Fifty is the New F-Word

by Margaret Lashley

  “Yes.”

  “When I saw your ring, my heart nearly stopped. It looked just like the blue sapphire ring Vinnie had given me. But then I read the inscription in the band, and I figured it couldn’t be. You see, mine was inscribed, too. But with just one big, loopy L on it...for Laverne, you know?”

  “Yes,” I said, and almost rolled my eyes from the irony. “A big loopy L for Laverne.”

  “Take your ring off, Val, and look at inscription. That L in Luv. It’s loopy, just like the L on the ring Vinnie Vendaygo gave me.”

  “What?” I took the ring off and studied the L. It was an entirely different font than the other letters. “But...Laverne, even if it is the same ring, how could Tom end up with it?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m sure of one thing. You’ve got the curse, now, Val. What happened to Cold Cuts.... And you getting accused of murdering her. It’s all my fault! I should have thrown that blasted ring in the ocean – or buried in the dirt!”

  “Laverne, it’s not your fault,” I said. “You know I’ve always had bad luck. But if it makes you feel better, I’ll take the ring off.”

  Laverne’s face brightened a little as I slipped the ring from my finger and set it on the coffee table beside my cellphone. As if on cue, the phone buzzed. I looked at the display. “Unknown Caller.” I looked back at Laverne. She was staring at me like a lost soul in need of forgiveness.

  “Laverne, could you do me a favor?”

  She sprang at the chance. “Anything, honey!”

  “I have a headache. Could you get me a tablet from the medicine cabinet?”

  “Sure thing, sugar.”

  “While you’re in there, take a moment for yourself. You look like you just lost a game of Maybelline paintball.”

  Laverne laughed softly, and clomped off toward the bathroom. I smashed the answer button on my phone and slammed it to my ear.

  “Hello? Are you still there?”

  “One of our operatives spotted the RV in Key Largo,” said the voice of Bernard Charles.

  “Oh my lor! Is my friend Cold Cuts okay?”

  “We don’t have enough information to say at this point. Our operative noticed a man in a ‘60s-era Winnebago who fit the profile you gave us for Bill Robo. He wasn’t able to see the plates, but the suspect was driving the vehicle down Highway 1, accompanied by a redheaded, Caucasian female of indeterminate age. Unfortunately, at that point, the agent ran out of fuel and had to pull over to the side of the road.”

  “Oh.”

  “You said Ms. Piddleton was brunette, correct?”

  “Yes. But that RV...it’s full of...disguises.”

  “What do you mean?

  “Cold Cuts – I mean Ms. Piddleton – she works on movie sets. She travels around with all kinds of wigs and costumes in the RV. It could have been her in a red wig. She’s got a million of them stowed in the RV. Everything from toupees to merkins.”

  “What’s a merkin?”

  “Um...maybe you should google it.” My confidence in my unknown ally skipped a beat. I’d thought that Mr. Charles knew everything.

  “I see. Any other news we should be aware of?”

  “I got a text message from Ms. Piddleton.”

  “When?”

  “This morning. I was going to call you but –”

  “What did she say?”

  “That’s just it. I’m not sure if it was really from her. It was a text. It said, ‘Having a blast with Bill.’ That doesn’t sound like something she’d really say, you know? It came with a picture of her looking like her throat was slashed. But the photo was dated last Halloween. So the whole thing could have been a prank.”

  “Or a taunt,” Mr. Charles said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I didn’t want to bring this up unless it became relevant. But the name Bill Robo is definitely an alias.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. We haven’t been able to track down anything on him. That means he’s either got no criminal record, or he’s slick enough to have never been caught.”

  I gulped. “Which one do you think it is?”

  “In my line of work, an honest man doesn’t need an alias.”

  “Oh.”

  “Sorry I don’t have anything more substantial to tell you at this time. I’ll be in touch.”

  The phone went to dial tone. I listened to it until Laverne’s voice broke my blank stare.

  “Who was that, honey?”

  “Oh.” I clicked off the phone. “A friend.”

  “That’s nice. Here’s your tablet,” Laverne said, and handed me a Tums.

  “Thanks, Laverne, but I meant the pain pills in the blue bottle.”

  I started to get up, but Laverne wasn’t having it. “You stay put, sugar. I’ll get it. What is it with you and blue, anyway?”

  “What do you meant?”

  “Blue Ty D Bol, blue Nyquil, blue bottles. You’ve got a thing for blue colored stuff, don’t you?”

  A couple of cells fired in my brain. “Oh my...,” I began. “I think I know what happened in the bathroom!”

  Laverne flinched and jumped back. “Whatever it was, I swear I didn’t do it!”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  When Tom arrived at my place that evening, I was chomping at the bit to tell him what I’d figured out. Maybe then he’d believe in my investigative talents. I figured a beer wouldn’t hurt anything either.

  “Hey, how was your day?” I asked as he came through the door. “Ready for a beer?”

  “Hey.” He watched me hobble over to him on my cane. “What are you doing on your feet?”

  “I’ve been taking it easy. My ankle’s feeling a lot better.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Tom took the beer and collapsed onto the couch. “Sorry to say, but I’ve got no more news on Cold Cuts.”

  I sat beside him. “Me either. But I’ve got a theory.”

  Tom shot me a dubious look. “Uh oh.”

  I shoved him on the shoulder. “I wish you’d take me seriously. I think I’ve figured out an important clue.”

  “What is it?”

  “All those chemicals in the bathroom? The ones that looked like blood?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think it could be hair dye.”

  Tom nearly choked on his beer. “Hair dye?”

  “Yes. I got a call from Bernard Charles today. He told me his team thinks they spotted the RV in the Keys. A man who fit Bill Robo’s description was driving. He was accompanied by a red-headed woman.”

  “And?”

  “Don’t you see? Cold Cuts dyed her hair in the bathroom sink.”

  “Huh,” Tom said, and contemplated the label on his beer. “That’s a possibility. But why was the dye all over the place, then? I mean, it was on the ceiling and everywhere.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe someone...interrupted her when she was doing it.”

  “Maybe. Or it could be that the perpetrator colored her hair. To disguise her identity after...well, you know.”

  “Crap. I was hoping this would make things clearer. It’s just made them worse.”

  “It’s a clue, Val. And a good one. What made you think of it?”

  “Something Laverne said. About my penchant for Ty D Bol.”

  “Huh?”

  “The blue dye in it. Something just clicked in my brain.”

  “Leave it to Laverne.” Tom noticed the ring on the coffee table and picked it up. “Why aren’t you wearing this?”

  “Oh. Because it upset Laverne.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She has it in her head that the ring is cursed.”

  “Cursed?”

  “Yeah.” I bit my lip. “She thinks it’s the same ring she threw away last year. Some guy named Vinnie had given it to her, then got hit by a bus. Every time she wore it, she had bad luck.”

  “Why does she think it’s the same ring?”

  “Because of the loopy L in Luv. Where did you ge
t the ring, anyway?”

  “I found it in the middle of the road about a block from here.”

  My jaw fell open. “So Laverne was right. It probably is the same ring.”

  “Odds are, yes.”

  I pouted angrily. “So why did you give it to me for an engagement ring?”

  “Don’t give me that look,” Tom said. “It wasn’t that I was trying to be cheap.”

  “Then what?”

  “The day I found it, I’d been thinking about asking you to marry me. I saw a glint in the road and stopped to see what it was. I found the ring. It was beautiful. I’d taken it as a sign of good luck. That we were meant to be together.”

  I crinkled my nose, unconvinced. “Well, there’s an ironic twist if I ever saw one.”

  Tom looked hurt. “What do you mean?”

  “I see it as just the opposite. I think it’s a sign that our relationship is cursed, Tom. That maybe we aren’t meant to be together.”

  Tom’s eyes grew wide with shock. “What?”

  “Maybe you should leave.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “That does it!” Tom snapped, and slammed his beer bottle down on the coffee table. “Val, you run so hot and cold, I never know if I’m gonna be scalded alive or frozen to death by you!”

  He jerked to his feet and stomped to the door. “I’ve had it. I can’t take it anymore.” He opened the door, took a step out. Then he turned to face me one last time. “Make up your mind what you want once and for all, Val. Or don’t ever call me ever again.”

  A FEW MINUTES AFTER Tom left, my cellphone buzzed. My heart leapt in my throat. I clicked to answer it. “I’m sorry!” I cried out. “I don’t know what I was thinking!”

  “A confession at last,” Finkerman’s slimy voice said in victory.

  Something inside me boiled over and screamed. I clicked off the phone and flung it across the room. Then I limped to the kitchen and poured myself a gin and tonic – with way more gin than tonic.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I’d finally gone and done it. I’d pushed Tom to the edge of the cliff. Maybe even over it. I’d slept about an hour last night, give or take forty-five minutes. I was delirious. I must have been. I’d actually called Winky and asked for his help. Maggie had been belching blue smoke, and I needed to get to Sarasota.

  I’d had all night to think about the disaster my life was in, but Cold Cuts trumped my own problems at the moment. I went over the details in my mind again, searching for anything I might have missed:

  When I’d woken up Monday morning in the cottage, someone was in the bed beside mine. I was sure of that, because of the snoring. I’d gone into the bathroom. At that point, it was clean – there was nothing amiss. If someone did dye their hair in the sink at the cottage, they had to have done it after I left the room at 5:30 a.m.

  I’d gone for a walk on the beach and read until around 8:45 a.m. Then I’d peeked my head in the room to see if Cold Cuts wanted to go to breakfast. It looked as if she were still asleep in bed, but maybe not. It could have just been bunched up covers. She could have been in the bathroom instead. I strained my brain, trying to remember if I’d heard snoring that time or not. I just couldn’t be certain. And I hadn’t checked the bathroom, either.

  Monty was in the lobby before 9 a.m., because he led me to the breakfast room, where Detective Stanley was making waffles in his dead-squirrel toupee. I’d left and run into Brad at the beach, then headed to Doug’s Dugout for breakfast, but got body slammed, then chased back to the room by the tornado. All of that happened within an hour. So whatever happened in the bathroom, and to Cold Cuts, had to have taken place between 5:30 and 10:00 in the morning.

  Coffee was already available in the breakfast room at half-past five, so someone had to be up and about by then. Brad or Monty or someone else? Either way, people were up and about when Cold Cuts went missing. Someone had to have seen something. I needed to get back to the resort to find out who.

  I’d shared my thoughts with Winky while he was bent over Maggie’s engine. He looked up, wiped more grease on his face, and said, “Well, you ain’t goin’ nowheres in this here vehicle.”

  “Why not? What’s wrong?”

  “You need a new set of rings.”

  The word “rings” echoed in my ears. I pushed the image of a blue sapphire out of my mind.

  “Do you think the Dodge can make it?” I asked, and nodded toward his rusty, faded-blue van.

  “Shore. She ain’t much to look at, but she’s got a heart of gold.”

  “YOU DON’T MIND IF WE stop at Old Joe’s Bait and Tackle Shack, do you?” Winky asked as he pulled onto Gulf Boulevard heading south. “It’s just over yonder on Sunset Beach by Caddy’s.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “I guess the Playing Hooky jewelry business is doing pretty well.”

  “Yep. I got to restock the earring racks for the second time this week. They’s all out a yore favorite ones again. You know, them with the hard-bodied grubs.”

  “Nice.” I tried to be enthusiastic, but no sleep and no Tom had sapped me dry of it.

  Winky took a right off Gulf onto the narrow road that paralleled Sunset Beach. Old Joe’s wasn’t much more than a shack, but it benefited from the draw its neighbor, Caddy’s beach bar, had on tourists and locals alike.

  “There’s ol’ Joe hisself,” Winky said as he parked by the wooden hut no bigger than a dilapidated garage. In the open door frame stood a skinny old man who looked to be comprised mostly of a tanned leather hide and a shaggy grey beard. He waved a boney hand of welcome.

  We piled out of the Dodge van. I grabbed my cane and I limped behind Winky up to the shack. “There’s my feller,” said Old Joe. “This your girlfriend?”

  “Lord, no!” Winky said in a tone that did nothing to bolster my self-esteem.

  “Hi, I’m Joe,” the old man said, and extended a hand the color and texture of a baseball glove.

  “Val,” I said. “Nice place you’ve got here.”

  It was a polite formality. The narrow aisles in the run-down shack were crammed with an odd, dusty assortment of junk that appeared to have been abandoned to time and neglect. Tourist beach necessities like sunscreen, floats and kites were mixed in amongst a tangled heap of fishing rods, ridiculous looking rubber lures and a bubbling old fish tank full of algae and live bait shrimp. Why anyone would willingly sacrifice a perfectly good, tasty shrimp on the odd chance to catching a fish, I’d never understand.

  “Got your earrings right here,” Winky said, and opened his tackle box up by the antique cash register.

  “Good!” Old Joe said. “Let me pay you what I owe you.”

  While the two men hashed out their high-roller finances, I poked around the place. An old wooden sign that read, “Fishermen know all the right holes,” made me smile. I thumped along toward the fish tank and spotted a set of opaque shot glasses featuring a big-bosomed woman in a bikini. Instructions read, “Add booze and watch her bikini disappear!” No thanks.

  I peered into the fish tank and watched the shrimp jet around, doing whatever shrimp do. Next to the tank was a pile of egg crates. Curious, I picked one up and opened it. Ten thousand crickets inside it all jumped in my face at once.

  “Aaarrghh!” I screamed. I lost my balance and flung the egg carton as far as I could on my way to a hard landing on the filthy concrete floor. On the way down, my cane managed to take out a half-dozen fishing rods. They toppled onto me as the crickets hopped all over my body in search of a getaway.

  “Gaul-dang it, Val!” Winky bellowed. He came over and offered me a hand. “You all right?”

  “Not really,” I muttered as he pulled me to standing. “But I’ll live. I’m sorry about this, Old Joe. I’ll pay for the crickets, and whatever else got destroyed.”

  Old Joe smiled the kind of happy-go-lucky smile I’d envied my entire life. “Don’t you worry a jot, Miss Val. We all make mistakes now and then.”
>
  “Well, thank you,” I said, feeling guilty. I wanted to buy something to make amends. I glanced around the shack. “I’ll take a couple of those shot glasses over there.”

  Old Joe grinned and reached for the glasses. “Whatever floats your boat, young lady.”

  “SMOOTH MOVE, EX-LAX,” Winky teased as we left the shack.

  I opened the door of the Dodge and tossed my bag of shot glasses inside. I was about to climb in when I had a thought.

  “Hey Winky. How about a beer at Caddy’s? I owe you for the ride.” The truth was, my own heart could use a little anesthetizing.

  Winky grinned. “Let no man say I ever turned down the opportunity for a free beer.”

  We walked through the sand over to Caddy’s beach bar. It wasn’t much more than a shack either. Just bigger – with picnic tables in the sand and a rooftop deck. I ordered us a couple of beers and joined Winky at a stool by a clapped-together wooden railing overlooking the beach. The sun, blue sky and white sand almost made me forget my troubles. I clinked by bottle against his.

  “To you and Winnie,” I said.

  Winky wagged his ginger eyebrows. “And to you and Tom.”

  My troubles returned. “Thanks.”

  Winky took a long draw off his beer, then hopped off his stool. “Headin’ to the little boys’ room.” He jangled the keys to his van at me. “Try not to do nothin’ else stupid ‘til I get back.”

  I forced a smile, then turned my eyes toward the shoreline. No more Tom. Cold Cuts was missing. What did I have to celebrate, anyway? Just the hope things wouldn’t get any worse?

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I looked, but no one was there. Winky was playing a trick on me. I tried the other shoulder and nearly gagged on my beer. A tall, skinny, pasty white guy with a head full of frizzy red hair grinned at me like a mummified skull in a carnival freak show.

  “Hi there,” Ferrol Finkerman said. “Having a nice day?”

  “What are you doing here?” I snarled.

  “I came to see you, of course.”

  “But...how did you know I was here?”