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

by Margaret Lashley

“Birth notice. A marriage license. Stuff like that.” I could tell Jacob wanted to know more. But so did I, and I was buying. “How in the world did Tony end up marrying that ponytailed witch?” I asked, then popped the cracker into my mouth so Jacob had to fill the silence.

  Jacob eyed me carefully. “Well, I’m not saying I’m innocent in all this, but all my lies about Glad failed to break Tony’s love for her. It was the truth that finally did. When I told Tony about the baby being a girl, and that Glad had named her a combination of his, her, and her mom’s name – Thelma Gladys Goldrich – he got all excited. He told me he was going to escape that prison of a school and get himself back home and marry her. But I had to tell him it was too late. Glad had already up and married Bobby. I’ve never seen anybody shatter like that. Hope I never do again.

  “After I told Tony about the marriage, it was like something just broke inside him. He started drinking and got busy making some big-ass mistakes of his own. Marrying Thelma Cornish – the one that punched you in the nose – was by far his biggest one. Believe it or not, Thelma kind of looked like Glad back then. Blonde hair, big boobs…uh. And her name…Thelma…Tony said he took it to be some kind of sign. He should have read the fine print. Thelma had a nose for money – and a vagina that didn’t mind taking one for the cause, if you know what I mean.”

  My mind tried to go there but I slammed on the brakes and thought about kittens playing with yarn balls instead. “I think I get the picture.”

  “Okay. Enough said on that,” Jacob nodded. “At any rate, Thelma acted the part real good. She pretended to love Tony and – here’s the genius part – she pretended to hate Tony’s father. It was a double-whammy combo that swept Tony right off his feet. She fooled Tony into marrying her and signing up for law school, just like his daddy wanted. Funny, the same day Tony told me he was gonna be a lawyer was the same day my tuition money dried up. Heh. I’d been replaced. My services were no longer needed. Tony went off to law school. I went home and got a job selling stoves and TVs. Their sham marriage didn’t last a year. Just long enough for Thelma to get a BMW and a monthly living allowance. Conniving bitch.”

  Jacob’s eyes met mine, then he hung his head. “Who am I to talk? I was no better than her. The only saving grace to this whole mess is that back in the day, Tony never figured out that he was surrounded by his father’s henchmen – me being the main one of them. It would have killed him for sure. He was just too trusting. Too pure of heart to realize what a heel I was.”

  Jacob’s glass was empty and so was mine. I needed another beer. I thought maybe he could use one, too. I smiled at him sympathetically and picked up his glass.

  “Wanna upgrade to a beer? My treat.”

  “Thanks, Miss. But these days I’m a teetotaler. After going back to Hawesville, I hit the bottle hard. Johnny Walker became my best and only friend. The secrets I’d kept from Tony twisted in my guts like maggots. Nothing I could chase or screw or drink ever came close to making me feel okay about selling out my best friend. Long, boring story short, I hit bottom and went through AA’s Twelve Step Program. My last confession was to Tony. In 1980. Back then, he was just about as hollowed out a shell as I was.”

  I reached over and touched Jacob’s hand. He winced and turned away.

  “Jacob, you don’t have to explain….”

  “Let me,” Jacob cut in. “I’ll just get it out quick. I called Tony up and asked if we could meet. He sounded happy to hear from me. Happy! I don’t think I ever felt so low in my life. He invited me over to his place. I took him up on the invitation. I sat on his couch and spilled my guts like a slaughtered pig. I asked him to forgive me. He sat there, still as a statue. Didn’t say a word. I begged him to punch me. Kick me. Anything he needed to get it out. But he was too much a gentleman. Honest to god I don’t think he had any anger or love or anything left in him by the time I found him. He just crumpled to the floor and cried. I got on the floor and cried with him. When we both couldn’t cry no more, he just said, ‘Help me find her.’ I vowed I would. It didn’t matter to him that what I found wasn’t pretty.”

  “What do you mean, wasn’t pretty?”

  “What Glad had suffered at the hands of Bobby Munch makes my sorry, self-pitying life look like a fairytale.”

  ***

  My clock ran out just when it was getting good. I was desperate to know more, but I had promises to keep – to Jamie and to myself. “I’ll see you in the morning,” I said to Jacob as I dropped him off at his car in the Water Loo’s parking lot.

  “See you back here, 8:30 sharp,” he replied, climbing into his white Prius. The car matched his white t-shirt, belt and tennis shoes. All white. A play for penance – or purity, perhaps?

  I waved as he pulled out of the lot and I glanced at my phone. Shit. It was already 4:30. I had to get my butt home, write four-hundred and ninety-eight words and email them to Jamie before our phone call at six. I had sweated through my clothes. I needed a shower, but that was going to have to remain an option for the moment. I hit the gas and Maggie’s mufflers belched out a grey, smoky roar.

  The lights on Central Avenue were kind and I made good time. It was five minutes to 5 p.m. when I pulled into my alley parking spot. I bolted up the stairs and as I fumbled with the key, my phone started buzzing. It was Tom. Shit. Shit. Shit. I don’t have time for this!

  “Hi Tom!” I said sweetly into the phone, then changed my tune. “Make it quick. I’m a woman on a mission.”

  “Whoa, there, tiger lady. What’s the hurry?”

  “I can’t explain right now. What’s up?”

  “I got the DMV lowdown on the three Thelma G’s. Got time for that?”

  “No. But sure. Let me have it.”

  “Turns out one lives in Chicago. She’s African American. Another is local. Hispanic. The other one Caucasian –”

  “It can only be her, the third one,” I said, cutting Tom off.

  “Why?”

  “Like I said, I can’t explain right now. Where is she?”

  “Well…”

  “What, Tom? I’m begging you, I’m in a hurry!”

  “Slow down, sister! She’s in a hospital for the criminally insane. Chattahoochee State Mental Hospital in North Florida.”

  “Screw off!”

  “I’m serious!”

  Time slowed down as my mind sped forward. “Didn’t you say Bobby was incarcerated nearby up there – at Apalachicola Correctional?”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t he go missing or something?”

  “Yep. Right after he was released.”

  “Tom, the hospital and correctional facility are in the same town.”

  “Yeah. Interesting, huh?”

  “I really don’t have time for this right now.”

  “Hot date?”

  I smiled despite myself. “Something like that. Meet you for lunch tomorrow? Ming Ming’s?”

  “Roger that.”

  I clicked off. Roger that. Great. Now he’s stealing my romantic lines. I sat down at the computer and opened the file named Double Booty. I forced myself to type despite the fact that my hands were shaking like a woman on the lam.

  ***

  I took a bite of fish taco and listened to Jamie over the phone as she read through my story synopsis. From her vantage point in New York, she couldn’t see that I was at the Taco Bus on Central Avenue. She also couldn’t see the dozen or so people standing in line to place their orders. For the uninitiated, the Taco Bus really was a bus. It was also painted the same hideous orange as the local Pinellas County school buses. Originally a food truck, it was now permanently parked on Central Avenue in front of a plain-Jane, single-story concrete block building painted the same scholastic shade of rusted dreams.

  After it caught on with locals and tourists alike, the Taco Bus moved its main kitchen to the ugly building behind the bus. Customers ate their tacos and burritos on dark-green, metal-mesh tables under the shade of big, beach-style umbrellas. Or they opted for d
ining in a carport-like area tacked onto the right side of the building. Like a lot of hole-in-the-wall places, the Taco Bus put out some seriously good food. It even earned a spot on that TV show, Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, though I’m not sure which of the three categories best described it.

  As I ate my taco I became mesmerized watching an enormous black man in blue overalls shove a whole burrito in his mouth. A tinny beeping in my ear made me realize Jamie was yelling into the phone, saying my name over and over.

  “Val? Val? You still there, Val?”

  I detected bad news woven into her tired, pinched voice. “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “I don’t know about this synopsis, Val. It needs work. Major work.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It just doesn’t seem plausible.”

  “But Jamie, it’s all based on true events!”

  Jamie’s voice morphed into a sneer. “That’s the bitch about writing fiction, Val. Unlike real life, fiction’s got to make sense.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  All I needed was a miracle. One teeny-tiny bit of inspiration. I stared blankly at my shot-down book synopsis. Double Booty. Ha! Double Doody was more like it. Even my morning walk and canoodle with Mr. Coffee had done nothing to raise my enthusiasm. The only bright spot was that it was Saturday. I still had today and tomorrow to come up with something good. But working on it would have to wait a bit longer. I was running late for a date with an angry, alcoholic neat freak old enough to be my father. It was the best offer I’d had in a while.

  Jacob was waiting for me in the parking lot when I pulled up to Water Loo’s. He saw me and waved through the squeaky-clean window pane of his Prius. He climbed out of the car, shut the door and tested the handle to make sure it was locked, then ambled over my way.

  “Mind if we go somewhere else?” he asked, holding his hands open and to his sides in what looked like a weird truce gesture, just like the day before.

  “No problem,” I said. “Don’t like it here?”

  “Not my favorite. Do you know anyplace with a good cup of joe?”

  “Starbucks?”

  “I’d rather not. I don’t know what all the fuss is about. That stuff tastes like burnt plastic to me.”

  “We’ve got options. Get in.”

  Jacob smiled and buckled himself in tight. “Your car. She’s a real beauty.”

  “My Maggie? Yeah, she sure is. You seem like a man who appreciates the classics, Jacob. How about we go to a real, honest-to-goodness diner for breakfast?”

  “That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.”

  I maneuvered Maggie onto a southbound lane of Gulf Boulevard in the direction of Corey Avenue and Gayle’s Diner. Jacob and I sat silent for the ride, enjoying the relative coolness of the early morning breeze on our faces. A few minutes later, we were sitting across from each other in a cozy booth for two, a waitress filling our white ceramic cups to the brim with piping hot java. Jacob took a tentative sip from the steaming mug.

  “Ahhh, now that’s what I call a good cup a joe!”

  “Glad you like it, Jacob. And I want to thank you. Breakfast is on me today.”

  “Thank me? For what?”

  “For coming forward. For sharing your stories with me. For being honest. You didn’t have to. And I know it’s not easy.”

  “You two ready to order?” asked the round, shiny-faced waitress. “I see somebody here appreciates my coffee. I’ll be back to top you off in a minute, young man. Now what’ll it be?”

  I ordered biscuits and gravy. Jacob followed my lead. While we waited for the food to arrive, Jacob continued his story with the perspective of a man who knew his part in it all too well.

  “I realized I could never go back and make things right for Tony, but I was the only one holding enough cards to try and deal with what had gone wrong. You know what I mean?”

  I didn’t, but I nodded anyway.

  “Tony was a pushover, but he was no dummy. He’d already figured out some of the facts before I filled in the missing pieces for him during my AA confession. His father had died of lung cancer a couple of months before I caught up with Tony. The old man confessed on his deathbed that he’d paid Bobby Munch five grand to get Glad out of town and make the baby disappear. Back then that was a fortune. He didn’t care how Bobby did it and he never asked questions later. The old man had one of his flunkies steal the hospital and county files to erase any record of the birth. He had ’em take a couple of months’ worth just to cover their tracks. He told Tony he got the idea after Glad’s parents and brother got killed in that traffic accident. He figured no one would go looking for a baby with no kin.”

  “No kin! What about Glad herself? She was the mother, for crying out loud!”

  “What can I say, Val? Back then things were different. Women didn’t have many rights. Especially fallen women. They kept their traps shut and did what their husbands told ’em. Either by choice or by force.”

  “Geez! Wasn’t Tony’s father the least bit sorry for what he did to them?”

  “I don’t know. Tony said his father thought it was the right thing to do at the time, to save the high and mighty Goldrich family from scandal. But Tony said the bastard broke down in the end and said if he could do things over, he would have let Tony marry Glad.” Jacob huffed out a sarcastic laugh. “It’s amazing what people will do to unload their guilt. Especially at the last minute when they won’t be around no more to witness the damage.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “It seems to me like he’d already witnessed the damage he did to his son and Glad. The only thing he missed out on was the chance to be forgiven. To make things right.”

  “Maybe. But his confession didn’t do shit to help either one of them. Both Tony’s and Glad’s lives were pretty much ruined by then.”

  Jacob’s words pinged a memory from our prior conversation. I cobbled the fragments together into a question while the waitress placed our breakfasts on the table and topped off our coffees.

  “Jacob, yesterday you said Glad had suffered at the hands of Bobby. That your life was a fairytale in comparison. What did you mean?”

  Jacob’s jaw tightened. He glanced out the window and swallowed hard, like he was trying to get a pill down with no water. “Put it this way. Bobby was a man of convenient morals. Learned it from preaching, I guess. A pretty picture of Glad and the thought of five grand in his pocket was all the motivation he’d needed to get the job done. I’m sure Bobby poured on the charm. Shit. He probably didn’t even need charm. Glad was a woman with no good options.”

  “I could imagine.”

  “No you couldn’t, Val. No woman in America today could imagine what it was like back then. Picture this. Glad gets wheeled out of the hospital with a new baby, no husband and no place to go. Parents dead, boyfriend disappeared, she ends up at a ‘mercy home’ for unwed mothers that’s crawling with tight-assed social workers looking down their noses at her like she smells of shit. They tell Glad the best thing for everyone is for her to give her bastard baby to some decent folks and pray that she can weasel her way back into society someday by kissing every ass she sees. Mercy home my ass! Dirt bags!”

  Jacob rapped his knuckles hard on the table, causing me to flinch. He seemed to catch himself off guard. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be impolite.”

  “It’s okay. Finish your story.”

  “So Glad’s taking turns nursing her baby and crying her eyes out when some bucktoothed bozo of a preacher takes notice of her. He says it’s love at first sight or some such horseshit. Then he offers her a way out. Glad can marry him and keep the baby. He’s fine with the kid. Says he’ll adopt it, raise it as his own. Only thing is, the revival tent is packing up and heading out of town in a day or two. She’s thinking it over when a holier-than-thou social worker tells Glad they’ve found a decent couple who wants her baby. They’re coming by tomorrow for a look-see. The clock is ticking in Glad’s ears like a time bomb. What would you do?”<
br />
  “Did that really happen?”

  “I don’t know, but probably. More or less. So, Miss Val, what would you do?”

  “I’d keep my baby…and go with Bobby.”

  “Bingo. Glad told me herself she didn’t have any choice, really. Bobby convinced her he would take care of her. She married him and they took off with the baby. For a moment she even thought she was lucky. Lucky! Geezus. She had no idea what she was getting into. She didn’t know she was sealing her fate.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Because I kept my promise to Tony. I was the one who found her.”

  Part of me wanted to know what came next. Part of me didn’t. I swallowed hard and thought of Glad in her pink lounge chair, sprawled out in the sun. I glanced at the time. The vintage chrome clock on the wall at Gayle’s Diner said it was ten after ten. I was supposed to meet Tom at noon. If I pushed it, I could stay another hour with Jacob. I hoped it would be long enough for him to share everything he knew.

  “Something else, Jacob? Slice of pie, maybe?”

  “No thanks, Miss Val. Mighty nice of you.”

  “Okay. So tell me, how did you find Glad?”

  “The truth be told, I didn’t have to look. I already knew where she was. I didn’t tell Tony because she’d begged me not to. I’d run into Glad nearly six years before. I think it was sometime in 1974. She and Bobby were in Hawesville with that traveling circus they called a revival. I drove by the church while they were setting up the tent. I recognized Bobby right away. He’d built himself up a belly over the years, but he still had that ridiculous Elvis hairdo and jackrabbit teeth. He was arguing outside the tent with a woman about as thin as a sheet of paper. I watched as he grabbed her arm and jerked it so hard I thought it might break it in two. Call it whatever you want, but something inside me made me pull over.”

  I fiddled with the packets of artificial sweetener, not wanting to make eye contact with Jacob. I braced myself for what might come next. I glanced quickly into his eyes and then back down to the pink and yellow packets. I gave a quick nod.