Beach Blanket Bloodbath (Amanda Feral Book 4) (17 page)

As I suspected, the promise of talking up
her books turned the lights on. Mrs. Winterford straightened, shifting upright
and pointed feverishly toward a button on the dash. I poked it and the back doors
opened, a reticulating arm swung the woman’s wheelchair out and around to the
side of the van.

I stepped out and around to the sidewalk,
leaving Wendy and Gil to wrangle the murderous author. “I’ll check in with Mrs.
Swinton to see if we’re all set to go.” I peered in the shop window. Eight or
nine people were smattered amongst a few rows of chairs lined up before a
podium and a table of my books and a few of Mrs. Winterford’s. “They’re already
waiting, so make it snappy.”

Inside, I clutched the bookseller’s hand
and nodded knowingly. “Almost.”

She grinned mischievously. “We’ve got you
set up over here but feel free to relax in our green room.”

I was led to a chair outside the men’s
bathroom. “Cozy. Maybe I’ll find a date back here.”

The woman shrugged. “Anything’s possible.
Can I get you anything? A cup of coffee?”

“Sure.” I couldn’t drink it, the after
effects would be explosive, but at the very least I could smell and sometimes
that was as good as the real thing. For a while there, after seeing a
documentary about eating disorders, I’d taken to chewing human food and
spitting it into Ziploc bags without swallowing anything. I found it ultimately
unsatisfying but had told Wendy about it and I suspect she does it to this day.
If only she’d had a spittoon for her Twix bars this weekend, she might have
been more active in the investigation and less so on the can.

Gil pushed Mrs. Winterford up next to me
and I gave her the kind of smile I reserved for colleagues I didn’t want to
eat. “I counted nine.”

“At least six of them are my regular
fans, darling.” She patted my hand. “But don’t worry, I’m sure of few more
people have heard of you.”

When Mrs. Swinton called us to the event
space, a crowd of at least a dozen had joined the ones I’d seen. Most notable
among the faces was Thad Chumley’s handsome mug. He talked breezily with a few
other men and across the crowd to two women who’d taken spots in the front row,
toothsome girls in wigs.

The bookseller stood at the podium,
gripping the edges as though she’d fall over from the weight of the grief and
made our introductions. “Thank you so much for supporting small business and
independent booksellers here in Las Felicitas. We struggle on, but with your
help it’s a little easier. Oh, who am I kidding?”

She burst into tears and fled to the
room. A woman near the back of the crowd followed quickly behind her,
presumably for the purposes of head nodding and timely flinching, the usual
expressions of empathy employed by the peripherally acquainted.

“Well, that’s one less for us,” Mrs.
Winterford groaned.

I took a step toward the podium but
before I could speak the author behind me chimed in. “As you know, I’m Mrs.
Marissa Winterford, author of such classics as The Billionaire Playboy’s Secret
Thalidomide Baby and The Sheik’s Harem of Trafficked Nymphomaniacs.”

My mouth dropped open. Not at the titles,
though I’d not seen any of those sitting out at the house, but at the
smattering of applause. It was as though she were a well-respected author and
these books stood alongside the greats of literature.

I glanced at the covers, jagged cut outs
of faces on roughly hand drawn bodies were thankfully obscured by big blocky
lettering, none nearly as heavily-weighted as the woman’s name—look in
the dictionary under delusional and you’d find this: Marissa Winterford,
Bestselling Author. The only way Mrs. Winterford could make such a claim would
be with the following codicil: Marissa Winterford, Bestselling Author at the
Las Felicitas Alcoholics Anonymous meeting—and even then, only on the day
the drunks were making amends. To call any of them books was an overstatement,
none could have been longer than a hundred pages, less considering the
thickness of each page. I couldn’t even imagine the discount printer that put
this shit together, it looked like construction paper.

Alternately, when I introduced myself,
there was no applause. Not even Wendy and Gil could be bothered to pretend they’d
read my books. Though, to his credit, Thad did smile and flick his tongue
between the vee of he index and middle fingers when he thought no one was
looking.

I attract only the classiest of
gentlemen.

Sighing, I stepped back and watched in
horror as Mrs. Winterford began an impromptu reading from her latest literary
atrocity.

 
“Heath Sinclair knew a thing or two about a woman’s privates.
One, that they were soft and comfortable and two that they were a precious gift
from God’s generosity.”

Oh my god. Who gives a single shit?

Soft and comfortable? Heath sounded like
an asshole. What woman wanted her cooch described like the inside of a Dearfoam
slipper? They sell that shit at Walmart, for fuck’s sake. I shielded my ears
from further literary abuse and signaled to Gil that is was most definitely
time to commit a murder.

He nodded, teeth glinting with vicious
glee and slipped into the back of the store.

Across the room, Wendy leaned with her
elbows on the counter, twirling her hair while chatting animatedly with Mrs.
Swinton and an oddly engaged Abuelita. I tried to get their attention,
alternating waving and smiling and shrugging for the cloud but to no avail.

As usual, if I wanted anything done, I
would need to do it myself. I crept up behind the murderess’s chair and
disconnected the exposed battery cables, rendering it about as useful for
transportation as an old lady-soaked La-Z-Boy.

“‘It’s so big,’ Delores Del Rey cried. ‘It
can’t possibly fit inside my pink paradise.’“

“And with that,” I leapt up and snatched
the sheaf of paper out of Mrs. Winterford’s feeble shaking hands. “The reading
portion of our evening comes to a close!”

The crowd applauded gratefully, except
for a pair of old biddies in the front row as wrinkled as the entire dried
fruit aisle. They scowled dramatically and crossed their arms with the kind of
contempt only the truly fanatic can muster. Probably hoping the author would
refill their empty fantasy banks with sleazy talk of mysterious muslin-sheathed
trouser snakes and voluminous canopied beds with downy comforters, a cup of tea
steaming on the nightstand or some shit like that.

Hardcore Winterford fans probably had
cozy snatches. Roomy, cavernous things. The kind of snootch a romance hero’s
dick could just crawl inside with no worries of any pesky friction to make it
uncomfortably stiff—courtesy of the Dearfoam factory, of course ($1.97 on
Rollback)—soft and comfortable.

I shook off thoughts of old lady poon—where
the hell had the thought even come from—and took my place behind the
podium. “I think it’s just about time for questions.”

Glaring past the few hands that had
sprouted above the audience toward a completely oblivious Wendy, I shouted the
question again.

Wendy stiffened and turned my way,
straightening her outfit as though prepping for an audition and clearing her
throat loudly.

“Yes,” I said. “You in the back. You have
a question?”

“Since the two of you are both mystery
writers, kind of. I mean barely, but you know—”

 
“Get on with it!”

“What do you make of the horrible murder
of Miss Sandflea?”

The audience grumbled noisily. There were
nods, a few snorts from a snoring—and notably hairless—gentleman in
the back and the Dearfoam bitches in the front raised their eyebrows with the
precision of a synchronized swim team.

“I have my suspicions,” I started.

“Well,” Mrs. Winterford butted in. “The
poor girl must have gotten mixed up with the wrong crowd. The entire thing
smacks of drugs. That pesky problem sweeping through our young people like a
bad case of the clap.”

Mrs. Swinton growled audibly.

“But suppose, there was something else at
play.”

“Such as?” Mrs. Winterford glared at me,
her blue eye shadow crinkling and flaking onto her spidery eyelashes.

“Perhaps—and this is merely
supposition—the poor girl’s death served a purpose. A means to an end.
What if the murder provided a certain someone or pair of someone’s with a
modicum of sustenance. For the killer himself, food, and for his accomplice,
something even more disturbing, a premise.”

Gasps, maybe. Actually, I think they were
only in my head.

Mrs. Winterford’s eyes widened. “A
premise? Are you suggesting that a writer was involved in this malfeasance? Why
most of us are of the utmost moral standing in our communities. Paragons of
civility.”

I nearly choked on the response. “Of
course,” I agreed. “I myself am a well known philanthropist and advocate for
child safety.”

And yes, I did say that with a straight
face. What?

I didn’t eat that poor girl in the park.
In fact, I gave the dumbass some decent advice. Reserve your judgments. I’m
about to turn this shit around.

Gil appeared from the GLBT shelves and
nodded that he was ready.

“What I’m suggesting, Mrs. Winterford, is
that a certain writer living in Las Felicitas arranged for a little late night
feeding for a local wereshark.”

“A what?” she coughed.

“Wereshark. Don’t be coy. We found this
note.” I snapped the piece of paper from my pocket and read it aloud. “The odd floating
letter ‘s’ would have been easily reproduced on your typewriter, if I could
have found it! Poor girl went to meet her secret admirer and got doused with a
bucket of chum from the roof.”

Mrs. Winterford sighed. “How, might I
ask, would I traverse the stairs to the roof of the Felicity?”

I searched for an answer. I’d suspected
it was because she could actually walk, but barring throwing her out of the
chair and risking possible faux-pas-age, I merely shrugged and winked at Gil to
do the thing. He came rushing forward, a maniacal grin replacing his
permanently-affixed dour expression, in his hand a sloshing bucket of gore.
Mrs. Winterford craned her neck back as far as she could, her expression pained
and frightened.

I almost felt a stitch of empathy spark
in my cold dead heart.

Almost.

Gil shouted, “Dinnertime!” And heaved the
bucket. The contents splattered the woman with more chum than would have ever
been necessary, even I shouted, “Excessive!”

Her white robe soaked up the mess quick, turning
into a puffy pink sponge, fish heads, tails and entrails clinging precariously
from the swelling knit. Mrs. Winterford screamed—but not nearly as hard
as I would have had my outfit been ruined, of course, I’d have never been
caught undead in anything as hideous as a terry cloth muumuu.

“I’ll tell you how!” I shouted. “Because
you can walk, hell run, and you’re about to prove it for me!”

The sound of her cries was nothing
compared to the sheer aggressive howls of five of the men and one woman who stood
bolt upright in the audience. They stood screaming toward the acoustical tile
ceiling while folding chairs flew in every direction, ricocheting off the
walls, ceiling and old lady heads. The Dearfoam Girls hit the deck as mouths
started stretching, skin tightening and taking on a terribly unattractive
thickness as they toughened into the gray hide of a pod of great whites—or
whatever the word is.

Gaggle? Herd? Who fucking makes up that
shit?

Regardless, the room flooded with a salty
sea air as the weresharks yakked up huge balls of wet seaweed like cats with
intestinal funk, splattering the already chum-stained bookstore carpet and the
old ladies—who probably had never been used to a liberal splashing of
bodily fluids.

Mrs. Swinton, Wendy and Abuelita scaled
the front counter as the heady brew sloshed about, while Gil and I made for the
back of the store and climbed atop a bookcase to get a better vantage.

Mrs. Winterford shrieked horribly and I
felt a stitch of regret that I quickly passed off as hunger pangs—because
come on, regret is for the living. She yanked at her wheelchair’s joystick to
no avail and finally, craning her body toward the approaching school shouted, “Eat
shit, fish fuckers!”

My eyes wide with anticipation. I
couldn’t believe she was waiting so long to dart from the chair to safety, I
almost shouted, “Run, bitch! Run!”

But she didn’t move.

When the sharks descended on her, I
realized my error.

The feeding frenzy began with a
particularly smooth and familiar shark, Thad who dispatched her head in a
single snap and then peeled off to let the others have at the rest of her.
Blood splattered the ceiling, floors, chairs and much to Mrs. Swinton’s horror,
the books on the shelves.

“Jesus Christ!” she screamed, bounding
from the check stand as the sharks shuffled out, humbled under the barrage of
her beratement. “You assholes couldn’t have done this outside where I could
hose the place down?”