Moth Busters, Dr. Prepper, Oral Robbers: Freaky Florida Mystery Adventures 1, 2 & 3

by Margaret Lashley

  For the umpteenth time, I tried to roll up my broken driver’s side window, and for the umpteenth time, I grimaced at my own stupidity. I shifted into first, and, just to prove I was honest as well, I did what I told Grayson I was going to do.

  I headed to Waldo to see Beth-Ann.

  “IF GRAYSON ASKS, YOUR cat had kittens,” I said as I walked into Beth-Ann’s converted beauty-shop garage.

  “I don’t have a cat. And why would Grayson call me?”

  “I don’t know. But I want to have a plan, just in case he does.”

  “You sound paranoid, Bobbie.”

  “Maybe I am. Vanderhoff died last night.”

  “Dang it!” Beth-Ann hollered. “I just ordered a whole case of that blue rinse she uses.”

  I shot her some side-eye. “Somebody murdered her, Beth-Ann.”

  Beth-Ann did a double take. “What?”

  “They ripped her throat out. Just like the corpse I saw in the woods.”

  “What corpse? Don’t tell me there’s a serial killer on the loose and you didn’t even bother to tell me!”

  “I’m telling you now.”

  “And you think Grayson’s the killer?”

  I studied her face. “Maybe. Why would you say that?”

  “I did that Google search, like you asked. He’s got kind of a shady past.”

  “And you didn’t bother to tell me? He could have killed me, for crying out loud, Beth-Ann! Do you know he was gone all last night? And this morning ... his laundry ... it was all bloody.”

  “Criminy!”

  I winced. “What did you find out about him?”

  “That he was telling the truth, mostly. Grayson was a physicist, like he said. But he got discredited and lost his position at MIT.”

  “Why?”

  “The grounds were kind of vague. Unethical behavior.”

  “That could mean anything from stealing paperclips to creating mutants in a lab.” I wrung my hands. “What are we going to do?”

  “I know what I’m gonna do.”

  Beth-Ann marched over to a cabinet and opened a drawer. She pulled out a pistol and pointed the barrel toward the sky. “Watch out Mothman, and any other kind of man who gets in my way.”

  I eyed her enviously. “You wouldn’t happen to have another one of those, would you?”

  Beth-Ann bit her lip. “Well, I was saving it for your birthday, but I think I’d rather give it to you now, so you live to turn thirty-seven.” She reached into the drawer and pulled out a wrapped gift.

  “Here, Detective Drex. Happy Birthday.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  I RETURNED TO ROBERT’S Mechanics feeling like a new woman. I was invigorated, supercharged, and packing heat.

  With my very own, no-hand-me-down Glock tucked away in the right hip pocket of my coveralls, I was prepared to handle whatever Grayson threw at me. And I figured he wouldn’t cross me. He knew firsthand what a good shot I was.

  I pulled into the parking lot. Grayson’s RV was out of the service bay. Earl’s coverall-covered butt was bent over the open hood.

  “How much longer?” I asked as I shut off the Mustang’s coughing engine.

  “Just took it for a test drive.” Earl wiped a socket wrench with an oily rag. “Needs a few adjustments and she’s ready to roll.”

  “Good, because I’m ready for Grayson to leave.”

  Earl’s eyebrows disappeared under his shaggy bangs. “Lover’s quarrel?”

  “Har har har. I think he’s outstayed his welcome. And what gives? I thought you said you’d have that thing ready by now.”

  “I would’ve,” he argued, “but these two fellas stopped by asking for directions to Alto Lake. I told ’em to find Waldo and—”

  My eyebrows shot up. “What did they look like?”

  “Like them men-in-black fellas. Only they was men in blue. Probably FBI.” Earl looked up to the sky and scratched his stubbly chin. “I wonder if a UFO crashed somewheres around here.”

  “What makes you think they were FBI? Did they say so?”

  “No. But I watch The X-Files, Bobbie. I know the difference.”

  “Earl, they were the FBI. Paulson called them. Vanderhoff’s been killed.”

  “Kilt? As in dead?”

  “Yes. Murdered.”

  “How? Who done it?”

  “I don’t know. Where’s Grayson?”

  “Upstairs packing.”

  For his getaway, no doubt.

  “Okay. Listen, Earl. If he tries to leave, don’t let him.”

  Earl smiled slyly. “Lookin’ for one more roll in the hay first?”

  “No!” I hissed. “He owes us a hundred and eighty-eight dollars.”

  I turned and stomped up the stairs, my bravado fading with each step.

  Should I call Paulson? Should I confront Grayson on my own? Should I just get the money from him and let him go?

  I tapped on the door to Grandma Selma’s apartment. Grayson called out, “Come in.”

  I crept in cautiously, my pistol drawn at my side. Grayson was sitting at the kitchen table. He looked up from his laptop and smiled. Beside him on the table were two stacks of pink T-shirts and boxers, neatly folded and stacked with the kind of precision that made me further question his mental.

  Yep. Totally OCD.

  I eyed him suspiciously. “Funny. I pictured you as the tidy-whitey type.”

  Grayson shrugged. “That’s what I get for buying cheap red handkerchiefs. I tried out that biker, do-rag look. But I think the fedora is more me.” He held a red kerchief to his forehead. “What do you think?”

  You’ve got a sketchy answer for everything, that’s what I think.

  I tightened my grip on the Glock hidden from his view. “You going somewhere?”

  Grayson shrugged. “Thought I’d rob a liquor store and go to Disneyland. You in?”

  “Cut the crap, Grayson. You’re a liar. You told me you’re a physicist.”

  Grayson’s brow furrowed. “I am.”

  “You were discredited.”

  “So? Once a physicist, always a physicist. How did you find that out, anyway? Did you use my computer?” Grayson smiled in a way that made me squirm inside.

  “No.”

  “Why not? Couldn’t get past the question on the screen?”

  I frowned. “I didn’t try. I guess I really didn’t want to find out what would happen if I tried to use it. What do you do to people who mess with your computer anyway? Rip their throats out?”

  “It’s a joke, Drex.” Grayson laughed and shook his head. “You really are uptight. Look.” He turned the laptop around on the table until the screen faced me. The same question from last night was flashing on the display: “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  He pressed the button. The computer opened to a menu. “See? It’s not even locked. The only password required is a conscience. Looks like you’ve got one. Congratulations.”

  “My personal integrity is important to me,” I said in a way I hoped implied that I didn’t think his was.

  Grayson eyed me silently for a moment. “I want to show you something.”

  I hesitated. “If it’s your lizard, I’m not interested.”

  Grayson laughed. “Keep Gizzard out of this.”

  He got up and walked past me, out of my grandmother’s apartment, down the breezeway, and into my apartment.

  Flabbergasted, I tagged along after him. “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “To your bed.”

  “Forget it!” I yelled. He turned around. I hid the gun behind my back.

  “I want to show you some important evidence I found, Drex. And I want you to be hooked up to the alpha wave monitor when you see it. I need to see how you react subconsciously.”

  “Why?” I asked angrily. “What difference does it make?”

  “It makes all the difference, Drex. Trust me on this.”

  “Trust you? Why should I?”

  Grayson shrugged. “I guess that’s a
valid question. But good grief? If you don’t by now, will you ever?”

  I stared at Grayson until he sighed.

  “Would it help if I asked nicely?” he said.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Would you please do this for me, Drex? Cherry on top? People’s lives could be at stake. Including yours.”

  I know. That’s what I’m afraid of.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  I WAS LYING IN MY BED, my hand tucked inside the pocket of my coveralls. Unbeknownst to Grayson, my fingers were wrapped tightly around the grip of my sleek, new subcompact Glock. The barrel was pointed at Grayson’s heart as he leaned over me and stuck electrodes on my stubbly scalp.

  “Calm your mind,” he said softly.

  Clearing my head was oddly difficult to do with him so near. Just inches from me, I found the animal warmth of his body teasing me in places long left unteased. Grayson was a man of mystery. Dangerous. Provocative. Strangely alluring. Possibly insane.

  If I wasn’t careful, he could be the death of me.

  “Try to keep your concentration,” he said, “Find your inner balance.”

  His eyes were bright with excitement—the sparkling, wide-open, intense eyes of a madman. Was he going to shock me senseless and try to rip my throat out? I didn’t know. But I’d found myself too curious to refuse him. He’d promised to show me something that would change my world as I knew it.

  For better or worse, I was ready for the change.

  And, thanks to Beth-Ann, I was also ready with my Glock.

  “Brace yourself,” Grayson said, and took a step back. He began to fiddle with the controls on the machine. “What I’m about to show you isn’t for sissies.”

  “Okay. I’m ready.”

  “Here goes.” Grayson pushed a button. An image came on his laptop screen. But this time, it wasn’t a series of static pictures. It was a video.

  Shaky and amateurish, it appeared to have been made with someone’s cellphone as they walked around inside a small ship or submarine. Everything was gray and slick. The hand holding the camera was trembling so badly that after a few seconds of watching, I began to feel nauseated.

  I swallowed against the bile rising in my throat. On the screen, the cameraman entered a small, black, oval doorway. What happened next made me forget all about being sick.

  I was too astounded.

  Beyond the doorway, three gray, human-like alien creatures looked up from what appeared to be control panels. Despite having no eyelids, no discernable nose, and only a slit for a mouth, I could still clearly read the panic on their faces.

  Suddenly, a cacophony of human voices rang out in confusion, like the drug raids I’d seen on detective shows. A man in military fatigues ran in front of the camera. He yelled at the creatures. “Stop what you’re doing. Now! Release them!”

  The shaky camera panned to the right. Three columnar, aquarium-like tubes glowed eerily in the dim light. Inside each one was a human child no older than ten.

  I gasped.

  “Steady,” Grayson said. “Think of your happy place.”

  In my mind, I climbed into Grandma’s lap as the man with the automatic weapon fired at the top of the first glass tube. It shattered. The child inside tumbled out and cried, “Daddy!”

  I wrapped Grandma’s imaginary afghan around me as the guy in fatigues fired at the other tubes. They blew apart. The children held captive inside screamed and cried out for their parents.

  The camera panned left. The three gray aliens were in a state of sheer horror, clumped together in a corner like frightened rats.

  Then a man screamed.

  It was a horrific, unforgettable howl. Off camera, the automatic weapon fired repeatedly. The phone taking the video fell to the ground.

  Screams and shrieks and unearthly wails echoed into each other, but whatever was emitting them wasn’t captured by the phone. The device lay still on the floor, its camera focused on the ceiling of what surely must have been some kind of alien spacecraft.

  I hugged Grandma and started sucking my thumb. Hard.

  Suddenly, the decapitated head of a gray alien flew into view. It hit the ceiling above the camera, then fell on top of the cellphone with a sickening thump. The image went black.

  “Excellent,” Grayson said.

  “Excellent?” I screeched. “You think that’s excellent?”

  “Not the video. You. Drex, you were able to maintain your alpha waves better than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

  He showed me the graph. My alpha waves looked like a roller-coaster ride that fell into a ravine. “That doesn’t look that impressive to me.”

  “Believe me, compared to the others, this is phenomenal.”

  “What others?”

  Grayson shrugged.

  “Is this just another made-up test, Grayson?” I wished and hoped and prayed he’d say yes.

  “Depends.” Grayson stared at me with the least readable expression I’d ever seen on a human face. “Do you want it to be fake?”

  “Hell, yes!” I bellowed.

  Grayson nodded.

  I bit my lip. “But it’s not, is it?”

  “That information is on a need-to-know basis, Drex.”

  Aggravation climbed up my neck and clenched my jaws like a vise. “Why are you showing me this, Grayson?”

  “Because I think you’ve got a gift.”

  I scowled. “This pineal twin thing?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  I locked eyes with him. “What do you want to use my so-called gift for?”

  “I can’t tell you—unless you’re all in.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was discredited by MIT because of my pursuit of unexplained phenomena. I believe there’s more out there than what we currently understand, Drex.”

  “Like what?”

  “Mothman. Bigfoot. Skin Walkers. Who knows? There’s a whole gamut of things that exist beyond the ability for the rational mind to accept. I’m obsessed with proving that they’re real. And I want you to help me.”

  “Me? Help you?”

  “Yes. Be my partner.”

  “Partner?” I muttered, too stunned to do anything but parrot Grayson’s words back at him.

  Grayson nodded. “It’s dangerous. But it’s also the adventure of a lifetime. But Drex, if you take this step, there’s no going back to life as you now know it.”

  I think I’ve already crossed that threshold.

  Someone banged on the front door, making me jump off the bed and rip half my electrodes out.

  “Hey boss man,” Earl called out. “We’re almost out of Fritos!”

  I pressed my molars together and looked Grayson square in the face.

  “So how much does this partner thing pay?”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  “WHERE’D YOU GET THE film?” I asked Grayson as I pulled the rest of the pasty electrodes off my scalp.

  He smiled thoughtfully. “I have friends in low places. Now do you believe me? At least about the possibility of Mothman being real?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. To me, the two don’t seem related.”

  Grayson frowned. “What would it take to convince you? I’ve seen him, Drex. You saw him yourself last night.”

  “I saw something fly over my head, and I saw something at my window. In both instances, it was dark. I’m not exactly prepared to say there’s a mutant cryptid on the loose.”

  “Your skepticism is appreciated ... up to a point,” Grayson said. “As for me, the only question remaining is why Mothman would choose to turn up here, in Point Paradise.”

  “I think I might know the answer to that.”

  Grayson looked at me, surprised. “You do?”

  I pulled the dog-poo shaped magnet from my pocket. “I got this off Vanderhoff’s refrigerator. She said it was the last thing her niece Mandy sent her from her travels.”

  “So?”

  “Mandy’s been missing for two weeks.”


  Grayson studied the magnet. “Grave Creek Mound?”

  “Yeah. I Google searched it.”

  Grayson looked up at me and smiled. “You did, did you?”

  I shot him a sour look. “Save it.” I nodded at the magnet. “The place is an old Indian burial mound. It’s in West Virginia, not that far from that Point Pleasant place where they had—”

  “The original sightings of Mothman,” Grayson said, finishing my sentence. He set the magnet down and flipped open his laptop. “Interesting.”

  “It’s just a burial mound of a chief or something.”

  Grayson shook his head. “Then why would it warrant an entry by Lewis & Clarke in 1803?” He stared at the screen. “Drex, this is the biggest burial mound in the United States.”

  “Okay. So it’s big. I only brought it up because I think it might’ve been possible for—”

  “This mound is over two thousand years old,” Grayson said, paying me no mind. His eyes were glued to the screen. “Good grief. It’s over sixty feet tall and as big around as a football field.”

  “So?”

  “Says here it was excavated in 1838. They found two burial chambers and three bodies inside.”

  “And let me guess. You think one of them was Mothman?”

  “Drex, why would Stone Age people bust their butts moving sixty thousand tons of dirt just to cover three bodies? They didn’t have backhoes back then, remember.”

  “I know that.”

  “They didn’t even have horses or the wheel.” Grayson studied the screen again. “Huh. It says the original structure had a forty-foot-wide moat around it, too.”

  I blew out a breath. “Okay. It had a moat. What’s that got to do with Mothman?”

  “It seems to me like these people wanted to make damned sure those bodies didn’t get unburied. But why?”

  I shrugged. “I dunno. Why did any ancient culture build monuments?”

  Grayson shot me a knowing glance. “Precisely.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Argh!”

  Ignoring me, Grayson returned to his computer screen. “Huh. It says during the excavation, they noticed the soil around the bodies had turned blue.”

  “Blue? What could cause that?”