THE REAL GYRO (Food Truck Mysteries Book 4) by Chloe Kendrick Page B

and went off in search of someone who might care.
    Another woman came into the entryway. She was exotic looking, beautiful with her dark hair and eyes. Her skin was a dusky color that I couldn’t place in terms of nationality. I remembered Danvers talking about Janelle’s involvement with a foreign government, and I wondered if Janelle’s mother hailed from that same nation. It would explain the loyalty to another country.
    “How can I help you?” the woman said. Her voice was husky and soft. I thought there was a trace of an accent, but again I couldn’t place it.
    I went into my spiel for real this time, explaining that I operated a food truck in the same vicinity as Janelle’s truck. I gave her the details about how we wanted to expand our operation and thought that we might be able to make a deal to help both of us. I handed her a business card and a brochure I’d had made to advertise Dogs on the Roll. She scanned the documents quickly and put them on a nearby end table.
    Her eyes said nothing. “You want to buy my daughter’s food truck?”
    I nodded. “Of course, I’d need to go through her financial records, the permits for the truck, and the information on the provenance of the truck first.”
    She nodded. “My husband and I have just been discussing what to do with that boondoggle,” she replied. “The paperwork is all in order. I can give you a copy of the permits and the information on Janelle’s purchase of the truck. I don’t have the numbers yet for the truck since it opened.”
    I nodded. “If I could get those, I could certainly get started on the due diligence for a sale. May I ask if anyone else has approached you yet about the truck?” One thought I’d had was that someone had killed Janelle for the truck. I remembered the card reader who said that the food truck was haunted. I thought now that she’d been close to the truth.
    Mrs. Nolan rolled her eyes. “No. My husband and I weren’t sure that anyone would be interested in it, and we had no desire to continue a food service business.”
    With the contempt in her voice, I wondered if she’d forgotten to whom she was speaking. She was practically insulting me to my face.
    “Excuse me,” she said. “I’ll be right back with the papers.”
    I took the time to snoop around. A long table by the window held a number of family photos, and I studied each one. If the number of photos was any indication, the Nolans were a close family. I saw three photos of Janelle with her parents. Her father had definitely had the dominant genes. He had the same perky smile and blond hair as his daughter.
    There were a number of vacation shots on the table. I scanned through them, trying to identify the location, thinking that it might help me identify the mother’s nationality. A few of the photos had snowcapped mountains in the background, and one photo had a red flag with a single green star in the center—Morocco. A friend of mine had taken a college trip to Morocco during her senior year, and I remembered the rather subdued flag compared to our own. I could ask Land about Morocco and any type of unrest in Northern Africa.
    I hurried to inspect the rest of the photos. Two more of the photos showed another man, who I assumed to be her brother. The man resembled his mother more than his father. He shared the same dusky complexion and dark hair. He wasn’t in the vacation shots, but there was a more formal portrait of the family with him. Janelle appeared to be in high school in that photo, and so I guessed it to be about a decade old.
    The last photo was the one that surprised me. Sam, the man my mother had tried to set me up with, was smack dab in the center of a Nolan family photo. He was smiling with his arm around Janelle. I barely had a chance to react before Janelle’s mother came back into the room. She was holding a manila envelope that bulged with papers. She handed the envelope over to me. “As I said,” she began without preamble,