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

by Margaret Lashley

  “Yes.” I opened my palm and showed him the dragonfly.

  “Amazing,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Let me have a look!” Mom complained. I held the jewelry out for her to see. “Yep, that’s it. I was gonna trade that thang to your Aunt Vera-Jane for a set of Harlequin Romance novels. But when she saw it was busted the deal was off.”

  My mom. Ms. Lucille Jolly Short. An ironic blend of incredible generosity and unbelievable thoughtlessness. I stared at the woman I’d called my mother for 48 years. She had always been a stranger to me. Now that I knew she actually was, I’d never felt so close to her. How ironic can life get? The woman I thought had ruined my life had actually saved it. Literally.

  Tom interrupted my thoughts. “Sorry to say it ladies, but we’ve got to go. Val, the clock’s ticking.”

  I hugged the woman who had raised me, and thought about the one who, long ago, had to let me go. Whether Glad left me behind, Bobby tossed me out a car window, or Tony’s father paid Jacob to snatch me away and leave me for dead, none of it mattered any longer. I suddenly felt whole and happy and loved. And that was all the answer I’d ever been looking for.

  ***

  It was almost five when we drove away. Mom didn’t see us off at the door. It was time for The Price is Right. Dale drove up in the golf cart as we were leaving. I got out and gave him a hug and promised to see him again soon. “We love you, Val,” he said as I climbed back into Tom’s 4Runner.

  “I love you, too, Dale.”

  Tom hit the gas, raising a cloud of orange dust on the clay road. Once we were on I-10, I realized I was absolutely famished.

  “Have we got time for a Chattaburger?” I asked.

  “Does it come with fries?” Tom teased and shot me a lurid look.

  I blushed. Tom noticed and switched gears. “Big day for you. How you holding up?”

  “Okay, actually. I feel pretty good. I don’t know how to describe it. Lighter, I guess.”

  “Too bad you returned that other piece of the dragonfly pin. It would have been nice to see if it fit. It would be the final piece du résistance.”

  “I uh….”

  “You kept it. I knew it!” Tom grinned. “You are a thief, Valiant Fremden!”

  “I am not!” I shot back.

  “Then why did you keep it?”

  “Let’s just say I had a gut feeling it belonged to me.”

  “Funny girl.”

  I fished around in my purse and found the little silver oval encrusted with green stones. I touched it to the broken part of the dragonfly pendant. It fit perfectly. My last doubts evaporated.

  “I guess it’s official. I really am Glad’s daughter.”

  “So then, Glad’s daughter, do you really want to celebrate with a Chattaburger? The exit’s coming up.”

  “Sure.”

  Tom hooked a right on the Chattahoochee exit and in a couple of minutes we were at a picnic table, munching on Chattaburgers and fries. I had to admit. They were delicious. They really should be world famous.

  “I’m curious,” said Tom, after washing down a mouthful of burger with a swig of root beer. “You’re Valiant. Your dad was Justice. Those are some pretty heavy-duty names for simple country folk.”

  “Simple country folk? Really?” I laughed. “You know how I got my name. My dad’s name wasn’t Justice Jolly as in J-U-S-T-I-C-E. It was Justas. J-U-S-T-A-S. As in, ‘Just as Jolly.’ He told me once that his family wanted him to be just as jolly as he could be. It was a play on words. Get it?”

  “Yeah. So your weird sense of humor runs in the family.”

  “I guess. Wait. They’re not my true family. Are you trying to be ironic?”

  “Maybe,” Tom teased, affecting his bad Southern accent. “I heard you do love you some irony.”

  I shook my head. “I do love irony. But irony doesn’t love me back. I guess I’m unlucky at love all around. Maybe I just know too much.”

  Tom leaned across the picnic table until his face was just inches from my own. He touched the side of my face tenderly. “Maybe you just don’t know enough.” He kissed me hard on the mouth. I nearly fainted all over again.

  ***

  I dreamt I was at the beach by Caddy’s. I spied an old woman on a pink lounger. I walked up and sat next to her. She smiled at me with crooked red lips and poked me on the arm. She didn’t say a word. She just kept poking me gently near my shoulder. Finally, she whispered something in my ear. “Hey. You awake?”

  The voice was too deep to be Glad’s. My lids flew open and I stared at two sea-green eyes. Tom! It all came flooding back. We hadn’t made it to St. Petersburg last night. Instead, we’d stopped and shared a room, and more, at the Sandman Inn. I won’t go into details, but I will say this: I’ve definitely changed my mind about cops in Quincy.

  “Redneck foreplay. Ha ha. Do you always remember every joke someone tells you?” I grumbled playfully, shifting to my side under the sheets.

  “Afraid so. Part of cop training.”

  Tom’s blond hair was still damp from the shower. He knelt beside the bed wearing nothing but a towel and a sexy, crooked smile. He kissed me lightly on the forehead, then crawled under the covers and wrapped me in his strong, warm arms. He brushed my hair back from my face and gave me another one of his fabulous, knee-melting kisses.

  “You’re beautiful when you’re all messed up in the morning,” he teased.

  “Just in the morning?”

  “Oh, that’s right. You’re messed up all the time.”

  “That’s not what I meant!” I bit him on the ear.

  He laughed and kissed me again, making my toes curl.

  “I hate to say it, Val, but we’ve got to be on our way. Ticking clock and all that. Are you ready to roll?”

  Yes, I was ready to roll. And I was ready to be on my way.

  Epilogue

  I could hardly believe it. In less than a month I went from hapless hobo to happy heiress. I wish you could have seen the look on Bulldog Goldrich’s face when she found out Glad’s daughter turned out to be me! I honestly thought she might shit a puppy! And as much as I love irony, I think it must actually love me more. If Bulldog Woman hadn’t punched me in the nose, she’d have gotten away with Tony’s fortune.

  And yes, it turns out that it was a fortune. Tony’s hovel of a house was in a truly sorry state. But while Tom and I and the stooges were cleaning out the mountains of garbage, we came across a trash bag full of uncashed pension checks and stock certificates worth nearly half a million dollars! Garbage wasn’t the only thing my real father hoarded, and his trash ended up becoming my treasure – yet another irony that made me smile. For helping me, I gave Jorge, Goober and Winky each a $5,000 finder’s fee. I didn’t tell them it was for helping me finally find myself.

  My Double Booty synopsis didn’t win me a contract. But the book is still a work in progress. So are Tom and I. With his help, I’m learning more and more every day that it’s not the destination but the laughs along the journey that count. Life feels good. I thought about calling Tamella and a few other fair-weather friends to let them know of my good fortune. Then I realized I really didn’t give a crap anymore what they thought. Sweet!

  I’m holding on to my amateur detective hat, too. Right now I’m helping Tom gather information in hopes of solving his old cold case, The Buckaroo Bandit. Jacob Timms better watch his back. It turns out that Tom is a pretty persistent guy when he finds something that really interests him.

  As for Glad, I guess I’ll never know the true story of my real mother, or how we came to be separated. But I have my own precious memories of her. I cherish those six beautiful weeks on Sunset Beach when she taught me how to smile at life again. I got to know her right before her own sunset, and for that I will always be grateful. Part of me likes to believe Glad knew somehow, deep inside, that I was her daughter. But either way, she was a true blessing to many of us. It’s weird, but thinking back on it now, I found my real mother on Mother’s Day.
I guess my life really was built on irony!

  By the way, I got Glad’s dragonfly pendant repaired. It never leaves the silver chain around my neck. I still spend a lot of time on Sunset Beach. I like watching the tourists and snowbirds from my mom's pink lounger. Every once in a while, someone will come up and say hello. When they see my face, they apologize and say, "Oh, for a second there, I thought you were Glad.”

  I always tell them the same thing. “Thank you. I am.”

  Two Crazy

  Fickle Finger of Fate

  Copyright © 2017 Margaret Lashley

  MargaretLashley.com

  Cover Design by Melinda de Ross

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For more information, write to: Zazzy Ideas, Inc. P.O. Box 1113, St. Petersburg, FL 33731

  This book is a work of fiction. While actual places throughout Florida have been used in this book, any resemblance to persons living or dead are purely coincidental. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, the names of places have been altered.

  ISBN: 978-0-9985809-3-7

  Prologue

  I’m Val Fremden, aka Thelma Gladys Goldrich, aka Valliant Stranger. A double life wasn’t good enough for me. So I decided to make it a triple.

  Last year, a bulldog-faced woman named Thelma Goldrich called me a whore and knocked me out cold at Caddy’s beach bar – right before the memorial service for an old beach bum named Tony. That punch in the nose turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.

  Long story short, Thelma’s right hook to my poor schnoz set in motion a chain of bizarre events that changed my life forever. I discovered that Justas and Lucille Jolly were not my biological parents. My real parents were a couple of crazy, beer-guzzling, beach-bum hoarders named Tony and Glad Goldrich. They both died within days of each other and named me – their biological, long-lost daughter – as sole heir to their tiny, junk-filled house on the Intracoastal Waterway in St. Petersburg, Florida. Oh yeah. They also left me enough cash to keep me in chocolate bars for a long while to come.

  Good thing, too. At the time I was like, seconds away from being homeless.

  I also found out that my real birthday was December 22nd. But I decided to keep celebrating it on April Fools’ Day, like I had for the last forty-eight years. Given the weird scenario surrounding this particular aspect of my life – correction – given the weird scenario surrounding my whole life in general, it just seemed…well…apropos.

  I’d figured out this twisted story with the help of a cop named Tom Foreman and three washed-up derelicts named Winky, Jorge and Goober. I’d rewarded the three burn-outs with $5,000 each. The cop, well, let’s just say he got something else out of me.

  Chapter One

  The tread-worn, whitewall tires squealed on the hot asphalt. I shifted into park and climbed out of Shabby Maggie, my 1963 Ford Falcon Sprint convertible. Like me, Maggie was creamy-white and a bit girlie on the outside, but underneath her hood beat a V8 engine that could kick ass with the big boys. I’d been cruising along Gulf Boulevard, a block from the beach, when a thought latched onto me like a starving mosquito. I pulled a one-eighty in the middle of the road and made a beeline for the drugstore at the corner of 107th in St. Pete Beach.

  It was my birthday, and I was going to celebrate it in style with a king-sized Mounds candy bar. I knew for a lot of folks, that wouldn’t have sounded like much of a present. But for me it was. I never kept chocolate at my place. It was the only thing I couldn’t be trusted with.

  I high-tailed it inside the store and grabbed a candy bar from a rack by the register. A minute later, I strolled outside with both chunks of delicious, gooey heaven crammed into my mouth like Lucille Ball at that chocolate factory. Distracted by the commingling of chewy coconut and rich, dark chocolate, I didn’t notice someone was in Maggie’s passenger seat until my butt was already wedged halfway in on the driver’s side. When I caught sight of her, just inches from me, I totally freaked.

  I jerked back and let out a high-pitched screamed that could only be heard by dogs and dolphins. Before my brain could put two-and-two together, I swung my purse at her and busted her square in the face. As my pocketbook hit pay-dirt, I had what I called an idioment; an idiotic moment of doomed recognition – like seeing the car keys hanging in the ignition just as you slam the locked door shut. There was no turning back. I’d have to live with the consequences. I sucked in a surprised breath and nearly choked to death on chewed-up coconut.

  “Aaarrrgh! Oh crap!”

  I cringed. My eyes doubled as she flew backwards off the seat and tumbled onto the floorboard. Dressed as she was, no one in the whole world would’ve recognized her except for me. It was Glad – still wearing that plastic Mr. Peanut piggybank she’d been shaking around in the very last time I’d seen her, less than an hour before her botched burial at sea last year. That day, someone had taken Glad from my car in this very same parking lot. Today, they’d returned her. And on my birthday, no less. I wasn’t sure if that qualified as ironic or not, but the timing was definitely weird.

  Whoever Glad’s kidnapper had been, he’d left a hand-written note on the seat. I picked it up. The torn scrap of yellow paper read, “Sorry. Mr. P.” I glanced around the parking lot. None of the tourists milling around the place looked like perverts or body snatchers. (Well, maybe one.) I picked Glad up, hugged her to my chest, and set her back on the passenger seat beside me. I turned the ignition and smiled. It might sound crazy, but over the rumbling of Maggie’s twin glass-pack muffler, I’d swear I heard Glad say:

  “Screw you, Kiddo.”

  I turned and gave her a wink.

  “Nice to see you again, too, Mom.”

  Chapter Two

  Owning a home again was turning out to be a blessing and a curse. It was nice to be able to fix things up the way I wanted. But dealing with the renovations and repairmen had me cursing under my breath – in German. Scheisse!

  I’d moved into Glad and Tony’s old 1950’s ranch house yesterday. Now, not even twenty-four hours later, the blasted air conditioning died. When I’d been renting, I’d just picked up the phone and said, “Come fix this.” Those days were over. I was the responsible party now. And I didn’t have a clue who to call. The only person I could think of was my next-door neighbor. I’d seen her a few times while I’d been working on the place. She’d waved and seemed friendly. What the heck. I’ll introduce myself and see if she knows someone who could fix it.

  I rang her doorbell. I didn’t get a referral. I got an eyeful, instead. The door opened wide, and standing before me was a woman wearing nothing but a pink thong bikini bottom, sparkly stilettos and enough gold necklaces to sink a rowboat. I think Mr. T would have made her an official member of The A Team if it weren’t for one thing. She must have been around seventy years old.

  If a geriatric donkey and one of those wrinkly little shar pei dogs had a baby, it might have grown up to have a mug just like this woman’s. Her long, horsey face was like spray-tanned crepe paper. When she cracked her mouth open and smiled at me, I half expected her to whinny – or bray. In fact, it was kind of surreal when she spoke instead. It was like being trapped inside that old TV show with Mr. Ed’s trashy girlfriend.

  “Howd
y, neighbor!”

  The tall, thin woman spoke down at me from her vantage point about a foot above my five-foot-four frame. She thrust out a hand, sending her cadre of necklaces and both boobs swaying. I tried to keep my eyes off the pendulum action.

  “Hi. I’m Val Fremden. Just moved in next door.”

  “Seen you moving in. Nice to meet you. I’m Laverne Cowens.”

  “Uh, I can see you’re busy, Laverne. I don’t want to take up your time. Just wondering if you knew a good air-conditioning repair company?”

  “On the fritz, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I know a thing or two about air conditioners. Let me see if I can help you out.”

  Before I could object, Laverne turned around and disappeared down the hallway, her shriveled, spray-tanned butt cheeks wobbling around a corner. A moment later she reappeared wearing a sparkly gold beach cover-up. I sighed with relief.

  “Show me that air handler thingy.”

  “Uh, that’s okay. I just need a ref –”

  “Nonsense! What are neighbors are for?”

  Laverne closed the front door behind her and shooed me toward my place with a liver-spotted hand spiked with pointy, red fingernails. She followed me across the lawn, high-stepping through the grass with her long, orange legs like a stork through a salad. I opened my front door and led her through my small, open-plan living room and kitchen toward a hall closet where the old air handler unit was installed.

  “Nice place you got here.” Laverne’s donkey head shifted left and right, causing her gold hoop earrings to jangle underneath her smooth, strawberry-blonde hair cut in a soft, layered bob. Her bug-eyes rolled the full range of their sockets. “I like the green paint in the kitchen.”