I cringed. “Well, I don’t know. I didn’t say I’d cracked the case. I just have a gut feeling there’s more to Vanderhoff’s story than your theory that a beauty parlor hairdryer cooked her brains.”
“Right. Speaking of which, have you gone by Beth-Ann’s to check out the dryer?”
Crap. I should have thought of that when I was at her place yesterday.
“It’s on my follow-up list for today.”
“Good. Just do me a favor.”
“What?”
“Don’t go chasing strange vehicles around in the dark. At least, not without me.”
I grinned. “No worries there, I promise.” That wasn’t a lie. I didn’t have money to waste on gas. The Mustang only got fifteen miles to a gallon. On a good day. Downhill.
“Okay. Call me when you’ve got something,” Paulson said.
“Roger that.”
I clicked off the phone and tromped down the stairs and over to the service bay. When I got there, Earl was deep under the hood of the RV, giving Knickerbocker the diagnosis on his raggedy-ass old Minnie Winnie.
“Threw a rod,” Earl was saying. “Right through the gear shaft.”
I wasn’t sure if Earl was being serious or had just delivered the punchline to the joke I’d expressly banned him from telling. I checked Knickerbocker’s face. He seemed unconcerned either way.
“Can you fix it?” Knickerbocker asked.
Earl shrugged. “Sure. But do you really think it’s worth spending the money on this old hunk—”
I kicked Earl in the shin. Hard.
His surprised eyes met mine, and I shot him a look that could curdle an enamel paint job. He winced and rubbed his leg.
“What a classic,” I said, beaming at Knickerbocker.
“Uh ...,” Earl fumbled. “I mean, I have to say, sir, she’s a real beauty.”
Knickerbocker’s battered face sagged a little more. He let out a sigh. “Listen. I know she’s no looker, but she’s got sentimental value. Do what you can for her, would you?”
“Don’t you want to know the cost first?” Earl asked. He glanced over at me and withered again under my angry glare.
Bill shook his head. “No. Whatever it costs, it’s okay.” He turned to me. “As long as you take cash, that is.”
“We definitely take cash,” I blurted before Earl had a chance to say anything else idiotic. He might’ve been a mechanical genius, but he was the crappiest salesperson in the known Milky Way Galaxy.
“We’ll get to work on it right away,” I said. “Earl will figure out the parts you need. You put down a deposit that pays for the parts, and we’ll get them ordered right away.”
Knickerbocker smiled absently. “That sounds good. How long will it take to fix?”
“I’d say not more than three to six days,” Earl said, “depending on availability of parts.”
“You have someplace to stay?” I asked Knickerbocker.
“I can’t stay in the RV?”
I shook my head. “No. It’ll be up on the lift.”
“And maybe in a few pieces, I suspect,” Earl said.
Knickerbocker shrugged and smiled in a vague, pained kind of way. “Then I guess I’m going to need a place to stay.”
“I’ve got a small in-law apartment upstairs,” I blurted. “I could rent it to you for say, eighty-nine dollars a night?”
Knickerbocker looked at me strangely, then let out a groan. His eyes rolled up into his head, and he collapsed backward, right into Earl’s waiting arms. My cousin caught him by the torso, then laid him out on the floor of the service bay like a side of beef.
“I’d a passed out, too,” Earl said. “You shouldn’t a gone over fifty-nine bucks, tops.”
“This isn’t funny, Earl. The guy may have a concussion or something. Help me get him up the stairs.”
“Shouldn’t we call a doctor?”
“Who? Dr. Greenblatt? He moved away two months ago.”
“Oh, yeah.” He looked me in the eyes. “Good thing you and me can’t afford to get sick.”
I didn’t try to argue with Earl’s logic. It made more sense than anything else going on at the moment. I grabbed Knickerbocker’s legs, Earl hooked his arms under his shoulders, and we toted him toward the stairwell.
As I wrangled the door open with an elbow, Earl’s stomach growled.
“Oh,” he said. “I almost forgot. I searched around, but couldn’t find no signs of a deer. This feller here must’a hit something else.”
I sighed.
So much for free venison stew tonight.
Chapter Thirteen
I STARED AT THE STRANGER sprawled out in Grandma Selma’s old bed.
Earl and I had carried Knickerbocker upstairs to her tiny in-law apartment. It was attached to my parent’s place by a short breezeway. I hadn’t been inside it for months. The air inside smelled faintly of dust and her perfume.
We’d laid Knickerbocker on the bed and pulled his shirt off to assess him for injuries. Between his neck and left shoulder, we’d discovered a large bruise ringed with broken skin. It was sort of oval-shaped, and as big as the bottom of a plastic jug of Castrol Motor Oil.
I’d figured the injury must’ve come from the shoulder strap on his seatbelt. Knickerbocker’s RV was too old to have airbags to soften the impact.
Earl, on the other hand, had insisted the injury was a Sasquatch bite. I’d shot him another choice selection from my repertoire of scathing looks, handed him my life savings, and sent him off to the A&P to fetch some aspirin, rubbing alcohol, and two cans of chicken soup, whatever was cheapest.
While Earl was away, I’d stayed behind to keep an eye on our unanticipated patient. Equipped with the hospital’s handy-dandy concussion watch list, I sat on an old wicker settee and intermittently glanced over at Knickerbocker, biding my time by scanning articles from a selection of outdated magazines I’d filched from the recycle bin at Beth-Ann’s.
I was engrossed in a fascinating article on new and exciting ways to reinvent green bean casserole when Knickerbocker groaned. I jumped up and sprinted to his side.
“Are you okay, Mr. Knickerbocker?”
He opened his eyes. Either his irises were black, or his pupils had swallowed them whole.
“Mr. Knickerbocker?” I repeated.
His eyes pointed in my direction, but whether he could see me or not, I couldn’t tell. He muttered something that sounded like a foreign language, then shifted his dazed eyes to his left, as if he was searching for something.
“It’s okay,” I said soothingly. “You’re okay.” I touched his arm. He jerked away.
“Mr. Knickerbocker!” I said louder. “You’re okay. Can you hear me?”
“Huh?” He grunted, and turned back toward me. His dilated pupils were now rimmed with green.
“You’re safe with me,” I said.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“My grandmother’s apartment. You passed out.”
“Oh.”
“I sent Earl for supplies,” I said, then heard a rumble. I went to the window. Earl was pulling Bessie into the parking lot, having spent, literally, my last dime.
I walked back over to the bedside. “I don’t mean to be crass, but I’ll need money before we can go any further.”
Knickerbocker’s head lolled on the pillow. He glanced down at his naked chest. “Go any further? Are we ... uh ... did we just—?”
My back bristled with Southern indignation. “Before we can order parts. For your RV.”
“My RV?”
“Yes. You said you hit a deer.”
“Oh. Deer. Right. Did it survive?”
My eyebrows inched closer together. “I don’t know. We didn’t see any signs of it around the accident site.”
“Why am I here ... in this bed?”
“You fainted. You hit your head in an accident. You walked here. We towed your RV? You don’t remember?”
“Uh ... sure. But why am I half naked?” Knickerbocker li
fted the sheet and took a peek under it. “You didn’t see my ... uh ... lizard, did you?”
A snort of laughter erupted from behind me. I turned to see Earl standing there holding a paper grocery sack, grinning like a lottery winner.
Earl smirked at me, then eyed Knickerbocker. “Been a long time since that one there’s seen a lizard.”
Knickerbocker reached up and touched the goose egg on his forehead. His brow furrowed. “So you didn’t see it?”
“I didn’t,” Earl said. “But having just freshly arrived, I can only speak for myself.”
I punched Earl’s arm. “Stop it. He’s delirious.”
I turned to Knickerbocker. “Now you lay back and let me disinfect your wounds.”
“You remember what bit you?” Earl asked as I took the bag, opened the bottle of alcohol, and poured some onto a wad of toilet paper.
“Bit me?” Knickerbocker asked.
“He’s talking about the wound on your shoulder,” I said.
I shot Earl some side-eye, then sat on the edge of the bed beside Knickerbocker. I dabbed at the half-circle of bruised, slightly broken flesh.
Knickerbocker winced. “Feels like a cracked clavicle,” he said. “Must’ve been the seatbelt.”
I turned and sneered at Earl. He crinkled his nose at me.
“I hate to bring this up,” Earl said, “but it’d be good to get some money down on them parts before the supply stores close for the day.”
“Parts?” Knickerbocker asked.
“Your RV broke down, remember?” I asked.
“Sure.” Knickerbocker tried to sit up, but fell back onto the pillows. “Sorry. I feel ... uh ....”
“Should I call a doctor?” I asked. “You don’t look so good.”
“No doctors!” Knickerbocker said with more energy than I thought he had left in him. He tried to sit up again, but gave up and leaned back on the pillows. “I hate doctors.”
Earl’s eyebrows raised to his shaggy hairline. “I hear that.”
“Look. In the glove compartment,” Knickerbocker said. “I keep money in there. Take whatever you need.”
My right eyebrow arched. “Aren’t you worried we might ... you know ... cheat you?”
“Yeah. Or rob you blind or something?” Earl added.
Knickerbocker studied us both through a pair of half-dilated, bloodshot eyes.
“Don’t take this personally,” he said. “But from the looks of you two, I don’t think you’ve got enough ambition for anything like that.”
Chapter Fourteen
I CLOSED THE DOOR TO the bedroom, leaving Knickerbocker propped up on pillows with a glass of tap water and a selection of Southern Living magazines circa 1997.
“What do you think we should do?” I whispered to Earl as we walked down the hall toward the kitchen. “He seems confused. Do you know anything about treating a cracked clavicle?”
“Not a thing,” Earl said. “But if I’m right and that fella got hisself bit up by Bigfoot, he’s probably got some kind of poison fever, you know, causing him to be all delusional and whatnot.”
I closed my eyes and blew out a breath. Talking to Earl was like trying to have a conversation with Jethro on the Beverly Hillbillies. He had the same country twang, the same dumb luck, and the same irritating happy-go-lucky attitude. He also had an uncanny knack for calling things accurately, despite having no intellectual pursuits beyond Auto Trader and Pimp My Ride. It was downright infuriating.
“It’s not a Bigfoot bite!” I hissed at Earl. “It’s from his seatbelt. He said so himself.”
“What about all that lizard mumbo-jumbo? That don’t make him a very reliable witness, if you ask me.”
“He’s probably confused. From the accident.”
Earl shrugged. “Or he’s some nut-job fresh outta the looney bin.”
I glared at Earl. I wanted to dismiss his comment out of hand. But doubt threaded its way across my mind like one of my Grandma Selma’s cross-stitches. And that spider with icicle legs crawled out from under my wig again and made a beeline for where my bra hooked in the back.
“I don’t want to be alone with him,” I blurted. “Earl, you make the soup. I’ll go check out the glove compartment.”
“Yeah. Let’s see if his cash is just a delusion too.” Earl crinkled his nose. “Uh ... how do I make it?”
I looked up at the six-foot-four lump of uselessness. “Soup? You’re kidding. You open the can, Earl. You pour it in a pan. Then you cook it till it boils.”
“What kind of pan?”
I groaned, shook my head, and stomped down the stairs.
Halfway down, I turned around and stomped back up the stairwell. “Where are the keys?”
Earl grinned, pulled them out of the breast pocket of his coveralls, and dangled them in front of me like a cat toy. I swiped them from his hand and blew him a raspberry.
What a jerk!
I UNLOCKED THE DRIVER’S door of Knickerbocker’s crappy old RV. It had a built-in cab, and I figured it measured around twenty-four feet long. Despite the exterior looking as if it were ready for the junkyard, I was surprised to discover the interior was almost mint.
One glance at the shiny chrome controls jutting from the aqua-painted metal dashboard and I was eight years old again—a kid in a candy store.
Sweet.
From the looks of it, the Minnie Winnie had to have been manufactured in the late 1960s, back when groovy was still a thing worth striving for.
Of course, the windshield was a total loss. It was shattered into an opaque hodgepodge of tiny ice cubes. The driver’s seat also had a gash on the left side, near the headrest. Nicotine-hued foam rubber spewed out from the gaping slit in the aquamarine vinyl like raw chicken fat.
I glanced around the floorboards and passenger seat. No receipts. No junk food wrappers. Not even a roadmap or a coffee ring. If this guy was living in his RV, you’d never have known it. I laughed to myself.
He must be totally OCD.
I tried the glove compartment. It was locked. I fumbled with the key ring and tried the smallest key. It didn’t work. I tried the next one. The key slipped in. I turned it, and the metal glovebox fell open like a slack jaw.
My own jaw followed suit.
Inside the glove compartment sat row upon row of neatly bundled cash—the kind of money you’d expect to nab from a successful bank heist.
I closed my mouth and cautiously picked up a packet. I fanned through the bills with my thumb.
Twenties. Fifty of them. A cool grand.
I picked up two more paper-banded packs and noticed a silver glint behind them. I shoved aside a few stacks. A 9mm Glock came into view.
I gasped.
I’d wanted a Glock since I was eight years old.
As I reached for the gun, a thought made me recoil as if I’d been attacked by a rattlesnake.
Who is this guy? Black clothes. Wads of cash. Driving in the middle of nowhere—in the middle of the night. There’s no way he can be good news.
I should call Officer Paulson!
I patted down my coveralls. Five heavy-duty utility pockets and not one of them contained my cellphone. I mentally kicked myself in the ass, then stuffed three bundles of bills into my right hip pocket. I stacked the others back neatly, locked the glovebox, and was about to leave when curiosity got the better of me.
I swiveled the seat around, got up, and crept into the main cabin of the RV.
Beyond the reach of the overhead service bay lights, the RV’s interior grew dim and veiled in a grayish gloom. As my eyes adjusted to the faint light, a modest kitchen, a small banquette, and a fold out couch built into the wall came into view.
Typical, old retro-style RV.
Beyond the main cabin, I could see a small hallway. At the end of it was a metal door. I walked to the edge of the hallway for a closer inspection.
The door looked like something from a lock-up unit. Four deadbolts secured the door above the doorknob. Four more below. Defini
tely not original equipment.
The hair on the back of my neck bristled.
Why would anyone do that?
A noise in the garage sent me whirling around on my thick, rubber heels.
Crap! Knickerbocker’s coming!
My upper torso twisted toward the front of the RV. The bottom half wasn’t quite so quick. I tried to take a step, tripped on my boots, and did a belly flop onto the floor of the main cabin.
“Oof!” I grunted as I hit the floor, the wind knocked out of me.
I lay there a second, taking inventory of my body parts, then hiked myself up on one elbow. As I waited for my breath to catch and the stars to clear from my corneas, I caught a movement from the corner of my eye.
I turned my head and found myself face-to-face with a pair of yellow-green, reptilian eyes.
Chapter Fifteen
THE REPTILE’S BULBOUS eyes stared blankly at me from inside a ten-gallon terrarium. It had been tucked beneath the banquette in Knickerbocker’s RV.
I grunted and hauled myself to sitting on the linoleum floor.
Well, what do you know? Knickerbocker really does have a lizard.
“LOOK WHAT I FOUND,” I said to Earl as I walked into the kitchen of Grandma Selma’s apartment toting the terrarium.
“Well, I’ll be. That looks like a lizard, all right.” Earl shook his head. “Too bad, Cuz.” He winked at me. “For a minute there, I thought you’d done got lucky.”
“Hardy har har.” I set the terrarium on the counter and pursed my lips to stifle a grin.
“Earl, that’s not all I found.” I pulled the stacks of twenties out of my pocket and fanned them in front of Earl’s face. “I guess you can go ahead and order those parts now.”
Earl’s eyes grew as big as boiled eggs. “Lord a’mighty! How much you got there?”
“Three grand. But there’s more if you need it.”
Joy and avarice mud-wrestled on Earl’s face, providing me with some much-relished sadistic pleasure.
“You got that soup ready?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Earl took an iron skillet off the burner and poured its contents into a bowl. The whole while, he kept one eye trained on the money, until I shoved the bills back in my pocket.
Freaky Florida Mystery Adventures Box Set Page 6