No One Needs to Know (5 page)

Maureen tried not to take it too personally.

By 1:45, lunch hour was over for most office workers. The mad rush had dwindled to a steady trickle.

No one was waiting behind the pale, thin-faced woman who had just ordered the salmon burger with arugula and aioli, and a side of green beans. “Are you Cheryl?” she asked, sizing up Maureen from behind a pair of sunglasses. “You look a little different from your picture in that magazine—and that time you were on TV.”

“Yeah, I’m Cheryl,” Maureen lied. She was tired of correcting people. She fetched a salmon patty out of the fridge and set it on the grill. The patty let out a sizzle. “It’s amazing what some Photoshopping can do. And that’s a big misconception about how heavy you look on TV. The camera actually
subtracts
ten pounds . . .”

The woman didn’t seem to catch on that Maureen was kidding. Her face was expressionless—without even a hint of a smile. Maureen had noticed earlier the skin-tight, black long-sleeve T-shirt and black jeans. Sticking her head through the order window, the woman seemed to study the interior of the food truck.

Maureen handed her the bag of food. “Thanks a lot. Hope to see you back real soon.”

“Nice little establishment you have here, Cheryl,” the woman replied, with a tiny smile—at last. “I’ll be sure to tell my friends.”

“You do that, honey.”

With no other customers waiting, Maureen stood by the order window and watched the woman walk away. She was barely thirty feet from the truck when—without breaking her stride—she tossed her unopened bag of food into a garbage can.

“What the hell?” Maureen muttered. She couldn’t believe the waste of perfectly good food—and of her time. The stupid woman hadn’t even tasted any of it. Maureen wanted to chase down the horse-faced bitch and give her a piece of her mind.

But then a thirty-something brunette with a cell phone to her ear came to the window. “Hi, Cheryl,” she said, barely looking at her. “I need a teriyaki and Swiss with potato salad, and a Diet Coke.”

Maureen scribbled down the order. “I’m not Cheryl,” she growled. “I just have on her apron. I’m Maureen . . .”

She didn’t wait to see if the woman understood or was even listening. Maureen turned away and started to prepare the order.

The customer who had just thrown away her untouched sandwich hadn’t been lying when she’d promised Maureen she’d tell her friends about Grill Girl.

One block away from the food truck, she stood on the corner of Fourth and Spring Street. She was on her cell phone with a cohort. “So that’s the layout,” she was saying. “Our friend is in there by herself. It’s kind of slow at the moment. So get over here and take care of things. I’m talking about within the next five minutes. Got that?”

“We’re on it,” replied the man on the other end of the line.

Maureen figured the two men would be her last customers of the day.

They looked like they were in their late twenties. One of them was on crutches. They dressed a little too casual to be office workers, even for casual Fridays. But they were friendly enough. In fact, the one on crutches was a real charmer with his shaggy brown hair and cute smile. She didn’t recognize either one of them. But they acted like friendly regulars with a “Hi, how are you today?” and slipping in a
please
and
thank you
when it was warranted. The one on crutches even winked at her, and tipped her five dollars.

With their burgers almost ready, Maureen decided to throw some teriyaki chicken on the grill for herself. She hadn’t had any lunch and needed to keep body and soul together until tonight’s lasagna dinner.

Maureen bagged their food and brought their orders to the window.

But no one was there.

She noticed the brown-haired one, not far away at all, in front of the library, on one of the benches where a lot of people sat eating their lunches. He had his crutches leaning against the wall.

“Hey!” Maureen called. She wondered where his friend was.

He saw her, and his face lit up with a smile. He waved.

“Your food’s ready!” she called.

He nodded emphatically, and then reached for his crutches. But they fell to the pavement. He looked so helpless and awkward as he tried to reach for them again. No one around seemed to notice. He waved at her again. “Just give me a minute! I’ll be right there!”

“No, no, stay put!” Maureen yelled. “I’ll bring it to you!”

On her way to the food truck door, she glanced at her teriyaki chicken on the grill. It was still a bit raw-looking, nowhere near ready. She left the food truck door ajar as she stepped outside and down to the street. Winding around to the front of the truck, she saw that he’d somehow managed to retrieve his crutches, but he was still sitting down. She also noticed for the first time that he wasn’t actually wearing a cast, none visible anyway. Maureen figured it must have been hidden under his trouser leg.

“Thank you so much!” he called as she came closer. He grinned at her as if this little gesture was just about the nicest thing anyone could have done for him. “I didn’t mean to put you to all this trouble . . .”

A bit breathless from running, Maureen handed him the bag. “No problem. What happened to your buddy?”

The young man shrugged. “Oh, he saw some girl he thought he knew, and ran off. The way he is, I’ll be lucky to see him again today.” He glanced into the bag. “Which one’s mine?”

“Either one,” she laughed. “You guys ordered the exact same thing.” She glanced back at the truck. No one was waiting by the order window.

“Must be really interesting working in a food truck,” he said. “Have you been at this location a long time?”

“A couple of weeks,” she said, turning to smile at him again. “We keep changing around where we are.” She wiped her hands on the front of her apron and sighed. “Well, I should get back there . . .”

“I don’t see any customers,” he said. “Why don’t you sit and talk for a moment?”

“Oh, I wish I could. But I can’t desert my post—”

“Huh, speaking of
dessert,
” he said, “I saw the sign you have by the window with the desserts listed. I was tempted to get a piece of the key lime pie. Did you make it yourself?”

“No, my partner did,” Maureen said. She started to back away. “Listen, I’d love to chat. But I left something on the grill in there. It’s probably burned to a crisp by now. If you’re still around after I close up the truck, I’ll bring you a piece of the key lime pie. Okay?”

“That’s a deal,” he said. “Thanks, Cheryl!”

Maureen didn’t have time to correct him. She just waved and hurried back toward the truck. Around the back, she found the door still ajar. Climbing up the metal grated steps to the door, she expected to be assaulted by the smell of burned teriyaki chicken. But once inside, she only got the familiar aroma of meat and onions cooking. Maureen shut the door behind her, and checked the grill. By some kind of miracle, the chicken wasn’t burned at all. In fact, it still needed another minute or two to cook. She picked up the spatula, and turned over the chicken breast.

Then she glanced out the order window to check if any customers were waiting. No one was there. She looked for her brown-haired friend among the people on the benches outside the library. It took a moment, but Maureen finally spotted him—along with his buddy—walking away. He wasn’t on his crutches. He was carrying them. He wasn’t even limping. His friend was holding the bag of food. The brown-haired one glanced back toward her for a moment. Then they picked up the pace and turned the corner.

It didn’t make any sense.

Another thing that didn’t make sense was the silence.

The vents weren’t on. And why wasn’t the food hissing on the grill? The chicken just sat there, not quite completely cooked, no juices bubbling or sizzling. Had the pilot light gone out?

She peeked under the grill and didn’t see a flame. At the same time, Maureen detected—past the smell of grilled meat—a slight gassy odor.

She heard something crackle. But it wasn’t coming from the grill. It was the microwave. She glanced up and saw the digital clock counting down the remaining minutes and seconds. Whatever was in the oven gave another sputter. She hadn’t turned on the microwave—at least not for the last few orders. She hadn’t nuked anything since the garlic green beans for that creepy, horse-faced woman.

Maureen had stepped out of the food truck for only a couple of minutes. But it was obvious to her now that someone had snuck in. They’d tinkered with the gas line, and blew out the flame under the grill. They’d also put something in the microwave oven. She heard it sputter again. She saw the minutes and seconds descend on the microwave’s digital clock: 1:06, 1:05, 1:04 . . .

Through the window in the oven door, she saw the sparks.

Someone had wadded up a ball of aluminum foil and put it in there.

1:01, 1:00, 0:59, 0:58 . . .

Maureen froze.

Inside the microwave, she noticed another spark. Then there was a bright flash.

It was the last thing she saw.

The blast ripped through the food truck. Witnesses said it was a small miracle the explosion didn’t start off a chain reaction with the food trucks parked on either side of the Grill Girl. Bus and car windows shattered—along with a few windows on the library’s ground floor. Thick black smoke billowed up between the buildings on Fourth Avenue while car alarms blared.

“I thought it was some kind of terrorist attack,” one passerby later told KING 5 News.

Twenty-two people were injured—mostly from flying glass and debris. Eighteen of them were treated at Harborview Medical Center and released that afternoon. Three remained hospitalized in stable condition, and a fourth—a nineteen-year-old woman—was in the ICU with burns from the explosion. She’d just been approaching the Grill Girl’s order window when the truck blew up.

There was only one fatality: sixty-year-old Maureen Forester, described in news reports as “a cook at Grill Girl.”

She was more than that to Cheryl Wheeler. She was just about Cheryl’s only friend, even though they really hadn’t known each other long. What the newspapers and TV didn’t say was that Maureen wasn’t even supposed to be working that day.

She was dead, because she’d decided to help out her friend.

Cheryl knew she’d never forget that.

She already knew what it was like to be haunted by an incident for years and years.

It was Monday afternoon, and she stood in line at the post office on Union and Twenty-third. She had a pale green slip in her hand. Cheryl was still in shock over everything that had happened. All weekend, the police and fire department investigators, lawyers, and insurance people kept her occupied—when she just wanted to be left alone to grieve. They said a faulty gas line might have caused the explosion. Cheryl pointed out that the food truck had passed a safety inspection just three weeks ago. It was her polite way of telling them they didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.

Maureen had been a widow with no known family. It was up to Cheryl to arrange the burial. She wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. She’d been on the phone all morning with the King County coroner’s office, St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, and Bonney-Watson Funeral Home.

All the busywork kept her emotions in check—up to a point.

But now, in the post office, it suddenly hit her that she’d lost her friend and the livelihood for which she’d worked so hard for so many years. She felt a pang in her gut. Her throat tightened. The sadness swelled up inside her, and she let out a gasp.

Of all places to start tearing up, it had to be here. She covered her mouth and faked a coughing spell to disguise her sobs. In front of her in line, a man with packages gave her a strange look. Had he recognized her from the local TV news over the weekend? Or could he see that she was crying? Cheryl turned away, and took a couple of deep breaths. She wiped the tears from her face.

There was always a line at this stupid post office. Unfortunately, it was where she had the P.O. box for Grill Girl. And every so often, like today, she found a slip of paper in there for a package to pick up. It was probably something she’d ordered ages ago for the food truck, now up in smoke.

Now third in line, Cheryl dug a Kleenex out of her purse and blew her nose.

She never got to tell Maureen about the potential client she’d met on Friday. The catering job wasn’t for the elusive Gil Garrett and Shawna Farrell. No, while her poor friend had been working in her place, Cheryl had signed a contract with Atlantis Film Group to cater a six-week movie shoot here in Seattle. It was a major motion picture, too—very high profile. The starting date was less than a month away.

The fact that she still cared about the job made Cheryl feel horrible. What kind of person was she? She hadn’t even buried her friend yet, and she was wondering how to pull off this catering gig without her truck and her coworker.

The stout, forty-something Asian woman behind the counter took her slip and her ID, and then returned with a package that was slightly bigger than a shoebox. From the uncomfortable, somber look on the woman’s face, Cheryl could tell she recognized the name—and the now-defunct business on the package address label. The woman gave her back her driver’s license, and the slip. “Sign here, please,” she said.

With the pen on a chain, Cheryl signed the slip. When she looked up again, the woman sadly shook her head. “I heard about what happened,” she whispered. “And I’m awfully sorry.”

Cheryl nodded. “Thank you,” she replied, but the words caught in her throat. She grabbed the package and got out of there before she started crying again.

In the parking lot, she stopped to wipe her eyes once more. It seemed almost pointless keeping her face dry—what with the dull, steady drizzle. She glanced at the return address on the package. Rain dotted the brown paper wrapping. The sender didn’t include a name, just an address in Ellensburg, Washington. Cheryl didn’t know anyone in Ellensburg. The package was fairly light, and marked
PERISHABLE
.