MURDER TO GO (Food Truck Mysteries Book 1) (6 page)

I thought of my parents who would have made a fuss and pampered me. However, I wasn’t in that kind of mood. I wanted to get even with whoever did this to me. I pulled out my phone and called Land. We still had an hour to go before the lunch crowd started which should give him enough time to take me home and return to work the lunch shift alone. I knew he wouldn’t be happy about the situation, but I hadn’t wanted this either. His arrogance would cause him to bristle at the thought of helping the boss, and I couldn’t say that I blamed him. I would have complained if the roles were reversed.

Land arrived about five minutes later. He nodded at Danvers, but said nothing. He helped me up and managed to get me to his car without incident, though my knees nearly buckled once. I closed my eyes on the drive home but my chef and co-worker kept talking to me, following the orders to keep me awake. He rambled on about his life in the Basque region, his amona and other details of his life. Even though I knew he was doing this just as a precaution, I enjoyed hearing more about him. He almost felt like a human being by the time I opened my eyes.

Until I saw where we were.

Land had driven me to my parents’ house. “How did you even know where to go?” I practically shouted at him. “I said I wanted to go home.” I felt betrayed and stupid, because for a few minutes, I’d actually enjoyed his company.

He nodded and smiled at me. “And you wouldn’t have done anything that the EMT told you to do. This way I can be certain you’re in good hands. And to answer your question, Alice had me drop off things to your parents from time to time, so I’ve been here plenty of times. You were probably just too busy sleeping on the sofa to notice.”

The dig hurt worse than my head—the less-than-subtle reminder that he’d been working at Dogs on the Roll longer than I had—and the implication that he had more right to it than me.

I focused on getting out of the car and walking to the door, which was far more difficult than it sounded. Land had to steady me once, which I bitterly resented given his behavior and comments. I didn’t want any help from that man.

My mother met me at the door. I wasn’t sure when he had called her, but I was certain that my mother had all the details of the incident at hand. She wore her best ‘I’m worried’ look, and I knew she likely had food already cooking for my stay. At least Land had given me the incentive to get well as fast as possible.

“Baby, come to mommy,” she said with open arms. I closed my eyes for a second, and then held my arms out to her. I felt her strong embrace. Land let go of me, but I could still feel his warmth against my skin. I was certain that the sensation was the result of my head injury and nothing more.

My mother led me into the living room. Land had not come in with her, and when I slowly turned my head to look out the window, his car had vanished. In all fairness, he did have to run the food truck singlehandedly today, but I still felt ticked that he’d left me here and skipped out without a word.

My mother guided me to my father’s recliner. I knew it had to be serious if she was allowing me to sit in my dad’s space. He’d only let a few people sit there and then only in the most dire of circumstances. She brought me a mug of hot tea that had presumably been steeping since she’d gotten the call about me.

I rested in the chair until I finished telling the story to my mother. She gasped at the part where I saw my second headless body. She fetched a second cup of tea, which was dark and hot. I knew she was pumping me full of caffeine as well as showing concern. I would have to be up quite a few hours before I could sleep soundly. More than anything else, I resented the killer for keeping me up all night.

My mom turned on the television, but I wasn’t in the mood. It was not even noon yet and the channel guide just showed shopping networks and old sitcoms. I got up slowly and walked to a set of shelves in the room. “Hey, Mom. Where did you get all these books?”

I was reading the titles, none of which sounded like my parents’ preferences. There were books by Proust, Faulkner and D.H. Lawrence on the shelves. This felt more like a high school English class than the family library. Mostly my mom’s tastes went toward romance and mystery. My dad rarely read, and when he did, it was something sports related like a baseball player’s biography. I was the eclectic one, mixing Agatha Christie and Edmund Crispin with Barbara Cartland and Rebecca Chance, and then throwing in a Hemingway for fun. I found a few romance novels stuffed in the corner of the bottom shelf, but they now seemed out of place with the classics.

My mother came back into the room, pulled out a book and looked at it fondly. “This was part of your Aunt Alice’s library. I couldn’t bear to part with them. She was so fond of her books. Sometimes I swear that she treated them like children. So I put them in with our books.”

She handed the book to me. “Alice would sit and read whenever she had a chance. She always did.”

I did too. I opened the copy of Catch-22 my mother had given me and started reading. My mother made frequent trips in to see if I’d fallen asleep, but I hadn’t. I was just quietly reading, which was something of a change.

I was nearly done with the book when I found a piece of paper tucked between the pages. At first, I just assumed that it was a bookmark, a remnant of something left over from Alice’s last reading of the book. However, on closer inspection, the paper had writing on it. I opened the folded page and started to read.

“I, Alice James, being of sound mind and body…”

I stopped. I knew what this was immediately. My aunt had left a will in her book, quite an odd place to keep one of her most valuable documents; but Alice had always been her own woman. I would not have expected her to do things the normal way.

I read through the rest of the document. Allowing for a few sundry bequests, she’d left the food truck to Land Mendoza and I received the rest of the estate. So Land had been telling the truth about the food truck. I wondered why she’d changed her mind to leave it to me.

I had a thought, and checked the date next to Alice’s signature at the bottom of the page. It was May 23
rd
, two days before her death and two months after the will which had been probated in court. This will had been written in her own hand, which looked familiar to me, but I wasn’t an expert. Two witnesses had signed the document as well, though I didn’t recognize either of them as being people I’d met through Alice. They were strangers to me.

I called my mother, who rushed into the room, thinking that I was having a brain hemorrhage or something similar.

I showed her the document and explained the situation with the dates. “What’s up with that? What do we do?” I asked, not sure what the process involved.

“Burn it,” my mother said simply. “Burn it and forget you ever saw this.”

I was shocked to say the least. My mother was always a big proponent of doing things by the book. She always paid her parking meters and never took two spots in the mall parking lot. Now she was suddenly advocating that I burn a legal document and keep what wasn’t mine.

“Why would you say that?” I had to wonder if my mother was just reacting this way because a lack of income would mean that I’d have to move back in with her. Did my own apartment mean so much to her that she would break the law for it? Or was she thinking that a court battle would burn up the small amount of savings I’d stored up?

“This is only going to cause more trouble. You’ve got enough trouble with the food truck, and you don’t need any more. If people think that you got it illegally, things will only be worse. I wish Alice had left you some books and some cash, like a normal person,” my mother said with some bitterness.

I had to admit that she was right on one count. I was already suspected of killing three people. I really didn’t need to add thief to the list. I had enough problems already.

However, as much as I wanted to ignore my problems, I couldn’t. I had loved Aunt Alice, and if she’d really wanted to leave the truck to Land, I would see that it was done. This didn’t make me a saint or a martyr. I was just someone who wanted to do right by my family.

Besides, I wasn’t familiar with the value of the entire estate. While the truck would be a business that would provide me with an income for years, a bequest of the residual estate could be a large sum of money as well. That might be enough cash flow to allow me to keep my apartment and perhaps even buy a car that was made in this century. The thought cheered me.

Even fuzzy-brained as I was, I won the argument with my mom. She used some very colorful language to describe her relatives, but she agreed that she wanted to see her sister’s wishes carried out. She gave me some more soup, and I finished my novel.

The next morning, I felt better. I’d already talked to Land and told him that I wouldn’t be in for the morning shift, but I would try to be there for lunch. I didn’t tell him that I might not be in for lunch, if it meant working for him. There were limits to my altruism, and working for Land Mendoza went way beyond what I would do for Alice.

I called Alice’s lawyer. I’d met him once at the reading of the will, but I’d saved his business card and called him for an appointment that morning. There was no way that I could possibly ask him about a new will over the phone.

Fortunately, he was available first thing, and I managed to get a shower without bothering the lump on the back of my head. It had stopped throbbing and didn’t bother me unless I rested my head on something. It didn’t happen often, but each time was enough to make me swear that I wouldn’t do it again.

He met me at the door to his office. He was a wizened little man who had a slight hunch to his posture. Mr. Huff was far beyond his prime, and I wondered if he’d known Alice growing up, since she remained a client even though he had semi-retired by the time he read the will to the family.

“What can I do for you?” the little lawyer asked as he made his way to his desk chair. He sat down with a squeak, and I blamed it on the chair out of courtesy.

I stammered for a few seconds, not sure how to begin. Finally, I just took the paper out of my pocket and handed it to him.

He read the paper through at least three times before he spoke. “This is quite a problem. This is why I always encouraged your aunt to tell me about the changes she made to her will.”

“Did she make many?” I blurted out, finally speaking.

“I wouldn’t say many, but regularly, yes. Some of the charities changed, and some of the people to whom she left bequests passed away, so she removed them from the will. You were always the primary beneficiary. However, this is a major alteration from the last will that I drew up for her, and this will cause some issues.” His face looked pained, as if he’d found a bug in his coffee. I couldn’t blame him.

“What’s the first step in this?” I asked, wondering how long I’d get to draw an income from the food truck.

He cleared his throat. “The first step will be to determine the authenticity of the will. It was handwritten and signed by two witnesses, which is fine, but without the testator to confirm the contents of the will, I will need to speak with the witnesses and perhaps go as far as to conduct a handwriting analysis. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but it’s a possibility.”

“But it was found in her book,” I said, realizing after the words were out how silly that sounded. I flashed back to the scene in my own house where someone had broken in and apparently not taken anything. Perhaps something similar had happened at my parents’ home so that the will could be planted.

“Nevertheless, it will need to be checked out. It will be in your favor that you turned this in. You will materially lose money based on this new will, so you have little motive to forge it or turn it in to me. It speaks to your honesty that you brought it to me so quickly.” He gave me a smile that was the equivalent of a pat on the head. It was equal parts benevolence and patronizing.

“So what’s to be done with the truck until this is straightened out?” I asked. I wondered if Land would be my boss at lunch, in which case, I’d quit immediately and get some lunch. I had no desire to work for him.

“I would just maintain the status quo until I get back to you with an answer,” he said. “I don’t know how exactly this will play out, so we need to take a cautious approach.”

“Thank you,” I said, standing up.

“While you’re here, I would be remiss if I didn’t suggest that you make your own will as well. You have assets now, and you should be specific about how you wish them to be distributed.”

Thinking of my meager possessions, I told him that I’d leave Dogs on the Roll to Land and the rest to my parents. He nodded, taking a few notes. “I’ll have this done for you in a few days. I’ll call then.”

I nodded and was kindly shuffled out of the office. I felt very ambivalent about going to work after that. The long hours and the hard work hadn’t paid off for me. They’d only served to get me a bump on the head and a step down in the will; not exactly the American dream.

I forced myself to go to the truck though. I put on a smile and worked through the lunch shift. Land actually came up to the window and gave me a couple of breaks so that I didn’t have to stand on my feet for two hours straight. It was almost charming and kind of him and I would have felt charitable had I not known that the truck would likely be his in a few days.

When I finished counting the receipts, the till from lunch was even better than the day before. The truck was making money in its new location. I had no worries as long as the spot remained mine. I second-guessed my decision about going to Mr. Huff with the newly discovered will. I kept thinking of him telling me that not many people would have brought in the new will, and then I remembered my mother telling me to burn it. She’d be in the category of people who would have let things be.

When the truck was cleaned and the money had been bagged for the bank, I called Land over to where I was sitting. Even though I should have gone to him, I was still feeling the effects of the concussion. He approached me cautiously, as if I were an animal that might bite him.

I held out a copy of the will I’d made. I’d actually made several copies of the document before I had visited Mr. Huff. I wanted to have a copy for Land to have, and then I wanted a copy so that I could follow up on the witnesses and try to find out any information I could on the changes to the will. If Alice had changed her mind about the distribution of her property, there had to be a reason for her decision. I just wished that she would have told me of her reasons rather than letting me find out this way. I wondered again, what would have happened if I’d not been knocked on the head and read the copy of
Catch-22
. The food truck would have belonged to me indefinitely. The whole incident seemed so random.

“Wow,” he said after reading the will for the third time. “Just wow.”

“That’s what I said,” I admitted. “It’s something of a shock, isn’t it?”

“I told you that she’d left it to me. She told me that it was mine if I still worked here when she passed away.” Land beamed like a school kid with a new toy. Part of me wanted to smack him, but I knew that if the roles were reversed, I would be crowing too.

“Yeah, well, I thought I’d show you this. Mr. Huff will probably be contacting you soon enough to tell you the details.” I didn’t look at him as I spoke. I didn’t want to see the triumph in his eyes. I had to say that the loss of Dogs on the Roll bothered me more than I’d thought it would. I would miss the autonomy that its income gave me, and I would miss the connection to my aunt. Not to mention that I would likely have to relinquish the little bit of freedom I had. I would go back to sitting on the couch and watching crime dramas. Not the life I’d dreamed I would have after college.

I got up to leave and Land put a hand on my shoulder. “Thank you. I know how easily you could have suppressed this, but you didn’t. You’re a good woman, like your aunt.” He gave me a smile and squeezed my shoulder.

Maybe it was the concussion, but a small jolt of electricity shot through my arm when he squeezed. I closed my eyes. The last thing I needed was an unwanted attraction to Lander Mendoza, and the second to last thing I needed was for him to see me cry. I took a deep breath, and started to leave again.

“Where are you going? I hope you’re going straight home. You need the rest,” he said with concern. He was doing a pretty good job of pretending to care about me. I’m not sure I could have done the same if the circumstances were reversed.

“Actually, after I stop at the bank, I’m going to go talk to one of the witnesses of the will. I want to find out more about how this came to be. I have to wonder if I did something that pissed my aunt off so that I didn’t get the food truck.” My head did hurt, and I dearly would have loved a nap, but I knew I had to learn what had happened with the will. The situation, as it stood, was unfinished. I wanted to learn more about why my aunt had no longer thought me fit to run her food truck.

Land’s entire face changed in a moment. The compassion from a minute ago was gone, and a flash of rage showed in his dark brown eyes. “You’re going to go and get them to lie, aren’t you? You want to talk them into saying that the will was a phony.”

Despite my slight headache, I shouted back. “That’s not true at all. Why would I talk them out of it when I could have just as easily destroyed the will? Explain that.” Shouting did nothing to help my head, and the pounding intensified with my anger.

Land began to say something and then closed his mouth. “Fine, you can go talk to these people, but I’m coming with you.” He crossed his arms over his chest like this was the end of the discussion. It might be in his culture, but I was having none of it.

I thought about pointing out that I had my own car and could go any time that I wanted, but I frankly was glad to have a companion on the trip if it meant that he could drive. Yesterday’s events had left me wan, and while I wanted to resolve this, I was equally glad that someone else would be driving me to that resolution.

We hit the bank and then I gave Land the address I’d Googled for the first witness to the will. He programmed it into his Camaro’s GPS, and with explicit instructions, we headed to the witness’ house.

Land pulled his Camaro into a parallel parking spot with more aplomb and more engine revving that I would have thought possible. He was giving me the full macho treatment with commands and loud cars. He killed the engine and turned to look at me. We hadn’t spoken much on the way there. I wanted to rest and saw no reason to resume the fight between us.

“Well?” he asked.

“With a concussion, I’m not moving as fast as you’d like? Get over it. If you’re coming with me, then I would suggest you don’t look like you’re going to try to kill the witness. That won’t make things any easier.”

My last statement seemed to sink in, and he took a deep breath. “Fine. I’ll let you do the talking.”

I nodded at this concession and opened the door. I headed up the walkway and knocked on the door. If my livelihood was at stake, then I wasn’t wasting any time on reflection. I wanted action.

A tiny, older woman answered the door. She could have been Mr. Huff’s older sister. Since I was looking for a Mr. Jonathan Jones, I deduced that this was not the right person. Not even a concussion slows my intuition. “Uh, hi, I was looking for a Mr. Jones. Do I have the right house?”

The woman looked for a moment as though she might cry. I knew the feeling too well. “That was my brother. He passed away recently.”

My first thought was of another headless corpse, and my knees nearly gave out as my mind flashed images of Fred Samples’ head again. Land steadied me with a hand on my arm, and I cursed myself that I would feel so weak in front of the enemy. I was bound and determined not to show any weakness in case it came to a war regarding the food truck. I did not want to be the fainting maiden to his macho conqueror.

“I don’t mean to sound crass, but could you tell me when this was? I’m not trying to pry, but he was involved in witnessing a will for my late aunt, and all the help you could give us would be greatly appreciated. The results make a lot of difference to many people.” I gave her a smile to show that I meant well.

She took a deep breath, as if she needed more oxygen to get through this interview. “Three weeks ago. If it’s important to people, then Jonathan would want me to help. He was very kind that way.”

“Was his passing—expected?” I asked. I hated talking about death. While I’d been raised to be direct in my discussions, my mother dealt with euphemisms when it came to death. These were the most intense moments of our lives and we were all too scared to confront it head on. I have wished at times that we were back in the days when Uncle Bob’s dead body was put in the dining room for the wake. It was both cathartic and no-nonsense. Death was all around us and we should be frank in dealing with it.

“As much as any death can be. He was 92 when he passed. He’d had congestive heart failure for years, so he knew that his time was short.”

Everyone else would have likely known his time was short as well. So, if Alice wanted to choose a person to witness a will, why would she choose someone who wouldn’t be around to testify about it in court? Given that the first witness had already passed, as well as my aunt, I was beginning to get a suspicion that this will would not easily be proved or disproved. If the goal was to muddy the waters here, someone was doing a damned good job of it. I still had no idea why anyone would
want
to muddy the waters. What would they hope to gain? If the will was a fake, who benefited from the results?

We mumbled some more platitudes and left the woman alone. We were in the car before Land spoke again. “It’s going to be like this, eh?”

I looked at him. I couldn’t tell if that comment had been a slur against me, or just life in general. “I hadn’t expected to need it, but I have the address for the other witness, too. Let’s try him.”

Land plugged the address into his GPS and we started across town. I didn’t speak, hoping that Land would think that I was just too tired to converse. However, my mind was running fast. I had a few ideas about the dead witness and the new will that were slowly percolating. I didn’t want to say anything to Land, mainly because I didn’t want another argument.