Freaky Florida Mystery Adventures Box Set

by Margaret Lashley

  “Good. So what’s on the agenda for today?” Grayson asked, tapping his index finger annoyingly on his coffee mug.

  My nose crinkled. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, seeing as I’m kind of stuck here, I thought I’d explore the local entertainment options.”

  “What are you talking about? There’s nothing to do here.”

  Grayson scratched his chin. “Remind me again. Why do you live here?”

  I blew out a sigh that could’ve extinguished the candles on a centenarian’s birthday cake.

  “I told you. I’m working on my escape.”

  “Oh, yes. The P.I. gig.”

  “Right. Which reminds me, I’ve got to give Paulson a report on Vanderhoff today.”

  Grayson’s left eyebrow raised slightly. “Vanderhoff?”

  “The old lady who keeps getting the weird phone calls. Hey. You didn’t call the shop last night, did you?”

  “No. But I heard the phone ring four times.”

  “My parent’s old landline. Sorry. It turned out to be a prank call. Nothing but beeps and static. Then some stupid mechanical voice said, ‘We’re watching you.’”

  Grayson’s back straightened. “Interesting.”

  “Nuts is more like it. Should I tell Paulson? He already thinks I’m crazy for seeing imaginary dead guys.”

  Grayson chewed his lip for a moment. “I tell you what. You help me, and I’ll help you.”

  “Help me? How?”

  “Let me borrow your car, and I’ll teach you how to bug a phone. Deal?”

  I sneered. “Whose phone? Earl’s? I already hear way more out of his stupid mouth than I want to.”

  “No. Vanderhoff’s. We can put a listening device in her phone, and then you’ll know whether she’s cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs or telling the truth.”

  I scowled. “In my book, that’s called invasion of privacy.”

  Grayson shrugged and locked eyes with me. “In mine it’s called on-the-job training.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I SLIPPED INTO A PAIR of jeans and my best threadbare button-down shirt. With the woodpecker wig centered on my skull and the last dregs of Mom’s dried-up eyeliner applied, I almost looked feminine. I blew out a sigh, then hobbled down the stairs in a pair of Mom’s inch-high red pumps to check on Earl in the service bay.

  “Well, look at you,” Earl teased. “I ain’t seen you out of coveralls in a year. I thought you’d done sewed yourself into ’em.”

  I shot him some side-eye. “Yeah. Ha ha and all that. Look, you got everything you need to keep going on the repairs to Grayson’s vehicle?”

  “Who’s Grayson?”

  Oh, crap! I don’t want to get into this with Earl. Not right now.

  “Knickerbocker,” I said. “It’s his first name.”

  Earl eyed me mischievously. “You two on a first-name basis now?”

  “He’s a private investigator, Earl. He’s going to help me on the Vanderhoff case.”

  “The Vanderhoff case? What. You a detective now, too?”

  Aww crap!

  “I’m working on something for Paulson, okay? Grayson’s helping me out.”

  Earl grinned. “I bet he is.”

  “Listen, Earl. He’s a customer. Nothing more. He’s paid six days rent in advance, and shelled out the entire tab for the parts. He even gave me five-hundred down toward your labor costs. That’s nearly thirty-five hundred bucks. Don’t blow it, okay? We need the money.”

  “I dunno, Bobbie. Something smells fishy to me.”

  “Who cares? His money’s good. And you know as well as I do, we damned sure need it.”

  Earl put on his pondering face for a moment. Not a good portent of things to come.

  “You’re right, boss man.” He sniggered and punched me in the arm. “If you ask me, sounds like a case of ‘Don’t ask, don’t smell.’”

  As my eyes returned from their orbit around their sockets, I spied Grayson coming down the stairs. His polished leather shoes were the only things gleaming in the entire garage.

  “Good morning, Earl,” he said after shooting me a wink. “How’re the repairs going?”

  Earl smirked. “Don’t ask, don’t sme—”

  I punched Earl hard on the arm.

  “Ouch!” He shot me a redneck scowl. “That hurt!”

  “You ready to go, Drex?” Grayson asked.

  I looked him in the eye. “Never been more ready.”

  Grayson grinned. “Come on, then. Let’s roll.”

  Chapter Thirty

  AS I STEERED THE MUSTANG out of the crumbling parking lot of the mechanic shop, Grayson fiddled with a weird, old-fashioned looking cellphone he’d retrieved from his RV. I smiled. Maybe he didn’t embrace technology either.

  “How’d you become a private investigator?” I asked.

  Grayson fiddled with some buttons on the device in his hand. “I read a book when I was a kid called, So You Want to be a Detective.”

  I shook my head and smirked. “It’s never a straight answer with you, is it?”

  Grayson shrugged and set the device in his lap. “Playing it straight all the time is no fun, Drex. Sometimes, a sense of humor is the only thing that gets you through the rough spots.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah. Life can be a real riot, all right.”

  “Come on. Of all the career choices in the world, what made you want to be a private investigator?”

  I steered the Mustang onto Obsidian Road and scowled. “I took one of those aptitude tests on Facebook.”

  “You mean the kind that tells you what kind of pizza you’d be?”

  “Exactly. It said I should be a shoe store manager.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Freaking Facebook.”

  Grayson laughed and fiddled with the door lock like an antsy little kid. “I don’t follow. How did that lead into you getting a P.I. intern license?”

  I shifted into third. “I was so pissed off after that Facebook test that I drank half a bottle of vodka. I woke up around three in the morning, still snockered. As fate would have it, the TV was blaring this late-night infomercial on how to ‘Train at home in your spare time to become a private investigator.’”

  “I see.” Grayson pursed his lips and tapped his fingers on the door handle.

  I bit my lip. “I know it sounds totally lame, but I was only pulling in ten bucks an hour as a mall cop. Barely enough to cover the gas to Gainesville and back.”

  “Wait a minute.” Grayson stopped tapping his finger and turned to stare at me. “You were a mall cop?”

  I pressed my molars together, wanting to curse myself out for letting that one slip.

  Grayson laughed out loud, stifled himself, then burst out laughing again. He sucked in some air and blurted, “Did you have your own Segway?” Then he doubled over in the passenger seat.

  I mashed the gas pedal to the floor. “Smartass.”

  “Sorry,” he said, trying to compose himself. “It’s just that ... well, most people who go into this line of work have a background in the military or law enforcement.” He snickered, then recovered himself. “Though, I suppose mall cop could count as some branch of non-government counter-intelligence.”

  I shot him some major side-eye. “Ha. Ha. Ha.”

  Grayson pursed his lips. “Okay, okay. I’m done.” He took a deep breath. “Tell me, from which prestigious school did you earn your intern certificate, Detective Drex?”

  I glared at him. “The Forensic Academy, okay? It was just one of those wild-hair things. Like I said, I was half-lit when I called them. I put the tuition on a credit card. It was non-refundable. When I sobered up in the morning, I figured, the money’s gone, so what the hell.”

  “Your insatiable passion for the profession is inspiring,” Grayson said soberly.

  I grinned despite myself. “Thanks.”

  “Where did you plan on getting your two years of on-the-job training?”

  I scowled. “I didn’t. I thought
that once I passed the test for the Class CC intern license, I was good to go.”

  “I guess you should’ve done a better job investigating it before you shelled out the money.”

  I blew out a breath and rolled my eyes. “I guess. But half a pint of Stolli has a way of making me lose my train of thought.”

  “Apparently, so does tequila.”

  I winced, then pulled up in front of Vanderhoff’s nondescript house in Cherry Manor. “We’re here.”

  Grayson opened the side door and tipped his fedora at me. “Well, Ms. Graduate of the Forensic Academy. Time to show me what you’ve got.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  OLD LADY VANDERHOFF took a final drag off her Marlboro and stamped out the stub in the overflowing ashtray on her kidney-shaped coffee table. She sat back in the wingback chair and eyed Grayson and me. Perched on the chair above her left shoulder, a dead-eyed doll glared back at us like a graveyard demon.

  “Beth-Ann put me under the dryer and went out for a smoke,” the old woman said. “I was all by myself in her garage.” She glanced over at me. “I mean, you know, beauty parlor.”

  “Go on,” Grayson said.

  “Well, some guy all dressed up in a hat and an old-fashioned, double-breasted suit came in and asked me my name. I told him a lady don’t just give out her personal details like that.” She hocked a loogie and spit it into a napkin. “Then the fella asked for the time. I told him. But then, he said something weird.”

  “What?” I asked, trying not to look at her napkin.

  Vanderhoff straightened her shoulders. “He said something like, ‘Excuse me, but I meant to inquire after the year.’ Just like that. Well, when I told him, he looked kind of surprised. He thanked me and then just up and left. When I got home, my phone was ringing. It was those damned beeping robots.”

  “You didn’t mention the guy before,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Eh. I didn’t think it was important. Well, truth is, I forgot. My memory ain’t what it used to be.”

  “So have you gotten any more calls?” Grayson asked.

  “Yeah. Last night, as a matter of fact. That robot bastard again. Now he wants me to meet him tonight at the Stop & Shoppe at nine-thirty. Well, I told him I couldn’t go.”

  “Why not?” Grayson asked.

  Vanderhoff looked surprised by his question. “Why, that’s when Matlock is on!”

  I stifled a smirk. “Was it the same voice that told you to go to A&P and steal the bananas?”

  “I would assume so.” Vanderhoff glanced over at Grayson and shook her head as if it were obvious I was some kind of nincompoop. “I mean, how many robots would get the idea to call me up? Right, Detective Grayson?”

  “Good point,” Grayson said. “Pardon me, but could I trouble you for a glass of water, Mrs. Vanderhoff?”

  The old lady batted her gray eyelashes at him. “No trouble at all, for you, honey.”

  Vanderhoff heaved herself out of the chair and hobbled to the kitchen. I followed her in and stood in the doorway, serving as a lookout for Grayson’s and my surreptitious plans to bug her telephone.

  As Vanderhoff reached for a glass in a cabinet, I snuck a peek back into the living room. Grayson was fiddling with the phone jack on the wall. I don’t know why, but I’d expected him to stick something into the receiver of the old rotary dial phone, like they always did in the black-and-white detective movies I’d seen.

  I frowned and turned around. Vanderhoff had the glass in the sink, filling it from the tap. She turned off the faucet and took a step toward the living room.

  “Uh ... wow,” I said, sidestepping in front of her. “That’s a lot of magnets.” I pointed to her refrigerator.

  Vanderhoff’s head pivoted on her turkey neck. “Yeah. But I won’t be getting no more. Mandy used to send ’em to me from all over the place.”

  “Oh.” My eyes scanned the dozens of magnets littering the freezer door. Amongst the tacky display, I spotted my business card. It was half-covered with a round, brown magnet that looked suspiciously like a mound of dog poop.

  Nice.

  I glanced back into the living room. Grayson motioned he needed more time. I turned back and smiled at Vanderhoff. “I see you’ve stuck my card on the fridge there. That magnet ... where’s it from?”

  Vanderhoff hobbled closer to the refrigerator. While she squinted at the magnet, I shot a glance into the living room. Grayson was sticking the old-fashioned cell phone thingy under the sofa cushion.

  “Grave Creek Mound,” Vanderhoff said. She straightened up and sniffed. “That was the last one she sent, if I recall correctly.”

  I nodded solemnly. “I heard you reported her missing. I really am sorry.”

  “Thanks.” Vanderhoff smiled. “Kids nowadays. Hopefully she’ll turn up.”

  “I hope so.”

  Vanderhoff fetched the glass of water from the sink and took a step toward the living room. I sprinted ahead of her in an effort to warn Grayson she was coming. My gut flopped when I saw him fluffing the pillows on the sofa.

  He winked at me and said, “And that, my little grasshopper, is how it’s done.”

  “How what’s done?” Vanderhoff asked.

  I cringed. Grayson didn’t even blink.

  “Conducting an interview, ma’am,” he said. “As you know, I’m here to help train our little Bobbie to become a bona fide private investigator. Don’t you think she did a fine job today?”

  Vanderhoff shrugged noncommittally. “I guess.” She handed Grayson the glass of water. He drank it down in one, long gulp.

  “We should be going,” I said as he handed her back the empty glass.

  “Thank you for your time. It’s been lovely.” Grayson kissed Mrs. Vanderhoff’s hand. She beamed at him like a smitten, geriatric schoolgirl.

  “Come back anytime, Detective Grayson,” she said as we stepped onto the front porch. She followed us out and stood in the doorway, grinning and waving as we climbed into the Mustang.

  “You seem to have a way with women,” I said, and waved back at Vanderhoff. Her grin faded. Then she went inside and closed the door.

  “She seemed nice enough,” Grayson said.

  “Sure. For a woman whose been known to spot the Virgin Mary in her French toast.”

  Grayson laughed. “It always pays to be polite—until it doesn’t. That should be rule number one in the P.I. handbook.”

  I grimaced. “What does that even mean?”

  Grayson grimaced, then burst into a grin. “Hey. I know! Let’s get a picture of you standing in front of her place.”

  I eyed him suspiciously. “For what?”

  Grayson pulled his cellphone from his pocket. “For your scrapbook, of course. Detective’s First Year.” He snapped off a couple of shots of me with my mouth hanging open.

  “I wasn’t ready,” I said.

  “She’s ready?” a woman asked excitedly. She was walking by on the sidewalk, towing a little white poodle on a leash beside her.

  “What?” I asked.

  The woman came over and bent down beside the driver’s side window. She was Nancy Parker. I’d seen her at the beauty parlor a couple of times. Nosy Nancy was a bad tipper, according to Beth-Ann.

  “Vanderhoff,” Parker said. “Is she finally getting ready to sell her place?”

  “No. Why would you think that?”

  Parker’s face collapsed with disappointment. “You’re the second ones to stop and take a picture of her place today.”

  “Really?” I asked. “Who were the others?”

  “I dunno. Just a guy I’d never seen before. I figured he was a realtor from Waldo or something.” Parker glanced over at Vanderhoff’s house and let out a big sigh. “Well, too bad, Doodles. We should get going.” The little dog yipped. She turned back to face me. “Y’all have a nice day, now.”

  “You too,” Grayson said.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked.

  Grayson sighed. “Darn it. I guess I
’m gonna miss Matlock.”

  I fought back a grin, turned the key in the ignition, and fired up the Mustang.

  “Let’s do a test call,” Grayson said as we cruised out of Cherry Manor and past the Stop & Shoppe. “See if mister tele-buggy’s working.”

  “How?”

  “Give Vanderhoff a ring.”

  I blanched. “Who? Me? What should I say?”

  “Ask her if her refrigerator’s running. Or if she’s got Prince Albert in a can.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t you ever take anything seriously?”

  “A few things. Sure. But this doesn’t make the short list.”

  I pulled over and dialed Vanderhoff. The phone rang ten times before she answered it.

  Grayson kept an eye on his own cell phone. When Vanderhoff finally picked up, a text message came up on his phone display. He tapped a button and stuck a pair of earbuds in his ears while I spoke with Vanderhoff.

  “Mrs. Vanderhoff?” I asked.

  “Oh. It’s you, Bobbie. I wasn’t gonna answer. I thought it might be that robot man again.”

  “No. Just me. I wanted to say thank you for your hospitality.”

  “Oh. You’re welcome, honey.”

  “Have a good day. Let me know if you get any more weird calls.”

  “I will. Tell Detective Grayson it was a pleasure to meet him. He can come by any—”

  “I will. Bye.” I hung up and sneered at Grayson. “I think she’s got a crush on you, lady-killer.”

  He grinned and pulled out the earbuds. “Jealous? I heard every word.”

  “So it’s working?”

  “Like a charm.”

  “Good. Speaking of charm, I need to call Paulson.”

  Grayson’s eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead. “I fail to see the connection.”

  I smirked. “I need to give him an update on the case. But I don’t know exactly what to say.”

  “Tell him Mothman’s in town and is performing a one-night-only gig at the Stop & Shoppe tonight at nine-thirty.”

  I shot him a look. “You know, you’re almost as bad as Earl.”

  Grayson grinned. “You said almost. I must be making progress.”