Read Online FIVE WILL GET YOU TWENTY (Food Truck Mysteries Book 9) by Chloe Kendrick - Free Book Online

that Ryan Pohler blackmailed you into passing bad bills?” Sabine was out of her seat and standing by the table now. I made a face at her, trying to tell her to settle down, but she ignored it or didn’t understand it.
    “Yes, he did.”
    The curious part of me would really have liked to have learned what the food truck owner had on her, but honestly that didn’t seem relevant to what we were discussing. Plus, I doubted that she would spill her darkest secrets to strangers. “How did you two know each other?” I asked instead, thinking that we might be able to trace the other people who passed the twenties in the same way.
    She took a deep breath, obviously relieved that we weren’t going to pursue questions about the source of the blackmail. Sensing that the interview was going to be a bit more low-key, Sabine took her seat again.
    “We go way back. I knew his kids in high school. I hadn’t heard from him in years, and then all of a sudden, he contacted me.”
    I nodded. I found that it was best to let the other person talk as they wanted to when telling an embarrassing or painful story.
    “He told me that he knew this secret about me, and that unless I did him a few favors, he would make it public.” She gulped as she finished the sentence.
    I avoided my questions about the secret. My desire to solve the case trumped my nosiness. “What type of favors?”
    She drew another deep breath as if sharing this was depleting her oxygen supply. “Well, at first, I thought it was going to be sexual in nature, but it wasn’t. I had to break into a food truck—not yours—and steal supplies so that they couldn’t open the next day. After that, he had me run errands for him, and lately, he’s been having me pass phony money. He told me that it was perfectly harmless, but after I passed the second twenty to your food truck, I had this sickening feeling that I was going to get caught. Ryan was so cavalier about it. Going to the same place all the time, and not taking any precautions. So I looked up the punishment for counterfeiting, and it was pretty steep. I was working up my nerve to tell him to forget it when I heard he was dead.”
    “Um, going back to the errands, what types of things did he have you doing?” While it seemed nit-picky, I wondered why he would have her do these things. If the purpose of blackmailing her was to put some distance between him and any actual felonies, then something had to be wrong about the errands she was running.
    “The usual stuff. I mailed some packages, picked up some supplies for the food truck, and made the bank deposits.” She looked relieved to be off of the shaky ground of criminal activities. “If he thought of it, he probably would have had me clean his cars and wash his windows. It was mostly about a power trip with him. He didn’t need the help. He wanted to get off on having someone do his bidding.”
    “Did you ever meet anyone else who was working for Pohler?” Sabine chimed in with the question. I guessed that she’d recovered from her disappointment that we weren’t going to delve into Bernadette’s life story.
    “I met a guy once, tall, dark, good-looking. He met Ryan at the restaurant where I always met him. This guy was just leaving when I got there.” Her description matched the person Carter and I had seen, the one he’d called QT. I decided that Sabine would have to go back and charm the wait staff one more time to find out who this man was. “I don’t know his name. Ryan made a point of not introducing us, though it was obvious that we were both there for the same reasons.”
    “Anyone else?” I asked, thinking that five bills had been passed, which left three people unidentified. Pohler could have had family members launder the bills or more acquaintances without a choice in the matter. The latter seemed more likely since it couldn’t be traced back as easily to him, and he likely didn’t care if the blackmail victims had to pay a price for