Val Fremden Mystery Box Set 1 Read online

  At the end of the cul-de-sac, he backed his car expertly into the driveway of a flat-roofed, ranch-style house painted tired shades of taupe to match the desolate, gravel-strewn yard. The only specks of green around the place were one straggly pygmy date palm and a few knots of hardcore weeds that had managed to scratch a living amongst the graveyard of dusty stones. The nondescript house was a dump, probably no bigger than a thousand square feet. But the backyard butted up against the Intracoastal Waterway, making the shack worth half a million, easy. Welcome to Florida.

  “We’ll be back in fifteen, tops,” said Jorge to his cop friend.

  The blond lieutenant gave one quick nod. Then, without a word, he got out, opened the backdoor to let us out, and returned to his place in the driver’s seat. He pulled out some paperwork and tried to ignore Winky, who was wiggling in the passenger seat beside him like a love-starved puppy.

  The rest of us tumbled out of the squad car and made our way toward the backyard. Dusty gravel crunched under the soles of our shoes. I glanced back at the squad car just before we rounded the corner of the house. Winky had his greasy nose and pudgy hands pressed against the glass of the passenger window, giving him the appearance of a fat kid trapped underwater.

  I shook my head. The other two stooges had been right.

  Good call to leave him behind.

  Jorge and I watched as Goober picked his way through the backyard and squeezed his tall, lanky frame between a jumble of abandoned stoves and discarded jalousie windows. He climbed over a rusty refrigerator carcass with his grasshopper legs and tried the door on the RV.

  “Locked!” he called out. “Let’s check out the house. Maybe there’s a key somewhere.”

  Jorge stepped around a jumble of dead bicycles and picked the backdoor lock in a matter of seconds. I wondered how many times he’d done that before.

  The door cracked open and a smell like fruit-flavored death came pouring out. The back door was right off the kitchen. On the counter, a black pile of slime wriggled. Houseflies buzzed around us like kamikazes. Against my will I took a closer look at the writhing lump on the counter next to the sink. Hundreds of maggots were making the heap of rotten bananas squirm like a nerd on a first date.

  I gagged involuntarily. Jorge just looked at the pile and grunted. He disappeared between the two-meter-high columns of magazines, his eyes darting around as if taking in every bit of the scene around him.

  “Holy mother of god, would you just look at all this crap!” Goober shouted, causing me to jump. He’d trailed in behind me, and was the only one tall enough to view the chaos in its entirety.

  “Cripes, Goober!” I said, annoyed at myself for being frightened. “Can you see Jorge?”

  He peeked around and shook his mustachioed head. “Negatory.”

  The small, galley-shaped kitchen was surprisingly clean, except for the banana corpses. Besides the backdoor, the only way out of the kitchen was through the narrow gauntlet formed by stacks of yellowing St. Petersburg Times.

  “He went that way,” I said, pointing at the foot-wide slit between newspapers.

  “Oh goody. Onward and upward,” Goober said dryly. He wiped the sweat from his bald head with a handkerchief. “You’re the teeny-tiny lady. You get to go first.”

  I wished I had on a hazmat suit instead of a sundress and sandals. I took a deep breath and squeezed myself between stacks of dusty magazines and newspapers and sacks of god knows what else. Goober followed behind me, punctuating the journey with curse-laden comments. Finally, we reached an opening that led to a bathroom. I flipped on the light switch.

  Like the kitchen, it, too, appeared perfectly normal. The vintage, flamingo-pink tiles gleamed in the light provided by three round bulbs above the vanity. The matching pink tub and toilet were immaculate.

  I could make out telltale tape marks on the mirror where something – most likely Tony’s will – had been affixed for someone to find. Two lonely toothbrushes hung in a black ceramic holder built into the wall by the sink. In the center of the holder stood a tube of denture cream. My heart flinched.

  Could it be Glad’s?

  But lots of people have dentures. Especially in St. Petersburg, the city known affectionately as “God’s waiting room.”

  I opened the medicine cabinet. Unlike most people’s bathrooms, there was no huge collection of caramel-colored prescription bottles.

  Who needs Prozac when you’ve got pilsner?

  No drugs. Just mouthwash and deodorant...and nail polish and lipsticks! My heart raced.

  A woman had lived here, for sure!

  I picked up one of the lipsticks. The color was called Certainly Red.

  Glad’s color if there ever was one!

  I opened a drawer and discovered I had spoken too soon about the prescription meds. I picked up the lone brown plastic bottle and read the label. It was a fake prescription for “Screwitol.” Against my will I burst out laughing.

  “You all right in there?” Goober poked his peanut head around the doorframe.

  “Yes. Hey, Goober, Tony wanted you to have this.” I tossed him the bottle. He caught it midair with his long, basketball-player fingers.

  “Hmmm. Screwitol,” Goober read as he held the bottle close to his face with one hand and smoothed down his moustache with the other. “Recommended by six out of five doctors. I like the odds. But honestly, I prefer JD myself. That’s Jack Daniels, in case you didn’t know.”

  “I get it. I’m a TNT gal, myself.”

  “Ah, Tanqueray and tonic,” Goober said, raising his eyebrows a good inch. “Classy, yet unsophisticated.”

  “High praise indeed,” I sneered. I was about to close the bathroom drawer when I heard a muffled voice.

  “Guys, come look in here!” Jorge called from somewhere in the house.

  “Where are you?” Goober called back. “Say something. We’ll follow your voice.”

  Jorge did one better. He began to sing. In Spanish. Goober and I smiled at each other. It had to be a good sign.

  “Ladies first,” he said, waving a hand down the hall in the direction of Jorge’s tenor.

  “Always the gentleman,” I replied. I frowned and eyed the newspapers and garbage bags stacked along both walls. There was barely enough room for a rat to get through.

  “Winky’s fat butt would have never fit,” I muttered. I sucked in my stomach and inched sideways down the hall.

  It took a full minute to squeeze down twelve feet of hallway. At the end, the garbage subsided, revealing a bedroom as orderly as the kitchen and bath. On the edge of a queen-sized bed covered in a white chenille spread, Jorge sat crooning like the leader of a teen boy band. He stopped singing as we entered.

  Jorge shook his head softly. “It was a love story, man. Amor. Take a look.”

  He handed me a framed picture of Tony and Glad. They were arm in arm, smiling at each other like contented lovebirds.

  “What?” I gasped. Glad had mentioned nothing to me about Tony. My heart pinched from feeling left out of the loop. I started to sulk, then caught myself. “This looks like it was taken a good twenty years ago.”

  “Secret lovers. The best kind,” Jorge said dreamily.

  “Secret lovers my butt,” said Goober. “Find anything else, lover boy?”

  “Jes, Señor Suave. I found t’ree chooboxes of letters and photos and stuff. They must have been together for years. There’s a Polaroid of them in Hawaii from 1998, with hotel receipts and those little drink umbrellas. They kept everything.”

  “No surprise there,” Goober said sarcastically. “This guy didn’t even toss his cookies.”

  “Come on, Goober. Where’s your sense of romance?” I teased.

  “Romance? What the hell’s that?” Goober threw his hands in the air. “It’ll take us hours to sort through all this crap, and this place smells like a monkey’s butthole. I say let’s take the boxes and get the hell out of here. This place is getting on my nerves.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I�
��ll take the three boxes home tonight. It was my idea, so I’ll do the dirty work of sorting through them.”

  “Suits me,” said Goober. Jorge nodded.

  I’d lied to the guys about my motive for wanting the boxes. But it was a white lie – the so-called polite kind of lie we women in the South were weaned on. I was practically dying of curiosity to find out more about Glad. But beyond that truth was another, bigger one: I couldn’t fathom trusting these guys with Glad and Tony’s personal belongings.

  The thought of Goober or Winky or Jorge pawing thoughtlessly through the remains of their life together gave me heartburn. I knew these guys had been Glad’s friends too, but that didn’t make the thought feel any better. It still seemed wrong. Really, really wrong. Plus, I was hurt that Glad hadn’t mentioned her relationship with Tony to me. Unless...he was the true love she’d lost. At any rate, I didn’t want to be the last to know what else she might have kept a secret.

  “Guys,” I said, “Glad and Tony kept their relationship quiet for some reason. Let’s not blow it for them now. Not yet. At least not until we find out more about it.”

  “No problemo,” said Jorge.

  “Okay,” agreed Goober. “Fine. Whatever it takes to get us out of here!”

  “I guess we’ve got what we need for now,” I said. “We can try the RV later if this doesn’t pan out.”

  We put the three shoeboxes in a garbage bag and Goober balanced them on top of his bald head like one of those jug-carrying desert wanderers. We inched our way back to the kitchen, then exited the house. Jorge locked the door behind us.

  Relief swept over me as I took in a deep breath of hot, humid outside air – as fresh as it got in St. Pete in July. “Remember, we tell no one,” I said as we crunched through the dry gravel along the side yard.

  Both men nodded a silent oath as we rounded the corner and walked toward the squad car. As soon as we came into view, Winky jumped out of the vehicle and ran toward us, waving his arms wildly.

  “Coast is clear!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Nobody seen us!”

  I cringed and turned to Goober and Jorge. “That means not a word to Winky, either.”

  “That really goes without saying, Val,” Goober said drolly, and rolled his eyes.

  Chapter Eleven

  SINCE GLAD’S DEATH, I’d let the stooges creep into my world, little by little...like a stray cat you give a meal to, then a name, then wake up one day to find pawing at you in bed, wanting something you weren’t sure you wanted to give. Unlike that hypothetical cat, however, I hadn’t allowed any of these strays into my bed. Not yet, anyway. I took comfort in that. I still had some kind of standards.

  Maybe I should call these guys the Schrodinger’s cats. Until I am actually observed screwing one of them, my dignity can remain undetermined, both dubious and intact....

  The irony that I was growing increasingly reliant on three of the world’s most unreliable men was par for the pothole-laden course that was my life to date. In fact, bizarre events and situations like this had, over the past forty-five years, shaped me into one of irony’s biggest admirers. One couldn’t be faulted for saying my life had been founded on the pillars of irony. Even so, the most ironic twist of all had to be my experience with Glad. The woman had taught me to enjoy life again, then died and left me in agony. Her passing reminded me that irony had a dark side. Maybe even a mean streak.

  Actually, I was beginning to think irony could be a downright dirtbag.

  I LEFT MY PARTNERS in crime at Caddy’s and drove home with the three boxes of booty lifted from Tony’s place. I parked Maggie in the assigned spot behind my apartment and hit the switch to close the convertible top. I’d found my girlie hotrod four months ago. Landing in the States with no credit and not a dime to spare, I’d tried to live without a car for three months. But the summer heat kicked in and fried my will to walk. So I’d scoured the FSBO ads and found Maggie. After seeing the price and the owner financing option, it was love at first sight.

  Lots of small imperfections had taken her worth down bigtime, but she still retained her classic beauty. Besides, what was a little rust and a couple of dents among friends? Lately I’d had plenty of hard lessons on the topic of beauty running deeper than shiny surface veneer. Truth be told, a few weeks ago I didn’t think I had any veneer left. But Glad’s advice had changed me. I once thought of perfection as a goal. Now I saw it for what it really was – an overrated illusion designed to keep us anxious and dissatisfied.

  Being fifty-six years old, it took Maggie a couple of minutes to drag her ragtop out of its compartment behind the backseat and shimmy it slowly over her chassis like a tired old hooker giving it one last go. She squealed the whole time, too, whining like an overwrought can opener. I used to fidget impatiently as I waited for her to finally flop the canvas top onto the chrome windshield frame. Now I kind of liked that she took her time. Just like Glad, Maggie reminded me to relax...and breathe...and live and let live.

  Chill. You’ve got time, kiddo.

  I cut the ignition and snapped the heavy chrome clips down that clamped the ragtop in place. Then I cranked the windows shut and grabbed the garbage bag on the seat next to me.

  A garbage bag containing the life of Glad’s garbage-loving man.

  Another taste of bittersweet irony.

  I slung the bag over my shoulder and climbed the rickety wooden stairs to my home-sweet-home. No larger than the double garage it sat above, my apartment wasn’t a bad place, all in all. Built in the 1920s, it had wooden floors, built-in cabinets and lots of windows. Having said that, the floors slanted like a funhouse, the painted-shut drawers required dynamite to open, and the original, single-pane windows provided absolutely no insulation or soundproofing whatsoever. I could actually hear the neighbor two doors down raking his leaves – among other things.

  But the location was cool. Weather permitting, it was an easy walk to the bars and restaurants downtown. From the top of my stairs I could see the eccentric, pink-and-white spire of the Vinoy Hotel. It jutted into the sky like a whitewashed Greek temple encircling a pink, amputated stump, capped with an improbable terracotta tile roof. In the last twenty years, this fallen sister of the famous St. Pete Beach Don Cesar Hotel had transformed itself from a twenty-dollar-a-pop flop house for degenerates into a fancy destination resort commanding three hundred bucks a night. The surrounding neighborhood and downtown area were being dragged along for the gentrification ride in fits and starts of redevelopment.

  At the moment, restored turn-of-the-century mansions sat next to run-down concrete duplexes from the 1960s. New, million-dollar condo towers butted up to dubious liquor stores and weed–infested vacant lots. St. Petersburg’s schizophrenic state left it harboring places where people of all economic strata could feel both at home and ill at ease. Given my questionable standing in the social hierarchy, the confusion was a perfect fit.

  Like most of Florida’s beautiful places, I knew St. Pete was doomed to be pounded and pulverized into a sanitized Disneyland for the rich. I figured she still had a few good years left before she gave up the struggle and became a generic, chain-store ghost of her former self. I saw it happening before my eyes. The certainty made me determined to enjoy St. Pete’s final funky days while they lasted, and while I could still afford the rent. After that, well, I guess I’d just have to wait and see what life sent my way.

  I held back the rickety screen door to my apartment with my right foot. I balanced the garbage bag on my left shoulder while I fiddled with the key in the front door. When it finally cracked open, the air-conditioned breeze emanating from inside felt like an arctic blast against the sweltering heat and humidity of outside. I pushed my way in, set the garbage bag down on the couch and kicked off my sandals.

  Thirsty, I opened the rusty door on the fridge. A lonely jar of olives stared back at me through bloodshot, pimiento corneas. Their only companions were a pint of half-and-half, a bottle of tonic water and a banana on the verge of imitating t
he ones I’d seen earlier today at Tony’s house. I fished around in the vegetable drawer and found a plastic bag amongst the dried-up potatoes with their spindly white shoots. Inside the bag was a tiny key lime not much bigger than a grape.

  My lucky day!

  I opened the freezer and pulled out the half-gallon jug of Tanqueray. My green goddess of goodness. The one real splurge I still allowed myself. I poured a generous portion in a glass, added two ice cubes, a squeeze of lime and some tonic. Presto! Instant TNT.

  Life is not that bad.

  Libation in hand, I turned my attention to the shoeboxes. I pulled them out of the garbage bag one by one. They weren’t labeled. I figured Tony just kept throwing stuff into a box until it was full, then sealed it with duct tape and started a new one. With that theory in mind, I was surprised when I peeled the tape off the first box and found it neatly arranged inside. Everything was sorted by year with index cards, like a homemade filing cabinet. The index cards in the first box spanned from 1945 to 1974.

  I took a long drink of my TNT and pulled out the papers for 1945. A yellowed newspaper clipping from April 24th 1945 edition of the Hancock Clarion announced the birth of daughter Gladys Kinsey, firstborn child to Mr. & Mrs. Roy G. Kinsey.

  Hmmm. This must be Glad’s stuff, not Tony’s.

  A faded, black-and-white picture was paper-clipped to the article. It showed a surprisingly old couple for the time, probably in their early forties, proudly holding a bundled baby. I presumed they were Glad’s parents.

  The next index card skipped to 1950. It housed a small collection of grade-school mementos. A photo of a girl about age five, standing in front of her parents in a fancy petticoat dress, tiny white gloves, ankle socks and patent-leather shoes. The hat on her mom’s head and the basket of eggs hanging on her father’s arm made the occasion obvious. The back of the photo simply read, “Easter 1951.” A faded, red, construction-paper valentine from a boy named Timmy nearly fell apart when I unfolded it. Scrawled in a child’s hand was the inscription, “I love you, sis.” Another picture showed a gangly, blonde girl around age ten holding a kitten in her arms. Even at that young age anyone could tell that Glad was destined to become a tall, classic beauty.