Seven Daze: Redneck Rendezvous (A Val Fremden Mystery Book 7)

by Margaret Lashley

  I squeezed his hand. “I’m not saying I want you to leave, Tom. Not at all. It’s just...well, with my other relationships, I always felt trapped. Backed into a corner, you know?”

  Tom looked at me, the sparkle gone from his eyes. “How is our situation any different? I honestly don’t know how to make it work for you, Val.”

  My heart flinched. “I think I felt trapped before because I didn’t have any...options. Having this daybed thing...I don’t know if I’ll ever even use it, Tom. But it would be there. As an option. Don’t you see?”

  “No. Not really.” Tom slumped over his barstool.

  I got up and inched myself closer to him until his inner thighs brushed against the sides of my waist. My hands squeezed his shoulders. I looked into his eyes. “That way, every night when I climb into bed with you, it’ll be a choice, Tom, not an obligation. Can you understand that? It’s not that I don’t want to be with you. I just don’t want to have no option but to have to be with you.”

  I’d never seen Tom’s face so dead serious. “I get what this is all about,” he said.

  I gulped. “You do?”

  Tom grinned and grabbed me around the waist. “You just want me to haul away that horrible guest bed, don’t you?” He pulled me to him. “I’m nothing to you but a hunk of meat. Free labor. Muscle power.”

  I grinned through grateful tears and kissed him on the lips. “Guilty as charged, officer.” I hugged him to me and whispered, “Thanks for getting it.” I pulled away just enough to give him a lusty leer. “And, just so you know, I really like your muscle power.”

  Tom kissed me again. “Just so you know, I’m available right now. For a free demonstration. If you want, that is.”

  I grinned and kissed him hard on the lips. “You know I never could resist a bargain.”

  “I’M STARVING,” I SAID, and sat up in bed. The clock read 10:13 p.m. “With class and everything, I forgot to eat dinner. You want a baloney sandwich?”

  Tom sat up on his elbow and grinned at me. “I thought you already served me one.”

  “Har har. I’m serious. The woman’s name really is Angela Langsbury.”

  Tom shook his head. “I should have known. I gotta hand it to you, Val. Weird follows you wherever you go.”

  I smirked. “So I guess that means you’re coming to the kitchen with me, then?”

  Tom snorted with laughter. “I guess so.” He sat up in bed beside me. “Wanna know a secret?”

  “Sure.”

  He nuzzled my neck. “I’d rather be weird with you than normal with anyone else.”

  I pushed him away. “Such a schmoozer. I knew there was some reason I kept you around.”

  I bit Tom lightly on the nose, then scampered out of his arms and down the hallway to the kitchen. I was slapping mustard on white bread when he ambled in, barefoot in boxers. I almost whistled. For a man his age, Tom still had it going on. Not quite a six-pack, but I never could handle more than three in a row.

  “Got any pickles to go with that sandwich, ma’am?” he asked, and smoothed back his golden bangs.

  I bit my lip. “Nope. Fresh out.”

  “You sure?”

  “Absolutely, positively, without a shadow of a doubt.”

  “Okay, then. Glass of milk to go with it?”

  “Coming right up.” I handed Tom a sandwich. He lifted the bread and inspected the baloney.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  Tom shot me a smirk. “I worked a homicide once where a woman put a foot-long piece of string in her husband’s sandwich. He choked to death on it.”

  “Oh! That’s good!” I plopped my sandwich onto the counter and ran toward my office.

  “Good?!” Tom called after me. “Where are you going?”

  “To write that down,” I called back as I scribbled in my notepad. “And to put pickles on the grocery list!” I wrote down “pickles” and padded back to the living room. “Want to make steaks for dinner tomorrow?”

  “Can’t.” Tom took a bite of his sandwich. “We’ve got that thing at Winky’s, remember?”

  “Oh yeah,” I muttered. “The cookout at the redneck corral.”

  Tom shook his head. “I still can’t believe he got half a million bucks for Old Joe’s Bait Shack.”

  “It’ll be interesting to see what he’s done with his windfall.”

  “Yeah. I bet he’s not eating baloney tonight.”

  I grinned. “I wouldn’t bet on it. So, Mister Detective, you got any more interesting ways to die you can tell me about?”

  Tom smirked coyly. “Maybe. But it’ll cost you.”

  “What?”

  “How about a kiss per story.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That sounds like a deal to me.”

  While we finished our sandwiches, Tom told me about a man who stabbed his partner with an icicle he’d fashioned in his freezer and carried with him in an Igloo cooler. The evidence had melted at the crime scene, but investigators were able to figure it out thanks to a bag of frozen cherries in the perp’s freezer. They’d found cherry juice in the guy’s fridge, in the cooler, and around the stab holes on the victim’s shirt. Of course, I’d padded to my office and written it down in my notebook.

  After our snack, as I brushed my teeth, I wondered about all the other ingenious methods people had devised over the centuries to do-in their partners. The phrase, “The Kiss of Death” popped into my mind. I grinned, rinsed my mouth out, and applied a thick coat of imaginary, poison-laced lipstick.

  I padded down the hall and climbed into bed next to Tom.

  “Good night, dearest,” I cooed, and planted a cyanide smacker on his lips.

  Chapter Four

  I grunted as I yanked the scratchy old sheets off the saggy, pee-stained mattress in my new office. It lay limp and stiff across the old box springs like a dead body. At my request, Tom and one of his cop pals had hauled the dilapidated bed into the second bedroom last year. It had been my hope that its inhospitable lumps and pokey springs would ward away houseguests. But I’d found out the hard way that when you live near the beach, people were willing to put up with darn near anything for a free overnight stay.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to haul this thing to the dump?” Tom asked. He tapped a finger on the doorframe to my makeshift office. Fresh from the shower, he looked quite arresting in his crisply pressed police uniform.

  “Nah. I’ll order a daybed from Fred’s Furniture. I’m pretty sure when they deliver it, they’ll pick up the old mattress and dump it for free.”

  “Have it your way, murder-mystery gal,” Tom quipped, and kissed me lightly on the lips. He eyed the nasty mattress and crinkled his nose. “Just don’t make me wake up dead with my body wrapped in that thing like an old sausage roll.”

  I grinned. “A pig in a blanket? Way too obvious, Lieutenant.”

  Tom laughed. “Yeah. But you were thinking about it, weren’t you?”

  I rolled my eyes to one side. “I plead the Fifth.”

  Tom hugged me to his chest. “I’ll let you off for bad behavior this time. But only because I’ve gotta go or I’ll be late for work.”

  Tom kissed me goodbye at the front door. I waved, then watched through the blinds as he maneuvered his silver 4Runner down the driveway. I sighed and turned back to face the silent living room. I was alone again – with nothing for company but a blank computer screen and an empty fridge. A tinge of panic shot through me. What was I going to do now?

  I know! I can dust the ceiling! Yes, it’s no good trying to write with dirty ceilings!

  My brain was incorrigible.

  I GRITTED MY TEETH and padded to the bathroom. As I reached for my toothbrush, I noticed Tom’s hanging there beside mine in the black ceramic holder built into the wall. Its midnight-black hue was an odd, but rather interesting contrast to the rest of the flamingo-pink wall tiles. The 1950s must have been a pretty daring time – for color combos, anyway.

  Suddenly, a flashback, like a sn
ippet of an old film, played before my eyes. It was a recollection of the very first time I’d seen this bathroom.

  It had been almost four years ago to the day. Summer had kicked in. The house had been closed up after my father Tony’s death, and the place had been steamy-hot and claustrophobic. I was sticky and sweaty from clawing my way through a maze of heaped-up debris that had clogged the living room and hallway leading to the bathroom....

  My skin pricked at the vivid memory. I’d been wearing a sundress and sandals that day, but oh, how I’d wished I’d had on a hazmat suit. I snickered at the thought of Goober and Jorge rifling through the house along with me. I’d only known the guys for a few days then, but I’d already learned enough about Winky to trust the other guys’ instincts to leave him in the patrol car with Tom while we committed our unauthorized search of the place.

  Oh, my gosh! Tom! That day was the very first time he’d ever met me!

  I smiled. Fine, upstanding, irreproachable Lieutenant Thomas Foreman had been the picture of professionalism that day. Polite, but stoic. In conversation, he’d remained all business, despite the fact that, technically, he was aiding and abetting a break-in to help out his buddy Jorge. And me.

  Oh, geeze! That day...I’d never really thought about it until now...but to Tom...I must have just been some random crazy woman committing a burglary with a bunch of hobos!

  I shook my head. How in the world did the two of us ever get from there to here?

  It had to have been some kind of freaking miracle.

  I shook my head and stared at Tom’s toothbrush hanging next to mine. A weird rush of Deja-vu swept over me. Again, I was transported back four years in time to the moment I’d discovered Glad’s toothbrush hanging next to Tony’s. It was then I’d realized there was more to her story than had first met the eye....

  I opened the medicine cabinet, half expecting to see Glad’s red lipstick and denture cream inside. But they weren’t. Tom’s razor and shaving cream had taken their place. They stared back at me, reminding me that everything had a way of coming back around full circle. Tom and I had replaced Tony and Glad...in this same space...just a different time.

  Tom and I were just a continuation of the age-old saga that had begun when the first pair of humans drew breath. We were just a man and a woman trying to find a way to make our lives work, together.

  Glad had her Tony. I have my Tom.

  I closed the medicine cabinet. “Tom is my Tony,” I said to the woman staring back from the mirror.

  And I hope he always will be.

  I nodded at my reflection – a silent recognition of the wish I’d just made – and switched off the light.

  Now, I just need to figure out a way to kill him.

  Or someone like him. For my class project, of course. I padded back to my home office and plopped my butt in the desk chair. I turned on the computer, opened a file, and began to type.

  Five Unique Ways to Kill Someone.

  1) Icicle.

  2) String in sandwich.

  3) Poisoned lipstick.

  4) Mattress roll-up.

  5) Ty-D-Bol?

  My stomach growled. I was out of pickles and ideas.

  But at least I’d made a start.

  WHAT DO YOU FEED A hungry redneck? I pondered as I wandered the aisles of Publix, my small, neighborhood, beach-themed grocery store. I picked up a can of Vienna sausages and studied it. What exactly are “meat by-products” anyway?

  “Comparison shopping?” a familiar voice sounded behind me.

  I turned to find Judy Bloomers ogling me. Her right index finger was busy twirling a lock of “secret” black hair hidden underneath her otherwise frazzled, bleached-blonde bird’s nest.

  “Nope. Going to a redneck cookout. Hey. Wait a minute. Are you following me? First writing class. Now the grocery store....”

  Judy adjusted the girdle-tight elastic on the waistband of her sky-blue polyester slacks. “Tailing someone is next week’s assignment. And for the record, I was in class before you got there. In fact, I believe I beat you by a week.”

  I nodded my concession. “Fair enough. Have you got your five ways to kill someone yet?”

  Judy’s pouty lip twitched. “Three. You?”

  “Four and a half. Hey. Do you think you could kill someone with Ty-D-Bol?”

  Judy smirked. “With or without the new scrubbing bubbles?”

  I snorted. “What are you doing here, anyway? You don’t look like you’re shopping.”

  “Good observation,” Judy said. “But wrong conclusion. I am shopping. Shopping for leads.”

  “Leads?”

  “Sure. Every place is good for finding real estate leads. At least, that’s what my broker says.” Judy picked up a can of pickled herring, realized what it was and crinkled her nose. She put it back on the shelf and shrugged. “That’s kind of why I took the class. To scope out the students. I didn’t know the class would be so small.”

  “Huh. Any prospects?”

  Judy grinned. “Clarice, the redhead, has been living alone in the same apartment since 1987. Victoria, the other lady, defers all major decisions to her husband, and he’s wedged into his house like an ornery hermit crab. Old lady Langsbury’s too cranky to consider. But Jeff’s got potential. He’s a Millennial, you know. Probably doesn’t even own a car. But right about now, his parents may be reaching their critical desperation threshold and could consider buying him a cheap condo.”

  “Wow. You really know how to work a room.”

  “You missed introductions last week. It was like true confessions.”

  “So, are you gonna stay in class? Now that you have your leads?”

  “I dunno.”

  “I think you should, Judy. You’re a natural-born detective.”

  Judy smiled. “Really? Thanks.”

  “So, what about me?”

  Judy looked me up and down, uncertainty knitted her brow. “What about you?”

  “You have the others pegged,” I said. “What are your conclusions about me?”

  “Given your bulging jeans and loose-fitting top, I’d say you’ve been avoiding writing and pretty much eaten everything in your house that wasn’t nailed down. Thus, the trip to the grocery store.”

  “Damn. You’re good.”

  Judy beamed. “I try.”

  I blew out a breath. “That’s it. I’m heading to the diet food section. I need to lose ten pounds.” I took off down the aisle with Judy on my heels.

  “You’re going about it all wrong,” Judy called after me. “The diet thing, I mean. It’s like selling real estate. You have to sell yourself the fantasy, not the reality.”

  I stopped in front of an aisle display laden with rows of diet food bars and canned shakes. “What do you mean?”

  “You have to sell yourself on an idea for it to work for you.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “Okay. Think about it this way” Judy said, eyeballing the display. “Which idea motivates you more? Would you rather go on a diet to lose ten pounds of ugly fat, or to look like Jennifer Aniston?”

  “I’ll take Jennifer.”

  “Exactly my point.” Judy grabbed a can and a packet off the shelf and held them up about even with her shoulders. “See what I mean?” She toggled the can in her hand. “This chocolate shake is doing it right. Drink chocolate, lose weight! What’s not to like?”

  “Okay.”

  She waggled the packet in her other hand. “Now look at the kale chips. Eat nasty green globs and wish you were dead.”

  I smirked. “I think I get it.”

  “Good.” Judy put the can and packet back on the shelf. “Well, I better get going. I think I see a lead.”

  “Oh. Okay. Good luck. See you Thursday?” I called as Judy walked away.

  “Pretty sure,” she said, not looking back as she made a beeline for a woman with a Prada purse.

  I loaded a dozen chocolate shakes in my cart and finished shopping.

  A
t home, I unpacked my groceries, then opened my file labeled Five Unique Ways to Kill Someone. Under number five, I deleted the word “Ty-D-Bol” and typed in “Kale.”

  Chapter Five

  “Oh, dear lord of the flies,” I whispered, and nudged Tom’s arm.

  Usually annoyingly cheerful and dependable, Tom was in one of his typical good moods. He was whistling a tune as he polished the driver’s side mirror of his SUV. Unlike me, he was making good use of his time while we waited in the driveway for Laverne. She was catching a ride with us over to Winky’s place.

  I nudged Tom again, locked eyes with him, and bobbed my head discretely to the left a couple of times. Tom got my drift and shot a glance in that direction. His jaw went slack and his whistling hissed out like a punctured tire.

  Laverne was picking her way across the lawn. In her liver-spotted hands, she held a red serving platter mounded with cookies.

  “She’s baked again,” Tom said absently. “That explains the dead possum in the backyard.”

  “Ugh,” I moaned. “I really don’t want another bowel blowout. Especially not at Winky’s place.”

  “I’ve got this,” Tom said. He turned and smiled graciously at Laverne. “There you are! I’m glad you’re riding over to the cookout with us. Here, let me take that for you.”

  “Thank you, honey!” Laverne beamed him a full set of dentures and handed over the potentially lethal plate of snickerdoodles.

  Tom opened the back door of the SUV and held it for Laverne like a fancy chauffeur. “Please. Climb aboard, ma’am.”

  Laverne grinned. “Nice to see there’s still a few gentlemen left in the world.”

  She scooted her scrawny butt into the backseat. Tom closed the door, then looked across the hood and shot me an evil smirk.

  I tilted my head and scrunched my eyebrows. “What’s up?” I whispered.

  “Don’t worry,” Tom said. “Just get in.”

  I sighed, and, for once, did as I was told.

  “You excited about the party?” I asked Laverne as I climbed into the front passenger seat.