Hot Dog Horrors: Felicia's Food Truck One Hour Cozies, #4

By Celia Kinsey

When bizarre objects start showing up in the hotdogs and chili fries Felicia is serving her customers, she wonders if someone is trying to get her food truck shut down. But when the same thing starts happening at other local eateries, Felicia vows to find out who's behind it all before somebody gets seriously injured.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Heather E Graham
• Release date: Jun 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201980467

Book preview

Chapter One

W hen was the last time you cleaned out your hot dog vat? Clarence Conroy demanded as he stood at the counter of the food truck, clutching his bottle of hand sanitizer in one hand and a baggie of ones in the other. Clarence is a relatively recent resident of Whispering Palms, the senior living complex three blocks away, but he never eats in the onsite dining room. Instead, he inflicts his business on a handful of local food service establishments.

We get him three days a week for lunch. It could be worse. Café Tijuana downtown has him every weekday during the supper hour, and Mama's Little Italian Kitchen has to put up with him every Saturday and Sunday evening. The rest of the time, to hear him tell it, he subsists on dry cereal and ham sandwiches.

Clarence refuses to touch money. He claims—and it's probably true—that the average piece of paper money carries more germs than the toilet seat in a bus station bathroom.

Clarence is an expert on germs, just as he is an expert on efficiency and organization. He's always making helpful little suggestions about how we could better streamline our system for preparing food and, especially, sanitizing our equipment. Before Clarence retired, he was a quality control manager for almost forty years. He worked at a chemical plant that produced cleaning compounds, so I guess a hypersensitivity to sanitation and order was an inevitable side effect.

We clean out the hot dog vat on a regular schedule, I told Clarence. I can assure you we are in full compliance with health department regulations.

That was not quite true. My cook, Arnie, and I try our best, but when you run a food truck with one side of it open to the elements all day, it's hard to eliminate all contact with nature. Just the previous week, we'd had a mother bird trying to build a nest up on the shelf where we kept our extra paper supplies. I hoped Clarence never found out about that.

What can I get for you, Clarence? Arnie asked.

Clarence eats at our food truck every Tuesday (2 hot dogs, no pickle relish, extra mustard with a side of potato chips), Wednesday (chili cheese fries with a side of frankfurters cut into bite-size pieces, hold the onions), and Friday (bratwurst dog, potato salad and a side of sliced tomatoes).

Clarence invariably orders exactly the same thing, depending on what day of the week it is, but he always insists on being asked what he wants, regardless. I guess he wants to keep his options open, even though he appears completely disinclined to shake up his strict routine.

Shortly after Clarence's arrival in