Freaky Florida Mystery Adventures Box Set

by Margaret Lashley

  Grayson slowly disappeared in the dust behind me. I thought I was in the clear. But fifty yards out, I hit a huge pothole. The driver’s side window disappeared into the door panel with a crunch of breaking glass.

  Then, the tread on the blown tire peeled away like a strip of black alligator hide. The bare left front rim couldn’t grip in the sand. The Mustang veered wildly to the left. It took all I had to keep it on the road as I hobbled along, the rim gouging and scraping and slinging up sand.

  Without traction, the car inched along slowly—slower than I could run. I dared a glance in the rearview mirror. Grayson was about thirty feet behind me, and gaining fast.

  Crap!

  I scanned the car for a weapon.

  Nothing.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror and nearly swallowed my tongue. Grayson was almost to the car!

  I grabbed the only thing I could find to defend myself—the green Tootsie Pop I’d licked once, then tossed in the ashtray. Grayson jogged up to my broken window. I hurled the sucker at him with all my might. It hit home, beaning him right below his left eye.

  “Ow!” he yelled, rubbing the impact spot. “What’d you do that for? And why the hell are you running away from me?”

  “You shot at me!” I screeched.

  Grayson grimaced. “It was an accident. I swear!”

  “No it wasn’t. You’re trying to kill me!”

  “I am not!”

  “Are too!”

  “Am not!” Grayson rolled his eyes. “This is ridiculous. What are we? Three-year-olds?”

  I stared at him sullenly. “How do I know you’re not some serial killer living in that RV in the woods? What about that skull I saw!”

  “What skull?” Grayson asked. “I don’t know anything about a skull. Geez, Drex. I’m trying to help you!”

  “Help me?”

  “Yes. With your detective license, remember?”

  My eyes narrowed. “Oh. In that case, thank you very much. I’ll send Officer Paulson to pick you up.”

  I hit the gas. The Mustang’s wheels spun in the sand.

  “Come on, Drex,” Grayson said, holding up his hands. “I don’t want you to call the police.”

  I scowled. “You’re in some kind of trouble with the law, aren’t you? I knew it!”

  Grayson shook his head. “No. I swear. I just ... I don’t want my name in a public incident report, okay? Come on, I’m no killer. See? I’m too charming.” He tried to wink his swollen eye, but only managed a flinch.

  I sneered at him. “Lots of psychopaths can be charming when they need to be.”

  He shrugged. “Fair enough. But Drex, I could’ve killed you a dozen times already if that’s what I wanted to do.”

  I jerked back in horror. “Is that supposed to be reassuring?”

  He sighed. “It’s the best I can come up with right now.”

  I stared at the strange man dressed in black. “Who are you really, Grayson?”

  He touched the bruise on his cheek just below his swollen eye. “I’m a physicist.”

  Suddenly, the horror and fear clinching my gut evaporated. No one could make up a story like that. Not on the fly. Not with a Tootsie Pop freshly hurled into his eye.

  “Prove it,” I said.

  Grayson smiled ingratiatingly. “Uh ... E equals MC squared?”

  I laughed. I don’t know why. Probably from sheer hysteria.

  Grayson grinned. “Well, aren’t we a pair. You think I’m Ted Bundy, and you look like John Wayne Gacy.”

  I shot a quick glance in the rearview mirror. My wig had flown off during the fracas, exposing my red, exceedingly receding hairline. Last night’s mascara had melted into black rings around my eyes.

  If that weren’t bad enough, it wasn’t blood that I’d felt earlier, when I’d first seen that skull.

  It was urine.

  I’d peed my pants.

  Just when I think life can’t get any crappier, it can.

  I laid my hands over the steering wheel, rested my bullet-riddled forehead on my forearms, and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  GRAYSON HELPED ME CHANGE the tire on the Mustang. Actually, he changed the tire while I fixed my wig and held him at gunpoint with his own Glock. This time, it wasn’t so much because I didn’t trust him, but because I had the upper hand. Besides, I needed the practice—for my P.I. license and all. This go around, however, I made sure the damned gun was loaded.

  Changing the tire and handing over his gun to me were part of the deal Grayson had made in exchange for me giving him a ride back to civilization—and for not calling the cops.

  The other part of the deal was that he had to come clean about who he was and what he was really up to out here in the middle of nowhere. He’d agreed to my terms without argument. Apparently, Grayson didn’t feel like dying in a backwoods crap hole, either.

  “So why’d you lie to me about being William Knickerbocker?” I asked, enjoying the weight of the Glock in my hand.

  Grayson looked up from cranking the lug-nut wrench. “Because I didn’t want to leave a trail. I’m kind of a big deal in some scientific circles. If the academic board found out I was chasing Mothman ... well, let’s just say it could put a damper on my already fragile credibility, if you know what I mean.”

  “What about the whole private investigator malarkey?”

  Grayson looked surprised. “That isn’t malarkey. I am. A private investigator, I mean.”

  I sneered. “That seems highly implausible.”

  Grayson wagged his eyebrows. “Perhaps, yet it remains tantalizingly within the realms of theoretical possibility.”

  I gave him half an eye roll. “I guess being a physicist pays for your hobby hunting monsters?”

  “More like the other way around. Physicists don’t get paid jack. That’s why I quit, kind of.”

  “So you really can make good money as a P.I.?”

  Grayson shook his head. “It’s always about the money with you.”

  I frowned. “I’ve got bills to pay. Big bills. Hospital bills.”

  “How much?”

  I grimaced. “I don’t know. I’m afraid to call them back.”

  Grayson frowned. “I detest doctors. No. I take that back. I detest the Western medical model.”

  “Why?”

  “The whole thing is based on being dead.”

  My eyebrows converged below the crater in the middle of my forehead. “What?”

  “Long story short, about four hundred years ago—”

  “Hold on,” I said, waving the gun. “You said ‘short.’”

  Grayson grinned and tightened the last lug nut. “Once upon a time, the Pope sanctioned this French guy named Descartes to dissect cadavers for scientific purposes. Now, thanks to his work, the entire Western medical model is based on the premise that we’re nothing more than a biological machine made out of meat and bones.”

  “So?”

  “Believe me, we’re a lot more than that.”

  I sighed. “Are you saying that we have a soul? I thought you were a physicist, not a preacher.”

  “We don’t have a soul, Drex. We are a soul. The body’s merely a semi-material manifestation for our exploration and experimentation in third-dimension reality.”

  I crinkled my nose. “Okay. Now I believe you’re a physicist. Can you repeat what you just said in English?”

  “We need a body to maneuver this earthly plain. You can’t drive a car without a foot on the gas pedal. No foot, no car, no go. See?”

  “Sort of ....”

  Grayson stood up and dusted off his knees. “Look, enough lessons for one day. What say we head over to the A&P, like you’d planned in the first place?”

  “Okay. But I want to know more about—”

  “Quantum physics?” Grayson asked hopefully.

  “No. How you made your money as a P.I.”

  Grayson sighed. “You do have a persistently one-track mind,
Drex. To the point of dogged determination, one might say.”

  I eyed him suspiciously. “When I’m interested in the subject, sure.”

  He smiled. “Good. Your motivation is money. Mine is mystery. Pursuing ‘monsters’ as you call them, takes persistence. And determination. And discretion. Extracting evidentiary material of the as-yet esoteric is a huge challenge.”

  I wasn’t exactly sure what he was talking about, but didn’t want to appear dumb. “Then why do it?”

  “Simple. I want to be the first person to prove their existence beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

  I frowned. “Excuse me, but going back to that whole bell curve thingy you mentioned the other day. Do you think the intellectual collective is ready for the truth? About Mothman and bigfoot, I mean?”

  Grayson’s lip curled upward. “Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? I have to come up with a better version of the facts before it can become the new truth.”

  “Let me wrap my head around this,” I said. “If your version becomes the new truth, it becomes the new reality? Or is it the other way around?”

  Grayson grinned. “And I thought you were just a pretty face.”

  I smiled. No one had called me pretty since Grandma Selma passed away. I didn’t like to think I was vain, but his compliment felt pretty damned good.

  “So, should we gather some provisions before we head to your first stakeout?” Grayson asked.

  I grinned. “Sure. What do you usually eat when you’re tailing someone?”

  “What most lovers of the unexplained eat, of course. Cheetos.”

  My nose crinkled. “Cheetos? Why?”

  “Because no one’s ever been able to scientifically prove what they’re made of. Plus, they have the added bonus of glowing orange in the dark.”

  I shook my head. “Okay. To the A&P it is.”

  As I shifted into first, a thought hit me. I turned to Grayson. “What about the skull I saw in the woods? Shouldn’t someone know about it?”

  Grayson locked eyes with me. “I suspect someone already does.”

  I reached for my phone. “I’m going to call Paulson.”

  “Do what you want,” Grayson said. “But if it were up to me, I’d wait until after our stakeout. It might not be safe for Paulson to go out into those woods alone. He’s going to need backup.”

  “But shouldn’t we at least warn him? We’re out here goofing around looking for some Mothman freak when there could be a psycho killer on the loose.”

  Grayson locked eyes with me. “Who says the two things aren’t interrelated?”

  My mouth fell open. “You think they are?”

  Grayson shrugged. “In the world of quantum physics, Drex, everything’s interrelated.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  WHILE GRAYSON WANDERED the aisles of the A&P grocery store in Waldo, I snuck into the restroom to call Beth-Ann for a reality check.

  “Hey, you got a minute?” I whispered into the phone.

  “Just closing up shop. I swear I think I may be the only person on the planet still doing permanent waves.”

  “Listen, you were right about Knickerbocker. He was using that name as an alias. He said he did it to keep under the radar with his colleagues. His real name is Nick Grayson.”

  “Nick Grayson?” Beth-Ann’s tired voice picked up a lilt. “Now there’s a name I can work with. Still, too bad he’s bald.”

  “He’s not. His head’s shaved. His hair’s growing back.”

  “Does this mean you’re calling dibs on him?”

  “Geez! No. I was calling because ... well, I don’t know whether to trust him or not. We went out to Bullet Point, you know, to shoot a few rounds. I found a skull in the grass—”

  “What?” Beth-Ann nearly choked. “A human skull?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t get that good a look at it. I ... uh ... kind of freaked and ran. Then Grayson shot out my tire—”

  “He what? Good grief! Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. It was all a big misunderstanding. At least, I’m pretty sure it was.”

  “Now you listen here, Ms. Roberta Drex,” Beth-Ann barked. “You stay out of the woods with that guy! He could be a madman. Like that Unabomber dude. He could have been living in the woods in that camper for years, getting crazier by the hour!”

  “That’s what I thought, too. At first. But if that were true, he could’ve killed me by now.”

  A toilet flushed. Nosy Nancy Parker emerged from a stall. I turned my back on her and cupped my hand over the phone.

  “Maybe he’s playing games,” Beth-Ann said. “Building your trust.”

  “But why?” I whispered.

  “Who knows? Blood sport? Why do psycho killers do anything they do?”

  Parker washed her hands and hit the hand dryer.

  “He says he’s a physicist,” I yelled over the noise.

  “What? Like that pi-R-squared crap?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why are you yelling? Is this some kind of code? Has he got you at gunpoint?”

  “What? No.”

  The hand dryer went off. Parker gave me the once-over and left the bathroom.

  “Okay. Maybe you’re right,” Beth-Ann said. “If I were a serial killer, I’d have picked an easier cover. You know, like a restaurateur or janitor or something. Physicist seems like a weird choice for an alibi.”

  I bit my lip. “So maybe he’s okay after all?”

  “I dunno. Maybe. Either way, please tell me you’ll be careful, okay?”

  “I will. I’m going on a stakeout with him tonight at nine-thirty at the Stop & Shoppe.”

  “A stakeout at Artie’s? You’re kidding!”

  “It’s a long story. Have you ever heard of the Mothman?”

  “The Mothman? Yeah. But what’s that got to do—”

  “I gotta go. Call me at ten tonight, would you? To make sure I’m still alive?”

  “Absolutely. Be safe.”

  “I will,” I said, then clicked off the phone, adjusted my wig in the mirror, and went off to find Grayson.

  GRAYSON AND I WERE sitting in my Mustang by the side of the road in the dark, weeds up to the windows. On the opposite side of Obsidian Road, the fluorescent lights of the Stop & Shoppe gave off a bluish-white glow in the gloom, as if the place was some forlorn ghost of failed merchandising past.

  “You’re getting crumbs all over the seat,” I grumbled at Grayson as he crunched on a handful of Cheetos. “You know, that isn’t the healthiest stakeout food in the world—or the stealthiest. You’re leaving a trail of orange goop all over the place.”

  “You’re right.” Grayson waggled his orange fingertips at me. “Could you imagine committing a murder with Cheetos fingers? No way to make a clean getaway.”

  I crinkled my nose. “Gross.”

  Grayson grinned. “Max Planck had it right when he said the world we perceive through our senses is only a tiny fragment of the vastness of Nature.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I doubt he was talking about Cheetos crumbs. Who’s Max Planck, anyway?”

  Grayson shot me a stunned look. “You don’t know who Max—oh, how sad. Everybody knows Einstein. But poor Max Planck. Every bit as brilliant a physicist, yet cast to the second shelf of history.”

  I blew out a bored laugh. “Yeah, I hate when that happens. Poor Max. Was he another starving physicist, or did he become a P.I. like you, to pay the bills?”

  “Neither. Max did all right for himself without a second job.”

  I sneered. “How nice for him. You know, you still haven’t explained how you got all that cash in your glovebox.”

  Grayson shrugged. “Like they say, ‘Do what you love and the money comes.’ The pursuit of the mystical and unexplained is what makes me feel alive, Drex.”

  I shot him a sour look. “Yeah? Paying the rent makes me feel alive. Or, at least, it gives me the fleeting feeling I might survive for another month.”

  He laughed. “You’re such a cynic. Okay.
Let’s just say I found something that was worth a lot of money to the right client.”

  I perked up. “What kind of client is the right client?”

  “I only have one criteria. My client is always H.B.”

  “H.B.? You mean—Halle Barry?”

  “No. Highest bidder.”

  “Highest bidder? You mean there’s more than one nutcase out there interested in this stuff?”

  Grayson sighed. “I’m glad to see you’re keeping an open mind. You’d be surprised how many people want to get their hands on evidence that defies all conventional explanation. With rarity comes great value.”

  “So what was it you cashed in ... excuse me ... collected evidence on?”

  Grayson glanced out the window. “Sorry. That’s on a need-to-know basis.”

  “Come on, Grayson!”

  Grayson went through the motions of locking his busted lip and throwing away the key.

  I snorted. “You’re such an idiot. Okay. I give. What does it take to be privy to this secret information of yours?”

  “Trusting me, for one,” Grayson said. “And being a partner.”

  “You have partners?”

  He shrugged. “Had.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “That’s also on a need-to-know basis.”

  Jerk!

  I turned and glared out the windshield, then held a pair of binoculars to my eyes so Grayson couldn’t see how pissed off I was. I focused in on the Stop & Shoppe. After adjusting the viewfinder, I realized Artie was bending over the ice-cream freezer. I was staring right into his big, fat butt-crack. I groaned in disgust.

  “What now?” Grayson asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Look, sorry about the Cheetos crumbs,” he said. “But if you want to be a P.I., you’re going to need a different car anyway. This one is way too conspicuous. You need some kind of gray, late-model, blend-into-the-scenery kind of vehicle.”

  “Oh. You mean like an old, algae-covered RV?”

  “I’m on vacation.”

  “For how long? That thing looks like you’ve been camping in it since the Y2K scare.”

  Grayson sighed. “Okay. You have a point. But as far as RVs go, you have to admit, no one would ever suspect what I’m doing in it. Your Mustang here is the equivalent of me riding around in a shiny red bus with Monster Hunter on Tour emblazoned all over it.”