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

I thought of Thomas’ call to the people who gave discounts on food that wouldn’t pass muster and their paranoia over my call. I wondered if they had anything to do with the killings since it came so close to the time I’d called them. What I
did
know was that Bernadette obviously knew more than she had let on. And I knew that my next stop would be Albert Ruschman.

Not much was going on at the crime scene, so I took the opportunity to text Land about the developments. I also tried to call Albert Ruschman again, but I got no answer there. I found an address on the web and decided that I would be going to visit him after the shift was over.

Land found his way over to the food truck as soon as he arrived. “How is it going?” he asked after giving me a long kiss. Thomas hadn’t spoken since Land arrived, but kept to his cleaning. Land wasn’t particularly interested in the new employee, because he’d made his opinion clear that he thought it would blow up in my face at some point.

I explained how I’d found the food truck in my spot that morning and that no one had opened for business. Land listened to my story, gave me a peck on the cheek, and went to find Danvers.

I kept myself busy by counting the cash while he was gone. I’d started getting the coffee ready for tomorrow by the time he returned.

“So what does he know?” I asked, thinking about how another of the counterfeiters was in my truck at the moment.

Land shrugged. “Early days. If you stick around a few minutes, you’ll get to meet Mrs. Pohler. She’s on her way here to identify the body. Danvers already has a full ID on the deceased based on what you told him, but he’s curious to see what the widow will say. He’s pretty convinced that she is in it just as much as her husband was, but he just doesn’t know if they’ll have enough to prove that.” I was surprised, not because the widow was a suspect, but because that was one of the longest statements I’d ever heard Land make. He usually left things to a few furrowed brows and eyebrow raises.

At the mention of Mrs. Pohler, Thomas decided to excuse himself. He made the good point that he didn’t want to be around when she arrived given that he’d left her employ to start with me.

However, it made me wonder if that was all there was to it. He’d been nervous all afternoon. While I could understand why he was upset, there could also be some less savory reasons why he didn’t want to be around—and my mind kept running to those. I tend to suspect everyone, even my family at times, and I knew that I’d have to relieve my mind of the questions at some point. How much did Thomas know? His knowledge would be important if someone was killing people who knew about the counterfeiting ring.

In the meantime, Land kept me busy for a few minutes until we heard the sound of a woman’s voice just outside of the truck. “Why don’t you ask this one where she was last night? She gains by having my husband’s empire crumble. She doesn’t care if his family goes hungry. She just wants another truck and doesn’t care who she steps on to get there.”

I knew that this woman had to be the widow. I’d never met her, but I had suspected that she’d be loud and arrogant. I hadn’t been wrong in my assessment.

When we made it to the window, Danvers was standing there arguing with the woman about causing a scene. She looked much younger than I’d expected. She had silver curls, but was in great physical shape. She was thin and looked like she could run a mile if you asked nicely. She was dressed all in black and wore a hat that covered most of her face. I wondered if the hat was chosen out of necessity, or if that was the only hat she had.

“Ma’am, you need to stop making accusations. Maeve Kinkaid has been cleared of any suspicion in this matter. In fact, she’s the one who called the police this morning. Why would she do that if she killed this woman?”

“I don’t know. I just know that she hated my husband—now he’s dead, and it’s that woman’s fault.”

I had a suspicion that she was covering up her appearance for a reason, and I tried to remember if I’d seen her before, but nothing came to mind. It was hard to take her out of the context of the mourning wear though, and I couldn’t be sure of her true appearance.

I wasn’t going to fight with a woman who was grieving—or pretending to be bereft. So I kept to the inside of the truck.

Land gave me a strange look. “You’re not going out to question her?”

I shook my head. “I don’t want them to pay too much attention to this truck. Thomas is working for me, and that could lead to some awkward questions. So I’ll keep a low profile.”

Land laughed. “Okay. Anyway, we should be able to hear everything she’s saying. It’s not like she’s being subtle here.”

I decided to listen again, hoping that I wouldn’t get as frustrated as before. Danvers had asked her something about an alibi and when she’d seen the truck last. “I was at home last night. My husband was just brutally murdered. I took something to help me sleep and went to bed. I was alone—of course. I have no idea what became of the truck. My daughter has been taking care of the business. She called about nine to tell me that it was missing.”

“You answered? We can check up on that.”

“I told you that I was. I told my daughter to call the police and leave me out of it. I don’t want anything to do with it. Or the people involved with it. They caused the death of my husband, and I want to sell it off as soon as I possibly can.”

Land raised an eyebrow at me. He didn’t want to interrupt the eavesdropping, but I too had heard the comment about food trucks for sale. It was an intriguing proposition, even if it would be an expense we couldn’t much afford at the moment. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to forsake my dream wedding dress to save for a fourth truck. My pool of available workers was shrinking, and I was concerned about leaving new employees alone in the trucks during the run-up to the wedding and during our honeymoon.

Mrs. Pohler was continuing. “I can’t understand why someone would want to kill my Ryan, but I want to leave Capital City as soon as humanly possible. There’s nothing to keep me here. So just ask your questions, so we can get this over with.”

Danvers was not talking as loudly as his companion was, so I had trouble hearing what he was saying. My mind was more interested in what the woman had said. She wanted to leave town as soon as she could. Was she being threatened? Was she concerned about her safety? The information about selling the trucks seemed off.

If I were to die, I assumed that Land would continue the business. He wouldn’t be the type to sell the entire operation in the first week after my death. The move seemed precipitative and desperate. After all, Mrs. Pohler would require some form of income after the estate was settled. Did she really think that selling their main source of income was a great idea?

Of course, while I thought this, I had no intention of going out there and discussing the intricacies of estate planning with her. With Danvers’ more level voice, she calmed down somewhat, and the voices died down to a level that I couldn’t hear over the street noises.

Even though I couldn’t hear the answers to the questions, I stayed around a while. However, Danvers seemed quite intent on grilling the woman whose gestures made it clear that she was not going to say much. After a proper interval, I decided to leave.

“I’ll stop over later and let you know what Danvers says,” Land said with a kiss. “I’m sure he’ll come by the truck and let me know how it went. Half the time he wants to bounce ideas off me, and the other half he wants to accuse me of being too involved. Plus, I want to hear his side of what’s going on with Sabine. She’s not returning my calls now. My grandmother had to go to her apartment and check on her. That’s not a good thing.”

I nodded and gave him another kiss. “See you later then.”

I drove the truck back to the secured lot, and then made the daily deposit. Today’s totals were higher than ever. I suspected that part of the reason for the increase in business was the fact that the police had put up tape around the site. Onlookers wanted to know what was going on, and buying coffee or a hot dog made a decent cover for their curiosity.

Since I knew that Land would still be hours from coming over and that Danvers was still at the current crime scene, I decided to pay a visit to Albert Ruschman. He still had not returned my calls, and I wanted to hear his story about his involvement in the counterfeit ring. I had a strong suspicion that his story would be much like the stories of Thomas and Bernadette. He was forced to help out by Pohler for some misdeed that would either put him in jail or doom his future.

I knocked on the front door of the man’s home but got no answer to my pounding. Given that Danvers now had Bernadette’s death on his radar, I knew he would come looking for the other people who had passed the bad twenties soon.

I had an ace in the hole with Thomas, but he’d been little help to me beyond giving me some ideas about the process of the blackmail and the name of this man, who was not answering his phone and now his door.

I had a bad feeling about the matter. He had not answered a call in over 24 hours, and he wasn’t home either, though what appeared to be his car was in the driveway. I walked back over to the newer-model Audi and put my hand on the hood. It was dead cold. I caught myself, and changed it to ice-cold.

I’d tried to find people before, and when I did, they’d been dead. I knew that if I found something incriminating today, I’d call Danvers immediately. The accusations against me earlier made me want to clear this up, and the prospect of perhaps gaining a truck or two had danced around the outside of my thoughts since I’d heard Mrs. Pohler’s intention to sell the trucks.

I stepped between some box hedges and moved close to the windows. Gauzy curtains hung over the panes, so I couldn’t see clearly, but I saw no signs of a struggle and no body on the floor.

I walked around the perimeter of the house and did the same thing to each window that I could find. Nothing. Flat out nothing. The house was immaculate. There were no signs of anything out of place, much less torn up. No signs of luggage, moving or even movement. Apparently Ruschman didn’t own any pets either, since I hadn’t even seen a water or food bowl. That would have allowed me to stake out the place until he came home for the pets, but again, there was not even a goldfish. He’d really left nothing for me to investigate here.

I went back to the Buick and drove home. There was nothing to do except wait, which was not something I excelled at.

It was nearly 8:30 before Land showed up. He’d texted a few times to postpone his arrival. Since I suspected that he was with Detective Danvers, I was more than willing to let it slide. He would have plenty to tell me when he arrived.

I heard a knock on the door and saw Land enter. I’d given him keys to my place, since we were very nearly married at this point; yet he was still gentlemanly enough to knock before entering. I’m not sure what he thought would be going on here—interrogations of suspects or maps with theories about the distances between crimes perhaps, but he was sorely mistaken.

I was merely watching a mindless reality show, putting in time before he arrived.

He raised an eyebrow at me when he saw what was on. “Getting desperate?” he asked.

I nodded and handed him the big bowl of popcorn I’d made. No matter what time he gets off work, Land always seems to want a bit more to eat. I wasn’t sure where he put those calories, but he liked to eat as much as I did.

“So tell me what you found out?” I pleaded after he spent a few minutes chewing placidly.

He gave me a big grin. “Danvers is in a bad place. His chief wants to the turn to the Feds on the counterfeiting aspects, but he doesn’t want to because he knows that they’ll take over and he’ll never clear the murder cases. So he’s pushing ahead as fast as he can, but he’s worried that he’s going to overlook something, and that it will end up being a big mess. If he doesn’t clear the case and the Feds don’t get informed until later, then he’s going to have to take the blame for it.”

“Does he have any leads?” I asked, thinking of Albert Ruschman’s empty house.

“Not really. He is looking at the business dealings of the company. He thinks that some of his shady dealings got him into trouble with the wrong people.”

I shared with Land what Thomas had said about the cheese, the spices and the sprouts.

He made a face. “No wonder that food tasted like crap. I bet he used that cheese the day of the event.”

I looked at him. “That bothered me though. Why would he deliberately use bad cheese on a day when he was trying to attract new customers? It seems counterproductive. You’d want to put your best foot forward that day, and then perhaps use the bad cheese on a daily basis, when you’ve already got their attention.”

Land nodded. “You’ve got a point, but he’s not here, so we just have to guess. I can think of at least three reasons why he would do it.”

I stared at him. “Name two.” His response was so glib that I had to hear his thoughts.

He flashed me a grin and kissed me on the cheek. Then he said, “First, he didn’t have the palate to discern the difference in taste. So he could have used it, thinking that he’d pulled one over on people.”

“But his own employees said that he had to scrape mold off it to use it.”

“Some people don’t care about stuff like that. I doubt that Sabine would think twice about cutting the mold off the bread and making toast. She’s like that.”

I laughed. I just couldn’t see her doing this. She always seemed so sophisticated. “So what’s the second?”

“He didn’t have a choice. Someone else made him use the cheese regardless of what he tasted or wanted.”

I thought that comment over for a minute. “Who do you think could have that kind of power? His wife?”