FIVE WILL GET YOU TWENTY (Food Truck Mysteries Book 9) (5 page)

After she calmed down somewhat, I explained my plan to Sabine. She was very agreeable to my suggestions, and I gave her copies of the photos I’d taken the day prior of Ryan and the woman. She nodded and looked ready to go.

Apparently she was more than ready, because she had the prep area cleaned and the trash out of the truck before I’d done the second count of the money. I told her to head on out as I finished up the last of my tasks. Land’s truck was already in his normal space, and I walked the cash bag over to him. I was hesitant to carry such a large sum of small bills around with me, and I knew that Land would guard it well.

I trotted over to the new food truck, feeling almost as excited as Sabine about the chance to learn more about this case. I was certainly playing within the boundaries by just helping out a subordinate on the job. I doubted that Danvers could have faulted me for anything that happened at my own establishment.

Carter wasn’t at all surprised to see me. I think he’d been expecting it. “Hey, Maeve. I’m sure you’ve already heard that Ryan Pohler was murdered?” he asked with a certain amount of excitement in his voice. “Do you think it was one of the people I saw passing bills?”

I shrugged, thinking of Sabine at the café. “It’s certainly possible,” I said. “What have you heard this morning?”

He gave me a grin. “I knew you’d come by to ask questions. As soon as I heard the news, I started eavesdropping on some of the conversations about him.”

“Is there anything worth listening to?” I asked, not wanting to waste time on conspiracy theories.

“Eh, most of the stories were money related. I heard two men say that Pohler was involved with the mob. Another person corrected them and said it was definitely a loan shark. I heard two women say that he was sleeping around and was killed by a jealous husband. Take your pick.”

“Any sign of Mr. QT?” I gave him my best imitation of his signature eyebrow wiggle. While Carter was happily married, I could tease him about good-looking guys.

He sighed, overdramatically. “No, more’s the pity. This truck is doing great business, but not with my demographic. I need to work on that.”

I’d looked at the truck receipts for the last few days. It could use all the help it could get. The truck was making fair numbers, but Taco Inferno was far below what either of the other two trucks made now—or made when they started for that matter. I was concerned.

“What about any of the others who passed bad bills?” I asked, hoping for a break.

“Nope, not a one. I’ve been keeping my eyes open for them.” Carter continued to make change and hand out tacos while I talked to him.

I went to work. If I was going to be staking out the food truck, it would be best if I looked like I belonged here. Everyone would be suspicious if I just sat and watched people as they came by.

Besides, I knew from experience how hard it is to cook, serve and take the money. Carter went back to cooking, and I took over the register.

A few hours passed, but nothing came from my time in the truck, other than better than average sales. I had to wonder if the burden of doing it all was too much for Carter. If the customers weren’t getting served fast enough, then perhaps some were going to the other trucks in the area. I would have to keep an eye on it and make some decisions about adding a second person to the truck. However, I didn’t want to do that until I was sure of the source of the problems.

I left about 5p.m., tired and feeling frustrated. I was no closer to any solutions. I had walked by the locations where the Pohler food trucks normally parked, but they were empty today. I wasn’t sure who would inherit the trucks now that he was gone. I knew nothing about his family or business, other than the suspicions about his practices.

I picked up the deposit bag from Land, and he passed on a message that Sabine wanted to see me. She had indicated that I should drop by. Land made a point of telling me that she said she would be home all evening because she had nothing better to do.

I laughed. “How long do you think that will last?” I asked him.

“I’m surprised that it’s gone on this long. She usually doesn’t seem to care when something ends.”

Land’s statement gave me pause. Even though Jax Danvers could drive me crazy, perhaps someone out there did care for him. It might even be Sabine. After all, they had dated for nearly a year.

“I’ll stop over after the bank,” I said. “I’ll let you know how she’s doing.”

“Thanks,” he said, turning to get back to work. A few more customers had lined up to place orders. I took their money, gave Land the orders, and then scooted to deposit today’s cash. Even though the bank was long closed, I dropped it in the overnight window and headed to Sabine’s to see what she’d learned.

True to her word, she opened the door as soon as I arrived. She was still dressed in the clothes she’d worn to work, which indicated that she was likely in for the evening.

She smiled at me. “So did you find anything at the new food truck?” she asked as she made me a cup of coffee. Sabine was known for swiping some of Land’s ground beans from the food truck, claiming it as her share of the royalties from its use on the truck.

“Nothing. No one came by, and no one tried to pass bad twenties to Carter. The Pohler food trucks were gone too, so I couldn’t do much of anything. What about you?”

She handed me a slip of paper while we waited. “Here’s the woman’s name and number. I wrote in her address after I googled her.”

The woman’s name was Bernadette Cravens, and as promised, the address and phone number were listed. She lived downtown. I assumed that the address was one of the newer apartment buildings that had gone up as part of the gentrification of the east side of the city.

“So what do we do now?” she asked as she poured the coffee. “Should we follow her and see where she goes?”

I shook my head. Surveillance and stakeouts were more for the professional law enforcement types than for me. I get bored sitting in one place and watching a door or window, waiting for something to happen. Land had done just that with Danvers on a number of occasions, but I found stake outs tedious. I preferred to be busy, finding leads and digging up new clues. This was definitely the type of work that I liked to do.

Since we had an address and nothing else to do, Sabine and I decided to pay a visit to Ms. Cravens. Sabine drove, which I appreciated. We’d both been up since 4a.m., but she’d had a chance to relax for a bit before now. I’d spent the intervening hours at the other food truck.

As I suspected, the address led us to a newer apartment building on the east side of downtown. Until the past year or so, the area had been high crime and a haven for prostitution. However, the buildings had been razed and new apartments and condos had been built. Land and I had looked at one of them a few months prior, hoping to find a new place for the two of us. However, we were leery of moving into an area that had changed so recently.

I pressed the buzzer and a woman’s voice answered. “Yes, who is it?”

I opened my mouth to explain, but before I could say anything, Sabine said, “friends of Ryan Pohler. He told us to come here.”

There was a long pause, where I thought that Sabine had lost us the interview, but after a moment, the door buzzed and we entered.

The directory was posted in the lobby, and Bernadette lived on the 7
th
floor.

“Let me do the talking,” I reminded Sabine, but I wasn’t sure the message was received. She was busy studying her appearance in the mirrored wall of the elevator.

When we got off on the 7
th
floor, Bernadette was waiting. Even if she hadn’t been recognizable as a little person, I’d studied the photos so many times that I would have known her anywhere.

“What do you want from me?” she asked before we’d even reached her.

“We just want to talk,” I tried to assure her. “I just had some questions for you.”

Bernadette studied me for a long time, and her face froze in an expression of panic. “I know you. You were working at the food truck yesterday.”

She looked at me as if she was going to bolt, so I began trying to settle down the situation. It wouldn’t do to get the police involved, since it would just lead to Danvers getting the information before I did. “Look, we don’t want any trouble. I just had some questions for you—about Ryan Pohler.”

“How can you say that you don’t want trouble and then say his name? The man was nothing but trouble.” She started sobbing as she finished her comments.

I didn’t say anything, but Sabine raised her eyebrows at me as if she was going to speak. I shook my head and handed the woman a tissue.

She dabbed at her eyes and then straightened herself. “I suppose you’re going to call the police now. Go ahead. I’m ready.”

Sabine snorted. “I just got dumped by a cop. That’s not going to happen.”

I paused for a second. I had really thought that Sabine had dumped Danvers, but now I was finding out it was the other way around. I was momentarily stunned by the news. I wondered what had gone down to make him take that move.

When I recovered myself, I said, “We’re not from the police, and we’re not going to call them. We just had some questions about Ryan Pohler and hoped you could help us answer them.”

She sniffed again. “Really? No police?”

“Absolutely. You heard her. We’re not on good speaking terms with them.”

She drew a deep breath. “Fine, then you can come in.”

We walked into her apartment. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but it wasn’t what I saw. The rooms were nearly bare. There were signs of once-decorated rooms, with nails in the walls and indentations in the carpet where furniture had once stood.

“Are you moving?” Sabine asked.

“I might have to,” Bernadette replied. “No money.”

“Is that why you were passing those counterfeit bills?” she asked. Supposedly, she had come with me for support and something to do, but I was barely getting a word in edgewise.

Bernadette started crying again. I went to the restroom to get some tissues. When I returned, Sabine was trying to make tea for everyone, and Bernadette was chatting quietly with her. I was surprised that the woman who was so gung-ho to show up the police had turned that off and become a friendly shoulder to cry on.

I handed the tissues to the woman, and she rewarded me with a smile. “Thank you.” I felt a little bad because all I’d done is take something of hers and hand it to her.

“So your friend here was telling me what’s going on,” Bernadette said after a few more sniffs. “You’re really not going to tell the police about me?”

I shook my head. “No, I’m just trying to figure out what happened to Ryan Pohler. I know you’re involved somehow, but unless it’s a material fact of the case, I won’t be sharing anything with the police and, well, Sabine has told you her thoughts on the matter.”

She took a deep breath. “I didn’t have a choice. I’m sorry.”

“What do you mean that you didn’t have a choice?” I asked, feeling confused.

She sniffed again and took another tissue. “Blackmail.”

“Are you saying that Ryan Pohler blackmailed you into passing bad bills?” Sabine was out of her seat and standing by the table now. I made a face at her, trying to tell her to settle down, but she ignored it or didn’t understand it.

“Yes, he did.”

The curious part of me would really have liked to have learned what the food truck owner had on her, but honestly that didn’t seem relevant to what we were discussing. Plus, I doubted that she would spill her darkest secrets to strangers. “How did you two know each other?” I asked instead, thinking that we might be able to trace the other people who passed the twenties in the same way.

She took a deep breath, obviously relieved that we weren’t going to pursue questions about the source of the blackmail. Sensing that the interview was going to be a bit more low-key, Sabine took her seat again.

“We go way back. I knew his kids in high school. I hadn’t heard from him in years, and then all of a sudden, he contacted me.”

I nodded. I found that it was best to let the other person talk as they wanted to when telling an embarrassing or painful story.

“He told me that he knew this secret about me, and that unless I did him a few favors, he would make it public.” She gulped as she finished the sentence.

I avoided my questions about the secret. My desire to solve the case trumped my nosiness. “What type of favors?”

She drew another deep breath as if sharing this was depleting her oxygen supply. “Well, at first, I thought it was going to be sexual in nature, but it wasn’t. I had to break into a food truck—not yours—and steal supplies so that they couldn’t open the next day. After that, he had me run errands for him, and lately, he’s been having me pass phony money. He told me that it was perfectly harmless, but after I passed the second twenty to your food truck, I had this sickening feeling that I was going to get caught. Ryan was so cavalier about it. Going to the same place all the time, and not taking any precautions. So I looked up the punishment for counterfeiting, and it was pretty steep. I was working up my nerve to tell him to forget it when I heard he was dead.”

“Um, going back to the errands, what types of things did he have you doing?” While it seemed nit-picky, I wondered why he would have her do these things. If the purpose of blackmailing her was to put some distance between him and any actual felonies, then something had to be wrong about the errands she was running.

“The usual stuff. I mailed some packages, picked up some supplies for the food truck, and made the bank deposits.” She looked relieved to be off of the shaky ground of criminal activities. “If he thought of it, he probably would have had me clean his cars and wash his windows. It was mostly about a power trip with him. He didn’t need the help. He wanted to get off on having someone do his bidding.”

“Did you ever meet anyone else who was working for Pohler?” Sabine chimed in with the question. I guessed that she’d recovered from her disappointment that we weren’t going to delve into Bernadette’s life story.

“I met a guy once, tall, dark, good-looking. He met Ryan at the restaurant where I always met him. This guy was just leaving when I got there.” Her description matched the person Carter and I had seen, the one he’d called QT. I decided that Sabine would have to go back and charm the wait staff one more time to find out who this man was. “I don’t know his name. Ryan made a point of not introducing us, though it was obvious that we were both there for the same reasons.”

“Anyone else?” I asked, thinking that five bills had been passed, which left three people unidentified. Pohler could have had family members launder the bills or more acquaintances without a choice in the matter. The latter seemed more likely since it couldn’t be traced back as easily to him, and he likely didn’t care if the blackmail victims had to pay a price for their crimes.

She shook her head. “I only really saw him, nobody else. We had to meet about once a week to discuss what we were going to do next.”

I did some quick thinking. “So you have some of the fake twenties still here—in the apartment?” I asked. If they only met once a week, then likely he’d given her the supplies for several days of passing phony money.

She blanched at the question. I was guessing that she hadn’t wanted to mention that she still possessed the potential evidence. “Yes, I have three more of them.”

“Could you get them?” I asked. I wanted to see the bills, though I’d seen the two that had come through my food truck already.

She got up without speaking and left the room. Sabine started to speak, but I put a finger to my lips. There was plenty of time to discuss the conclusions from all of this. I didn’t want to spook this woman in any way at the moment.

She returned with 3 twenty-dollar bills. They were crisp and new—and identical down to the serial number. “Do you know where he got these from?” I asked. I wouldn’t have had the slightest idea where to get the paper or inks or technology needed to print these bills. I was unimpressed that they all were totally identical. It would make it that much easier to find the bills and not accept them.

She shook her head again. “Not a clue. He wasn’t big on sharing information with me. He was more interested in what I could do for him.”

I kept one of the bills and passed the other two back. I felt fairly safe in this. I knew that she would likely dispose of these pieces of evidence after we left, but I wanted to have one to see if I could ask Land to investigate it. I knew that Land had some contacts from his military/police past who could help him learn more.

“Can you tell me about his family?” I didn’t know anything about him, much less his family, but I wondered if they might have been involved in these illegal matters as well.

She gave me the name and address of the Pohler home, where the wife and a college-age daughter both lived. Bernadette said there was another daughter, but she was unsure if she still lived at home or was on her own.

Bernadette looked at her watch, which was a less than subtle sign it was time for us to go. We excused ourselves and left the building. Sabine had barely reached the car when she started asking questions. “Why didn’t you take all the bills? Why just one?”

I explained my thinking that I wanted to have Land work on one bill to see what he could find. Plus, the possession of a single phony twenty was just bad luck in the food services business. The possession of three such bills would likely be sufficient evidence to suggest that I was a counterfeiter. I wanted no such evidence on my person. Danvers had asked me to look into certain aspects of the case, but I didn’t trust him enough to consider us on the same side. 

Of course, dumped or not, I didn’t share all that with Sabine. I merely told her that three bills could be suggestive that I was involved in the matter. She took that at face value. We discussed our next steps on the way home. I was going to have Land look at the bill via his network, and she was going to go back to the café and find out the name of the man who had been with Ryan Pohler.

She dropped me off at my car, and I went home knowing that 4a.m. would come too soon.

***

Surprisingly, I was up with the alarm. I finished getting ready and was out the door in record time. I wasn’t sure why I was so energetic. I had tucked the fake bill into a compartment in my purse so it wouldn’t be visible to anyone. I planned on taking that over to Land later when he arrived on Elm Street.

That morning, Sabine didn’t show up. I waited for her, checking my watch every few minutes until the time came and passed that I needed to start the food preparations for the daily shift. I jumped in and started chopping. I chose some of the easier recipes that Carter had developed over his time at the food truck. No reason for me to kill myself on a tough morning.

I opened the truck by myself that morning. Fortunately, as Carter had learned, the first two hours of the shift were almost all coffee sales. So I wasn’t feeling too overwhelmed, but as the morning progressed, the realization that I was going to have to do this by myself became clearer.

I’d worked the truck by myself before, but usually I’d had notice. While it might seem ironic, I knew my numbers well, but food service could still be a mystery to me at times. I would have chalked up Sabine’s absence to the same evil forces that had flattened a tire on Taco Inferno, but with Ryan Pohler gone, I couldn’t think of a legitimate source for causing such trouble. Had someone else gotten to her and paid her to not show up? Perhaps someone had taken her, knowing I’d be lost without her. However, given Land’s warnings, I suspected that she just hadn’t felt like coming to work.