“What about that...piece of someone they found on the beach?”
“I was hoping you’d forgotten about that.”
My body heaved and I burst into loud, ugly crying. Tom leaned in and hugged me. “She’s going to be all right,” he said, and rubbed my back.
“You don’t know that,” I sobbed.
“You’re right. I don’t. But there’s nothing more we can do tonight. What you need is a hot shower and a good long sleep.”
“I don’t want a shower,” I protested.
“Trust me on this, Val. You’ll feel better. Besides, you really need it.” Tom pinched his nose closed with a thumb and forefinger.
A tiny puff of laughter escaped my lips that time, and I let Tom take me up into his arms.
Chapter Nineteen
“Well, I wonder who that could be,” Tom said when the doorbell rang. It was barely 6:30 a.m. and Tom was already washing up the cappuccino cups. Neither of us had slept much. We’d both given up and had our coffees before the break of dawn. He’d helped me dress and I was back at my invalid station on the couch, trying not to scratch my mosquito bites.
“What have you done?” I asked.
Tom braced for impact. “I invited Winky and Winnie over to look after you.”
“What?” Panic shot through me. I looked down at the coffee table. It was bare. Tom had, thankfully, returned my nightstand drawer and its contents to where they belonged. I folded my arms and scowled. “I don’t need looking after. Besides, I’ve got you.”
“No you don’t. I need to go see what I can find out.”
I pouted. “I know. But Winky?”
Tom shrugged apologetically. “I tried for Winnie, but they come as a set, apparently.”
The doorbell rang again. Tom took a step to answer it.
“Wait!” I cried out.
“What now?” Tom asked.
I lowered my voice as if the pair were already in the room. “What do they know?”
Tom smiled wistfully. “Nothing. Except that you’re a little down in the dumps and could use a friend. After all, you twisted your ankle on vacation, remember? That’s all the story they need to know for now.”
“Okay,” I sighed. “Let them in.”
“Hey there, Val Pal!” Winky hollered as he came through the door. He was carrying a length of polished bamboo and a huge tackle box. Winnie was toting a box of Davie’s Donuts. I hoped they weren’t recycled.
“What are you two going to do?” I asked. “Beat me with a stick and force-feed me donuts?”
“Well now, that depends on your behavior,” Winky joked. “And how quick you learn them new tricks.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Winnie said as Tom and Winky laughed. “He’s made you a cane out of an old fishing rod.” She twisted her lips and shook her head at Winky, then turned to Tom. “Won’t you stay and have a donut with us?”
“I really need to get going,” Tom said. “But can I take one for the road?”
“Sure,” Winnie beamed and pushed her red-frame glassed up on her pudgy little nose. “I picked them up fresh this morning.”
“That was mighty nice of her, wasn’t it, Val?” Tom said as he grabbed a crème filled donut and wagged his eyes at me.
I glared back at Tom. “Yes, is sure was.” I nodded at Winnie and Winky. “Thank you for the donuts...and for keeping me company.”
“You three have fun,” Tom said, his hand on the knob of the still-open door. Before he disappeared, he winked at me and smiled, and I forgot for a second about the terrible situation we were in.
MY KITCHEN COUNTER looked like a flea-market stall. Besides a cane and donuts, Winnie and Winky had brought along enough fishing tackle to fill a clothes hamper.
“I hope you don’t mind if we work while we’re here,” Winnie said from her perch on a barstool.
“Not at all. It looks kind of interesting.”
“Yeah, it’s fun,” said Winnie. “And the money’s good, too.”
“Sure beats that time I was a male stripper,” Winky said. He held up a rubber worm and waggled it lasciviously. “Still, it was good money. I earned thirty bucks in one shot.”
“You were a stripper?” I grimaced. “I don’t mean to be rude, but...who would pay to see you naked?”
“Look who’s talkin’, you old, one-legged, flea-bitten varmint.”
“Winky!” Winnie scolded.
Winky sat up straight on his barstool and poked his freckled nose in the air. “For your information, Miss Know-It All, I wasn’t naked. I wore me a Speedo. And the old gals at the nursing home seemed to appreciate it. Paid me a dollar each at the door.”
“To get out, I bet.” I shook my head in disgust at the thought. “I’m surprised you weren’t arrested.”
Winky laughed. “Who says I wasn’t? Jail ain’t too bad for a day or two. Three squares and a workin’ john.”
“Enough, already,” I begged. “Why are you telling me this?”
“’Cause you asked.” Winky turned to Winnie for support. “She started it.”
“Well, I’m stopping it, too,” I said. “Show me your stuff.”
Winky got up and started to waggle his hips and pull off his shirt.
“I meant your tackle stuff!”
Winky grinned. “I know. I was just funnin’ ya. Don’t get your panties all in a wad.”
“I won’t,” I said, and sat up. I grabbed the homemade bamboo cane and tapped it on the floor. It seemed sturdy, so I hoisted myself up on it.”
“Lazarus back from the dead,” Winky joked.
“Ha ha,” I sneered, and hobbled over to the kitchen counter to see what they were working on. “Wow. Who knew there were so many lures?”
“I did,” Winky said.
“This one’s my favorite,” Winnie said. She held up a lure that looked like a tiny, white feather duster with a red dot at the top and a crimson band around its neck. “It’s called a pop-eye buck-tail jig.”
I shook my head. “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”
“No worse than y’all’s names for nail polish,” Winky shot back. “What was that one you liked, Winnie? Princess Delilah’s Dreams or some such nonsense.”
“Princess Pink,” Winnie said. She put down an earring she’d just finished. “Well, that’s it for me. I’ve got to go. My shift at Davie’s starts in fifteen minutes.” She looked over at Winky. “You two behave, now. No monkey business. You hear me?”
Winky flashed his girlfriend a mischievous smile as she picked up her purse and brushed donut crumbs off her lap.
“What?” I asked. “You’re leaving us?”
“I’m afraid so, Val. Consider yourself lucky. At least he’s potty-trained now.”
“Hardy-har-har,” Winky sneered playfully. “It’ll be fun, Val. You can help me make earrings.” He held a pair of lime-green jelly worms to his ears and rolled his eyes around like a lunatic.
“Great. I’m stuck in a vocational re-training scheme with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
“You’ll survive,” Winnie laughed, and closed the door behind her.
I sat down in the stool Winnie had been occupying. “What’s that chubby white one called? The one with the red eye?”
“Hate to break it to you,” Winky answered, “but you’re lookin’ in the mirror.”
It was hard, but I forced myself not to laugh. “Come on!”
“It’s called a spook. It’s good for catching lunkers.
“What’s a lunker?”
“It’s a freshwater bass.”
“Why don’t they just call it that then?”
“Well, it’s a special kind a bass,” Winky explained. “That’s the name they give ‘em when they done got old and wily and hard to hook.” Winky studied me for a moment and laughed. “Kinda like you, Val. And they got a big old mouth on ‘em like you, too.”
“Thanks,” I said, surprised at how his words stung. I got up and took a step toward the couch.
“Now don’t be sore, Val. I was just funnin’.”
“And you’re so easy to hook?” I pouted and flopped back on the couch. “Have you asked Winnie to marry you?”
“Not exactly. But I’m studyin’ on the idea.” Winky got up and stood on the other side of the coffee table. “Can I see yore ring?”
I held out my hand.
“No, I mean see it. Hand it over.”
“Ugh. Why?” I tugged the ring from my finger.
“Winnie said she really liked it. Wants me to dublicate it.”
“Duplicate,” I said, handing him the ring.
He studied it under the ceiling light. “I mean make a double of it Val. That’s called dublication.”
“Fine. Should be easy now that you’re a jewelry maker.” I scratched absently at a bite on my arm.
“I ain’t that good yet,” Winky said, and handed me back the ring. “Tom told me you done gone and twisted yore ankle. But how’d you get all them bug bites? I believe I seen guys livin’ in cardboard boxes looked better’n you.”
“You’re just full of compliments today,” I sneered.
“I do what I can.” Winky fell back into the easy chair. “So what really happened on vacation? You and Tom get in a brawl?”
“No,” I said, suddenly on the verge of tears again. “Just my regular crap luck is what happened.”
Winky’s wisp of a ginger eyebrow perked up. “What do you mean? I thought you said you and Tom wasn’t –”
The phone rang. I lurched at the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Well, there you are,” said a voice from my past. One I’d hoped I’d never hear again. It was the slimy voice of the ambulance-chasing, Hummer-driving jerk-wad attorney who’d tried to extort money from me over the finger I’d found in my couch a couple of years ago.
“I’ve been trying to reach you on your cell phone, but you didn’t answer,” Ferrol Finkerman sneered. “I’m surprised you still have a land line. To be honest, I’m even more surprised that you answered it. It’s like a flashback to the good old days when, if someone picked up the phone, you knew exactly where they were.”
I put my hand over the receiver. “This is private, Winky.”
Winky shrugged. “Okay. I’ll just take a turn at your crapper, then.”
“Sure. Go ahead.” He hauled himself up and disappeared down the hall.
“What do you want, Finkerman?”
“Well, money, of course.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“No, but apparently you have. Attacking a poor man in public and causing deep psychological trauma. Mmmm. I can smell the dollar bills.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ve gone and ticked off the wrong man, Ms. Fremden.”
“And who would that be?”
“Besides me, you mean? Why, Detective James Stanley. A close, personal friend.”
I groaned. This was the last thing I needed right now. But somehow, my new-found anger and disgust melded together and formed a glue strong enough to hold me together. “Why am I not surprised?”
“Well, that makes one of us. I have to say, I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“To trip and fall and accidently knock someone over?”
“No. Not that. I mean to stab someone to death. Stanley showed me the pics. Nobody could have survived that scene. It looked like the Bates Motel.”
“Shut up!”
“And your luck just keeps getting better, Ms. Fremden. Because I’m going to make sure you’re served with my client’s claim before you end up in the slammer.”
“You’re a jackass, you know that, don’t you?”
“And I’m just down the street,” Finkerman said. “See you in a minute.”
Chapter Twenty
Crap! I was being held prisoner in my own home by a freckle-faced, fishing-tackle jeweler who didn’t have the faintest inkling about what kind of trouble I was in. And now that skinny-assed, frizz-head Ferrol Finkerman was barreling toward my house in his stupid, canary-yellow Hummer. There was no time for explanations. I only hoped there was time to escape.
“What’s with the blue toilet bowl?” Winky asked as he emerged from the hallway.
“Ty D Bol,” I said, and hauled myself off the couch to standing with the help of Winky’s homemade cane. “It’s my turn for the bathroom,” I said, and lumbered up to him. “This might take a while.”
Winky snorted. “And you’re always sayin’ I ain’t got no couth.”
I needed to keep Winky distracted somehow. “There’s beer in the fridge,” I said, and pushed by him. “Help yourself.”
“Thanks. Don’t mind if I do.”
I hobbled down the hall, past the bathroom to my bedroom. I shut the door behind me and fished around inside my nightstand drawer until I found the spare key to Shabby Maggie. That was the easy part. Now I had to sneak out the window. Thankfully, the windowsill was low – about level with the middle of my thigh. I hoisted the window pane up and pushed out the screen. Then I stuck a hand on the wall, balanced on my good right foot and stuck my left leg out the window.
I straddled the windowsill and stuck the cane in the grass. Then I tried to haul the other half of me out the window without putting pressure on my left foot. Yeah. Like that was going to work. I lost my balance and fell onto the lawn. The impact knocked the key out of my hand.
You’ve got to be kidding me! Finkerman could be here any second!
I scrambled around on my knees, clawing at the grass like a cat with diarrhea and no litter box in sight. Finally, my fingers found pay dirt. I plucked the key from the lawn, propped myself up on the cane and hauled myself to standing. Then I hobbled as fast as I could to the car, opened the door, backed my butt up to the seat and fell inside. Beads of sweat poured down my face as I hit Maggie’s ignition switch. Her twin glass-pack mufflers roared to life.
The front door flew open and Winky hollered at me. “Hey! Where you going?”
“To get lunch,” I said, and shifted into reverse. “I’ll be back in a little bit!” I hit the gas and peeled down the driveway. I didn’t have a phone, license or wallet, but, thanks to Winky, I had a bamboo cane I could use to beat Finkerman about his ugly, frizzy-haired head.
Halfway down the block I passed the obnoxious lawyer in his hideous yellow Hummer. He stared at me as if he’d seen a ghost, then slammed on the brakes. Thank goodness those overblown dune buggies had a turning radius of a quarter mile. I punched the gas on Maggie’s V8 and disappeared in the cloud of blue smoke pouring from her chattering muffler.
I didn’t know what was wrong with Maggie, but she’d begun burning oil like a bad fry cook. She coughed and sputtered, and I pulled into the next street and ducked down an alleyway. With no money, nowhere to go, and no other ideas, I sat in the alley and waited. About twenty minutes later, I was chased out by an old man in a Lincoln Town Car. I was blocking his access.
I turned the ignition on Maggie and limped home like a busted teenage runaway.
“I DIDN’T KNOW YOU WAS related to Harry Houdini,” Winky snarled as I hobbled back through my front door. He set an empty beer bottle on the counter. “I’m supposed to be keepin’ an eye on you, you know.”
“I know.”
“So, where’s lunch?”
“I forgot I didn’t have any money.”
“Uh huh. Somethin’ fishy’s goin’ on around here. And I got the evidence.”
I sighed. What was the harm in telling him now? I opened my mouth to confess the whole horrible mess, but Winky cut me off.
“What was this doing on your couch?” He held up a round, opaque disk the size of a jar lid.
“What is that?”
“This here’s a tarpon scale, I do believe. What I wanna know is, how’d it get on your couch?”
“How should I know? I don’t even know what a tarpon is.”
“It’s a fish, you lunker.”
“Not this again, Winky. I’m not i
n the mood.” I plopped back onto the couch.
“What’s the matter with you, Val? You’re always good for a round of word wrasslin’. Something really is wrong, ain’t it?”
I pursed my lips and shook my head.
“Don’t be a soiled brat, Val.”
“Spoiled.”
“What’s spoiled?” he asked, and sat on the coffee table beside me. “Don’t you trust me?”
“It’s not that, Winky,” I confessed. “It’s just...I don’t know what to say. I don’t know where to begin.”
Winky patted me on the hand. “Well, like ol’ Laverne always says, begin at the beginin’.”
I GAVE WINKY THE ABBREVIATED version. I started with the tornado and ended with Cold Cuts missing. I didn’t mention Bill Robo or the bloody bathroom.
“Is that all?” Winky laughed. “I bet she just run off with one of them young fellers she met at the beach.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Cold Cuts ain’t as cautious as you, Val. It’s took you what? A good two years to warm up to me and the other fellers.”
He had a point. “That’s true. But unlike her, I’ve had my heart crushed more than once or twice. She’s too young to know any better.” Melancholy threatened to set me off on another crying jag. I needed something to occupy my mind besides thoughts of Cold Cuts being tied up somewhere...or worse. “Show me how to make a pair of earrings,” I said to Winky.
He grinned like a carnival barker. “Make me a baloney sandwich and I’ll show you how to make our best seller. Seems like I got to go twiced a week now to Old Joe’s Bait Shack to refill the little display thingy. ”
“Really?” I looked across the kitchen counter at the tackle box and jumbles of lures, wires and jewelry fasteners. “Which one is that?”
“Like the ones me and Winnie give you for your birthday,” Winky said. He picked up a handful of small, colorful lures that looked like a stubby, pregnant worms. “The ones that use these here hard-bodied grubs.”
“What did you say?”
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