hours—ever.
Detective Danvers’ voice filled the food truck. I was startled. Not only was Land calling Danvers, but apparently he had the detective’s phone number on his device. They definitely were more involved than I suspected. I didn’t have Danvers’ phone number, and I’d worked on a previous murder case with him. I still had no idea how a Basque chef and a local police detective could know each other. Neither of them had shared that information despite several hints from me.
“Land, what’s up?” the detective said. The use of his first name, almost like a buddy, was surprising as well.
Land cleared his throat and quickly explained the entire situation regarding the DVDs and the timeline. He explained how the studio staff could easily have accomplished both of these while the contestants were less likely to be able to have the time and expertise. He finished, and Danvers was quiet for a few minutes.
Danvers said, “If it’s the staff, I doubt that this is real malice. I’m thinking that this is a huge publicity stunt to get this show in the news. I’m not a big fan of tricks like this, but I’ll tell you, it makes me far less inclined to do anything about it. Their circus, their monkeys. If I got involved, the most likely charges to come out of this would be hauling some of the staff in and threatening to charge them with filing a false report. Given that they brought this to my attention to begin with, I don’t know if it would stick or not.” He sighed deeply. “I wish these reality shows would just go away. It’s all one big publicity grab to become a semi-celebrity.”
Land gave me a broad smirk. Even though I could sympathize with Danvers’ comments, I hadn’t joined the show to get personal notoriety. I had wanted to increase the visibility of the food truck and make enough income from it to support myself without counting on my parents. I’d sat at home on their sofa for too long before my aunt had passed away and left me the truck. My business degree had earned me scant interviews and no offers. I had absolutely no desire to go back to those days.
“So, I’m guessing you’re going to say ‘let it drop’?” Land shot a look at me as he spoke. Subtlety was not a strong suit of his.
Danvers laughed, which wasn’t a good sign. “Well, if it gets too bad, I’d go to the show’s producers and tell them what you told me, but yeah, if this is all smoke and mirrors from the staff, then you don’t have much to go on. You’re going to dump this at their door and then what? Expect them to stop trying to get some buzz going for the show? Good luck with that.”
They talked for a few more minutes, but they gave no clues as to how they knew each other. I figured that Danvers knew he was on speaker and behaved accordingly, which meant nothing too personal would be said. I would be left in the dark as to their connection. I tried not to think about it too much, but when I saw or heard them together, my curiosity was definitely piqued.
Land pressed the disconnect button, and the truck fell silent again. “I don’t suppose you’ll follow that advice, will you?”
I gave him a grin as I put up the window. “To some degree, yes. I will tell the producers what we found and then drop it. We’ll just try to prepare for whatever pranks might occur. I’m going to talk to my mother and see if she can be on-call for any emergency runs that might need to be made to pick up ingredients or whatever.”
He nodded, which was about as much as I typically got from him.
The next six hours were chaos. The promos for the TV show had started to air, and we had many more customers that morning. They all asked about the show and asked about our standing and whether we were still in the competition. I explained to all of them that we had signed a confidentiality agreement that meant we couldn’t say a word about any of it until the episodes aired. Overall, they were understanding about it. However,
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