Scatman Dues (Freaky Florida Mystery Adventures Book 6) by Margaret Lashley (ereader for android TXT) 📕

in robes scrambling around like fat, white mice.

Then a flash of bluish-white light akin to a nuclear blast went off.

I felt a breeze against my cheek, but I didn’t hear a thing.

Instead, I saw a speck of something silver heading toward me.

Then the world went black.

Chapter Sixty-Five

I was swimming in a sea of Reese’s Pieces.

My mouth tasted like a rainbow of dead goldfish.

I needed some mouthwash, bad.

I reached for the Tootsie Pop sticking out of the kitchen drawer.

But when I tried to peel the wrapper off, the paper read Dum-Dum.

I AWOKE TO FIND MYSELF lying in an unfamiliar bed—in an unfamiliar room. Everything was so ... white. And peaceful. And quiet.

Either I’d died, or my last assignment with Grayson had finally ended with me in a psych ward.

I sucked in what felt like my first breath in ages. The place smelled like plastic. And disinfectant. And ....

Fritos?

Slowly, I turned my thumping head to the left. My cousin Earl was passed out on a vinyl recliner beside me. Atop his potbelly, a family-size bag of corn chips rose and fell in rhythm with his breathing.

“Earl?”

My voice sounded strange—like it was underwater. A twinge of concern upped the volume in my throbbing head.

“Earl?”

Earl snorted himself awake, then glanced over at me.

His eyes nearly doubled. He shot up out of his chair as if it were an ejector seat. Fritos flew everywhere.

“Bobbie!” he shouted. “You’re awake!”

“You’ve got a real knack for the obvious,” I cracked.

My words echoed weirdly inside my skull. Déjà vu washed over me. I felt as if I’d been here before—done all this before...

“What happened?” I croaked. “Where am I?”

“In the hospital,” Earl said. “Don’t you remember?”

“I think so,” I said. “There was that guy at the mall—the one in hot-pants...”

Earl eyed me sympathetically, but cautiously, as if I might be contagious. “Uh...yeah. That’s right, Bobbie.”

I tried to sit up, but the IV tube in my arm had me partially pinned down. “Tell me straight,” I said. “How bad off am I?”

Earl winced. “The good news is, you’ll live. The bad news is, you’ve got one hell of a Kentucky waterfall.”

“What?”

I reached for my forehead. My fingers glided across my bald scalp, stopping at the edges of a big bandage on my forehead. “Argh! Gimme a mirror!”

Earl’s lips curled slightly as he handed me the mirror lying on the table beside my hospital bed.

I peered at my reflection. My face went slack. The top of my head all the way to my ears had been shaved bald. I dropped the mirror onto my chest in disgust. “Ugh! Not again!”

Earl gave me a funny look. I recognized it as the same one he used to give Aunt Clara after she got dementia.

“Uh...look, Bobbie,” he said. “You been out a good while. But there’s somebody here who’s been dying to see you. Let me go get him.”

“Who is it?”

“Your boyfriend,” Earl said, then snickered.

My heart pinged.

Grayson!

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Earl said, then disappeared out the door.

A moment later, a familiar face peeked inside the doorframe. I recognized the comb-over in an instant.

It was Carl Blanders.

My slimy, cheating ex slunk into the room waving a box of cheap chocolates at me like a booby prize from the fair.

“I heard you got shot in the head,” he said sheepishly. “I came as soon as I could.”

I scowled. “Where’s Grayson?”

Carl blanched and retracted his box of chocolates. “Who?”

“Grayson!” I hissed. “I want to see Nick Grayson!”

Carl recovered his smarmy smile and patted my hand. “Oh. Is that your nurse? Are you in pain? Should I call for him?”

I was in pain. Agony, actually. But I was beginning to realize it wasn’t the kind even morphine could take the edge off of.

“We’ve all been so worried about you, Bobbie,” Carl simpered. He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “You’ve been in a coma for quite a while, now.”

My gut flopped.

There it was. My fate delivered by my mealy-mouthed nemesis.

I’d been shot in the head at the mall—and I had suffered severe brain damage.

I wasn’t a P.I. intern.

I wasn’t chasing monsters with some ridiculous private eye named Nick Grayson.

All of that nonsense had been a dream. The machinations of my mangled cerebral cortex.

I looked into the cheating, hazel eyes of Carl Blanders and felt my heart break.

The Earth was indeed a galactic toilet.

And I was just a turd in the frickin’ punchbowl.

Chapter Sixty-Six

I looked at my fingernails. The grease under them didn’t lie.

All the crazy adventures I’d had with Grayson had all been absurdities. Asinine figments of my comatose imagination.

Brain farts.

The reality was, I was just a deadbeat mechanic stuck in the dead-end town of Point Paradise.

Hot tears trickled down both sides of my face. I closed my eyes, wishing my crummy ex Carl would get the hell out of my room and let me die in peace.

“Cheer up,” he said, opening the chocolates and helping himself. “I went by your dad’s shop and brought you this. I thought it might cheer you up.”

I cracked open a tear-filled eye, then wanted to kick myself for falling for his false charms again.

Carl was leering at me with his horse-toothed smile, holding up the baseball cap he’d given me to commemorate our second anniversary of going together.

I vaguely remembered the cap had been signed by some stupid baseball hero of his. It would’ve made the perfect gift—if I’d happened to have been Carl Blanders.

I’d hated it then. I still hated it now.

“Get out,” I said.

“What was that?” he asked. “Oh. I get it. You need to take a leak or something, right?”

“No,” I hissed. “I need to get a new life. One without you in it.”

“But Bobbie, baby—”

“Don’t Bobbie baby me!” I cried. “What’s the matter? Did Candy finally get wise to your philandering ways? Boo hoo! Now I said get out!”

Carl stared at me, stunned. I’d never shown him that kind of gumption before.

“Uh ... sure,” he said. “I don’t want to upset