Moth Busters, Dr. Prepper, Oral Robbers: Freaky Florida Mystery Adventures 1, 2 & 3

by Margaret Lashley

  Wanda scowled and wandered off behind the waitress station. I hoped for Grayson’s sake she didn’t keep a stash of arsenic on hand.

  “Good news. Ms. Gable approved the paperwork I faxed over,” Grayson said, wagging his bushy eyebrows at me. “Balls’ admission is just pending an on-site interview. Our appointment’s in an hour.”

  “An hour?” I glanced over at Balls. “He’s gonna need a shower and clean clothes first.”

  Grayson sniffed the air. “Maybe we should rent a pressure washer.”

  “Your coffee, sir,” Wanda said. She set the mug on the table in front of him and lingered there a moment. I thought I saw her lips curl slightly before she turned and swaggered away.

  I chewed my lip. As a veteran of “the restaurant wars” myself, I’d have bet a solid hundred Grayson’s java contained a side of “special sauce.”

  As Grayson’s fingers curled around his coffee mug, I debated whether to warn him of his possible imminent demise via passive aggression. But then again, the guy was being pretty lackadaisical considering we now had less than an hour to get Balls prepped and ready for our mission.

  “We’re gonna need clean clothes for Balls,” I repeated. “Walmart trip?”

  Grayson raised the mug to his lips, then set it back down without taking a sip. He studied Balls for a moment. “No. In his state, Walmart might prove to be too much stimulus. Could incite a panic attack.”

  Grayson had a point. The Walmart in New Port Richey was, after all, a supercenter.

  “Where we gonna find him a new outfit, then?” I asked.

  Grayson picked up his coffee mug again. “Salvation Army donation box.”

  I frowned. For a beggar, Balls had turned out to be quite the little chooser. Before he’d fallen face first in it, he’d insisted on two scoops of ice cream with his apple pie á la mode.

  “Balls might not go for hand-me-down clothes,” I said.

  Grayson laughed. “Believe me, he’s not that particular. When you were in the ladies room earlier, he ate a dead fly on a dollar dare.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “WHEW!” GRAYSON SAID, emerging from the tiny bathroom in the RV. “I’ve got to hand it to Mr. Balls. He certainly lives up to his name.”

  I gagged on the red Tootsie Pop in my mouth. “For the love of God, please don’t elaborate.”

  Balls stepped out of the bathroom wearing nothing but Smurf underpants and a toothless grin. I looked down. Pappa Smurf appeared to have a bad case of the mumps. I died a little inside.

  “Whelp, there she went,” Balls said, and held up his hand.

  Still cringing from my Papa Smurf sighting, an overwhelming force I couldn’t understand made me open one eye. There, between Balls’ thumb and forefinger, he held what appeared to be an un-popped kernel of corn.

  “My last tooth,” he said, displaying it as proudly as if he’d just found a gold nugget.

  “That’ll certainly cut down on the dental bills,” Grayson said, then looked my way. “Your turn now, cadet. Get Mr. Balls dressed for his debut.”

  “Me?” I cringed. “Why me?”

  “Because I just gave him a bath.”

  “So? Isn’t that why you get paid the big bucks?”

  “Yes. And that’s why I get to make the executive decisions, too. Now, if you want to earn your P.I. merit badge, I suggest you get busy, girl scout.”

  I WIPED THE SWEAT FROM my brow, my hand trembling from exhaustion. Getting old man Balls dressed had been a feat akin to trying to cram a feral cat inside a garbage bag full of yapping Chihuahuas. And I’d had to do it while Grayson drove the RV like a bat out of hell.

  “Good job, cadet,” Grayson said as I flopped into the passenger seat next to him.

  “How much longer to Banner Hill?” I asked.

  “Almost there. How’d you manage it?”

  “Please,” I said, staring blankly at the windshield. “Just let the memory fade.”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the tiny Jim Beam bottle I’d stashed away earlier. I twisted off the cap and guzzled it down.

  MY THROAT HAD ALMOST stopped burning when I heard a grunting sound coming from the back of the RV.

  Grayson shot me a look. “What’s up with Balls?”

  I swiveled in my chair and leaned forward, trying to catch a glimpse of Balls without having to get up. He was lying on the sofa, sucking down a tiny bottle of whiskey like a baby goat. I stared at the empty miniature in my hand.

  Dear God. That could be me in twenty years.

  Horror hackled the hairs on the back of my neck. “Why do you buy booze in miniatures?” I asked Grayson angrily. “They cost a hell of a lot more than buying it by the quart.”

  Grayson shrugged. “I like the tiny little bottles. They’re cute. And they’re just the right size to mix vitamin water for Gizzard.”

  “Hey, what’s with the lizard?” Balls’ voice bellowed from behind us.

  “Gizzard isn’t a lizard,” Grayson yelled back. He hit the brakes. I looked up and realized we’d arrived at Banner Hill.

  As Grayson maneuvered the RV into a parking space along the street in front of the nursing home, he said, “Technically, Mr. Balls, Gizzard is an anole.”

  “Aww. Don’t be talking trash about this here poor lizard,” Balls yelled back. “She ain’t so assholey.”

  “Not assholey,” Grayson said. He cut the ignition. “Anole. Anolis carolinensis, to be precise.”

  I unbuckled my seatbelt. The whiskey had me feeling loose and sassy. I glanced over at Grayson. “You and your stupid phylum fixation. Lizard. Anole. What’s the difference?”

  “You’re kidding,” Grayson said, looking somewhat aghast as he stood and pocketed the keys. “A lizard is a reptile of the squamata order.”

  I scowled.

  I’d like to squamata your order.

  Instead, I hauled my butt out of the chair and followed Grayson into the main cabin of the RV.

  “Anoles are part of the iguana family,” Grayson said, picking up the terrarium from the banquette table.

  “You don’t say,” Balls said, then stuck his tongue inside one of the empty whiskey bottles littering the sofa around him like a hobo nest.

  Due to the slim pickings available at the Salvation Army drop box, Balls was dressed in a hot-pink Backstreet Boys T-shirt, white size-zero girls’ jeans, black-and-white checked sneakers, and Gizzard-green socks.

  Grayson studied him for a moment, then turned to me and whispered, “I don’t think even an army could salvage that outfit. Let’s hope Ms. Gable is colorblind, or our mission is doomed.”

  Balls half-rolled himself off the couch and stumbled toward us. He swayed gently up to the terrarium.

  “Where we at, little lizard boy?” he asked Gizzard. His breath steamed up the glass.

  “Like I said, Gizzard is a green anole,” Grayson said, turning sideways to buffer the terrarium from Balls’ deadly breath zone. “And she’s female. You can spot the males by their brightly colored dewlaps.”

  I sighed audibly. Grayson was on another of his useless-fact tirades, and, as usual, at the worst possible moment.

  Grayson, if you had a dewlap, I’d sooo be slapping it until it was brightly colored.

  “Anoles belong to the chameleon family,” Grayson went on, tucking the terrarium under his arm and safely out of Balls’ reach. “This lucky girl can change color at will, disappearing into the background to avoid detection.”

  I glanced at Balls, then Grayson. Suddenly, I found myself jealous of a five-inch long, mealy worm-eating varmint.

  Disappearing would come in sooo handy right now ....

  “Whatever,” Balls said, then peeked out the tiny window above the sofa. “Hey. Why’d we stop here?”

  “For your assignment,” Grayson said. He handed Balls a twenty-dollar bill. “Get us what we need and there’s more where that came from, mister.”

  “Humph,” Balls grunted, staring at the twenty.

  “Stay ri
ght here for a moment,” Grayson said. “I just need to get something from the glove compartment.” Grayson turned and discretely nudged me on the shoulder. “Follow me,” he whispered under his breath.

  I trailed Grayson back into the front cab of the RV, hoping by some miracle he was going to tell me he was calling the whole thing off. Instead, he reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a black writing pen.

  “See this?” he said.

  “A pen?” I asked. “What’re you gonna have Balls do? Hand out autographs?”

  Grayson shot me a look. “It’s a spy pen, Drex. Once activated, this little baby can deliver up to four hours of uninterrupted video and audio.”

  “Oh.” I crinkled my nose at the innocuous looking writing instrument, then made a mental note to never accept another free pen from anybody. Ever. Again.

  “Hopefully, this will catch some of the action going on in the nursing home overnight,” Grayson said.

  I cringed. “Like what? Bedpan races? Or Balls scratching his, you know—”

  “That’s a calculated a risk we have to take,” Grayson said. “However, now that you mention it, to minimize that possibility I’m going to tuck the pen inside Balls’ front pocket and aim it outward, like this.”

  He stuck the pen in his own pocket to demonstrate. “Now you do it to Balls.”

  We went back into the cabin. I stuck the pen in the pocket of Ball’s pink Backstreet Boys T-shirt.

  “What’s this?” Balls asked, looking down at his shirt.

  “A popular boy band,” I said, hoping to deflect his attention from the pen.

  “A monitoring device,” Grayson said, negating my attempt at stealth. “So you can—”

  “Can,” Balls said, cutting him off. “I gotta go to the can.”

  “Right,” Grayson said. “It’s just right there.”

  We both stared at Balls.

  “A little privacy, please,” the old man said.

  “Huh?” Grayson grunted.

  I grabbed Grayson’s arm. “I know exactly how you feel, Mr. Balls. Come on, Grayson. We’ll be up front in the driver’s cab.”

  “OUR APPOINTMENT’S IN five minutes,” Grayson said, checking the time on his cellphone. “Think he’ll be a while?”

  “Like I would know?”

  Grayson rolled down the driver’s side window and shrugged. “Just in case, you know.”

  I knew. And I didn’t want to think about it.

  We sat in our seats and twiddled our thumbs. A few minutes later, from the back of the RV, a door slammed so hard the whole motorhome shook.

  “Mr. Balls?” Grayson called out. “Are you okay?”

  Suddenly, something flew through the driver’s side window, hitting Grayson square on the side of his head. As it fell to his lap, I realized it was a wadded up twenty-dollar bill.

  “I ain’t crazy, you know!” Balls yelled.

  “What?” I scrambled out of my seat and leaned across Grayson, craning for a view out the driver’s side window.

  Balls was standing in the parking lot about twenty feet away, hopping from foot to foot in his checkered slip-on tennis shoes. Suddenly, he began to belt out a loose, sing-song rap.

  “You can put me in a war zone. You can put me in a disaster zone. Hell, you can put me in a cyclone! But ain’t nobody puttin’ me in no nursing home!”

  “Wait!” Grayson yelled.

  But, apparently, Balls wasn’t in the mood for following orders. He took off in his tight white jeans and pink top like a love-struck teenybopper who’d just spotted Jonathan Knight.

  “Crap,” Grayson said. “There goes fifty-nine bucks for the spy pen.”

  “Sorry,” I said, climbing off him and handing him the wadded-up twenty.

  Grayson looked me up and down. “Well, cadet. Looks like it’s time for plan B.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “PLAN B?” I ASKED.

  The words left a taste in my mouth worse than pure evil had.

  “Yes,” Grayson said. “Congratulations. The Balls is in your court.”

  I sighed. “Grayson, the expression is, ‘The ball is in my court.’”

  “No. Balls.” Grayson clapped a hand on my shoulder. “As in, you’re the new Balls.”

  My stomach dropped four inches. “What?! But .... I can’t!”

  Grayson raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”

  “Well, I ... I’m a woman, for one thing!”

  Grayson snatched the auburn wig off my head. “Could’ve fooled me.”

  I ran my hand across the red fuzz growing back from my hospital buzz cut. My mind raced like a rabid squirrel, trying to chase down another excuse.

  “What about these?” I said, sticking out my chest. “Balls doesn’t have boobs.”

  Grayson’s lips twisted into a sadistic grin. “You’re forgetting, cadet. You yourself told Gable that our dear old grandpa wanted to be a granny. Who says he hasn’t had a bit of reconstructive surgery?”

  My chest fell. “But ... but ....”

  Grayson smiled. “Your quick thinking saved the day with that one.”

  I scowled. “Saved your day, maybe.”

  “But this is your reward,” Grayson said.

  “Reward? Posing as a geriatric tranny-granny? Come on, Grayson. You can’t be serious!”

  “Think of it this way,” he said. “Now’s your big chance, Drex. You get to go undercover. This is real, honest-to-God P.I. training.”

  My shoulders slumped.

  Crap.

  I glanced down at the discarded Salvation Army clothes piled up in the corner like the aftermath of a hobo three-way. I groaned. I knew full well my butt would never fit in any of those pants.

  I launched into my own plan B—Begging.

  “Can’t we find someone else?” I whined.

  “There’s no time.” Grayson glanced at his cellphone. “Our meeting with Gable is in three minutes.”

  I chewed my lip. “Can’t we reschedule?”

  “And lose another night? No.” Grayson shook his head. “Who knows how many vets’ lives could be at stake here?”

  “But what about the surveillance pen? Balls ran off with it!”

  Grayson grinned. “No worries on that count. I’ve got a whole case of them.”

  I sighed and watched my last hope fly out the RV window like Balls’ golden tooth. I glared at Grayson. “You can’t remember to buy toilet paper, but you’ve got a whole case of spy pens?”

  Grayson shrugged. “Different folks have different priorities.” He handed me a pair of purple leotards. “Now, how about trying these on for size?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “IT’S SHOOOW-TIME,” Grayson announced as he wrestled the folding wheelchair out of the RV and onto the street in front of Banner Hill. “Are you nervous about your first stakeout?”

  I was. But I felt more angry than nervous. I glared at the wheelchair, wanting to kick myself. It’d been my idea to take the damned thing in the first place. I’d spotted it abandoned behind some bushes by the Salvation Army collection box where we’d filched the clothes for Balls.

  Grayson unfolded the wheelchair and patted the seat. “You ready, Grampa Drex?”

  I scowled and plopped my butt down in the chair. “Just push me, already,” I demanded, and stuck a Tootsie Pop in my mouth.

  Grayson heaved the chair, grunting from the effort. “Get out. Let me get the wheels up over the curb first.”

  “Nope.” I crossed my arms and smiled. “Not a chance.”

  “How am I supposed to get you onto the sidewalk?”

  “You’re the investigative genius. Figure it out.”

  Grayson tugged until I thought he might blow a gasket. Still, I didn’t budge.

  I might’ve been more obliging if I’d had on a decent outfit. But as it stood, there was no way I was going to stand up and be seen in public dressed in smiley-face boxer shorts and purple leotards. Not in this lifetime.

  “You wanted me on this stake
out, you gotta pull your weight,” I said.

  “I am,” Grayson argued, tugging at the wheelchair. “I just wasn’t expecting to have to pull yours, too.”

  He yanked the chair a final time. One wheel went up onto the curb. The chair skittered sideways, nearly dumping me out on my head.

  “Careful!” someone yelled from across the parking lot. “You need a hand?”

  “No!” Grayson called back. “It’s all under control now.”

  Yeah, right.

  “Geez, Grayson, I almost ate a dirt sandwich,” I grumbled as he maneuvered the wheelchair onto the walkway. As he wheeled me toward the nursing home entrance, I checked my cellphone. “We’re late for our appointment.”

  Grayson leaned over and whispered into my ear. “Give me your cellphone.”

  The hair on the back of my neck pricked up. “No way am I going in there without this, Grayson. What if somebody goes mental in there? How am I gonna call for help?”

  “That’s why they have those little call buttons by the beds,” he whispered. “Now hand it over.”

  “Not happening.” I tucked my cellphone into my leotard.

  Grayson glanced around and sighed. “Fine.”

  “Fine,” I hissed back, and punched the big red button marked For Handicapped Access with my fist.

  The double glass doors slid open automatically. Grayson shoved the wheelchair over the threshold.

  “Take it easy with the merchandise,” I grumbled. Then I spotted Gable and lowered my voice an octave. “There she is.”

  I nodded toward the reception desk, where a smooth, helmet of hair was rising like a brown moon from behind the laminate countertop. It was quickly followed by Ms. Gable’s glowering face and stout torso.

  “You’re five minutes late,” she barked when she spotted us. “I just put your paperwork in the trash.”

  “Oh! So sorry about that,” Grayson said, pouring on the charm. “Gramps was so excited, he couldn’t decide what to wear. See?”