Val Fremden Mystery Box Set 1

by Margaret Lashley

  I snickered to myself. “Yes, I actually was surprised.”

  Laverne shot me a sly grin. “So...looks like Tom wasn’t boinkin’ Milly after all.”

  I studied Laverne’s face with new intensity. “No. You were right. But you knew all along, didn’t you?”

  Laverne winked and showed me her perfect, pearly dentures. “Like I’ve said before, growing up in Vegas, I learned how to keep a secret. Have you had any lunch yet, sugar?”

  I held up my empty glass. “Does Tanqueray count?”

  “Only in Vegas. How about joining me for a Skinny Dip?”

  The thought made me lose my appetite. “Uh...no thanks.”

  “Come on. I’ve got chicken cacciatore and veggie lasagna. Only 300 calories each. I hate to eat alone.”

  “Oh. Um...okay.”

  “Good girl! I’ll break out the microwave!”

  I crawled out of the hammock, walked past the fire pit and straddled the low picket fence separating Laverne’s and my backyards. With a liver-spotted hand spiked with long, red gel nails, Laverne ushered me into her home-sweet-home-away-from-Vegas. I looked up at the red acrylic clock made of dice mounted on the wall above her white Formica kitchen cabinets. It was already half-past the white cube with a one on it.

  “I didn’t realize it was so late,” I said.

  “I got used to eating lunch late, in-between show times,” Laverne replied. “Funny, it’s been thirty years since I last kicked a leg up on stage. Seems like not more than three or four decades ago.”

  In the short time I’d known her, I’d learned better than to try to improve Laverne’s math skills. I shrugged in agreement, took a seat on a barstool and watched as she fished around in the freezer and pulled out two small, rectangular cartons.

  “Yeah. Time flies, Laverne.”

  “It sure does. Pick your poison.”

  Laverne held up two blue-and-white boxes labeled Skinny Dip Cuisine. One had a picture of chicken cacciatore, complete with mint sprig. The image of a gooey, delicious-looking hunk of lasagna was displayed on the other.

  “I’ll have the lasagna, thanks.”

  “One lasagna, coming up!”

  Laverne popped the whole, unopened carton into the microwave and set the timer for five minutes. I kept my mouth shut as the oven hummed. The off-centered box circled around lopsided, catching corners and shifting around haphazardly like a drunken sailor on a merry-go-round.

  “Speaking of time, sugar, what are you going to do with yourself now that you’re all settled into your house?”

  “I don’t know. Water my new lawn, I guess.”

  “Gosh, it sure is pretty. Tea?”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  I looked over and grimaced. Unwittingly, I’d chosen a front-row seat to the shriveled-butt-cheeks show, starring Laverne Cowens. She bent over in front of me and pulled a pitcher out of the fridge. They really should put an age limit on thong bikinis.

  The microwave dinged. Laverne sprang into action like a trained chimp. She flung open a drawer and grabbed a lime-green oven mitt with a clown’s face on it, probably lifted from Circus-Circus. She shoved it onto her right hand, then reached into the microwave and yanked the swollen, slightly charred carton of lasagna out onto the counter. A second later, she placed the luckless box of chicken cacciatore in the oven, clicked the door shut and pushed the button, setting off the next carousel ride of the doomed.

  “You should take a class down at the college, like I do.”

  Laverne yanked off the oven mitt and poured tea into two tall, thin glasses. Each had the words “El Cortez Casino” etched in red above a fan of colorful playing cards.

  “Really? What classes have you taken?”

  She handed me a glass of tea. I took a sip.

  Laverne straightened her shoulders proudly. “Well, I don’t mean to brag, but I just finished a cooking course on international cuisine.”

  Brown liquid invaded my lungs, making it impossible to breathe. I tried to cough up the tea with my mouth closed. My effort resulted in a deep, rattling howl reminiscent of an asthmatic dog trapped in a well.

  “Oh my goodness, honey! Are you all right?”

  “Yes, just...drank...wrong.”

  The bell on the microwave tolled, announcing the death of another Skinny Dip. Laverne turned her attention to the seared carton. She pulled it from the microwave, stabbed through one end of it with a knife and cussed like a sailor when steam shot out and turned her index finger as pink as bubblegum. I smirked, despite my close brush with a Lipton-inspired death. Laverne sucked her index finger as she sawed open one end of each carton with a knife, then dumped the two cardboard meal trays onto the counter.

  A disconcerting shiver went up my spine at the delighted gleam in Laverne’s eye as she wielded the knife like Norman Bates in a shower and popped the bulging, clear-plastic blisters covering the paper trays. Satisfied with her work, Laverne plopped the meal that was supposed to be lasagna on the counter in front of me. It appeared to have been pre-chewed for my dining convenience.

  “Can you believe it? Only 300 calories!” Laverne exclaimed.

  She sidled onto the stool next to me, still wearing nothing but that gold thong bikini. One glance at her dinner made me grateful I’d opted for the lasagna. The chicken cacciatore looked as if it had been scooped up from a local vomitorium. Thankfully, the portions were miniscule. I took a bite of lasagna. It tasted better than it looked, but that wasn’t saying much.

  “This isn’t bad,” I said. “But really, there must be like, two tablespoons of food here, Laverne. For 300 calories, you could eat two tablespoons of anything.”

  Laverne grinned, wide-eyed and goofy as a child. “I know, right? Isn’t it amazing?”

  My first prick hadn’t burst Laverne’s bubble. I decided to not be a prick by taking another poke. Instead, I took the second, and final bite of my lasagna. Crap. I could have eaten a Mounds bar for 300 calories. I sighed. Then I lied.

  “That was delicious Laverne. Thanks.”

  Laverne studied my face, her head cocked sideways like a confused Rhesus monkey. A square-ish piece of carrot from her cacciatore clung to her long chin like Picasso’s interpretation of a witch’s wart. Despite the appearance of lacking sophisticated cognitive faculties, Laverne had picked up on my lack of enthusiasm.

  “What’s wrong, sugar? I thought you’d be happier about your party and your birthday surprise.”

  My shoulders drooped. “Oh. I’m sorry, Laverne. Does it show?”

  Laverne’s drawn-on eyebrows arched. “Like a black bra through a wet t-shirt.”

  I slumped on my stool. “Crap. I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but that new backyard is going to take a lot of maintenance. That’s work I’m stuck doing. And did you know? Tom sold my RV without asking me.”

  Laverne shrugged. “Yeah. So?”

  “The Mr. Peanut bank...it was in the RV, Laverne. I’ve lost Glad – again.”

  Laverne’s smile wilted. “Oh. I’m so sorry, honey.”

  “And somehow Tom made me feel like this was all my fault. I mean, isn’t some of it his fault? I know I should be happy about the yard...about the party. But I’m not, Laverne. I’m just...pissed.”

  “But what are you winning?”

  I shot Laverne an angry glare. Was she even listening?

  “What do you mean?” I groused.

  “In Vegas, we had this saying. What are you winning?”

  Laverne smiled at me sweetly, like a mother donkey. She’d chosen to ignore my rudeness, and part of me was grateful. But it wasn’t fair. Laverne had Lady Luck on her side. She’d hit the sweet spot with intelligence. She was smart enough to function in society, but dumb enough to always be in a good mood. High IQs were definitely overrated. I didn’t watch TV or read the papers, hoping to benefit from the old adage, ignorance is bliss. But the tantalizing idea that Laverne didn’t even know that she was missing out on anything made me want to bite through a car tire with envy.

/>   “I don’t get what you mean,” I muttered.

  “So, what are you winning by being pissed?”

  Dang. Her dumb question was actually pretty smart.

  “I don’t know. My self-respect? My right to be...right?”

  “Maybe. But that ain’t hitting the jackpot.”

  “What? What’s the jackpot?”

  Laverne’s horsey face registered the innocent, dumbfounded concern of a worried puppy.

  “Why, happiness, honey. Don’t you know that?”

  Laverne’s kind, simplistic answer ignited a blaze of rage inside my chest. I scrambled off the stool, too angry to remain seated.

  “But why should I have to pay for others’ mistakes, Laverne?” I screeched. “Why does happiness always come at a cost?”

  Laverne, unfazed by my anger, didn’t miss a beat. She smiled at me sweetly.

  “Well, that’s easy honey. Can’t nobody win the jackpot without playing. And it always costs something to play.”

  Chapter Three

  I’D SPENT SUNDAY EVENING alone, cooling down slowly, like the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. I’d avoided a critical meltdown, and when I woke up Monday morning, I’d found myself on the verge of no longer being a lethal danger to other life forms.

  After a cappuccino and a long, cool shower, at 8 a.m. I called Lefty’s Hauling again. It rang fifteen times, unanswered. This was, of course, totally unacceptable. It was time for Plan B.

  I slipped on a sundress and sandals, put my hair in a ponytail and climbed into the red pleather driver’s seat of Maggie, my 1963 Ford Falcon Sprint convertible. With a little encouragement in the form of smashing her gas pedal to the floor, Maggie carried me north along Gulf Boulevard. The four-lane road, lined with two- and three-story beach resorts, skirted the Gulf of Mexico like stiches in a hem.

  Year round, tourists flocked to the quaint mom-and-pop motels and sugar-white beaches. I couldn’t blame them. All-in-all, St. Pete Beach was a great place to be.

  I turned east on 107th Avenue. Immediately, the salt air and kitsch beach shops disappeared, replaced with anywhere-USA strip malls. At 66th Street, I turned north in the direction of good-old Pinellas Park.

  Every major metropolitan area had a section designated especially for rednecks. How they found each other, I didn’t know. Maybe they were all related, or there was some special redneck hotline I wasn’t privy to. At any rate, in Pinellas County, the mecca for country bumpkins and politically incorrect-and-proud-of-it folks was definitely Pinellas Park.

  If it weren’t for Florida’s history of hurricanes and tropical storms, Pinellas Park would have choked to death on doublewide trailers decades ago. But in 1993, a freak storm took out all but the very highest quality manufactured homes. It had been dubbed the “1993 Storm of the Century” by some, the “’93 Super Storm” by others, and the “Great Blizzard of 1993” by the Yankees up north. But we locals simply called it the “No-Name Storm,” because it had come up so quickly and unexpectedly not even the weather forecasters had had time to register it with an official moniker.

  It had begun on March 12th as a cyclonic storm in the Gulf of Mexico, then quickly grew into a beast that stretched from Cuba to Canada. It moved into Florida around midnight, catching us unaware with winds over 100 mph. It spawned 11 tornadoes and a storm surge in St. Pete that topped out at seven feet. For folks along the coast, bay and rivers, it had been devastating. It wiped out or damaged over 18,000 homes in the Sunshine State and killed 47 of our citizens, more than Hugo and Andrew combined. Suffice it to say, it was not a good time to be living in a tin can on wheels.

  Florida’s seasonal tropical storms like No-Name and the annual seven months of relentless heat and humidity were like cancer and the plague to anything made of metal. Even so, every year, seniors and other derelicts from up north took their chances in RVs and mobile homes. They came down to Florida by the millions right after Thanksgiving and left the day after Easter in hordes like migrating wildebeest, after carefully placing tinfoil in the windows of their metallic abodes – to protect them from space aliens, I guess.

  It was the first week of May, so the snowbirds had already flown the coop. In their stead had come the hard-faced, barrel-chested, androgynous Europeans in speedos and industrial-strength two-piece suits. Insulated with blubber and Nordic genes, they thought any ocean water above freezing was warm enough to swim in. Bless their hearts.

  On 66th, I drove past the endless rows of uninspired strip centers anchored by monotonous chain stores. These were the same kind of soulless shopping centers that had popped up all over the country like mushrooms after a rain, and threatened to turn St. Pete into another generic city. I scowled and took a left onto a side road called Lewis Lane.

  A few blocks in, I was surprised to find commercial buildings give way to open, grassy acreage big enough for horses to roam. I followed a double-rut, white-sand road wedged between horse pastures to a chain-link fence that marked the end of the line. A hand-painted sign on the right side of the twelve-foot-wide gate read, “Lefty’s is Right Here.” Next to the sign was a three-foot wide butt of someone bent over in a pair of dirty blue overalls. At the sound of Maggie’s glasspack muffler, the overalls straightened up and turned around, revealing a white male occupant with a cue-ball shaped head, a trace of eyebrows, and not a single front tooth.

  “Woo hoo! That’s a beaut!” the ruddy-faced man said in a spot-on impression of my redneck friend Winky. He hobbled up to the car, limping as if he might have recently injured or lost part of his lower left limb.

  “Thank you. This is Maggie.”

  The man reached over to shake my hand with fingers as big and round as already plumped Ball Park franks. Thankfully, he didn’t have to prove his manhood by squeezing my fingers to the bone. Instead, he put a thick thumb in my palm and daintily shook the ends of my fingers as if they were made of fine porcelain.

  “Nice to meet you, Maggie. I’m Lefty. What can I do you for?”

  “No, I’m...” I thought about explaining that I was Val Fremden...that Maggie was my car’s name...but I figured there was no real point. “I came to get back an RV you hauled away on Saturday. Down in St. Pete Beach?”

  Lefty showed me his toothless grin. “Oh yeah. Cute little thang.”

  “So, what do I need to pay you to get it back?”

  “Oh. Nothing, Maggie. ‘Fraid you’re a little late. A girl come by yesterday and bought her.”

  A needle of pain dug a sharp, deep stitch in my chest. “But...I thought you were closed yesterday.”

  Lefty laughed and scratched the top of his head. “Yeah. Don’t nobody pay no attention to that around here. And this here girl, she was a mighty persistent little spitfire. Seen that RV and wasn’t nothin’ gonna stop her having it. Paid cash. I like me some cash, you know.”

  “Selling the RV. It was...a mistake. I need it back. Can’t you help me? I have cash too.”

  “Sorry, little lady. Wish I could help, but the man who swapped it give me clear title. Then this girl come up Saturday with cash. I hadn’t even had no time to re-register the title yet. She said she’d take care of it. I mean, what’s a feller to do?”

  “Can you tell me her name?”

  “Uh, yeah. Let’s see...Baloney?”

  “Baloney? Is that a joke?”

  Lefty scratched his head. “Um...no. That ain’t it. Dang it! I can’t rightly recollect at the moment.”

  “Well, where’s the RV? Did you haul it to her place?”

  Lefty’s face broke out into a proud, toothless grin that made me think of the Gerber Baby – if he was forty years old and chewed tobacco.

  “Ha ha. That’s the beauty part, Maggie. I hauled the RV here and old Nick, our mechanic, cleaned the sparkplugs and changed the oil and air filter and that little RV hummed right back to life. Good old American-made engines. Don’t build ‘em like they used to. Doubled the value in an hour’s work. Good old Nick. He can fix anything. So you see, I didn’t have to haul it
nowheres. That girl drove it right on out of here.”

  As he spoke, the needle of pain in my heart got busy sewing a quilt. Crap.

  “Did she leave something with her address? Fill out some paperwork?”

  “Paperwork?” The idea sent Lefty into fits of laughter. “Do I look like the kind of guy who’d bother myself with paperwork, little lady? Hell, I don’t even have a bank account. Those fat-cat bankers ain’t gonna steal my money away.”

  “Well, in case she comes back, would you have her call me?”

  “Why shore, Maggie. Be glad to.”

  I handed Lefty my card. He slipped it into the back pocket of his overalls without looking at it. As I drove away, I had the sinking feeling that, for all the good it had done, I may as well have used the card to wipe my own butt.

  ON THE DRIVE HOME, I passed Ming Ming’s sushi place on Central and saw Milly’s red Beemer parked out front. It wasn’t until I was a block past her that I remembered I was supposed to meet her there for lunch. Crap on a cracker! I hit the brakes and pulled a one-eighty on Central Avenue, causing a jaywalker to kick it up a notch to jay-sprinting. I checked the time on my cellphone as he waved an angry fist at me. It was two minutes until noon. Sweet! I wasn’t even going to be late. I pulled into the lot and made my way inside the restaurant.

  One look at Milly’s face and I knew she was chomping at the bit with some juicy news of her own.

  “Hey, Valiant,” she said playfully as I walked in the door.

  “Hey, Millicent,” I said back.

  After we’d insulted each other with the despised names given to us by our parents, it was time to get down to business. For Milly, that always meant men.

  It wasn’t her fault completely. Milly had always been a man magnet. She was blonde and had a button nose and a body that, on several occasions, even made me think about giving up chocolate. Her looks had always garnered lots of flirty attention from the opposite sex. But when it came to actually dating, she’d proven as finicky as a blue-ribbon show cat. Over the dozen or so years I’d know her, she’d endured so many bad dates she could’ve easily been listed in Ripley’s Believe it or Not. But to her credit, Milly had always taken it all in stride. In fact, she’d turned her penchant for shooting down men’s proposals into an all-season sport.