Wait a minute. There was definitely something fishy going on....
I WOKE UP WITH A START, swimming in sweat. It was pitch black. Angry growls emanated from under the bedcovers. Either I was about to get eaten alive, or I was about to starve to death.
I shot out of bed. My shoulder whacked against a hard surface. Like a ricocheting bullet, I bounced off the wall, stubbed my toe on some unknown object, and knocked my head on the corner of something with a big corner.
What the heck was going on here?
I fumbled for the light switch. As the dim, yellow bulb blinked on, I was reminded that I wasn’t in St. Pete anymore. I was in a tin-can condo the size of an ice-cream truck. But it didn’t smell like Ben & Jerry’s – unless they’d released a new flavor called Malted Moth Balls.
“Ugh!” I forced opened a tiny window in the bedroom, then hobbled along the three-foot-long hallway to the kitchen galley. I yanked opened the tiny fridge and cursed myself. Last night, I’d filled it with the salad greens, carrot sticks and diet salad dressing I’d bought in Lake Wales. I tried the cupboard, hoping against hope for some kind of junk-food miracle. Nope. Just the kale crisps and seaweed rollups I’d put in there.
What the heck had I been thinking?
After last night’s “Something’s in the bushes!” scare, I’d been too nervous to eat dinner. I’d cranked on the window air conditioner, fixed myself a gin and tonic and passed out on the short-sheeted bed. Sometime during the night, the A/C must have frozen up and crapped out. It was 3:09 a.m. and I was trapped in a metal box, as sweaty as a pig and as hungry as a bear.
I was a pigbear!
And all I had to cool and feed myself was a cardboard church fan and some roots and leaves.
Pigbear was not happy.
I made myself a Tanqueray and tonic. As I put the bottle back in the fridge, I noticed a soggy paper bag slumped over on the tiny dinette table like a lump of beige clay. I reached inside the bag and pulled out a boiled peanut. I popped the salty shell into my mouth, worked it open with my tongue, and bit down on the three soft, perfectly cooked pearls inside.
They were the best boiled peanuts I’d ever eaten.
I WAS SITTING IN THE dinette booth finishing off the last peanut in the sack when I heard another growl. But this time, my stomach had nothing to do with it. The grumbling had come from outside. And it sounded very nearby.
I switched off the kitchen light and scooted a few inches along the booth until I could press my face to the window pane. I couldn’t see a dad-blame thing.
Another high-pitched, cat-like snarl pierced the night. The noise was coming from somewhere near the front end of the RV. A second later, it was followed by a tinny clunking sound. The growl sounded again, accompanied by another, deeper growl. A third whiny screech joined in.
It sounded as if a crowd of drunken chipmunks were having a rave, and then things turned ugly. I’d never heard anything like it. Unless I counted that time Winky and Jorge trapped a stray cat in a Croker sack full of empty tin cans.
I peered through the mini blinds and squinted hard. My skin turned to gooseflesh. Something as big as a human ran by in the darkness. I let go of the blinds as if they’d just stung me.
Mother of Pearl! Was there really such thing as Bigfoot?
Stumpy had warned me not to go out after dark.
And here I am...all alone! I need protection!
I scrambled around the tiny RV searching for a club. There wasn’t even so much as a flyswatter. I grabbed the only thing I could find and hot-footed it back to the bedroom. I locked the door and leapt into the bed, but not before managing to stub my toe yet again on the dad-burn bedframe.
“Yow!”
I screeched in pain, then clapped a hand over my big mouth – in case Sasquatch was listening. I sat up in bed and pulled my in knees in toward my chest. For the next hour, I remained there, balled up and still as a statue, breathing into the blackness, my itchy finger poised on the trigger of a spray-bottle of Ty-D-Bol.
WHEN I WOKE UP AGAIN, the sun was shining through the slits in the bedroom blinds. I sat up and looked around, pleasantly surprised to discover that I was still alive.
A tap on the door made me blink myself into focus.
Geeze! I haven’t even had a cup of coffee yet!
I padded to the door and opened it a tiny crack. Whoever it was didn’t need to know I was wearing Tom’s t-shirt as pajamas.
“Boy howdy,” Stumpy said through the crack.
He was in his same dirty overalls, and still smuggling that prize-winning watermelon. But his t-shirt looked clean.
“Stinks in there,” he said, and crinkled is bulbous red nose.
“It wasn’t me,” I lied. As tasty as they’d been, Stumpy’s boiled peanuts had, nevertheless, taken their toll on my colon.
“Shut up.” Stumpy replied.
How rude!
“What?” I scowled.
“Trailer’s been shut up a while. Nothin’ a little airin’ out won’t solve.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right.”
“Came by to see how you was getting’ on. And remind you ‘bout the fish fry tonight.”
I opened the door a hair wider. “Okay. Thanks. What can I bring?”
“Oh, no. You’re our guest tonight, young lady. You don’t got to bring nothin’.”
“That’s really nice of you, Stumpy. Thanks. And, by the way, your boiled peanuts are really good. The best I’ve had, actually.”
Stumpy beamed with the kind of unselfconscious pride I’ve only ever witnessed in the true South.
“That’s what I like to hear.”
“I’m curious,” I said. “What’s there to do around here?”
“Well, purty much anything you put your mind to.”
Stumpy grinned, reminding me to make an appointment with my dentist.
“‘Cept mindin’ your own business, that is.” He laughed. “Folks ‘round here is plum allergic to that.”
“Thanks for the warning. But I think they’ll find me a pretty boring subject.”
“I guess we’ll see about that.”
AFTER DOWNING A CUP of coffee and cleaning the entire kitchen and bathroom with Ty-D-Bol, bleach, and an old toothbrush I found under the sink, I got dressed and went out to explore the Hell’ammo.
It had been too dark to see squat when I’d arrived last night. But the morning light revealed the true natural beauty – and truly unnatural horror – of the place.
Tucked amongst the beautiful old live oaks and saw-leaf palmettos was what could only be described as the decaying remnants of tsunami debris.
The wave must have washed over Lake Rosalie perhaps twenty years ago. Left behind in its wake was a hodge-podge of off-kilter, rusty old trailers and abandoned household goods gone bad. As I glanced around, I got the feeling even a junkyard would turn its nose up at most of the crap gracing the property.
From what I could tell, none of the trailers or RVs had been moved in decades. How could they have been? Their tires were either flat, disintegrated, or completely AWOL.
Most of the trailers were covered in cheap, falling-down plastic siding, tacked up ages ago to make them appear more like cabins. Others, like mine, didn’t bother to hide the fact they were pull-behind RVs. Either way, all were covered in a thin film of green algae, as if the forest itself was trying to slowly digest them, bit by bit.
Spanish moss hung from the trees like old hag’s hair, and piled up on the rooftops like mounds of bad curly perms waiting to be donated to a senior center. The narrow spaces between the run-down abodes were clogged like arteriosclerotic veins – not with garbage, per se, but with piles of broken furniture and rusted car parts, accented by the occasional abandoned major or minor household appliance.
I wondered what an alien from another planet would make of all this. I shook my head.
No wonder Bigfoot ran away.
I glanced over at Maggie and reminded myself that I could leave at any time. The thoug
ht made me suck in a deep, comforting breath. I noticed her rearview mirror was askew, and walked over to investigate.
Crap! Someone had been pilfering around inside Maggie!
In my haste not to become Sasquatch’s bride last night, I’d left her top down. Whoever’d fiddled with her mirror had left the seats and floorboards smeared with muddy prints. I opened the passenger door. The gnawed lid of a plastic container fell out onto the ground.
Uh oh....
A noise behind me made me whip around. A raccoon stumbled sideways out of the bushes and fell on its side. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
Oh my dear lord, no!
“I’m sorry!” I said to the disabled raccoon. “I shouldn’t have left the cookies out here. It was my fault.”
I glanced around, wild-eyed as a murderer, hoping no one else had seen.
“You must be Val,” a voice said.
I nearly jumped out of my skin.
I whirled back around. About six feet away was a skinny old woman eying me from beneath a head full of curlers made from toilet-roll tubes. She was perched atop the saddle of an adult-sized tricycle. Soldered onto the front end, in lieu of a third wheel, was a metal grocery-shopping cart.
“I’m Charlene,” she said, and waved. “Howdy! Just stoppin’ by to see if you need anything. I’m headin’ up to Junior’s Save ‘n’ Stuff.”
I couldn’t for the life of me form a coherent word, much less a sentence.
“Admirin’ my ‘shopper chopper,’ eh?” She grinned. “Stumpy fixed it up for me real nice, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” I managed.
“Junior’s got a sale goin’ on today. Two-fer-one on Cheetos and moon pies. You want you some, sugar?”
The angle of my vision shifted up and down slightly. I must have been nodding my head.
“All-righty, then. Got you down for both.” Charlene grinned and pedaled off down the narrow dirt lane like a hillbilly remake of The Wizard of Oz – on LSD.
Okay. That’s it. I’m done here.
I ran back inside the RV and slung everything hanging out of my suitcase back inside and clicked the fasteners. Thank goodness I hadn’t unpacked yet. I’d spent too much time cleaning the kitchen and bathroom to have gotten around to disinfecting the chest-of-drawers.
As I scooted past the refrigerator, I didn’t even hesitate.
Too bad, carrot sticks. You’re on your own.
I flung my suitcase down the rickety metal steps and locked the RV behind me. But after I’d drug all my stuff over to Maggie, my alter ego got the best of me.
If you’re going to be a writer, you need to toughen up, Val. I mean, this place is chock full of interesting characters, right?
A mosquito the size of a dragonfly landed on my arm.
Screw that!
I swatted it away, and scrounged around my purse for my car keys.
Where were they?
Dread filled my mind. They weren’t in the RV. Either I’d lost the keys in the yard...or I’d locked them in the trunk last night!
Crap on a cracked up cracker!
I straightened my shoulders, set my jaw to Valliant Stranger mode, and dragged my luggage back inside the RV.
Like it or not, I was here to stay.
Chapter Twelve
“Come on, Tom! Can’t you come over now with the spare keys?” I pleaded over the phone.
“I wish I could. But it’s almost rush hour. The traffic will be killer. It’ll take me three hours minimum to get there. Not counting the drive back.”
“I’m not worth it?”
“Val! You know I’ve got regional meetings all this week. Tonight I’ve got to schmooze a couple of bigwigs in town. I just can’t make it happen. Sorry.”
“Crap.”
“But I tell you what. I’ll get the keys overnighted to you when I get home from work today. You should have them by tomorrow afternoon, tops.”
“Tomorrow? That means I’ll be stuck here for another night!”
I could almost hear Tom smirk over the phone. “Come on, Valliant Stranger. Think of it as a...literary adventure.”
“There’s nothing literate about this place, Tom. And I’m afraid –”
“Listen,” Tom interjected. “For the last time, there’s no such thing as Bigfoot. And even if there was, I doubt he’d be into snickerdoodles. Especially not Laverne’s. Give me the address and I’ll get the keys off to you tonight. Honestly, that’s the best I can do.”
“I know,” I conceded. “But I’m worried about using UPS. I don’t think even the AARP can find this place.”
“Why not?”
“Well, like I told you. It’s in the middle of nowhere. The sign is falling down. And the community mailbox is a microwave stuck on a fence post with duct tape.”
I waited a minute while Tom composed himself.
“Come on, Val,” he finally managed between snorts. “You’re a big girl. You can make it another night on your own.”
I bit my lip. Part of me wasn’t sure I could. But I wasn’t about to admit that to Tom. My jaw clamped down on my molars.
“You’re right, Tom. Just forget it. I’ll figure some way out of here on my own.”
I clicked off the phone. Tom tried to call back, but I didn’t pick up.
Southern pride was an idiotic and enigmatic force not to be reckoned with lightly.
FOR THE NEXT HOUR, my phone buzzed every ten minutes or so, but I didn’t dignify it with an answer.
I knew better.
Stuck in a dilapidated RV with nothing but lettuce and kale crisps for sustenance, things had nowhere to go but ugly. Tom’s refusal to come to my rescue had pushed me over the threshold to hangry – a state in which I knew I was capable of darn near any dastardly deed.
I fixed myself a snack, sequestered my phone safely inside a zipped pocket in my purse, and plopped down in the tiny dinette booth.
It was time to write.
I opened my laptop and clicked the start-up button. As I waited for it to boot up, I pulled the chain on the blinds and stared at my angry reflection in the RV’s dusty window.
I bet Jorge’s gorgeous girlfriend Sherryl isn’t munching on a carrot stick right now like a dang gerbil.
I opened the file marked Five Unique Ways to Kill Someone.
I added another entry to my list; Cyanide Snickerdoodles.
The rhythmic movement of my fingers across the keyboard stimulated an old, entrenched habit that had lain dormant in my brain for years. Like a sprouting seed, I felt a smile slowly curve across my lips as my fingers moved. An automatic response akin to riding a bicycle fell into place in my mind, just as it had all those years ago.
Before Germany.
When I’d been a bona fide copy writer.
A newfound urgency pressed down on me. I closed Five Unique Ways to Kill Someone and opened a new file. I entitled it, The Snickerdoodle Murders.
A devious expression possessed my face like a lesser demon, and, as if by magic, my fingers began to fly across the keyboard.
I laughed to myself.
Who would have ever thought that a lack of pickles and a visceral dread of going outside would team up to become the muses that would kick-start my new writing career?
I WAS JUST TYPING “THE End” on a rough draft of my homework assignment, The Snickerdoodle Murders, when something scurried across my bare foot.
It had to have been either a mouse or a Florida-sized cockroach.
Anyone who’d ever seen a palmetto bug could understand why I was hoping for a mouse. My mouth flew open and ejected a high-pitched tone that made my own eardrums pop.
My knees nearly collided with my chin as I scrambled out of the booth. I shot a death stare at the plate littered with orange roots and dark-green leaves. Snacks I’d left untouched on the table.
This is what I get for filling this stupid RV with rodent food!
The mouse was the last straw. It truly was time to get out of this place. In a last-d
itch effort to find my car keys, I grabbed my purse, turned it upside down, and shook its contents onto the dinette table.
A lipstick and two pens tumbled out and rolled off the table onto the booth seat. Crumpled receipts and papers fell like giant flakes of dandruff and covered the plate of carrots and seaweed.
I rifled through every pocket and crevice of my handbag.
No keys.
I turned my attention to the rest of the RV.
I grabbed a broom and swept the kitchen floor and around the cabinets. Still no keys.
I got on my knees on the bedroom floor and raked under the bed with the broom. My efforts resulted in one nudie magazine, an empty bag of pork rinds and what I hoped were the fossilized remains of five Milk Duds. I was sweeping them into a dustpan when someone rapped on the door.
I padded over and opened it.
Before I could say “Howdy,” shopper-chopper chick Charlene pushed her curler-headed self inside, her arms laden with moon pies and Cheetos.
“How’s it goin’, Val?” she asked, and plopped the boxes and bags of processed foods, aka nectar of the gods, onto my tiny kitchen counter.
Drool began to fill in the space under my tongue.
“Uh. I’m doing okay. What do I owe you, Charlene?”
“Seven dollars and thirty-two cents. Moon pies ain’t as cheap as they used to be.”
I grabbed my wallet and counted out the bills while Charlene’s wandering eyes took in every square inch of the tiny RV.
“What you been doin’ all day?” she asked. Her curious, dark-brown eyes conveyed a tinge of suspicion.
“Nothing much,” I said, and handed her a five and four ones. “What’s there to do around here, anyway?”
“Lots. If you got a good imagination. Hey, this here’s too much,” she said as she counted the money.
“Keep it. For a delivery fee.”
A smile cracked her pinched face.
“How’s about I take you on a little tour of the place?”
Val Fremden Mystery Box Set 3 Page 8
