Val & Pals Boxed Set: Volumes 1,2 & the Prequel (Val & Pals Humorous Mystery Series)

by Margaret Lashley

  “Why the makeup today, kiddo? You don’t need it.”

  “I was going to meet a friend…or should I say, ex-friend for coffee this morning. She ditched me. I guess I’m no longer up to her standards.”

  Glad leaned across her beach lounger and took my hand in hers – something she’d never done before. “Let me tell you something, girlie. Who gives a shit what that cow-brained heifer thinks a you? All that matters is what you think a you. And if you don’t mind me sayin’ so, I think you’re kind a wonderful, Val.”

  Hot tears sprang up and spilled from my eyes, tightening my throat so that I couldn’t speak. Glad smiled, let go of my hand and sank back into her lounger. After a while, I wiped my eyes on my beach towel, picked up my beer and took a big gulp.

  Jedi Master Glad chose that precise moment to lift a scrawny butt cheek and trumpet out a magnificent, flappy-assed fart. My reaction was involuntary and immediate – I choked and spewed two foamy furrows of Fosters straight out my nostrils like a rabid dragon. I nearly suffocated between gasps and giggles. Glad shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly and smiled at me with a grin Jimmy Carter couldn’t match.

  It was weird. A few short weeks ago, I would’ve been aghast at Glad’s behavior. But at that particular moment I realized I’d felt nothing remotely on par with horror or disgust or shame. Glad’s flatulent act was no longer an embarrassing faux pas to me. Instead, it was a wake-up call – a noisy refusal to be defined by social mores. It was…total freedom! Glad’s words were not just some bullshit theory from an old gasbag. She had mastered total, who-gives-a-shit self-acceptance. I wanted that!

  Glad sat up and drained her can of Fosters, then tossed it at me playfully, startling me out of my inner machinations.

  “We all create our own dad-gum prisons, Val. But I’m here to tell you, we always got a-hold a the keys. We got the power to set ourselves free anytime. Anytime. All you got to do is choose to feel good, no matter what kind a shit rolls your way.”

  I nodded at the wise old guru disguised as beef jerky. She’s right.

  I sniffed back a drop of inhaled beer tickling my nose and looked out at the ocean. A single thought whirled around in my head like a water sprite. I have the keys. I have the keys. I have the keys.

  So why am I still loitering around in an orange jumpsuit, waiting for someone else’s permission to go free?

  Chapter Four

  Over the next few weeks, a new feeling began to take hold in my heart. I wasn’t sure what to call it, but I think it might have been hope. In a surge of renewed optimism, I dusted off my old resume and writing portfolio and began to look up some old contacts in the advertising industry. I also applied for waitress positions at a couple of restaurants on the beach and downtown, just in case my old copywriting career was as dead on arrival as I had felt on that plane from Frankfurt.

  Yes. Glad’s crazy-but-effective, no-bullshit tutelage had started to take root. I noticed I felt freer, looser somehow, like a crab that had sloughed off an old carapace that no longer fit. With new room to breathe, a tightly bound knot of rubber bands had begun to unravel in my chest. The unexpected snaps pinched and hurt, but the relief always outweighed the pain. Glad, it seemed, turned out to be good medicine, even though her words were sometimes hard to swallow.

  ***

  One morning, as I pulled Shabby Maggie into Caddy’s parking lot, my cellphone pinged. It was a text from Cannon & Tate Advertising thanking me for my interest in a position there. Unfortunately, the feeling was not reciprocal. Another rejection. Shit.

  I grabbed my beach chair out of the backseat. As I picked my way across the parking lot, I stepped on a broken clam shell and blew out my flip-flop. Crap! I hobbled and hopped my way along the parking lot on one foot. When I reached the soft beach sand, I took off my good flip-flop and tossed both cheap-ass shoes in a garbage bin. I looked up and saw Glad waving at me. I started to wave back when my phone pinged with another text message. I read it. Shit. Apparently, Beachshore Grille didn’t think I had what it took to be waitress, either.

  “Shit, shit and double shit!” I yelled loud enough for Glad to hear.

  “What’s up, Kiddo?” Glad said from somewhere under her floppy hat and sunglasses.

  I walked up to her and held my phone out for her to see. “Look. Two rejections in five minutes! With my luck, I don’t think I could get a job cleaning shoes in a shit factory.”

  Glad took off her hat and glasses and glanced at the phone. “Don’t sweat it, Kiddo. You’ll get a job when you set your mind to it.” She smiled and wagged her McDonald’s-arches-for-eyebrows at me. The perfect half-crescents of black eyebrow pencil scrawled on Glad’s sun-spotted forehead gave her a permanent look of astonishment that had, at first, made me secretly embarrassed for her. Now, seeing the double arches in action caused a smile of endearment to curl my lips, despite my frustration over my unemployment situation.

  “But I really need a job now,” I whined. I pouted as I set up my beach chair, then fumbled through my bag for a copy of The St. Petersburg Times I’d folded to the job classifieds.

  Glad sat back in her lounger and returned her pink Gilligan hat to its perch atop her short shock of silver hair. She reached a long, Slim Jim arm toward the cooler for another beer and said, “I think you should hold out for the job you really want.” She punctuated the end of her sentence with the click and vacuum-whoosh of a fresh can of beer opening.

  As I watched her take a slug of beer, my smile evaporated and my own eyebrows scrunched angrily together. “You don’t get it,” I argued. “I lost my career, Glad! I need to get back in the workforce. Otherwise, how am I going to be a worthwhile citizen?”

  Glad shot me a sideways glance and began laughing so hard she spilled beer all over her purple, polka-dotted swimsuit. She slapped her knee and said, “Worthwhile citizen! What kind a horseshit is that?”

  My mind raced around for the right answer. Somehow it wasn’t as easy to pluck black-and-white from my grey matter anymore. Glad watched my struggle with what appeared to me to be the kind of patient amusement reserved for kindergarteners and idiots. I finally fumbled out something that sounded familiar. “To be productive, Glad! To keep the economy going. To make a difference in the world. It’s what we were taught to believe!”

  Glad sat up in her pink lounger, dug her bony brown toes in the white sand and beamed at me like a mother who just taught her daughter to go potty all by herself. “Bingo, Kiddo! You hit the dang nail on the head!” Glad’s blue, laser-beam eyes stared intently into my own dark-brown ones for what seemed like a minute, searching for something but failing to find it. Finally, she explained, “It’s what we were taught to believe. But whose beliefs are they really, Val?”

  “I don’t know, Glad!” I shrieked, then shriveled into a growing grey uncertainty. “Everyone’s, I guess.”

  “Not mine!” Glad slapped her thin brown thigh and cackled out a laugh. Not a cynical laugh. A genuine, hearty laugh laced with a good Southern helping of joy. “I haven’t done much else but sit my ass in this chair and drink beer for the last twenty years. Do you think I’m a worthwhile citizen, Kiddo? Tell the truth now. You know it’s all the same to me.”

  I turned the ignition on my old belief system, but the judgmental engine just sputtered and failed. I got out of the old jalopy and slammed the door defiantly. “Before I got to know you, I might have said no, Glad, you weren’t a worthwhile citizen. But now…now I’d say yes.”

  Glad’s expression never wavered. “So, Val, what changed your mind?”

  “You did.”

  “Little ol’ me?” Glad grinned and planted a hand on her hip, then jabbed an index finger into her dimpled cheek and twisted it provocatively like a pinup girl from back in her day.

  I wanted to laugh but my throat was swollen tight with the pressure of unshed tears. “You’re the most worthwhile person I know, Glad,” I managed to choke out.

  Glad’s arms dropped to her sides and her eyes grew as liquid as min
e. “But I haven’t changed a peep since we met, Val.”

  “I know,” I said. “What does that mean?”

  Glad sat back in her lounger and grinned at me proudly. “It means you have.”

  Chapter Five

  Glad was right. I’d not only changed. I’d been turned upside-down and inside-out.

  Before I met Glad, I’d read about six million self-help books trying to fix my broken life. But nothing ever cut through the crap like a single hour with her. I’d never laughed so hard or felt so totally accepted in my entire life. Over weeks of “drinkin’ and discussin’” as she called it, Glad had become my friend, my confidant, my surrogate mom, even. I could tell her anything and she’d find the bright side. I could be so down I didn’t know up and she’d get me laughing until I nearly peed my bathing-suit bottom.

  “There ain’t no subject off limits to a good laugh,” she liked to say.

  After six weeks of “Glad Therapy,” I had begun to see her point.

  So I was surprised one Monday at the end of June when I dropped my beach bag by Glad’s lounger and she didn’t say a word. The orange glare of the rising sun reflected off her dark sunglasses, obscuring her eyes. I figured she was asleep.

  Feeling lighter and more playful than I had in years, I decided to have some fun. I snuck up behind her and tried to catch her off guard. “Screw you, Kiddo!” I yelled, and jumped flat-footed in front of her, my arms up Karate-chop style like in some bad ninja movie.

  Glad didn’t respond. I touched her arm. Even in the summer heat she felt cold. I nudged her. Nothing. The hair on my arms and the back of my neck bristled. I squatted down beside her and shook Glad by her boney brown shoulders. Her sunglasses fell off. Her once bright-blue eyes were dull. The heat had already wicked them dry. Glad was dead.

  A knife blade stabbed my heart, making my knees buckle. My mentor, my only friend, my touchstone was…gone. Not knowing what else to do, I folded Glad’s arms gently across her chest and covered her with my beach towel. Then I collapsed down on top of her and cried. I just let it rip through me, hot and heavy and draining. I cried for Glad and all the other people I’d lost along the way. “Thanks for being my friend,” I whispered in her cold, brown ear. “I know wherever you are now, they’re lucky to have you.”

  I’m sure it was just my grieving mind, but I swear I heard her whisper back, “You bet your ass, Kiddo.”

  I hugged Glad’s body tight one last time. She let out a long, flappy fart. I laughed involuntarily, which set me off on another crying jag, this time mostly for myself. Eventually, I pulled it together a bit and rubbed the dripping snot from my nose onto the beach towel. I whispered goodbye to Glad one more time, then got up and stumbled blindly toward Caddy’s beach bar. I told the first waitress I ran across what had happened.

  “Not Glad!” she’d screamed. Two other waitresses had come running over to find out what was wrong. Within a minute or two, around twenty people had gathered up in a circle, hanging on each other’s shoulders and sobbing. Even the old guy who picked up trash on the beach broke down when he heard the news. It turned out that all the employees and half the customers at Caddy’s had known Glad. Why wouldn’t they? Unlike me, Glad had been an open book worth reading. Making friends had come easy for her.

  Paralyzed with unfamiliarity, I watched through a yellow-grey haze as the usual stuff that happened next swirled around me. I saw an ambulance arrive. I heard them pronounce Glad dead. They loaded her on a stretcher. They zipped a grey bag up around her. They shoved her into the back of an ambulance. Its lights were off. There was no hurry.

  Finally, one of the paramedics came up and asked who was going to identify and claim the body, as Glad had no ID on her. It was quiet for a moment, then several people all at once said, “I will.” I was one of those voices. The sad chorus that accompanied me belonged to three grungy guys I’d often seen hanging around Caddy’s. I didn’t know their names, so I felt obliged to introduce myself.

  “I’m Val,” I said, squeezing the required breath out of my tight, empty lungs. My words wafted softly in the steamy air. My eyes wandered, unseeing, nowhere in particular.

  “We know who you are,” one of the men answered.

  The thick, Southern twang in his voice coaxed me back to attention. The first thing my watery eyes focused on was a herniated navel protruding from a swollen beer belly as tight as a satiated tick’s. The belly was attached to a short, thick man in a baggy, knee-length bathing suit. “I’m Wally,” he said, holding out a pudgy, freckled hand for me to shake. “But Glad liked to call me Winky.”

  “Wee Willie Winky. Get it?” I heard Glad’s familiar voice whisper in my ear.

  Instantly, the stabbing pain in my heart was forgotten. I struggled to stifle an unwelcome giggle rising up my throat like soda bubbles, pinging against my tonsils. I had the unfortunate habit of giggling when I was nervous, but this was something different. This was a real, honest-to-god laugh trying to get heard. I bit down hard and shook Wee Willie’s hand. Damn it, Glad! Won’t you let me be sad even at your passing?

  “How do you know me? Have we met?” I asked Wee Willie – Wally – whatever!

  “We seen you sittin’ with Glad all them times,” said Winky, scratching his bare belly with a dirty index finger. “But she told us not to bother you two. Said you had important thangs to discuss that didn’t need no man messin’ it up.”

  “Oh. Well…thanks for that, I guess.” The words felt strange and sticky in my throat.

  “I’m Stu,” said another man, sidelining Winky for my attention. He was taller. A good six feet at least. Thin build. Huge moustache. Head as bald and brown as a roasted peanut. Yeah, a peanut.

  “But Glad called me Goober.”

  I nearly choked. Another freaking inside joke! I made a pathetic attempt to pass my unwanted laughter off as crying. Failing that and not wanting to appear insane, I excused myself and bolted to the ladies room to compose myself. “Goddammit Glad!” I said under my breath as I closed the stall door. “This isn’t funny!” I collapsed onto the toilet and buried my face in my hands, laughing and crying and laughing and crying until I couldn’t tell one from the other anymore. God I’m going to miss that woman!

  “You all right in there honey?” I heard a woman’s voice ask from the other side of the stall.

  “Yes, thanks,” I answered, then blew my nose on some toilet roll.

  “Okie dokie then. I’m here if you need me, you know.”

  “Thanks Glad,” I said without thinking.

  I sat there another second before the realization hit me. Glad! I jumped up off the toilet and slung open the stall door. No one was there. I knew I heard Glad’s voice, first outside and now in the restroom. I wondered if I might be going crazy. Then I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and removed all doubt. Suffice it to say, Alice Cooper was not a good look for me. I smoothed my dark, afro-wannabe hair with my hands, then yanked a paper towel out of the dispenser on the wall. I reached over to turn on the tap and my hand jerked back involuntarily. A huge, greenish-blue dragonfly was perched on the faucet handle. Its iridescent wings spanned a good four or five inches.

  It rested on the tap patiently as I cleaned an inch of smeary black mascara from under each eye. For some reason, the insect’s presence didn’t freak me out. Instead, I felt a strange calm wash over me. Once I was quasi-presentable again, I reached out my right index finger and the dragonfly crawled onboard. I carried it out of the bathroom. As soon as we hit the open air it flew off with a bee-like buzz of its rainbow wings.

  “There she is!” I heard someone yell. I looked around, half expecting, as if by dragonfly magic, to see Glad appear out of a mist. Instead, I saw the three beach bums heading my way.

  “There you are!” said Goober, formerly known as Stu. He hitched up his baggy beige cargo shorts. “We were worried about you.”

  “You were?” I asked incredulously. “You don’t even know me.”

  “We don’t stand on no ga
ul-dang formalities here, Miss Val,” said Winky. He folded his hands over his naked beer belly in a way that made me feel it was a display of redneck respect.

  “Any friend of Glad’s is our friend, too,” said the third man in a shy, half-whisper. He was of medium height and build, with blue-black hair and café-con-leche skin. Nice looking in an Antonio-Banderas-hits-the-skids kind of way. “I’m Jorge,” he said, then looked at my sandals.

  “I told the paramedics to take her to Grabb’s Funeral Home on Central Avenue,” Goober interrupted before I could say anything. He absently smoothed his huge moustache with a swipe of his right thumb and index finger. His eyes shifted left and right as if searching for something. “But without ID, they’ll only take her to the county morgue,” he continued. “We’ll have to figure something out. Meantime, we need to take up a collection for the cremation, pronto. Death doesn’t come cheap anymore. Once we get Glad’s remains back, we can have a little ceremony out at the beach. Scatter her ashes out in the Gulf and stuff.”

  “I want to help,” I said. “What can I do?”

  “Thanks, Val,” replied Goober. “Mighty nice of you. Well, first off we’re going to need a big coffee can. Anybody here got one?”

  “We ain’t puttin’ her in no gaul-dang Folgers can like they did in The Big Lebowski!” yelled “Wee Willie” Winky. The pudgy little freckled guy’s lips were white. The rest of his face was the color of a Bloody Mary. “I won’t stand for it, I’m tellin’ ya right now, it will not stand!”

  I studied Winky for a moment. Having come from a family that made The Jerry Springer Show look like The Sound of Music, I knew the difference between a bat-shit crazy redneck and a Southern man who just happened to have a red neck. (Neither one should be crossed, mind you. But while both would sleep with your sister to get back at you, only one would kill your dog to even the score.) When in doubt, I always looked for a ponytail. It was never a good sign. Wee Willie had a buzz cut, no tail. I quietly breathed a sigh of relief.