Nancy checked her Swiss watch. “Look, Fremden. It’s 7:58.47. I’ve gotta go and put on my money belt.”
“Give me the figurine, and I’ll leave you to it.”
Nancy sighed. “Okay. Five bucks.”
“Five bucks? For that thing? That’s outrageous!”
Nancy smiled like a sneaky dog. She glanced down the road again. Cars were lining up along the street. People were piling out and dragging little wheeled shopping carts behind them. She shrugged.
“Take it or leave it, Fremden. It’s your call.”
I thought about it for a split second. Five bucks to rid the world of that hideous stink bomb? The thought of my hammer obliterating that slob’s grimacing face was too much to resist.
“Okay. I’ll go get the money.”
I reached for the figurine. Nancy snatched it off the table and smirked evilly.
“Let’s see the cash first.”
My mouth fell open. “What? You don’t trust me?”
Nancy’s nearly lipless slit of a mouth twisted cruelly. “Desperate people do desperate things.”
“You think I’m desperate?”
Nancy shrugged and looked up at the heavens. “It’s not what I think that matters.”
I turned and ran back across the street to my house, trying not to crack my gnashing teeth. I flung open the door, skittered into the kitchen and grabbed my purse off the counter.
“What’s up?” Tom asked, looking up from the sink.
“I need five dollars,” I said as I fished out my wallet.
Tom’s left eyebrow arched. “What for?”
“For a ffff...”
My voice fizzled out like a dying balloon. My gut punched itself as I scrambled for a white lie. Preferably one that began with an “F.”
“For...funds. You know. Change,” I bumbled. “Nancy across the street...she’s going to give me change. For, you know, yard sale customers and stuff.”
I set my face to stone mode and studied Tom’s expression. Had he bought my bag of baloney?
He smiled, picked up a plate from the drain board and began to dry it with a dishtowel. “Okay.”
My lips pursed with guilt...or something like it. But I had no time for true confessions. I ran out the door with my wallet, wondering who the bigger shmuck was, me or Tom.
A few footsteps out the door, I stopped in my tracks. Nancy wasn’t at her table. And neither was my figurine!
I scurried to her door and banged on it like a junkie on a bender. Nancy opened the door, scowled, and put her hands on her hips. Slung around her waist like a Wild-West gun holster was what looked to be a coin-operated chastity belt.
Lucky Ralph.
“Uh...here’s your five bucks,” I stuttered. “Gimme the figurine.”
“Geeze, Fremden. Your upper lip is sweating. Are you okay?”
“Uh...sure. Come on. Hand it over!”
Nancy tucked the fiver in her utility belt and handed me the crappy figurine. I snatched it from her hand, took a step toward home, then realized I couldn’t let Tom see me with my ceramic contraband.
“Uh...look, Nancy. Could you just keep it for me...until the end of the day?”
She eyed me suspiciously.
“I guess so. Why?”
“I don’t want it, you know, to get mixed up with my own yard sale stuff...and, you know, commit an accidental resale.”
Nancy nodded and took the figurine back. “Yes. Of course. I’ll file it away on the ‘F’ shelf in my garage.”
Alphabetized garage shelves? You gotta be kidding me!
“Thank you, Nancy. Now, I’d better get back to my own table.”
“Hop to it,” Nancy barked. She looked over my shoulder and her face suddenly softened into something resembling a human expression.
“Hi, Tom!” she called and waved.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I turned around. Tom was outside, perusing the merchandise on our table.
Crap on a cracker!
He looked up and waved back. “Morning!” he called out. “Great weather for the sale.”
I angled my torso to hide the clandestine figurine still in Nancy’s clutches.
“Yes, it sure is,” Nancy cooed sweetly. “I hope you take time to enjoy your day, Tom! Don’t forget to stop and smell the roses!”
I nearly stumbled over my own two feet.
I’d have been more prepared for a locust plague than for Nancy’s transformation from battle-axe to sweetheart. In my humble opinion, it sounded as if Nancy Meyers was a little too pleased to see Tom – and I was none too pleased about it myself.
“Well, here come the hoards,” I said, eyeing Nancy with new eyes. “I guess we should all get busy.”
“Right,” Nancy said, switching back to battalion mode. “Wait a second. Did you contribute to the bake off, Fremden? I didn’t see anything with your name on it at the baked goods table.”
“I plan to,” I said sourly. “I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”
Nancy’s thin lips tried to purse, but just made a white line under her nose.
“What are you waiting for, Fremden?” she barked.
“Uh...a friend.”
“Who?”
“Confidentiality regulations restrict my ability to outsource that information,” I said.
“Oh. Of course,” Nancy replied.
She looked back across the street at Tom and smiled, as unfazed by my jabbing punch at her regulatory tomfoolery as a seasoned prizefighter with an inch-thick skull.
Chapter Eight
“I’ll give you this wooden spoon and the toothpick holder for that figurine,” I said to the old lady.
Like a desperate camel stumbling alone in the Sahara, I’d spotted the ceramic oasis in her clutches as soon as she’d hobbled within ten feet of me.
“This thing?” she asked, and glanced down at the object in her hand.
It was a statuette of a portly, round-bottomed woman with an exaggerated neck that stretched high above her, giving her the overall shape of a Chianti bottle.
The old woman gripped the figurine by its elongated throat, as if she were throttling it. I was jonesing to do the hideous figurine one better.
“Yeah, that thing,” I answered. “Lemme see it.”
She set the figurine on my yard-sale table. Only when she released her gnarled fingers did the extent of the waste of perfectly good porcelain become fully apparent.
The pear-bottomed figure was clad in a brown-and-gold, animal-print unitard that spanned the length of her impossibly long neck, and formed a tight hoodie all the way to her forehead. On top of her head were two short antennae and pointy, cat-like ears. Inscribed on the base below her hooved feet was a pun so bad it made me groan out loud.
Gee Your Affable.
Never before had three little words been used so effectively to devastate both art and literature simultaneously.
I picked up the abomination and glared into its miniscule, beady eyes. “Giraffe woman” stared back, begging me to put her out of her illiterate misery. It was my civic duty to oblige.
“The toothpick holder and the spoon,” I offered again. “Whatta you say?”
The old woman’s sharp eyes scanned my table.
“Throw in that bottle opener there and you got yourself a deal,” she said.
I looked around to make sure Tom wasn’t nosing about, and gave the woman a quick nod.
“Deal.”
I stuffed the kitchen gadgets into the old lady’s bag, then quickly tucked the Abominable Giraffe Woman into a box, along with Turtle Boy, another figurine I’d traded for Tom’s old football. I stole a glance across the street. The Knick Knack Nazi was giving me the stank-eye.
Too bad.
I waved and smiled. “No resale,” I yelled.
Nancy scowled and tilted her head in a way that made me feel she wasn’t buying it. But I didn’t care. It wasn’t a lie. Reselling those figurines was totally off the table. Not only would it have been against y
ard-sale regulations – it would have been against basic human decency.
“Good doing business with you,” I said to the old woman.
“You, too, hun.”
“Have a nice day,” I added, and turned to stash my box of ill-gotten ceramics on a shelf in the garage.
“Not likely in today’s litigious society,” a man’s voice sounded behind me. “Here. Take one of my cards.”
I turned to see a tall, skinny man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and baggy shorts. A ludicrously large pair of pink, heart-shaped sunglasses sat atop his angular, pointy nose, which protruded from under the sunglasses like an anemic beak. A thin cloud of curly, reddish- brown frizz topped his pasty white noggin.
As he extended a long, wimpy arm toward the old lady, a flicker of recognition sent a jolt of disgust through my gut.
“Ferrol Finkerman,” I hissed under my breath.
I glared at the opportunistic attorney who’d twice tried to extort money from me with false claims. Once for human finger dismemberment, the other for indecent toupee exposure.
Finkerman patted the old lady’s shoulder dismissively and looked over at me. One look at his hideous smile made me grit my teeth and wish I’d filed a restraining order against the clod when I’d had the chance.
“Well, if it isn’t Ms. Fremden in the flesh,” he said, then folded his arms and stared at me through those dumb glasses like a half-plucked ostrich that’d just won the booby prize at a roadside carnival.
“What are you doing here?” I spat.
“Can’t a man have his leisure activities?” he asked jovially.
My lips pursed as I tried to hold in the distasteful thoughts welling up in my throat.
“What’s with the stupid glasses?” I said sourly.
“These? Just picked ‘em up at one of the tables. You know, in my line of work, it pays to go incognito. Unrecognizable is unidentifiable...in a court of law, if you catch my drift.”
“Too bad you’re not wearing something big enough to cover up your sleaze.”
Finkerman’s eyebrow arched high enough to clear the oversized glasses.
“Ouch,” he smirked, and glanced around at the junk on my table. “Got any old library books for sale?”
“What? No. Why?”
Finkerman smiled. I immediately thought of my Aunt Pansy. She’d once told me that a smile could improve anyone’s appearance. But I guess that theory only worked for human beings.
“It’s a hobby of mine,” Finkerman said. “A little public service, if you will.”
I snorted. “Public service? Don’t make me laugh, Finkerman. What’s your angle?”
Finkerman’s lips twisted and puckered into a puffy lump.
“You know me so well, Val. I like that about you.”
He leaned over the table toward me and whispered, making the nasal tone of his voice somehow even more annoying.
“In my spare time, I send notices to people who fail to return library books. Here. I’ll show you.”
Finkerman took a book from his bag of yard-sale finds and opened it to the back cover. He pulled the lending card from its paper pocket, studied it, and shook his head.
“Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. It seems Manny Delrose was supposed to return this book on or before March 30th, 1998. He didn’t, and now it’s time to pay the piper, Mr. Melrose.”
“What are you talking about, Finkerman?”
The pasty-faced attorney looked up at me and spoke as if he were quoting sing-song rhymes from a Dr. Seuss book. “Well, it appears a fine is in need. Yes, a fine would be fine. Oh yes, fine indeed.”
I crossed my arms. “A fine? What do you mean? Don’t tell me you’re.... No way! You’re not...working for the library, are you?”
Finkerman threw back his head and laughed, revealing a jumble of piranha teeth.
“Ha ha! Of course not! The state doesn’t pay squat, Fremden! Besides, I don’t need them.”
“So, what are you talking about?”
Finkerman slipped the lending card back into its pocket, closed the book and held it up as if he were going to give a lecture on his new USA Today award-winning novel. If the title had been How to Be a Disgusting Weasel, he’d have nailed it.
“I’m talking about sending Manny a letter from my law office mentioning the tardy nature of said book. Along with, of course, an offer to keep Mr. Delrose from garnering a criminal record for theft of public property. Believe it or not, a simple letter like that can earn me a tidy sum.”
I shook my head in disgust.
“That’s sick, Finkerman. Even for you. I wouldn’t think a book fine would be worth your precious time.”
“That’s just it, Fremden. It takes no time at all. I’ve got it all down to a simple form letter. Insert name and address. Mail it off. Two minutes work, tops. Not a bad way to earn $89.94.”
My eyebrows collided. “What?”
Finkerman grinned slyly. “That’s the threshold people will pay to make a legal problem go away...without court dates, legal repercussions, and, most importantly, no pesky questions being asked.”
My nose crinkled. “How do you know that? Ugh! Never mind.”
Finkerman’s grin was giving me the willies.
“Hey, guilty consciences are what make the world go round, Fremden. People are so gullible, they’ll fall for all kinds of scams.”
“So!” I said, and pointed a finger at him. “You admit that what you’re doing’s a scam!”
Finkerman’s spine straightened. “You aren’t recording this, are you?”
I slumped from disappointment at the missed opportunity. “No. Are you?”
Finkerman touched a square-shaped lump in his breast pocket. “So...I never said the word ‘scam.’ Capeesh?”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”
Finkerman cleared his throat. “On another note, you wouldn’t happen to be thinking of suing anyone, would you?”
My jaw nearly hit the sidewalk. “You must really be hard up to be asking me that, Finkerman.”
“Why?”
“Because when I think of dirtbags, only one person comes to mind.”
He laughed. “Oh, come on, Val. I thought we were old pals.”
“Pals?!” I snorted. “You must be crazy! Who would want to be pals with you?”
Finkerman shrugged. “In my book, a pal is anyone who isn’t actively plotting my demise.”
I shook my head. “I bet that’s a short list.”
I was about to tell the ambulance chaser to beat it when something stopped me cold. A figurine was poking its head out of his bag of books.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“This thing?”
Finkerman plucked the little statue from his bag. It was an Asian-looking woman standing with a gavel in one hand, a briefcase in the other. Her name was Su Mee.
“Charming, isn’t she?” Finkerman asked.
Compared to him, yes. And after the slimy conversation I’d just had about attorneys abusing the law, I wanted Su Mee something fierce.
“I’ll trade you a Mr. Coffee machine for the statue thing,” I said, trying to sound casual.
Finkerman studied the statue as if it were made of gold and precious gems. “Sorry. No can do.”
I blew out a breath. “Come on, Finkerman. What do you want for it?”
Finkerman surveyed my table of used household crap and stuck up his pointy nose. Then he looked past me into the garage. His upper lip curled like the corner of a soggy affidavit.
“That tray of cookies behind you,” he said.
I turned around and glanced at the heaping pile of snickerdoodles. I’d baked a double batch last night.
“I dunno....”
“Come on, Fremden. It’s just the thing I need to impress a new client tomorrow. You know, something home baked. It could give me that... what do you call it? ‘Illusion of humanity.’”
It would’ve taken a lot more than cookies to convince me Finkerman was human. But who was I to argue? I wan
ted to rid the world of Su Mee something awful. I grabbed the figurine from his pale, boney fingers.
“Deal,” I said, and stuffed the statuette in the box with the others. I hoisted the tray of cookies from the shelf and handed it to him.
“Nice doing business with you again, pal,” Finkerman sneered. “That figurine set me back a whole seventy-five cents. Ha ha! I win!”
As I watched Finkerman disappear down the sidewalk with his prize, the door that led from the house into the garage opened. Tom came out and gave me a kiss and a cool glass of water.
“Whew!” he exclaimed. “It’s hot as blazes! How’re you doing?”
“Okay. How about you?”
“I tell you what, Val, those are some pretty tough old gals manning that bake sale table. It wasn’t easy, but the switch is done.”
“Good work.”
Tom glanced over at the garage shelf. “Hey. What’d you do with Laverne’s cookies?”
A satisfied smile curled my lips.
“Don’t worry, Tom. I donated them to a very good cause.”
Chapter Nine
“I still don’t understand how we only made four dollars and thirty-seven cents for all my old stuff,” Tom said as I counted the money out into his palm.
I shrugged. “Times are tough. Nobody pays much for used junk anymore. Look on the bright side. At least the garage is almost cleaned out. And we’ve still got tomorrow to make your fortune.”
Tom shook his head. “I hope you know what this means.”
“What?”
“You can never, ever break up with me, Val Fremden. I could never afford to buy all that stuff again.”
I smirked. “Well, there’s always next year’s yard sale. If need be, maybe you can recoup it all.”
Tom grinned and shook his head. “Anyone ever tell you you’ve got an evil streak?”
I batted my lashes at him. “Oh...at least once a day.”
Tom laughed. “You’re incorrigible.”
I pouted. “That’s not very nice.”
Tom wrapped his arms around me. “Oh, come on, Val. Incorrigibility is the thing I love most about you.”
While I decided on my mood, Tom kissed me on the nose.
“By the way,” he added, “let me know when you’re done with the sale tomorrow and I’ll haul the rest of the boxes out to the street for the garbage men.”
Val Fremden Mystery Box Set 3 Page 23
