“Sorry you killed him?” His tone sounded more hurt than angry.
“No! I mean, I’m sorry, yes. But not that I killed him...I mean...because I didn’t kill him!”
Judging by his expression, my eloquent testimony had yet to convince Stumpy of my innocence.
“Who did, then?” he asked, his voice marked with pain and a touch of sarcasm.
I thought about the food at last night’s fish fry. I knew my expired Cheeto casserole hadn’t killed Woggles, or nobody would be left alive.
“I dunno. Maybe the mayo on those pears last night did Woggles in. It looked like it had gone off to me.” I inched my way to the left rear tire and squatted again. My knees cracked like a walnut in a vice grip.
“I done et five a them thangs myself,” Stumpy argued as he came around and met me at the back of the car. “I’m still standin’.”
I tugged on the sticky duct tape plastered across the left rear side panel. “Well, everybody has different tolerances for things.”
“How do you know that?”
I looked up at Stumpy. Given his dirty overalls, bare feet and glint in his eye, it wouldn’t be long before he was toting a torch and a pitchfork. I hauled myself to standing.
“Listen, Stumpy. I didn’t hurt Woggles. Why would I? He seemed like a nice fella. I’m sorry he’s gone.”
“So why you tryin’ to leave in such a hurry?”
“Because I think whoever killed Woggles might be after me, too. I found a voodoo head and a nasty note on my door last night.”
Stumpy’s furrowed brow went slack. “What you talkin’ about?”
“I got another one today. Inside my freezer. Go look for yourself.”
I let Stumpy inside the RV. He came back and stood in the doorframe, the shrunken head in one hand, the bottle of Tanqueray in the other.
“You should be more worried about this,” he said, and shook the gin bottle at me. “This here ain’t no voodoo head. It’s...speak of the devil.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” I said.
But Stumpy wasn’t looking at me. I turned to follow his gaze. Standing on the road was Charlene in her shopper chopper, Elmira was riding shotgun again in the basket up front.
“Why you ungrateful hooligan!” Elmira screeched. She whirled her coonskin purse in the air over her head like a shepherd’s rock sling.
“Hold up!” Stumpy said. “Why you two got it in for this woman?”
“She called my sister a witch!” Charlene bellowed.
“No I didn’t!” I argued.
“Sure did,” Charlene countered angrily. “When we was walkin’ by her house. I told you Elmira was a crafter. You said it was witchcraft!”
“I only asked –”
“I give her one a my nicest trinkets,” Elmira sneered. “What’s she do with it? Throwed it in the yard!”
“What? I didn’t!”
“I seen it yesterday!” Elmira’s eyes scanned the ground. “Back up, Charlene. It’s gotta be right around here somewheres.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You mean that shrunken head? With the note that said, ‘Stay Away?’ You don’t think that’s witchcraft?”
Stumpy walked to the middle of the space between me and the other women. He held up his hands like a referee. “Now hold on, ladies. One at a time.” He held up the shrunken head from my freezer. The Tanqueray bottle was gone. I didn’t notice where it went to. “Elmira, what you got to say for yourself?”
“I ain’t no witch!” Elmira spat. “That there what she’s callin’ a voodoo head is a room freshener. You know that, Stumpy Whitehead! It was a welcome gift.”
“Then why did the note tell me to ‘Stay Away?’” I argued.
“That ain’t right. I wrote ‘Stay Awhile. Or at least, I meant to.”
“Oh,” I conceded. “The note got wet. It was all smeared.... But wait a minute! Why’d you break into my RV and put it back in my freezer? With a note telling me to ‘Get out now!’”
Elmira looked put out. “I did no sucha thang!”
“Then who did?” a man’s voiced boomed out from the bushes. Monster-sized Slim stepped out and joined ranks with Stumpy. Geeze. Now it was four against one.
“What did you do to get that ten thousand dollars?” Slim asked.
“Yeah,” Charlene sneered. “Sounds like hit-man money to me.”
I took a step back. “It wasn’t...that check...it doesn’t belong to me.”
“Then why was you throwing money around?” Charlene asked, her face pinched into one glaring, three-inch circle. “You give Woggles a fiver for nothin’. Tried to bribe me, too.”
I smiled weakly at Stumpy. He didn’t return it.
“Why wouldn’t you let Woggles see what was in yore trunk?” Charlene asked.
Stumpy’s head cocked to one side. “What’d you need with all that ice?”
“You got a body in there?” Slim asked.
“That’s it!” Charlene cried. “Woggles must a seen the body. So you had to get rid a him!”
I could feel my body shrivel. I backed up. “No. This is all a big misunderstanding....”
“Then why was all your clothes and what-not covered in blood?” Elmira asked.
“She’s the witch,” Charlene said. “She come to the door yesterday totin’ a broom. And look at her now. She’s still got one!”
Slim snatched my crutch away with his bear-sized hands. In one easy motion, he ripped off the towel duct-taped over the bristles, revealing it was, indeed, a broom.
“I...I didn’t kill Woggles!” I screeched. I took a step toward the RV. But without my crutch, pain shot through my smashed toe.
I was trapped! I collapsed in a heap beside Maggie, closed my eyes, and awaited my fate.
“I THINK IT’S TIME FOR you to go.”
I cracked open an eye and caught a glint of gold reminiscent of Laverne’s lame jumpsuit. If only. Both my eyelids flew up. Could it be she’d come to rescue me from this angry mob?
No. The gold belonged to Steve’s front tooth. The smarmy guy feigned a smile from beneath his ball cap. For whose benefit, I wasn’t sure. He held out his hand. I took it. He hoisted me to my feet. I noticed his blue t-shirt read, This Never Happened.
“Party’s over,” Steve said to the Hell’ammo clan.
“Says who?” Slim asked.
“Yeah,” Stumpy joined in. “On whose authority? Yours?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Steve said curtly. He reached in his back pocket. “I’m on special assignment for Chief Earl Collins. VJU. Vigilante Justice Unit.”
Steve flashed his badge and tucked it back in his pocket while the Hell’ammo crowd huddled together and mumbled amongst themselves. They seemed to be taking some kind of vote.
“What you gonna do with her?” Stumpy asked, looking up from the huddle.
“Chief Collins wants me to bring her in for another round of questioning,” Steve said. “Now I suggest you all go back to your own business. And don’t follow us or you’ll be next.”
That last bit made more than a couple of eyes widen.
Steve picked up my purse, handed it to me and said, “Hold out your hands.”
As I did, he whipped out a pair of handcuffs and clapped them on my wrists. His fingers dug into my upper arm and he tugged me toward the dirt road. Relief wasn’t a word I’d have used to describe how I felt as we made our way past the suspicious stares of Slim, Stumpy, Elmira and Charlene. But I figured my odds had to be better at the police station than against an angry horde.
Steve led me down the dirt road in silence. Once we rounded a curve out of sight from the others, Steve stopped and let go of my arm.
“I need to check something,” he said. “Wait here.”
He took a step behind me. The familiar sound of duct tape ripping off a roll sounded. I turned to face him, but before I could speak, Steve slapped a strip of tape over my mouth.
The last thing I saw before the paper sack went over my head
was the glint of his gold tooth, and the sound of his voice saying,
“Do exactly what I say and you just might make it out of this alive.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
I couldn’t see a thing. Had I been saved by Steve...or kidnapped by a serial killer?
The fact that I was now lying on a bed in a moving vehicle didn’t seem to favor the former. What kind of police agent had a bed in his van...or truck...or whatever this was?
Blinded by the paper sack over my head, my other senses heightened. My nostrils detected an odor like a pile of dead rats. I could hear music coming from somewhere...most likely the front of the vehicle. It was Roger Miller crooning King of the Road.
Steve began singing along. The torture had begun.
I tried to get up, but my captor had tied my ankles together after shoving me on the bed. I squirmed around on the mattress like a grub, then gave up. But my struggling hadn’t been totally in vain. Something new appeared in my range of vision. A dim, grey light emanated from around my chin. Steve hadn’t fastened the bag around my neck!
I wriggled down the bed until the paper bag no longer covered my eyes.
In the thick, grey light, I could see I was in an RV. Lumpy, rank-smelling garbage bags hung on the walls. I made out a woman’s floppy hat on a shelf. I squinted into the dark and immediately wished I hadn’t. Sticking out of the bag closest to me was a ghostly human hand. The amputated stump’s fingers reached outward, frozen by rigor mortis.
Holy mother of Elvis! The bags swaying on the walls around me were stuffed with the body parts of Steve’s other victims!
Something touched my leg. I jerked away as if I’d been hacked with a machete. I tried to scream bloody murder, but the duct tape over my mouth thwarted my efforts. I forced my left eye open and craned my neck to get a look at my leg. To my relief, it was still intact. So was my purse. It was on the bed by my shin, toppled over on its side. I almost kicked it off the bed for scaring the crap out of me. But then a thought pierced through my scrambled wits.
That purse might be my only hope.
If I could get to it, maybe there was something inside my handbag that could save me. I folded myself like a pocketknife and reached my cuffed hands toward the handle. Suddenly, the vehicle swerved and lurched to a stop.
The music stopped...
...the engine cut off...
...and footsteps headed my way.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“I see you’ve been a naughty girl,” Steve’s voice hissed playfully as he stepped into the tiny room where I lay trussed up on the bed like an injured deer.
“Mmm mmm,” I muffled through the duct tape, and shook my head softly in a plea for mercy.
“You really shouldn’t have taken that bag off. I wanted to surprise you.”
Steve leaned over me, his face just inches from mine. I could smell the sour beer on his hot breath. “Don’t scream,” he whispered, then ripped the duct tape from my mouth in one quick, merciless yank.
I hadn’t felt pain like that since the one time I’d tried to wax my legs.
“Yowww!” I bellowed.
Steve put his hand over my mouth. “Take it easy.”
“Who are you?” I mumbled through his fingers and my glue-sticky lips. “Where are we? What do you want with me?”
“Hold on,” Steve laughed cruelly. “Give me a minute.”
I struggled to sitting. “And let you murder me out here in the woods?”
Steve laughed again. He reached for something in his shirt pocket. As he leaned over me, I grabbed the handle of my purse with my cuffed hands and walloped him across the face with my hillbilly hacky sack.
He fell on top of me like a bag of doorknobs, knocked out cold.
Adrenalin throbbed in my eardrums. I heaved Steve’s limp body aside and plucked feverishly at the fabric binding my ankles. Finally, I felt it give way.
As I inched off the bed, Steve moaned. Panic shot through me. Before I knew what was happening, my hands snatched up my purse, raised it in the air, and clobbered Steve once more good on the noggin. I scooted off the bed and scrambled toward the front of the RV, my toe aching like a sore tooth.
I flung the door wide open, hoping I could find a lone motorist or a homesteader in the woods who I could flag down for help.
I didn’t have to look far. The sickly yellow light of a lamppost revealed the RV was in the middle of a Walmart parking lot.
I stood there open mouthed. Barefoot. In handcuffs. Wearing a paper bag on my head like a chef’s hat.
You know you’re in trouble when the people of Walmart look at you funny.
I SNATCHED THE PAPER bag from my head. I needed to get out of these cuffs. Calling the police for help seemed like a non-starter. Besides, my phone was dead. I’d only had a couple of minutes to charge it before I got spooked by the lovely parting gift Elmira had left inside my freezer.
A thought hit me like a fist in my gut.
As horrifying as it was, my only option at the moment was to go back inside the RV...and retrieve the cuff key from Steve. I sucked in a Valliant Stranger breath and turned around. As I crept back inside, I left the RV’s door open. That way, any Walmart shoppers loitering nearby could hear me scream....
I SEARCHED THE CAB first. The keys were still hanging in the ignition. I yanked them out and sorted through them. Thanks to Tom, I knew what a handcuff key looked like. Unfortunately, the bundle rattling through my shaking fingers didn’t contain one. I dropped the keys into my purse for safekeeping. I wasn’t going to let this murderer get away with...you know...murder.
A knot twisted in my gut. Crap on a cracked-up cracker. If the keys weren’t here, that meant....
My gut did a backflip. I shuffled around and stared toward the dark hallway leading to the bedroom. I straightened my shoulders, grit my teeth, and hobbled toward the psycho slaughterer’s black lair.
Every hair on my body was standing at attention. My mind was screaming, Nooooooo!
In the dim light, Steve looked like a gray mannequin. He appeared to still be unconscious, sprawled out on his back in the bed. I leaned over him and patted down his shirt pocket. Nothing. I grimaced and reached my cuffed hands into his right pants pocket. I felt something...but it wasn’t a key.
Ugh!
I jerked my hands away. Steve groaned.
Lord help me! I need to get those keys before he comes to!
I couldn’t see crap. So, I fumbled on the wall for a light switch and flipped it on.
In the blinding light, Steve snorted and rolled onto his side. As he did so, his ball cap and wig remained where they were, like hacked off body parts. Steve had been wearing a disguise!
The dirtbag was bald! And his head was shaped like....
I stared at his face. My mind’s eye filled in his smarmy, pencil-thin moustache until it was as thick as a wooly brown caterpillar.
Steve wasn’t Steve. Steve was Goober.
I was so shocked I could have beaten him senseless.
But I’d already done that.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I laid a cool washrag on Goober’s bumpy forehead and looked around the room. Everything was so familiar now. I could feel my face redden at my own wild imaginings. The garbage bags hanging on the walls...they didn’t hold dead bodies, but Cold Cuts’ disguises. I was inside Glad’s old RV, not a murder mobile. The source of the dead-rat smell was as yet to be determined. Perhaps Goober had returned to his old pet-cremation job. Given the other options for the foul odor, I actually hoped that was the case.
Goober groaned. I wiped his brow.
“Are you all right?” I asked, and shook his shoulder gently.
He cracked open a dizzy eye. It focused on me and Goober recoiled like a Mossberg shotgun.
“Stop,” he grunted. He kicked his legs feebly like an overturned tortoise and scooted a foot away from me. “It’s me...Goober! Don’t –”
I grimaced with guilt. “I know, Goober! I didn’t know! I mea
n, I know now,” I fumbled. “What the hell are you doing here? Were you trying to murderize me?”
“What?” Goober grunted. “No. Whatever gave you that idea?”
I glanced at the mannequin hand sticking out of a garbage bag, then at my cuffed hands, then at the twin knots growing out of Goober’s forehead like devil’s horns.
“Gee, I dunno.”
“WERE THE HANDCUFFS and duct tape really necessary?” I asked, and rubbed my freed wrists.
“I didn’t have time to explain,” Goober said. He was sitting across from me in the RV’s dinette booth nursing his lumps and a beer. “I knew you’d have to hear every gory detail before you’d go with me.”
“That’s not true,” I sulked, knowing it darn well was.
“Come on, Val. There was no time for Q and A. The natives were getting mighty restless, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
I conceded with a sneer. “So, where’d you get the badge?”
Goober reached in his back pocket. “You mean this thing?” He flashed a Donut VIP badge just like the one Winky had given me.
I shook my head and snorted out a laugh.
Goober shot me a crooked grin. His smarmy moustache, combined with the light reflecting off the twin knots on his forehead, made him the spitting image of what I thought a psycho killer should look like.
“I had to rescue you Val, before you succumbed to the dark side.”
“Before I.... What in blue blazes are you talking about?”
“See? You’re already starting to sound like a hillbilly. That twang in your voice? Then that comment you made to Stumpy...that the trailer park felt like home? Really, Val. You were one step away from playing a tune on a moonshine jug.”
“I was not! And anyway, what were you doing there? Did Tom send you to spy on me?”
“Naw.” Goober felt one of his horn-lumps as he spoke. “He called me and said you needed your spare keys. He’d tried to get back with you, but you never answered. He got worried when he couldn’t reach you, and called me. I’ve recently become a free agent, in case you haven’t heard. I volunteered to drop the keys by and make sure you were all right.”
Seven Daze: Redneck Rendezvous (A Val Fremden Mystery Book 7) Page 13