FIVE WILL GET YOU TWENTY (Food Truck Mysteries Book 9) Read online

  I took a deep breath and exhaled before I fully jumped into the day. I checked on the hot dogs, which were cooking, and ran an eye over the condiments. I hadn’t had to do that in a long time, but with a new chef, I wanted to make sure that everything went right. If there weren’t enough dogs or toppings, then the customers would likely forego a wait. They were on the quick lunchtime clock and didn’t have time to wait as long as they would for a sit-down meal.

  We’d nearly finished the shift when I got a call from Carter. “Hey, got a minute?” he asked. His tone was casual, but I knew that he would only call if something was wrong. My chest constricted in panic.

  “Sure, for you, always,” I said, trying to sound equally breezy. “What’s up?” My stomach was in knots, waiting to hear what calamity had befallen the new truck so soon. Had I forgotten a permit, and the truck had been shut down? Had someone run into the truck and totaled my investment?

  “Take a deep breath,” Carter said with a laugh. “It’s not that bad. It’s just that the truck has a flat tire. Can you send a tow truck over to fix it?”

  I exhaled, realizing exactly how tense I’d been. The worries of the new truck were apparently getting to me. “What happened?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. I just noticed a slight list to the truck and went out to check things. I noticed the tire at once. I didn’t hit anything on the way here, and I don’t remember a tilt this morning.”

  I’d just bought new tires for the truck before we took it to the festival last weekend. These were not tires that went flat so easily. I wondered what Carter wasn’t telling me.

  Even though I had my concerns, I made the call to the service and arranged to have someone come out and fix the tire after the shift. I called Carter back and told him what I’d done.

  “Great. I’ll call you at the end of shift and report out on the day’s sales,” he said with a laugh. “I know that’s why you really want to hear from me and not my sparkling personality.”

  I thought back to my realization that this truck represented my ability to make my own way as an adult, an employer, and a spouse. I laughed, but it was an uneasy one, knowing that he was all too right. Sabine gave me an odd look, but I just shrugged and got back to work.

  The tow company called me back shortly after that. I hated to take calls during work hours, since it was hard enough to take orders when I was giving it my full attention. The man told me that the tire had been fixed, but then he said, “I wanted to let you know that the tire was slashed. It wasn’t a matter of the driver hitting something or a pothole. This was done on purpose. I’ll back you up if you need to make a police report for insurance purposes.”

  The words cut through me as the knife had cut through the rubber tire. I was shocked. We’d never had any incidents of vandalism or animosity while the trucks were parked on the streets during the day. I felt violated that someone had taken my truck and tried to render it inoperable. I was grateful that it had been so easily fixed, but given the size of the bill from the towing company, it was not going to be cheap. I was watching every cent with this new truck, and I didn’t want to be paying for needless expenses.

  I also knew that I wouldn’t be making a police report or telling the insurance company. The former would bring about too much unwanted attention, and the latter would raise my rates, something I didn’t want.

  I asked to speak to Carter. The tow truck driver handed him the phone, and I spoke, “Did you see anything this morning?” I wondered if I would notice if someone came around to the back of the truck and slashed the tire.

  “No, I’ve been too busy. I’ve been rushing around trying to make sure that everything’s okay.” He sounded freaked. He probably thought that I was going to blame this on him.

  “I’m not blaming you for anything. You didn’t do this to the tire. Someone else did. I was just wondering if you could give me a timeframe for the incident.”

  “No clue. Sorry. You can bet that I’ll be on the lookout tomorrow,” he said, sounding relieved that I wasn’t going to yell at him.

  I had a strong suspicion that Ryan Pohler was behind the vandalism. We expanded our territory into areas where his had historically been the only food trucks. He’d been unctuous and overly magnanimous at the festival, which had done nothing to endear him to me. Now that our truck was having minor problems, I automatically thought who would be most likely to gain from it. His name came to mind, though I could hear Land’s voice telling me not to jump to such wild conclusions.

  There was no more criminal activity in the area of town with the new truck than we had here. It was only a few blocks from where we parked. Of course, given that I’d witnessed a few murders on Government Square, I wasn’t sure that I’d made the best analogy there. Perhaps I should have raised the bar to only want fewer crimes for the new truck than the other two.

  The rest of the shift was quiet for us. My nerves were shot, thinking of all the things that could go wrong with a food truck manned by only one person, but I didn’t receive any other calls or updates, so I assumed that things were going well.

  We had almost finished for the day. Sabine was cleaning the last of the prep area surfaces, and I was counting the cash for a second time. The day’s tallies were great. So at least nothing was wrong with sales.

  The extra money could come in handy. I’d had my eye on a wedding dress that cost more than I’d like to admit. I’d never thought of myself as the frilly bride type. Some of my friends had been offered a choice of cash or a wedding from their parents. I knew that I would have taken the cash in a heartbeat. Yet they’d all wanted the wedding. Now I wondered what I would choose in the same circumstances.

  I was starting to feel the allure of the event. I was trying to keep things under budget so that we could start off with a nice nest egg, but the dress, which cost far more than I’d planned, kept popping into my brain when I wasn’t thinking about it.

  However, the timing was such that I had to worry about the finances. I’d been putting off buying much for the wedding because we had purchased a new food truck and paid for some targeted marketing in the area. Wedding details seemed like a luxury at the moment, though I knew I’d have to get moving on those things soon.

  I was feeling an immense amount of pressure to make this third truck a success, and my thoughts were a jumble as I took the food truck back to the secured lot. I drove home in silence, not even listening to the stock reports on the radio. I wanted the quiet time to reflect on things and go over in my mind what, if anything, I needed to do in order to make this new truck work.

  When I got home, I decided to go for a run. I was in desperate need of some physical activity to still my mind. So I took off across the park; though I’d recently seen a murder there, I didn’t worry about my safety. My main goal was just to relax.

  I made it home without any incidents and took a shower. When I finished and changed, I noticed that I had two messages on my phone. The first was from the bank, indicating that my deposit had errors in it. Since I knew that wasn’t the case with the bag I’d dropped off, I suspected that it was the deposit for the new truck. The timing was about right to indicate the deposit had been made by Carter. I ignored the other call for the time being and dialed the bank.

  A clerk answered, put me on hold for an interminable amount of time, and finally a woman answered and introduced herself as the branch manager. “Ms. Kinkaid, I’m glad you called. This normally isn’t a problem with your deposits, but today there were five $20 bills that were counterfeit in the bag.”

  I scrunched up my face. For the most part, we had not had any problems with being passed fake currency. I didn’t want to have to start doubting every customer that came through the line, as many of them had been loyal customers for years now.

  I asked a few questions and learned that it was indeed the other truck. I wasn’t blaming Carter for this either. He’d never collected cash before. He’d always been the cook at the original truck, and I’d dealt with the mo
ney and coffee. Now he had to do it all, which included making sure that we weren’t being robbed. In the rush, it would be easy to accept some counterfeit bills without noticing.

  However, coming on top of the flattened tire today, I was beginning to sense a pattern here. These were not individual acts in my mind, but were perhaps a concerted effort to hurt my business. And again my mind came back to the same man I’d suspected for the slashed tire.

  I had to wonder if I was just too stressed. I had absolutely no proof that these were anything other than the misfortunes that could befall any business in the first few days of operation.

  However, I was still suspicious of Ryan Pohler. I couldn’t put my finger on the reasons why I thought he was behind the incidents, but I felt that way—strongly. Part of it boiled down to the fact that I couldn’t make his numbers work. No matter how hard I tried, the expenses for the truck had to be criminally low in order for him to show the profits and expansion he had made in the past three years. I wasn’t being envious. I wanted to grow, but I wanted to follow the rules. My dad had always made a point of abiding by the tax code and the licenses needed to work, and he’d passed that on to me.

  I learned from the bank manager that the counterfeit bills would be turned over to the police for investigation, and my deposit would be $100 less than what we posted. So profits would be down for the day.

  I grumbled to myself, because the police would obviously start with the business being the source of the bad bills. We had nothing to show them to prove otherwise. The new truck had a security system, but we didn’t run it during the day. So we had no way of knowing who had passed those twenties to us. “I don’t know,” was not going to be a great answer to tell the police.

  Chapter 2

  Having dealt with the first issue, I decided to listen to the other call on my voicemail. Not surprisingly, it was Carter who gave me a total for the day and a good report on business. I didn’t have the heart to call him back now and tell him that he’d been conned. He’d been through a rough patch over the last few months, and this was the happiest I’d seen him in that time. I hated to bring him down.

  Of course, he’d know about it soon enough, since the police would want to ask some questions, but I decided to give him an evening of happiness before the investigation started.

  Land came over, and I told him the news. He brought me a dinner from the Basque food truck, so I dined well as I shared all the things that had happened. We had an early night since I had to get up early. He didn’t like to stay over if I had to wake him at 4a.m., so he said goodnight, and I toddled off to bed.

  ***

  The next morning, I was the first one to the food truck. I texted Sabine to tell her to meet me at Elm Street, and I started getting things ready for a new day. I had ordered a few of the highlighters that detect counterfeit bills and expected them in a few days.

  I’d developed an idea last night that I knew Land wouldn’t be happy with, but he’d likely go along. Once the highlighters arrived, then I was going to help Carter for a few days at the new truck. That would leave Sabine by herself at the original truck, but she’d shown herself to be a model employee so far. So I didn’t worry about it. However, I did know that Land was concerned about his sister’s professionalism since he’d mentioned it so many times in the past. He’d been right about people in the past, so I knew that I would risk ignoring him at my own expense.

  Even so, I wanted to be on the new truck for just a few days. I knew that Carter would be doing the best he could, but if he were to look out for counterfeiters and vandals, he’d be doing the work of three people on the truck. That was asking a bit much of him.

  I heard a tap on the door to the truck. I thought that Sabine must have forgotten her keys, but when I looked out the peephole in the door, it was Detective Jax Danvers. I groaned for a second and then opened the door. There was only one thing that would get Danvers here before the crack of dawn, and that was crime. He didn’t even arrive this early to get Land’s coffee mix.

  “So, I hear you had a little problem with fake twenties yesterday?” he asked without preamble. “Five of them in one deposit. That’s a good run for anyone.”

  “And if you know that, you also know that those came from the new truck and not Dogs on the Roll,” I added. My mood was taking a dive, and it wasn’t even five o’clock yet. By the end of shift, I would be majorly put out. “So I can’t add much to that statement.”

  “Yeah, I heard, but the trucks belong to you, so I thought I’d start with you.” He had a smile on his face that told me he was enjoying this far too much. Perhaps it was because I had shown him up in investigating some open crimes over the past few years, but he knew me better than to think I’d started printing my own cash. I was making enough legally.

  “So what am I supposed to know about this?” I asked, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. Even though he was not high on my list of favorite people, he was dating Sabine, which meant that I had to play somewhat nice with him. “I only talked to the bank yesterday afternoon. I haven’t talked to Carter yet. I ordered a highlighter so that I can check the twenty dollar bills we accept. If someone is passing us bad money, it’s not our fault. It’s just our bad luck.”

  “The funny thing is, though, that we didn’t get any other reports of phony twenties being passed yesterday in all of Capital City. Just your new truck. Interesting, isn’t it? I’m going to talk to Carter later today,” Danvers said. “I thought you might want to give him a head’s up that I’m coming by. He spooks easy, and I don’t want to freak him out.”

  I had to admit that I was shocked and surprised by Danvers’ thoughtfulness in the matter. He’d never worried about upsetting me, but he was concerned for Carter. Maybe Sabine was having a good influence on him.

  However, that theory was quickly put to rest. Sabine walked into the food truck, saw Danvers, and walked out. No words, no recriminations, just an exit. I was stunned. No one had said a word to me about there being any bad blood between them. As far as I knew, the pair was still dating.

  Yet, even I could see that there were some bitter feelings at the moment. I chose to ignore the incident and continue the conversation. “So, I don’t suppose there’s any way that we can get back the money we lost?” I knew the answer, but if Danvers wanted me to participate in this matter, I thought that some payback would be nice.

  “Dream on,” Danvers said, not even referencing the incident with Sabine. Given his tone, I would think that nothing had happened. So he was obviously aware of what was going on and why. Now I wanted to call Land, because I figured that he knew all the details, but had not seen a reason to share them with me, likely thinking that my future sister-in-law would tell me all while we were working together closely. “You might want to let Carter know that we’ll be over later today. I’m probably going to have someone go through all the twenties in the drawer too.”

  I swallowed hard, thinking of how it would look to have uniformed officers standing inside the truck and counting the money. That was not the type of reputation I wanted for the first week of operations. Word would spread fast that something was wrong about the new food truck if warrants were being executed against the operator. “Could you send a plain-clothes guy to do that?” I asked, hoping to alleviate some of the situation. A man in street clothes was less likely to turn off customers, even if they were able to infer what the officer was doing. “Policemen in the truck counting the cash might stymie business.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Danvers said, trying not to look annoyed. “Maybe I’ll do it. I can spend a little time helping Carter and checking bills.”

  For a moment, I wasn’t sure if he was being serious or not, but given his mood, I would have to take him at face value. “Thanks,” I offered, hoping that his relationship troubles wouldn’t be taken out on the food trucks—or me.

  He left, and within two minutes, Sabine had returned to the truck. She must have been standing within a certain perimeter, feeling
that 5a.m. in downtown Capital City had to be better than being in the truck with Detective Danvers. That told me a lot about where they were in the relationship at the moment.

  “What did he want?” she said petulantly. She took her long hair and wrapped it into a ponytail and pushed it under the hat she used to prepare food. She didn’t make eye contact with me, which was suggestive.

  “Five bad twenties got passed to Carter in the new truck. He was asking questions about the money and what we knew about it. But there’s not much to tell. We don’t know anything.”

  She nodded. “That type of operation is hard to pin down, especially if they move around a lot. I’m surprised that Carter had five of them. That’s a lot, which means probably five customers used them. No one buys $100 worth of tacos for lunch. That would be too obvious. It’s just not normal for a gang to target the same business on the same day.”

  I wondered where she’d gotten her knowledge of counterfeiting operations, but like her brother, I doubted if I would get an answer if I asked. She would make some generic statement that would leave me knowing nothing more than I did before. Given that she had yet to tell me a word about what was going on with Danvers, I doubted that she would be in the mood to share her knowledge of felons with me either.

  I continued to prep the coffee, and I counted out the money as I worked. I looked at the bills as I counted them, but I couldn’t see any obvious flaws in the currency. It wasn’t like FDR or Obama was on the twenty. They all looked perfectly normal to me.

  I finished what I was doing and opened the window for business. Sabine continued to prep for the day’s menu. She was slicing whole dill pickles into spears and chopping up tomatoes and onions for the Chicago dogs. She told me that she’d eaten hot dogs made in that manner in the Windy City, and I believed her. She had traveled around nearly as much as her brother had.

  Now I was curious about the counterfeiting operation. I’d never really encountered anything like this, and I wasn’t sure how the operation worked. I just assumed that people paid with bad bills and received change for their bad money. Yet a taco and drink order would likely take about half the twenty, so I wasn’t sure they were getting the most for their money. It seemed more likely that they’d get the most inexpensive thing on the menu, a plain coffee, or an inexpensive small drink.