Val Fremden Mystery Box Set 3

by Margaret Lashley

Steve handed me an upside-down push-broom. Its flat pad of bristles had been wrapped in a towel and secured with duct tape.

  “What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “It’s a crutch. I made it myself.”

  “You don’t say. What’s with the round thingy halfway down the handle?”

  “Drink holder. Thought it might come in handy.”

  “Oh. Sure,” I laughed. “But it would be handier if it already had a drink in it.”

  Steve grinned. “I thought you might say that.”

  He reached in a plastic bag and pulled out a Fosters.

  “My favorite!” I said.

  “Beer. Never leave home without it. Trade you some of that ice for a sort-of cold one?”

  “Deal.”

  I grinned, took the beer, and handed Steve the bag of ice from my lap.

  “So, what’s your story?” I asked as I cracked the tab.

  Steve shrugged. “Not much to tell.” He eyed my notebook. “What are you working on there?”

  “If you must know, ingenious ways to get rid of a body.”

  Steve’s eyebrows disappeared into his baseball cap. “Oh.”

  “It’s an assignment for a class I’m taking.”

  “Let me guess. Mafia 101?”

  I smirked. “No. But I like the way you think.”

  “Here here,” Steve said, and lifted his beer for a toast.

  I raised the beer to my lips and took a sip.

  A high-pitched scream echoed through the trees.

  Steve and I spewed our beer.

  Steve gasped, glanced around, and looked at me. His expression seemed to register both concern and amusement.

  “I didn’t realize it was Bigfoot mating season.”

  My heart flinched. “You really think that was the call of the wild man?”

  Steve opened his mouth to answer, but Stumpy came crashing out of the woods, rendering him mute. The old man hightailed it past us without saying a word.

  Steve rubbed his goatee absently.

  “Depends on your definition of a ‘wild man.’ But I have to say, Stumpy’s rapid exit did seem rather ominous.”

  “Geeze! Help me!” I cried as I tried to rock my butt out of the hole in the dilapidated lawn chair. “I’m a sitting duck!”

  Steve tried to look serious, but I knew a stifled grin when I saw one.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “Here, take the crutch.”

  I hoisted myself up on the push-broom. The washing machine cut off.

  “Please. Steve. Could you help me get my clothes out of there?” I nodded my head toward the washer.

  “Really? A murderous beast is breathing down our necks and you’re worried about your laundry?”

  “It would be rude to leave it. What if someone else needed to use the washer?”

  Steve shook his head. “You’ve got an odd set of priorities, Val.”

  I grimaced apologetically. “I blame my mother.”

  Steve snorted and lifted the lid on the washer.

  “Who doesn’t?”

  BY THE TIME STEVE HELPED me hobble back to the RV, the Hell’ammo was eerily deserted. I stuffed the rest of the ice in my freezer and made Steve a gin and tonic to thank him. It was either that or kale chips.

  When I stuck my head out the door of the RV, Steve was hanging up the last of my laundry on the old clothes line. Everything was flecked with telltale pink spots, compliments of Chef Boyardee.

  “Crappy job,” I said.

  “And here I thought you’d be all grateful and what-not.”

  “Oh! Not you, Steve. I meant the washer!”

  “Okay. That’s better.”

  “Here. I made you something.”

  “I hope it’s not another mess. I should be getting paid for being your domestic slave.”

  “Har har. No. It’s a gin and tonic.”

  “Wage terms accepted.”

  I handed him his drink, hobbled back around to fetch my own, and joined him on the porch.

  “Be honest. Do you think there’s such thing as Bigfoot?” I asked as we sipped cocktails by the clothesline.

  “I’ve seen stranger things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, like that, for instance.”

  I glanced in the direction Steve nodded and did a double-take.

  Coming up fast along the dirt path was a babushka-headed Charlene, peddling her shopper chopper for all she was worth. Inside her shopping cart, still in her sport bra and skirt, was her sister, Elmira.

  The queen was on her knees in the cart, facing forward, her hair blowing around her head like a scraggly Medusa. She held a large wooden cross out in front of her, making her look like one of those patron saints carved on the bows of old Spanish galleons.

  “Were they crying?” I asked as they whizzed by us, leaving a cloud of orange dust in their wake.

  “I don’t know,” Steve muttered absently. “I wasn’t looking at their eyes.”

  “I think we should go see what’s going on.”

  “I dunno,” Steve hesitated. “If a skunk ape really is after them, we don’t stand a chance of outrunning them. Plus, it looks like they’ve got God on their side.”

  I laughed partly out of fear, and partly because of the utter absurdity of, well, all of it.

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  I limped alongside Steve as he traced Charlene’s chopper marks all the way to the clubhouse. A crowd was gathered around the edge of the pool.

  “What happened?” I asked Stumpy. He didn’t answer.

  I hobbled over on my broom crutch and peered around his shoulder. The air went out of me like a punctured tire.

  Inside the makeshift truck-bed pool, a body floated, face up. One eye stared blankly skyward. The other, well...didn’t.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Woggles was dead.

  Dread stabbed my heart. But it wasn’t all for Woggles. Floating in the water beside him was the bottom half of a plastic container. Inside it, like the lone survivor in a doomed life raft, was the crescent-shaped remains of a half-eaten snickerdoodle.

  My heart sunk to my knees.

  Oh dear lord. Laverne’s cooking has finally gone and killed someone.

  My legs grew wobbly. I felt light-headed and woozy. The world started swaying. I leaned into the crutch, then crumpled to the ground like a soggy bag of Stumpy’s boiled peanuts.

  WHEN I CAME TO, I WAS lying on the pool deck. Woggles was splayed out on a stretcher beside me. Everyone from the trailer park was gathered around us like curious, poorly-dressed vultures.

  I shot up to sitting.

  “I’m not dead!” I cried out, feeling the need to prove the point.

  “I think we got that,” an EMT said, then spoke into his radio. “She’s awake, Chief.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “You passed out,” Steve said, and showed me his gold-toothed grin.

  “Oh.” I looked over at my not-so-lucky companion. “Poor Woggles.”

  “Here. Let me help you up.”

  Steve stretched out a hand. I took it. He pulled me up to standing, then handed me the broom-crutch. Charlene and Elmira eyed us warily as I steadied myself on my feet. I took a tentative step.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” the EMT barked.

  “What? Why not?”

  “Chief wants to talk to you.”

  “Chief?”

  “That would be me,” said a middle-aged man in a police uniform. He broke through the small crowd and stepped to within a foot of me.

  “Chief Earl Collins.”

  “Oh. Mr. Collins –”

  “Chief Collins,” he said. “And you are?”

  “Sorry, Chief Collins. I’m Val Fremden.”

  “Tell me, Ms. Fremden, what do you think happened here?”

  I thought about Laverne’s cookies. Had they done old Woggles in? A frog tied a knot in my tonsils.

  “I...uh...I don’t know.”

  “Hmmm. W
ell, that’s too bad.”

  “What do you mean, Chief?”

  “It means we’re gonna have to do this the hard way.”

  I shifted my weight on the crutch. “I don’t understand.”

  “Look around,” he said. “According to everybody here, you killed Wally Walters.”

  “What?!” I scanned the faces of my accusers. Their eyes darted around like minnows in a pond.

  “But...but...” I stuttered.

  “Um...Chief?” Steve said, holding up a finger. “Just for the record, that would be everyone but me.”

  “Have it your way, mister. You can come in for questioning, too.”

  Steve’s eyes doubled in size.

  “Well,” he backtracked, “I didn’t say she didn’t do it.”

  “Right,” Chief Collins said. “Ms. Fremden, I’d like you to accompany me down to the station.”

  Oh, dear lord!

  “Are you going to...cuff me?”

  Chief Collins looked surprised. “Do I need to?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, all right then. You have some ID on you?”

  “It’s back at the RV.”

  “Lead the way.”

  I hobbled down the dirt path. Chief Collins lagged a few yards behind me and talked to a man holding a clipboard.

  “What do we have so far?” I heard Chief Collins ask.

  “First blush, it looks like foul play,” the man answered. “Wounds to the body suggest a possible knife attack.”

  Geeze. I never thought I’d be relieved to hear those words.

  “...or he could have been poisoned.”

  I stumbled and nearly fell.

  “Are you all right up there?” Chief Collins asked.

  I didn’t dare look back. I’d never been good at hiding a guilty face.

  “Sure. Uh...this is my RV.”

  I fished the key from my pocket, limped up the steps and opened the door.

  “Mind if we take a look inside?” the man with the clipboard asked.

  “No. Not at all.”

  The two men made quick work of surveying the inside of my tiny RV. By the time I’d gathered up my purse and inched my swollen toe into some flip-flops, they were through.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  Chief eyed me with suspicion.

  “Not particularly. Looks like signs of a struggle,” he said, and nodded his head toward the bedroom. My suitcase looked like it had exploded in there.

  “Oh. No struggle. That’s all me. I’m just...a bit of a slob, you might say.”

  “What happened to your toe?”

  “Well, I –”

  “Chief, take a look at the ceiling,” clipboard man said. He pointed his pencil at a few dark-red specks. “Looks like blood splatter.”

  “People always forget about the ceiling,” Chief Collins said, and tutted as his eyes met mine. “Evidence of a cleanup in the sink, too, Rogers. Get some samples for testing.”

  “But...it’s not what you think,” I said lamely.

  “You don’t say,” Chief Collins said.

  I smiled weakly. “Well, it’s kind of a funny story, really. I can explain –”

  “I’d appreciate it if you would do just that, Ms. Fremden. But not here. Down at the station. Into a tape recorder. Rogers?”

  The man with the clipboard said, “I’m on it, sir.”

  AS DETECTIVE ROGERS shut the back door on the squad car, I looked through the window at the crowd of folks gathered around. They’d been so friendly last night. Now their angry stares were tinged with the sting of betrayal.

  I knew exactly how they felt.

  As the squad car kicked up dust, I watched Maggie and the RV shrink away out of sight, and tried to look on the bright side.

  At least now I’d be able to make a phone call.

  Chapter Twenty

  I knew the drill. I’d only get one call. So, I decided to wait and see how my “interview” with Chief Collins went. If my gut was any indication, I’d be needing an attorney more than I’d be needing Tom.

  “Seeing as how you’re from out of town, I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt, Ms. Fremden,” Chief Collins said, causing the toothpick between his lips to bob up and down erratically.

  I shifted in my chair in the small, sparse room reserved for questioning suspects and witnesses. I wasn’t sure if the Chief’s soft approach was a “good cop” ploy or just his general nature.

  “You see, those folks at Shell Hammock are a tight clan,” he continued from his standing position on the opposite side of the wooden table I was seated behind. “I mean, how would you feel if a stranger showed up in your little community one day, and next thing you know, your friend gets murdered?”

  I swallowed a lump.

  “Not good. You said you’d like to give me the benefit of the doubt. Does that mean you think I’m innocent?”

  The Chief’s lips twisted to one side. “I’d like to think so, but you’ve got to give me something to work with.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not one to jump to conclusions so quick as some, but most times, I’ve found if it smells like a rotten egg, it’s a rotten egg. I have to say, the evidence against you doesn’t look too good. I mean, I’m not the sharpest man on the force, Ms. Fremden, but you left a trail of clues even my dimwitted son-in-law could follow.”

  “Clues? What clues?”

  The Chief pulled the toothpick from his mouth and studied the chewed end.

  “Well, there’s that pesky blood splatter all over your RV, for one.”

  “It isn’t blood. It’s Chef Boyardee.”

  The Chief nodded slowly and blew out a breath. “All right, then. Supposing it is. How do you explain this?”

  He slapped my notebook on the table. “Is that your handwriting?”

  “Yes.”

  “And is that your list labeled. ‘Ways to get rid of a body?’”

  “Uh...yes, but –”

  “Kind of a little coincidental, don’t you think?”

  “Uh...sure. I could see how you could think that. But, here’s the thing. I’m taking a class on writing mystery novels. The list is for an assignment.”

  “An assignment. Uh huh. Who’s your teacher?”

  “Angela Langsbury.”

  Chief Collins’ face lost a large fraction of its lackadaisical charm.

  “Don’t get smart with me, Miss Fremden. You think because I live in the country I was born in a watermelon patch?”

  “No, sir. I know this must all sound –”

  The door squeaked open. Detective Rogers, the cop with the clipboard, entered and handed it to Chief Collins. He proceeded to shoot me a dirty look as the Chief scanned the report.

  “Says here the spots in your RV tested negative for blood,” Chief Collins said.

  “See? I told you. So, are you going to release me?”

  Rogers pointed at something on the clipboard. The Chief nodded.

  “Oh. All but one,” Chief Collins said. “Found a pesky spot of blood on the edge of the table. Human, too.” He looked up from the report. “What do you have to say about that?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not the first person to stay in that place. It could be anybody’s.”

  “Then you won’t mind if Detective Rogers here gets a sample of your blood for comparison, right?”

  “Uh. No. That’s fine.”

  The words were barely out of my mouth when Rogers grabbed my hand, jabbed my finger, and stuck a pipette on the wound to suck up a sample.

  “Ouch!” I cried out. “Are we done now?”

  Chief Collins studied the report for a beat before saying, “Not just yet.”

  He nodded at Rogers and the insolent finger jabber left the room. Chief Collins flipped to the second page of the report.

  “There’s just a few other little things I want to clear up first.”

  He eyed on the clipboard. “I have testimony from Elmira Fitch that you
accused her of witchcraft and that you put a spell on Wally Walters to make him think he was a toad-frog. Then you lured him into the pool, telling him it was a pond, and drowned him.”

  My unhinged jaw failed me. “I...I...”

  Chief Collins looked up and smiled. “Don’t worry about it. We all know Elmira’s cornbread ain’t quite done in the middle.”

  I blew out a sigh of relief.

  “But her sister Charlene, now she’s a bit more reliable – and the busiest busy body this side of the Chattahoochee. Says here she testified that when she returned from the store to deliver the Cheetos and moon pies she’d graciously picked up for you, she overheard you talking on the phone to somebody. You said, quote, ‘Things were about to get ugly.’ Charlene also said she saw you wiping down your car with a towel that had bloodstains on it.”

  “That was my ‘emergency’ towel, and I was talking to...uh...myself....”

  Chief Collins glanced up from the clipboard for a second.

  “Uh-huh.”

  His eyes went back to the report.

  “So, last night, during the fish fry, Charlene says that when Woggles went home, you left right after him. I’m quoting here, ‘She took off with that new fella without even offering to help clean up. When I walked by a couple hours later, on my way home, bone-tired from cleaning up without her help, I heard somebody holler inside her trailer. Then I heard a thump. I waited around a minute or two, but didn’t hear nothing else. So I minded my own business and went home. I never saw Woggles alive after that.’”

  “Well...I can explain. You see, that’s when I had the accident with the spaghetti sauce. I tripped and knocked it –”

  “You know,” Chief Collins cut in, “nothing like this has ever happened at Shell Hammock before. Then you show up and bam. Woggles is dead. What do you have to say about that?”

  “Uh...I’m renowned for my bad timing?”

  Chief Collins chewed his toothpick. “Maybe. But I’m beginning to think there’s more to it than that. Take a listen at Slim Johnson’s testimony.”

  He turned the page on the clipboard.

  “‘It was them cookies. Nobody ‘round here bakes cookies. I think she up and poisoned Woggles with them.’”

  I choked. “Why would I do that?”