Val Fremden Mystery Box Set 3

by Margaret Lashley

  Dressed in raggedy cargo shorts and a t-shirt with both sleeves ripped off, Winky looked more like a derelict that’d been stranded there overnight than he did the place’s rough-shod owner. He was leaning against a worktable, engrossed in a periodical. From the picture on its cover, it was either Time or Mad Magazine. I never could tell the two apart.

  “What’s so funny?” I grumbled at the ginger-haired hillbilly.

  Winky looked up from his magazine. When he saw me, he half-squelched a snort. The effort looked painful.

  “Pshaw! Good lordy, Val! You look mad as all get out!”

  “Yeah, well, just gimme a donut and a cup of coffee. And keep ‘em comin.”

  Winky’s left eyebrow shot up an inch. He saluted and said, “You got it, chief,” then disappeared into the inner workings of the shack.

  I removed my head from the window and took a calming breath of salt air. My donut fix was on its way.

  I glanced toward the beach and noticed that a raw-plywood counter had been tacked to the side of the shop’s exterior wall. It appeared to have been suspended with bent nails and at least one entire roll of yellow duct tape. The overall effect looked more like a crime scene than a dining counter.

  I dragged a dilapidated barstool up to it and tested the counter’s holding power with an elbow. Winky reappeared at the window.

  “I see you’re expanding the business,” I quipped.

  “Yep,” Winky said.

  I reached over and he handed me a cup of coffee.

  “Got so’s there’s so many folks hangin’ ‘round here the city code feller tole me it was either add seatin’ or put up a ‘No Loitering’ sign. As I’m a big fan a loiterin’ myself, I couldn’t see doin’ that. It’d be like livin’ in a state a perpetual irony. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” I said. More than you could ever know.

  I grabbed the coffee cup and plopped my purse on the counter. Suddenly, I heard a groan like my grandpa used to make whenever he read the obituary column.

  The makeshift plywood countertop listed to the left, broke off the wall, and collapsed onto the sand like a tourist full of tequila shots.

  “Lord a-mighty!” Winky bellowed, and craned his head out the window for a look.

  Before I could even survey the damage, Winky was at my side, patting my hand.

  “You didn’t go an’ get yourself scalded, now, did ya?” he fussed.

  “Huh?” I looked absently at the full coffee cup in my hand. By some miracle, I hadn’t even spilled a drop. “No. I’m fine.”

  “Whew! Sorry about that. Here, lemme help ya pick up your pocketbook stuff.”

  I set my coffee inside the service window and squatted down beside Winky as he scrabbled around in the sand and weeds, collecting up the contents of my spilled purse.

  “Boy howdy!” Winky whistled. “That there’s a beaut. Good thing no harm come to this here feller.”

  “Huh?” I asked, and looked over in his direction.

  Perched in Winky’s pudgy, freckled paw was the crappy figurine that, a mere fifteen minutes ago, had compelled me onto a ladder in my garage so I could fetch a hammer and smash its little brains out.

  “Give that here,” I said, and grabbed for the stupid little man on a toilet. Winky swatted my hand away.

  “Hold your horses, Val. Lemme have a good look-see at it first.”

  Winky studied Dr. Dingbat’s ode to the throne as if it had been sculpted by Leonardo DaVinci.

  “What’s this here do?” he asked, and pressed a brown button at the base of the figurine.

  I guess all of the figure’s other appalling features had caused me to miss that particular one.

  Winky mashed the button again.

  “Huh. Nothin’ happened,” he said, and scratched his ginger buzz-cut.

  My nose crinkled.

  “What’s supposed to happen?” I asked, then waved my open palm at him wildly. “Wait! I don’t want to know!”

  But it was too late. Winky’s thumbnail had unscrewed a fastener on the base. A lid popped open.

  “Looks like the battery’s done gone dead,” he said, and turned the figurine over and shook it. An old, brown battery dropped into his waiting palm like a dead palmetto bug.

  “Too bad. I guess we’ll never know,” I said with a certain amount of relief.

  “Not a problem,” Winky said, oblivious to my tone. “I can fix that up right ‘cheer. I keep me a mess a batteries around – for all them smoke detectors, don’t ‘cha know.”

  Before I could object, Winky trotted inside the shack and returned with a new battery. With the joyful anticipation of a kid at Christmas, he inserted the new battery, closed the lid and mashed the button.

  Difficult Defecation grunted like a wild boar at rutting season.

  Ugh! How did my life come to this?

  Winky laughed like an epileptic chipmunk and mashed the button again. Speechless, I shook my head as he stared with open-faced joy at the statuette and its pornographic sound effects.

  “Now that there’s a pure work a art,” he said. “Where’d you get him, Val?”

  “At the yard sale.”

  “Dag nab it!” Winky bellowed. His lips pursed to white. “I wished I’d a gone earlier. But Winnie wouldn’t let me. Saturday’s our biggest mornin’ here at the shop.”

  Winky eyed the figurine, then me.

  “What you gonna do with him, Val? Pardon my askin,’ but this don’t seem like yore kinda thang.”

  “Uh...I was going to –”

  “Val!” Winnie called from the window. “Is that you?”

  “Yeah!” I called back.

  Winnie’s sweet, pudgy face peered out the window. Her black bob hung down either side of her cheeks and she squinted at me through her red-framed glasses. “How are you? You here for one of my famous peanut-butter bombs?”

  I jumped at the chance to change of subject. “Does a bear poop in the woods?” I called back.

  “He shore does!” Winky answered, and pushed the button on Doo-Doo Daddy again. It grunted like my mother Lucille did every time she tried to rock her big behind out of her easy chair.

  “Gimme that!” I said, and snatched the figurine from Winky’s hands.

  Inside the shack, Winnie grinned and shook her head, sending her black bob swaying around her puffy cheeks. “Winky, I think the grease vat needs changing,” she hollered through the window.

  “All right!” Winky cheered. He puffed out his chest, grinned like a loony toon, and skittered off back inside.

  “Change a grease vat?” I asked Winnie after he’d disappeared.

  She laughed and shrugged. “Don’t ask me why, but it’s his favorite thing to do.”

  As Winnie handed me a donut through the service window, she caught sight of the figurine. “Where’d you get that horrible thing?”

  “At the yard sale. You didn’t hear it?”

  “Hear what?”

  “The grunting and groaning.”

  “Oh. Yeah. But I thought it was Winky.”

  “Nope.” I held up the figurine. “It was this little yard sale treasure.”

  “Yard sales,” Winnie said dreamily. She rested her elbows on the service counter and laid her chubby chin in her hands. A faraway look filled her eyes.

  “Gosh, Val. You know, if I had all the money in the world, I’d buy me a You-Haul-It and just go yard salin’ every single day.”

  I grinned at the woman who, by some kind of redneck miracle, had been at the perfect place at the perfect time to become the perfect companion for Winky, the most imperfect man I knew.

  “Not a bad plan, Winnie,” I said. “Hey. By the way, do you happen to know anything about slipcovers?”

  Winnie snorted and came up off her elbows. “Come on, Val. You saw the couches Winky picked out for our trailer. What do you think?”

  I shot her a smile and took a huge bite of Winnie’s almost-world-famous peanut butter and bacon donut. One chew into it, my cellphone rang. O
f course.

  It was Mr. Scam Likely calling again.

  “I gotta get this,” I mumbled to Winnie through a mouthful of donut. She nodded and disappeared inside the shack.

  “You don’t waste any time, Finkerman,” I said into the phone.

  “In keeping with that theme, let’s cut to the chase, Fremden,” Finkerman’s nasal voice whined. “Did you read the summons? I’m suing you for defamation of character.”

  “Not possible, Finkerman. You don’t have any character.”

  “Ha. Ha. Just for that, I’m doubling my request for damages to five grand.”

  “Five grand!”

  “Yes. See you in court. Unless, of course, you want to settle.”

  “Argghh!” was the only vocal sound I could manage as a reply. I mashed the red End Call button so hard my cellphone chirped.

  “You all right?” Winky asked, his head reappearing in the service window. “You sounded just like that there figurine thangy.”

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” I lied.

  Winky studied me as thoughtfully as a man with few thoughts could. “You come up in here mad as a hornet, and now you’re bellerin up a storm. What’s got in your drawers, Val?”

  “Finkerman. He just hit me with a defamation of character suit.”

  Winky looked at the figurine on the window ledge and smirked. “Don’t you mean defecation a character?”

  I scowled. Finkerman had just pushed my already bad mood over a cliff. Winky’s stupid joke was the last straw.

  “This isn’t funny, Winky!” I screeched. “If I don’t mount some kind of defense against that parasitic creep, I could be out five grand!”

  Winky whistled. “Wow. Five grand. That’s a lotta donuts.”

  “You aren’t kidding. That opportunistic dirtbag! If I saw him right now, I’d punch him in the nose!”

  “Well, as far as I can tell, that sorry rascal don’t need no more bad luck.”

  “What are you talking about, Winky?”

  Winky shrugged. “Nothin’, really. I seen him the other day, and, I guess you might say that man was in what my momma would’a called ‘a state of dire straits.’”

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “Here. Lemme show ya.”

  Winky picked up his cell phone, swiped the screen a couple of times, then turned the display to face me. Glaring at me in full color like a miniature TV was a screen shot of Finkerman standing in line at Walmart with a three-pack of Fruit-of-the-Loom tidy whities in his hand. The back of his pants were smeared with, well, you-know-what.

  My jaw nearly hit the sand.

  “Now that there’s what I’d call one crappy situation,” Winky snorted. “Wouldn’t ya say?”

  “Yes!” I hollered, and grabbed the phone from Winky’s hand so fast he jumped back as if he’d been bitten by a rattlesnake.

  “What in blue blazes?” he yelped.

  I looked at the photo again, cheered, and reached into the window to give him a huge hug.

  “Wallace J. Winchly, I could kiss you right now!”

  Winky puffed out his chest and stuck his thumbs in the ragged holes where his shirt’s sleeves used to be.

  “Yeppers,” he said, smiling proudly. “I seem to have that effect on women.”

  I grinned, and from somewhere inside the shack, I heard Winnie burst out laughing.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Nothing sweetened a sour mood quite like incriminating evidence on a dirtbag.

  I took another disbelieving peek at the image Winky sent to my cellphone. It had to have been too good to be true.

  But no. There it was. Finkerman in all his waspish glory, in line at Walmart buying undies and looking more than just a little, shall we say...indisposed.

  “Yes!” I cheered again, and laughed out loud. “This is gonna be just the ticket to put me back on top with that scum bag. Winky, how can I ever thank you?”

  “Give me a hand with this here plywood countertop,” he said. “I gots to haul it to the dumpster over there.”

  “You giving up on sit-down service?”

  “Naw. But I got me a policy, Val. Duck it or chuck it. I done tried to duck tape that thing to the wall. Now it’s time to chuck it.”

  “What’ll you do then about the code guy? You know, the loitering complaints?”

  “Don’t rightly know,” Winky said, and picked up one end of the plywood. “To tell you the truth, Val, the troubles of two honest, hard-workin’ country folks don’t amount to a hill of pork’n’beans in this here world.”

  I lifted the other end and helped tote the makeshift counter to the dumpster.

  “I’ve got an idea,” I said. “Why don’t you get some tables instead?”

  Winky dropped his end of the counter.

  “Waa hoo! That’s a good idea,” he said, and stared at me with admiration on his freckled face. “You know, Val, if’n you ever need a job, the Donut Shop could use a smart gal like you.”

  “Thanks Winky. I’ll keep that offer in my back pocket. As Plan B.”

  I TOOK A SIP OF COFFEE and waved the flies away from my donut. From my vantage point at the service window, I could see Winnie fiddling around with a wad of dough. Winky was nearby, gleaning business advice from Alfred E. Newman.

  As I weighed my options as to what to do next, a small, white ghost crab skittered across my foot and ducked into a hole in the sand.

  If only life were that easy.

  Finkerman’s nasty call had made it crystal clear that my original plan to make nice with him in order to get Goober’s dreamcatcher back had been a farcical pipe dream. As far as I could tell, Ferrol Finkerman was completely immune to the subtleties of non-sadistic human behavior.

  If I was going to bring down the frizzy-haired shark, I was going to need a sharp spear. The Walmart picture was a good start. But knowing Finkerman, it wouldn’t be enough to get him to drop his five-thousand-dollar lawsuit against me.

  To achieve that, I was going to have to tip my spear with poison...and aim it precisely where it would do the most damage. Seeing as how Finkerman appeared to lack both a heart and a conscience, I had to figure out the cad’s Achilles heel. But what could be worth more to Finkerman than money?

  His Hummer? His office? His reputation?

  I took another look at the picture of him at Walmart. One thing was for sure. It certainly wasn’t his dignity.

  If I was going to take Finkerman down, I needed a brilliant, foolproof plan. Luckily, I was fortified with a belly full of coffee and donuts. And I was already at the place where I’d stumbled upon most of my good ideas in the past.

  Sunset Beach.

  Of course, Glad was no longer there sprawled in her pink lounge chair, waiting to spout her crazy, but uncannily sage advice. Still, I always felt closer to her when I wandered the shoreline by her favorite old haunt, Caddy’s beach bar.

  I said my goodbyes to Winnie and Winky, then kicked off my sandals and made my way through the sand toward the turquoise water of the Gulf of Mexico.

  As my toes dug into the warm sand, I remembered I’d come to the donut shop wearing a bathing suit under my sundress.

  I supposed that was irrefutable proof that I truly was a bona fide native of the Sunshine State.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The hot breeze smelled of salt and seawater as I picked my way along a stretch of sugar-white sand as wide as a football field.

  With Winky’s donut shop behind me, I still had two buildings to pass as I made my way to the shoreline. As different as night and day, the structures were a tangible reminder that time marches on, and no matter how much we want it to, nothing ever stays the same.

  To my left was a familiar refuge, Caddy’s beach bar. It was my old stomping grounds, and where I’d first met Winky, Jorge and Goober. The nearly dilapidated old shack was filled with the memories of Florida’s laid-back past...of my past – including the spirits of Glad and Tony, the long-lost parents I barely knew.

  To my right, a hu
ndred feet away from the run-down bar, was its newest neighbor. It was an angular, three-story, orange-colored house that poked out of the dunes like the petrified tooth of a gigantic, prehistoric Jack o’ lantern. This intrusive, unfamiliar place belonged to Florida’s future...my future. Not just because it seemed out of place, but also because it was owned and occupied by a transplant, a new arrival named J.D. Fellows, aka Laverne’s boyfriend.

  Like Finkerman, J.D. was an attorney. But there, the two men parted ways like chocolate and vanilla.

  J.D. had money. Finkerman was perpetually broke. J.D. had a soft side. Finkerman was a hard case. Finkerman was tall. J.D. was short, until you factored in personal integrity – then J.D. soared heads taller than Finkerman.

  And when it came to what the two men would stoop to in order to make a buck...well, I did mention that they were both attorneys.

  As I got closer to the house, I could see that, just as had been the case at Winky’s donut shack, there was a new addition to J.D. Fellows’ place as well.

  But it wasn’t duct-taped to a wall.

  It was a “No Trespassing” sign. A politically correct version of “Get Lost.”

  The antithesis of a welcome mat.

  Even though I knew J.D., the red-and-white warning sign that stuck out of the sea oats hit me like a slap in the face. Its hard lines tainted the soft beauty of the quaint, sandy footpath that had been worn into the vegetation over the years by fellow beachgoers.

  No stranger to feeling left behind by the upper crust, I reached inside my purse and toyed with the idea of leaving Dr. Dingbat’s Difficult Defecation on J.D.’s back porch, as a kind of joke. J.D. was notoriously fastidious, and I was positive the he’d have been horrified by Doo-Doo Daddy. But the diminutive attorney was also a bit paranoid. Knowing him, he would’ve probably called a bomb squad to have it removed.

  I decided against it and let loose of my grip on the figurine. To be honest, it wasn’t because I was too nice to pull the prank on J.D. Ultimately, I was too selfish. After getting another gander at the nasty little thing, I decided I didn’t want to miss out on the delicious satisfaction of smashing that little piece of crap to smithereens.