Val Fremden Mystery Box Set 3

by Margaret Lashley

  No surprise there.

  From the looks of her, Victoria hadn’t quite recovered from her Aquanet run-in with Langsbury. As I watched from my automotive spectator seat, she and Finkerman appeared to have some kind of argument. After a minute or so, Finkerman got out of the car. Alone.

  “Geeze, Finkerman. You raising a family in there? What are you doing hanging around with Victoria?”

  Finkerman shrugged. “You know how it goes. I was working with her on a case. One thing led to another and...well, let’s just say her husband didn’t take too kindly to our...uh...partnership.”

  “Really?” I deadpanned. “Who would’ve ever seen that one coming?”

  Finkerman sighed. “If you’ve just come here to rub salt in my wounds, mission accomplished.”

  I opened my mouth to deliver a zinger worthy of a whole box of Morton, but closed it again. Unbelievably, my stupid Southern guilt-o-meter had caused my heart to ping with something along the lines of sympathy – for Finkerman, no less!

  “Are you two okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah. We were counting on a payout yesterday. Eighteen hundred bucks. But it fell through.”

  Don’t do it, Val. Just smile and walk away. Don’t do it! Please don’t do it!

  “Maybe I can help,” I said, and mentally kicked myself in the behind.

  “Yeah?” Finkerman said. His face read disbelief. I’m sure mine did, too.

  “I thought maybe, since you’ve got some free time, you could help me out on this investigation thing I’m doing,” I said.

  “Really?”

  As Finkerman’s jaw made the slow return trip to the base of his skull, I forced a smile, loathing myself more with each word that passed from my lips.

  “Yeah. I’ve got a few legal questions. You could help me, and I could help you.”

  Finkerman managed to scrounge a smug look from amongst the sorry ruins of his current situation.

  “Well, I normally charge five hundred an hour,” he said.

  I sneered. “How about we say, uh...five bucks a question.”

  Finkerman laughed his sick, piranha-mouthed chortle. “Yeah, right.”

  “Okay. Never mind.” I turned to go.

  “Wait!” he practically screamed. “Since you’ve been a good client –”

  I turned back around and shot him a dirty look.

  “Well, I mean, since you kept your word and didn’t rat me out for the library book scam, I guess we could work something out.”

  “Okay. What’s your best advice on how to locate missing people? People that maybe don’t want to get found.”

  “Easy. Follow the money trail.”

  “Money trail?”

  “Basic stuff, Fremden. Check for credit card receipts. Where they stopped to get gas...restaurants, hotels, stuff like that.”

  “What if they were traveling incognito? In an RV?”

  Finkerman held out a thin, insectoid arm. “Five bucks first. For answering the first question.”

  I rolled my eyes and fished a tenner out of my purse. Finkerman grabbed for it, but I held it back like bait.

  “This is all I got,” I said. “Answer the second question, too.”

  Finkerman blew out a breath. “Someone traveling in an RV can be trickier. I’d start by checking out RV parks for the vehicle. But you’re up against two obstacles.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “RVs are mobile. And nowadays, the economy’s so bad, half the country’s living in something with wheels.”

  I glanced over at Victoria and handed Finkerman the ten dollar bill.

  “Good point,” I said.

  My mind flashed back to five years ago, when I’d been about ten bucks away from living in Maggie. “You still have your cellphone, Finkerman?”

  “Yeah. Prepaid. For the next three days, anyway.”

  “Okay. Keep it handy. I might need you.”

  I handed Finkerman a twenty. He nearly gasped.

  “What’s this for?” he asked.

  “Let’s just call it ‘prepaid.’ You owe me one.”

  “Actually, I owe you four.”

  “Four?”

  “We agreed on five bucks a pop. I may be a lot of things, Fremden, but I live by one creed. Everyone works for the terms they negotiate for themselves.”

  I smirked. “So then, how much is Victoria charging?”

  Finkerman’s narrow, angular face registered a startled surprise. Then it cracked into a grin.

  He threw back his frizzy head and burst into a laugh that, for the first time since I’d known him, actually sounded genuine.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I leaned back in my desk and stared at the dreamcatcher postcard Goober had sent me nearly a month ago.

  Where in blue blazes could he be?

  With the letter to Goober in the mail, I was stuck waiting for a reply from him. The trouble was, I was notoriously bad at waiting. Besides, I didn’t know for absolute certain if 3799 was even his post office box. It could’ve belonged to anybody. If that were the case, I’d be waiting forever for a reply that would never come.

  I sighed and thought about my conversation with Finkerman. He’d advised me to follow the money trail. But Goober had an active aversion to using credit cards. “Too traceable,” I remembered him saying once. Based on that, I was pretty sure he didn’t have one. That ruled out running a credit check.

  As far as chasing down the RV went, I could’ve started calling every RV park from Key West to Tennessee in the hopes of getting lucky. But the odds of finding him were about as good as chasing down a cockroach in a junkyard.

  I sat up in my chair and blew out a long breath. I couldn’t put it off any longer. There was absolutely, positively no getting around it.

  Goober had left me with one last, dreaded option.

  I turned the dreamcatcher postcard over in my hand and studied the postmark.

  Greenville, Florida.

  Goober’d mailed his card from the same podunk town where my adoptive mother, Lucille Jolly Short, lived. Did he do that so people would think the postcard came from her and not him? If so, why would he care? Was someone after Goober? Or....

  A nagging thought tied a knot in my stomach.

  Did Goober go to Greenville so he could leave a clue to his whereabouts with my mother?

  Goober’d never met my mother. So, being unaffiliated with her “charms,” it was theoretically possible that he had braved a visit to her.

  Dread gnawed at the knot in my gut.

  What if he had dropped by to see her? Would he have introduced himself as my friend Goober? Maybe. But he could’ve shown up on her doorstep as anybody. After all, he was traveling in an RV crammed with Cold Cut’s crazy disguises. Who would Goober have told Lucille he was? According to Tom, even the name Goober went by, Gerald Jonohhovitz, wasn’t real.

  I could call my mother to find out, but that would involve calling my mother....

  I stared up at the corner of the ceiling, hoping a better idea might be stuck in a dusty cobweb up there. Or maybe a black widow spider would swing down, bite me, and put me out of my misery....

  I put a mental X through the thought of calling my mother and pinned the postcard back on the corkboard on the wall.

  There has to be some other way....

  I STUCK A LEG OUT OF the hammock and kicked the ground to get it swinging again. With Snogs sleeping on my belly, I took a sip of Tanqueray and tonic and watched the diamonds dance on the choppy surface of the Intracoastal Waterway that lined the edge of my backyard.

  Goober hadn’t been the most industrious of men. I was trying to get into his mindset.

  Where would a lazy man with a low work ethic and a high IQ go to disappear?

  “To the moon!” a voice screeched, providing a timely, if unlikely, answer.

  I sat up in the hammock and saw Laverne run across her yard in hot pursuit of Randolph.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “What’s going on over there?”

&
nbsp; “Gosh darn it!” Laverne bellowed, then dove into the grass.

  Grunting ensued from both parties. Finally, Laverne stood up. I could see her arms were wrapped around Randolph. His little pig belly looked swollen.

  “Everything all right?” I asked.

  “No! This little rapscallion ate the pineapple upside down cake I was making for the luau!”

  “Oh.”

  I snickered, plied a limp, sleepy Snogs from my stomach, and crawled out of the hammock. As I toted Snogs over to the picket fence, I couldn’t help but giggle. Randolph’s contented face was the polar opposite of Laverne’s frustrated scowl.

  “It’s not the end of the world, Laverne. You have plenty of time to make another cake.”

  Laverne pouted. “You don’t understand, Val. It was a special cake. I used up the last of my secret ingredient making it.”

  “Secret ingredient? What are you talking about?”

  Laverne looked around, as if to make sure no one could overhear her.

  “Krassco,” she whispered.

  “Krassco? What’s that?”

  “You don’t know about Krassco? Hold on. I’ll show you.”

  Laverne set Randolph down and disappeared inside her house. I put Snogs in the grass and looked up Krassco on my phone while the pup sniffed at the pig between the pickets in the fence. What came up on my Google search made me swallow my spit.

  No. It couldn’t be.

  Laverne returned, toting a rusty, gallon-sized tin can.

  Oh my lord. It is.

  Laverne handed me the tin. It was so greasy it slipped out of my hands. Before I could stop him, Snogs dove for the can. He sniffed it, yelped, tucked in his tail, and ran off.

  I picked up the can, still reeling in disbelief.

  “Laverne, they haven’t made this stuff since 1938. Krassco’s a ration from World War II.”

  “Huh. Well, no wonder I can’t find it anywhere. Not even at the Dollar Store anymore.”

  “Laverne, we’re talking seventy-year-old pig lard here!”

  Laverne’s face shot through with panic. “Shh! Not so loud! Randolph might hear you! I know what it is. But I was raised on Krassco, Val. It’s my favorite.”

  “Laverne, I don’t think you get it.”

  I pointed at the greasy words stamped onto the metal, Army-surplus can. “This stuff expired in nineteen forty-eight!”

  Laverne tutted and shook her head.

  “Oh Val, you know you can’t trust those expiration dates.”

  WITH THE LONG-RUNNING mystery of Laverne’s deadly baked goods solved, I turned my attention to the remaining four crises at hand.

  One, Caddy’s was slated for demolition next week by Timothy Amsel. Two, Greg Parsons, the owner, had disappeared. Three, head waitress Norma Jeen was missing, and considered either a victim or a prime suspect. Four, Goober was also MIA.

  Tom had warned me to keep clear of the first three. Those were his domain, and I had to trust him on that. So, there was only one thing left for the crazy gerbil living in my addled brain to do.

  Find Goober.

  And that meant....

  I let out a groan that could be heard in Mexico City.

  I have to call my mother.

  I fixed a gin and tonic and downed it. I fixed another and dialed her number before I lost my nerve.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “Vallie? Is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s been so long I hardly recognized your voice.”

  “Right. Mom, what’s that whirring sound?”

  “I’m here at Betty Jean’s Feed and Beauty. Hold up a second.”

  I heard Mom yell, “Elmira! Can you reach back there and turn my drier off for a second?”

  The whirring sound stopped.

  “What’s up with you?” she asked. “Are you in trouble?”

  “No. Just calling to say, ‘hi.’”

  “Uh-huh. Well then, hi. Elmira! You can turn my drier back –”

  “Wait! Mom, I was wondering...have you maybe gotten...uh...a visit from some strange man lately?”

  “Well, yeah. Not me, really. But Dale.” Mom giggled. “Dale said some feller turned up at the door calling him a bastard.”

  “What?”

  Mom laughed. “Funniest story to hit Jackson County in years, Vallie.”

  “What happened?”

  “Awe, nothing much. Turns out it was all a misunderstandin’. Poor feller come knockin’ on our door. Said he was from the New Will Angelical Order of the Southern Methodist United in Spirit Church. Well, a course Dale let him in.”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, that’s when this feller went to tellin’ Dale he was a bastard. You know it ain’t like Dale to get all hot under the collar. But he did.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. Dale actually left that feller standin’ in the doorway and went and turned down the volume on the TV to tell me about it. Well, you know I jumped up outta my chair to give that feller a piece of my mind.”

  No surprise there.

  “Geeze, Mom. What happened?”

  “Come to find out, Dale’s hearing aid was on the blink. Poor feller was telling Dale he was a pastor, not a bastard.”

  I waited while Mom laughed over the phone line for a full minute.

  “Ah...whooo!” she finally bellowed after catching her breath. “Cracks me up ever’ time I tell it.”

  “So what happened to the pastor? Did you let him in?”

  “Naw. We sent him on his way. He was a Methodist, after all.” Mom paused a beat and said, “Why, thanky, Elmira.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, that new girl Elmira just brought me a glass of water. You’d be proud of little Greenville, Val. We got us one a them rainbow people workin’ up at the beauty salon.”

  “You mean a gay person?”

  “Huh? I mean a woman with a rainbow afro.”

  My gut flopped.

  “What’s she look like, mom?”

  “Well, if you ask me, she ain’t gonna win no beauty contest anytime soon, but she can tease hair like nobody’s business. She got poor old Alberta’s thin hair all blowed up like an extra-large strawberry cotton candy. It was a downright miracle, if you ask me.”

  “What’s she look like, mom?” I asked again, trying not to sound the least bit impatient.

  “I ain’t one to judge, you know that, Valliant.”

  Yeah, right. “I know, Mom.”

  “Well, let’s see. She’s kinda tall and square-shouldered. And bless her heart, Elmira’s got a five o’clock shadow. But after fifty-five, what woman don’t? Anyway, poor thing. She ain’t too long for this world. Seems like every time I’m in here the ambulance comes and hauls her away for somethin’ or another.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Don’t rightly know. You know I ain’t one to pry. But there ain’t no tellin’ how much time any of us’s got left on this Earth, Valliant.”

  “No, Mom.”

  “So, you comin’ to visit me before it’s too late and the Lord calls me home to my reward?”

  “Yes. How does tomorrow sound?”

  “Well, if that’s the best you can do, I guess I’ll have to live with it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  As I clicked off the phone, the full weight of what I’d just done slammed into me like a ton of hicks.

  There was no turning back. I’d gone and done it.

  I’d told my mother I’d visit her.

  Tomorrow.

  Ugh! Why? Why? Why did I do that to myself?

  I tossed my phone on the couch and slunk off to my home office. I scanned the corners for the cobwebs I’d seen earlier.

  Where’s a black-widow spider when you need one most?

  Assisted suicide apparently off the table, I heaved a sigh and plopped into my desk chair. I leaned over and opened the blinds to let in more light. As I gazed wistfully at the dangling beer cans on Goober’s redne
ck dreamcatcher, a movement from outside caught my eye. It was my missing-link neighbor Jake. He was crossing the street, carrying a shovel over his shoulder.

  I zipped out the front door after him.

  “What are you doing?” I called out as he stepped onto the sidewalk in front of Nancy’s house.

  “For the luau,” he yelled back, and patted the shovel handle. “Gonna dig a pig-roasting pit in the ground. Nancy asked me to.”

  I sprinted up to him and glanced over at Nancy’s place to make sure she wasn’t spying on us.

  “But Jake, the whole thing is bogus. It’s all a joke.”

  “Not according to Nancy. I mean, what was I supposed to say to her when she asked me to dig the pit? No? We have to at least make it look authentic...you know...like it’s really gonna happen. At least until we get Roscoe out of here.”

  “Randolph. And you’re right. So, how big a hole are you gonna dig?”

  “About the size of a small grave.”

  A glimmer of hope flashed across my mind.

  Maybe I could jump in there when he’s done. Jake could bury me alive. Then I’d be off the hook for Greenville....

  “But it’s only Tuesday,” I said. “What’s the rush?”

  “Roasting a pig in a pit takes a minimum of twenty-four hours. I googled it. Plus, I got appointments coming up in the next few days. I’m gonna be busy.”

  “But it’s not really gonna happen!”

  Jake’s lips twisted up on one side.

  “Maybe it should, Val. If Nancy gets wind this whole thing was a joke on her, no telling what kind of nasty new regulations she’ll come up with to torture us.”

  “Geeze. Maybe you’re right. Do you think we should, you know, order a pig and just go along with the plan?”

  “Honestly? Yeah. Nancy’s doing most of the work now, anyway. And I can’t take another onslaught of nastygrams. You know I caught her yesterday in my front yard with a ruler? She was measuring my grass blades!”

  “Okay, okay. I’m on it. Any idea where I can get one?”

  “A ruler?”

  “A pig.”

  “You mean besides Laverne’s backyard?”

  “Har har.”

  “How about a butcher? Or a restaurant, maybe?”