Val Fremden Mystery Box Set 1 Read online

  “Hey there, Val Pal! Look who showed up fresh out a the hoosegow.”

  “What’s going on, Winky?”

  “Cops just dropped it off. Said they didn’t need it no more, now that the case was closed.”

  “What case?” Laverne asked.

  “The one that involved me being charged with human dismemberment, remember?”

  “Huh?”

  “The finger? When I found that finger in the couch? The cops hauled it away as evidence.”

  “Oh. Sure. That’s right, honey.”

  Laverne and I climbed out of the car. Winky handed me a piece of paper.

  “It come with this here.”

  The note read: “Many happy returns. Lieutenant Hans Jergen.”

  “What ‘cha gonna do with it?” Winky asked.

  I knew what I wanted to do with the note. The couch, on the other hand, I wasn’t quite sure.

  “Well, honey, I’m heading out of this heat,” Laverne said. “I’m about to sweat through my leotards! Here’s your skirt back.”

  Before I could object, Laverne shimmied out of the skirt and handed it to me.

  “Uh...thanks, Laverne. For your help today.”

  “Loved every minute of it, sugar! Good luck tonight...and tomorrow!”

  I watched Laverne slip off to her house like a geriatric cat burglar. I turned around to see Winky stretched out on the lumpy old sofa.

  “What are you doing, Winky?”

  “Just givin’ her a test drive.” He hauled his chubby butt to standing. “Here. Lemme give ya a hand with it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “To haul it into the house.”

  Bile rose in my throat. “I don’t want it!”

  “Well, Val, for all intensive purposes, yore stuck with it.”

  “Intents and purposes.”

  Winky stared at me blankly. “Yeah? So, what are your intents?”

  “I dunno. Wait. Let’s throw the piece of crap on the fire pit out back. Have a couch bonfire.”

  Winky grabbed his chin and gave the couch an intense once-over. “As gaul-dang fun as that sounds, Val, I got me a better idea. When Winnie gets here, let’s load this bad boy into the Dodge. It’s gotta sleep better than that blasted old air mattress.”

  Chapter Eleven

  WHAT WAS WRONG WITH my life? The things I wanted to get rid of kept coming back. The things I wanted to hold onto kept slipping away. I pondered this and the meaning of life as I dressed in someone else’s cast-off clothes for a fake date with a derelict Hispanic man who hadn’t been sober since the invention of cellphones. Oh joy.

  On my reconnaissance mission with Laverne, I’d discovered that trying to park Maggie in Garvey’s narrow spots was a challenge – even when the lot was empty. Therefore, I opted to ride with Winky and Winnie in the van. Their role in tonight’s stakeout was to stay outside on “parking lot patrol” in case the RV showed up. Goober and Jorge were to be Milly’s and my dates. They’d told Winky they’d get there “by other means of transportation.” We waited in the van for them to show up.

  “So what’s this woman look like?” Winnie asked. She turned around in the driver’s seat and peered at me through her red-frame glasses. The thick lenses magnified a pair of dark eyes that darted between narrow slits above her puffy, pink cheeks. “You never said.”

  “Yeah,” Winky chimed in. “Who should we be on the lookout for, supposin’ she don’t drive up here in the RV.”

  “Well...,” I fumbled. “She...she could be blonde. Or she could have a rainbow-colored Mohawk. Tattoos...or maybe....”

  “That’s quite a range,” Winky taunted.

  “Sorry. She dresses up. In disguises.”

  “That’s cool,” Winnie said. She fussed with her black bob hairdo in the rearview mirror. “I’d like to –”

  A city bus pulled up and hissed. We all turned to the right in the direction of the noise. The bus doors flew open. Two vagrants tumbled out.

  “There they are now,” Winky said. He yelled out the van window, “Hey fellers! Over here!”

  Goober saluted. Jorge tripped and fell face-down on the asphalt.

  Lovely. We’re off to a great start.

  IT WAS SUNDAY NIGHT and Garvey’s was packed to the brim with losers. We fit right in. The lady whose orange-swirl hairdo defied gravity and description didn’t bat an eye of recognition at me, even though barely five hours had passed since I’d been here with Laverne. Perhaps for her, discretion was the better part of valor – or Valium? She grabbed a handful of menus from a stack on the reception desk and escorted us through the land of misfit boys to the only open booth on the poop deck.

  Just as we scooched in, my phone rang. It was Milly.

  “Val, I can’t make it.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “I promise, I have a good reason. I’ll explain later. Gotta go.”

  She clicked off, leaving me to fend for myself on the merry-go-round of mayhem.

  “Milly’s not coming,” I said.

  “This place reminds me of Water Loo’s,” Goober said, not missing a beat. He’d worn a black t-shirt that looked like a tuxedo. Mr. Class.

  Orange swirl lady returned and deposited three glasses of water on the table with as little care as humanly possible. The third thud caused Jorge to return to this plane of existence. He lifted his head and smiled at me sheepishly.

  “Yeah, it does look a bit like Water Loo’s,” I agreed. I picked up a glass and studied the tiny white flakes swimming around in the liquid. “Minus the water.”

  “And the Loo,” Jorge said.

  Goober and I smiled at each other. It was rare for Jorge to say much. Booze usually robbed him of conversation skills beyond a few slurs. Goober reached across the table and shook him on the shoulder. I encouraged our shattered friend to keep going.

  “So, what’s new with you, Jorge?”

  “My mother got remarried,” he offered, then stared at the menu.

  I knew Jorge had been living in his mother’s garage in a makeshift “apartment” since his wife and kids were killed in a traffic accident years ago.

  “Oh. So, good for her. Will you stay in the house?”

  “Jes. She’s giving it to me.” Even though he kept his eyes on the menu, I could tell Jorge didn’t seem thrilled with the news. “She’s moving in with him.”

  “You’re not happy for her?” I asked.

  Jorge looked up at me. “What? Oh, jes. I’m happy for her. But now...I’ll be....”

  Jorge’s attention faded before he could finish his thought. But I could guess what the problem was. He’d be in that house all alone. The poor guy had lost everyone in his family that he’d cared about except his mother. And now she was leaving him, too. I’d like to think what I said next was completely altruistic, but that would have been a lie. However, killing two birds with one stone was...an efficient way to kill two birds.

  “Jorge, why don’t you invite Winky and Winnie to live there with you?”

  Jorge stared down at the menu. “I dunno. My mother wouldn’t like it.”

  “Your mother won’t be there. Besides, she gave you the house, right?”

  He looked up. “Jes.”

  “When is the wedding?”

  “This morning.”

  “What? You never....”

  Goober shot me a warning look. Tread lightly.

  “Oh. So she’s gone already? The house is empty?”

  “Val, it’s not empty,” Goober said sarcastically. “Jorge lives there. And I’m moving in tonight.”

  “Oh. Is there room for Winnie and Winkie, too?”

  Goober and I looked at Jorge. He shrugged. Then smiled.

  “Sure. Why not? We could be a fam....”

  Jorge stopped dead in his tracks. He’d almost pushed his own self-destruct button – the f-word ‘family.’ I held my breath. Goober came to the rescue.

  “Famished, right Jorge?”

  Jorge gave a tiny nod.

>   “Me, too,” I said, way too cheerfully.

  “Me three,” Goober said and shot me a dirty look.

  The old lady came back with a notepad. “So, what’ll it be?”

  “The cheese fondue for three,” Jorge said.

  Goober and I exchanged raised eyebrows and grins.

  “Sounds good to me,” I said. Very good, indeed.

  WE MADE IT ALL THE way through dinner with no Cold Cuts attack. In a way, I was glad. I’d gotten to share a special moment with the guys. One that had the potential to be a turning point for Jorge. At 8 p.m. I declared the stakeout officially over. I paid the bill and we bid Garvey’s adieu.

  We’d just rounded the corner to the back parking lot when we heard Winky holler from the van window.

  “’Bout time, you three. Let’s go!”

  I walked up to the van window. Winky stared straight ahead, madder than a stirred-up hornet’s nest. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked. He didn’t answer.

  “He’s ticked off about something else, Val,” Winnie said. “Nothing to do with you.”

  I looked across the van to Winnie. “Did you two have a fight?”

  “No. A –”

  Red-faced Winky turned his head to face me. “We was just sittin’ here, mindin’ our own business, when this crazy woman came up and tried to steal Winnie away from me.”

  Winnie put a hand on his shoulder. “She didn’t try to steal me away, Winky.”

  “She did, too. Asked Winnie if she needed to go back to rehab.”

  “What?” I asked, incredulous.

  “You wouldn’t a believed it, Val. That gal talked a pile a horse hockey. Said she thought Winnie’d done been cured once.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of dating...what was it?” Winky looked over to Winnie for an answer.

  “Moronic hicks,” she offered softly.

  Goober and Jorge began laughing their butts off.

  “What did she look like?” I asked over their guffaws.

  “A witch!” Winky hollered. “All dressed in black. Long-ass black fingernails. I tole her to get on her broom and fly back to where-evers she come from.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said she would a, but her broom was busted. In the shop ‘til Wednesday. Told Winnie she should drop me like a hot tamale. Can you believe that?”

  I glanced at Winky’s beer belly, atrocious haircut and wife-beater t-shirt.

  Could I believe that? Oh, yes. I certainly could.

  Chapter Twelve

  I AWOKE TO THE SOUND of someone rapping on my sliding glass door. I wrapped a bathrobe around me and shuffled into the living room to let the annoying stray hound in.

  “There you are. Finally,” Winky scolded me. “I need to pinch a loaf. Drop a deuce, you know.”

  “Yeah. I figured.”

  As Winky defiled my facilities, I made coffee and wrote a mental note; Buy more Ty D Bol. I awaited the royal flush and the arrival of his majesty from the throne.

  “Woo doggy! That was a tough one. Hey, Val Pal. D’you ever hear the one about the constipated mathematician?

  I groaned in my mind. “No.”

  I absently handed Winky a cup of coffee, somewhat stunned he could pronounce the word “mathematician.” He grabbed the cup and wagged his ginger eyebrows at me.

  “Yeah. You know, the poor old feller worked it all out with nothin’ but a pencil and a piece of paper.”

  I groaned audibly this time. But I had to hand it to Winky. He was a miracle worker. I actually wanted to go to work.

  I PULLED SHABBY MAGGIE into the parking lot of Griffith & Maas. Milly pulled up beside me in her shiny, red Beemer. I accosted her before her matching, shiny red pumps hit the pavement.

  “Why couldn’t you make it last night?”

  “Milly shut the door and locked it behind her, then shot me a smug look. “I wanted to teach you a lesson, Val. In responsibility. You’re a working girl now. You need to act like one.”

  She marched toward the front door. I scrambled to follow her.

  “How is you not showing up last night going to teach me responsibility?”

  Milly spoke without looking back. “Now you know how I felt...when you blew off your interview appointment last week.”

  I grabbed Milly’s elbow as she reached for the door. “I didn’t blow it off, Milly. Something...came up.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Look, you were right about Garvey’s. Cold Cuts was there.”

  Milly’s face registered surprise. “So, you caught her already?”

  “Well, not exactly. She ambushed Winky in the parking lot. He didn’t realize it was her.”

  “Oh. Too bad.” Milly opened the door to the accounting firm. I followed her inside.

  “Milly, we decided to do a second stakeout tonight. Can I count on you?”

  Milly looked at me, then nodded toward a jumbled stack of files bigger than her Beemer.

  “I dunno. Can I count on you?”

  BY 11:30 THAT MORNING, I’d lost both heels and my entire sense of humor. For nearly three hours, I’d been schlepping around files non-stop for Mrs. Barnes, aka “The Little Old Sadistic Slave Driver from Pasadena.” My aching feet and back made me forget all about my black-and-blue bottom. I was about to cause an avalanche by collapsing dead onto a heap of files when the old taskmaster herself stuck her shriveled head in the file room and announced it was time for lunch.

  I dropped an armful of files and peeked down the hallway. Milly was nowhere in sight. Screw her. Besides, I had a lunch date with Tom. I tiptoed out of the office and slipped my heels back onto my blistered feet. I hobbled out to the parking lot, turned the key in the ignition and hit the gas. I smiled smugly to myself. I’d made a clean getaway.

  “MILLY HASN’T BEEN VERY friendly today,” I whined.

  Tom looked up from the Ming Ming’s menu and shot me a silly pout.

  “Poor baby. The kids at school didn’t like you?”

  I kicked him under the table.

  “Ow! Hey! Look, maybe she doesn’t like to mix business with pleasure. Lots of people don’t.”

  “But there’s no one else in the office to see her do it...except for Mrs. Barnes.”

  “That’s funny. In high school, I had a teacher named Mrs. Barnes. She was a real ballbuster.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if she was one in the same. She’s already worked me to the bone this morning. And the woman’s old enough to be Methuselah’s grandmother.”

  “So, what does my favorite working girl want for lunch?”

  I hadn’t realized I’d developed such an appetite. But food had nothing to do with it. I looked at Tom longingly and blew out a breath. “The usual, I guess.”

  “You know, you’re sexy when you have to work, Val. It adds to your mystique. Ms. High-Powered Career Woman. Me likey.”

  Tom’s knee rubbed up against mine. I moved my leg to reciprocate, causing my stiff thigh muscles to grumble with pain. I’d just finished a 180-minute, complete-body workout. If I hadn’t felt like I’d been run over by a steamroller, I’d have jumped Tom’s bones in the parking lot.

  AFTER LUNCH, TOM WALKED me to my car. He kissed me goodbye as I leaned against the driver’s door of Maggie. Afterward, he lingered, holding my hand.

  “What’s up, Tom?”

  He looked deep into my eyes. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, I was wondering. If you’d thought much about...what I told you at the party.”

  “Oh, Well, now that you mention it, yes. I have.”

  Tom snuggled a little closer to me. “And?”

  “Why did you get a vasectomy?”

  Tom flinched and jerked his hand away.

  “Oh. Well...umm...I guess I just thought it was time to give up on the whole idea of having a family.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  Tom shrugged. He took my hand again and studied it, rubbing my palm with his thumb
as he spoke.

  “To be honest, Val, I didn’t want to end up like my cousin Karl. He got divorced a couple of years ago. Then he went and knocked up his thirty-year-old girlfriend. He married her. But the girl was twenty years younger than him. How did he ever think that ever going to work?”

  Tom looked at me as if he expected an answer. I shook my head and gave him one.

  “I dunno.”

  “Right. Well, no surprise. They ended up getting divorced a few months after the baby was born. Now she’s raising the kid alone. And he’s gonna have a kid in grade school while he’s pissing in his diapers in a nursing home. It’s just not fair.”

  “What do you mean, Tom? Not fair to who?”

  “To anyone. Karl finally got some sense and started dating women his age. But it’s kind of too late. I mean, what does he expect these women to do? Marry him and take care of a two-year-old on the weekends? The man was a fool to go messing around with a woman that much younger than him.”

  I studied Tom with new eyes. Maybe it was the sunlight gleaming off his sandy blond hair. Maybe it was knowing he loved me, and wanted me to love him in return. But if I had to put a finger on it, I’d say it was the magical words from his lips. Tom had never been sexier. I leaned over and kissed him with a lip-lock that meant business. Forget my aches and pains!

  It was Tom’s day off. We could...oh crap! No we couldn’t. Dang it! This “job” stuff was turning out to be a real cock-blocker.

  I RETURNED TO THE DETENTION camp known as Griffith & Maas with the disgruntled attitude usually reserved for long-term postal employees. I could have been having my way with Tom. Instead, I was screwing around with heavy piles of useless paperwork.

  “Where’d you go for lunch?” Milly asked when I stomped in the door.

  “Is that a requirement of the job? To tell you my personal business?”