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

by Margaret Lashley

  As I pulled up behind Jorge, a thought dawned on me that I wished hadn’t. This is the guy you’re turning to for help, Val? Who’s more pathetic, you or him? I blew out a breath and cut the ignition.

  Jorge was busy taking a slug from his pocket rocket when I tapped on the window of his grey-and-bondo colored Buick.

  “Hola, Jorge, como estas?” I asked through the glass, pretty much using up all the Spanish I knew.

  Jorge came to life like a puppy in a petting zoo. “Bien! Y tu?” He jumped out of the ratty Buick and gave me a hug. He smelled of Old Spice and whiskey, but he was steady on his feet. Good sign.

  We walked into the depressingly dingy, greasy-spoon diner and slid into the usual corner booth. The waitress wiped her hands on her dirty apron and rolled her eyes. What’s with the ’tude? We’re paying customers. I shot her a look and turned back to Jorge.

  “Jorge, we’ve got to do something about Glad.” I wiped sticky coffee rings off the table with a mysteriously damp paper napkin. “I think I found her Minnie Winnie. The one she said she lived in when she first came to St. Pete.”

  “Yeah? So what? She’s dead.” I watched the fledgling spark falter in Jorge’s eyes.

  “I know,” I said quickly, hoping to keep his interest alive. “So is Tony, the garbage guy at Caddy’s. It said in the paper that Tony left everything to Glad in his will.” I knew I was taking a leap on my “G” theory, but I didn’t want to complicate things too much for Jorge’s sloshed brain cells. My strategy seemed to work.

  “No chit!” Jorge sat up. His mouth formed a smile, then a frown, then a smile, then a frown again. I guess he was trying to decide whether to be sad about Tony or happy about Glad. Then his mouth went still and he spoke woodenly. “Like I said before, Val. So what? Glad is dead.”

  Jorge sunk back into the dilapidated booth. His dull eyes followed the plump waitress as she slammed two worn, brown plastic mugs of coffee down on the table. She rolled her eyes again, plastered on a fake, weary smile and asked the obligatory question, “Will there be anything else?”

  “Not at the moment,” I answered. Again with the attitude. WTF!

  I don’t like attitude. I waited tables to pay my way through college, and knew what a pain in the ass customers could be. We weren’t that type. We were nice enough. We just stayed for hours. No big deal most days. Who goes to Water Loo’s anyway? Nobody but drunks and assholes. We were mostly the former, so I didn’t get why the waitress found us so annoying.

  “Alrighty, then,” she said dismissively, then padded off behind the serving station to get busy ignoring us. I tried to shrug off her negative vibe by turning my attention back to Jorge.

  “Yes, Jorge. I know Glad’s dead. But she might have a family somewhere who could use the inheritance, whatever it might be.” I watched Jorge’s expression go from so-what to shut-down. Shit! I’d gone and used the “f” word – family. Big no-no. Based on his reaction I might as well have slapped Jorge in the chops. “Sorry! It just slipped out,” I whined, trying to backpedal.

  Jorge turned away from me. He lowered his head and started nodding at some unseen object in the seat beside him. The moment felt surreal, and I felt like a turd. Then I remembered that I’d brought the ex-cop a bribe.

  “Look what I got you!” I squealed with fake delight. I held up a green and silver can. Jorge stopped nodding at his invisible demons and cocked his ear in my direction. “Your favorite!” I teased. He ventured a glance my way. “Coco Rico!” I said in my best Spanish accent, wiggling my torso in a mock cha-cha. Jorge turned around and smiled tentatively. I handed him the can of coconut-flavored soda and beamed a smile at him big enough to be seen from an orbiting satellite.

  He took the can, nodded and cracked the tab. “Salute,” he said solemnly, then slung his head back and took a deep draught. When he did, I could see three small crosses tattooed like a necklace into the crease where Jorge’s neck met his chest. One cross for his dead wife, two for his kids, I presumed. Jorge was a broken man, but as far as I could tell, he still enjoyed a few simple pleasures. Coco Rico and whiskey appeared to be the main two. As I studied Jorge, his blue-black wavy hair reminded me of a dark, tempestuous sea. A reflection of his tormented soul, perhaps. Winky’s arrival at Water Loo’s saved me from diving in too deep.

  “Thar’s my peeps!” he crooned, swaggering shirtless over to the booth like a bulldog pimp. Winky’s chest was almost hairless, but he made up for it in freckles. In fact, the rusty orange spots looked as if they might overtake his skin completely one day.

  As I studied the constellation of freckles that held Winky together, the plump waitress with the bad attitude came running over with a spare shirt. Winky puffed up like a movie star. “This fine establishment here keeps a few extra shirts on hand for us lackadaisical beach fellers.”

  “When you gonna learn?” chided the chubby little hash slinger. She held up a huge yellow tee shirt that probably belonged to Big Bird from Sesame Street before he lost it in a drunken brawl. The arms of the young waitress were as tight as sausage casing and white as alabaster. The contrast was striking against her black hair and red glasses. “No shirt, no service, Winky. You know the rules.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Winky said almost shyly. He winked salaciously at the waitress and took the wilted shirt with a dainty pinch of fingers. Redneck etiquette – rednetiquette! The waitress upped the ante on his wink with a slightly naughty, deeply dimpled smile. Interesting.

  “You got somethin’ against clothes?” Jorge asked as he grudgingly slid over to make room for Winky’s pudgy and probably freckled butt.

  “At least I can still park in the parkin’ lot, Peemeister,” Winky shot back.

  Jorge opened his mouth to say something, but I wanted to nip this dogfight in the bud.

  “Did you hear about Tony?” I blurted at Winky.

  “Yep. Pummeled by a pile a pornos, I bet. All in all not a bad way for a feller to go.”

  “Since when do you read the paper, Winky?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Thay’s a lot you don’t know about me, Val. Still waters run deep, don’t cha know.”

  “I got chore still waters right here,” Jorge said, grabbing his crotch.

  “I bet you do…,” Winky shot back. He tried to stand up but was thwarted by lack of maneuvering space between the booth, the table and his impressive beer belly.

  “Knock it off, guys!” I said, exasperated. I tried again to shift their focus. “Winky, did you see the picture of the backyard? There’s a Minnie Winnie in all that junk. I think it may be Glad’s. We might have a chance to find out more about her. Who she really was. If she had a fa…. If she had friends. Aren’t you guys curious at all?”

  “Sure. Tell us more.” The baritone voice from overhead belonged to Goober. He’d snuck up on us during our enthralling intellectual exchange.

  “I want to get inside that Minnie Winnie…” I began.

  “Me too!” Winky hollered, cutting me off mid-sentence. Winky laughed like a deranged woodpecker. Jorge and Goober snickered and exchanged high-fives.

  “What? I don’t get it,” I said with growing annoyance. What am I doing here? When did I sign up to be the butt end of a joke for a booth full of freaking homeless guys?

  Goober edged into the booth beside me, absorbing me into his mushroom cloud of body odor. He picked up a spoon and used it as a pointer. He seemed to have a thing for spoons. “See that waitress over there? Chubby one with the red specs?”

  “Yes.” It was the waitress with the bad attitude.

  “Name’s Winnie,” he said, grinning and giving me an elbow to the ribs.

  “Ah. Good one,” I said, nodding at Winky. “You’d like to be inside…ha ha. I get it. Very funny.”

  Winky scrunched up his freckled face like a naughty kid and grinned. I faked a smile and tried for a third time to herd the hapless hobos toward my own topic of interest. “Like I said, I want to get into that RV, maybe even the house. Tony left all his stuff to a
woman named Thelma G. Goldrich. I think that could be Glad.”

  “It’s a long shot,” said Jorge, straightening up in his seat. “Why would he leave everything to a dead woman?” Interest and something approaching sobriety appeared on his face. Impressive, considering how pickled his brain must have been.

  “He probably made the will before Glad died and didn’t have time to change it,” I offered.

  “Maybe. I dunno. But if you think it’s worth looking into, Val, I’m pretty sure I can get my friend Tommy to get us the address. Maybe let us in the house, too. We’re still tight. His brother married my cousin Mercedes. Tommy’s a lieutenant now, so he can pretty much do what he wants without a lot of other guys breathing down his neck.”

  “Great! Call him,” I said.

  “I don’t have a phone.”

  “Use mine.”

  I fished around in my purse and handed Jorge my cellphone. He punched in Tommy’s number from memory. His friend on the force didn’t need any arm twisting. A minute or so later Jorge clicked off the phone and smiled. “He’s checking on the address. Then he’s on his way.”

  We had just enough time to pay the bill and offer up a “Screw you, Kiddo” toast to Glad before Jorge’s friend Lieutenant Tom Foreman pulled into the parking lot. I piled into his squad car along with the stooges and headed off to commit my first official crime – breaking and entering.

  ***

  On the ride over, I sat wedged between Jorge and Goober in the backseat of the patrol car. Winky had called shotgun, so he got to ride upfront with Tom the cop. Apparently those were stooge rules. I made a mental note of it.

  We headed south on Gulf Boulevard past a line of 1950’s era pastel-colored hotels and motels planted just feet from the road. Wedged cheek to jowl, the small, two-and-three story mom-and-pop establishments obscured the stunning beach that lay just on the other side. In fact, the only hint we were near the Gulf was the carnival parade of sunburned, hungover tourists who stumbled along the sidewalk in too-tight bathing suits and too-late sun hats.

  As we passed the bumblebee-striped Bilmar hotel, Jorge and Goober began discussing whether or not Winky could be trusted inside Tony’s house. Sandwiched between the two, I had no alternative but to eavesdrop like a nosy ping-pong ball.

  “He’ll mess things up for sure,” Jorge whispered to Goober. “You remember what he did at Kat’s New Year’s party.” Jorge put his mouth to my ear. I got the heebie-jeebies as he whispered, “He went through that poor lady’s drawers and came out wearing her leopard print bra like a pair of earmuffs.”

  “Point taken,” Goober said under his breath. “I’ll never forget the scene at Sea Hag’s. Who knew so many toilet rolls could fit down somebody’s pants?”

  “Or at Hal’s funeral when he…”

  “Oh god. Don’t even say it,” Goober said, cutting Jorge off. “Nothing’s sacred to Winky. Not even the dead. Better leave his ass in the car.”

  “How we gonna do that?” asked Jorge. “The boy’s got a fuse as short as his Johnson.”

  “Leave that to me,” Goober said. He closed one eye and tapped his bald noggin with his right index finger. “Hey Winky!” Goober yelled across to the front seat.

  Winky’s head popped around to face us, tongue out like an eager, ginger-haired pug.

  “We need you to keep an eye out for Tony’s nosy neighbor while we search the place,” Goober explained like a military strategist. “Tony told me she looks spot-on-a-match like Pamela Anderson. Likes to prance around half naked in front of her windows. Even sunbathes topless sometimes in the front yard. We don’t want her poking around, messing up our plans.”

  “I’m on it, chief!” Winky shot back. He made a thumbs-up next to his right ear. “You can count on me!”

  I took a sideways glance at the peanut-headed commander in chief. Maybe Goober wasn’t such a dummy after all.

  The squad car turned east off Gulf Boulevard into the low-key, red brick entry to Bahia Shores, one of the first subdivisions built on the strip island in the 1950s. Officer Tom drove slowly along curvy streets with kitsch names like Bikini Way and Bali Hi Court before finding Bimini Circle. At the end of the cul-de-sac, he backed his car expertly into the driveway of a flat-roofed, ranch-style house painted tired shades of taupe to match the desolate, gravel-strewn yard. The only specks of green around the place were one straggly pygmy date palm and a few knots of hardcore weeds that had managed to scratch a living amongst the graveyard of dusty stones. The nondescript house was a dump, probably no bigger than a thousand square feet. But the backyard butted up against the Intracoastal Waterway, making the shack worth half a million, easy. Welcome to Florida.

  “We’ll be back in fifteen, tops,” said Jorge to his cop friend.

  The blond lieutenant gave one quick nod. Then, without a word, he got out and opened the backdoor and returned to his place in the driver’s seat. He pulled out some paperwork and tried to ignore Winky, who was wiggling in the passenger seat beside him like a wormy puppy. The rest of us tumbled out of the squad car and made our way toward the backyard. Dusty gravel crunched under the soles of our shoes. I glanced back at the squad car just before we rounded the corner of the house. Winky had his greasy nose and pudgy hands pressed against the glass of the passenger window, giving him the appearance of a fat kid trapped underwater. I shook my head. The other two stooges had been right. Good call to leave him behind.

  Jorge and I watched as Goober picked his way through the backyard and squeezed his tall, lanky frame between a jumble of abandoned stoves and discarded jalousie windows. He climbed over a rusty refrigerator carcass with his grasshopper legs and tried the door on the RV.

  “Locked!” he called out. “Let’s check out the house. Maybe there’s a key somewhere.”

  Jorge stepped around a jumble of dead bicycles and picked the backdoor lock in a matter of seconds. I wondered how many times he’d done that before. The door cracked open and a smell like fruit-flavored death came pouring out. The back door was right off the kitchen. On the counter, a black pile of slime wriggled. Houseflies buzzed around us like kamikazes. Against my will I took a closer look at the writhing lump on the counter next to the sink. Maggots. A million of them were making the heap that used to be bananas fidget and squirm like a nerd on a first date. I gagged involuntarily. Jorge just looked at the pile and grunted. I watched as he disappeared between the two-meter high columns of magazines, his eyes darting around as if taking in every aspect of the scene around him.

  “Holy mother of god, would you just look at all this shit!” Goober shouted, scaring me. He had trailed in behind me and was the only one tall enough to view the chaos in its entirety.

  “Cripes, Goober!” I said, annoyed at myself for being frightened. “Can you see Jorge?”

  He peeked around and shook his mustachioed head. “Negatory.”

  The small, galley-shaped kitchen was surprisingly clean, except for the banana corpses. Besides the backdoor, the only way out of the kitchen was through the narrow gauntlet formed by stacks of yellowing St. Petersburg Times.

  “He went that way,” I said, pointing at the foot-wide slit between newspapers.

  “Oh goody. Onward and upward,” Goober said dryly. He wiped the sweat from his bald head with a handkerchief. “You’re the teeny-tiny lady. You get to go first.”

  I wished I had on a hazmat suit instead of a sundress and sandals. I took a deep breath and squeezed by stacks of dusty magazines and newspapers and sacks of god knows what else. Goober trailed behind me, punctuating the journey with curse-laden comments. Finally, we reached an opening that led to a bathroom. I flipped on the light switch. Like the kitchen, it, too, appeared perfectly normal. The vintage, flamingo-pink tiles gleamed in the light from the three round bulbs above the vanity. The matching pink tub and toilet were immaculate.

  I could make out telltale tape marks on the mirror where something – most likely Tony’s will – had been affixed for someone to find. Two lonely toothbrush
es hung in a black ceramic holder built into the wall by the sink. In the center of the holder stood a tube of denture cream. My heart flinched. Could it be Glad’s? But lots of people have dentures. Especially in St. Petersburg, the city known affectionately as “God’s waiting room.”

  I opened the medicine cabinet. Unlike most people’s bathrooms, there was no huge collection of caramel-colored prescription bottles. Who needs Prozac when you’ve got pilsner? No drugs. Just mouthwash and deodorant…and nail polish and lipsticks! A woman had lived here, for sure! I picked up one of the lipsticks. The color was called Certainly Red. Glad’s color if there ever was one!

  I opened a drawer and discovered I had spoken too soon about the prescription meds. I picked up the lone brown plastic bottle and read the label. It was a gag prescription for Fukitol. Against my will I burst out laughing.

  “You all right in there?” Goober poked his peanut head around the doorframe.

  “Yes. Hey, Goober, Tony wanted you to have this.” I tossed him the bottle. He caught it midair with his long, basketball-player fingers.

  “Hmmm. Fukitol,” Goober read as he held the bottle close to his face with one hand and smoothed down his moustache with the other. “Recommended by six out of five doctors. I like the odds. But honestly, I prefer JD myself. That’s Jack Daniels, in case you didn’t know.”

  “I get it. I’m a TNT gal, myself.”

  “Ahh, Tanqueray and tonic,” Goober said, raising his eyebrows a good inch. “Classy, yet unsophisticated.”

  “High praise indeed,” I sneered. I was about to close the bathroom drawer when I heard a muffled voice.