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

by Margaret Lashley

  “Jus’ until I get back on my feet,” Jorge said defensively, shooting Goober a dirty look. Jorge glanced shyly over at me with his huge, blackish-brown eyes and smiled brightly. “It’s got air condition an’ everything!”

  “A regular Taj-a-Maholic,” sneered Winky.

  “At least it’s got a roof and walls,” Jorge sneered back.

  “So where do you guys camp?” I asked. I tried to sound cheerful in an attempt to defuse yet another potential squabble amongst the boys.

  Goober nearly choked on the spoon clicking around in his mouth. “Camp? You make it sound like a vacation, Val. Living in a tent for a week is camping. For a month it’s an adventure, maybe. Any longer than that and you’ve got to admit to yourself that you are just one thin sheet of fabric away from being homeless.”

  I swallowed hard. “So you and Winky camp…uh…are neighbors?”

  “Yeah. There’s a makeshift camp out in the woods nearby. About half a dozen guys call it home. I’d tell you where it is, but then…”

  “You’d have to kill me, right?” I joked.

  “No. I wouldn’t want to be woken up with you bothering me every night for a quickie.” Goober grinned luridly at me from under his moustache. His tongue worked the handle of the spoon in his mouth, making it move rapidly up and down. The spoon clinked against his teeth with a tinny, hollow sound as his eyebrows made their own set of obscene movements. Jorge and Winky snuffed back grins and redneck guffaws while they watched my expression morph from dumbfounded to disgusted and back again. Actually, I’d found Goober’s contorted face both hilarious and horrifying, making me unable to decide whether to laugh or scream. So I did neither. I opted to smile calmly, look away and change the subject.

  “So, what do you guys think of Tony’s wife?” I asked Jorge and Winky.

  “That bulldog bitch can suck my boner,” said Winky sullenly.

  “What I mean is, do you think she’s really Thelma G. Goldrich? The one in the will? If not, what’s her motivation?”

  “What’s her motivation? What are you, some kind of detective?” asked Goober. “With your big, swollen nosy-nose we might start calling you Stephanie Plum.”

  “I think that’s been taken,” I said snidely.

  “No shit.”

  Goober’s retort bucked me off my high horse. Val, you’re being an asshole! These guys aren’t dumb. At least Goober isn’t. But why, then, do they live their lives on the edge? Just one short step away from oblivion? I saved my questions for another time, swallowed my snooty pride, and returned to the topic of discussion.

  “So, really, do you think she’s Tony’s wife?” I asked meekly.

  “At one time, apparently,” said Jorge. “Tom did said her name was Thelma Goldrich.”

  “Speaking of Officer Foreman, how’s it going with Tommy dearest?” Goober interjected. He leaned over the booth until his face was just inches from mine. The close-up view and accompanying aroma made me flinch involuntarily.

  “Nothing to report,” I said.

  “No man down yet?” Goober asked. He sat back and pretended to write in an imaginary notepad.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Won’t be long, now. It’s hard to keep a good man down, you know.” Goober’s eyes glanced up from his imaginary notebook just long enough to shoot me a lewd look.

  “Don’t you mean it’s good to keep a hard man up?” Winky bellowed.

  All three stooges burst into a cacophony of raunchy laughter. After a few minutes of my enduring being the red-faced butt of their jokes, Winnie walked up and actually handed me a cup of coffee. I noticed her face was almost as red as mine.

  “A toast!” I said, raising my mug. I was on a mission to kill this conversation and get the hell back home. My request caused the men’s laughter to sputter out like an engine taking on water. Each put a left hand over his heart and raised his cup to meet mine.

  ***

  “What a freaking waste of time,” I muttered to myself as I stomped across the Water Loo’s parking lot toward my car. What did I expect? That these burn-outs would have ideas? I must be getting as demented as they are.

  I climbed into Shabby Maggie, cursed the red-hot-lava seats, and twisted the key into the ignition. I was about to shift into reverse when I was caught off guard by the presence of an old man standing near my driver’s side door. He was short and wiry, with a full head of straight, steel-grey hair. He was dressed neatly in a clean white t-shirt and white plaid shorts held up with a white leather belt, white socks and white tennis shoes. He stood motionless, about three feet from the car, with his palms open to show he was harmless, I supposed.

  “Can I help you?” I asked. The man nodded and took a tentative step toward the car. I slid Maggie into reverse and kept my hand on the shifter.

  “I heard you talking in there about Glad and Tony Goldrich,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “I knew Glad and Tony pretty well.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “You did?”

  “Yes,” said the old man. He nodded his head slowly, as if stirring up the memory in his brain. “I knew Tony from way back. College days. Oh. Excuse me! My name is Jacob. I used to be Tony’s roommate at school.”

  Something clicked in my brain. Tony’s letter to Glad from the academy. He wrote that if she received the letter, it was because his roommate Jacob…. Jacob! “You’re the Jacob who smuggled Tony’s letters out?”

  “Uh…yes. How did you know that?”

  I shifted Maggie back into park. This was just the break I’d been looking for. “Oh my god! Mister, have you got time to talk?”

  He glanced at his naked wrist, then back. “Miss, I’ve got nothing but time.”

  For a split second I thought about going back into the Water Loo’s with Jacob, but then I remembered how hopeless it was to try to get serious with the stooges around. I sized Jacob up. He seemed harmless enough. I decided it would be better to make a clean getaway with him.

  “Great! Hop in.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  My curiosity about Jacob had also revived my appetite. I needed a snack, and a place to write down whatever useful information the old man had to say.

  “You hungry?” I asked Jacob.

  I studied the small, immaculately clean man as he climbed into the passenger seat. Everything about him seemed neat and orderly, including his movements. He strapped Maggie’s after-market seatbelt across his lap and settled himself in. Only then did he turn to me and speak.

  “I could eat.”

  “You like beer?”

  “I could drink.” He smiled at me wistfully and looked away.

  “I know just where to go.”

  I shifted gears and pointed Maggie south on Gulf Boulevard in the direction of Bill’s Sand Bar. It was a small, open-air beach bar butted right up to the sand behind the nostalgic Bon Aire Motel on St. Pete Beach. By nostalgic, I mean the motel was the kind of place that still advertised rooms with air conditioning and color TVs. Bill’s bar wasn’t much to look at either. But as they say, looks could be deceiving. This little beach dive happened to have the coldest beer and the best fish spread in town. The view of the Gulf from the barstools wasn’t half bad, either.

  “So what are you doing down here?” I asked as we tooled down the tourist strip. With the top down, we both enjoyed an unbroken view of the summer sky, clear and blue as a robin’s egg. The purity of the blue sky made the puffy clouds seem whiter somehow. Laundry fresh.

  “Well, I saw Tony’s obituary online,” Jacob explained. He held his hands in front of him in an apologetic, open-handed gesture as he talked. “I know it sounds weird, but it’s kind of a hobby for me. Online obituary surfing. There’s not much else to do when you get to be my age.”

  Jacob looked over at me as if seeking forgiveness. I shrugged at him. That seemed to be enough.

  “Anyway, I saw Tony’s obituary about a week ago. I came down for the memorial service. Were you there?”

 
“Briefly. I was the one in the bloody white sundress.”

  “What?” Jacob asked, incredulous. “I must have missed that. What happened?”

  “I got punched out by Tony’s ex, Thelma Goldrich. Haven’t you noticed my big schnoz?”

  “I have, young lady. But I’ve learned not to comment on such things. I got to say, her taking a swing at you also doesn’t surprise me much. I guess nothing does anymore. I saw her myself, you know. Thelma Goodrich, I mean. At Tony’s memorial. She’s changed on the outside, for sure. Almost unrecognizable except for that string of sausages she calls a ponytail. But from what you say, she’s still as rotten as ever on the inside.”

  “Wait a minute! You know her?”

  “No, not personally. But I know of her. From Tony.”

  I pulled Maggie into the parking lot of the low-slung, 1950s Bon Aire Motel. Jacob continued sharing what he knew as we walked along a sidewalk that skirted two-story, blue-grey walls that formed a horseshoe-shaped, open-air courtyard punctuated by tall palms and colorful, tropical foliage.

  “Tony and I were pretty good buddies in high school. The best, really. He was kind of shy back then. Always was. No ladies’ man, that’s for sure.” Jacob laughed as if sharing a joke with the ghosts of his past.

  “Then he met Gladys – or should I say Glad? It was spring break. Middle of May, I think, 1962…three…something like that. Anyway, Tony and me were cruising for girls. That’s what we did back then before this blasted online dating and texting stuff. Anyway, we were feeling hungry and stopped at Duffy’s Burgers. It was a kind of drive-in place you just don’t see nowadays. Except maybe for Sonics.”

  The sidewalk led us to a knee-high concrete wall butted up to the sugar-white sand of St. Pete Beach. A row of unpretentious concrete picnic tables embedded with smooth, pastel-colored tiles offered uncomfortable but scenic places to sit and enjoy the stunning views of the Gulf from under the cool shade of beach umbrellas sponsored by Corona beer.

  “A cold one?” I asked Jacob.

  “Just an iced tea will do me,” he said and forced a smile. His face was tired and sad. Exactly how I felt, myself.

  “Okay then.”

  Jacob chose a table while I walked over to the half-circle countertop ringed by barstools known as Bill’s Sand Bar. I ordered the smoked fish spread and an iced tea for Jacob. Despite the overt advertising attempt, I chose Fosters over Corona. The day was blistering hot. But a nice breeze off the water and the shade of the umbrella made it pleasant weather for Florida, considering it was approaching mid-July’s triple-digit meltdown temperatures. I handed Jacob his tea and set the fish spread on the table between us.

  “Thank you, Miss…uh, I don’t mean to be impolite, but I don’t know your name.”

  “Oh! Sorry, I’m Val Fremden.”

  “Nice to meet you, Miss Fremden. Are you a relative of Glad’s?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. I just thought…well…I didn’t see her at Tony’s memorial.”

  “You don’t know, then.”

  “Know what?”

  “Glad is dead.”

  “What?” said Jacob, choking on a sip of tea. “I didn’t see her obituary. I thought she was still…. What happened?”

  I thought about explaining that the reason there was no obit was because Glad died with no ID, and how I’d falsified her name to claim her from the morgue, but then I remembered what I’d done was probably a crime. I wasn’t sure I could trust Jacob. Besides, I just wasn’t in the mood to think about Glad being dead. “It’s a long story. But she’s at peace now. Ashes sprinkled in the Gulf. Same place as Tony’s.”

  Jacob shook his head. “That’s unbelievable. When did she die?”

  “The last day of June.”

  I felt a familiar tightening in my throat. I needed a change of topic. “How about a toast?” I held up my beer.

  “Sure,” Jacob said, clinking his plastic cup against mine. “To what?”

  “To what’s to come.”

  Jacob looked at me sharply. “Sure. To what’s to come.”

  “But for now, let’s get back to what has already come and gone, if you don’t mind.”

  Jacob nodded and took a big sip of tea.

  I felt a sweet, nostalgic longing wash over me. “Please, Jacob, tell me how Glad and Tony met.”

  “Let’s see,” Jacob began, then cleared his throat. “We were at Duffy’s. Yeah, we were at Duffy’s eating burgers one day when this hot number walked by in a pink sweater and pants cut to her knees. What did they call them? Ah yeah. Pedal pushers. Flowery ones. I remember because she was a sight pretty hard for a man to forget. Blonde, beautiful smile, big bazong… uh. Nice figure, you know? Hourglass.” Jacob grimaced and glanced my way.

  I grinned. “I think I get it.”

  He smiled and his face relaxed. “Okay. So I looked over at Tony and he was just staring, open mouthed, like he’d just been hit over the head or something. Guys being guys, I couldn’t let it go. I laughed and grabbed his arm and started waving it like a gorilla. I yelled, ‘You want a hamburger to go with that shake?’ Then I let go of Tony’s arm real quick. Glad turned around and saw Tony with his hand still in the air, staring at her like a deer in the headlights. Ha ha! I’ll never forget it! Glad started walking toward him. I thought Tony was gonna faint! She marched right up to him and said something like, ‘So, handsome, are you going to give me a bite of that burger?’ I know it sounds pretty tame nowadays, but back then that was pretty suggestive talk, if you know what I mean.”

  He stopped talking, waiting for me to respond. I nodded and he continued.

  “That Tony…he was smitten like a kitten in a mitten. Ha ha! They started dating. Those two together was truly something to see. Glad was like Miracle Grow for Tony. He opened up and bloomed like a rose in summer. I never saw him so happy. He came from a kind of tough family, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  “Bunch of high-falootin’ bastards if you ask me.”

  Something dark flashed over Jacob’s face, then faded. He shook his head and picked up a Saltine cracker from the plate of fish spread.

  “Glad got pregnant. But if you read that letter, you already know that part. And you know Tony got shipped off to private school. But what you probably don’t know is that Tony wasn’t just a student at that place. He was a prisoner. I know because I was hired to be his guard.”

  I sucked in a deep breath and held it as Jacob absently ground the cracker to dust between his fingers. “His father paid my tuition. I sold my soul for an education. I got one, too. But not the one I’d planned on. Kids today with their hundred-grand student loan payments. God, if only my debt had been just money. I’d trade with one of them in a heartbeat.”

  Jacob looked surprised at the pile of cracker dust on the table. He wiped it away and stared out at the Gulf. “I was on the payroll as Tony’s enemy. Reporting back to his father for my next meal ticket.” Jacob blew out a breath and swallowed hard. He looked at me with eyes full of anger and regret, then pursed his lips and pressed on with his confession.

  “Tony wrote Glad every day. He counted on me to mail the letters, but I only mailed the first one. The one you read. I also stole all the letters Glad wrote Tony. It was easy. Tony never suspected me. When he didn’t hear nothing back from her, I watched Tony wither away, wild with guilt and pain and sorrow. His bastard father kept telling me it was for the best. That Tony would get over it.

  “When that took too long, the bastard told me to do whatever it took to make Tony get over it. I didn’t know what to do. When Mr. Goldrich realized I didn’t have any natural talent for making people miserable, he gave me some from his ample supply. God shit on me, I tried pretty near all his suggestions. I told Tony that Glad had another beau. I told him that when her parents died, Glad confessed to somebody that the baby wasn’t his. When Glad hooked up with that traveling preacher, I told Tony the kid was really that guy’s. That Glad had been seeing him for months and
was using Tony to cover her sins and get a big payoff, because she knew Tony’s family was loaded. Then I told him one thing that wasn’t a lie. I told him Glad had taken her baby and run off with that same preacher. A shyster named Bobby Munch.”

  “Wait a minute,” I interjected. “You’re saying Glad had her baby with her when she left with Bobby?”

  “Yes. She couldn’t bear to give it up.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ll get to that.”

  “Okay, Jacob. But tell me now, I’m dying to know. Was it a boy or a girl?”

  Jacob coughed out a cynical laugh. “As bad as I was to Tony back then, I just had to know, too. So I pretended to get chummy with Tony’s father. I asked him if Gladys’ ‘bastard kid’ had been a boy or a girl. I honestly didn’t think he’d tell me. But I guess up in his golden palace, Glad was nothing to him. A flea. I remember that bastard Goldrich laughed like a demon and told me that Glad had a girl. I remember his words exactly. He said, ‘The bitch named the little shit Thelma, after her own whore of a mother.’ His pompous, jackass voice still rings in my ears whenever I think about it.”

  Jacob shook his head as if to clear away the lingering remains of that noxious memory. He wiped his eyes with a napkin and took a deep breath. He sipped his tea and then looked me straight in the eyes. What he said next set my own ears to ringing.

  “Tony and Glad’s baby girl. Thelma. She’s the one named in the will. I’d bet on it.”

  A surge of excitement caused my heart to thump. “So where is she, Jacob?”

  His face deflated. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  My heart sank. Jacob didn’t know any more than I did about the whereabouts of Glad and Tony’s daughter. He couldn’t even tell me if she was still alive.

  “Do you know any more?” he asked.

  “I’ve only got some theories, a few documents and some sketchy clues,” I said. “What do you know, Jacob?” I reached for a cracker and smeared some fish spread on it.

  “What kind of documents?” Jacob asked.