Val Fremden Mystery Box Set 3

by Margaret Lashley

  A twinge of jealousy pinged around in my head like a stray BB pellet.

  What is this mysterious power Nancy has over men? Jake never offered me a mug! Not that I’d really wanted one...but that’s beside the point!

  I marched past Winky over to Jake’s table.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded. “Cavorting with the enemy?”

  Jake looked taken aback, then laughed. “Oh. It’s not what you think, Val.”

  “What do you mean, not what I think?”

  He shrugged like a bored chimp. “You know the old saying, ‘What goes around comes around.’”

  “Yeah. So?”

  I picked up a mug from his table and sulked.

  “Why’d you give her one of these?”

  “Strategic tactic,” he said, and tapped a hairy finger on his bald noggin. “A little thing I like to call ‘phonetic justice.’”

  Jake’s elusory wordplay was getting on my last nerve. I slammed the mug down on his table.

  “Like I said before, Jake. I don’t get it.”

  “You’re in Charge, Val,” he said, and looked at me as if his meaning should be perfectly obvious now.

  I picked up the mug and raised it in preparation to bean Jake on the head with it.

  He got the hint.

  Jake held his hands up in a kind of defensive surrender, and continued his explanation.

  “Okay, okay. Take it easy, Val. Look at it this way. Let’s just say I ‘charged’ Nancy’s coffee with a little urine...as in ‘urine charge.’”

  I nearly swallowed my tongue. “You didn’t.”

  Jake wagged his gorilla eyebrows. “I did.”

  “Jake, that’s diabolical!”

  He shrugged and studied the harry knuckles of his right hand.

  “Eh. Not really. Just a little trick I picked up from my clients.”

  “Which ones?” I asked. “The canines or the criminals?”

  Jake laughed. “Maybe a little of both.”

  I grimaced and looked back across the street just in time to see Nancy take a slug from the mug. I turned back to face Jake.

  “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

  Jake grinned sweetly and struck a pose, sort of like a contemplative gibbon.

  “As anyone can see, Val, I don’t have a bad side.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Nancy raised her “You’re In Charge” mug to her thin lips again. Part of me winced. Part of me cheered. And part of me scolded myself for not running over and knocking the cup from her hand.

  As I walked back to my place, the train-wreck of a scene was so mesmerizing I failed to notice the other disaster unfolding at my own table.

  “There you are,” Winky hollered.

  Startled, I nearly dropped the two brownies in paper napkins I held in my sweaty hands.

  “Look who’s here, Val!” Winky called out. “It’s that feller what made me rich!”

  I tore my eyes from The Nancy Show and zeroed in on Winky, then on the pasty, frizzy-headed jerk loitering around the chia pet and Tom’s old boom box.

  “Keep your hands off the merchandise,” I warned Finkerman.

  “This guy didn’t make you rich, Winky. He just handled the paperwork.”

  I looked down at the stack of books in the shyster attorney’s hand. “What’d you do, Finkerman? Break into the library’s overnight book depository?”

  Finkerman graced me with a toothy, insincere smile that reminded me of that shark in the old Star-Kist Tuna commercial.

  “Very clever, Fremden. I’m just here to, as you said yourself, ‘handle the paperwork.’”

  Finkerman slapped an envelope in my hand.

  “You’ve been served,” he said, and did the shark-smile thing again.

  “Served what?” Winky asked.

  “A load of bull crap,” I hissed, and glared at Finkerman.

  “I what’n aware that bull crap came in envelopes,” Winky said, and scratched his navel.

  “The bull crap I’m talking about is outside the envelope,” I said, my eyes locked on Finkerman.

  Finkerman smirked. “Well then, my work here is done. I’ll take my leave. Pleasure doing business with you, Fremden.”

  “The only pleasure in it for me is to see you go,” I spat.

  Finkerman tipped an imaginary hat. “Until we meet again. Very soon, I suspect.”

  My fingers crunched down on the envelope. “Until then, may you find a nice wood chipper to fall into, you pathetic, poisonous...Pinocchio!”

  “What’n that thoughty a him, hand deliverin’ yore mail ‘n all,” Winky said as Finkerman’s frizzy head bobbed along amidst the crowd on the sidewalk. “But you got my curiosity up, Val. Why’d you call him Pinocchio? On account ‘a his long nose?”

  “No.”

  Winky scratched his chin. “’Cause he walks all kind a stove-up like?”

  “No.”

  Winky picked up the chia gnome and studied it, as if it held the answer. “Well, why then?”

  “Winky, I called him Pinocchio because, despite his appearance, Finkerman’s not quite a real person.”

  Winky’s eyes doubled in size.

  “Naw! No foolin’? That there feller’s one a them robot people I seen on TV?”

  Winky shook his head in wonder. “Woo, doggy! Well, he sure fooled me!”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” I muttered. “Put down the chia pet, Winky. Here’s your brownie.”

  “Don’t mind if I do. All this thankin’s got me up an appetite somethin’ fierce.”

  Winky set the chia gnome on my table, grabbed the brownie and took a bite out of it big enough to choke a Billy goat. He chewed once before his face went pale. Without warning, his mouth dropped opened and chunks of brown rubble tumbled out like peat moss from a derelict gumball machine.

  “Good lord, Val! Laverne didn’t make these thangs, did she?”

  “No! I wouldn’t do that to you!”

  Winky held his hand to his throat and ran to the back of the garage. He grabbed his beer, took a slug, gargled with it, and spit out the dregs in the bushes on the side of the garage.

  “Ugh! That was a close one,” he said.

  I eyed my brownie as if it were made of ground-up cockroaches. “Are they really that bad?”

  Winky crinkled his freckled nose in disgust. “Let’s just say, I’ve had gaul-dang vegan food that tasted better.”

  “Hey, you two!” Laverne called out as she made her way toward us in a flowery beach cover-up and six-inch silver heels.

  My eyes shot a wary glance across the street at the Knick Knack Nazi.

  “Laverne!” I said in a hushed tone. “What are you doing here? Who’s manning your table?”

  “Nobody, honey. I’m sold out!”

  “How’d you manage that?” I asked.

  “Well, sugar, it helps to add a little ‘history’ to your stuff. You know what I mean?”

  “Uh...no,” I said.

  “Well, take that chia pet there,” Laverne said. “Would you buy it if you knew it used to belong to...” she stopped and looked around, then whispered, “a little person?”

  “You mean a midget?” Winky asked, his eyes growing wide.

  “Yes,” Laverne said.

  Winky grabbed the chia pet and pawed at me, pleadingly. “How much you want for it, Val?”

  “Wait a minute, Laverne,” I said and turned my back to Winky. “All that stuff you sold was J.D.’s?”

  Laverne grinned. “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. If all goes to plan, by next year’s sale all he’ll have left at my place is a weight bench in the garage.”

  “Respect,” I whispered, and nearly curtseyed in admiration at the old woman who was clearly queen of her own Vegas-style domain.

  Winky tugged on my sleeve. “Come on, Val! How much you want for the chia –”

  “You can have it, Winky,” I said.

  Winky let out a hillbilly cheer. “Woo hoo! Boy howdy! Thanky
, Val!”

  He beamed at the ugly, worthless chia pet that had been made irresistible by Laverne’s “historical embellishment.” I had to hand it to her, Laverne had a hidden knack for showmanship.

  “Did you get to see the little pig?” Laverne asked.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “Winky watched the table for me so I could go take a look. I’m curious, Laverne. Why would you want to kiss a pig, anyway?”

  The skinny old woman shrugged her boney shoulders and laughed. “Just to see what it’s like, I guess.”

  “It ain’t that great,” Winky said, and tucked the chia pet in a huge pocket on the left thigh of his cargo shorts.

  “What?” I asked, the word escaping my mouth like a squeal. “How do you know?”

  Winky shrugged.

  “My cousin Thelma. She’s spot on a match for that there little pig. ’Ceptin, a’course, that pig ain’t got no moustache.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The time had come for someone to kiss a pig.

  It was 5:00 p.m. on the dot, and the yard sale was officially over for the year. As the Knick Knack Nazi shooed malingering customers away with her police baton, the only thing left for the rest of us to do was fold up our tables and gather around for the official announcement of this year’s bake-off winner.

  Tom and I, along with Laverne and Jake, lined up around the pig’s cage and waited as another neighbor, Doris Templeton, tallied the votes collected on Nancy’s clipboard.

  Jake eyed the piglet with sympathy. “Who in the world decided that the winner has to kiss that poor pig?”

  “That kid over there suggested it,” Tom said, and pointed to a young boy in a Cub Scout uniform. “He’s raising the pig as part of his FFA project.”

  “FFA?” Jake asked.

  “Future Farmers of America. Nancy told me she approved a pig as the prize, thinking it was going to be delivered as pork chops and bacon. But when the kid got wind of that, he broke down and cried.”

  “I didn’t know you and Nancy were so close,” I said, and eyed Tom up and down.

  Tom shot me a sideways grin. “I wouldn’t call it ‘close.’”

  “So what happens to the pig now?” Jake asked. “I mean, after the make-out session today?”

  Tom shrugged. “I dunno. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t want to know.”

  “Me either,” I said.

  “I think he’ll go off to a farm in the country and make friends with a spider,” Laverne offered brightly.

  We all turned and stared at her.

  “What?” she asked. “I read about it in a book.”

  Jake started to say something, but I cut him off.

  “Yeah, Laverne,” I said. “That’s probably exactly what’ll happen.”

  “Hush!” Nancy barked and waved her baton to silence the crowd. “Doris? Are you ready to announce the winner?”

  Doris, a recent transplant from Ohio, cleared her throat and looked around nervously.

  “Ahem...it seems as if we have...a tie.”

  She looked over at Nancy and smiled weakly. “It’s between your brownies, Nancy, and...uh...Laverne’s snickerdoodles.”

  I heard Laverne gasp.

  “Ein tie?” Nancy bellowed. “Das ist verboten!”

  She glared at our blank expressions with ice-water eyes. A moment later, she remembered she was in America, home of the free...and the English speaking. She pursed her thin, Germanic lips and grumbled at Doris.

  “I mean, that’s not allowed.”

  Nancy grabbed the clipboard from Doris’ hands and studied it. Her accusatory eyes darted up, landed on a face in the crowd, then returned to the clipboard, then up at another face, then back to the clipboard. This continued for a minute or so as the crowd waited in dead silence for Nancy’s verdict.

  Suddenly, Nancy’s left eyebrow twisted into an “S.”

  “Aha!” she shouted.

  The crowd gasped simultaneously. Nancy’s eyes locked in on me like a ballistic missile.

  “Val Fremden! You didn’t vote!”

  Oh, crap on a cracker!

  With everything else going on, I guess I’d forgotten all about it.

  My gut gurgled. The outcome of this year’s bake-off was now down to...me!

  Who should I vote for? Nancy or Laverne?

  My mind swirled with panic and confusion. I’d been the one who’d instigated the whole “Let’s Make Nancy Kiss a Pig” campaign. I couldn’t go against it now. The entire neighborhood was counting on me!

  This was our chance to passive-aggressively stick it to the woman who’d made it her civic duty to leave notes on our windshields informing us it was high-time we washed our cars, trimmed our hedges....

  “Well?” Nancy said. Her ice-blue eyes cut through me.

  Be a patriot, Val. Vote for Nancy’s brownies.

  I took the clipboard from Doris and wrapped my fingers around the pen chained to it. Everywhere I looked, the expectant, smirking faces of my neighbors stared back.

  I smiled back.

  Yes, that’s right folks. We’ve got this one in the bag. Pucker up, Nancy, it’s time for you to smooch a swine!

  The pen in my hand was poised on the paper, ready to tick the box for brownies, when my eyes landed on Laverne. My silly, goofball friend was crouched beside the cage, beaming at the little piglet, her face full of childlike wonder. She was positively moonstruck...or, perhaps, more accurately, “pigstruck.”

  I felt as morally torn as a Baptist who’d just been handed a free case of Jack Daniels.

  “Vote now!” Nancy demanded.

  I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and scrawled my vote on the clipboard, then handed it back to Doris. Having sealed my fate, I sidled over to Laverne and slipped my arm around her, to help brace her for the results.

  Doris cleared her throat, shot a side look at Nancy, and said, “The winner of this year’s bake off is...Laverne and her snickerdoodles!”

  “Weeee! I get to kiss the pig!” Laverne squealed with delight and jumped up and down like a little girl.

  “Congratulations,” I said, and tried to avoid the sour glares of the crowd encircling us.

  “I get to kiss a pig!” Laverne squealed again. “Thank you, everybody!”

  Laverne gave us all a good gander at her dentures, then toddled over to join the Cub Scout kneeling by his piglet’s cage.

  “Well, at least she looks happy,” Tom said.

  “Yeah. She does,” I said.

  We all watched the old Vegas showgirl pucker up.

  “Good choice,” Jake whispered.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “I just betrayed everyone.”

  “Not everyone.” Jake pointed a hairy finger toward Laverne and the pig. “I see two creatures over there that seem more than okay with the outcome.”

  I had to admit, both the piglet and Laverne appeared ecstatic to have found each other.

  “So, you’re not mad at me?” I asked.

  “No,” Jake said. “Why should I be?”

  “Because I said I was gonna vote for Nancy.”

  “On the contrary. You saved us both some bother.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jake scratched a hairy forearm.

  “Val, if you’d a voted for Nancy, I was gonna have to call the ASPCA.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Well, there went two days of my life I’ll never get back,” Tom quipped.

  I looked up from my computer. Tom was standing in the doorway of my home office holding a white paper bag. It was a few minutes past seven o’clock, and he’d just returned from picking up Chinese food for dinner.

  I snapped my laptop shut. There was no need for him to know I’d been online shopping for slipcovers.

  “You can say that again,” I said, and eyed the bag in his hand. “Did we clear enough money from the yard sale to get eggrolls?”

  “Just barely.” Tom looked past me to my desk. “Hey, what’s in the envelope?”

 
My body froze for a microsecond, then thawed enough to fake a casual shrug.

  “Nothing.”

  I glanced at the innocent-looking manila envelope on my desk. Inside it was the lawsuit Finkerman had served me with earlier in the day. It was pure claptrap. A frivolous, long-winded long-shot from a frizzy-haired freak. And it had me worried enough to almost lose my appetite.

  I picked up the envelope and shoved it in a drawer.

  “Just writer stuff,” I lied.

  Just like with the slipcover plan, there was no need to get Tom involved. I’d find my own way out of Finkerman’s trap. Besides, if I told Tom, I’d have to confess that I’d traded Laverne’s cookies to Finkerman for a figurine.

  I slammed the drawer shut and smiled up at Tom.

  “Did you get the General Tso’s chicken like I asked?”

  “Of course, your majesty,” Tom said. “I want to sleep in the bed tonight...not the doghouse.”

  I laughed. “Good boy. I see I trained you well.”

  “I try. Besides, in a few more days, the doghouse will be occupied.”

  “Oh my gosh! That’s right! The puppy comes home in less than a week! And we still haven’t come up with a name for it yet.”

  “How about General Tso?” Tom joked.

  I scratched my chin and pretended to consider it. “Nah. Too ethnic.”

  Tom laughed. I gave him a peck on the lips, turned the light off in my office, and tugged him toward the kitchen.

  “Come on, Lieutenant Foreman. I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”

  “With everything battered and fried and covered in sweet and sour sauce, Val, who knows? You just might get your wish.”

  “HAVE YOU SEEN MY FOOTBALL?” Tom asked, then crammed a chopstick full of noodles into his mouth. He shifted his weight in the hideous Barcalounger, set the greasy paper carton in his lap and took a slug of beer.

  Suddenly, as if I’d been struck by a blue-white bolt of lightning, my hair stood on end, and my eyes were blinded by a horrific vision of the future.

  Tom’s shiny blond hair had morphed into a greasy grey ponytail. He had a beer gut big enough to use as a TV tray. And he was sitting in that same, brown-plaid horror of a lounge chair