been fabricated, or she was desperate enough to hurt my business that she would take a loss. I wondered where she could get the money to sustain a loss like that. Could she have gone back to her investor, or would it come out of her own pocket?
I ran through the expenses as well. I wanted to see if there were any areas where I could combine this truck’s expenses with my own to make us work more efficiently. I highlighted a few areas where our use of onions, buns and other ingredients could be combined for a potential savings. I also ran through Janelle’s expenses where she might have been paying too much for a service. There was only one, her parking costs were far higher than mine were. I marked that and went back to the spreadsheets.
I stopped as I noticed an unexplained expense. It appeared to be a monthly payment to an unlabeled bank account. There was no explanation given or any name provided for the account, just an account number where $400 disappeared to every month. I did mark that for Danvers, thinking that he would be a better choice to find out information about electronic transfers than I would.
I puzzled over this for a moment. I thought that this incident showed that Janelle’s parents were likely out of the running for the killer. They would not have provided any information to me about the food truck that might implicate their family in any way. I suspected that this bank transfer was related to her other occupation as spy. Was she helping to fund the groups that wanted to hurt Algeria?
I had no idea if the crime was personal or due to her involvement in espionage. That gave me two sets of suspects to investigate. I thought about this for a while, and decided that I would try to focus on the personal side of the murder. To be blunt, I had no way of finding out information on the passing of documents and material from people in the US to other countries. It wasn’t possible. I didn’t have the contacts or the network to do so.
Therefore, I decided to concentrate on the personal matters. These were things that I knew and could get my hands on. I had already found an ex-boyfriend in Sam, and hopefully cleared the parents of being involved in the espionage work. I was making good progress in that arena. So I knew which path to take.
The only bad thing about that path was that it included how someone got in and out of the food truck without leaving an open exit from the truck. I would have to find out if there was only the one set of keys or if copies had been made. I would only be able to trace if Janelle had had keys made, not where they ended up, but that would be a start. If someone had made a set of keys without her knowledge or permission, that would be another matter entirely. I would have no way of telling that. Capital City had far too many locksmiths for me to hunt down an unknown person’s activity with one particular locksmith.
If the food truck had not been locked by the keys on the way out, then I was stymied. There were only a few means of egress from a food truck: the back door, the door to the cab and the serving window. The two doors had been locked from the inside, and the window had been chained on the inside. So it boiled down to either having keys or a secret way out of the truck. I had to say that even though I was a bit shaken from my earlier encounter, there was a small thrill at the thought of a secret passage out of the truck. It sounded so mysterious and adventurous.
Carter showed up the next morning. I hadn’t really thought of a way to broach the topic of Janelle with him again. I knew of no way to ask Carter why he hadn’t been photographed by the police, speaking to a known courier. If he was involved, he would lie about it. If he wasn’t involved, ultimately he would have no idea. In either case, I would be alerting him to the fact that the police had been monitoring Janelle’s truck and that I had him labeled as suspicious.
I did make a note to ask the
I ran through the expenses as well. I wanted to see if there were any areas where I could combine this truck’s expenses with my own to make us work more efficiently. I highlighted a few areas where our use of onions, buns and other ingredients could be combined for a potential savings. I also ran through Janelle’s expenses where she might have been paying too much for a service. There was only one, her parking costs were far higher than mine were. I marked that and went back to the spreadsheets.
I stopped as I noticed an unexplained expense. It appeared to be a monthly payment to an unlabeled bank account. There was no explanation given or any name provided for the account, just an account number where $400 disappeared to every month. I did mark that for Danvers, thinking that he would be a better choice to find out information about electronic transfers than I would.
I puzzled over this for a moment. I thought that this incident showed that Janelle’s parents were likely out of the running for the killer. They would not have provided any information to me about the food truck that might implicate their family in any way. I suspected that this bank transfer was related to her other occupation as spy. Was she helping to fund the groups that wanted to hurt Algeria?
I had no idea if the crime was personal or due to her involvement in espionage. That gave me two sets of suspects to investigate. I thought about this for a while, and decided that I would try to focus on the personal side of the murder. To be blunt, I had no way of finding out information on the passing of documents and material from people in the US to other countries. It wasn’t possible. I didn’t have the contacts or the network to do so.
Therefore, I decided to concentrate on the personal matters. These were things that I knew and could get my hands on. I had already found an ex-boyfriend in Sam, and hopefully cleared the parents of being involved in the espionage work. I was making good progress in that arena. So I knew which path to take.
The only bad thing about that path was that it included how someone got in and out of the food truck without leaving an open exit from the truck. I would have to find out if there was only the one set of keys or if copies had been made. I would only be able to trace if Janelle had had keys made, not where they ended up, but that would be a start. If someone had made a set of keys without her knowledge or permission, that would be another matter entirely. I would have no way of telling that. Capital City had far too many locksmiths for me to hunt down an unknown person’s activity with one particular locksmith.
If the food truck had not been locked by the keys on the way out, then I was stymied. There were only a few means of egress from a food truck: the back door, the door to the cab and the serving window. The two doors had been locked from the inside, and the window had been chained on the inside. So it boiled down to either having keys or a secret way out of the truck. I had to say that even though I was a bit shaken from my earlier encounter, there was a small thrill at the thought of a secret passage out of the truck. It sounded so mysterious and adventurous.
Carter showed up the next morning. I hadn’t really thought of a way to broach the topic of Janelle with him again. I knew of no way to ask Carter why he hadn’t been photographed by the police, speaking to a known courier. If he was involved, he would lie about it. If he wasn’t involved, ultimately he would have no idea. In either case, I would be alerting him to the fact that the police had been monitoring Janelle’s truck and that I had him labeled as suspicious.
I did make a note to ask the
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