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

by Margaret Lashley

  “Alright then. You ready to blow this burger joint?”

  “I sure am.”

  Tom grabbed a handful of napkins on the way out. “Just in case.”

  ***

  We traveled north on I-275 to Lake City, then headed west on I-10 toward Tallahassee. The trip was half over. Winky was still sawing logs in the backseat. Now it was my turn to answer Tom’s questions.

  “How did you end up in St. Petersburg? Isn’t your family from the Panhandle area?”

  “I never lived up there long,” I answered. “In Greenville, I mean. My parents moved around a lot. I finished high school in Lakeland and got my bachelor’s in Tampa from University of South Florida. I worked for an insurance company and married a guy. We moved to St. Pete. Things didn’t work out. I moved to Germany. Blah blah blah. Rinse and repeat. Now I’m back home.”

  “A real romantic, aren’t you?”

  I cringed. “I used to be. Now I guess I’m just…cynically optimistic.”

  “No wonder you love irony, Val. You are irony!”

  I was trying to think of a clever comeback when Tom’s phone rang. I watched the pine trees and oaks whiz by on the side of the interstate while he listened for a minute, then hung up.

  “It was a burner.”

  “Huh?”

  “Jacob’s cellphone. It was a pay-as-you-go. Disposable. Untraceable.”

  “Oh.”

  “Doesn’t necessarily mean anything. But it doesn’t help his case or ours. What’s he doing down in St. Pete, anyway?”

  “He was a friend of Tony’s. Down for the funeral.”

  “The funeral was last week. So why’s he still there?”

  That was a good question for which I had no good answer. I shrugged and looked out the window again. Sunday afternoon was ticking by. I thought about the new synopsis of Double Booty I’d emailed to Jamie this morning. It seemed like a year ago. Would it be good enough to win me a publishing contract? Would I be able to pay my rent next month?

  Tom poked my leg. “Hey. Where’d you go?”

  “Lady Lala Land.”

  “Okay. Go there often?”

  “According to Goober, yes.”

  Tom’s phone rang again. “Hola amigo.” Tom looked at me and silently mouthed the name, “Jorge.”

  “Uh huh. What did he look like? Uh huh. No. Yeah. Go ahead and follow her. Call me when you know something. Ciao.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Jorge said he saw Bulldog Woman and some guy drive up your street. They stopped for a minute in front of your place and the man got out, took a picture of the house, then got back in and they took off. Funny, Jorge said the guy was an old blanco. White shirt, white belt and white shoes.”

  Jacob! My whole body started trembling. “Tom, that sounds like Jacob. He and Bulldog Woman…they’re working together! And they’re out to get me!”

  “Hold on, Val. Why would they be out to get you?”

  “I don’t know! You’re the freaking detective!” I lost it and started bawling my eyes out.

  “It’s going to be alright, Val,” Tom said gently. “You’re safe with me.”

  Tom sat in silence and let me have my cry. I took my time moaning and mulling over my situation. Why did I let myself get involved with these crazy-ass people? I should have kept to myself. Relationships never work out for me. People are work. People are pain. People are freaking dangerous!

  My pity party lasted a good half hour. Then I shifted back to cynically optimistic. Dammit!

  Tom saw me come up for air and flashed me a reassuring smile. “You’re cute when you’re terrified. I’d kiss you if I weren’t driving seventy miles an hour down I-10 through the middle of Tallahassee.”

  “Now look who’s the romantic.” I sniffed and blew my sore nose carefully. “Where are we staying tonight?”

  “I thought we would get a motel in Chattahoochee.”

  I snorted a laugh. “You’ve obviously never been to Chattahoochee. There’s no motels there. They barely have a traffic light. We better stop in Quincy and check for rooms. Take the next exit once we get past Tallahassee, city boy.”

  “Yes ma’am. You feeling better?”

  “I guess.”

  “I’m serious about not worrying about Jacob and that woman you call Bulldog, Val. Statistically, you have a much greater risk of dying in an automobile accident than getting murdered.”

  I shot Tom a dirty look. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  Tom grimaced. “Somehow it sounded a lot better in my head.”

  “Thanks for trying, Tom. Just do me a favor. Keep your eyes on the road. Our exit is coming up.”

  Tom took a right off the interstate and soon the ugly, hardscrabble town of Quincy came into view. “I hate Quincy,” I said. “I got my one and only traffic ticket here from a mean old cop when I was seventeen.”

  Tom laughed and tried to talk redneck. “Maybe I can make it up to you, sugar doodle.”

  “That’s the worst Southern accent I’ve ever heard.”

  “Thanks,” Tom said, pretending to be crestfallen. He pulled the 4Runner into the parking lot of the town’s only motel, The Sandman Inn. “Wish me luck,” he said, then hopped out and went inside a rust-red door labeled “Motel Office.” He was out and tapping on my window not much more than a minute later. I rolled down the window.

  “Bad news, sugar doodle,” Tom said, his bad accent making an unrequested encore. “It’s the annual Flea Across Florida Festival. Manager said there’s no rooms to be had ‘round these parts’ for fifty miles.”

  “Great. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse.” Shit. I guess desperate times really did call for desperate measures. “I’ll call my mother and see if she’s got room for us. But first I’m going to need a drink.”

  Tom looked at me warily. “She can’t be that bad.”

  “Sugar doodle, you have no idea.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It was late afternoon and I was on my second Budweiser when Winky woke up in the backseat of the 4Runner with a snort. He immediately commenced to yelling.

  “Where the hell am I?” he bellowed. He hoisted himself up in the backseat and rubbed his eyes. I watched in horrified fascination from the vanity mirror as he felt around on his freckled face with both pudgy hands, found a peanut stuck to his cheek, peeled it off and ate it.

  “Just outside Greenville,” answered Tom. “We’re waiting for Val’s liquid courage to kick in.”

  Winky looked at me and nodded. “Well hurry up. I’m so hungry I could eat a possum.”

  “Here, have a hoagie instead.” Tom tossed Winky a greasy white paper bag. “Picked up beer and dinner at the Junior Store down the road. Sorry. They were fresh out of possum.”

  “What’s a dadburned Hokie?” Winky asked. He snatched the bag and ripped into it. “This here’s a summarine samwich, Yankee boy.”

  Winky chomped on the sandwich like a hungry gator. The grunts and groans he made while cramming it into his face were damn near pornographic. Still, they were preferable to what I knew was coming as soon as I stepped inside the door at dear old mom’s.

  I drained the second Budweiser and set my jaw to lock-down. “Let’s roll.”

  ***

  My mother lived in what I semi-affectionately called, “The tristate area of denial.” Denial about how filthy her house was. Denial about how lazy she was. Denial about how mean-spirited and petty she was. But I have to say this for her – she’d give you the shirt off her back if you needed it. You’d just have to wash it first.

  She and my father divorced nearly thirty years ago. He died a decade later. She remarried three years ago and now lives with her perfect match – a legally blind guy with the patience of a snail on Prozac. His name is Dale, but my sister and I affectionately call him, “The Hostage.” I was explaining all this to Tom when we pulled up in their front yard and ran over something metal hiding in the foot-tall grass.

  “What the
hell?!” Tom cursed his luck and jumped out of the 4Runner to assess the damage.

  My mother must have heard the commotion. The front door cracked open and a little white-and-tan, mixed breed pooch came shooting out into the yard. It disappeared in the grass, yapping its head off. A second or two later the silhouette of my rotund mother in a faded old shirt and worn-out stretch pants appeared on the porch. She made a visor over her eyes with a pudgy hand and peered out at us.

  “Ragmuffin!” she hollered. “Is that you? Y’all come on inside. Don’t you have no sense? It’s too hot to be out this time a day!”

  I popped a breath mint and sighed. “We’re coming!”

  “Ragmuffin?” Tom asked, his right eyebrow up to his hairline.

  “Zip it, copper.” I wasn’t joking.

  Tom and Winky followed me into the house. My mom offered them a seat on a couch even uglier than mine. She carefully positioned her extra-wide derriere, then leaned backward and fell into her worn-out recliner. The whole house smelled faintly of old farts, urine and Jergens hand lotion. A hodgepodge collection Olan Mills family portraits hung on the wood-paneled wall above the sofa like a gallery of the damned. I was there in my glorious missing-front-tooth stage, along with big-hair prom night and mascara-meltdown college graduation. A few open spaces between frames offered tell-tale clues to marriages that were no longer to be mentioned.

  “Mom, these are my friends Tom and Winky.”

  Tom nodded and smiled. Winky just about bowed and curtseyed.

  Unbelievable!

  “Guys, this is my mom, Lucille Jolly.”

  “Val, I’m not Jolly no more. I’m Short. Since I married Dale.”

  “Sure, Mom. Sorry. Mrs. Short.”

  “Nice to meet y’all. Would y’all like some sweet tea?” my mother asked.

  “Yes ma’am,” answered Winky before anyone else could speak.

  “Vallie, why don’t you get in there and make us some.”

  Here we go. “Sure,” I replied sweetly, then picked my way around mom’s hopelessly cluttered kitchen. Amongst the ruins, I found an ancient rubber-handled saucepan and a box of Lipton tea. I filled the pan with water from the tap and set it on the stove to boil. Then I pretended to be busy while I eavesdropped on the conversation going on in the living room.

  “Nice place you have here,” said Tom.

  “Thanky, Tom. How do you know my other girl Val?”

  “We’re both friends of Winky, here.”

  Nice dodge, Tom.

  “Winky. Ain’t you one a them from the Alford clan in Grand Ridge?”

  “No ma’am. I’m a Jeeter, through and through. From Graceville.”

  “A Jeeter, huh? I know’d you was from around here. You got good manners, son.”

  I stifled a laugh and nearly busted my nose open again. Ouch!

  “Tom, where’s yore family from?”

  “Maryland, ma’am.”

  “You a Yankee?” It was more an accusation than a question.

  “Oh. No ma’am. I was born in Florida. My family moved from Maryland before I was born.”

  “Hmmm.”

  The water started to boil. I dropped in four tea bags and watched the clear water turn to brown sludge. I switched off the burner and tugged at an old plastic pitcher in the drain board until I could get it out from underneath a mountain of Cool Whip containers without causing an avalanche. I rinsed the stained interior of the yellow pitcher and scooped a full cup of sugar from a bag on the counter. I poured in the sugar, then the hot, brown brew. I filled the pitcher to the top with tap water. It was done…sweet tea just the way my mother liked it. I rinsed out four miss-matched jelly glasses, filled them with ice and tea and carried them out to the living room.

  My mother scrunched her upper lip and took a sip from her jelly jar. “Kind of weak, but you never did know how to make good tea, Val.”

  “Sorry, Mom. Where’s Dale?”

  “Already gone to bed. Here, take this for me.” Mom placed something wet in my hand. “It’s my bridge. I don’t like to wear it when I’m drinking tea. Might stain my teeth.”

  I looked down at the u-shaped piece of metal embedded with two false molars. I reset my jaw again. “Where do you want me to put it?”

  “In the bathroom on the toothbrush holder. Don’t you know anything? Oh, I forget. You ain’t been to visit in a long time.”

  My yoga breathing was getting a lot of practice. More pictures of unfortunate souls stared at me from cheap brown frames as I walked the sculptured-carpet gauntlet to the bathroom. I thought about dropping mom’s bridgework in the toilet, but her familiar hammer of guilt slammed down on my conscience. I rinsed her dental work and hung it in a hole on the toothbrush holder next to tubes of denture cream and hair tonic, then made my way back to the scene of the crime in progress. Mom was laughing at something.

  “Ha ha ha! Val, are y’all really here to visit some crazy lady in the Chattahoochee nuthouse?”

  I shot an angry look at Tom. He pointed a thumb at Winky. I blew out a deep breath. “Yes. Thelma Goldrich. Do you know her, Mom?”

  “Never heard of her. What’s she in for?”

  I shot out an answer before anyone could say a word, leaving Winky’s and Tom’s mouths hanging open like shocked goldfish. “She just has spells. Like everybody else around here.”

  My mother nodded knowingly. “Yep. I guess by now all of us has seen the inside of that place from one side or the other.”

  Tom looked at me with eyes as big as fried eggs. I pointed a thumb at my chest and shook my head no. Tom sighed, then laughed out loud with relief. I could almost hear his good impression of me hit the skids.

  “She might be a millionaire,” blurted Winky.

  “Who?” my mother asked.

  “That crazy lady. Thelma. We gonna steal some a her DNA and see if she’s heir to the throne of Goldrich.”

  “You don’t say,” my mother said, leaning in now that the gossip had gotten good. She cocked her ear toward Winky. “How come you don’t already know if it’s her or not?”

  I wanted to stop this train wreck, but it had already traveled too far down the tracks. I resigned myself to my usual role around my mother – horrified spectator.

  “’Cause she up and got herself lost a long time ago, when she was just a baby,” said Winky. He sat up straight, relishing his position as the deliverer of juicy news. “Her folks wat’n rich back then. But they are now. I mean, they was. They’s both dead now. Anyway, it’s what you might call complicated. Val says it’s got to be her. Ain’t nobody else fit the bill.”

  “I’ll be,” said my mother, sitting back in her faded beige recliner. “A millionaire in a nuthouse. Now that’s a cryin’ shame waste a good money if I ever heard a one.”

  “Amen to that, ma’am.” Winky lowered his head.

  “We don’t know if she’s actually a millionaire…” I said before Mom cut me off.

  “Oh well. It’s almost time for Matlock,” my mother chirped, switching gears as smooth and mindlessly as a long-distance trucker. “Val, you wanna fix up the guest room for the fellers? You can sleep on the couch when I’m done with my programs.”

  “Sure, Mom.”

  “I think they’s some Jello pudding packs in the fridge if anybody wants one. Val, could you get me a v’niller? If they ain’t no v’niller, I’ll take a butterscotch.”

  “Okay, Mom. Where can I…”

  “Shhh. Program’s startin’. I just love me some Matlock.” Mom turned to face the TV, mesmerized, as lost to the world as a lizard caught in the stare of a great blue heron.

  I got Mom her pudding pack and fished around for bedclothes in the overstuffed linen closet full of mismatched sheets and towels. Tom helped me change the sheets on the rickety old full-sized bed in the guestroom.

  “Sorry about the mothball smell,” I said sheepishly. “And the Smurf sheets.”

  Tom laughed good-naturedly. “I’ve lived through worse. Don’t worry. About anything. V
al, I’ve got relatives, too, you know.” Tom took my hand and tried to kiss me, but I turned my head away. Tom looked puzzled and a bit hurt.

  “Don’t take it wrong, Tom. It’s just that…if this relationship does go somewhere, I don’t want to remember this house as being the first place we kissed.”

  Tom grinned and sighed. “Got it. But I want a raincheck.”

  “Okay.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.” I squeezed Tom’s hand, then let it go. I walked to the bedroom door.

  “You know, I’ll be happy to take the couch, Val.”

  I turned around in the doorframe and smiled. “I wouldn’t do that to you. I like you too much. Winky? Now he’s another story. He knows how to fend for himself in the land of the skunk ape. Speaking of Winky, where is he?”

  “Passed out in the back of the 4Runner would be my bet. He found the remainder of your six pack. The rest, as they say, is history.”

  Tom smiled and studied me with those green eyes of his. He looked as out of place in my mom’s house as a wristwatch on a T-Rex. I really did want to kiss him. But not here. This place held too many screwed-up memories. I didn’t want to jinx my chances with him.

  “Good night, Tom.”

  “Good night, Val. Oh, just one more thing.”

  “What?”

  “Was your mother’s last name really Jolly?”

  “Yes. Now you know where I get my love of irony. I inherited it from my mother.”

  “That must be all you inherited. You don’t look anything like her.”

  “Thanks,” I said coyly. “You sure know how to sweet talk a girl.”

  Tom grinned and I shut the door behind me, trying to brand the image of his impish smile and handsome face into my memory banks.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I dreamt a vulture circled me, then landed and pecked on my forehead. I struggled to wake myself. For a moment I thought I was at home on my couch. Then I heard a familiar voice and memories of yesterday came rushing back into my body like floodwater into a dry riverbed. I was at Mom’s house…and Jacob was trying to kill me!

  I opened my eyes and caught the blur of something red heading right for my face. Before I could scrounge up enough energy to react, it landed on the forehead