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

by Margaret Lashley

  The woman held up the bag and showed me her orange teeth.

  “No thanks. I’ll just look around.”

  “Help yourself. Holler if you need me.”

  I wandered through the garage. It was packed to the gills with the same things you find at every yard sale. Unused sporting equipment, ugly heirlooms, Avon collectibles and suspiciously unclean kitchen gadgets. I was just about to leave when I saw a box in the corner labeled, “Anything for 50 Cents”. I took a peek inside and grinned. I handed the lady five bucks.

  “Aww, I’m glad those things are going to a good home. You collect ‘em, do you?”

  “Yes. They bring me a lot of joy.”

  “Well I’m glad to hear it. Want me to wrap ‘em in newspaper?”

  “No. That won’t be necessary. But thanks.”

  The woman handed me back three Cheeto-stained one-dollar bills. I put them in the plastic grocery bag along with my prizes.

  “You get these often?” I asked as I walked toward Maggie.

  “Pretty regular. Stop by and see me. I’m here most days.”

  “Okay, thanks. I just might take you up on that.”

  I slid into the bucket seat and carefully laid the bag on the passenger seat. As I rumbled toward home, four chipped ceramic figurines clinked together, gossiping amongst themselves in their China voices about how lucky they were to find a new home. They had no idea what they were in for.

  Chapter Thirteen

  On the ride home from the garage sale, I realized I didn’t have a single girlfriend. Clarice, Berta and Glad…they’d all slipped away, like sand through my fingers. Was I like that lady on Murder She Wrote? Everyone who came near me ended up dying – the women, anyway.

  I sighed. I couldn’t do anything to change the past. But I did have a shot at changing the future. Last-night’s break-in had delivered more than one kind of shock. It was a rude awakening and a wake-up call. I was repeating the same mistake I had with Friedrich; I was becoming way too reliant on Tom. I needed to change that – and quick.

  I wracked my brain. Was there a single woman I could turn to for friendship and advice? I thought about calling my adoptive mom back in Greenville, but I could hear her voice without even picking up the phone:

  “I tried to tell you, Ragmuffin. But you’re too highfalutin for my advice now. That’s what happens when you go traipsing off to places you don’t belong.”

  I hit the gas and headed toward home.

  ***

  I wasn’t the kind to burn bridges. It was more my style to neglect them instead. I’d mastered the technique while I was away in Germany all those years. Out of sight, out of mind, I’d banished my old acquaintances to some cobwebbed corner of my brain. I’d paid little attention as my connections with my family and friends in Florida had grown weed-infested, corroded, and inched their way toward total disrepair.

  Since my return a year and a half ago, these half-forgotten folks had begun to spring to mind again like snippets from a favorite movie. I’d already tried to reconnect with a few old friends, but I’d done so with guilty trepidation. And a bit of shame. After all, in their eyes – and maybe mine too – I was a failure. I’d left the States riding a gallant, white steed of high-flying dreams. I’d returned dragging a dirty blue suitcase weighed down with painful lessons from the German school of hard knocks.

  I’d lost more than a husband in Germany. I’d lost my best friend, Clarice. And fun-loving old Berta, too. Finding Glad passed away on her lounge chair last year had left me gun-shy about investing my heart with anyone I thought could truly hurt me. My puny little birthday-party guest list was undeniable evidence of how small I’d allowed my world to shrink. But lately, I’d begun to miss the company of old friends. And by “old” I meant the kind of friends I’d had before I went abroad – the kind that didn’t consider dumpster diving a valid career opportunity.

  One such friend had been Milly Halbert.

  Over eight years had passed since I last saw Milly. We’d been fairly close before I left for Europe. But I’d abandoned her like a pirate’s wench when I sailed across the sea in search of la dolce vita. I’d returned nearly broke, with no job, no credit, no place to live and no friends that weren’t either strange or estranged. I’d been snubbed by a few old acquaintances, and it had hurt. But I was sick and tired of licking the wounds from my personal shipwreck. I was ready to try crossing one of those old bridges again.

  Being an admitted coward about all things relationship, right after I’d bought the figurines, I’d looked up Milly’s number and texted her a simple note asking if she wanted to meet at Nitally’s for lunch at noon. I’d gotten a one-word reply. “Okay.” Not sure what to read into those four little letters, I’d turned Maggie around and headed back toward downtown. At two minutes to twelve, I placed a trembling hand on the restaurant door. My stomach rumbled from nerves and hunger. I was either going to get a hug or an earful of obscenities. I braced myself for the worst and pushed through the restaurant door.

  “Valliant! Great to see you!” Milly hollered at me from across the restaurant as soon as I peeked in the door.

  As it turned out, the worry had been for nothing. Milly Halbert was the unsinkable Molly Brown in my Titanic boatload of former friends. The sound of her voice and the sight of her heart-shaped face sent a delicious wave of soft, warm comfort washing over me. My eyes watered with gratitude. I smiled guiltily. Milly had been the only person I’d let call me Valliant, the weird name given to me by my adoptive parents. She’d earned the privilege. Her first name was even worse than mine.

  “Millicent!” I shouted back. The sandy-blonde fashion diva winked a hazel eye at me, and, just like that, the eight years separating us vanished in the curry-scented air.

  “There ought to be a law against men wearing sandals if their toenails look like Fritos,” Milly half-whispered as I sat down in the red plastic booth opposite her.

  She grimaced and bobbed her head sideways in the direction of the man sitting at the table next to us. Against my will, I took a peek. Milly’s description was more accurate than I wanted it to be.

  “Ugh. He ought to run a diet club,” I said. “There went my appetite.”

  Milly giggled, then involuntarily snorted like a piglet. The old, familiar sound was as comforting as a warm blanket on a chilly morning. I drank it in. It felt good to be accepted as I was, despite my huge, gaping flaws.

  “It’s so good to see you again, Milly. Thanks for agreeing to see me.”

  “Are you kidding?” She winked again. “I’m grateful you texted. You’re one of my favorite mistakes, my friend.”

  I grinned. Ironically, though Milly accepted me lumps and all, she offered no such slack to men unlucky enough to cross her path. In fact, when it came to the opposite sex, Milly had a list of offending “laws” as long as the bridge to Key West. This was one of the reasons I found her so endearing – and probably the main reason she rarely ever got a second date.

  It certainly wasn’t her looks that turned men off. Both Mother Nature and Father Time had been kind to Milly. She looked pretty much the same as she did last time I saw her. In a word – gorgeous. Blonde, slim, button nose, hazel eyes and the perfect height of five feet, five inches.

  Milly was the kind of woman so outwardly perfect that a girl couldn’t be blamed for secretly hoping she harbored some inner, hideous flaw, like psychopathy – or both sex chromosomes. But I knew better. In fact, over the years, the only flaw I’d ever detected in Milly was that when it came to men, she was ruthless and clueless. She attracted guys like lint to a black suit, but she couldn’t seem to navigate her way around the inner workings of a relationship to save her life. Fed on a steady diet of reality shows and fashion-magazine dating advice, Milly seemed fated to strut the catwalk of life forever a stray.

  “Well, Milly, if I’m one of your favorite mistakes, I can’t be that bad.”

  “I’m serious! I’ve missed you, Val. Sometimes I think you’re the only one who eve
r really got me.”

  “Sometimes you’ve got to give to get,” I said with way more preacher in my tone than I’d intended. Dating Tom had me feeling a little smug. Maintaining a long-term relationship with a man was the only category in which I had the remotest chance of topping Milly, so I considered it remiss not to revel in it for just a second or two.

  “But getting is so much better than giving,” Milly whined.

  She laughed at her own joke and reached toward me, accidentally knocking over her glass of water. I’d forgotten what a klutz she could be. The commotion caused Frito Toes to look our way. He shot Milly a lewd expression that should have stayed locked behind bedroom doors – or maybe jail bars. I watched as she turned away from him and faked a retch. Classic Milly.

  She leaned over the table toward me.

  “There ought to be a law against leering in public.”

  “He can’t help himself, Milly. There ought to be a law against looking as good as you.”

  Milly laughed and brushed aside my compliment like biscuit crumbs from a tablecloth.

  “Like I said, Val, I’ve missed you. You’ve been back what…a year? What have you been up to, naughty runaway?”

  “This and that. You remember my mom?”

  Milly turned up her nose. “Yeah.”

  “Turns out, she wasn’t really my mom.”

  “I could’a told you that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sorry, Val, but that woman wasn’t anybody’s mom. Not the way a mother should be.”

  “Wait, don’t tell me. There ought to be a law against mothers like her.”

  Milly smiled and cocked her beautiful, blonde head.

  “Well, natch’.”

  I grinned. “Let’s see. I also moved into a house in Bahia Shores. I inherited it from my real parents.”

  “Wait a minute. Real parents? I thought you were kidding about your mom.”

  “No. It turns out I was adopted, sort of.”

  “Really! How did you find out?”

  “That’s a long story for another day. I’ll fill you in over drinks sometime.”

  “Okay. But do you like them? Your real parents?”

  “They’re both dead.”

  “Oh. Dating anybody?”

  Good old Milly. She was to romance what roads were to Rome. All her conversations led back to men.

  “Yes.”

  Milly leaned in, her hazel eyes wide and sparkly. “Tell me about him!”

  “Here.”

  I clicked my phone to a picture of Tom and slid it across the table.

  “He’s a cop.”

  Milly grabbed my phone like it was a free diamond tiara.

  “Woo hoo! What a looker!”

  She glanced up at me, her eyes full of mischief.

  “Did you meet him in jail?”

  “Ha ha,” I said dryly. “Thanks, Milly. Do I look that desperate to you?”

  Milly laughed. “No. It’s just that…meeting a nice guy is so… freaking frustrating.”

  “God knows that’s true. How about you? Dating someone?”

  Milly rolled her beautiful, long-lashed eyes.

  “No. If I like them, they don’t like me, and vice versa. I signed up on MatchMate last November. It’s been what…five months now online? I’ve gone out with probably fifty guys. All ‘one-hit wonders.’ I tell you what, Val. Chemistry is a bitch. A bitch who must be obeyed.”

  “Geeze. If you can’t get a good guy, Milly, what chance do the rest of us have?”

  “Honestly, Val! The cute guys are players. The smart guys are nerds or doughboys. The rest are Duck Dynasty contenders or potential serial killers. My new car’s navigation system took care of the last reason to even need a man anymore. When my Pleasure Pony dildo arrives in the mail, I’m thinking of taking this baby off the market for good.”

  I hitched my lip up on one side. “I know it’s bad out there.”

  “Bad? Last Saturday I spent all this time and money getting ready for a date. Manicure, pedicure, Brazilian, the works. This jerk showed up in a raggedy-ass Grateful Dead t-shirt and cammo shorts. I wouldn’t have worn that outfit to wash my own car!”

  “You don’t wash your own car.”

  Milly shot me a look. “That’s beside the point! You know what I did?”

  “No. What?”

  “I went back to my bedroom and changed into sweats and flip flops. I put my hair in a ponytail, marched my butt back out to the living room and said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realize we were going to clean out your garage.’”

  “You left your makeup on?”

  “Of course! I’m not that stupid.”

  “Okay. Well, what did he say?”

  “That’s just it! He didn’t say anything. He thought it was a joke. He laughed!”

  I thought about Tom and his ironed jeans and non-Frito toenails.

  “Not all men are like that.”

  “I sure hope you’re right, Val.”

  A metal chair leg scrapped noisily across the concrete floor. The Frito bandito was making his getaway. As he passed us, he smiled and dropped a crinkly scrap of paper on Milly’s side of the table. After he disappeared out the door, Milly poked at the crumpled note with a straw, as if it were contaminated with anthrax. She maneuvered it around until she could see the message scrawled on it. She read it out loud.

  “Call me. You won’t regret it. Steve.”

  “See? You’re still attracting them like flies, Milly.”

  “Yeah. Ass flies.”

  Milly’s lips twisted into a tortured pout. She pushed the scrap of paper off the table and watched it fall to the floor. When her eyes met mine again, her mouth had morphed into a devilish grin. She scrunched her head to her shoulders.

  “With toenails like his, he’s probably got a foot fetish,” she teased.

  The game was on again.

  “Eeeww!” “Okay. I’ve got one,” I said. “I wonder if Mr. Fritos comes with his own bean dip.”

  “Gross!”

  I dropped my voice an octave and leered at Milly. “Drop your drawers my lovely and join me in my hot tub full of bubbling brown goop.”

  Milly reached across the booth and slapped me playfully on the shoulder.

  “Aauughh! I forgot how good you were at this. You win. I’ll pick up the tab.”

  “You don’t have to, Milly. Let me. I’m grateful that you showed up.”

  “Rules are rules, girlfriend. Speaking of which, there ought to be a law against making someone picture that guy in a hot tub.”

  “True enough. I’d be the first to second that motion.”

  ***

  I decided not to tell Milly about my predicament with the finger. Not yet, anyway. It’d been so wonderful to see her again. I didn’t wanted to scare her away. Hi! Haven’t seen you in years! You look great! Me? Oh, nothing special. I’m just the main suspect in a human dismemberment case.

  After lunch with Milly, Tom had called. He’d wanted to come over tonight. I’d lied and told him I had a headache.

  The truth was, I was still hopping mad about him leaving me to deal with the break-in and Officer Jergen all by myself. To top it off, he still hadn’t bought me a birthday present. I’d tried to be a big person about it, but my giant wad of hurt feelings had grown so huge it finally outweighed even my fear of falling victim to another home invasion. I’d acted nonchalant with Tom on the phone, and secretly taken a perverse pleasure in the notion that if I got murdered tonight, it would be his fault. Tom would have to live with the guilt. Forever.

  Resentment clotted into a throbbing, grapefruit-sized knot just above my heart. The only thing saving Tom from my wrath was my foolish Southern pride. It was time for a full-on pity party. I poured down more than a couple of TNTs and lined up my adorable garage-sale figurines on a concrete block out in the backyard. I plopped into in a lawn chair and watched the sun disappear. In the fading twilight, I took a hammer and smashed the four porcelain cutie pies into a m
illion dusty bits.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Last night’s “knick-knack-give-a-whack” therapy worked. I woke this morning in a better mood. I made myself a cappuccino and basked in soft, sunny memories of a dream I’d had about Glad. She’d been sprawled out in her pink lounge chair in the sugar-white sand next to Caddy’s beach bar, grinning at me from underneath her Gilligan hat, her drawn-on eyebrows arching over black, bug-eyed sunglasses. She got me longing for a nostalgic trip to Sunset Beach. I googled the news. Still nothing about the finger. I guessed the coast was clear.

  I slipped on a bathing suit and was halfway out the door when a thought stopped me and shoved me back inside. Crap. I had an appointment with J.D. Fellows at 10:15. Anxiety barged its way inside my mind and shattered my mellow mood like a cheap figurine.

  ***

  “So, just to be certain I have this correct, a very short man dressed as either George W. Bush or Alfred E. Newman broke into your place in the middle of the night, sat on your bed, and demanded to know where your finger was?”

  “Well, when you say it like that, it sounds kind of weird.”

  “We don’t say weird here, Val. We say implausible. So, how short was the man?”

  I averted my eyes. Even though J.D. Fellows towered above me in his special chair positioned strategically behind his custom mahogany desk, when he’d ushered me into his office, he’d been eye-level with my elbows. Despite the fact that our relationship stretched a bit beyond professional, in his office sanctum Mr. Fellows was all business. His question about the height of the perpetrator sent my political correctness radar skittering off the charts.

  “Um…well, first he was on the bed. Then I kicked him. He flew off of it. And then he ran away.”

  Mr. Fellows remained silent and stared at me dubiously through the bifocals on the end of his bulbous nose.

  “It was dark. It was hard to tell.”

  “Can you be more specific? Did you perhaps see him near some familiar item by which you could compare his height? A nightstand or doorway, perhaps?”

  “Yes. That’s how I knew he was short.”