Val Fremden Mystery Box Set 1 Page 4

  It rested on the tap patiently as I cleaned an inch of smeary black grunge from under each of my eyes. As I smoothed my afro-wannabe hair with my hands, I realized the insect’s presence hadn’t freaked me out like it normally would have. Instead, I’d felt a strange calm wash over me.

  With the mascara erased and my hair tamed, I reached out my right index finger toward it. The dragonfly crawled onboard. I studied it for a moment, then carried it out of the bathroom. As soon as we hit the open air, it flew off with a bee-like buzz of its rainbow wings.

  “There she is!” I heard someone yell.

  I looked around, half expecting, as if by dragonfly magic, to see Glad appear out of a mist. Instead, I saw the three beach bums heading my way.

  “There you are!” Goober, formerly known as Stu, said. He hitched up his baggy cargo shorts. “We were worried about you.”

  “You were?” I asked incredulously. “You don’t even know me.”

  “We don’t stand on no gaul-dang formalities here, Miss Val,” said Winky. He folded his hands over his naked beer belly in a way that made me feel it was a display of redneck respect.

  “Any friend of Glad’s is our friend, too,” said the third man in a shy, half-whisper. He was of medium height and build, with blue-black hair and café-con-leche skin. Nice looking in an Antonio-Banderas-hits-the-skids kind of way.

  “I’m Jorge,” he said, then looked at my sandals.

  “I told the paramedics to take her to Grabb’s Funeral Home on Central Avenue,” Goober interrupted before I could say anything. He absently smoothed his huge moustache with a swipe of his right thumb and index finger. His eyes shifted left and right as if searching for something. “But without ID, they’ll only take her to the county morgue,” he continued. “We’ll have to figure something out. Meantime, we need to take up a collection for the cremation, pronto. Death doesn’t come cheap nowadays. Once we get Glad’s remains back, we can have a little ceremony out at the beach. Scatter her ashes out in the Gulf and stuff.”

  “I want to help,” I said. “What can I do?”

  “Thanks, Val,” Goober said. “That’s really nice of you. Well, first off we’re going to need a big coffee can. Anybody here got one?”

  The short, redheaded redneck blew a gasket.

  “We ain’t puttin’ her in no gaul-dang Folgers can like they did in The Big Lebowski!” Winky yelled. The pudgy little guy’s lips were white. The rest of his face was the color of a Bloody Mary. “I won’t stand for it, I’m tellin’ ya right now, it will not stand!”

  I studied Winky for a moment. Having come from a family that made The Jerry Springer Show look like The Sound of Music, I knew the difference between a bat-crap crazy redneck and a Southern man who just happened to have a red neck. (Neither one should be crossed, mind you. But while both would sleep with your sister to get back at you, only one would kill your dog to even the score.) When in doubt, I always looked for a ponytail. It was never a good sign. Winky had a buzz cut, no tail.

  I quietly breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Cool your jets, Winky,” said Goober, putting a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I thought we could use the can to collect the donations in. Decorate it up nice. Put it by the cash register. Maybe glue a picture of Glad on it. We’ve gotta to do something quick, you know. We’ve gotta to pay the piper, sore to speak.”

  Sore to speak. Ugh.

  As a professional writer, I’d come to realize that being highly literate was definitely overrated. When applied too liberally, it could be the ruination of your life.

  “I’ll take care of it,” I heard myself say.

  From the looks of it, I was probably the only one among us with more than twenty bucks to my name. Relatively speaking, I wasn’t that short of cash at the moment. But I had been short on friendship. Glad had filled that hole for me for an amazing six weeks. I was grateful. And if she really was still hanging around, I wanted to let her know it.

  “I’ll have a nice donation container here in an hour. You can count on me.”

  “That would be really great,” said Jorge. He batted back tears from his big, blackish-brown eyes, and stared at my feet again.

  “Okie dokie, then,” I said, involuntarily mimicking Glad, like people tend to do when they’ve spent a lot of time together.

  I flushed with embarrassment at my faux pas and hesitantly scanned the three guys’ faces. They all registered nothing but sad, wistful smiles. Relieved, I nodded and turned toward the parking lot.

  Back at my car, I slipped my shorts on over my bathing suit and inched my feet back into my flip-flops. To save time, I left Maggie’s convertible top down and headed to the nearest Target store.

  THE COMFORTING NEARNESS of Glad and her whispered inside jokes dissipated in the steamy heat during the drive to Target. In their wake my heart grew numb and hollow with shock.

  Walking into the harsh, fluorescent-lit retail extravaganza was an assault on my overwrought senses. Everything screamed with hideous brightness, garishness and pointlessness. I rummaged half-heartedly, then angrily through the ludicrously large selection of storage containers and kitchen canisters. Nothing seemed right.

  Who makes all this crap, anyway?

  I was about to panic when an idea struck me. I padded over to the children’s section in search of a piggybank. I found a white ceramic one about a foot tall, complete with pink wings and a halo. The chubby cherub’s huge, hound-dog eyes looked up sweetly at the inscription, “For My Little Angel.”

  It was perfect.

  Perfectly awful.

  I wanted to smash the idiotic thing to bits with a freaking pink hammer. But it was either that insipid angel or a Dalmatian-spotted cow that mooed and wagged its tail every time someone shoved a coin down its throat.

  I was carrying the blasted angel bank up to the register when I caught sight of something sitting at the register endcap. I grinned like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. I shoved the sappy angel back onto a shelf between bags of charcoal briquettes and tubes of sunscreen. I grabbed my prize and was back at Caddy’s in under an hour, as promised.

  “What on Earth ever made you pick that thing?” Goober asked.

  He frowned at me as I sat the foot-and-a-half tall Mr. Peanut piggybank down by the cash register next to a picture of Glad.

  I stepped back and compared Mr. Peanut with Goober. They were twins if I ever saw a set – except for the winking holographic monocle on the plastic peanut head. The fact that Goober didn’t make the connection raised the irony factor to darn near orgasmic for me.

  I could have sworn I heard Glad snickering in my ear.

  Chapter Six

  GLAD HAD LIVED IN A universe where last names didn’t matter. Come to think of it, neither had first ones. In her world, everyone had been free to make themselves up as they went along. It seemed to me that the practice had worked pretty well for her in life. Death, however, had proved to be another story.

  The trouble was, no one knew Glad’s last name or where she’d lived. As weatherworn as she’d appeared, she could have called that pink beach lounger home, for all I knew. She’d had no ID on her when she died. A Jane Doe. That meant there was no known next of kin to notify of her death. Legally, I didn’t have any right to her remains. But there was just no way I was going to let Glad’s body go unclaimed and forgotten.

  A corpse for the medical university or a body farm? No! Not for my precious friend Glad.

  At a loss as to what to do next, I’d arranged to meet Goober, Winky and Jorge to discuss our options for springing Glad out of the morgue. I was supposed to meet them at a restaurant called Water Loo’s in St. Pete Beach. When I walked in the dive I knew instantly that the universe was having another laugh on me. And, truth be told, I hoped it pissed its own pants.

  Even in its heyday, Water Loo’s couldn’t have hoped to be as respectable as, say, an inner-city Waffle House. The cockroach-hued, fake-wood paneling that covered every wall came in handy as camouflage for both filt
h and free-ranging cephalopods. The dirty linoleum floor bore a sad, worn-out trail to a row of dark-brown vinyl booths teetering on the edge of dilapidation.

  I would have fled if I’d had any place better to go.

  “Hey Val!” shouted a voice from the corner booth.

  I recognized the Marlboro-inspired baritone. It belonged to Goober. I shot a glance in that direction. The sight of the three men from Caddy’s sitting together in a booth caused me to suck in a short breath. I took a fumbling step in their direction like a tattered moth flittering headlong into a bug zapper.

  Goober and his pals looked as if they’d just washed ashore from some catastrophic and idiotic sea voyage. Sunburned faces. Stubble beards. Tattered clothes pungent with the smell of booze and sweat. They were the kind of guys whose mere presence caused eyes to shift and minds to narrow. I had to admit, the first time I’d met them I’d been no exception. But their redeeming desire to help Glad had softened my feelings toward them to something undefinable...somewhere between unease and resignation.

  I plopped down next to Goober feeling numb with shock. Glad’s unexpected departure had shoved me into my own personal episode of The Twilight Zone – one where I’d been spun around and around until I couldn’t catch my bearings, because any bearings I’d ever known no longer existed.

  “Off in Lady Lala Land?” Goober asked.

  He poked me to attention with a coffee spoon, then returned the dull silver utensil to his mouth. He sucked on it like a lollipop, clicking it against his teeth as he grinned at me from under a bushy, brown moustache he’d probably lifted from an unsuspecting walrus. It didn’t suit his bald, peanut-shaped head. Every time I looked at him I couldn’t help but think of that Mr. Peanut piggybank.

  “What? Oh. Umm...just thinking,” I fumbled, giving myself a second to come up with a lie. “I was just thinking...about how we all met.”

  I flicked my wavy brown hair off my shoulder and glanced at the spot on my arm where his spoon had made contact. I contained my disgust to discreet tightening of my jaw and looked back up at Goober.

  “Yeah, that was one hell of a day,” he said, nodding slowly. He flung a sideways glance across the booth in the direction of his buddies.

  “One hell of a day,” Wally and Jorge echoed in unison, then sighed like lovelorn losers.

  Though the two acted as a pair, physically they were as opposite as bookends. Wally was a fat, loud-mouthed, short-tempered, über-freckled redneck. Jorge was a deep, dark mystery of quiet contemplation inhabiting the form of a lean, caramel-skinned Hispanic.

  The idea of associating with these remnants of men caused a marble-sized knot of panic to lodge just below my larynx. Light years from familiar territory, I imagined myself a kind of urban Jane Goodall studying a tragic subspecies of homo erectus.

  Homo rejectus, perhaps?

  But like a good anthropologist, I swallowed hard and got the marble down. After all, as I said before, I really didn’t have any place else to go or anything better to do.

  “We need a gaul-dang toast!” bellowed pig-bellied Wally, jerking up from his slump like he’d been stuck with a pin.

  I had to commend him. Wally was actually wearing a shirt today. No sleeves and a hole where his left nipple peeked out, but a bona fide shirt nonetheless.

  “Jes. A toast,” echoed thin, sad-faced Jorge, his eyes brightening at the prospect of a drink. Judging from the bulge in the pocket of his faded Hawaiian shirt, Jorge had brought along an amigo from the liquor store.

  A pocket rocket. Oh boy.

  The men raised their scuffed brown coffee mugs in their right hands, then placed their left hands over their hearts in what appeared to be a well-worn ritual. Like a victim of Stockholm Syndrome, I followed their lead. When everyone was in position, Jorge made two sharp clicks out of the side of his mouth. Apparently, that was the signal for us to raise our mugs toward the center of the table until they all clunked together.

  “Screw you, kiddo!” the men belted out over the dull clinking of plastic on plastic.

  I blinked back a bittersweet blush of memories and watched the men take solemn, misty-eyed glances at each other like soldiers of some distant, yet never-to-be-forgotten war.

  I was familiar with the skirmish.

  Survival of the fittest.

  I was becoming a veteran of it myself.

  The sudden realization of my close camaraderie with the three social pariahs curdled my stomach and made me glance around the diner self-consciously. The dump was empty except for us, so I knew the dirty looks from the waitress in her ugly brown uniform were for our benefit alone.

  Mornings spent gulping down complementary Water Loo’s coffee refills looked to be the high point of the day for these guys. I hoped I wouldn’t suffer the same fate. With the toast to dearly departed Glad over, all three men collapsed back into the booth like sacks of unwashed potatoes. The blank looks on their faces made me wonder about the thoughts that plagued people with too much time on their hands.

  Booze. Sex. Regrets....

  As for me, I let my unemployed writer’s mind sink to a new low, just like my butt in that dilapidated booth. I amused myself by giving the guys a secret pet name – the three stooges. After all, they really were stooges. And there really were three of them. Hell, one of them was even named Stu.

  I knew it was an easy joke. But hell. Sometimes fish in a barrel needed shooting.

  “So what are we going to do about Glad?” I tossed the question out to no one in particular.

  Goober looked up from his coffee cup.

  “Oh. We already held that meeting.”

  “Really?” I asked. “So what’s the plan?”

  “We all voted that you should take care of it,” Goober replied, then smashed a cockroach on the table with his bare hand.

  Chapter Seven

  IN FLORIDA, PEOPLE died in droves from the heat, old age, exhaustion and suicide. Bodies stacked up like cordwood in summer, and cold storage was prime real estate. I was hoping to put these facts to my advantage when I called the county morgue. At our Water Loo’s summit, the stooges and I had agreed it would seem less creepy if a woman tried to claim Glad’s body. So, I thought up a cover story and made the call.

  “Hello, I’m calling about the woman brought in yesterday,” I said, not knowing where to begin a conversation involving a dead body.

  “Which one?” asked a man’s deep, raspy voice.

  “An older lady. Silver-white, short hair?”

  “Lady, you just described half of Pinellas County.”

  “Oh. Ummm...”

  “You got a name, by chance?” he asked impatiently.

  “Yes. Glad...uhh...Gladys.”

  The line was silent for five seconds. “You really gonna make me ask for the last name?”

  “Oh! Look, I’m sorry, but I don’t know her la...I mean...she came in as a Jane Doe. I’m her...niece.”

  Geeze! I almost blew it!

  “Okay, that narrows it down to six, maybe ten I got at the moment. Any identifying marks? Scars? Tattoos?” he asked wearily.

  “I don’t think so. Oh. Wait. She’s wearing a green bathing suit. Does that help?”

  “Aww, yeah. Tanned like a leather wallet? I know the one,” Mr. Sensitivity said.

  “What do I have to do to claim her body?”

  “Come in and fill out a form.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  I JUMPED IN MAGGIE and hit the gas. I was at the county morgue before the phone got cold.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?” a man asked when I walked in the door.

  I recognized the voice. The guy on the phone was the clerk on duty. It made sense.

  “Hi. I think I was just talking to you about Gladys?”

  “Hmmm?” he asked and scratched his right ear.

  He was younger than he’d sounded on the phone. Slimly built, his eyes were the same piercing, ice-water blue that Glad’s had been.

  “Green bathing suit?” I pr
ompted.

  “Oh yeah. Old crocodile hide.”

  The man’s goatee and grin made him look devilish, but in all the right ways. I nodded and did my best to smile.

  “I just got off the phone with you, right?” he asked.

  “Right. I’m Gladys’s niece. I’m here to make arrangements for her...uh...remains.”

  “You got a picture ID for her? Driver’s license?”

  Crap!

  I looked down and faked going through the motions of searching my purse for them.

  “Oh no,” I said, and shot him my best pathetic, pleading look. “I must have left them at home!”

  The clerk eyed me, his face emotionless except for a slight uptick of one eyebrow.

  “Is this going to be delivery or to go?”

  My gut flopped. “What?”

  “What do you plan to do with the body?” he asked, his finger tapping on the counter.

  “Oh. I want her sent to Grabb’s Funeral Home. For cremation.”

  My reply seemed to satisfy something in him. The clerk gave a quick nod, grabbed a form from a pile and handed it to me. “I’m going to need to see your driver’s license.”

  I handed it over.

  “Okay,” he said. “Look, I’ll do you a favor, since you’re sending her to Grabb’s. Just fill out the form with her vitals as best as you can remember ‘em. Just make sure your contact information is accurate. That way, if anybody comes asking questions, we’ll have you on file. I’m gonna need to make a copy of your license.”

  I nodded. He photocopied my license along with the form.

  “Sorry about your loss,” he said as he slid my license back across the counter.

  “Thanks.”

  “No, really. Sorry about the morbid humor. It’s just that this job is...incredibly desensitizing. You wouldn’t believe how many people never get picked up. I’m glad your aunt isn’t going off to unclaimed freight.” He winced at me and slapped himself on the forehead. “Ugh! Sorry again.”