Freaky Florida Mystery Adventures Box Set

by Margaret Lashley

  “A nightgown?” I said. “I’m trying to look like a man, remember?”

  “I meant a hospital gown.” Stanley stepped out into the hallway and returned pushing a small laundry cart. “I’ve got a fresh one here somewhere.” He fished around in a pile of folded clothes. “Aha. Here we go.” He handed me a mint-green gown that tied in the back.

  I scowled. “My favorite designer. Louis Butt-out.”

  Grayson helped himself to a white lab coat from the cart and stuffed it into the duffle bag containing my “personal effects.”

  “I did not just see that,” Stanley said.

  “What do you want with the lab coat?” I asked Grayson.

  “I plan to conduct a review of the missing guys’ charts tonight,” he said. “How about a little help, Stanley?”

  Stanley closed his eyes and stuck his fingers in his ears. “I see nothing. I know nothing.” He opened one eye and shook his head at Grayson. “Sorry, man. That’s all the help I can give you.”

  Grayson clapped a hand on Stanley’s back. “All I’m asking for is a little night watchman service. Keep an eye out while I peruse some files. Easy-peasey.”

  Stanley shook his head so hard his dreadlocks began to sway. “No way, man. I need this job.”

  “Fair enough,” Grayson said. “Thanks for the doctor duds.”

  “You didn’t get those from me,” Stanley said, checking off something on a clipboard.

  I picked up the glass of water by my bedside and held it up to the light. “This water looks bluish. Is it safe to drink?”

  “That isn’t for drinking,” Stanley said. “It’s for your teeth.”

  “My teeth?” I asked.

  “Yeah. The ones that go into the glass.”

  My nose crinkled. “Oh. But I don’t have dentures.”

  “You don’t?” Stanley glanced down at the clipboard, then back at me. “According to this, you better get some quick. Before the count comes.”

  “Count?” Grayson asked. “As in ... Dracula?”

  Stanley shot him a look. “No. As in bed count. It’s lights out, dentures out at seven-fifteen, sharp.”

  “Sharp,” Grayson said, nodding slyly. “Is that some kind of code?”

  Stanley eyed Grayson. “Code?”

  “For vampires. Sharp teeth and whatnot.”

  I shot Stanley an apologetic look. “Anything else I should know before we call it a night, Stanley?”

  “Yeah. Don’t listen to Melvin across the hall. He’s crazy.”

  I smirked. “Ditto for Grayson.”

  AT FIVE MINUTES PAST seven, Grayson waltzed back into my room and tossed a small brown bag on my lap.

  “What’s this?” I asked, sitting up in my bed. The crunch of the plastic liner on the mattress made me cringe with disgust.

  “It’s your get-out-of-the-dentist-free card,” he quipped.

  I opened the bag and pulled out a pair of cheap, plastic vampire teeth. “What the?”

  He shrugged. “Best I could do on short notice. Walmart doesn’t sell choppers off the shelf.”

  As I plopped the fanged dentures into the glass of blue water on the nightstand, the door opened. An orderly I hadn’t seen before glanced first at me, then at the teeth in the glass. He scribbled something on a clipboard and said, “Visiting hours are over in ten minutes. You need a bedpan, Georgie?”

  “No. sir.”

  “Very good.” The orderly disappeared, closing the door behind him. Grayson pulled a black pen from his jacket pocket.

  “Here’s your granny cam,” he said, and hooked it to the sleeve of my thin, cotton gown. “Just tap here to start recording.”

  “Okay. When should I activate it?”

  “Whenever you see something suspicious. Or you feel like you’re going to pass out. Whichever comes first.”

  “Pass out? Why would I ...? Never mind.”

  “You gonna eat that pudding?” Grayson asked, nodding at a plastic container sweating condensation on my nightstand tray.

  “Maybe.”

  “I was thinking it could be porphyria.”

  I crinkled my nose at the container. “I thought it was tapioca.”

  “I meant what’s going on here,” Grayson said. “Porphyria’s a blood disorder, Drex. One of the treatments for it used to be the drinking of human blood.”

  There goes my appetite.

  I handed Grayson my pudding cup. He peeled off the top and dug into it with a plastic spoon. “Mmm.”

  “Eat fast and then beat it,” I said, folding my arms across my chest. “You’ve got one minute, then I’m pressing my alarm button.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  AT EXACTLY 7:15 P.M., I saw the hall lights blink out through the crack under the door. I stretched out in my nursing home bed and yawned. After two weeks of sleeping in either sleazy hotels or the lumpy sofa in Grayson’s RV, I felt like I’d won a free night in P. Diddy’s retirement crib.

  I was living large with my own full-sized bed, full-sized TV, and full-sized bathroom—one that, by the way, would not come with Grayson screeching Bat Out of Hell at the top of his lungs tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn.

  Yeah. A girl could get used to this ....

  I clicked off the lamp beside my bed and snuggled under the sheets. In the eerie green glow of the bathroom nightlight, I giggled like a naughty teenager as I fished around in the covers for my contraband cellphone. I pressed speed dial and called the only person I knew who wouldn’t ask too many questions—or be freaked out by my answers.

  “Hey, Beth-Ann,” I whispered to my geeky, Goth girlfriend back home in Point Paradise.

  “Bobbie. You’re still alive,” she deadpanned. “I was beginning to wonder.”

  “Yeah. Still got all my fingers and toes. How’s the beauty-shop biz?”

  “Slow. All the old ladies are saving up their cash for next week.”

  “Next week? Somebody’s funeral?”

  “No. Thanksgiving. It’s the calm before the wash-n-set storm. Come next Tuesday, I’ll be a madwoman, curling and teasing every old biddy’s silver-blue do from Waldo to Fairbanks.”

  I snorted. “Why in the world do they bother?”

  “I dunno. I guess they all wanna look better than their relatives. Or, at least better than the stuffed turkey they’re sitting next to.”

  I grinned. “Speaking of turkeys, have you heard from my cousin Earl lately?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I was just wondering. You think he’s actually trying to run the auto shop, or is he letting our family business fall to pieces?”

  “I thought that already happened years ago.”

  I winced. “Ha ha.”

  “Listen. If you want, I can drive by the garage and snoop around. Tell Earl I’ve got transmission trouble or something.”

  “No.” I sighed. “You’re busy. Let’s save that idea for a future emergency. Right now, I’ve got a different one on my hands.”

  “Don’t tell me. You’re pregnant!”

  “Geez! No!”

  “Sorry,” Beth-Ann said. “At least tell me you’ve gone to bed with Grayson by now. I need some juicy gossip, stat.”

  “I’m in bed. But not with Grayson.”

  “Ooo la la! With who, then?”

  “Not who. Where. I’m doing my first private eye stakeout!”

  “Where? In a brothel?”

  My nose crinkled. “No. A nursing home.”

  “Nursing home?” Beth-Ann laughed. “Why? Somebody steal gramps’ Geritol?”

  “No. They stole gramps himself.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not kidding. People keep disappearing from here.”

  “New Port Richey? Of course they do, Bobbie. Anybody with brain cells and bus fare.”

  “I’m serious, Beth-Ann. Grayson thinks something really odd is going on.”

  “So do I. Why haven’t you two hooked up yet?”

  I shook my head. “Good grief, girl. Is that all you thin
k about?”

  “That and hair dryers.”

  I blew out a breath. “Look at us. Just like old times. Friday night and neither one of us has a date.”

  Beth-Ann laughed. “Sad, but true. At least your odds are better than mine.”

  “How so?”

  “You’re surrounded by beds full of men.”

  “Yeah. All old enough to have voted for Barney Rubble for president.”

  Beth-Ann giggled. “We are a pair, aren’t we? I got stuck with all the old ladies. You got stuck with all the old men.”

  “Yeah. Lucky us.”

  “Eeew.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “I just had a thought.”

  “About what?”

  “Watch yourself, Bobbie. Old men can still get it up, you know.”

  “Eeew.”

  “Exactly. Hey! You know how you can tell which ones still can?”

  I grimaced. “No.”

  “Depends.”

  “Depends?”

  “Yeah,” Beth-Ann said. “Depends on the bulge in their pants—if it’s in the front or the back.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  BROOKLYN MEL WAS IN my room.

  He was dancing around in a diaper.

  It was bulging on the least favorable side.

  “Rock and roll is the Devil’s music,” he said, then pirouetted toward a bookshelf like Doris Day on speed. “I prefer easy listening, myself.”

  He flipped the switch on a portable radio. Michael Franks’ Popsicle Toes began to play. He sidled over to my bed and slipped a cold hand under my covers. He grabbed ahold of my left foot and lifted it toward his open mouth.

  He wasn’t wearing his dentures.

  “Stop!” I yelled. I reared back my leg, preparing to kick Mel and his denture-less mug all the way to Denver.

  Suddenly, Quasimodo burst into the room and bonked Melvin over the head with a bedpan.

  I closed my eyes and hoped against hope that the pan was empty ....

  I AWOKE WITH A SNORT, twisted up in the sheets like a pretzel. My naked butt was hanging off the left side of the bed.

  The door cracked open. I squirmed to cover myself.

  “Sleep well?” Stanley asked, poking his head in the door. “I just thought I’d check in on you before breakfast.”

  I jerked the covers over my derriere. “What time is it?”

  “Five-twenty.”

  “A.m. or p.m.?”

  Stanley grinned. “So, I take it you slept well.”

  “I was out like a broken taillight.” I sat up in bed. “Do they put drugs in the water around here or what?”

  Stanley shrugged. “Don’t ask, don’t tell. That’s my policy.”

  “Right. I forgot.”

  “So, you’re okay?”

  “Yes. No body parts missing. Thanks for checking. Have you seen Grayson?”

  “Not this morning. But breakfast is at six. Invite him, if you want. I’ll come back and wheel you down.”

  “That’d be great. Thanks.”

  Stanley left without mentioning my embarrassing Southern exposure. I laid back in bed and counted my blessings. At least it hadn’t been my smartass cousin who’d seen me. Mercifully, Earl didn’t know anything about this stakeout. And he never would. I’d sworn Beth-Ann to secrecy over the phone last night.

  I sucked in a deep breath and sighed. Then I stretched out on the bed like a stray cat on vacation. I hadn’t slept this well since the time I drank eight margaritas and slashed all four tires on my cheating boyfriend Blanders’ moving van.

  Ahh. Precious memories ....

  AS PROMISED, STANLEY returned to fetch me for breakfast. As he pushed my wheelchair around the corner and into the breakfast room, I nearly gasped. I’d expected Grayson. The other hairy, ape-like creature sitting beside him, not so much.

  “What are you doing here?” I hissed.

  “Hiya, Cuz,” Earl said, swiping his shaggy black bangs from his eyes. “You didn’t think I was gonna miss this did you?”

  I shot Grayson a look that could’ve curdled the milk inside a Billy goat. He shrugged. “With you indisposed, I needed the backup.”

  Earl snickered at me in my wheelchair. “You got a bedpan under there, Bobbie?”

  I sneered. “If I did, I’d have already beaned you upside the head with it.”

  “Well,” Stanley said, “I’ll leave you to your happy family reunion. I’ve got to go get Melvin, anyway.”

  As he turned to go, the skinny nurse from yesterday came running into the breakfast room.

  “Stanley!” she gasped, nearly out of breath.

  “What’s wrong, Nina?”

  Nina saw us staring, and lowered her voice. “I ... I just came from Melvin’s room. He’s not there. No one’s seen him this morning!”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  AFTER SAMPLING A SPOONFUL of slimy porridge from his Banner Hill breakfast tray, Grayson had suggested we dine out. I’d darn-near left skid-marks on the terrazzo burning rubber with my wheelchair.

  We were back at Johnny Grits, but I wasn’t worried about getting thrown out, this time. Disguised as an old man in a wheelchair, I figured no one would recognize me without my sidekick, Balls. As for Grayson? He was on his own.

  “So another poor old geezer flew over the cuckoo’s nest?” Earl mumbled through a mouthful of bacon. “What’s that make? Four now?”

  “Yes,” I said, eyeing Grayson sullenly. “How could you leave me in that place alone last night? I could’ve been the one who ended up buying it!”

  “Buying what?” Earl asked. “I thought they didn’t allow no solicitors.”

  Grayson eyed the tendons poking from my neck. “I had your back,” he said to me. “I was camped out in the RV in the parking lot the entire night. All you had to do was ring me.”

  “Right,” I said sourly. “And just how did you plan on getting in?”

  “Stanley.”

  I slunk back in the booth. “Oh.”

  “That dude who wheeled you in for breakfast?” Earl asked. He wagged his eyebrows at me and laughed. “He your new boyfriend, Bobbie?”

  I shot my annoying cousin my best evil grin. “I’ve got a scalding cup of coffee here, Earl, and I’m not afraid to use it.”

  Earl shrunk back in his seat. “Feisty this mornin’, ain’t ya.”

  Grayson took a bite of hash browns. “Let me see your pen, Drex.”

  Crap.

  “I uh...I forgot to activate it last night.”

  Grayson eyed me blankly for a moment as he chewed his hash browns. He swallowed. “Did you see anything unusual last night?”

  I winced. “Do dreams count?”

  Grayson perked up. “Absolutely.”

  “I ....” I glanced over at my cousin, then leaned in and whispered something into Grayson’s ear.

  “What? I can’t hear you,” he said.

  I scowled. “I said, I dreamed Melvin was dancing around in a diaper. Then he tried to suck my toes.”

  Earl laughed so hard he blew coffee through his nose.

  I glared at him. “If you need the Heimlich, don’t come crawling to me.”

  “Did you take a shower this morning?” Grayson asked.

  I surreptitiously tried to smell my armpit. “No. Why?”

  “Good. I need to swab your toes for saliva.”

  Earl hooted so loudly the waitress came running over.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked, her eyes as big as the poached eggs she was carrying.

  “Sorry ‘bout that,” Earl said, sopping up coffee with his toast. “Looks like I’m gonna need me some extra napkins.”

  I closed my eyes and smiled, secure in the knowledge that if I survived this moment, there was no way my life could ever get any worse. I opened my eyes. Grayson was holding a Q-tip in my face.

  Well, there went that pipe dream.

  “Can the swabbing wait until after breakfast?” I asked.

  Grayson shrugged. “
Sure. I guess so.” He put away the baggie of cotton swabs.

  While Earl was busy dabbing at his head-to-lap coffee stains with the extra napkins dumped off by the waitress, I leaned across the table and spoke to Grayson through gritted teeth.

  “I still don’t see why you had to tell Earl about our case.”

  “Like I said, I needed the backup.” Grayson stirred a pinch of salt into his coffee refill. “And when I found out he was already in town, well, how could I resist?”

  “Already in town?” I turned and scowled at my soggy, flannel-shirted cousin. “Are you stalking me, Earl?”

  He laughed. “You wish, Cuz. I’m in town for the revival.”

  “The revival of what?” I asked. “Your dead brain cells? Too late for that.”

  “Faith,” Earl said reverently, then patted his coffee-stained chin demurely with a paper napkin. “You remember the Baptist Evangelical Resurrection Path Seekers, don’t ya, Bobbie?”

  My nose crinkled “The who?”

  “The BERPS,” Earl said. “They came through Point Paradise about ten years back?”

  I stared at him blankly. “I got nothin’.”

  Earl cocked his head at me as if I were a five-legged frog. “Come on, now. Reverend Bertie? He performed that miracle, remember? He healed that boil on Artie’s butt.”

  I grimaced at the unearthing of a memory I’d worked hard to bury. “Oh, yeah.”

  “That doesn’t sound like much of a miracle to me,” Grayson said.

  “Well, you didn’t see the boil,” Earl said.

  I sighed. “Or the butt.”

  “Hmm,” Grayson said. “Why is it I’ve never heard of these BERPS?”

  “Luck?” I said.

  “Oh, man! Mr. G, you’re in for a treat!” Earl grinned and slapped Grayson on the back. “Nothing beats The Bertie in action! I’d bet good money that feller could even raise the dead!”

  “Hmm,” Grayson said. “If so, Bertie may be just the guy we’re looking for.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Melvin was dancing around in a diaper. Then he tried to suck my toes.”