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

by Margaret Lashley

  “Yes, we’ve established that he was short. Now we need to know how short.”

  “Um. Exceptionally short. You know what I mean?”

  Mr. Fellows raised a sarcastic eyebrow. My face flushed red.

  “Short like me, you mean?”

  “Um. Yes.”

  “And the finger? Do you think it belonged to…the man in the mask?”

  “No. It was a full-sized finger.”

  “My dear, we ‘short people’ can have full-sized body parts.”

  “I…I didn’t mean to imply –”

  “You know I practice estate planning, Ms. Fremden. I’m not a defense attorney.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “So why did you come to me?”

  Shit! My carefully steered conversation was careening off a cliff. Mr. Fellows looked like a tea kettle ready to blow.

  “Well. I thought you might know –”

  “Look here, Ms. Fremden. Just because I’m a little person doesn’t mean I know every single one of them on the planet! It’s not like there’s a Lollipop Guild of St. Petersburg or something!”

  “No! No! I meant…that I thought…you might know…an attorney. To refer me to.”

  Mr. Fellows deflated like a leaky balloon.

  “Oh. Well. In that case I –”

  A voice buzzed over Mr. Fellows’ phone intercom, interrupting him mid-sentence.

  “Mr. Fellows! Mr. Greene is on the line. He says it’s an emer –”

  Mr. Fellows clicked a button on the phone, silencing the intercom. He reached a hand across the desk in my direction, but didn’t make eye contact. I shook it and let it go.

  “I think that will do for today, Ms. Fremden. I will call around for a referral for you. I’m not used to dealing with criminal cases.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I trust you can see yourself out?”

  “Oh. Yes. Of course.”

  I wanted to apologize, but feared it would just make things worse. I opened the solid, mahogany door to his posh office and stepped out. As I turned to close the door behind me, I took a last peek at Mr. Fellows. He wasn’t hiding his feelings anymore. He was red-faced angry, and began yelling into the phone. I closed the door behind me carefully, as if to not wake the sleeping baby. But this baby was not only awake. Its diaper needed changing.

  ***

  I left Mr. Fellows’ office feeling like I’d stepped in every cow patty in a forty-acre field. Was the whole world angry at me? Out to get me, even? I needed a shoulder to cry on. I didn’t want to wear out my welcome with Milly, but she was the only shoulder I knew of that didn’t reek of sweat and booze. I took a chance and texted her about meeting me for lunch at noon at Ming-Ming’s, my favorite sushi place. I got a text back that read: “Natch!” I grinned, jumped in my old Ford and headed west on Central toward the beach.

  I’d just pulled into a parking spot at Ming Ming’s when my phone chirped. I answered it. A familiar, baritone voice was on the line.

  “Goober One to Goober Two.”

  I groaned.

  “Hey Goober. What’s up?”

  “I got a fella here says he knows a fella.”

  “Okay. And?”

  “Says the scar-faced kid is called Capone. Pretty clever, eh?”

  “Extraordinarily creative.”

  “Don’t be a sourpuss, Val. It’s busker society rules. Never use your real name. We all have our handles – you know. Code names.”

  “I get it. So what does this guy know?”

  “Liar Lewy? He says Capone hangs out mainly in the area around Seventh and Second. That’s his territory, sore to speak.”

  “How did Liar Lewy get his nickname?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “Well, it doesn’t add to his credibility factor.”

  “I guess. But that’s what he says.”

  “Thanks, Goober. So what’s your code name?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  Goober clicked off the phone. I wasn’t sure if he’d hung up on me or his phone had run out of money. I hauled my sad butt out of my car and took a table inside Ming Ming’s to wait for Milly.

  Chapter Fifteen

  As usual, Milly had men on her mind. So between bites of Ming Ming’s sushi, I brought up my troubles with Tom.

  “I don’t know, Milly. I mean, I like being someone’s partner. But I also like sitting around the house with no pants on. And being able to fart whenever I want to.”

  Milly giggled. “Uh oh! Do I detect the shining knight’s armor starting to rust?”

  I sighed and my shoulders slumped.

  “I dunno. That’s a good question. I mean, we always want what we don’t have, right? You don’t have a relationship and want one. I’ve got one, but now I’m not so sure I want it.”

  “It’s the never-ending ‘catch twenty-two’, Val. Don’t get me wrong. I like my single life. But if I was in a relationship…married, I mean…I’d feel so much safer. My future would be secure.”

  “You’re kidding, right? I’ve been married three times. There’s no security in it! Not in my experience, anyway. All I ever got out of marriage was a case of emotional schizophrenia.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I dunno. I guess I just could never figure out how to stay true to who I was and what I wanted. I always turned into some strange version of whoever the hell I thought they wanted me to be. It drove me nuts!”

  Milly eyed me playfully with her sparkling hazel eyes.

  “I can see that.”

  “Ha ha. Anyway, sorry for the tirade.”

  “Don’t be. Val, you’re like the black widow spider of relationships.”

  “Eeew. What do you mean?”

  “Nothing is wasted. When you’re done with a man, you eat him alive.”

  “Gee. Thanks.”

  “No, I mean it in a good way. You dissect him. Digest him. Get all that you can out of the relationship. Learning wise, I mean. Not like me. I just keep repeating the same mistakes.”

  “You and me both, sister. I feel like I haven’t learned squat. I’m more like the earthworm of relationships.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t tell which end is up and I keep digging new holes for myself.”

  Milly laughed.

  “At least their new holes.”

  I smiled sarcastically.

  “So tell me, Milly. What’s your latest mistake?”

  Milly’s eyes brightened.

  “I call him refrigerator man.”

  “Cold?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Square?”

  “No. Just the usual. Clueless.”

  “Okay. Spill it.”

  Milly leaned in, her eyes sparkling. She lived for moments like this.

  “I met him at a bar. We danced. He was short, but kind of cute, you know? So I gave him my number. He texted me, asking I was busy the next evening. I texted back I was free. He texted the word ‘good’ back, but by five the next afternoon, I still hadn’t heard a word.”

  I shook my head in girlfriend sympathy. I knew what came next couldn’t be good.

  “Typical.”

  “Right? So I thought, forget this crap. I called a girlfriend and we went to dinner. So, it’s half past seven and I’m halfway through my salad when this guy pings me. One word. ‘Wazzup.’ Then he sends me a picture of his freaking refrigerator!”

  “Huh?”

  “Exactly! I text back that I’m out with someone. He texts the word ‘Later’ and I never hear from him again. W-T-F, Val. What’s up with that?”

  “All I can say is, count your blessings, Milly. You nipped this jerk in the bud. It usually takes me seven to fifteen years to figure out a guy’s a total jackass.”

  Milly shrugged. “I guess you’re right.”

  Milly’s eyes glanced to the right. I could almost see the lightbulb go off over her head.

  “There ought to be a law against a man parting his
hair down the middle.”

  My eyes followed hers. Seated against the wall was a skinny guy in his fifties. He wore blue jeans and a red, silky-looking shirt emblazoned with a long-stemmed white rose design that wrapped around his ribcage and bloomed on his left breast pocket. He was busy studying a Ming Ming’s menu through a pair of red bifocals. A greying mop of wavy hair parted in the middle hung down in his eyes. It looked like a geriatric Pekinese was taking a nap on his noggin.

  “Do you think it’s a wig?” I whispered.

  “Gawd! I hope so!”

  We both giggled. The game was on, and I was at bat.

  “Hey. The seventies called. They want their shirt back!” I sniggered.

  “Hasn’t he ever seen like…a fashion magazine?”

  “Or have a friend who’s seen a fashion magazine?”

  We were on a roll. Milly cupped her hands into a megaphone.

  “Hey mister. Did you pay for that haircut or were you ambushed by a three-year-old chimpanzee?”

  Tea shot through my nose. I ducked down and Milly snorted. I grabbed a napkin and held it over my nose and mouth as we both giggled and grunted and tried to regain our composure. When I could breathe again, I took my turn.

  “Okay, okay. I got one. Hey dude! Are you related to Willie Nelson? ’Cause it’s definitely time to get –”

  “On the road again!” we exclaimed together.

  We couldn’t fight the tsunami and fell out, swamped with laughter. In the middle of our giggling fit, Milly knocked over her jasmine tea. The warm, brown liquid spilled across the table like an unfortunate bowel elimination and collected in puddles on the floor. I wiped tears of laughter from my eyes with my napkin, then bent over to sop up the spilled tea. As I did, I knocked heads with Pekinese man.

  “Ouch!” I cried out.

  The man jerked back and rubbed his head.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just trying to help out.”

  He held a tea-soaked napkin in his hand. Good old Southern guilt washed over me like a spilt baptismal pool.

  “Oh. I’m sorry, too. Thank you,” I offered sheepishly. “That’s really nice of you.”

  “No problem,” he said. “It looks like disaster’s been averted. Anything else I can do for you two?”

  I fumbled around for something to say. Milly was no help. She sat across from me, red-faced and silent as a guilty, naughty child.

  “Um. Could you take our picture? I want one for –”

  “Sure! You two get together and I’ll peel off a shot.”

  I handed the man my cell phone and joined frozen-faced Milly on the other side of the table. The guy took a couple of snaps and handed me back the phone.

  “Thank you,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  “Nope.”

  What an odd name. I expected him to return to his table, but instead, the man made his way toward the exit door. Milly and I watched him as he opened the door and stepped outside. As the glass door slowly shut behind him, he turned to us and spoke.

  “Have a nice day, ladies. I make it a policy to never get on a first-name basis with a pair of assholes.”

  ***

  After my lunch humiliation, I figured I might as well stay in the gutter. I left red-faced Milly paying the check at Ming Ming’s and drove east on Central Avenue. I hooked a left at Third Street and drove into the alleged hangout of scar-faced Capone.

  The red brick streets of the Old Northeast neighborhood were rutted by monsoon rains and a hundred years of vehicular traffic. Maggie hated them, and so did I. To save her from damage, I parked along Second Street, a block away from Old Northeast Tavern. The place was probably Florida’s first attempt at a strip mall. Built in the 1930s, it suffered from Spanish flat-roof design and American lack of commitment. Its merengue-like stucco façade and three-story clock tower had faded to an orange-pink hue from decades of standing in the glaring, tropical sun. The five-store lineup of tiny businesses within it came and went with the tide – just like the rest of Florida’s transient population.

  The only establishment that had demonstrated any staying power against this fickle, economic outflow was a pizza joint offering pies by the slice. Being three blocks from my old apartment, I’d eaten there a few times last year when I’d been in desperate need of a pizza fix. Even though the name of the place lacked originality, Old Northeast Pizza’s pies didn’t. They were delicious. And the price was right – $2.50 for a slice as big as my head.

  As I walked along the sidewalk across the street from the strip center’s row of shabby storefronts, I spotted a guy with a chipped tooth fishing pizza crusts out of the wastebasket outside. It looked like my growing street smarts were paying off. I patted my inner Valiant Stranger on the back.

  “Hey. Are you Capone?” I called from across the brick street.

  The guy jumped and poised for takeoff like an Olympic track star. He looked my way and I saw his scar. Bingo!

  “What a ya want?” he yelled back. His voice was hard, but curious.

  “Nothing. You helped a guy load a couch onto a 4Runner about a week ago. Right?”

  Capone shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  He put a crust between his teeth and ripped off a hunk. I walked across the street as he eyed me warily like a hungry raccoon.

  “Look. I just want to know if you stuck anything in the couch. For safekeeping. While you were napping on it.”

  Capone stopped chewing the crust. He fished a cigarette butt out of his mouth, looked at it, tossed it in the trash bin and commenced to chewing again.

  “Anything like what?”

  “Like a finger? With a gold ring on it?”

  “Are you outta your mind?”

  “I’m not accusing you of cut –”

  “Lady, if I found a gold ring, do you think I’d load it onto a truck and watch it drive away?”

  He had a point. Dammit. There went my best lead.

  “Okay. Thanks Capone. Here’s five bucks for your troubles. There’s plenty more where that came from for the right information on the finger – either who lost it or who’s looking for it.”

  Capone snatched the fiver from my hand, then looked over at the pizza place. I took a step back in the direction of my car.

  “Hey lady. How am I supposed to get a hold of you? With more information, I mean?”

  Brilliant, Val. Some detective you are. I didn’t want to give another derelict my number, so I gave him Goober’s.

  “Just call this guy. You probably know him already.”

  “Who is he? A cop?”

  “No. A friend of mine. Bald. Bushy moustache. He pushes a stroller sometimes?”

  “Not ringin’ any bells.”

  “He’s got a head shaped like a peanut?”

  Recognition flashed across Capone’s face.

  “Aw, yeah. You mean Bushwacker.”

  ***

  It was a gorgeous afternoon in early April, and I didn’t feel like going home. I took a nostalgic stroll by my old apartment, hoping the fresh air would clear my head and help me think. Who could have put that finger in my couch?

  Florida didn’t have seasons. Not like most people thought of them, anyway. April was the closest thing to autumn that St. Pete had to offer. It was the time of year when the live oaks shed their tired old leaves all at once. Within the span of a week or so, the huge, old trees transformed themselves almost as drastically as caterpillars turning into butterflies.

  Massive canopies of olive-green leaves died overnight and their tannish-brown carcasses rained down like snow onto lawns and cars and streets and swimming pools. Within a day or two, the shiny green leaves that had pushed the old leaves off unfurled and formed massive, neon-green umbrellas against the blue sky. Then the oaks set about sprouting male and female flowers. If pollenated, the female flowers hung tight and turned into acorns. The male flowers, or catkins, had no such chance. They released their pollen, shriveled up and came careening down to earth. Their crumbly, wormlike bodi
es fell by the millions and collect on sidewalks in drifts, like dust bunnies under a bed.

  I shuffled along the cracked sidewalk half covered in oak leaves and catkins, and counted my blessings that I wasn’t allergic to oak pollen. I crossed Beach Drive and breathed in the sweet fragrance of jasmine in bloom. It hung from the wrought-iron fence of one of the mansions that lined the block between Beach and Northshore Boulevard. Across the street was Northshore Park, an oasis of green grass dotted with oaks and the occasional exotic Poinciana or Jacaranda tree.

  The city park’s east side ended at a concrete seawall. I found a bench in the shade facing the wide expanse of Tampa Bay. Seagulls screamed and blue jays quarreled with each other as I sat quietly, waiting for some inspiration that would help get me off the hook for finding that horrid finger.

  How did that dwarf guy know the finger was at my place? And why on earth would he want it back so badly that he’d broken into my place?

  One thing was for sure; it had to be someone who knew the couch belonged to me. That’s the only way the dwarf could have known I had it. Unless…he or one of his buddies was in the alley when Tom and Capone loaded the couch into his 4Runner. They could have been hiding there, waiting for Capone to get off the couch so they could retrieve the finger. Yes. It could have been someone watching from the alley who followed Tom to my place.

  Geeze. If that was the case, it could have been anyone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Tom spent the night last night. He ran the sink while he was in the bathroom, driving home the fact that we were still in that tense, awkward phase all new relationships went through. We were both still clinging to the illusion that we were perfect. Even so, old habits each of us had swept under the rug were beginning to crawl their way to the surface. He left the cap off the toothpaste and the toilet seat up.

  Being on one’s best behavior was a hard act to maintain, and we were beginning to tire under the strain. This morning, after some half-hearted cuddling and a couple of cappuccinos, I went to the kitchen and googled the crime-related news for St. Petersburg. It had sort of become a compulsion of mine ever since my interrogation by Officer Jergen. I kept waiting to open the screen and learn that the police had made an arrest in the case. But there hadn’t been a word. Not even a report about me finding the finger. I was dying to know what was going on, but I didn’t dare mention it to Tom. Every time I’d tried, he’d shut me down. He refused to get involved.