Seven Daze Read online

  Seven Daze

  Redneck Rendezvous

  Book Seven in the Val Fremden Mystery Series

  Margaret Lashley

  Copyright 2018 Margaret Lashley

  MargaretLashley.com

  Cover Design by Melinda de Ross

  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.

  Praise for the Val Fremden Series

  “Hooked like a fish. OMG Margaret Lashley is the best! Val could be Stephanie Plum's double!! Phenomenal writing.”

  “I love this rollicking series. Hilarious, exceedingly well crafted, amazingly quirky characters.”

  “The characters and interaction in this book are totally 'wet your pants laughing' funny!! Don't believe me? Grab a copy for yourself and see.”

  “I was totally surprised, after many twists and false clues, by the ultimate killer....”

  “I like murder mysteries that, like I found this one, are not easily solved, And Val's constant run-ins with the local police and her fellow campers are crazy, humorous, or both.”

  “Totally madcap and zany.”

  “I loved this book! It was still hysterically funny. I don't think that I ever want to be invited to a redneck BBQ based upon what was served at Winky's. Cheetos and marshmallow fluff anyone? LOL”

  “The only thing that I can say bad about this book is that it was such an easy read that I finished reading it too soon. Will anxiously be waiting for the eighth book!”

  "If you enjoy Janet Evanovich you will love Margaret Lashley!"

  More Hilarious Val Fremden Mysteries

  by Margaret Lashley

  Absolute Zero

  Glad One

  Two Crazy

  Three Dumb

  What Four

  Five Oh

  Six Tricks

  Seven Daze

  “There’s all kinds of okay in this world. And I’m okay with that.”

  Val Fremden

  Contents

  Seven Daze

  Praise for the Val Fremden Series

  More Hilarious Val Fremden Mysteries

  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

  What’s Next for Val?

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  I thought seven was supposed to be a lucky number. Maybe it was...for dwarves.

  But me? Not so much.

  In fact, every time that number popped up in my life, I gave it a little side-eye. Seven wasn’t lucky. It was a boil on my buttocks – an ugly reminder of how close I’d come to living in a cardboard box, wrestling alley cats for empty tuna cans.

  A few years back, before I returned to Florida, I’d spent seven years in Germany. That’s when I found out that seven years abroad was exactly how long it took to destroy my life savings and my life in general. I’d washed up back on the shores of my hometown, St. Pete Beach, not just broke and homeless – but pretty much erased from the hearts, minds and credit histories of every person and place I’d ever thought I could count on.

  Geeze. Even my name had become a stranger. Literally. The old Val Jolly I’d been before I left for Europe was gone. A bad marriage had changed it to Val Fremden – a word that meant “stranger” in German. It’s almost scary to think how apropos that had turned out to be....

  So screw you, seven.

  Come to think of it, six was no good, either. It reminded me of what a magnet for mayhem I could be. Six times now, I’ve ended up smack-dab in the middle of a nut-fest of squirrelly shenanigans no sane person could have imagined. Like hobgoblins inhabiting an unsound mind, bulldog-faced bullies, shady shysters, fruitcake relatives and nutty neighbors seemed to track me down and stick to me like Crazy Glue.

  Don’t even get me started on five. It was the number of years I’ve had to lick my wounds since I got torpedoed by a German dreamboat. Anchors away, dirtbag.

  Four wasn’t much better. That was how many times I’ve had to start my life over. With nothing.

  As far as three went...well, that was the number of times I’ve been married. Or, perhaps more accurately, it was the number of times I’ve been divorced.

  Over the years, I’d become deeply suspicious of the numeral two, as well. Two was a pair. A matched set. If you don’t get my drift, go back and read number three.

  I never have understood eight, either. To me, it always looked like an infinity symbol that had been stood on its head. No thanks. My life didn’t need any more help going off-kilter.

  And nine? Nine sounded like German for “no.” A non-starter on both counts.

  Nope. In my book, the luckiest number was one. Numero uno. As in me, myself and I. During my extended tutelage at the School of Hard Knocks, I’d learned that one was the single digit I could consistently rely on.

  Even if it was odd.

  JUST WHEN I THOUGHT everything in my life had returned to a semblance of normalcy, I opened the mailbox and screamed. Inside was a letter from the AARP. It was official. The world had just declared me “old.”

  “You all right over there?”

  I glanced over my left shoulder. My neighbor, Laverne Cowens, was waving at me from the other side of her mailbox. In the full light of day, the radiant glare rocketing off her gold-lame jumpsuit nearly blinded me. Either that, or I’d succumbed to cataracts. I squinted and waved the letter back at her.

  “Ugh! Laverne, I’ve just been ‘AARPed.’”

  “Oh,” she grinned and shook her horsey head. “That ain’t nothin’. Wait ‘til you get your first coupons for Depends. Then we’ve got something to talk about.”

  My upper lip snarled involuntarily. “Can’t wai
t.” I turned toward the house, then changed my mind. I was stalling. I knew it, but I didn’t care. Anything was better than going back inside to face “it.”

  Up to now, I’d made a point of trying to steer clear of Laverne’s personal life, but I was out of ideas and just desperate enough to push the scales in her favor. I forced a smile. “Hey Laverne, how are things going with you and J.D.?”

  Laverne’s grin faded like a cheap tattoo at the mention of her boyfriend’s name.

  “We haven’t killed each other yet, so there’s that,” she joked half-heartedly. One of her penciled-on eyebrows jerked upward. “How about you? I noticed a bunch of moving boxes going into your house yesterday.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed as I made my way along the sidewalk toward her. “Tom’s almost moved in.”

  “Boy howdy. He’s not wasting any time, is he?”

  “No.” I blew out a breath. “I guess it’s like lancing a boil. Better to just dig in and get it over with.”

  Laverne’s red lips twisted into a smirk. “How romantic.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry. Sometimes, I really think I should just be taken out and shot.”

  Laverne snorted, giving me a gander at her dentures. “We can’t all be hopeless romantics now, can we?”

  “No, I suppose not. But why is it I only ever seem to get the ‘hopeless’ part down pat?”

  “Ha ha! Honey, you always make me laugh. Want to come in for a drink?”

  “It’s ten-thirty in the morning, Laverne.”

  Laverne shrugged. “So?”

  I glanced around at the neighbors’ houses. Nobody was around. “Okay. What the heck.”

  I FOLLOWED THE SKINNY old woman up her driveway toward her modest, ranch-style house. Built in the 1950s, it was a mirror image of my own little abode. If our homes hadn’t butted up to the Intracoastal Waterway leading out to the Gulf of Mexico, most people wouldn’t have given the low-slung, concrete-block boxes a second glance. In fact, nowadays, the only reason anyone bought a place like ours was to doze it and build a McMansion on the lot.

  But folks like Laverne and me preferred character over modern conveniences. At least that’s the story I told myself. I didn’t have enough money to remodel my vintage kitchen, much less rebuild the whole house. And I kind of liked that my place had a “lived in” appearance. The delicate pallor of impending poverty came in handy. It kept away would-be door-to-door solicitors and Halloween trick-or-treaters.

  On the outside, Laverne’s place was just like mine – a tad faded and as non-descript as an out-of-shape, ball-capped man at a sports bar. But inside – now that was a different story.

  Amongst the hallowed rooms of Laverne’s lair lurked the biggest collection of Vegas memorabilia outside Madame Tussauds’ wax museum in Las Vegas proper. As I followed her inside the door and waded past bookshelves cluttered with tacky souvenirs, I noticed that something was off. Laverne’s living room, once an unabridged shrine to all things happy, glitzy and glittery, had been infiltrated by an army of somber, humorless invaders.

  On the wall beside the stunning, life-sized, color photo of Laverne in her feathery cabaret outfit being kissed on the cheek by Elvis, hung a black-and-white picture of a dour group of short, angry-looking men dressed in lederhosen. Their expressions seemed to convey they were recent graduates of the Sauerkraut Club. Laverne’s bookcase, once chock-a-block with shiny celebrity figurines like a mini Oscar-Awards after-party, now had dull-hued, kerchief-wearing Hummel figures milling about in the crowd like babushka-headed party poopers.

  I shot a worried glance at Laverne as she pulled a couple of beers from her fridge. “How far has J.D. gotten with this?” I asked.

  “What?” she asked.

  “This...I dunno...hostile takeover of your space.”

  “You noticed, huh?” Laverne shook her head. “Sheesh. He wants me to drink beer out of a stein, Val. A stein! I got my doubts, honey. I’m not so sure it’s gonna work out with us.”

  “Why? I know you like beer.”

  “Sure. But I only drink it out of the bottle...or my lucky Marilyn Monroe leg.” Laverne opened a kitchen cabinet and pulled out a flesh-colored, leg-shaped glass complete with white high-heel and fishnet stocking. “I don’t do steins,” she muttered. “And I’m beginning to think I don’t do roommates, either.”

  “Oh,” I said, and slumped in my stool. “Sorry to hear that. Well, I guess it’s good you two didn’t tie the knot. At least you and J.D. can dial back the living-together thing pretty easily, right?”

  Laverne cracked open a can of beer and began to fill the shapely leg with golden liquid and foam. “I guess. I mean, he’s still got his place on the beach and all.”

  My chin met my neck. “J.D.’s got a house on the beach?”

  “Yeah. Sunset Beach.” Laverne sulked at the leg, as if it might have been Marilyn’s fault.

  I glanced around with fresh eyes at the garish clutter crammed in every crevice of Laverne’s kitchen. A bobble-headed Dean Martin winked at me. “And he chose to live here instead? Why?”

  “Beats me,” Laverne answered. She shoved a shamrock-covered glass full of beer across the counter toward me. “Because I’m here, I guess. And because I don’t want to live on the beach.”

  I couldn’t have been more incredulous if Laverne had confessed she wanted to live in a dumpster with Frosty the Snowman. “Why not?”

  “Because this is my home, Val.” Laverne looked around her place with sad, puppy-dog eyes. “And you’re next door. I like having you nearby. I don’t feel like I’m all alone.”

  Laverne’s words tapped a nerve – hard – like a spike hammered into a beer keg. The fact that J.D.’s memorabilia had distinctly German roots reminded me of all the lonely, soul-sucking years I’d spent in Germany, forlorn and friendless. My heart flinched at the rush of painful memories – of feeling hollowed out, vulnerable and fragile. Then I realized, to my great relief, that I hadn’t felt that way in a long, long time.

  My gut instinct was to warn Laverne. But of what? Geeze, given my track record, I was in no position to give relationship advice.

  “Compromise is hard,” I offered, trying to put a positive spin on the personal dread that had begun to churn like sour milk in my stomach. “But, you know, it’s not like you’d be moving to another country or something. Sunset Beach is only a few minutes’ drive from here.”

  “True. But it’s not here.” Laverne pouted and stared at me with her endearing pug eyes. “I know it sounds corny, but home is where your heart is, Val. And my heart’s right here.”

  My eyes stung. “Then here is where you should stay. After all, it’s your life.” I sniffed back a totally unexpected tear. Was I getting sentimental in my old age, or just going senile? What next? Crying at dogfood commercials?

  I grabbed my glass. “Hey, how about a toast?”

  “To what?” Laverne asked.

  “To knowing where your home is.”

  Laverne grinned. “To knowing home when you see it,” She hoisted Marilyn’s leg.

  I sipped my beer and watched her take a long, throat-bobbing chug. Her grin returned. She set the leg-mug down on the counter and asked, “You got any super glue?”

  I nearly spewed my beer. “What?”

  Laverne opened a drawer and pulled out a baggie containing the shattered remains of what appeared to have once been a Hummel figurine.

  “I...uh...accidently dropped this.”

  I stifled a smirk. “I don’t have any glue. I used it up fixing Tom’s acrylic baseball case. I...uh...accidently dropped it yesterday.”

  We eyed each other and burst out laughing.

  “It would appear that great minds think alike,” I said, and drained the beer from my Shamrock Casino glass.

  Laverne wiped the corners of her eyes with a paper towel. “Thanks, honey. I needed a good laugh.”

  “I think we both did. Boyfriend business can be tough.” I set my empty mug on the counter and looked around her place again.
“I’m curious, Laverne. What exactly do you do all day?”

  Laverne shrugged nonchalantly. “Whatever I want.”

  I nodded appreciatively. “Huh.”

  Laverne picked up Marilyn’s leg and finished off her beer, blissfully unaware she’d created a scene perfect for a flesh-eating zombie spoof. She set the empty leg on the counter and grinned at me. “So, how’s the writing going?”

  My smirk faded. “Slow. I’m still setting up my writing space in the second bedroom.”

  “Give it time, honey,” Laverne said.

  I blew out a sigh. “You’re right. I shouldn’t press myself. Now that Tom’s living with me, he’s helping out with the bills. I hope that’ll take the pressure off my savings account.”

  “I hear that.” Laverne stepped over to the sink to give Marilyn’s leg a rinse. The sight of a fishnet-clad shin in the drain-board was unsettling enough, but Laverne upped the ante. She slid a plate across the counter at me and asked, “Want a cookie? Snickerdoodles. I made them in cooking class.”

  I’d never been startled by a cookie before – not even one of Laverne’s. I eyed the misshapen, hideous globs of dough. Pale, gooey middles surrounded by charred edges. They reminded me of petrified splats of vomit – with eyeballs in it. I thought about J.D., who faced trials like this on a daily basis. I wished I’d had one of his baggies tucked in my waistband, so I could fake eating one, smuggle out its remains, and dispose of it in a toxic waste container.

  “I’m on a diet,” I lied.

  “Suit yourself.” Laverne picked up a cookie.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “I thought you got banned from cooking classes at the senior center.”

  Laverne shrugged. “You set one little oven on fire and you’re blackballed for life. I’m telling you, Val, those old folks got no sense of humor.”

  She poked the horrid cookie at me for emphasis. My body shrunk back involuntarily.

  “Nope. This new class is down at St. Pete College. Continuing ed.”