Val Fremden Mystery Box Set 3 Read online

  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 began to sting. “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?”

  “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 the old woman 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 more glue, Laverne. I used it all 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 as Laverne wiped the corners of her eyes with a paper towel.

  “Thanks, honey. I needed a good laugh.”

  “We both did,” I said. “Boyfriend business can be tough.”

  I set my empty glass 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. “You don’t say.”

  Laverne picked up Marilyn’s leg and finished off her beer, blissfully unaware that she looked like the femme fatal in 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.”

  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 heard 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 the faded Vegas showgirl upped the ante by sliding a plate of cookies across the counter at me.

  “Want one? 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 them.

  I thought about Laverne’s boyfriend, J.D., who faced culinary trials like this one on a daily basis. I wished I’d had one of his baggies tucked in my waistband so I could fake eating the cookie, 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 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 as if to prove her point. My body shrunk back involuntarily.

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

  Laverne put down the cookie and picked up a brochure. She reached a long, skinny arm across the counter and handed it to me. “See? They’ve got all kinds of classes. And the best thing is, not everybody there’s got a blue rinse in their hair and a stick up their butt.”

  I glanced through the brochure.

  “Huh. It says here they have a writer’s class. Mystery Writing for Fun and Profit. Meets Thursday nights from six to eight.”

  “That’s tomorrow!” Laverne squealed. “Same time as my cooking class!”

  “But it started last week,” I muttered.

  “So? You’ve only missed one class. Why don’t you take it? We can ride over together. It’ll be fun!”

  “I dunno.”

  “What have you got to lose? And Val, it’s in the evening. Think about it. That’s free time away from the guys.” She jabbed a red-lacquered nail at the brochure. “And like it says here, you can ‘Explore Your Inner Aptitudes.’”

  “Or ineptitudes.”

  I bit my lip and read the brief syllabus while Laverne drummed her nails on the counter.

  “Val, thirty-five bucks buys seven weeks of ‘Thursday evening, do-as-you-damn-well-please’ time.”

  I looked up at Laverne with a new admiration.

  “Excellent point, my friend. Mind if I use your phone?”

  Chapter Two

  Ever since I’d quit my job at Griffith & Maas last week, I’d been living a lie.

  I’d bought a new laptop and a cheap acrylic desk. I’d set up the second bedroom as a makeshift office. I was going to be a writer again.

  But I wasn’t writing.

  I’d spent Monday sitting at my desk staring at my laptop and playing solitaire. Tuesday I’d stared at my laptop and used an old toothbrush to clean every inch of grout in the bathroom. Yesterday, I’d organized the junk drawer and sorted rubber bands and paperclips by size and color. Today I’d cleaned out the refrigerator – by eating all the leftovers, including ketchup packets and every olive and pickle that had the misfortune to be apprehended while swimming innocently around in a jar full of brine.

  I was supposed to be writing. But the words wouldn’t come. What kind of story did I have to tell, anyway? How to arrange dryer lint into fun animal shapes?

  It had been weird enough not going to work anymore. Every morning this week I’d peered through the front blinds as Tom had driven away in his SUV. I knew that after he kissed me goodbye and headed to his job, I was free to write. But I hadn’t felt free. Instead of using my imagination for writing novels, I’d used it to put bars on the windows and roadblocks in my brain.

  I’d become my own jailer. And my sentence was to write sentences!

  It was too much pressure. Getting that blasted AARP notice yesterday hadn’t helped, either. For me, it hadn’t been an anonymous, over-fifty rite of passage. It had been a very personal wake-up call; A “Come on down!” shout-out from the MC in the gameshow called My Life.

  I was running out of time to do something big with my time on Earth. Writing might be my last chance...and what was I doing with it? I was blowing it! Instead of cranking out stories, I was hurtling down a slippery slope on a pair of thighs that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that gravity was no longer my friend.

  I stared at the blank laptop screen as if it might rescue me from myself. It stared back, not offering even so much as a pity blink. I put my head in my hands.

  What am I doing? I don’t have any more time to waste! I need to write the next great American novel before dementia sets in!

  But the black void of the computer screen wasn’t about to divulge its secret plots today. And for some reason, no amount of internal prodding, pleading, or psychotic, blackmail-type threats could motivate my mind
, or get my fingers to press the keys. Anything and everything seemed more appealing than writing – even scrubbing the toilet.

  My worst nemesis was the fridge. As I sat at my desk, the evil food in the refrigerator called to me like a siren’s song, luring me to my death by morbid obesity.

  As I scraped the last of the peanut butter out of the jar, I hoped the mystery writing class tonight would give me some inspiration. If not, my only memorable life accomplishment might turn out to be that when I die, I’ll have to be hauled from my house with a forklift and buried in a piano case.

  “WHAT DID YOU DO TODAY?” Laverne asked as she climbed into Shabby Maggie, my 1963 Ford Falcon Sprint convertible.

  My back bristled.

  “Don’t ask. Hey, do you know how to get mustard stains out of upholstery?”

  “No. But I know how to get blood stains out of cotton sheets.”

  I eyed the old woman. She was wearing a putrid green pantsuit. “Don’t tell me. Vegas days?”

  “Yep.”

  I smiled. “I bet your life would make a good novel, Laverne.”

  “Sure, kid,” she shrugged. “Anyone’s would. So, how’s your book coming along?”

  A hot flash of desperation shot through me. Either that or I’d gone menopausal.

  “Not so great. Working from home is harder than I thought. I need...inspiration.”

  Laverne’s head jerked to the right. Her eyes bugged out like a cartoon character who’d just spotted an oncoming bus. I followed her line of sight. J.D.’s white Mercedes was pulling up in her driveway.

  Laverne nudged me on the shoulder. “Step on it, Val, or we’ll be late for class.”

  “Trouble in paradise?” I asked.

  Laverne looked me up and down and smiled brightly. “Yeah, honey. That would be a great name for your novel!”

  “MY NAME IS ANGELA LANGSBURY,” the scrawny, silver-haired woman at the front of the classroom said as I walked in. She was pencil thin. Blue veins ran up her forearms and temples like worms under the surface of milky Jell-O. She wore a faded, black, sack of a dress and leaned on the edge of a metal desk in a narrow, angular room the color of a grey whale’s posterior.

  Five desks, four of which were already occupied, faced the teacher. A blackboard covered most of the wall behind her.

  I snickered and made my way toward the last open seat.

  “Excuse me,” Ms. Langsbury said. “I don’t see what’s so funny...Miss?”

  “Val Fremden,” I answered. “Sorry. I thought you were making a joke...Angela Lansbury? Murder She –”

  “I get it. Not amusing,” instructor Langsbury said in a tone that implied she’d heard it all before about a trillion times. Her black, beady eyes bore through mine until I shrunk two inches. I took another hesitant step toward the empty desk.

  “Ms. Fremden, please remain standing,” Langsbury said in a tone not unlike nails on a chalkboard. My spine arched.

  “Class. What can you tell me about the woman who just entered the room?”

  My face grew hot as I stood and tried not to face my jury. It was a lineup of three middle-aged women of various shapes and sizes, and one young guy with a soul patch whose expression made me suspect he just might have been there against his will.

  “She’s late,” said a woman with ugly librarian glasses and a face to match.

  “What else?” Langsbury asked, and looked me over as if I were an art-class model.

  “She’s disrespectful,” said another woman with red hair and a pinched expression.

  “She’s got a weird sense of humor,” said a familiar voice. I dared a glance her way. There sat Judy Bloomers, a real estate agent I’d met a few weeks back.

  “Her jeans are too tight,” said the young man.

  The room went silent. The glowering looks he got from me and the other women caused the hipster-wannabe to shrivel even further behind his desk.

  “Okay. Enough,” said Langsbury. “I see some of you remembered last week’s lesson and stuck to the facts without interpretation. Victoria, you’re right. She is, indeed, late.”

  The library-faced lady sneered at me smugly.

  “Disrespectful?” Langsbury continued. “Yes, she’s expressed this tendency with both tardiness and rudeness. Good observation, Clarice.”

  The red-haired lady crinkled her thin nose and smiled as if it pained her to do so.

  “Jeff, you said her jeans were too tight,” Langsbury said. “This is a highly subjective comment. I suppose, in some country, somewhere, jeans that tight could be considered appropriate.” She glanced at me and smirked almost imperceptibly.

  “And Judy, the comment about the weird sense of humor is yet to be determined. It will require more observation. Thank you, Ms. Flintstone. You can take your seat now.”

  “It’s Fremden,” I corrected.

  “Of course,” said Langsbury. “So, we are agreed, then? Names are no laughing matter.”

  I bit my lip. “Agreed.”

  The class laughed nervously as I slid into the last open chair. My face burned with embarrassment and anger.

  How rude!

  As soon as my butt hit the chair, I lifted it again.

  I don’t need this crap! I’m leaving!

  My butt was hovering midway off the seat when what Langsbury said next made me set it back down again.

  “Ms. Fremden,” she asked, “what’s the cardinal rule for writing a good novel?”

  How should I know? That’s why I’m here, Sherlock!

  I didn’t want to add “stupid” to my rapidly growing list of undesirable attributes, so I scanned my brain and came up with something I’d heard somewhere before.

  “Uh...write what you know?”

  “If that were true, there wouldn't be any science fiction novels, now would there?” Langsbury said.

  “Uh...no,” I admitted.

  “Or romance novels either,” Judy quipped. “Think about it. I’d believe in Martians faster than I’d believe in a guy with ripped abs that swept me off my feet, then swept the floor and washed the dishes.”

  The whole class laughed, including Langsbury.

  “Judy’s right,” Langsbury said. “Write what you know and you’ll bore yourself and your readers to tears. No. The correct answer is to write what you’re curious about. Write about what excites you. So, tell us, Ms. Fremden. What would get you excited?”

  “Uh...a sale on magic jeans that made your butt three sizes smaller?”

  Ms. Langsbury smiled. “The Case of the Magic Jeans. It has a nice ring to it for a mystery. Don’t you agree, class?”

  I glanced around the room. All smiles. Langsbury winked at me.

  And just like that, I’d been redeemed.

  MS. LANSGBURY SPENT the next two hours reviewing the “dos and don’ts” of writing mysteries. How to develop characters and story lines. How to avoid plotting yourself into a corner. And, of course, how to dodge the dreaded ending everyone saw coming.

  Geeze! There was so much more to writing novels than I’d thought. By the end of the class, my head was spinning. Two hours had flown by.

  “All right, class, that’s it,” Langsbury said.

  She tapped a piece of chalk on the board and wrote out the words, ‘Five Unique Ways to Kill Someone.’

  “This week’s homework assignment is to imagine how you might be able to get away with murder,” she said. “Next Thursday, I want to see a short story and a list of five original ways to help someone bite the dust.”

  “Who should we kill?” asked Victoria, the woman impersonating a snooty librarian.

  “Anyone,” Langsbury answered. “A coworker. Family member. Spouse.”

  “I don’t need any more ideas on how to get rid of a husband,” Judy sneered. “I’ve got a list as long as my arm. I was married for twenty-eight years, after all.”

  The women laughed appreciatively. Jeff looked as if he were counting the number of steps to the exit door.

  “Oh! One final thin
g,” Langsbury said as we rose from our seats. “Don’t forget about the writer’s retreat coming up in Orlando. I’ll need to know next week for sure who’s coming. And you’ll need to pay your five-hundred dollar deposit to secure a spot.”

  “I missed last week,” I said to Langsbury as the others filed out of the room. “What’s this writer’s retreat about?”

  “It’s akin to a murder-mystery weekend,” she explained. “We spend three days at a bed and breakfast outside Altamonte Springs. I give vague details about a recent murder, and have various characters drop by for lunch and drinks. Participants have to study them, interview them, and ultimately try to determine who the murderer was based on the clues and evidence presented.”

  “Sounds like a typical weekend at my relatives,” Judy quipped.

  Langsbury shot Judy some side-eye and poked a piece of paper at me. “Here’s a flyer if you’re interested.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and walked out with Judy.

  I glanced at the flyer. “Geeze! Eighteen hundred bucks for a weekend of pretending to be Agatha Christie? That’s pretty steep.”

  “Yeah,” Judy agreed. “Too rich for my blood.”

  “So, what are you doing here?” I asked. “Do you want to write mystery novels?”

  Judy smirked. “Wow, Val. Your powers of deduction are astounding.”

  I punched her on the arm. “Ha ha.”

  Judy shrugged. “I dunno. I’ve thought about it off and on my whole life. I heard about this class and figured, why not give it a go.”

  “I used to be a copy writer,” I muttered. “Everybody thinks they can write a book.”

  “I’m a real estate agent,” Judy sneered. “Everybody thinks they can sell a house.”

  I winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Judy shrugged. “I’ve got thick skin. But hey, I’ve gotta know. How’s it working out with your new neighbor? The guy who barbequed his mother?”

  “He didn’t barbeque.... Look, come to find out, he’s actually a nice guy. And it turns out that spontaneous human combustion is a real thing.”

  “Really?” Judy kicked a stone off the sidewalk. “Too bad. I was going to use that as one of my five ways to knock somebody off.”