Free MURDER TO GO (Food Truck Mysteries Book 1) by Chloe Kendrick

felt a little sad that those were my only two options at this point. My generation had been promised so much more from a college education.
    The third time that I pressed down on the bell, a woman came into the lobby and let us in. “What do you want from old man Boyko?” she asked. She was a heavy-set woman with curlers in her hair. I was shocked by the fact that there were still curlers in the U.S., and that she’d answer the door like that. The uneasiness at the pit of my stomach grew heavy as she looked from one to the other of us.
    “I had a legal question for him, regarding my aunt,” I said, honestly but vaguely. “He could answer it in a minute if he would just talk to us.”
    The woman cackled. “You’re going to need a Ouija board for that one. Boyko passed away two weeks ago.”
    “Two weeks ago?” I had an idea forming in my head, and the outcome wasn’t nice. If the idea of the forgery was to ensure that we couldn’t get the witnesses to talk, then the will had been created sometime in the past two weeks and put into my parents’ home in even less time than that.
    Fortunately, my parents were not big entertain-at-home types, so I could likely pare down the list of people who could have put the will into the book to less than a handful of fingers. I couldn’t rule out the possibility that someone had broken into my parents’ house as they had done to mine. I knew that in certain parts of the house, papers could be placed and no one would be the wiser. My mother had a very loose definition of housekeeping.
    “Yeah, two weeks ago. I found his body. He was already cold when I got to him.” She coughed with a deep rattle that sounded like she might be next.
    I nodded. “Can you tell me what he died of?”
    Land poked me with his elbow, but I pushed him away. The woman wasn’t close to Boyko; she’d laughed at her own joke about his passing. I wasn’t going to offend her by asking a question that would save me hours of research. My head hurt and I was in a hurry.
    “Cancer, pancreatic cancer. He’d been ill for a long time, and the doctors didn’t give him much time to live. It wasn’t a surprise at all. Were you two close to him?” She eyed us and noticed the poking and pushing between us. One of her eyebrows went up, which had the effect of making Land turn beet red. I tried not to snicker, seeing the big man look like a guilty schoolboy. Apparently, he didn’t think of me that way, and any suggestion otherwise made him uncomfortable.
    “Not very. He was a friend of my aunt.” I had a sudden thought. “Would you have any samples of his signature? He witnessed a will, and I work for a lawyer who is trying to verify the witnesses. If Mr. Boyko isn’t around, I wondered if you had a sample of his handwriting that I could share with the lawyers.”
    “When did he sign a will?” the woman asked. She narrowed her eyes to squint at me, as if she were committing my face to memory in case she had to testify about it later. I was afraid that a trial was an option now that I’d learned that the second witness was dead.
    “The end of May,” I replied, thinking of the date on the will. “Does that matter?”
    “Boyko was in hospice. He only had one visitor each week, the young man from the home care program. The kid brought in food and helped clean up the house. He didn’t leave the house. Hadn’t since he fell in February during that ice storm. So I’m not sure where he’d get the chance to sign a will. Don’t you have to do that in person?”
    I nodded. “From what I understand yes.”
    She paused and then held up a finger. “Wait here and I’ll be back.” She left Land and me standing in the entryway. He looked at me, but I looked away. Either he thought I was out to steal his truck, or he thought I was up to no good. Neither option was a good thing nor did I want to be reminded of them. He was already aware that I didn’t work for Mr. Huff, and yet I’d told this woman that I