Val Fremden Mystery Box Set 1

by Margaret Lashley

  Just like my mom to leave out a minor detail like that.

  I hung up the phone and went outside. Tiny was already on his way over. One look told me his name was a huge misnomer. The only way he could have been considered tiny was if he was swimming with a school of blue whales.

  “Hey y’all!” Tiny called out from the middle of the street. He hitched up his huge overalls as he half-walked, half waddled barefoot across the red clay road. Tom looked up from under the hood at him, then back toward me, his face one big question mark.

  “It’s the cavalry – Tiny McMullen,” I explained.

  Tom stood up and shook Tiny’s huge paw.

  “Nice to meet you Tiny, I’m Tom.”

  “Likewise, I’m sure,” said Tiny with a grin. Then he dove his head under the hood. “Watcha got here? Them Ty-otees can be tricky.”

  “Won’t start,” Tom said.

  “Give it a try,” Tiny said.

  Tom climbed into the vehicle and turned it over. It sputtered and died.

  “Hmm. Let me have a look at her. I ain’t got nothin’ else goin’ on today. Where was y’all headed, anyways?”

  “To Chattahoochee,” I said.

  “In or out?”

  “What do you mean?” Tom asked.

  “In Chattahoochee nuthouse or out in Chattahoochee proper?”

  “Oh. In, I guess,” Tom answered.

  “We’re going to visit someone,” I said.

  Tiny looked over at Winky, who was helping Mom’s yappy dog chase a squirrel up a pecan tree. Tiny nodded knowingly and winked. “Gotcha. Visit someone. Sure.”

  “I...uh...” I began, but Tiny cut me off.

  “Seein’s how it’s kinda an emergency, y’all can take my truck if y’all wanner.” Tiny hiked a thumb toward his yard full of dead and decaying vehicles. “She ain’t a looker but she runs like a wet dream. Ooops. Sorry Miss.”

  I shrugged and looked over at Tom. “Beats hanging around here.”

  “Sure, why not,” Tom said. “Thanks, Tiny. Can we bring you anything back from Chattahoochee?”

  “You’re a gentleman and a scholar,” Tiny said. “I sure wouldn’t mind havin’ me a Chattaburger. And fries. Uh...and a Mountain Dew, if it ain’t too much trouble.”

  “Deal,” said Tom. “Where can we find this place?”

  I stuck an elbow in Tom’s ribs. “I know where it is.”

  Tiny grinned. “You ought to. Chattaburger’s world famous ’round here.”

  The men talked about mechanical stuff while I rounded up Winky. Tom fished the grey plastic container that looked like a double-decker tackle-box out of his truck. We climbed into Tiny’s rusty old red Ford pickup. I sat in the middle of the bench seat because Winky’d gone and called shotgun. I guess I couldn’t win them all. But I wasn’t complaining. Sitting in the middle put me dangerously close to Tom. He sidled in next to me and handed me the grey box.

  “Hopefully we’ll need it today when we meet Ms. Goldrich.”

  “Miss Thelma G. Goldrich,” Winky said. “Got a nice ring to it. Tom, if I was to up and marry her, would I get me some a her money?”

  “I don’t know, Winky. First we’ve got to see if she’s even related.”

  “Yeah, they don’t take too kindly to marryin’ inside the family no more.”

  “I meant if she’s related to Tony and Glad.”

  “That too. And if she’s ugly. Ain’t no amount a money worth marryin’ a butt-ugly person.”

  I looked over at Winky, a testament to the un-showered, unshaven, unappealing and uncouth.

  “Amen to that,” I said.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  GETTING IN TO SEE THELMA Goldrich was a lot easier than Tom and I had planned. When Tom showed his badge to the guard at the main gate, he’d simply waived us through and pointed us in the direction of the mental health buildings on the west side of the huge state hospital campus. Following the guard’s directions, we arrived at a nondescript white building with black handrails leading up six concrete steps. After careful consideration, we left Winky in the old Ford with a Randy Travis CD, a six-pack of Bud and a carton of banana moon pies for company. I don’t think I’d ever seen a grown person look so absolutely contented.

  Winky was already tearing the cellophane wrapper off the first moon pie as I closed the truck door. Tom was halfway up the steps, waiting on me. I stumbled on the second stair. Tom grabbed my arm.

  “Are you as nervous as I am?” I asked.

  “Nothing to be nervous about, Val,” Tom said with a shrug. “What will be, will be. That’s all.”

  “I guess I can’t argue with that.”

  We walked inside the front door of the long, narrow building. It opened directly onto a lobby area. I took a seat with a view down the hallway while Tom spoke with the bespectacled, middle-aged receptionist behind a glass window. As they chatted it up, I saw a skinny, butt-naked man walk down the hallway and disappear behind a doorway. Another woman in tight jeans and a grey sweatshirt came down the hall and sat in the chair next to me. I smiled at her, thinking she was another visitor. She took my hand and launched into a stream-of-consciousness babble about being able to chew gum again after years of practice.

  Oh boy.

  I felt like an extra in One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest. I took turns fake smiling at the gum-chewing woman and stealing glances in Tom’s direction, hoping he would look back at me. When he finally did, I shot him my best “hurry up” look. He laughed with the receptionist one more time and walked over with two visitor tags in his hand.

  “Here. Put this on. It turns out Thelma is in here on a voluntary basis. They’re going to get her now.”

  The receptionist ushered us into a small waiting room that looked exactly as I pictured it would. The blank walls were that industrial shade of green found only in government buildings and the inside of dill pickles. White, metal bars protected two curtain-less windows, and dust swirls danced in the twin rays of sunlight they let into the room.

  The table and chairs were made of solid oak, and were heavy and square. I figured that made them harder to pick up and throw. The top of the table was tattooed with messages scrawled in black and green and blue ink.

  I was reading the inscription, “Screw you, Velda,” when the waiting room door creaked open. A thin, shattered-looking blonde woman poked her face inside.

  “Y’all lookin’ fer me?”

  “Are you Thelma Goldrich?” I asked.

  She must have lost a lot of weight since that mugshot I saw of her was taken.

  “Yes’m.”

  “Hi, I’m Val. This is Tom. He’s a police officer.”

  “I ain’t done nothin’ wrong!” Thelma shrieked. Her head disappeared behind the door.

  “Wait!” I called after her. “Thelma! We know you didn’t do anything wrong! We’re here to see if something belongs to you!”

  The door creaked open again and Thelma stepped inside. She was thin and big bosomed, just like Glad. Her skin was white as milk. She had on a faded yellow sundress with a tiny daisy print. Her hair was a tangle of brownish-blonde straw, stacked in a loose bun that looked an awful lot like an abandoned bird’s nest.

  She spoke tentatively, keeping one hand firmly on the doorknob. “I ain’t lost nuthin’ as I recall.”

  “Well –” I began, not realizing she wasn’t through.

  “’Ceptin’ my parents,” she added. “That’s all.”

  “You lost your parents?” I asked softly.

  “Nope. They lost me. People ’round here said I was left on a doorstep with nothing but a diaper and a note with my name on it.”

  “Oh. How long ago was that?”

  “Last November a hundred years ago.”

  Tom looked over at me and tamped his fingers lightly on the tabletop. I took it to mean hush, so I did. I thought he was going to lead the interrogation, but instead he just asked, “Thelma, would you like a cup of coffee or something?”

  “What the –?”
/>
  Tom shushed me again with his hand, then patted his shirt pocket where I’d seen him put the plastic bag for collecting the DNA sample.

  “I sure would like me some coffee,” Thelma said. “You know they make us pay a whole dime for a cup around here? They think we’s made outta money or somethin’.” Thelma let go of the doorknob and took a seat across the table from us.

  “It’s my treat, ma’am,” said Tom. “Do you take cream or sugar?”

  “Yessir.”

  Tom did an almost imperceptible double take, but said nothing. He stepped out the door and left me alone with Thelma. Earlier, I’d thought of a whole list of questions to ask her, but now that I was face-to-face with her, my thoughts all skittered out the window like mice chased by a barn cat. Before I could get my brain and mouth in sync to say something, Thelma spoke.

  “That’s a purty necklace.”

  I touched the cheap dragonfly pendant hanging around my neck. “Thanks.”

  “It reminds me a somethin’.”

  The hair on my neck stood up. “What?” I asked.

  Thelma raised her voice ten octaves. “I said it reminds me a somethin’!”

  “No. I mean...right. What does it remind you of, Thelma?”

  “What?”

  “The necklace? The dragonfly?”

  “Oh. It reminds me a them bugs that flies around outside. That’s why I don’t like to go out there. Too many bugs ever’wheres.”

  The door creaked open. Tom came in carefully balancing two paper cups in the flattened palm of his right hand. The sight of him sent relief flooding through my body.

  “You said cream, Thelma?” he asked.

  “Yes’m.”

  “And sugar?”

  “Yep.”

  Tom nodded, and removed one cup with his left hand. He offered Thelma the second cup by lowering his right hand like a tray in front of her. She picked up the cup and took a sip. I looked over at Tom while she drank. He smiled at me and mouthed the word, “bingo.”

  “You want this one?” He offered me the other cup.

  I shook my head. I couldn’t take my eyes off Thelma.

  Thelma seemed to disappear into another time and place as she drank the coffee. She closed her eyes and hummed between sips. Tom and I watched her, as mesmerized by her as she was by a simple cup of coffee. When she’d drained the cup, it was as if someone hit her “on” switch again. Her eyes opened. She returned to this plane of existence, and began to slowly tear the paper cup to pieces. She wadded it into a ball and threw it in the wastebasket beside her. Tom and I both tried hard to pretend we didn’t notice.

  “Mmmm. That was good,” Thelma said. “So what y’all want again?”

  “Thelma, you said your parents left you on the road,” Tom said. “What were their names?”

  Thelma looked hard into the left corner of the ceiling.

  “Mickey and Memaw...or Minnie, I do believe. They was mouses, you know. I was only tiny as a mouse when they left me. They come back when I was fully growed, but I didn’t want to talk to them folks no more. They was too crazy! I was nice to ‘em and ever’thing. Even so, that old woman stole a piece a my hair! She reached out and cut it clean off with a pair a scissors!”

  Thelma formed her right hand into a pair of scissors. Quick as a rattlesnake strike, she thrust her hand across the table and snapped her two fingers together just an inch from my tender, red nose. I flinched and sucked in a startled breath.

  “You ain’t got no scissors has ya?” Thelma barked at me, then stood abruptly.

  I jerked backward, nearly tipping over in my chair.

  “No, Thelma, we don’t,” Tom said in a calm, reassuring voice.

  “You’s all liars!” Thelma shrieked. “Liars, liars, pacifiers!”

  Thelma covered her bird-nest hair with one hand and grabbed for the doorknob with the other. “I ain’t gonna let you cut me again!” She jerked the door open, then disappeared behind it.

  I looked over at Tom. I was still reeling with shock.

  “I didn’t know what to expect. But it sure as hell wasn’t that.”

  “It’s okay,” Tom said. “It’s over.”

  Tom got up and peered over the wastebasket. “Only three cups in here, and only one shredded to smithereens.”

  He took the plastic bag and a pair of tweezers out of his shirt pocket and gingerly placed the tattered remnants of the cup inside the bag. “Looks like we’ve got what we came for.”

  “Right,” I said sadly.

  Tom shot me a sympathetic smile. “Too bad she’s such a loony-toon, Val.”

  “I don’t know, Tom. There may have been some truth to what she said. You know, Jacob mentioned something to me about Glad saving a lock of Thelma’s hair when she was a baby. Do you think Glad might have tracked down Thelma here and taken another sample...for comparison testing or something?”

  “Could be. To be honest, I’d be surprised if she hadn’t. Thelma wasn’t that hard to find. But don’t take too much stock in what the poor woman just said. Crazy people aren’t renowned for their reliability.”

  I sighed. “I guess you’re right.”

  Tom took my hand.

  “Val, with Glad and Tony both dead, we’ll probably never know for sure if they knew about Thelma. And there’s really no use in wasting any time speculating about it until the DNA test comes back. If this poor, squirrelly girl is their Thelma, I wouldn’t blame them for not making her part of the family. Geeze. They’d probably have been better off never finding her at all.”

  I hung my head. “I guess you’re right.”

  A thought occurred to me that should have long before then. “Tom, what are we going to compare the DNA sample to, anyway? We need Glad’s and Tony’s DNA, right?”

  “Already on it, Val. At Tony’s memorial ceremony, you made it pretty clear how sure you were that he wouldn’t name his ex-wife as the heir. What was it you said? Something like, ‘He wouldn’t leave her a pile of his own fecal matter, much less his estate.’ ”

  I cringed. “Yeah, something like that.”

  “Well, I have to say, the eloquence of your words stuck in my mind.”

  I knew Tom was joking, but for some reason it made me cringe even harder.

  Tom grinned and let out a short laugh. “What can I say, Val? You inspired me. I decided to go over to Tony’s house and get samples. You know, just in case. I found some good ones, too. A matted hairbrush and some fairly large toenail clippings. I sent them off to a private forensics lab in Tallahassee. My buddy Darryl there owes me a few favors.”

  I smiled coyly. “Wow. I didn’t know a cop’s life could be so glamorous,” I teased. “You know, fairly large toenail clippings and all.”

  “How’s this for glamorous?”

  Tom grabbed me in his arms and kissed me hard on the mouth. The feel of his strong arms around me made my body tremble. His tongue circled the tip of mine until I forgot my last name. Hell, and my first one, too. When Tom finally unlocked his lips from mine, red and white stars swirled around on the pickle-green walls.

  Holy Crap!

  WHEN TOM AND I GOT back to the truck, Winky was curled up in the front seat of Tiny’s rusty old Ford, sawing logs like a seasoned lumberjack with a brand new Black & Decker. Tom’s kiss had softened my snarky façade. For the first time in forever, I felt all mushy inside. I peered into the passenger window at Winky. He looked as cozy as a baby bird, all snuggled in his jumbled nest of empty beer cans and plastic moon pie wrappers. I caught sight of my reflection in the glass. My sappy expression said it all.

  Oh crap, Val. You’re in deep!

  I bit my lip and looked up. Tom was waving at me from across the cab. A mischievous look crawled across his face, and he put a finger to his lips. I watched and tried not to giggle as he quietly opened the truck’s squeaky door. He stealthily leaned inside, and thumped Winky right on the nose. The freckled little piggy snorted to life.

  “What the gaul-dang it is goin’ on?” he
bellowed. “Can’t a feller catch a nap around here?”

  “Rise and shine, Winky-dink,” I chimed from the passenger window.

  Winky-dink? Really? Girl, you’ve lost it!

  Winky wrestled his way up to sitting and scratched at his beer belly. His faded red t-shirt appeared to have lost both sleeves in some tragic accident.

  “How was that girl? Thelma? Is she the one?”

  “Can’t tell for sure at the moment,” Tom said. “But I got her DNA sample right here.”

  Tom patted his breast pocket. He reached around Winky and took a manila envelope from the grey box, then slipped the plastic bag containing the mangled cup inside.

  “Let’s see if there’s a Fed-Ex around here. I was planning on dropping this off in Tallahassee on the way back this afternoon. But there’s no telling how long before Tiny has the 4Runner up and going again.”

  “Shot gun!” Winky called out.

  I pretended to be disappointed and let Winky have his victory.

  We got lucky and found a Fed-Ex carrier picking up packages from a drop station just outside the hospital entrance. I watched from the old Ford as Tom put the manila envelope containing the cup inside an overnight package and filled out a delivery form. He handed the carrier some cash and shook his hand, then headed back to the truck.

  “That Tom there’s got some green. And some balls,” said Winky. “Let’s just hope he don’t got green balls!”

  Winky snorted with laughter at his own joke, then grabbed me in his infamous headlock-hug. I almost suffocated in his armpit before I could escape. An untold number of days without a shower had raised Winky’s body odor to near lethal. When he finally let me loose, I felt as if I’d been slimed by a dead catfish. I looked in the rearview mirror. My makeup was beyond repair.

  Crap on a cracker!

  “Good news. The guy said he’s on his way to Tallahassee from here,” Tom said as he climbed into the truck. He eyed us both like kids who’d been up to no good. “He said he could deliver it in an hour or two.”

  “That’s great, Tom,” I said.

  “Yeah. The sooner the better. Florida heat doesn’t do DNA any good. I sent the cup to that friend of mine at the forensics lab. We should know something in a couple of weeks.”