MURDER IN THE SPOTLIGHT (Food Truck Mysteries Book 2) (14 page)

As they were getting ready to break in, Danvers had strolled around to the back of the house. He talked briefly to the officers and then looked at me. “Friend of the homeowner? Work together?”

I nodded. “Without getting into a ton of detail, my description seemed pretty apt. We do work together —or did until she was eliminated this week.”

Danvers sighed. “I’m afraid that she was eliminated entirely.”

“Me too.” I was so upset that I forgot to mention his lack of morning coffee—or the kiss. At this point, I was just envisioning Tracy tied up in the room with her throat slit. The image kept flashing through my mind, reminding me of the other murders.

The two officers smashed in one of the panes of glass in the backdoor and opened the locks from the inside of the door. They pulled the door open, careful not to touch any of the knobs or metal parts of the door. I knew that a tech crew would not be far behind.

Danvers didn’t even try to stop me from going inside with them. I wasn’t sure why that was. Perhaps a kiss got me some special treatment, or maybe he just wanted to scare me with another dead body. I wasn’t particularly brave about looking in the house. I walked well behind the officers and Danvers. I didn’t want to be the first one to see anything.

In the end, nothing was there. There was no body. There were definite signs of a struggle. Their smart TV was in pieces on the floor with the cables and whatnots still attached. Pillows had been ripped apart. Cushions were destroyed.

Blood marked one wall, and there were impressions of a fist in two places in the plasterboard. Someone had been mad, and people were bleeding. However, there was no sign of Tracey Jones or anyone else in the family. I had trouble believing that they were wealthy enough to leave three unused cars in the drive.

With no one home, Danvers asked a patrol car to drive by on a regular basis to see if someone returned home and find out what was going on. It was odd for me to see the police stymied, but they were. The prankster had turned murderous again, it appeared, and no one knew what to do next.

One of the other detectives said something about going back to the station and trying to find a number for the family or a work number for Mr. Jones. I mentally wished him luck. It would have been far easier to find a work number for Danvers, Mendoza or Kinkaid. Jones would be next to impossible to pin down.

I walked around the yard a few times, and then walked back to where Danvers stood with two other men. I waited until they’d all gone before speaking to Danvers.

“There’s something—” I started to say before he interrupted me.

“Look, I know we kissed last night, and you’re a woman so you’re going to want to talk about it, but now’s not the time. I have a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it.”

I balled my fists at my side. This was exactly the kind of behavior I hated in men. Isn’t Maeve a dear little girl who fits the mold of all young women? She wants to discuss her feelings and decide on a china pattern. “Actually, I was going to say that you
do
have some time. I think that they did leave on their own.” I stared him down, waiting for him to challenge my opinion.

And of course, he did. “Why would you say something like that? There’s blood on the wall. That’s not the sign of a quick trip to Disneyland.”

“The dogs are gone,” I said simply.

“What dogs?” he said. I’d obviously thrown him off-track, since I hadn’t mentioned feelings or spending our lives together. It had been a kiss, and right now, that concern was near the bottom of my list.

“Exactly. The dogs are gone. So either they took the dogs with them, or the dogs went to the kennel. I don’t know many killers who bother to board the dogs so that they don’t go hungry until the corpse is discovered. That seems a bit too thoughtful for my perception. So a member of the family took the dogs away. That means that this is probably not as it appears.” I took a long breath when I finished. I was making deductions based on what I’d seen, but I had no positive proof to back up my suppositions. It was all guesswork on my part.

Danvers was having none of it. “You don’t even know if they have a dog,” he replied. “What makes you think that they have a dog?”

I looked at him, giving him the ‘simple child’ look he’d bestowed upon me earlier. There’s nothing I like more than treating others how they’ve treated me. It’s close to the Golden Rule. “They have a dog. I’m not sure exactly what breed—but if I had to guess, I’d say it was a Lab or a Retriever.”

Danvers put his hands on his hips and looked at me, his mouth slightly open. “You’re quite the little Sherlock today, aren’t you? And how do you know the type of dog they have when the dog isn’t even here?”

I nodded. “I saw the dog poop in the studio. I got a good long look at it. It’s bigger than a little dog’s would be. My mother and her friends all like the little dogs, the ones that can sit on your lap, and if you’re around dogs very much, you know the size of their poop. That’s just the way it is. The poop at the studio was bigger than that. So I’m guessing it would be the next size up of breed, and those two are pretty popular.”

I was expecting another rant, but instead Danvers laughed. “Okay, you’ve got me there. Assuming that Tracy Jones put the poop in her box, then she likely has a dog of that size. It’s not like you go next door to the neighbor’s house and ask for a cup of dog crap.”

“You’re still not sure of that?” I asked. I was fairly certain at this point that Tracy had pranked herself. That still left me with two questions about the event that I couldn’t answer. The first was why the prankster had not targeted her at all. Everyone else had been hit, but Tracy Jones had remained unscathed. Why?

The other thing that I wasn’t sure about was the fact that Jones had been given such an easy ingredient to use. The show had taken pains with the rest of us to ensure that we had something that would stretch us and challenge us to add this ingredient. Jones had received an ingredient that she likely was already using. The ease of the challenge for her had been a gift from the judges, though she’d still managed to blow it. This all tied back to the show and the producers, who I suspected were in some way involved with the things going on.

Danvers started talking and I snapped back to the conversation. “No, I’m not sure about that. It seems too pat to blame her, and exactly what did she hope to gain from doing something like that. It was so amateurish.”

I nodded. “I agree. The prankster has been anything but sloppy in his or her work. That’s why this very public prank was out of character.”

“What do you mean public?” he asked.

“Look,” I started to explain, feeling better that I was schooling the teacher here, “none of the pranks to date were things that would be picked up on the air. The forgotten ingredients would be blamed on the truck owners. The notes to the contestants would never air. The pee on our prize. None of the viewing audience would ever see a thing. The poop in the ingredient box was different. If they wanted a shot of Tracy getting her ingredient, they’d either have to use the shot they had or they’d have to re-film the whole thing. It all worked in favor of the show’s producers, which is one reason I think they’re involved with the pranks. They’re heightening the tension but not at the expense of the show. Tracy’s prank meant that they would have to re-film, which is an expense to the show.”

“So you’re thinking that the producers of the show wanted to kill Marsha and that Annabella got in the way?” Danvers eyed me as he asked the question.

“It has to be,” I replied. “She had to come across something that they didn’t want to be exposed. So she was killed to keep their secret. I can’t imagine anyone who would want to kill Annabella.”

“Except her sister. That woman has been calling daily to get updates from us. I really think she wants a break in the case so she can issue a press release and get her name in the news some more. I’ve never seen anyone quite so enamored of her own reputation.”

I thought about it, but I wasn’t sure. Rochelle was pushy, but I couldn’t imagine her killing her own sister just to get on the show. It was more than a little far-fetched, given that she wouldn’t even know if the producers would go for that.

Danvers looked around the scene. “I think we’re about done here, so you can head out.”

I shook my head. “I want to prove something to you.” I pointed at the house. “Let me find proof of a dog, and then we can go.”

He laughed. “You’re obsessed with this pooch. Fine, I’ll let you look around for any signs of a pet, but you can’t touch anything in the house. It’s a possible crime scene.”

We walked back to the back door, which had been sealed. Danvers broke the tape and entered first. I followed along behind him. The house was silent except for our footsteps. I looked in the kitchen for signs of dog food, but nothing was there. I didn’t see any signs of a water bowl. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there wasn’t a dog here. I began to doubt my theory when we walked past a collage of photos for the family.

In one of the center photos, a recent shot of the family, there was a Chocolate Lab. Their perfect Jones children had their arms around it, and Tracy was standing behind the group. I pointed to it and grinned. The dog was real. After that, we found a leash by the front door, connected to a body harness. So the dog did live there, but was gone at the moment.

I left the house feeling vindicated. Danvers indicated that he’d be asking the neighbors if they knew of any trips or family members that the Jones might be visiting. I didn’t tell him, but I was going to be canvasing all the local kennels to see if a Chocolate Lab was there.

I was up early the next day and had the food truck at our site before Land arrived. It was a rare thing, but I was in a hurry today. I logically knew that I wouldn’t get there any faster by arriving here early, but I needed to keep busy. Yesterday’s crime scenes had made me remember all too vividly the murder scenes from last week. It had made it hard for me to go to sleep last night, and my dreams were more blood thirsty than a Quentin Tarantino movie.

I had already counted the money and started the coffee before he stepped inside the food truck. “What’s up with you?” he said.

“Couldn’t sleep,” I responded, truthfully if not completely. “I thought it would be easier if I was just working.”

“Did you see Tracy Jones yesterday?” he asked, eyeing me as he spoke. I hadn’t seen anything on the news about the missing Jones family, but if he knew about Danvers’ visit to my house, then I wasn’t sure what he’d heard from Danvers about the disappearance too. “What did she have to say?”

I explained the entire situation to him from seeing the destruction to the Jones home to finding the photos of the dog. I poured myself a cup of coffee after that and leaned back against the counter.

“So you’re going to try to find that dog today, aren’t you?” Land said with a smile. I wasn’t sure why he was happy about this. Perhaps it was the fact that I was going to go behind Danvers’ back to get some evidence. In any case, he was practically beaming about it.

“After work, yeah. I’ve already got my lie picked out and everything.” I raised an eyebrow to let him know that I had put some thought into this.

“You could just wait until tomorrow. I got a call last night that they’ve pushed up the filming schedule. They want to finish this season up as fast as they can so that they can be done with it. The murders seem to have put a damper on things.” Land went back to his chopping as I thought about what he’d said. A shortened filming schedule meant that we’d be losing more days of work in a shorter period of time. That would definitely hurt our bottom line here. We were working on a tight budget as it was.

It would also give us less time to finish any investigation. The producers had indicated that the next season would take place on the East Coast, so they’d be miles away in a matter of days rather than weeks. It heightened the sense of urgency in getting this thing solved. More filming days would mean that I wouldn’t have the time to poke into the matter, so nothing would be solved.

I wondered if Danvers knew about the new filming schedule. Honestly, it wasn’t my problem. The producers would have to talk to the Capital City police about leaving. I remembered all those shows where the police told suspects not to leave town. I wondered if they did that in real life.

The shift went quickly, more so than I’d hoped. We had a good day. When I counted the receipts for the day, I was pleased to see that we’d set a new record for daily sales. The show, for all its drawbacks, had proved to be a positive for business. I wondered if perhaps a less scrupulous food truck owner would consider adding drama to the show just to get more sales for themselves. People had done worse things in the name of business. Some corporations killed thousands—two people was a drop in the bucket compared to that.

Land offered to take the food truck back to the secured lot for me. In that way, I could start earlier on the phone calls and perhaps catch the kennel open before they closed for the evening. I had no idea how long a kennel was open. I knew that the dogs were there 24 hours a day, but I didn’t know about the staff. They might not answer the phone after a certain point in the evening.

I walked across the street and down the block to Maple. I planned to get a cab to the secured lot or perhaps home after I’d found the dog. There was no question in my mind that I would find the dog. I just had to persevere in order to one up the police.