Free FIVE WILL GET YOU TWENTY (Food Truck Mysteries Book 9) by Chloe Kendrick Page B

decision had not hurt the business.
    On the way out, he gave me a kiss that felt much more like what I was used to. I made it back to Dogs on the Roll with wobbly knees. I did my normal cleanup schedule first, counting money and prepping the coffee before I started on cleaning the kitchen and prep area. I was elbow deep in suds when I heard a knock at the door.
    I shook off some of the suds and opened the door. I was sure that my expression said everything that I was thinking at that moment. There in front of me, applying for a new job was the guy that Carter had labeled QT. Up close, he was even better looking with his dark hair brushed away from his face and a thin, lean body. I would definitely have been interested if I wasn’t so clearly involved.
    “You,” I said, grabbing his arm before he could sprint off again. I pulled him into the truck, and he came willingly, not wanting to be seen by the bystanders. This time I would scream my head off if he ran again, and his chances of getting away were far slimmer than the other day.
    “Look, it’s not what you think,” he said. “I can explain everything. I don’t want any trouble.” He looked as if he might cry.
    I stood there with my arms crossed and standing in front of the door. His options were limited. “I was forced to pass that bad money. I didn’t want to do it, but Ryan Pohler made me.”
    “But he was your boss?” I said, wondering why a person would blackmail an employee. It didn’t seem like the way to get the best from them. It was another matter to blackmail someone you knew vaguely as was the case with Bernadette.
    “Yeah,” the man agreed, “I’d worked there about a year before he did this, but that didn’t stop him from being a jerk. He pulled me aside one day and told me that I was going to go to Taco Inferno and buy things with money he’d given me. I was worried from the beginning. I thought he might to try to say that he found something in the tacos, but I saw him give someone else money too, and I knew that couldn’t be the case. No one would buy all that food and expect people to believe that one menu item was tainted.”
    I thought of some of the hoaxes over the years with restaurants. Most of them had been shown to be false, but they always caused a big stink when they happened. A major chain like Wendy’s or MacDonald’s could likely weather such a storm. I wasn’t sure that a food truck could take a blow like that. “So why was he doing it?” I asked, wondering why my truck had been singled out in Capital City.
    The man shrugged. “I don’t know. It wasn’t like I was in a place where I could ask. He was in charge, and I was the worker.”
    “But he was asking you to do something illegal? Why not just quit?” I asked. I thought I already knew the answer to my question after talking to Bernadette.
    “He was blackmailing me. He told me that I’d either do what he said or…” Thomas’ words trailed off. Given the way he’d been flirting with Carter, I had a good idea of what the hidden subject was. I decided to leave it for now. Like my deal with Bernadette, I’d only push the subject if it became important to the case later.
    “He was blackmailing you and threatening your job. So you passed phony money for him.”
    Thomas nodded. “Yeah, it wasn’t the first time that we’d done a few shady things.”
    “Like what?” I asked, perhaps a little too eagerly. I’d wanted to know what shady things Pohler had been engaged in to get three trucks up in a year.
    “We’ve had to get cheese that was moldy and scrape off the mold. Since it’s cooked, no one can really tell, but Ryan had us do that on more than one occasion. He was all about saving money.”
    I thought of Land’s dish at the festival and how he’d thrown it away saying that the cheese didn’t taste right. I wondered if they’d been using the old cheese then too.
    “What else?” I didn’t budge from my position, letting him know that I wanted