Val Fremden Mystery Box Set 1 Read online

  “Wanna cup of coffee?” she yelled from the low picket fence dividing our properties.

  “I’m kinda busy,” I yelled back.

  I raised the broom and whacked a poop-brown cushion for emphasis.

  “You should always take time to stop and smell the roses.”

  Laverne walked over to the white fence reached out her hand.

  “Here.”

  I let go of my stranglehold on the broom handle. Laverne held out a small bouquet of white, orange and pink roses. I dropped my broom and a little bit of my witchy mood and met her at the fence.

  “Thanks, Laverne.”

  I took the roses from her hand. Inbred Southern guilt crawled up my throat and out of my mouth.

  “Why don’t you come over to my place for a cup of coffee?”

  “Don’t mind if I do!”

  Laverne hiked her robe up to her hips, stepped over the fence with her spray-tan-orange stork legs and followed me inside. She ogled the kitchen with her big donkey eyes while I poured coffee into two huge novelty mugs. Hers read, “World’s Best Something or Other.” Mine read, “I Like Big Cups and I Cannot Lie.”

  “I see your faucet’s leaking.”

  Laverne was sitting at the breakfast bar, staring at the kitchen sink.

  “Yeah.” I shrugged. “Another thing on my to-do list.”

  “Maybe I can help.”

  Before I could object, Laverne jumped up and busied herself jiggling the tap handle. The stainless-steel double sink had a pivoting faucet that swiveled to reach both basins. Laverne swung the spout from one sink to the other, then back again. I kept one eye on her as I searched the fridge for the cream. She was totally tongue-out focused on her task.

  “You take sugar or cream, Laverne?”

  Her eyes shot up at me for a millisecond, then returned to the faucet.

  “Huh? Oh. Neither.”

  “Okay. Here’s your –”

  “Ah ha!” Laverne called out. “I got it!”

  “Got what?”

  “It’s not leaking anymore, see?”

  I looked at the faucet. She was right. No drip, drip, drip. I handed her a mug.

  “What did you do?”

  She set her mug on the counter.

  “Watch.”

  Laverne moved the spout about an inch to the right. The water started dripping again.

  “See? If you move the thingy to five p.m. on the clock dial, it quits leaking.”

  She adjusted the tap again, her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth to aid her in her effort.

  “See? No more leaking.”

  “Wow, thanks, Laverne,” I said dryly. “Another problem solved. But tell me again. The position that stopped the leak. Was it five a.m. or five p.m.?”

  “Five p.m., definitely.”

  Laverne sat back and cocked her head proudly.

  “Okay, I’ll try to remember that.” I’ll never forget it as long as I live.

  Laverne’s naïve, cheerful ignorance made me question how she’d survived to such a ripe, old age. To be totally honest, it also made me envious. I was completely devoid of the gene required for Laverne’s brand of happy-go-lucky bounciness. I wondered what life must be like for people like her – those lucky individuals who were never bothered by the need to ponder the reason for anything. I couldn’t seem to escape questioning everything – from the purpose of my existence to why a grown-ass man wouldn’t buy me a decent birthday gift.

  “You okay in there, sugar?”

  My attention shot back to the room. Laverne was staring at me like a mother donkey.

  “Oh, sure. I was just wondering, Laverne. How’d you learn to be so...handy?”

  “Oh. I was a Vegas showgirl!”

  As if that explained everything.

  THE HOUSE I INHERITED wasn’t, in itself, much to look at. It was just a single-story, concrete-block box with terrazzo floors, an open living room, dining room, kitchen area, two bedrooms and one small bathroom. But the location was a whole different story. After Laverne left, I went outside to gather up the battered remains of the sofa cushions. As I reached for the last one, a boat horn sounded. I looked up and was reminded that my backyard had a breathtaking panorama of the nearly always sunny and sparkling Intracoastal Waterway.

  When I’d first gotten the house, the backyard had been a garbage dump. Literally. But after all the junked appliances, broken windows, garbage bags and dead cars had been hauled away, a whole new perspective had come into view. Even now, with nothing but weeds and bald patches of sand for landscaping, the seascape was spectacular. The only thing blocking my wide-open water vista was Glad’s old Minnie Winnie RV. It remained, still parked, flat-tired, in its little patch of weeds. I just couldn’t bear to part with it.

  From where I stood, the wide, turquoise waterway sparkled like diamonds in the sunlight. Small, wooden docks jutted out along the saltwater inlet like teeth on a sawfish’s boney nose. Along both sides, modest homes in pastel hues made the waterway feel more like a cozy, liquid lane, with boats replacing cars parked along its edges. The overall effect was, ironically, both expansive and cozy. I stopped dead in my tracks and drank it in for a moment. Lavern was right. It does pay to stop and smell the roses.

  When I hauled the sofa cushions back into the house, an odor punched me in the nose. It wasn’t roses. It emanated from the area around the couch, and smelled like a dead frog’s fart. I dropped the cushions on the floor and peered under the sofa. Nothing. I climbed onto the cushion-less frame and felt around in the crevices where the bottom of the couch met the back. I came up with three pennies, a plastic spoon and a laundry token. I tried the space by the right armrest. My fingertips detected something wedged in the crack. I curled my fingers around it and pulled it out.

  It was about the size and shape of a hotdog. Whatever it was, it was wrapped in a white handkerchief. I unfolded the cloth and stared, open mouthed, at a gold ring engraved with the initials WH. It was still encircling a bloated, grey, human finger.

  Chapter Six

  IT WAS A LITTLE LATE in life, but I’d just discovered another thing that made me scream like a little girl.

  “Calm down, Val!” Tom said over the phone. “Put it in a jar with some ice.”

  “Are you out of your mind? I’m not touching that thing!”

  Bitter bile surged up my throat. I wretched.

  “We need to preserve the evidence,” Tom said in his cop voice.

  “Then I suggest you come over and do it!”

  I clicked off the phone and ran toward the bathroom. I high-jumped past the area in the living room where I’d flung the finger away in horror. I locked the bathroom door and dry-heaved into the toilet. I stuffed a towel under the door, in case that horrible finger came back to life and tried to inch its way after me.

  The logical part of my brain knew that the whole idea of a reanimated finger was irrational. The scared-witless part didn’t give a flying crap what my rational part knew. I needed to keep my feet off the floor and away from that finger! I squatted on top of the pink toilet-seat lid and remained perched there, like a frozen pigeon, until I heard the door creak open and a familiar voice call my name.

  “Val? Where are you?”

  “In here, Tom!” I called from behind the bathroom door. “I’m not coming out until you deal with...it!”

  “Roger that.”

  Tom burst out laughing.

  “It’s not funny!”

  “I’m not laughing at the finger, Val.”

  “Well, you better not be laughing at me, or you’re going to get another kind of finger!”

  Tom laughed again.

  “I’m on it, Miss Marple.”

  The panicked horror that had gripped me for the last fifteen minutes like a popsicle in King Kong’s fist suddenly thawed and sent me tumbling off the toilet. I grabbed the towel bar on my way down and snatched it off the wall. We both fell to the floor with a clattering thud. Tom was at the door in an instant. He tr
ied the knob, but it was locked. I wasn’t taking any chances with that finger.

  “You okay in there?”

  “Yes, I think so.” I hauled myself up, still clutching the towel bar in my right hand. “Where’s the finger?”

  “Apprehended. In a pickle jar. You’re safe.”

  I cracked open the bathroom door and looked up at Tom. His face was plastered with a boyish grin. I kept a firm grip on the towel bar and held it like a club behind the door, in case that hideous finger escaped from that jar.

  “You better be telling the truth! No funny stuff!”

  Tom’s face returned to normal, which for him meant devilishly handsome.

  “Scout’s honor. I never joke about evidence.”

  “Then why did you call me Miss Marple?”

  “First of all, you’re not evidence, Val, so joking with you is fair game. Secondly, you fancy yourself a detective, Valiant Stranger, but you crumple at the least little thing. Third –”

  “A finger isn’t a little thing!” I shot back. “I mean, it’s not a big thing...but...aargh! Anyway, I never said I wanted to be a detective. And I didn’t crumple!”

  “Tell that to your towel bar,” Tom quipped.

  “Very funny.”

  I dropped the bar. It clanged on the tile floor as I closed the bathroom door behind me. I tiptoed down the hall behind Tom and glanced around the living room and kitchen.

  “Is it still in the house?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “No.”

  “Okay then. Now tell me how you found it.”

  Tom and I sat on the stools at the kitchen breakfast bar. I poured us each a glass of iced tea and explained how I pulled the finger out from a crevice in the sofa.

  “With my bare hands!” I whined in horror.

  Tom studied my hands for a moment then eyed his glass of tea warily. “Better bleach your hands.”

  “I did already. Like, six times, if Ty D Bol counts.”

  Tom tried not to smile.

  “That ought to do it. How do you think the finger got in the couch?”

  “How should I know? You’re the one who hauled the mangy thing back from the alley. Were there really three cats and a possum on it?”

  Tom brushed a strand of brown, wavy hair from my forehead.

  “No. Just a bum taking a nap.”

  “What!”

  I screeched and punched Tom on the arm, nearly knocking him off the stool.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Hold on there! At the time, I didn’t think anything of it.” Tom regained his perch on the stool. “The guy couldn’t have been laying on it for more than an hour or two. He seemed okay. I gave him a fiver to help me load the sofa into my 4Runner.”

  “Was he screaming when you left?”

  “What?”

  “You know. Something like, ‘Hey mister, my finger’s in that couch!’”

  “Not that I noticed.”

  I gloated. “So who’s the crummy detective now?”

  TOM CALLED THE COPS. They came to the house and one of them asked me a bunch of questions. I answered them while Tom talked to the other cop and handed over the pickle jar with the finger in it. They hauled it and the couch away as evidence. I figured that would be the end of it.

  Boy was I wrong.

  Chapter Seven

  TWO DAYS HAD PASSED since the couch had given me the finger. Then I’d gotten another one from Couches Today. When I’d called this morning to ask when to expect delivery on my new sofa, they’d basically instructed me not to hold my breath.

  I would have been ticked off, but it was Tuesday. That meant Tom would be taking me out tonight. Even though we were in the habit of spending three or four nights a week together, the cop and I still kept our separate places. We also kept a standing Tuesday-night date we’d begun when we first started seeing each other last year. I called it Taco Tuesdays. That always made Tom smile.

  It still stung a little that Tom hadn’t bought me a real birthday present. But I was trying to rise above it. After all, I’d lived through so much worse. Considering all the lousy presents I’d received over the years from my ex-husbands, that ugly-ass couch didn’t even make the top three. Those esteemed positions were held by a jar of jalapeño peppers (sole Christmas present), a cheap silver necklace with a plastic four-leaf clover (fourteenth anniversary) and a walnut press. (Really? I mean, really?) In my opinion, those beat the couch hands down in my “WTF were you thinking” rankings.

  Still, it bugged me. If I was going to stay in a good mood for Taco Tuesday, I needed a pick-me-up. I knew just where to get it. On the way home, I stopped at a funky little boutique on Corey Avenue and bought a pink floral top to wear with my black jeans tonight. Tom liked me in pink, and turning Tom on was never money wasted. As I drove back to my place, my mind was filled with visions of Tom peeling off my new blouse. I nearly hit the mailbox pulling in the driveway....

  I stripped and turned the tap on full-blast in the vintage flamingo-pink bathtub. All the repairmen who’d tromped through the house in the past six months had advised me to tear out the old 1950s bathroom, but I just couldn’t bear the idea. I guess I felt nostalgic – not just about the architecture, but about the parents I never really knew.

  Except for a casual “hello,” I’d not once spoken to my father, Tony Goldrich. I’d seen him around Caddy’s beach bar plenty of times. But back then, I hadn’t known he was my biological father. He’d simply been the itinerant beach bum raking the sand and picking up garbage. I’d met Glad, my mom, on Sunset Beach next to Caddy’s. We’d talked a lot. Often for hours. I’d gotten to know her pretty well in those six weeks before she died.

  I squeezed a good measure of rose-scented bubble bath into the water and watched it foam into merengue-like peaks. I wondered if Glad had liked bubble baths as much as she had enjoyed a cold pint of Fosters. Or bright-red lipstick. The thought of Glad’s beef-jerky hide soaking in the pink tub made me feel at home, somehow. My decision to keep the bathroom intact had really been about holding on to a piece of them – a piece of my real family. I smiled and lowered myself into the steamy froth.

  Ten minutes later, I hauled myself, naked and pink, out of the tub. I reached absently for a towel and came back with a handful of air. I made a mental note: “Get a new towel rod.” I grabbed the towel I’d laid across the toilet seat and wrapped it around me. I fiddled with my damp hair in the mirror and looked at the small photo of Glad I’d found when I was clearing out the house. I’d taped it to the vanity mirror. I stared at her image, then at my own reflection. I liked to think I looked a bit like my mom, but I wasn’t sure.

  The photo of Glad had been taken not long before she passed at the age of 65. In it, she was smiling that crooked, red-lipstick smear of a smile, sprawled out in the sun like a frog on vacation. Her long, Slim Jim arms and legs spilled over her pink lounge chair, stuck in the sugar-white sand at Sunset Beach.

  I smiled. The photo had captured Glad perfectly, in her element, doing what she loved. She didn’t have a care in the world as she hoisted that pint-sized can of Fosters between her boney, brown fingers. I kissed the tip of my finger and touched it to her face. Then I slipped into my bra and panties and got ready for my date with Tom.

  I LOVED TACOS, AND Red Mesa Cantina in downtown St. Pete had some of the best. Tom and I parked on Beach Drive in the free, three-hour parking zone between Fifth and SixthAvenues. It was a bit of a haul to Red Mesa from there, but it was a nice walk. And it saved money. I wasn’t destitute anymore, but those days had taught me not to needlessly throw away my cash. But even more than that, I found it hard to relax and enjoy the evening when I had to constantly think about feeding a parking meter.

  Tom and I strolled hand-in-hand past the romantic, posh and pink Vinoy Hotel, then skirted the oak-shaded park offering glimpses of yachts bobbing on the calm, harbored waters of Tampa Bay. The sky was tinging pink, and a tiny chill crept in on the early evening air. I
shivered. Tom untied his sweater from around his neck and draped it over my shoulders. He looked into my eyes like I was the only woman in the world.

  “I really like you in pink,” he whispered in my ear.

  Goosebumps popped up on back of my neck.

  “Really?”

  “But I like you even more in nothing at all.”

  A wave of electric lust shot through me. Man, it’s hard to stay mad at a man who likes me naked. Maybe that’s enough of a birthday present – him liking me in my birthday suit.

  We cut through the evening crowd in front of the Birchwood Hotel. The streetlamps kicked on. I spotted a street performer about twenty feet in front of us. I pointed at him.

  “Look, Tom! How cool!”

  The man had a deep, baritone voice. But his words sounded strangely hiccoughed and slurred. As we drew closer, I realized the man was singing the Star Spangled Banner. But it didn’t sound quite like singing, exactly. Weirdly, the performer was bent over like a quarterback waiting for a hike. My teeth clamped together and started grinding. What the? The man was belching and farting the national anthem – for tip money!

  Tom burst out laughing. I punched Tom on the arm.

  “Don’t laugh! That’s horrible! It’s disrespectful!”

  Tom put his arm around me and tried to hold me back, but I was hell-bent on giving the offensive jerk a piece of my mind. I marched up to him – too close to him – and the guy broke wind in my face. A second later my purse found its mark on the man’s backside with a dull thwack. He whirled around. Our eyes locked. My mind did a double-take and my mouth fell open like a wallet at a strip club.

  It was Goober.

  My anger evaporated in the roasting heat of social embarrassment. My neck, moments before chilled to goosebumps by Tom, turned scarlet-hot with shame. I tugged at Tom’s arm, trying to escape. I wanted to take him – and any lingering chance of a nice evening – along with me. But it was too late.