rolled his eyes like a detective should be able to figure this out without prompting.

“Any thoughts on who might have done this?” Danvers had dropped the pretense of coming for a bite to eat and had put on his official face.

“Betty Troxler came to mind. She lost the challenge yesterday and was booted off the show,” I added. If Land was telling all, I figured I might as well jump in as well. Danvers was a very attractive man, and I thought his attention should be on me rather than on Land anyway.

“Yeah, her name came up more than once,” Danvers said.

Noting that he’d indicated another set of incidents, I wondered why we hadn’t heard about these on set. Was I just out of the loop, or had someone at the production company kept a lid on this? I figured that unless I told someone in the competition, no one else would likely ever know about what had happened to me. The producers did not share any on-set gossip with the contestants.

“So how many incidents are we talking here?” I asked, figuring that the best way to find out something was to ask. At the very worst, he would refuse to answer; however, since he’d come here asking questions, he might indulge me.

“Seven so far. Eight if we include your urination.” He met my gaze for a second, and I wondered if we’d just had a moment.

I raised my eyebrows. “Wow, that’s a lot. We haven’t heard anything about it on set. I suppose they’re keeping it swept under the rug.”

Danvers looked at me. “Did whoever peed on your stuff leave a note? We’ve had a few other issues with threats and general nastiness.”

I handed over the note, thinking that Land had started this full cooperation tactic. I figured that if he wanted me stop that he would give me some kind of sign. Danvers read the note and put it in his pocket. “It’s a lot like the other notes,” he said. “Any idea how you’ll pay for it?”

I shrugged. “I just assumed that it was a cliché meant to scare us. I didn’t really think that anything worse than urine on the kitchenware would happen.”

“Yeah, it appears that someone, or some group of people, is pretty disgruntled on the show. The producers asked me to look into it.”

“A homicide detective?” Land asked. “Isn’t that a little extreme?”

“It’s a high profile case, and the captain wanted a detective on the case who might have an in with the cast or crew.” Danvers looked around to see if anyone was around. Since he’d already spoken, it seemed a little late for that.

“So you mean us?” I said. Danvers was going to use our food truck as a form of bait, apparently, to get a nasty poison pen writer to come out in the open. I didn’t like the idea of jeopardizing our place in the contest to help the police. Let them pick another food truck, and just let us sail on to victory.

“The captain mentioned you by name, so yeah.” Danvers tried to give me a smile, but I wasn’t having any of it. His flirting typically came when he wanted me to help him.

“Great. So what do you want to do? Review every piece of film that we’re in? Ask if we’ve seen anything unusual?”

Danvers shook his head. “No, nothing like that. For now, I’m just hoping that you pass on anything—impressions you have or anything you hear or see on the set. If it comes to it, I might want to be on the truck for an episode or two.”

I furrowed my brows and looked hard at him. “Are you sure that you’re not just doing this to get on television? You’re starting to sound like Betty.”

“Betty was an aspiring celebrity?” Danvers asked as he pulled out his notebook. When the notebook came out, it was officially police business.

I told him of several of the encounters with Betty and her general behavior on set. He took some notes as I talked. In summarizing what she’d done, the events seemed minor compared to what Danvers was suggesting. I doubted that she would jeopardize being on the episodes just to get back at the other contestants. It seemed like overkill, even for her.