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

by Margaret Lashley

  I drained my coffee cup and flopped onto the worn-out old sofa sagging against a wall in my tiny living room. I’d found the unfortunate couch abandoned here by the woman who had the apartment before me. Looking at it now, I couldn’t blame her. It was truly hideous – coffee-stain beige with shit-brown cushions that hung over the back like lumpy, misshapen bags of garbage. But my butt didn’t care. Truth be told, I was actually grateful. It sure beat sitting on the floor.

  The prior tenant had also left a microwave, some mismatched dishes, an old full-sized bed and a lawn table with four chairs. Arriving with nothing, at the time I’d felt like I’d hit the jackpot. The only things I had to buy were a towel, a set of sheets, Mr. Coffee and a computer. Truth be told, the simple life had its charms. I owned next to nothing, so I had next to nothing to lose.

  I reached over and grabbed the shoebox of memories I’d been sorting through last night. The first thing I pulled out of the box was a marriage certificate dated January 3, 1965, legally joining Gladys Kinsey to Robert C. Munch in holy matrimony. Bobby! Holy my ass! Geeze. That marriage date wasn’t more than a few weeks – a month or so tops – after poor Glad had given birth. Her parents must have wanted her gone, big time.

  The yellowed news clipping I picked up next erased that thought. Dated December 26, 1964, it was the obituary of Mr. Roy G. Kinsey and Mrs. Roy G. Kinsey. They, along with their son, Timmy L. Kinsey, had been killed December 24 in a car crash while away visiting relatives in Florida. They were survived by their only daughter, Gladys Kinsey, and Mrs. Kinsey’s cousin, Mrs. D. B. Meyers of Tallahassee.

  Poor Glad! Tragedy heaped on tragedy! A lost love. An illegitimate baby. Parents and brother dead. Left to cope alone with some woman named Mrs. Wannabaker who probably wasn’t even a relative!

  I wracked my brain. In all our beachside talks, Glad had never mentioned a baby to me. She must have had to give it up. Or it died. Could it have been this baby – and not Tony – that was Glad’s lost love?

  Life must have been pretty bleak for Glad to run off with Bobby so soon after giving birth. But as harsh as it was, Glad was probably lucky Bobby would have her. Back then, women with a past like Glad’s didn’t have a lot of options. Actually, neither did women in general. Looking through those old letters and clippings made me realize that until a few decades ago, no part of a married woman’s name was used in official correspondence. Instead, her identity was overwritten by her husband’s, leaving only the tiny letter “s” in Mrs. John Doe to distinguish her from him. That wasn’t going to make tracking down Glad’s relatives any easier, and it was starting to annoy me. I decided it was time for a break.

  ***

  I pulled into the parking lot at Water Loo’s at 10:15. Through the glass I could see the three melon heads of the stooges bobbing around in the dirty brown corner booth. It was already over 90 degrees and as humid as a sauna in Botswana. Sweat trickled down my back as I walked across the parking lot and up to the greasy entrance door. I reached for the handle and something in my mind clicked awake. How did I get here? It was as if my body had driven me on autopilot. Maybe even against my will. What am I doing here? I felt disoriented. Then I remembered. I chose to come here. I have nowhere else to go. I have nothing else to do. I have no one else to talk to.

  I took a deep breath and wondered how my life had sunk to this moment. Worse still, I worried if I might look back at some point in the future and call this the good old days. A thread of panic stitched my throat tight. God, if that’s true, kill me now. I swallowed hard, opened the door and stepped inside.

  “Val Pal!” shouted freckle-face Winky as he caught sight of me coming through the door.

  I grimaced out a smile. Welcome aboard the SS Sphincterville. Bend over and crack a smile.

  “Hey guys!” I said with faked, exaggerated enthusiasm. I walked over and slid into the booth next to Winky. I tried to maintain a bit of space between us, but he reached over and gave me a one-armed bear hug. Suddenly my face was an inch from the curly muff of ginger hair sticking out of the armhole of his sleeveless, neon-orange tank top. I held my breath and struggled to get free.

  “Always glad to see the Val Pal!” he chortled, squeezing me tighter against his freckled armpit. I was just beginning to think I might asphyxiate when he finally eased up on his grip.

  “Yeah, always a pleasure,” I said sarcastically as I pulled out of his headlock. I smoothed my hair and the front of my dress. I wanted to report my findings to Goober and Jorge, but I needed to get Winky out of the way. I glanced over at my grinning wrestling buddy and plastered on a fake smile. “Winky, could you go ask the waitress to get me a cup of coffee?”

  Winky jumped at the chance to speak with Winnie, just like I knew he would. I got up and let him out of the booth, then slid over next to Jorge. We waited for Winky to get out of earshot.

  “So what’d you find out?” asked Goober, a spoon clicking away in his mouth.

  “You’re not going to believe it, but I think Tony and Glad had a baby together.”

  Jorge, who had been sitting silent as a stone, suddenly burst to life. “A little muchacha! Or is it a muchacho?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. “And that baby would have to be in its mid-forties now.”

  Goober stopped clicking his lollipop spoon and straightened his back. “Wow. That means there may actually be somebody to claim Tony’s will.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “So Glad and Tony had a baby. But that’s not all I found out. I’m not sure she kept it. Long story short, Tony got sent off to some boy’s military school or something. Glad’s parents died in a car crash not long afterward. A couple of weeks, maybe a month after the crash Glad married a preacher named Bobby Munch and left town.”

  “What happened to the kid?” Goober asked.

  “I don’t know. She could have given it up for adoption. Her family may have taken it to live with relatives. It could have died for all I know. But I hope not.”

  “Via con Dios!” exhaled Jorge. “Poor, poor Glad. We have to find that kid. Her kid.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” I confessed. “I’ve got Glad’s birth date and a few names of people that could be friends or relatives. I was thinking you could get your friend Lieutenant Foreman to run some stuff for us through the police computers. What do you say?”

  “Jes, of course!”

  “Great!” I pushed my notes across the table toward him. I glanced around for Winky and saw a fly buzz around Goober’s bald head. He swatted at it absentmindedly, nearly backhanding Winnie the waitress as she came up from behind, trailed by lovesick Winky. She slammed a cup of coffee on the table in front of me, shot me a bitchy look and left. Winky snorted out a laugh and climbed back into the booth, sandwiching me between him and Jorge.

  “What’s up with her?” I asked Winky.

  “She’s yell us,” said Jorge, cocking his head toward Winky.

  “Yell us? What the blazes you talkin’ about?” demanded Winky.

  “Jealous, you idiot,” said Goober. “You just gave our lady friend here a hug. Winnie didn’t like that. Better watch out you don’t get any special sauce in your coffee, Val.”

  I looked down at my cup. A line of fine bubbles swam around the edge of the coffee. Maybe it was always like that. Maybe not. I didn’t feel like taking the chance. I shoved the cup away, causing the guys to roar with laughter.

  “You and Winnie have been flirting around for months. When you gonna seal the deal?” joked Jorge, reaching around me and jabbing Winky with an index finger.

  Winky waved a chubby fist at Jorge, his fat fingers an inch from my face. “I’m gonna seal your deal right now!” Winky’s face was bright red, but his anger seemed feigned. Poor little Winky was actually embarrassed! Redneck puppy love.

  “Alright already,” I griped. Keeping these guys on track was like trying to get earthworms to form a straight line and do the conga. I was about to ask Winky to get me another cup of coffee when he spotted the note I
’d given Jorge and grabbed it out of his hands like a grade-school bully.

  “Ha ha! Gotcha,” Winky sneered as he studied the paper. He inhaled, then blew out a whistle. “Hawesville, Kentucky, huh? I got a cousin up in them there parts.”

  “I didn’t know you could read, Winky,” I said. The comment garnered a snicker from Goober and Jorge.

  “Like I said before, Val. Still waters.” Winky tapped an index finger on his fat, buzz-cut noggin, never looking up from the note. “Woo hoo. Born in 1945. Glad what’n no spring chicken, that’s for sure.”

  “None of us are,” interjected Goober. “Have some respect for a lady.”

  “What lady?” Winky said, craning his head in an exaggerated attempt to search the vicinity.

  “I’m talking about Glad, you twit,” said Goober. He shook his head at me as he pointed a thumb at Winky. Then he remembered I was also a woman and hastily said, “And Val here, too.”

  “My deepest apologies to ladies both present and passed,” Winky said melodramatically, bowing his head in mock respect.

  “I thing it’s time for a toast,” said Jorge, snatching the paper back from Winky.

  “A toast!” echoed Goober and Winky.

  I knew what came next. And despite an effort not to, I smiled.

  Chapter Twelve

  When I peeled out of the Water Loo’s parking lot, the sky looked as if the gods had gotten drunk and spilled merlot all over the place. Dark reddish-purple smears surfed their way across the horizon eastward from the Gulf. I could already smell that familiar hint of metal and muck in the thickening air. I knew what that meant. I had about fifteen minutes to get home before the weather hit – and hard. I mashed the gas pedal and Maggie’s V8 engine roared deep and steady, like Barry White imitating a lion’s roar. I swung wide and turned off Gulf Boulevard onto First Avenue South. I hoped the synchronized lights would give me a straight shot to Third Street, then home.

  Summer storms in Florida always started out with a smattering of big, fat raindrops. They ended with torrential sheets of water being blown to bits by schizoid winds whipping first one way then the other. Our tropical storms rarely lasted more than half an hour, so they didn’t have any time to waste. In a matter of minutes you could count on at least a half-dozen lightning strikes cracking the ground, each one always just a bit too close for comfort.

  I was on Third Street and almost to the alley when the first tablespoon-sized drops smashed against the windshield. By the time I parked a minute later, I had the choice of waiting it out in the Sprint or getting soaked to the bone. A solid torrent of water turned the visibility to zero. I was reaching for the door handle when lightning struck nearby, filling the liquid air with a crackling blue-white light reminiscent of an old-time flash bulb. A kinetic boom of thunder came two seconds later, and echoed a long, trailing rumble that rattled Maggie’s windows and my teeth.

  As I sat waiting out the rain, I recalled reading somewhere that a car was the safest place to be in a thunderstorm. There was something about the rubber wheels grounding the car against electrical charge. Well, screw that. Upstairs in my apartment my new computer was still plugged in. If it got toasted by lightning I may as well be dead, too.

  I jumped out of the car and slammed the door behind me. Instantly, I was soaked to the skin in the deluge. I scrambled up the rickety stairs, fighting a vertical monsoon current. As I reached the top of the landing, I slipped and nearly fell. Like a scene out of a Charlie Chaplin movie, I made a spectacular recovery and leapt beneath the small porch sheltering the front door. Wiping rain from my eyes, I fumbled the key into the lock, tumbled inside and yanked the computer’s plug out of the socket. About a half-second later another bolt of lightning filled the apartment with angry, blue noise. The light over the kitchen stove went out and the microwave blurted a long, high-pitched, farewell bleep. Shit. Still, it could have been worse. Much worse.

  I got in the tub and peeled off my sopping clothes. After hanging them on the rod, I towel-dried my hair and slipped into my house dress. I’d found the loose-fitting blue shift at a thrift store for three bucks. I’d convinced myself it wasn’t a moo-moo. I wasn’t fat, but I wasn’t a bag of bones, either. My house dress was the female equivalent of a guy’s t-shirt and undershorts. Hey. Fair was fair.

  I walked to the kitchen, opened the dark fridge and pulled out a beer. I took a sip and then spent the next ten minutes playing hide-and-seek with my reading glasses. I finally caught them under a pile of bills on the makeshift kitchen table. Fortified with beer and bifocals, I plopped on the living room rug, back against the ugly old sofa, and dug further into the shoebox labeled 1945 to 1974.

  ***

  By the storm-grey daylight filtering in through the window, I could just make out the pictures of Glad and Bobby Munch together. There was no fancy wedding photo. But given the era and the situation, I didn’t expect to find one. There was, however, a picture of Glad with straight, shoulder-length blonde hair, looking pale but stunning in a matching royal blue jacket and skirt. She was standing next to Bobby Munch in a light-blue suit and tie.

  Bobby was a few inches shorter than Glad. A bit thick in the middle, he sported dark, nearly black hair and long, mutton-chop sideburns. Bobby might have been handsome, and even passed for a close relative of Elvis if not for one thing. His teeth. He was as bucktoothed as a road-flattened jackrabbit. The picture of Glad and him in their dress-up clothes appeared to have been taken in the tired, generic lobby of a church or government building. Both Glad and Bobby looked more distracted than happy. There was no way of telling what the occasion had been.

  I thought about Glad as I had known her, so happy and at home with herself, sprawled out on her beach chair in her Gilligan hat and bug-eyed sunglasses. It was weird to see images of her looking so prim and proper and pinched. I picked up a photo of her sitting at a picnic table wearing pink pedal pushers and a matching gingham top buttoned up to her neck. Another picture of her outside a white revival tent showed her in a plain, modest dress down to her knees, a sweater over her arms. In every photo she flashed a big, beautiful smile. But on closer inspection all of her smiles looked identical, and her eyes didn’t reflect a matching happiness. They reflected something else.

  Disappointment? Regret? No. It looked more like a faraway…longing.

  By being with Bobby, free-spirited Glad had probably missed out on the counter culture of the 1960s altogether. I could only imagine how bitter a pill it must have been for her to view the social freedom revolution from the cage of a forced marriage.

  I put the photos back in their correct date slots and pulled out the only paper filed under 1974. It was a hand-written receipt from William N. Jonson to Gladys K. Munch for the transfer of title to a 1966 Minnie Winnie Winnebago. Clipped to the receipt was a picture of Glad at the beach, standing next to the RV in a bikini that would have made a Bond girl grind her own teeth to dust. Glad had bought the Minnie Winnie off Jonson for a cool hundred bucks. I could just imagine her wheeling that deal. That guy never stood a chance! The receipt for the RV was dated May 12, 1974. I was recording it in my notebook when the phone rang.

  It was Jorge. Apparently Lieutenant Foreman worked fast.

  “Val, hola! I got some news. Glad’s mom’s maiden name was Eunice Thelma Alford. She married Roy Gerard Kinsey in 1939. You already know Glad was born April 24, 1945 at Hawesville Memorial in Kentucky. And the letter from Tony to Glad in care of Mrs. H. E. Wannabaker? Turns out she was the wife of Harold Earl Wannabaker. He owned the house on Coolidge Street until he died in 1992. The obit said he was laid to rest next to his beloved wife. So I guess that’s a dead end.”

  “Sounds like it. Got anything else?”

  “Jes. But you’re not gonna like it. There was no record of a baby being born to Gladys Kinsey in 1963, 64 or 65 in Hawesville or any other hospital nearby.”

  “Shit.”

  “But listen to this. Tom said when he was doing the search he noticed a lot of the records from
1964 were duplicates. He called the city’s records department to ask why. They told Tom that all the Hawesville birth records for the last two months of 1964 had gotten lost. Back then they had searched the records department from top to bottom, but never turned up anything. The records had to be recreated by hospital files or the original documents given to the parents.”

  “That’s strange.”

  “Tom thought so, too. He told me to ask you if you knew anyone who would want to get rid of any record of the baby’s birth.”

  I could think of a few to start. Glad’s parents? Tony’s parents? Tony, perhaps? Maybe even Glad herself…? No, I couldn’t believe that.

  “Not off the bat, Jorge,” I answered. “Tell Lieutenant Foreman thanks from me. I may need a few more favors from him before this is through.”

  “Okay, Val. See you tomorrow?”

  “Sure.”

  Jorge clicked off and I began to ponder the lieutenant’s question. Who had the most to lose from the birth of Glad’s baby being made public?

  A mechanical sound jerked through the drooping air and everything electrical in my apartment coughed back to life. The ceiling fan began to spin anemically and the light above the stove flickered on. I padded into the kitchen to check the status of my microwave. Dead as a doornail. Damn.

  After about twenty minutes, the monsoon rain subsided to a drizzle, then petered out completely. I hauled the dead microwave down the wobbly wooden stairs to one of the huge black trashcans that lined the grimy, red-brick alleyway. As I set it down beside the container, I could feel the steam already rising from the old clay bricks like the breath of an underground dragon. Even after a deluge, the respite from the summer heat never lasted long in St. Pete.