by Dana Mentink
Spyglass Lane Mysteries presents:
The Finny Series
Book Two
Fog Over Finny’s Nose
By
Dana Mentink
Copyright 2012
Spyglass Lane Mysteries
Smashwords Edition
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Published in association with MacGregor Literary Inc., Portland, Oregon.
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Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
Dedication
To my little girls, who are Mommy’s biggest fans.
To my precious Lord, for blessing me with two angels from heaven.
Chapter One
“It’s a toe.” Ruth was peering into the glass jar on the counter of the Plymouth Frock Dress Shop.
It was one day before the Finny Fog Festival kickoff, and Ruth found herself enduring another fitting for her costume.
Maude snorted. “How would a toe find its way to the middle of the golf course?”
“It’s not a golf course—it’s a putting green; and Alva says that’s where he found it. He brought it here because he didn’t know what else to do.” Looking into the gargantuan mirror on the shop wall, Ruth added testily, “I know a toe when I see one.”
“Hold still, Ruth, honey,” said Flo from her position on the floor as she pinned some fluttery silver gauze to the back of Ruth’s tunic.
Ruth grimaced. The silver tights were giving her a wedgie. Moreover, the putty gray disks that sandwiched her in between did nothing to complement her pasty complexion, wide shoulders, and robust bottom.
“Has anyone filed a report with the police?”
“You mean a missing toe report?” Ruth peered at the gray bulb in the jar. The nail was longish and yellow, and a sprig of black hair sprouted just above the severed end.
“I presume that the toe belongs to someone who wasn’t thrilled to lose it. Maybe there’s a body around somewhere to match,” Maude said. “That’s what Alva has been blabbering about anyway, and for once I agree with the nutcase.”
“Don’t even kid about that.” The village of Finny, California, might appear to be a tranquil beach getaway, but underneath, Ruth knew, all kinds of passions simmered in a vigorously bubbling broth. “Jack is on his way here. He said to leave it where it is and keep our hands off.” The Jack in question was Jack Denny, Finny police detective.
“As if we would take the disgusting thing out of the jar.” Maude sniffed. She rubbed the mole on her temple thoughtfully. “I can’t believe Alva brought it here anyway. What in the world gets into him?”
Maude’s four-foot-eight frame stood ramrod straight, her vertebrae as steely as her constitution. Even her hair was determined, defiantly maintaining its black color in the face of five decades of living. Ruth was again amazed that someone so unyielding had been a contortionist for the circus. Ruth had actually seen photos of the mighty Maude Stone neatly folded in half and stuffed into a vegetable crate.
Florence Hodges rose from her kneeling position and rolled up her tape measure. “He said he thought a squirrel might eat it and whoever lost it would need to get an artificial toe. It was thoughtful, actually.” She unfurled a pink Kleenex to wipe the patina of sweat that sparkled on her round face and dampened her red hair. The rest of Flo was round, too, and as pliable as a jelly doughnut.
“That man wouldn’t know thoughtful if it ran him over,” Maude huffed.
“Just because you have issues with Alva doesn’t make him a bad person.” Flo pointed to the toe. “Looks a bit rough. Could have used some moisturizer, I’d say. By the way, have you tried the new hydrating lotion at Puzan’s? It really soothed my skin after I dug up my potatoes.”
“I told you it was too early to dig them up,” Maude said. “They’re going to be bitter.”
“Mr. Hodges seems to like them just fine.” Flo calmly pulled her hiked-up pants back down over her meaty calves.
“Mr. Hodges would eat anything you put in front of him, including the tablecloth.”
“That’s because he loves me and appreciates my cooking,” Flo said mildly. “And he’s never eaten a tablecloth. Once he swallowed a pink birthday candle, but that was purely by mistake.” She attempted to gently cram a circle of tinsel onto Ruth’s flyaway hair.
Tearing her eyes from the orphaned toe and her ears from the arguing women, Ruth surveyed her appearance in the mirror again. “I look like a giant silver hubcap,” she said.
The huge cardboard disks she wore on her front and rear were spray-painted silver and festooned with shiny swaths of metallic satin. Her legs were squeezed into silver tights. She continued to look at her reflection, convinced that a nearly forty-eight-year-old woman had no business being within spitting distance of spandex.
Maude paced like a nervous tiger around the front lobby of the dress shop. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she directed around a mouthful of pins. “You look exactly like a fog bank, doesn’t she, Flo?”
Flo was the unflappable leader of the Finny Ladies Organization for Preparedness, which lent itself to the unfortunate acronym FLOP. She had long ago cultivated a poker face to deal with disasters that visited the seaside town of Finny from time to time. She assisted in crises of all kinds, including the death of Ruth’s husband four years ago, and ironically, she’d made the cake for Ruth’s wedding to Monk several months earlier. She looked solemnly at Ruth in her shroud of silver and remarked, “Maybe we ought to revisit this mascot concept, Maude.”
“I agree,” Ruth piped in. She had begun to rethink the idea almost as soon as she had been roped into being the character mascot for the first ever Finny Fog Festival. Finny could not boast any luxury hotels or quaint shopping districts, but fog the town had in abundance. Maude was the publicity chairperson for the festival and a hard woman to refuse. She had planned a full three days of foggy fun and frolicking. “Why do we need a mascot anyway?”
Maude’s bun bobbed indignantly. “Why? Because we need this festival to be a success, that’s why. We need something to bring people to Finny. Something to make visitors forget that people have recently begun to get murdered here.” Her voice bounced off the racks of hangers. For a tiny woman, she was gifted with the lungs of a longshoreman. “And now with this toe business, we need all the positive press we can get.”
Ruth had to admit Maude had a point. The whole mess two years ago had certainly not encouraged much tourist activity for the tiny town. Something about homicidal maniacs on the loose and the fact that Finny had nothing remotely resembling a mall kept people away. Visitors to the California coast seemed more inclined than ever to bypass Finny on their way to better-known stops, like neighboring Half Moon Bay.
“I think the Fog Festival will be enough of an attraction. People will come for the food and the crafts and music. They don’t need a walking fog bank.” Ruth heard a hint of desperation in her own voice.
“The kids will love it, getting their picture taken with Mrs. Fog. Speaking of pictures, have you taken those shots for the photo display posters?” Maude continued with the tenacity of an aggrieved pit bull. “You’ve just got to—”
A horrendous crash caused Maude to drop her pins on the shop
floor. The three women ran out the front door to investigate.
They were met by a tangle of bicycle parts, human limbs, and little balls bouncing in multihued confusion in every direction. Delicate puffs of feathers floated lazily in the morning air.
“Alva! Are you all right?” Ruth raced to the fallen octogenarian, who lay upside down on top of a battered bike. Underneath the Alva layer was another human figure lying prone on the sidewalk.
“Yep. Right as rain.” He clambered to his feet. “I was going faster than a greased pig when Martha flapped right out in front of me, crazy bird. I couldn’t see, and I hit that guy. I dropped my bag of gum balls, too.”
Alva Hernandez straightened slowly, cramming his fuzzy hat back over the equally fuzzy strands of white hair. After surveying the scene for a minute, he dropped to his knees and started scooping up the gum balls, shoving them in his pockets.
Ruth groaned. Most of her flock of crippled seabirds collected by her late veterinarian husband were content to stay in the backyard while she was away, but after one of the flock was maimed last year, Martha had become Ruth’s shadow. Martha threw up such a squawk and a holler that Ruth had taken her along to the dress shop. The bird sat contentedly, sunning herself on a bench outside the shop. At least, that was where Ruth had left her, figuring a bird with a missing wing and a partial right foot could not get too terribly far.
Maude and Flo were already gingerly prodding the figure on the cement.
“Alva,” Ruth said as she walked carefully between the skittering gum balls to join them, “why were you in such a hurry?”
The man lying on the ground began to grunt and mumble. He was egg shaped, bluntly round at the top, widening to a gentle oval in the middle where his black leather belt was cinched around his jeans. She was mesmerized by his head, completely bald and shining like the glistening flesh of an onion after the dry skin has been removed.
Maude assisted the man in rolling over and sitting up. The front of his head was every bit as dazzlingly white as the back. He might have been an albino except for the pale blueness of his eyes and a faint blush of color in his eyebrows. His glasses sat crookedly upon his nose.
“Wh–what happened?” he said, blinking furiously.
“We are so sorry,” Flo spoke up. “It was an accident.”
“Yes,” Maude said, glaring at Alva. “Some people should not be allowed to operate moving vehicles. Especially old people.”
A resident of Whist Street, Maude had earned her nickname of the Wicked Witch of Whist. She funneled her wrath to Alva, whom she accused of stomping on her primroses, and to the police, who refused to incarcerate him for the crime. Ruth had witnessed her leap onto the desk of a Finny police lieutenant, where she remained for an hour protesting Alva’s mistreatment of her flowers.
“I don’t think it was Alva’s fault, exactly,” Ruth said and then looked down at the stranger’s gaze. “I’m awfully sorry. My bird walked in front of him and he swerved into you, I’m afraid.”
He blinked translucent eyelashes again. His face was smooth and unlined, round and full like the rest of him. The man was much younger than his bald scalp first suggested.
“Can we help you up, Mr.—?” Flo asked.
Two more blinks. “Honeysill. Ed Honeysill.” He offered his hands, and the three women grabbed onto his arms and hauled him to his feet.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Maude said, pumping Ed’s hand vigorously. “I am Maude Stone, chairperson of the Finny Fog Festival, and this is Flo Hodges and Ruth Budge, my assistants.”
Ruth felt the bit of discomfort that commonly arose at her continued use of her late husband’s last name. It seemed disloyal, somehow, to Monk. They both agreed, however, that no one in Finny would ever get used to a new name for Ruth, and Monk’s last name presented certain problems. Duluth. Ruth Duluth, they both agreed, sounded like some kind of carnival ride.
Ed nodded, still dazed.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Ruth asked.
“I think so, yes. I’m fine.” He straightened his glasses and blinked before gesturing to Alva. “Is he okay?”
Maude eyed Alva with disgust. The old man’s pock- ets were bulging with gum balls. “He’s fine. Alva, you know those can’t be sold in the store after you dumped them all over creation. They’re contaminated.”
“I know. Goin’ to keep ’em. Shame to let ’em go to waste.”
“You can’t chew them,” Maude continued ruthlessly. “You don’t have any teeth.”
Alva’s grizzled eyebrows drew together obstinately. “Do so.” He removed his upper bridge and plopped it on the bench. It sat on the wooden plank, grinning in ridiculous pink gumminess. “See?”
Ruth suddenly remembered her previous train of thought. “Oh, Alva. You were going to tell us why you were going in such a hurry.”
“It’s on account of the proctologists.”
“The what?” Flo said.
“Them radical proctologists. Saw them up nose, looking to cause trouble. They hate people. Probably searching for one to sacrifice. Maybe a mechanic or a UPS driver or something. Probably where that toe came from.”
The three women stared at him.
“What in the blue blazes are you talking about?” Maude hissed.
“A bunch of proctologists. Weird people with lots of gear, heading up nose. One of ’em had a knife. I saw it plain as day.” He popped a scuffed purple gum ball into his cheek.
“Proctologists?” Ruth repeated.
The shiny-headed man spoke up. “Er, I think he might be talking about ecologists. I did see a group of people I recognized this morning. They are some sort of ecological gang dedicated to the liberation of the earth or some such thing.” He regarded the confused group before him. “They are pretty radical, I understand.”
“Oh yeah,” Alva said around the gum ball. “Maybe they did say ecologists. Anyway, I’m fixin’ to get to the cops afore they off anyone around here.”
Maude shook her head. “Pay no attention to him, Mr. Honeysill. He’s an idiot, but a harmless one. What brings you to Finny? Did you come for the Fog Festival?”
“In a way. You’re featuring some local produce at your festival, and I’m in fungus.”
All three women looked at him blankly.
“I market edible fungus to restaurants along the coast. Mushrooms, truffles, and the like. I have a few things to check out here in Finny, one of which is the Pistol Bang Mushroom Farm. I hear they have a booth at the festival.”
Alva’s head shot up. “That was my granddaddy’s outfit,” he lisped.
“Oh, really? Are you in the mushroom business?”
“Not anymore. Newspapers now.”
“You publish a newspaper?” Ed looked impressed.
“Not publish, deliver.” Alva put his teeth back in and mounted his bike. “Gotta go to the store and tell ’em about the gum ball mess before I file my report with the coppers.”
“Don’t you need to apologize to this gentleman?” Maude demanded.
“Sure. Sorry, Mr. Honeypot. See you around.” Alva wobbled away.
Ruth, jumping into the pause that followed Alva’s shaky departure, decided to try to make amends for the melee Martha had caused. “Actually, I know the woman who runs the business now. She bought it a few months ago. I could take you there, if you’d like.”
“Really?” Ed’s eyebrows moved up on his bare forehead like wiggly blond caterpillars. “How about this afternoon? I’m only here for the first weekend of the festival, so I’d like to cover as much ground as possible.”
“Okay.” She caught a glimpse of a feathery bottom scooting under the bench. “I’ll meet you here, say around three? Will that work?”
He nodded. “Is it far?”
“A couple of miles. Straight up Finny’s Nose.” She bent over and plunged under the bench. The feathery bottom scooted out the other side. Upright again, she noticed that Ed’s caterpillar eyebrows had crawled upward again in confusio
n.
“The big hill. We call it Finny’s Nose,” she explained.
“It’s all part of the colorful history of our quaint little hamlet,” Maude interjected. “Ruth is doing a historical booklet on the history of Finny, complete with pictures. She’s our photographer, when she’s not busy with her other career.”
Ed nodded politely. “What business are you in, Mrs. Budge?”
“She’s a vermiculturist,” Flo said.
Ruth noted the blank look on his face. She would have been surprised to see any other kind of look. “A worm farmer. I operate Phillip’s Worm Emporium.”
He smiled. “A worm farmer? Now I’ve never heard of that one before. How do you plant worms?”
“No planting required, just lots of hard work.”
“I imagine living on the coast like this generates a good business from fishermen types looking for their bucket of night crawlers.”
“Night crawlers reproduce too slowly to do well in a commercial venture. My husband and I farm red worms.”
“Incredible,” Ed said. “What do you do with them?”
“Most are sold for bait-and-tackle purposes, but I also sell the castings to organic farms like Pistol Bang’s, and a few florist shops. The smaller ones I sell to local pet shops. I even supply high schools for their composting program, if you can believe it.”
She dove with as much grace as she could muster behind a ceramic pot full of rosemary. Her fingers grazed Martha’s wing, but the bird wriggled out of her grasp.
“I’d better get checked in at the hotel,” Ed said.
Florence executed a sneaky end-around maneuver and caught the unsuspecting Martha. The disgruntled bird flapped her pewter and white feathers. Flo dusted off the naughty gull before handing her back to Ruth.
“You would never pass an obedience class, you bad thing.” The bird tucked her head under Ruth’s chin and fell asleep. “Okay, Mr. Honeysill. Three o’clock it is.” There was some hesitation in the man’s expression. “Is there something else?”