Two Crazy: Fickle Finger of Fate (A Val Fremden Mystery Book 2) Read online

  Two Crazy

  Fickle Finger of Fate

  By

  Margaret Lashley

  “Why does Life always have to give me the finger?”

  Val Fremden

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  Copyright © 2017 Margaret Lashley

  MargaretLashley.com

  Cover Design by Melinda de Ross

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For more information, write to: Zazzy Ideas, Inc. P.O. Box 1113, St. Petersburg, FL 33731

  This book is a work of fiction. While actual places throughout Florida have been used in this book, any resemblance to persons living or dead are purely coincidental. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, the names of places have been altered.

  ISBN: 978-0-9985809-3-7

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  I’m Val Fremden, aka Thelma Gladys Goldrich, aka Valliant Stranger. A double life wasn’t good enough for me. So I decided to make it a triple.

  Last year, a bulldog-faced woman named Thelma Goldrich called me a whore and knocked me out cold at Caddy’s beach bar – right before the memorial service for an old beach bum named Tony. That punch in the nose turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.

  Long story short, Thelma’s right hook to my poor schnoz set in motion a chain of bizarre events that changed my life forever. I discovered that Justas and Lucille Jolly were not my biological parents. My real parents were a couple of crazy, beer-guzzling, beach-bum hoarders named Tony and Glad Goldrich. They both died within days of each other and named me – their biological, long-lost daughter – as sole heir to their tiny, junk-filled house on the Intracoastal Waterway in St. Petersburg, Florida. Oh yeah. They also left me enough cash to keep me in chocolate bars for a long while to come.

  Good thing, too. At the time I was like, seconds away from being homeless.

  I also found out that my real birthday was December 22nd. But I decided to keep celebrating it on April Fools’ Day, like I had for the last forty-eight years. Given the weird scenario surrounding this particular aspect of my life – correction – given the weird scenario surrounding my whole life in general, it just seemed…well…apropos.

  I’d figured out this twisted story with the help of a cop named Tom Foreman and three washed-up derelicts named Winky, Jorge and Goober. I’d rewarded the three burn-outs with $5,000 each. The cop, well, let’s just say he got something else out of me.

  Chapter One

  The tread-worn, whitewall tires squealed on the hot asphalt. I shifted into park and climbed out of Shabby Maggie, my 1963 Ford Falcon Sprint convertible. Like me, Maggie was creamy-white and a bit girlie on the outside, but underneath her hood beat a V8 engine that could kick ass with the big boys. I’d been cruising along Gulf Boulevard, a block from the beach, when a thought latched onto me like a starving mosquito. I pulled a one-eighty in the middle of the road and made a beeline for the drugstore at the corner of 107th in St. Pete Beach.

  It was my birthday, and I was going to celebrate it in style with a king-sized Mounds candy bar. I knew for a lot of folks, that wouldn’t have sounded like much of a present. But for me it was. I never kept chocolate at my place. It was the only thing I couldn’t be trusted with.

  I high-tailed it inside the store and grabbed a candy bar from a rack by the register. A minute later, I strolled outside with both chunks of delicious, gooey heaven crammed into my mouth like Lucille Ball at that chocolate factory. Distracted by the commingling of chewy coconut and rich, dark chocolate, I didn’t notice someone was in Maggie’s passenger seat until my butt was already wedged halfway in on the driver’s side. When I caught sight of her, just inches from me, I totally freaked.

  I jerked back and let out a high-pitched screamed that could only be heard by dogs and dolphins. Before my brain could put two-and-two together, I swung my purse at her and busted her square in the face. As my pocketbook hit pay-dirt, I had what I called an idioment; an idiotic moment of doomed recognition – like seeing the car keys hanging in the ignition just as you slam the locked door shut. There was no turning back. I’d have to live with the consequences. I sucked in a surprised breath and nearly choked to death on chewed-up coconut.

  “Aaarrrgh! Oh crap!”

  I cringed. My eyes doubled as she flew backwards off the seat and tumbled onto the floorboard. Dressed as she was, no one in the whole world would’ve recognized her except for me. It was Glad – still wearing that plastic Mr. Peanut piggybank she’d been shaking around in the very last time I’d seen her, less than an hour before her botched burial at sea last year. That day, someone had taken Glad from my car in this very same parking lot. Today, they’d returned her. And on my birthday, no less. I wasn’t sure if that qualified as ironic or not, but the timing was definitely weird.

  Whoever Glad’s kidnapper had been, he’d left a hand-written note on the seat. I picked it up. The torn scrap of yellow paper read, “Sorry. Mr. P.” I glanced around the parking lot. None of the tourists milling around the place looked like perverts or body snatchers. (Well, maybe one.) I picked Glad up, hugged her to my chest, and set her back on the passenger seat beside me. I turned the ignition and smiled. It might sound crazy, but over the rumbling of Maggie�
�s twin glass-pack muffler, I’d swear I heard Glad say:

  “Screw you, Kiddo.”

  I turned and gave her a wink.

  “Nice to see you again, too, Mom.”

  Chapter Two

  Owning a home again was turning out to be a blessing and a curse. It was nice to be able to fix things up the way I wanted. But dealing with the renovations and repairmen had me cursing under my breath – in German. Scheisse!

  I’d moved into Glad and Tony’s old 1950’s ranch house yesterday. Now, not even twenty-four hours later, the blasted air conditioning died. When I’d been renting, I’d just picked up the phone and said, “Come fix this.” Those days were over. I was the responsible party now. And I didn’t have a clue who to call. The only person I could think of was my next-door neighbor. I’d seen her a few times while I’d been working on the place. She’d waved and seemed friendly. What the heck. I’ll introduce myself and see if she knows someone who could fix it.

  I rang her doorbell. I didn’t get a referral. I got an eyeful, instead. The door opened wide, and standing before me was a woman wearing nothing but a pink thong bikini bottom, sparkly stilettos and enough gold necklaces to sink a rowboat. I think Mr. T would have made her an official member of The A Team if it weren’t for one thing. She must have been around seventy years old.

  If a geriatric donkey and one of those wrinkly little shar pei dogs had a baby, it might have grown up to have a mug just like this woman’s. Her long, horsey face was like spray-tanned crepe paper. When she cracked her mouth open and smiled at me, I half expected her to whinny – or bray. In fact, it was kind of surreal when she spoke instead. It was like being trapped inside that old TV show with Mr. Ed’s trashy girlfriend.

  “Howdy, neighbor!”

  The tall, thin woman spoke down at me from her vantage point about a foot above my five-foot-four frame. She thrust out a hand, sending her cadre of necklaces and both boobs swaying. I tried to keep my eyes off the pendulum action.

  “Hi. I’m Val Fremden. Just moved in next door.”

  “Seen you moving in. Nice to meet you. I’m Laverne Cowens.”

  “Uh, I can see you’re busy, Laverne. I don’t want to take up your time. Just wondering if you knew a good air-conditioning repair company?”

  “On the fritz, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I know a thing or two about air conditioners. Let me see if I can help you out.”

  Before I could object, Laverne turned around and disappeared down the hallway, her shriveled, spray-tanned butt cheeks wobbling around a corner. A moment later she reappeared wearing a sparkly gold beach cover-up. I sighed with relief.

  “Show me that air handler thingy.”

  “Uh, that’s okay. I just need a ref –”

  “Nonsense! What are neighbors are for?”

  Laverne closed the front door behind her and shooed me toward my place with a liver-spotted hand spiked with pointy, red fingernails. She followed me across the lawn, high-stepping through the grass with her long, orange legs like a stork through a salad. I opened my front door and led her through my small, open-plan living room and kitchen toward a hall closet where the old air handler unit was installed.

  “Nice place you got here.” Laverne’s donkey head shifted left and right, causing her gold hoop earrings to jangle underneath her smooth, strawberry-blonde hair cut in a soft, layered bob. Her bug-eyes rolled the full range of their sockets. “I like the green paint in the kitchen.”

  “Thanks. Not much to see at the moment. I’m still putting the place back together.”

  “Glad and Tony did let things get a little rangy around here, that’s for sure.”

  “You knew my parents?”

  “A little. But they mostly kept to themselves. Once in a while, Glad would talk to me over the fence. But not too often. In fact, I didn’t even know they had a daughter until you showed up.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  I thought about explaining how I hadn’t known it myself until a few months ago, but I was in a hurry and wanted to keep on topic. I opened the closet door and hit the light switch. Nothing happened.

  “Huh. The closet light isn’t working,” I muttered absently.

  “Hmmm…but your kitchen light is working,” Laverne remarked. “That’s strange. Are you sure you paid the whole light bill, honey?”

  I snickered. Laverne’s face showed genuine concern.

  “Uh. Yeah, I think so.”

  Laverne cocked her head like a puzzled dog and scrunched her horsey brow. I figured I’d better do something to distract her before she blew a gasket in that worn-out little brain of hers.

  “Uh…I’ll go get a flashlight,” I fumbled.

  I padded to the kitchen and grabbed a big black flashlight from the cupboard below the sink. I shone it into the closet. Laverne peeked in and shook her head.

  “Aha! Just what I thought! That’s a Trane!”

  She pointed a shiny red fingernail at the brand name etched into a silver plaque on the air conditioner’s dull, dusty, olive-colored housing.

  “So, what’s the problem? Is that a bad brand?”

  “No. Duh!”

  Laverne shot me a pathetic look. She shook her head softly and pointed at the logo again.

  “See here, Val? It was made for a train, not a house.”

  My mouth fell open. I stared at Laverne like a dead trout in a seafood display case. She smiled back sweetly, like a kindly old schoolteacher. I almost expected her to pat me on the head. She punched me softly on the arm instead.

  “First house, huh, sugar? You’ll get the hang of it.”

  “Wow. Well…uh…thanks, Laverne. Sorry to have bothered you.”

  “No bother at all, honey! Happy to have you around! You just call me any old time you need me.”

  “Thanks. I sure will,” I said as I steered her skinny butt to the door. I meant it, too. Because at that moment in time, I couldn’t conceive of a single scenario where I would ever need her help again.

  ***

  The busted air conditioner was just the latest item on a mile-long list of repairs my parents’ dilapidated little house had needed to make it inhabitable again. Just sorting through and hauling away decades of accumulated junk had taken months. Living with Friedrich’s hoarding issues in Germany had prepared me somewhat for the mess, but he’d been an amateur compared to Glad and Tony. Together, they’d accumulated literally tons of garbage. It was everywhere, strewn from the rafters in the attic to the far corners of the backyard. Among their neurotic stash of loot was every magazine printed since 1985, around twenty-million almost-used up toilet paper rolls, fifty million assorted twist ties, bread bags and yogurt cups, a ball of used tinfoil big enough to choke a blue whale, and swollen cans of fruit cocktail and succotash purchased during the Carter administration.

  But the biggest shocker came when I’d unearthed a mummified black-and-white cat in the back bedroom. Squashed nearly flat under an avalanche of Cat Fancier magazines, there was no telling if it had been my parents’ cat or some unfortunate stray. Or worse yet, one of the neighbors’ precious pets. I’d stuffed the dried-up carcass in a Hello Kitty bag I found under the bed, threw it in the dumpster and never said a word to anyone.

  After clearing away the mountains of crap, I’d gotten started on repairs; new roof, plumbing, electric, water heater, etc. It was German déjà vu all over again as I’d watched my bank account drop like the gas tank indicator on a Hummer stretch limousine. Finally, toward the last week of February, I’d seen the light at the end of the repair tunnel and felt it was safe to give my landlord notice. My goal had been to move into my new place before my birthday. But I knew full well that things didn’t always go as planned. After all, I was the middle-aged poster child for how life could suddenly take a U-turn and dive off a cliff. Armed with that knowledge, I’d covered my bases and paid the rent through the end of April.

  As it turned out, that decision had been more money down the dra
in. But I wasn’t complaining. After scrubbing and painting every room in the house, I’d managed to get the house livable before the end of March. Yesterday, March 31, I’d piled my belongings into the backseat of Maggie and moved from my ratty, closet-sized apartment downtown to my palatial, thousand-square-foot house on the Intracoastal Waterway. I’d owned next to nothing, so the move had only taken one trip.

  I smiled at the idea of never having to go back to that place. Yesterday, I’d tossed my last handful of clothes onto the pile in the backseat and cranked Maggie’s engine to life. My landlord was gone on vacation, so I’d dropped the apartment keys in the mailbox. There’d been no one to wave goodbye to, so as I’d driven away I’d extended my middle finger to the ugly-ass brown couch I’d ‘inherited’ from the last tenant. I’d left its sagging old carcass in the alley, along with my memories of the eighteen months I’d spent there as a lost, friendless, derelict-in-training.

  Fun times.

  Chapter Three

  With my meager belongings all tucked away in my new place, I was celebrating my good fortune. Tonight I was throwing a birthday-cum-housewarming party. The air conditioner had died, but it was just the first day of April. It wasn’t full-on summer yet in St. Pete. We still had a few good weeks left before the sweltering heat and humidity came and squatted its sweaty, sunburned ass on us and robbed us of our will to live.

  My party guests for the evening included the regular gang, Goober, Winky, Jorge, my parents’ estate attorney J.D. Fellows, and, of course, my boyfriend Tom. Earlier today, when I’d realized I was the only woman attending, I’d thought about inviting Laverne from next door. But given her low IQ and clothing-optional lifestyle, I’d decided she’d been too sketchy.