Val Fremden Mystery Box Set 1 Page 48

  I wasn’t in the mood to hear about her latest shenanigans. But I needed some cheering up. Her horrific tales of dating made me appreciate my own pathetic life.

  “So, spill it, Milly. Who, what, where, when.”

  Milly’s eyes sparkled with delight. “Good old, direct Val. You’re the poster child for keeping it real. Have I told you lately that I love you?”

  I grinned back. “No. But it seems to be going around.”

  Milly eyed me curiously, then her eyes flew open like a kicked-in door. “Wait. What? Did Tom –”

  I smirked. “Yes. Saturday. At the party.”

  “Oh my word! What did you say?”

  My smirk switched to a grimace. “Oh. Uh...‘Thanks.’”

  Milly flinched. “Ouch!”

  I shook my head. “That’s not the half of it.”

  “What else –”

  Milly’s voice faded as the waiter came to the table to take our order.

  “Sea dragon roll and an iced tea for me, please,” I said, looking up at the waiter.

  “The same for me,” Milly rattled off absently, then dismissed the waiter with a flick of her hand. Her eyes remained locked on me. I got the feeling she’d have replied “the same” if I’d ordered a deep-fried cow patty. She leaned over the table and whispered.

  “So what’s the other half?”

  I raised my left shoulder to my ear and let it drop again. “We had a fight. I haven’t spoken to him since.”

  “What?! After all he did –”

  I leaned in and glared at Milly. “Before you go taking sides, hear me out. He sold my RV without asking me. The piggybank with mom’s cremains was in the RV.”

  Milly’s judgmental expression crumpled. “Crap, Val!”

  “Hold on. It gets worse. I just came from the junkyard that hauled it away. They’ve already sold it to somebody else for cash. No paperwork. No name. No nothing. Milly, Glad is gone for good. I don’t have a clue where to even begin looking.”

  “Aww! Double crap, Val. I’m sorry!”

  The waiter set two glasses of tea in front of us, along with a pair of straws. We both smiled up at him courteously, as if he existed in some other dimension, then shifted back to glowering at each other as soon as he left.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “There’s nothing I can do but hope that ‘Lefty’ gives me a call.”

  “Lefty?”

  I shook my head and blew out a breath. “Don’t ask.”

  Milly studied me for a moment and played with her straw. “I’m sorry about your mom’s cremains, Val. But you know, you have to let go of her sometime. I mean, now that the house is finished, you need something to do. You have too much time on your hands.”

  “That’s weird. That’s exactly what Laverne told me yesterday. She said I should take an adult education class at the college. She’s starting a ceramics class next week.”

  “Ceramics? Are you crazy? You don’t need a hobby, Val. You need a job.” Milly cocked her head coyly. “Did I mention we have an opening?”

  I raised my eyebrows dubiously. “No. No you didn’t.”

  “Would you be interested?”

  I curled my upper lip. “I’m not broke by any means. But according to my bank account and the average mortality charts, it’s probably a good idea.”

  Milly smirked. “A word of advice, Val. Don’t use that line in the interview.”

  I jerked to attention. “Interview? What interview?”

  “I set one up for you. Tomorrow at ten. It’s for a junior office assistant.”

  I stared at Milly like a kid who’d just been grounded for a month.

  “Come on, Val. It’ll be good for you. You need to get out and do something...normal.”

  “Normal?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  The scary thing was, I actually did know what she meant.

  “You’d be a natural, Val.”

  “As far as I can tell, I’m unemployable, Milly. Thanks to my seven missing years abroad, I can’t even get a job as a waitress. Who’d hire me?”

  “I would.”

  “Is the hiring at your decision?”

  “No. But let’s just say I can pull some strings.”

  I blew out a sigh. “Do I have a choice?”

  Milly shot me a wry smile. “Now that’s the spirit!”

  The waiter arrived with our sea creature rolls. I suddenly realized I hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday’s Skinny Dip debacle. I was starved. I looked over at my good friend Milly. I figured I might as well have a show with my dinner, so I repeated her favorite prompt.

  “Okay, so...where were we? Who, what, where and when?”

  Milly grinned and took her cue like a professional thespian. She straightened her shoulders, rolled them a few times for good measure, and launched into her bad-date monologue.

  “Well, the who is a six-foot tall piece of crap named Dexter Ponds. The what? A MatchMate date, of course.”

  Our heads nodded in unison. “Of course.”

  “Where? This dump on Central. When? Yesterday at 7 p.m. You didn’t ask, but the why? I don’t know. You tell me. Why do I keep doing this to myself, Val? Do I hate myself that much?”

  “Why? What happened this time?”

  “What always happens. The guy shows up and he’s ten years older and thirty pounds heavier than his profile picture. He eats like he was raised in a laundromat, and he automatically thinks he can do better than me.”

  “Why do you say that? You’re beautiful.”

  “Not according to Poindexter, master of the insult disguised as a compliment. My favorite was when he told me I was plump, but still ‘kind of’ pretty. Val, am I losing my looks?”

  “What? No! The guy’s a jerk!”

  Milly pouted with insecurity. “Are you just telling me a nice lie?”

  “No. I think you’re the prettiest woman I know. So shut up and eat your dragon roll.”

  Milly smiled, only half convinced. “There ought to be a law against free-roaming dumbells like him.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Free-roaming dumbbells? That doesn’t sound like you.”

  Milly laughed softly. “That’s because it’s not. I mean, I can’t take credit for it, anyway. I almost forgot...this is was where the date got good. Val, in the middle of Dexter’s insulting monologue, a woman came up from out of nowhere and told him to piss off!”

  I blanched and sat back in my chair. “What?”

  “I know. Val, it was so...unexpected. One minute I’m sitting there trying to figure out how to get out of the whole Dexter disaster, and the next minute this woman with a rainbow Mohawk and fifty face piercings slides into the booth right next to me. She puts her tattooed arm around my shoulder and says she couldn’t believe I was cheating on her with a man, and a fat ugly one to boot!”

  My eyebrows flew up an inch. “No way!”

  “Yes way! She told Dexter to get lost. I can’t remember word-for-word what she said, but it was something along the lines that she ‘didn’t have time to waste on cotton-candy, unicorns or free-roaming dumbbells like him.’ I’m telling you, Val, that guy nearly crapped his pants! He couldn’t have gotten out of that restaurant faster if he’d been strapped onto a rocket!”

  “Whoa!” I shook my head in disbelief. “Milly, when you think about it, what she did, it’s pretty ingenious, actually. Did you get her name?”

  “She told me her friends called her Cold Cuts. Weird, right?”

  “I dunno. Sounds pretty spot-on to me.”

  Chapter Four

  IT WAS TACO TUESDAY, my official date night with Tom. We still hadn’t spoken to each other since our fight Saturday night. For me, it had been a matter of principle. I still hadn’t made up my mind about who’d been more right and who’d been more wrong. But there was one thing I knew for sure. The contents of my refrigerator couldn’t keep a cricket alive one more night.

  I’d finished off the last of the birthday pa
rty leftovers – two dried-up chicken wings and five hard-cornered cubes of cheddar cheese – with my cappuccino this morning. Unless I wanted my lunch to be a Dijon mustard sandwich with dill pickle slices for bread, I was going to have to go buy some food.

  I hated grocery shopping. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because there was way too many options to choose from nowadays. I mean, fifty different kinds of peanut butter? What happened to the good old days, when there was simply “crunchy” or “smooth” – or that exotic one with swirls of grape jelly? It was all just too much. I always left the store feeling like I’d picked the wrong things. But this morning, my habit of procrastination left me no choice. It was go shopping or starve.

  As I slipped into shorts and a tank top, I thought about calling Tom. I missed him. And my traitorous stomach, like clockwork, had begun craving its weekly taco delivery. I picked up my cellphone and almost clicked #7, speed dial for Tom. But I couldn’t think of what to say beyond ‘hello,’ so I slipped the phone back in my purse and headed out the door.

  CARBON BLEW OUT IN thin, black puffs from Maggie’s muffler as I cruised south on Gulf Boulevard toward the Publix on Treasure Island. Even though it was part of a chain, this particular Publix was a small, neighborhood store that catered to hard-core locals and transient, semi-sober beachgoers. I found a spot in the parking lot and laid my hat on the passenger seat. A split-second later, my shoulders began to roast in the glaring sun. My sandals clung like sticky-notes to the semi-molten asphalt as I trotted across the lot. It was quarter to nine and already a scorcher.

  Stacked along both sides of Publix’s glass entry doors were cheap, folding beach chairs and colorful pool floats. I skirted past a goofy-eyed inflatable dragon and stepped inside the cool, welcoming air. The aroma of fresh-baked bread set my mouth to salivating. It forced me, against my will, to pick up a sesame-seed baguette. Avocados from Mexico lay stacked in small pyramids by the front door, irresistible at the bargain price of two for a dollar. I yanked a clear plastic bag from the roller thingy. After finally getting the flimsy bag peeled apart, I slipped a pair of avocados inside.

  Guacamole and...what else? Tortilla chips.

  I left my shopping cart next to a stack of Styrofoam coolers and wandered over to the summer display of chips, soft drinks, burger buns and barbeque sauce. That’s when I saw it. The hideous banner cheerfully announcing; “Mother’s Day is May 13th!”

  Crap. Already? In less than two weeks, I’d have the pleasure of being reduced to rubble over the phone by Lucille Jolly-Short, my adopted mother, evil-genius, and master of the back-handed compliment. Her only saving grace was she’d agreed to adopt me after her husband found me on the side of the road. That, and she’d saved the other half of the dragonfly pin my real mother had fastened to my diaper.

  Maybe if I sent her a card, I wouldn’t have to call her.

  I sauntered over to the small rack of greeting cards and sifted through the cheesy offerings. Every last one of them were pink and plastered with hearts – doting and happy and way too sappy. Where were the other cards? The ones that said, “Thanks mom, for setting me up for a lifetime of slowly recovering my self-esteem.”

  I couldn’t have been the only one. In fact, I was certain Hallmark was missing the marketing opportunity of a lifetime.

  Crap on a cracker. I guess I’ll have to call her.

  I shuffled back to my grocery cart. In the top basket, next to my avocadoes and baguette, someone had slipped in a box of reservoir-tipped Trojans. I picked up the carton and looked around.

  “There you are.”

  I turned in the direction of the voice and tried not to blanch. Standing less than two feet away from me was a man in his late fifties who hadn’t seen a razor or a shower since sometime last month.

  Cheap, black-plastic shower shoes revealed he hadn’t had a pedicure lately, either. His canary-yellow t-shirt was stained with lord-only-knows-what. It featured armholes that hung halfway down his sides, flashing innocent victims with unwanted views of his hairy armpits, side-fat rolls, and an alarming assortment of suspicious moles. His plaid shorts were baggy enough to support a small family of trolls. And, of course, he sported my favorite hairdo – a greasy, grey, ratty ponytail. If this guy had been in a contest to turn women off, he would have gotten my vote, hands down.

  “I’m sorry?” I replied.

  He took the condoms from my hand. I stared, dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe this guy ever actually got laid.

  “You put your stuff in my cart.”

  I started to protest, but glanced into the cart and changed my mind. It was filled with a jumble of bachelor survival goods – hot dogs, TV dinners, two cases of beer, hemorrhoid cream and a family-sized container of Tums. Either he’d commandeered my cart or someone else had – and then dumped my stuff in his cart.

  “Oh. Sorry about that.”

  I grabbed the bag of avocadoes and the baguette and tried to make a getaway, but the guy side-stepped and trapped me between the coolers and the wall. He motioned with his eyes downward, toward the bag of avocados in my hand.

  “Fruit. I like fruit, too, you know. My favorite is melons and peaches. Get it?”

  He wagged his unkempt eyebrows at me as his grotesque, greyish tongue darted between his lips like an anemic slug.

  Illiterate, disgusting and incapable of subtlety. What’s not to like?

  “Thanks, but I’m not interested.”

  The man looked surprised. “Then why the signal?

  “Signal?”

  The man pointed at my crotch. My eyes darted down. To my horror, the baguette and bag of avocados I was holding had unwittingly arranged themselves to mimic a huge, albino penis and a low-hanging, gangrenous scrotum. My face flushed with heat. In motions too fast to be seen by the naked eye, I shoved the baguette under my arm and swung the avocados to my side. I fumbled for words.

  “Look...um...this was purely unin –”

  “Why Sally Harper! If that don’t beat a goat a gobblin’! How have you been, honey?”

  The man’s eyes shifted to the left and locked onto a busty, big-haired blonde. She was squeezed into purple spandex pants and a t-shirt spattered in an explosion of rhinestones. She grinned at me from behind a pair of cheap, white, heart-shaped sunglasses. Tiny, plastic starfish adorned the glasses in a tacky salute to Florida kitsch.

  Fruit man’s interest in me dropped like a frog hopping off a cliff. I guess gentlemen really did prefer blondes.

  “Hey there, pretty lady.”

  The woman ignored him and punched me on the arm.

  “Girl, it’s me. Sherry Perry. From high school. Pompom princesses! You and me!”

  Sherry wriggled her body with cheerleader enthusiasm. I stood and stared at her, as speechless and stone-still as a statue of the class dork.

  “Hey, Sherry. I like your pompoms,” the hideous man said.

  I watched, still frozen with awe, as Sherry sidled up to captain condom and whispered something into his ear. The guy withered and shrunk. I could almost feel his testicles recede inside his plaid-tent shorts. He shot me a disgusted glance, commandeered his cart and made a hasty getaway.

  Sherry turned to me and grinned. She folded her arms at shoulder level and nodded her head once, quick and bouncy, like Barbara Eden in I Dream of Jeannie.

  “Poof! Man be gone!”

  I couldn’t help but be impressed. Her powers truly did seem magical.

  I grinned back at her. “What did you say to him?”

  Sherry laughed. “I told him you and I were incurable hermaphobiatics.”

  “Gross! Is that a real thing?”

  “No. I just made it up.”

  “Why? I mean...why did you...help me?”

  “Let’s just say I have ‘creep phobia.’ I hate to see a good woman bothered by a creep like that.”

  I smiled in gratitude. “That’s pretty cool. Thanks, Sherry.”

  “You’re welcome.” Sherry took off her sunglasses and studied me for a mo
ment with eyes as brown as dark chocolate. “Hey, have you got time to have a coffee with me? They just opened a Starbucks in this Publix and I’m dying to try it.”

  “I don’t know, Sherry. I think I’ve got –”

  Sherry popped her sunglasses back on. “Hey don’t sweat it. Just so you know, my name’s not Sherry. That was just for getting into character. My real name is...well...my friends call me Cold Cuts. See you around.”

  As she turned to go, something churned in my mind. Cold Cuts? But wait...this woman didn’t look anything like Milly had described her. Could it be...?

  “Hold up, Cold Cuts.”

  The busty blonde stopped and pivoted on her purple high-heels.

  “You know what? I think I’ll have that cup of coffee after all.”

  Chapter Five

  COLD CUTS TOOK A SIP of her skinny cinnamon double mocha latte. It was hard to be sure, but underneath that big blonde wig and all that makeup, she looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties at the most.

  “So what’s with the costume?” I asked, then immediately blushed with regret. Maybe this wasn’t a costume. Maybe this was how the real Cold Cuts normally dressed.

  “Oh. Yeah.” She laughed and pulled at her rhinestone shirt. “I’m in costume so often, I have to look in the mirror sometimes to remember who I am.”

  “You know, I think you may have helped out a friend of mine the other day. Not as Sherry Perry, though. Milly said the woman had a rainbow Mohawk and face piercings – and tattoos?”

  “Oh, sure. That’s Scary Kerry. She’s one of my favorites.”

  “Really? How many of these ‘characters’ do you have?”

  Cold Cuts shrugged. “There’s no real number. I make them up as I go along.”

  “Oh.” I leaned across the table toward her. “I’m curious. Why do you do this?”

  Cold Cuts cocked her head to one side. “I dunno. I guess the idea of having to be the same old person my entire life would be a horrific bore. Who says you can’t try out new roles? Be a different person when you feel like it?”