Val Fremden Mystery Box Set 1 Read online

  “I could have you arrested for that, you know,” he smirked.

  “I suppose you’d rather hear him read every road sign from here to Chattahoochee – complete with sound effects?”

  Tom laughed. “God, no. I don’t even want to imagine what he’d do with those sexy billboards near Ocala.”

  I put my thumb over the bottle lip and shook the cola. “Happen to see any moon pies around here, Mister?”

  “No. How about a pecan log, Miss?”

  Tom held up a monster-sized candy bar and eyed me lasciviously.

  “Maybe later,” I said nonchalantly, causing his eyebrows to rise nearly to his scalp. I giggled. “Hmmm. No moon pies. That calls for redneck plan B.”

  I grabbed a bag of salted peanuts and poured half of them into the RC. The cola foamed up and out of the bottle, spilling onto the floor.

  “What the heck are you doing?” Tom asked. He grabbed a handful of napkins from next to the hotdog roasting machine and helped me wipe up the mess.

  “Better here than in your car,” I replied.

  “Got-cha. Good thinking, partner.”

  “So we’re partners now?”

  “If you play your cards right.”

  I grinned and grabbed a Dr. Pepper out of the cooler.

  “Hey, I’ll take one of those,” Tom said.

  “Finally, something we have in common,” I quipped. I handed him a Dr. Pepper, then fished around in my purse for my wallet.

  Tom touched my shoulder. “Forget it. I’ve got this.”

  “Thanks,” I offered gratefully.

  He paid the cashier, and we climbed back into the 4Runner. Before I strapped in, I reached over the backseat and handed Winky his foamy reward for good behavior.

  “Sorry, no moon pies, Winky. But I fixed you up real good anyway.”

  Winky’s eyes widened with delight.

  “All right! I ain’t had me one a these in a coon’s age! Thanky, Val!”

  Winky flung his head back and took a giant slug out of the bottle. He swallowed hard to get the foamy soda down, then crunched on a mouthful of peanuts. “Mighty dang good!”

  I turned around to face Tom and slid into my best Southern drawl.

  “That there’s the original country-man dinner, don’t cha know.”

  Tom shifted into reverse and grinned.

  “I stand corrected. You really do speak redneck.”

  WITH THE ORANGUTAN fed and sedated, we were faced with a new problem. Winky had a snore that could rattle the windows on the Concord. Between our charge’s thunderous blasts, Tom and I took turns sharing our life histories.

  I learned Tom had grown up in Orlando, and had a degree in business from the University of Central Florida. Fresh out of college, he’d tried a desk job for almost a year. But he couldn’t adjust to life confined to a cubicle, no matter how big or fancy it might have eventually evolved into.

  “I guess you might call it failure to thrive in the business environment,” he joked. “But it just seemed pointless...shuffling papers around. I’m not much of a theoretical guy. I’m more hands-on.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  Tom grinned, then reached over and put his hand on my thigh. Electric heat shot through my entire body. I mean my entire body.

  “It’s a long drive. Better pace yourself, tiger,” I said, and peeled his hand from my leg.

  Tom grinned, shrugged, and focused on the road.

  “So how did you end up in the police force?”

  “Process of elimination, mostly,” he replied. “I wanted a job that would get me outside. I tried landscaping, but I needed more adventure – and less sun. I would come home from mowing lawns all day so dehydrated all I could do was lie on the couch, drink water and watch TV. In a way, I guess that led me to my next career move. I watched a lot of those TV detective shows and thought, what the heck. I’ll give that a try. I went to the police academy and, voilà, here I am.”

  “How long have you been a cop?”

  “Twenty years this month. Seems like a lot less. Crazy, but I can still remember my first case.”

  “What was it?”

  Tom took his eyes off the road for moment. “Are you really interested, or are you just trying to pass the time?”

  “Does it have to be one or the other, officer?”

  “Fair enough. The Buckaroo Bandit.”

  “Huh?”

  “My first case. I called it The Buckaroo Bandit. Back then, I was a little less jaded and a lot more creative.”

  “I can see that. So tell me about it,” I said as the exit sign for Dade City passed by.

  “When you’re first on the force, you’re low man on the totem pole. You have to go where there’s a job opening. I ended up spending six months in Chiefland, Florida. Pretty podunk little town back then. Still is, probably. Can’t say, as I haven’t been back. But as small-potatoes as it was, that town still handed me my butt in a beer can. A pretty weird case I never did solve.”

  “Weird?”

  “Really weird. Some local farmer was trawling for catfish in the Apalachicola River that summer and snagged a skull. A human one. He fished it out and brought it to the station in a Piggly-Wiggly grocery bag. I’ll never forget it. I felt just like Barney Fife on Mayberry RFD. I took one look inside the bag and nearly crapped my pants trying to keep from laughing.”

  “Laughing? Why?”

  “The skull only had two teeth left in it. Two front teeth as bucked out as teeth can be. The guy must have been half rabbit. Maybe that’s why we never found his next-of-kin. They were hiding in a hole somewhere eating carrots.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  “Nope. You just can’t make that stuff up.”

  “No. You sure can’t. Tom, pull over. I’ve got something to tell you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “WOW, VAL. IF WHAT YOU’RE saying is true, Jacob could have murdered Bobby Munch.”

  “I know.”

  We’d stopped at a Steak & Shake in Ocala for an early lunch. Winky was still sawing logs in the backseat of the 4Runner. Tom and I were sitting in a shiny black booth with a shiny chrome jukebox. A shiny pink waitress took our order.

  Why did everything have to be so freaking shiny?

  “As far as I know, my old Buckaroo Bandit case is still open, Val. I’ve got to report this. What’s Jacob’s last name?”

  “Crap. I think he told me. Maybe not. I don’t know.”

  “Phone number?”

  “I only gave him mine. But wait. He called me yesterday. His number should be in my phone.”

  “Okay. Give me your phone and I’ll get someone working on that.”

  I handed my phone over and went to the restroom while Tom placed the call. As the squeaky door closed behind me, I suddenly felt trapped inside a bad horror movie. Even my reflection in the bathroom mirror looked odd and unfamiliar.

  What the hell am I doing here? Busted nose. Traveling alone with two strange men – to meet a woman in the loony bin! And last night.... Oh my word! I may have spent time talking to a murderer! My life isn’t going down the drain. It’s going down the toilet!

  “It’s all right, kiddo.”

  Glad!

  I grabbed the stall door next to me and jerked it open. It was empty.

  What did you expect, Val?

  I let go of the door. As it creaked to a close, something caught my eye. On the top right corner of the stall, exactly where my hand had been, was a dragonfly sticker. A chill shot through me.

  Okay. Maybe I’m the one that should be in the loony bin.

  Fighting back rising panic and tears, I pushed myself out of the restroom and into the shiny red, white and black world of ecstatically happy hamburgers and shakes. Tom was watching me from the booth. I scrutinized his face for telltale signs that he might be a serial killer, too. But then I realized I had no idea what to actually look for.

  “They’re on it. Shouldn’t take long,” Tom said. He looked at me cl
osely. “You okay, Val? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “No. Just heard one.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.... It’s just a lot...to take in.”

  “Never been that close to a potential murderer. I get it.”

  “Do you think he wants to kill me, Tom? Jacob, I mean?”

  “I doubt it. If he did, you’d probably already be dead.”

  My mouth fell open and tears quickly filled my eyes to their brims. Tom reached over and took my hand.

  “Geeze. Sorry, Val. Cop humor. I don’t see any reason why Jacob would be after you. We don’t even know for sure he’s involved in the Buckaroo case.”

  “How many bucked-tooth skulls can there be out there?”

  “I don’t know. They could be breeding like bunnies.” Tom contorted his upper lip in a maniacal imitation of a rabbit. “Ehhh, what’s up, Val?”

  I snorted with frantic laughter, forcing runny snot to pour from my tender nose.

  Tom jerked a couple of napkins from the chrome holder and handed them to me. I carefully honked my nose on one.

  “She thought I was his girlfriend, you know,” I said.

  “What? Who?”

  “Bulldog Thelma. She thought I was Tony’s girlfriend. That’s why she punched me in the nose.”

  “Oh.” Tom’s eyebrows knitted together and his smile drained away.

  “There’s something else, Tom. Jacob didn’t know Glad was dead. When I told him, he wanted to know when she died. Then he wanted to know if I had her birth certificate. He also asked about a birth certificate for her daughter. Does all that mean anything?”

  “I don’t know. Anything else you haven’t told me?”

  I thought about dragonflies and broken brooches and Glad’s voice in my head. “Nope.”

  “All right then. You ready to blow this burger joint?”

  “I sure am.”

  Tom grabbed a handful of napkins on the way out.

  “Just in case,” he said with a wink.

  WE TRAVELED NORTH ON I-275 to Lake City, then headed west on I-10 toward Tallahassee. The trip was half over. Winky was still sawing logs in the backseat. Now it was my turn to answer Tom’s questions.

  “How did you end up in St. Petersburg? Isn’t your family from the Panhandle area?”

  “I never lived up there long,” I answered. “In Greenville, I mean. My parents moved around a lot. I grew up a bit of a redneck, and finished high school in Lakeland. Then I astonished everyone and moved to Tampa to get a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Florida. After that, I worked for an insurance company and married a guy. We moved to St. Pete. Things didn’t work out. I moved to Germany. Blah blah blah. Lather, rinse, repeat. Now I’m back home.”

  Tom shot me a look. “A real romantic, aren’t you?”

  I cringed. “I used to be. Now I guess I’m just...cynically optimistic.”

  “Cynically optimistic? No wonder you love irony, Val. You are irony!”

  I was trying to think of a clever comeback when Tom’s phone rang. I watched the pine trees and oaks whiz by on the side of the interstate while he listened for a minute, then hung up.

  “It was a burner.”

  “Huh?”

  “Jacob’s cellphone. It was a pay-as-you-go. Disposable. Untraceable.”

  “Oh.”

  “Doesn’t necessarily mean anything. But it doesn’t help his case or ours. What’s he doing down in St. Pete, anyway?”

  “He was a friend of Tony’s. Down for the funeral.”

  “The funeral was last week. So why’s he still there?”

  A good question for which I had no good answer.

  I shrugged and looked out the window again. Sunday afternoon was ticking by. I thought about the new synopsis of Double Booty I’d emailed to Jamie this morning. It seemed like a year ago.

  Would it be good enough to win me a publishing contract? Would I be able to pay my rent next month?

  Tom poked my leg. “Hey. Where’d you go?”

  “Lady Lala Land.”

  “Okay. Go there often?”

  “According to Goober, yes.”

  Tom’s phone rang again.

  “Hola, amigo.” Tom looked at me and silently mouthed the name, “Jorge.”

  “Uh huh. What did he look like? Uh huh. No. Yeah. Go ahead and follow her. Call me when you know something. Ciao.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Jorge said he saw Bulldog Thelma and some guy drive up your street. They stopped for a minute in front of your place. The man got out, took a picture of the house, then got back in and they took off. Funny, Jorge said the guy was an old blanco. White shirt, white belt, white shoes.”

  Jacob!

  My whole body started trembling. “Tom, that sounds like Jacob. He and that Bulldog Thelma woman...they’re working together! And they’re out to get me!”

  “Hold on, Val. Why would they be out to get you?”

  “I don’t know! You’re the freaking detective!”

  I lost it and started bawling my eyes out.

  “It’s going to be all right, Val,” Tom said gently. “You’re safe with me.”

  Tom sat in silence and let me have my cry. I took my time moaning and mulling over my situation.

  Why did I ever let myself get involved with these crazy people? I should have kept to myself. Relationships never worked out for me. People are hard. People are pain. People are dangerous!

  My pity party lasted a good half hour. Then I shifted back to cynically optimistic. Dang it!

  Tom saw me come up for air and flashed me a reassuring smile.

  “You’re cute when you’re terrified. I’d kiss you if I weren’t driving seventy miles an hour down I-10 through the middle of Tallahassee.”

  “Now look who’s the romantic.” I sniffed and blew my sore nose carefully. “Where are we staying tonight?”

  “I thought we would get a hotel in Chattahoochee.”

  I snorted a laugh. “You’ve obviously never been to Chattahoochee. There’s no hotels there. They barely have a traffic light. We better stop in Quincy and check for rooms. Take the next exit once we get past Tallahassee, city boy.”

  “Yes ma’am. You feeling better?”

  “I guess,” I muttered.

  “I’m serious about not worrying about Jacob and that woman you call Bulldog, Val. Statistically, you have a much greater risk of dying in an automobile accident than getting murdered.”

  I shot Tom a dirty look. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  Tom grimaced. “Somehow it sounded a lot better in my head.”

  “Thanks for trying, Tom. Just do me a favor. Keep your eyes on the road. Our exit is coming up.”

  Tom took a right off the interstate and soon the ugly, hardscrabble town of Quincy came into view. “I hate Quincy,” I said. “I got my one and only traffic ticket here from a mean old cop when I was seventeen.”

  Tom laughed and tried to talk like a redneck. “Maybe I can make it up to you, sugar doodle.”

  “That’s the worst Southern accent I’ve ever heard.”

  “Thanks,” Tom said, pretending to be crestfallen.

  He pulled the 4Runner into the parking lot of the town’s only motel, The Sandman Inn. “Wish me luck,” he said, then hopped out and went inside a rust-red door labeled “Motel Office.” He was out and tapping on my window not much more than a minute later. I rolled down the pane.

  “Bad news, sugar doodle,” Tom said, his bad accent making an unrequested encore. “It’s the annual Flea Across Florida Festival. Manager said there’s no rooms to be had ‘round these parts’ for fifty miles.”

  “Great. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse.”

  Crap. I guess desperate times really did call for desperate measures.

  “I’ll call my mother and see if she’s got room for us. But first I’m going to need a drink.”

  Tom looked at me warily. “Come on. Your mom can’
t be that bad.”

  “Sugar doodle, you have no idea.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  THE SUN WAS FADING in the sky ahead of us. Tom was driving fifty-five on I-10, and I was chugging down my second Budweiser. Suddenly, Winky came to life with a snort, then commenced to yelling like a stuck pig.

  “Where the hell am I?” he bellowed. He hoisted himself up and rubbed his radish eyes. I swigged my beer and watched the redheaded redneck in horrified fascination as he felt around on his freckled face with both pudgy hands, found a peanut stuck to his cheek, peeled it off and ate it.

  “Just outside Greenville,” Tom answered. “We’re waiting for Val’s liquid courage to kick in.”

  Winky looked at me and nodded. “Well hurry up. I’m so hungry I could eat a possum.”

  “Here, have a hoagie instead.” Tom tossed Winky a greasy white paper bag. “Picked up beer and dinner at the Junior Store down the road. Sorry. They were fresh out of possum.”

  “What’s a dad burned Hokie?” Winky asked. He snatched the bag and ripped into it. “This here’s a summarine sammich, Yankee boy.”

  Winky chomped on the sandwich like a hungry gator. The grunts and groans he made as he crammed it into his face were almost pornographic. Still, they were preferable to what I knew was coming as soon as I stepped inside the door at dear old mom’s.

  I drained the second Budweiser and set my jaw to lock-down.

  “Let’s roll,” I hissed.

  MY MOTHER LIVED IN what I semi-affectionately called, “The tristate area of denial.” Denial about how filthy her house was. Denial about how lazy she was. Denial about how mean-spirited and petty she was. But I had to say this for her – she’d give you the shirt off her back if you needed it.

  You’d just have to wash it first.

  She and my father divorced nearly thirty years ago. He died a decade later. She remarried three years ago and now lived with her perfect match – a legally blind guy with the patience of a snail on Prozac. His name was Dale, but my sister and I affectionately call him, “The Hostage.” I was explaining all this to Tom when we pulled up in their front yard and ran over something metal hiding in the foot-tall grass.