Cloud Nine- When Pigs Fly

by Margaret Lashley

  I shifted into drive and cruised toward the end of the alley.

  “Huh. That make sense, I guess. It would explain how Finkerman could stay there so long without being run off.”

  “Yep.” Winky agreed. “Or, you know, it bein’ a secret spot all hid away and such, it could be that’s where Goober got hisself abducted by aliens.”

  I closed my eyes and took a breath.

  “Right, Winky. Or it could be that.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  After leaving Finkerman in a downtown alley as the official, live-in bodyguard of Goober’s old Chevette, I’d planned to head over to Langsbury’s place with Winky and see what we could find out about Amsel. But Winky had to get back to work, so I dropped him off at the donut shop.

  I made a quick pit stop at home to grab a floppy sun hat and sunglasses as a disguise before I went to stake out Langsbury’s place by myself. But once I stepped inside my front door, real life derailed my well-laid plans.

  First, I had to let Snogs out for a wee. While I waited on him to do his business, I thought I might as well write a letter to Goober to mail when I left.

  I sat at my desk and dashed off a less-than gracious note to Goober, telling him that absconding without a word to his whereabouts was a rather jerky thing to do. After signing it, I decided to include my phone number, just in case he’d lost his cellphone. When I’d misplaced mine last year, I’d realized I hadn’t known a single soul’s phone number by heart anymore. Not even Tom’s.

  With Snogs relieved and the letter to Goober done, I searched around for an envelope to mail it in. That’s when it dawned on me that Winky still had the envelope I’d used to scribble down old lady Langsbury’s address. I started to give him a call to get it, but then again, I wasn’t sure I could count on him to accurately relay the information.

  I blew out a breath and glanced at the newspaper lying on the kitchen counter. The new banner on the Tampa Bay Times informed me that it was Monday. That meant it was my night to make dinner.

  Crap on a cracker.

  I picked up the newspaper and skipped to the local business page. A new picture of Amsel made my stomach turn. He had one foot on the head of a shovel, digging it into the sand next to Caddy’s. The smug grin on his ugly mug made me want to puke. I ripped the section out and called for Snogs.

  “Here boy!”

  Snogs came running up. I put the newsprint on the floor and a toe on Amsel’s face. “I’ve gotta run. Do your business right here, okay?”

  Snogs yipped.

  It sounded like “I’ll do my best,” to me.

  I tousled the pup’s head and glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. It read 3:39 p.m. If I left immediately, I’d have just enough time to swing by the donut shop, grab the envelope from Winky, then stop at the grocery store, pick up some semi-healthy food from the Publix deli, slap it into some serving dishes, and hide the take-out containers in the trash before Tom got home.

  I grabbed my keys and made a mad dash for the door.

  This healthy, home-cooked meal plan is going to be the death of me....

  I WAS IN THE GARAGE stuffing the deli containers into the trash bin when I heard Tom’s SUV pull up in the driveway. I scrambled back inside, yanked on an apron, and did my best Doris Day impression.

  “Honey, you’re home!”

  Tom eyed me skeptically, then cracked a weak smile. “Hey.”

  “Geeze, Tom. You look beat.”

  “Thanks.” Tom kissed me absently on the lips, took off his gun holster, and eyed the fake home-cooked meal laid out on the dining room table. “Huh.”

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Just exhausted. You’re lucky you don’t work like I do. You get to sit around and write all day. I can’t imagine what that’s like.”

  Me either, buddy.

  “Any news about Greg and Norma?” I asked.

  “Nothing much. It’s weird.”

  Tom pulled a bottle of beer out of the fridge and offered it to me. I took it. He fished out another for himself.

  “What’s weird?” I asked.

  Tom popped the top on his beer and took a sip. “I dunno. My gut tells me Amsel’s our guy. But thanks to orders from higher up, I can’t touch him. And maybe they’re right, because the evidence keeps pointing elsewhere.”

  I fiddled with the label on my beer. “Like where, elsewhere?”

  “To Bigfoot,” Tom quipped tiredly.

  “Yeah, right,” I said.

  “You know I shouldn’t be telling you anything.”

  “Why? What would happen if you did?”

  “I could get reprimanded. Sued. Fired. Beheaded.”

  “Fine. Don’t tell me anything. Just don’t joke about it, either. I know Greg and Norma. They’re friends, sort of.”

  Tom wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me close. “Sorry. I’m just frustrated. I feel like my hands are tied. And whoever did this, well, she does have big feet.”

  I shifted out of Tom’s embrace. “She? You mean big feet like Norma?”

  “I mean any woman who wears size ten Birkenstocks.”

  I shook my head. “It just can’t be Norma, Tom.”

  Tom looked me in the eyes and shrugged. “If the shoe fits, Val.”

  “How do you know the perpetrator wore Birkenstocks? You can’t leave me hanging like that. I thought you said we were a team.”

  Tom locked eyes with me for a moment and said, “Okay. But what I’m going to show you stays between you and me.”

  Tom led me to the couch and sat down next to me.

  “Okay. Look at this,” he said, and opened a folder. He handed me a photo of footprints in the sand. “We found this trail of footprints. See those long gouges there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It looks like someone or something was dragged across the sand from Caddy’s out to the beach.”

  “I see.”

  “What’s weird is, on either side of the trail were sets of what appear to be identical women’s shoeprints. Large ones. Like size ten or bigger.”

  “So, what are you saying?”

  “Nothing but exactly what I just said.”

  “That Greg was abducted and dragged out to sea by a pair of Amazon women?”

  “I’d say that’s a stretch, Val. And I’ve already said too much.” He took the picture from me, put it back in the folder and closed it. “Let’s eat. I’m so hungry I could eat a rubber chicken breast.”

  “Good. Because that’s exactly what we’re having.”

  Chapter Twenty

  As I drove down Central Avenue toward downtown on Tuesday morning, I rehashed the plan in my mind that I’d come up with last night. I was going to mail Goober’s letter at his post office. That way, I could show that skeptical mail clerk that I was legit. After all, why would I send a letter to someone’s post office box if I wasn’t officially allowed to have access to it?

  My upper lip snarled involuntarily.

  Crud. That doesn’t make any sense at all.

  Like messages from a dream written down in the middle of the night, in the light of day, my idea no longer held water. Or, should I say, Tanqueray.

  Last night, after three gin and tonics, the idea of handing that dubious postal clerk a letter addressed to Goober’s box had sounded like a brilliant plan. But as I paused as the light on Sixteenth Street, it suddenly sounded like crap.

  Double crap. On a cracker, even.

  Geeze, Val! Why would anyone send a letter to a post office box they supposedly were allowed to access themselves?

  I blew out a breath and resigned myself to Plan B. When I pulled up in front of the post office, I skipped going inside the lobby. Instead, I slipped Goober’s letter into the mail slot outside. Yesterday, the postal clerk had been suspicious, but he’d let me off without making a citizen’s arrest. There was no use tempting fate again. Ending up in federal prison didn’t sound too appealing.

  Neither did the other choice I was left contemp
lating. In fact, this last-resort option was so unappealing, I actually decided to visit Finkerman as a delay tactic. Besides, his new office was conveniently located just around the corner...in a baby-blue Chevy Chevette.

  I turned off First Street and cruised down the alley to Goober’s car. As a courtesy, I “rang the bell” by tapping lightly on Maggie’s horn. Finkerman’s frizzy head slowly rose up from the seat like Dracula emerging from his coffin.

  I was about to make a snarky remark when, to my surprise, another nappy head rose up beside him in the passenger seat. Disgust shot through my gut when I actually recognized the other face.

  What’s wrong with my life, that I know every miscreant and deviant in town?

  Finkerman’s passenger was Victoria, the snotty twit who’d lost her catfight and lawsuit with old lady Langsbury. Victoria put on her librarian glasses. She blinked, spotted me, and sneered.

  No surprise there.

  From the looks of her, Victoria hadn’t quite recovered from her Aquanet run-in with Langsbury. As I watched from my automotive spectator seat, she and Finkerman appeared to have some kind of argument. After a minute or so, Finkerman got out of the car. Alone.

  “Geeze, Finkerman. You raising a family in there? What are you doing hanging around with Victoria?”

  Finkerman shrugged. “You know how it goes. I was working with her on a case. One thing led to another and...well, let’s just say her husband didn’t take too kindly to our...uh...partnership.”

  “Really?” I deadpanned. “Who would’ve ever seen that one coming?”

  Finkerman sighed. “If you’ve just come here to rub salt in my wounds, mission accomplished.”

  I opened my mouth to deliver a zinger worthy of a whole box of Morton, but closed it again. Unbelievably, my stupid Southern guilt-o-meter had caused my heart to ping with something along the lines of sympathy – for Finkerman, no less!

  “Are you two okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah. We were counting on a payout yesterday. Eighteen hundred bucks. But it fell through.”

  Don’t do it, Val. Just smile and walk away. Don’t do it! Please don’t do it!

  “Maybe I can help,” I said, and mentally kicked myself in the behind.

  “Yeah?” Finkerman said. His face read disbelief. I’m sure mine did, too.

  “I thought maybe, since you’ve got some free time, you could help me out on this investigation thing I’m doing,” I said.

  “Really?”

  As Finkerman’s jaw made the slow return trip to the base of his skull, I forced a smile, loathing myself more with each word that passed from my lips.

  “Yeah. I’ve got a few legal questions. You could help me, and I could help you.”

  Finkerman managed to scrounge a smug look from amongst the sorry ruins of his current situation.

  “Well, I normally charge five hundred an hour,” he said.

  I sneered. “How about we say, uh...five bucks a question.”

  Finkerman laughed his sick, piranha-mouthed chortle. “Yeah, right.”

  “Okay. Never mind.” I turned to go.

  “Wait!” he practically screamed. “Since you’ve been a good client –”

  I turned back around and shot him a dirty look.

  “Well, I mean, since you kept your word and didn’t rat me out for the library book scam, I guess we could work something out.”

  “Okay. What’s your best advice on how to locate missing people? People that maybe don’t want to get found.”

  “Easy. Follow the money trail.”

  “Money trail?”

  “Basic stuff, Fremden. Check for credit card receipts. Where they stopped to get gas...restaurants, hotels, stuff like that.”

  “What if they were traveling incognito? In an RV?”

  Finkerman held out a thin, insectoid arm. “Five bucks first. For answering the first question.”

  I rolled my eyes and fished a tenner out of my purse. Finkerman grabbed for it, but I held it back like bait.

  “This is all I got,” I said. “Answer the second question, too.”

  Finkerman blew out a breath. “Someone traveling in an RV can be trickier. I’d start by checking out RV parks for the vehicle. But you’re up against two obstacles.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “RVs are mobile. And nowadays, the economy’s so bad, half the country’s living in something with wheels.”

  I glanced over at Victoria and handed Finkerman the ten dollar bill.

  “Good point,” I said.

  My mind flashed back to five years ago, when I’d been about ten bucks away from living in Maggie. “You still have your cellphone, Finkerman?”

  “Yeah. Prepaid. For the next three days, anyway.”

  “Okay. Keep it handy. I might need you.”

  I handed Finkerman a twenty. He nearly gasped.

  “What’s this for?” he asked.

  “Let’s just call it ‘prepaid.’ You owe me one.”

  “Actually, I owe you four.”

  “Four?”

  “We agreed on five bucks a pop. I may be a lot of things, Fremden, but I live by one creed. Everyone works for the terms they negotiate for themselves.”

  I smirked. “So then, how much is Victoria charging?”

  Finkerman’s narrow, angular face registered a startled surprise. Then it cracked into a grin.

  He threw back his frizzy head and burst into a laugh that, for the first time since I’d known him, actually sounded genuine.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I leaned back in my desk and stared at the dreamcatcher postcard Goober had sent me nearly a month ago.

  Where in blue blazes could he be?

  With the letter to Goober in the mail, I was stuck waiting for a reply from him. The trouble was, I was notoriously bad at waiting. Besides, I didn’t know for absolute certain if 3799 was even his post office box. It could’ve belonged to anybody. If that were the case, I’d be waiting forever for a reply that would never come.

  I sighed and thought about my conversation with Finkerman. He’d advised me to follow the money trail. But Goober had an active aversion to using credit cards. “Too traceable,” I remembered him saying once. Based on that, I was pretty sure he didn’t have one. That ruled out running a credit check.

  As far as chasing down the RV went, I could’ve started calling every RV park from Key West to Tennessee in the hopes of getting lucky. But the odds of finding him were about as good as chasing down a cockroach in a junkyard.

  I sat up in my chair and blew out a long breath. I couldn’t put it off any longer. There was absolutely, positively no getting around it.

  Goober had left me with one last, dreaded option.

  I turned the dreamcatcher postcard over in my hand and studied the postmark.

  Greenville, Florida.

  Goober’d mailed his card from the same podunk town where my adoptive mother, Lucille Jolly Short, lived. Did he do that so people would think the postcard came from her and not him? If so, why would he care? Was someone after Goober? Or....

  A nagging thought tied a knot in my stomach.

  Did Goober go to Greenville so he could leave a clue to his whereabouts with my mother?

  Goober’d never met my mother. So, being unaffiliated with her “charms,” it was theoretically possible that he had braved a visit to her.

  Dread gnawed at the knot in my gut.

  What if he had dropped by to see her? Would he have introduced himself as my friend Goober? Maybe. But he could’ve shown up on her doorstep as anybody. After all, he was traveling in an RV crammed with Cold Cut’s crazy disguises. Who would Goober have told Lucille he was? According to Tom, even the name Goober went by, Gerald Jonohhovitz, wasn’t real.

  I could call my mother to find out, but that would involve calling my mother....

  I stared up at the corner of the ceiling, hoping a better idea might be stuck in a dusty cobweb up there. Or maybe a black widow spider would swing down, bite me, and
put me out of my misery....

  I put a mental X through the thought of calling my mother and pinned the postcard back on the corkboard on the wall.

  There has to be some other way....

  I STUCK A LEG OUT OF the hammock and kicked the ground to get it swinging again. With Snogs sleeping on my belly, I took a sip of Tanqueray and tonic and watched the diamonds dance on the choppy surface of the Intracoastal Waterway that lined the edge of my backyard.

  Goober hadn’t been the most industrious of men. I was trying to get into his mindset.

  Where would a lazy man with a low work ethic and a high IQ go to disappear?

  “To the moon!” a voice screeched, providing a timely, if unlikely, answer.

  I sat up in the hammock and saw Laverne run across her yard in hot pursuit of Randolph.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “What’s going on over there?”

  “Gosh darn it!” Laverne bellowed, then dove into the grass.

  Grunting ensued from both parties. Finally, Laverne stood up. I could see her arms were wrapped around Randolph. His little pig belly looked swollen.

  “Everything all right?” I asked.

  “No! This little rapscallion ate the pineapple upside down cake I was making for the luau!”

  “Oh.”

  I snickered, plied a limp, sleepy Snogs from my stomach, and crawled out of the hammock. As I toted Snogs over to the picket fence, I couldn’t help but giggle. Randolph’s contented face was the polar opposite of Laverne’s frustrated scowl.

  “It’s not the end of the world, Laverne. You have plenty of time to make another cake.”

  Laverne pouted. “You don’t understand, Val. It was a special cake. I used up the last of my secret ingredient making it.”

  “Secret ingredient? What are you talking about?”

  Laverne looked around, as if to make sure no one could overhear her.

  “Krassco,” she whispered.

  “Krassco? What’s that?”

  “You don’t know about Krassco? Hold on. I’ll show you.”

  Laverne set Randolph down and disappeared inside her house. I put Snogs in the grass and looked up Krassco on my phone while the pup sniffed at the pig between the pickets in the fence. What came up on my Google search made me swallow my spit.