Val Fremden Mystery Box Set 3

by Margaret Lashley

  Lying underneath them wasn’t a rattlesnake or my keys – it was that stupid Donut Shack VIP badge. The dang pin on it had pricked my finger. Donuts always had been my downfall.

  “Figures.”

  I collapsed back into the booth with a thud. As I sucked on my injured finger, something else caught my eye. It was the pile of letters I’d pulled from the trash when I’d been tailing Goober at the post office the other day.

  I thumbed through them. One was a blue envelope addressed to “Current Resident.” It contained a pack of discount offers from neighborhood businesses. I wondered if there were any coupons for Depends in there, then wished I hadn’t.

  The next was a letter from the AARP. It was addressed to Gerald Jonohhovitz, aka Goober. I snorted. It seemed no one could escape the AARP’s clutches, no matter how off the grid they were.

  Goober hadn’t opened the envelope, but it bore a familiar, greasy stain. I recognized it as the telltale, sticky-finger residue caused by Winnie’s world-famous peanut-butter donut bombs. If asked to explain how I knew this in a court of law, I would’ve most definitely incriminated myself beyond all hope of leniency. Still, a self-congratulatory smile crept across my lips at my “Sherlock-Holmes-like” powers of deduction.

  I tossed the AARP letter on the table along with the coupons and glanced at the next piece of paper. It was a check stub from Griffith & Maas. I saw the payout amount and shook my head. Minimum wage was definitely a soul-sucker.

  I set the stub on top of the AARP envelope and looked at the last scrap of paper.

  My jaw fell to the ground like a bad girl’s drawers.

  It was another paystub, smeared with the same greasy thumbprint as the others. Goober’s name wasn’t on the stub. Neither was any company name. The stub read simply, “For services rendered.” It was in the amount of ten-thousand dollars.

  What in blue blazes? What could Goober have done to earn that kind of money?

  A sharp rap on the RV door made me nearly jump out of my skin. I glanced to my left. A pinched face stared at me through the oval of glass in the door.

  “Fish Fry is on!” Charlene yelled through the pane. “See you at six o’clock!”

  I nodded absently, but my mind was on something else...

  ...ten-thousand dollars!

  I stared at the stub again. This had to be some kind of mistake. Goober didn’t have any skills that could earn him that kind of dough – unless I was highly mistaken about the going rate for a professional fart slinger. And he didn’t have any family that could lend him the loot, either. I mean, I guess he didn’t. I’d never really asked....

  I turned the stub over. The other side was blank.

  “For services rendered,” I muttered. That didn’t sound like it was for any kind of inheritance.

  Wait a second. Goober was always cooking up some new get-rich scheme. Had he finally done it? Naw...

  As far as I knew, Goober had nothing of value to sell...unless he’d pre-sold his body to science.

  Had Goober taken a loan out on his carcass? Was his cadaver to be collected upon his death like one of those reverse-mortgage schemes? I mean, what other options were there?

  I glanced at the clock. It was 5:11. I bit my lip and shoved the papers back into my purse. I’d have to deal with Goober later. At the moment, I had more pressing problems on my mind.

  A good Southern woman wouldn’t be caught dead showing up to a social gathering empty-handed – no matter how stringently her host had insisted that she do just such a thing.

  I needed to bring something with me tonight. But what?

  One thing was for certain. If I went to that fish fry bearing a platter of kale chips, all rules regarding the reciprocation of said Southern hospitality would be instantly declared null and void.

  In other words, things could get ugly for me.

  Hmmm.

  I tapped a finger on my chin. Aspiring mystery writer and redneck double-agent Valliant Stranger has just been handed her second major challenge of the day....

  Waterproofing Maggie with duct tape and a tarp had been a piece of cake. The stakes inherent in this second puzzle were considerably more complicated.

  I scanned the meager offerings in my RV’s tiny kitchen. I was going to have to get creative...and tread carefully.

  In the South, adhering to unspoken societal obligations often proved tricky like this. But thanks to my upbringing in Greenville, my family had provided me with a first-rate education on the care and feeding of hungry hillbillies. That’s why I knew kale was definitely not on that menu.

  MY TOES SCRUNCHED AS they tried to grip the wobbly cooler I was balanced atop. I shone a flashlight into the long, narrow cabinet above the two-burner stove. The glint of glass caught my eye. I reached deep into the cupboard and pulled out a wayward jar of spaghetti sauce.

  Dang. What could I do with that?

  I didn’t have so much as a box of macaroni and cheese to go with it. I set the jar on the counter and shone the flashlight deep into the cabinet again. Finally, a bit of luck tumbled my way.

  Now that’s what I’m talking about!

  I reached into the cupboard and teased the jar out until it was close enough to grab hold of.

  I’d hit the redneck motherlode – a jar of marshmallow fluff.

  My short-lived enthusiasm disappeared when I opened the jar. The fluff had shrunk down a good two inches from the top and was the consistency of Spam. I stabbed at it with a spoon and frowned. According to the expiration date, it had passed its prime a little over three years ago.

  Crap on a cracker.

  I sniffed the fluff anyway. It didn’t smell funny...and it was still white...mostly. Besides, how could marshmallow go bad?

  The gelatinous glob made a dull thud when I dumped it into a mixing bowl. The fluff had lost its...fluff. If I had a mixer, I reasoned I could beat it back into shape. But based on my prior pilfering through the RV, I was absolutely certain there was no mixer, blender, or any other whirling contraption to be found.

  Wait a second. Except for...

  ...a power drill! That could work!

  I ran the three steps to the bedroom and grabbed the drill from the miniscule closet. Now all I needed was something to use as a beater. Something with a hole in it – like a slotted spoon.

  I rifled through the only kitchen drawer. No dice. But there was a pair of scissors. It was worth a go.

  I stuck the blade-end of the scissors into the bit shaft and flipped the switch on the drill. The scissors shot off, flew across the room, and stabbed a couch cushion through the heart.

  “Ooops!”

  I pulled the scissors out and covered the hole with another throw pillow. I stuck the blade-end back in the drill. Half a roll of duct tape later, those scissors weren’t going anywhere.

  I plunged my makeshift mixer into the bowlful of white goo, fired up the drill, and beat that marshmallow glop until the drill’s battery gave up the ghost.

  My chest puffed out and my eyes sparkled as I admired the gleaming bowl of merengue in front of me.

  Like Lazarus, I’d brought the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man back to life. Or, at least, back to fluff.

  Eat your heart out, McGyver.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “The early evening shadows played upon the dish of Cheetos and marshmallow fluff in my arms, adding subtle highlights to the tangle of fluorescent orange worms writhing in a sea of sticky white goo.”

  Not bad for a first draft.

  I named the file Cheetos’ Revenge, saved it, and logged off my computer.

  I was feeling pretty stoked. In just one day I’d finished a whole short story, started another, and had created a casserole from scratch. This whole “writer’s retreat” thing was working out pretty well after all. Losing my keys had been a blessing in disguise. I’d actually accomplished something!

  I closed the computer, grabbed the casserole, and headed out the door.

  As I picked my way along the sandy lane towar
d the firelight flickering on the shore of Lake Rosalie, Deja-vu crept up behind me. Or was it just my imagination?

  The odd blend of curiosity and trepidation wrestling in my gut felt so...familiar. I was sure I’d been in this situation before – another lifetime ago – on a dusty path just like this one. Maybe once upon a time I’d been a fur trapper, looking to make a peace offering to an indigenous tribe....

  A chill wriggled down my spine like a daddy-longlegs spider.

  Oh, no! What if my offering is rejected by the clan?

  I looked down at the casserole. Orange fingers poked out from their shroud of white goo and pointed at me accusingly.

  What if they saw the casserole as a joke...at their expense? What if they thought I was a jerk for bringing it?

  An avalanche of doubt crushed my confidence. I tightened my grip on the casserole dish and hoisted it to my right. I was about to heave it into the bushes when a voice sounded behind me.

  I was so startled I nearly yelped.

  “Howdy, Val,” Stumpy said as he walked up beside me. “Glad you came. Crowd’s kind ‘a sparse since the snowbirds flew on back home.”

  “Oh. Right. Thanks.” I smiled sheepishly. “What should I do with this?” I shrugged, raising the casserole dish a few inches.

  “Aww. I done tol’ ya you didn’t have to bring nothin’.”

  “My momma would roll over in her grave if I didn’t,” I said, in a voice I barely recognized as my own. As if possessed by ghosts of the past, I’d reverted back to the Southern twang it had taken me thirty years to get shed of.

  My face flushed with heat. I hoped it didn’t glow in the dark.

  “Put ‘er over there.”

  Stumpy pointed a short finger toward the open tailgate of a rusty Chevy pickup. The truck had either been parked or abandoned next to a rusted-out washing machine.

  “And grab yourself a cold one while you’re over there,” he added.

  I set my odd offering down on the tailgate next to a platter of canned pear halves. Each lay on a lettuce leaf and sported a dollop of yellowing mayo where their pits used to be. Every ghostly pear was garnished with a few shreds of processed, yellow, cheese-like food product.

  Next to the pears were bowls containing the obligatory potato salad, baked beans, and tub of green Jell-O, complete with canned fruit chunks floating around in it like suspended vomit.

  Geeze. This makes Winky’s party look like a soiree at the Ritz.

  I leaned over the old washing machine and grabbed a beer from the icy water in its rusty tub. I cracked it open and chugged half of it down before I headed over toward the others.

  As I surveyed the odd collection of humanity sitting around the campfire, I felt an unexpected, interspecies connection I’d only felt once before – with a gorilla at the zoo. Maybe it was because my real mother once lived in an RV, too.

  “I believe you done met Woggles,” Stumpy said as I stepped up to the crowd.

  He motioned for me to sit on an old dinette chair. Its vinyl seat had been pre-ripped for my inconvenience.

  “Yes. Hi, Woggles,” I said. He tipped his beer can at me in a silent salutation.

  “This here’s Slim,” Stumpy said, and waved a short-fingered hand at a man who was anything but slender.

  “Howdy,” Slim said, and leaned his hairy, four-hundred pound frame forward like a grizzly bear.

  The motion caused his inadequate dinette chair to groan in a way that made me wince. I shook his huge, beefy hand. It enveloped my own as if it were a newborn’s.

  “And I know you done met Charlene,” Stumpy continued.

  I nodded at the thin woman who rode around in a shopper chopper and made home deliveries. She’d changed into polyester slacks and a top encrusted with enough rhinestones to cover Cincinnati. Her silvery-blonde hair was beautifully coiffed in soft curls.

  Huh. Who knew toilet-paper tubes could be so handy?

  “You cain’t rightly not know Miss Busybody,” joked Woggles about Charlene. She smiled at me, then shot Woggles a dirty look.

  “And hey, ever-body, this here feller’s named Steve,” our host Stumpy said. “He drove in just about an hour ago.”

  I looked Steve over. He was a tallish, white guy of indeterminate age and weight. He wore a ball cap over a shaggy head of dark hair. His goatee-like beard was equally unkempt. Accompanying it like one bad decision after another was one of those smarmy, pencil-thin moustaches that made me instantly suspect him of being dimwitted, involved in shady dealings, or, most likely, both.

  Steve smiled, revealing a gold front tooth.

  Hmmm. Apparently Steve was a man of means, relatively speaking.

  “Hi Steve, I’m Val,” I said, and extending my hand to shake. Steve didn’t reciprocate. I gave him a bit of side-eye and took my seat.

  “Well now, what say we get this here show on the road,” Stumpy said.

  “What about me!” a female voice bellowed from the bushes.

  A short, squat woman in her late sixties emerged from the slate-colored darkness. Her blunt, boxy, gray bob looked as if she’d cut it herself. With a knife. In the dark. Her pudgy, square body was covered in a loose-fitting, faded house dress that fell just above her saggy knees.

  She stomped over and wedged herself into the chair beside me with an indignant huff.

  I waited a moment, then dared a sideways glance. Below her angry eyes and pursed lips, the woman sported a thin beard of curly white hairs. It resembled a loose wad of fishing line glued haphazardly to her chin. Possibly in the dark. With a knife.

  “All right, then,” Stumpy sighed. “Fire up the fryers, boys. Queen Elmira has arrived.”

  I WAS DOLLING OUT A spatula of orange and white goop onto my plate when a man’s voice sounded behind me. He was so close to me I could feel his breath on my neck.

  “Don’t tell me. Marshmallow and Cheeto squares?”

  It was gold-toothed Steve.

  I shrugged and offered a slightly embarrassed smile.

  “You’re pretty astute for a vagabond.”

  “Who you callin’ an ass toot in a Vagabond?” a screechy woman’s voice yapped. “You ain’t no beauty queen, yoreself, Missy. Actin’ all high and mighty. And you don’t even own your own trailer!”

  I turned around to face Elmira. Her crinkled nose and pursed lips told me she was sporting for a fight.

  “Astute,” I said.

  She raised a flabby, white fist at me.

  I took a step back and yelped, “Hold on!”

  “Astute means smart,” Steve said, stepping between us. “It was a meant as a compliment, Elmira. And I don’t have a Vagabond. I’ve got a Winnebago.”

  “Oh,” Elmira said. Her voice softened, but her face didn’t. She continued to glare at me suspiciously. “Watch it with that high-brow talkin’.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Here. Try one of these.” I offered her the orange and white glop still hovering on the spatula.

  Elmira snatched it and shoved a corner of it in her mouth. It disappeared along with her scowl.

  “Don’t you go trying to sweeten me up, neither,” she said, but her face showed my ploy had worked. As she waddled off toward the campfire, Charlene joined us.

  “What’s up with her?” I asked. “Somebody steal her cruller?”

  Charlene shot me a dirty look. “What do you mean by that?”

  I flinched. “Nothing. She just reminds me of my own dear, sweet mother.”

  “Oh,” Charlene said. “Well, just so you know, me and Elmira’s sisters.”

  I bit my lip and nodded. “Family is family. Am I right?”

  “Darn straight,” Charlene said. A grin broke out on her face. “Gimme some of that.” She pointed at my casserole. “I heard it was purty darn good.”

  I relaxed with relief. No harm, no foul. My casserole was a hit!

  Steve grinned under his smarmy moustache as I served Charlene a square. As she headed back to the bonfire with her sweet treat, Steve took the spatula
from my hand and served himself a piece.

  “Huh. That’s surprisingly good,” he said, licking his fingers.

  “The secret’s in the marshmallow fluff,” I bragged. “I came up with that myself. You see, I didn’t have any marshmallows, except the gooey middles of some moon pies. I thought about using them, but I figured I’d better not. In Polk County, that might get me arrested for desecrating a local treasure.”

  Steve studied me for a moment. “I see you don’t learn too quickly from your mistakes, do you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Open mouth, insert foot.”

  He demonstrated by opening his mouth and inserting more of the marshmallow and Cheeto glop.

  I sneered. “Oh, don’t be such an ass toot.”

  Steve laughed and choked on the mouthful of casserole. His hand flew up to his throat, and he got busy hacking out a lung.

  “Are you okay? I asked, and slapped him on the back. I fished the last beer out of the washing machine and cracked the tab on it. Steve grabbed it out of my hand and poured it down his throat.

  “Ever thang all right over here?” Woggles asked as he stumbled up.

  “Yeah,” Steve gasped.

  Woggles’ good eye scanned the empty washtub. “Dang. No more beer. Party’s over. Guess I’ll head home. I ain’t feeling too good, no-ways.”

  “Can you see okay in the dark?” I blurted without thinking.

  Geeze! Steve’s right. My mouth sure can hold a pile of feet.

  “I’ll be fine,” Woggles said, and wandered off into the night.

  “Them crazy eyes sees it all,” Stumpy said, stepping out from the shadow Woggles left behind. “He don’t miss much. Some folks ‘round here thinks Woggle’s is psychic, you know.”

  Stumpy reached around in the washtub for a beer and came up empty-handed. “Huh. Looks like it’s closin’ time.”

  “She used the last one to save my life,” Steve said, his voice still raspy.

  Stumpy laughed and slapped Steve on the back hard enough to make his eyes bulge. “Well, at least it went to a good cause.”