Unsightly Bulges Read online

  Unsightly Bulges

  A Trailer Park Princess Cozy Mystery

  By Kim Hunt Harris

  Copyright © 2015

  Kim Hunt Harris

  All rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  But Wait, There’s More!

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to all the people who encouraged me to write Salem’s next story – my dear book club friends at Read Books and Wine about It, the readers who reached out to me through Facebook and email to let me know they were waiting for this story, and the friends of friends who asked when the next book would be out. It has been encouragement to me beyond words, and I have needed that. I hate to be one of those high-maintenance types who need constant reassurance, but – let’s be honest. I’m one of those high-maintenance types who needs constant reassurance.

  Special mention goes to Chasen Harris and Catherine Newman, for their combined (if accidental) contribution of “butt crack broccoli.”

  And lastly, this book is dedicated to you. Whether you bought the book or it was given to you, whether in hard copy or ebook, or whether you found it at a Free Lending Library, I really don’t care. There are approximately 80 gazillion books (an unofficial count) you could read, and mine has found its way to you. That’s a miracle. Thank you for being a part of my miracle.

  Pssst. Do you like free stuff? Silly question. Of course you do. How about super-top-secret information? Then I have a deal for you! Click on the link below and get a short story that takes place between this book – Unsightly Bulges, and the next book – Caught in the Crotchfire. The only way you can get this super-top-secret, super-fun story is by signing up for my newsletter (I solemnly swear not to sell your address to anyone else ((I don’t know how to do that)), never to harass you or send you forwards that say you’re going to get hit by a bus if you don’t send it on. I’ll just give you updates on new releases, other book news, excerpts from time to time, and the occasional link to a funny cat video. Sound good? Click here and start reading Get the Dale Outta Here (but not until you finish reading Unsightly Bulges, or else there will be SPOILERS. And nobody wants that).

  www.FreeBooksFromKim.com

  One

  My friend and mentor, Les, is fond of telling me that I have to be careful what I pray for. “God just might give it to you,” he says. Always with one eyebrow raised, like who knew what horrific pandemonium would inevitably ensue if God gave me exactly what I requested for a change. His ways were above my ways and all that.

  But I didn’t think even a God who works in mysterious ways would send a dead body to fulfill my request that he help me stick to my diet.

  Excuse me. Strat-EAT-Gic Plan. In Fat Fighters we were fined two units every time we said the “D” word. See, I had prayed for help not half an hour earlier, asking God to give me strength, willpower, discipline, a wired-shut jaw, anything to help me lose weight. Then I had driven straight to Sonic. It had been that kind of day. I knew I wasn’t supposed to turn to food to relieve stress, but since I could no longer turn to alcohol, drugs, or wildly promiscuous behavior, that left either violence or fried foods. So you can see how a double meat, double cheese burger with extra mayo and jumbo fries was actually a fairly sensible option.

  I scrubbed my face with my hands and tried to convince myself that I deserved to be sitting there (at Sonic, America’s Drive-In, where roller-skating carhops will bring your 237 grams of fat directly to your car window! You don’t even have to get out from behind the wheel! I had no reason to feel guilty. I’d been pretty good, considering...well, considering how bad I usually was. I’d lost four pounds in the five weeks since my high school buddy Trisha and I had joined Fat Fighters.

  Yes, I’d hoped to lose twenty. Or thirty. But four was nothing to sneeze at. My pants were still too tight, but at least I could sit down without feeling like I was going to sever an internal organ. This trip to Sonic was my first real binge. Then again, this was the first time a) my little dog Stump had coughed up something bizarrely shaped and of unidentifiable origin on my kitchen floor, b) I’d been bitten by a saber-toothed Pomeranian at work, and c) I had looming date with the husband. (That last didn’t sound like a big deal for most people, but...well, I wasn’t most people. Until the last few months, I thought Tony and I were divorced. Turns out, not so much.)

  I sighed and leaned my head back against the seat, wishing the carhop would hurry up with my food. If I had too much time to think, I would freak out about the weekend with Tony, what I was going to wear, what I was going to say. Would he try to kiss me, for heaven’s sake? If he did, how would I react? What was the protocol here? I mean, he was my husband.

  I also reflected on the unfairness of a world that had no sympathy when you say you’ve been bitten by a Pomeranian. Those suckers might be small, but their teeth were like rattlesnake fangs.

  And Stump. Good Lord. What could she eat that would look like that when it came back up?

  I heard a rumble and looked up to see the garbage truck in the alley behind Sonic. I watched idly, my mind whirling as the metal dumpster rose into the air and spewed its contents into the truck, much as Stump had done just that morning on the kitchen linoleum. Crushed cardboard boxes, black trash bags, various papers and cups. Dead body.

  I actually sat there for a few seconds, still worried about Stump, before it dawned on me that the dumpster behind Sonic is not our normal way of disposing of dead bodies. What my reaction lacked in timing, it made up for with intensity.

  “Hey!” I shouted. Because that always helps.

  Unfortunately, the carhop had just skated up to my window with my order, and she thought I was yelling at her. She jerked back, and my french fries went flying.

  “Sorry!” I yelled. Because I was in yelling mode now. “Dead body! In the dumpster!”

  She was too busy backing away, wide-eyed, to see the bigger picture.

  The truck dropped the dumpster back down with a hollow thump and trundled on down the alley.

  I cranked the engine over and swung out of the space. I should have looked back; I almost ran down another carhop behind me, but luckily she was pretty quick with a dive. I steered with one hand and dug through my purse for my phone with the other. I bounced the car out of the parking lot and spun around into the alley at the same time my hand closed around my phone. I charged my rusty little bucket down the rutted dirt alley while I punched in 9-1-1.

  “I need to report a dead body.” Wow. Déjà vu. It was, what, three months since I had called the same number with the exact same message? Maybe I ought to put 9-1-1 on speed dial.

  I was proud of myself, however, for not bursting into hysterical laughter this time. I had not wanted to do that last time, but I couldn’t help it. I have issues.

  It took a few attempts for me to convey to the dispatcher what was going on, and even then I don’t think she completely understood the gravity of the situation. She seemed entirely too calm when she said, “Police are on their way.”

  But the truck was now stopped at another dumpster, so I hung up and jumped out of the car. I leaped onto the running board and shouted “Hey!” at the driver, slapping the window a few times.

  He looked much the same as the carhop had when I’d shouted at her.

  “You have a dead body in your truck,” I mouthed through the closed window.

  He stared at me.

  “You have. A dead body. In your
truck.” I motioned for him to roll the window down.

  After a second he leaned over, slowly, and inched it down, eyes wide.

  “I was watching when you emptied the dumpster behind Sonic. There was a dead body in it.”

  He looked confused. “There’s a dead body at Sonic?”

  “No,” I said. I did not say, “you idiot,” because I was trying very, very hard not to be that kind of person anymore. I took a deep breath. “There was a dead body in the dumpster. Now it’s in your truck.”

  He threw the truck into park and said, “You’re kidding.”

  “Ummm, no.” Hopefully when I made jokes I was funnier than that.

  I stepped back as he flung open his door and jumped up onto the seat. He braced his hand on the top of the cab and leaned, stretching on tiptoe to peer into the big bed that held all the garbage.

  I circled the truck in time to see him inching, toes barely clinging to a metal seam along the side of the truck, toward the big bed. He held onto a pipe with one hand and leaned to look in. “Are you sure? I don’t see – oh. Oh, good Lord. Oh, man.”

  He let go of the bar and dropped to the ground. “I saw a foot. Oh, man. Oh, man.” His eyes rolled back in his head, and he staggered.

  “I called the police. Hey, don’t –” But it was too late. He keeled over.

  I was holding his head in my lap and giving his cheek increasingly firmer “pats” when I heard sirens. The guy blinked a couple of times and looked up at me. “Oh man,” he said again.

  “Yes, I know.” I scooted him off my lap and stood to wave at the squad car that was slowly making its way down the alley. I was happy to see a patrol officer I didn’t recognize get out and do the cop-swagger toward me.

  I knew it wouldn’t be Bobby Sloan because he was a detective now. He had shown up at my last Finding-Of-The-Body, but that was a fluke. It could have been Watson, another cop with whom I was on more-familiar-than-was-comfortable terms. I would prefer not to see Watson again, and I was sure the feeling was mutual.

  This guy looked young, probably just out of the academy. He was Hispanic, medium build with buzzed hair. He eyed the driver and me so suspiciously that I started to feel guilty, which was annoying.

  He did just what the driver had done, hopping first onto the seat, then inching out far enough to see what the driver had seen.

  I stood beside the alley and peered up at him. It was as if I could tell exactly the moment he realized he was going to have to climb into that truck to make sure the person attached to that foot was really dead. His mouth turned into a grim line and he looked down at us. “Stay right there,” he ordered.

  With a quick shake of his head, he hoisted himself up and straddled the side of the truck, then dropped into the truck.

  The driver kept looking up at the opening of the hauler, as if the foot he saw was going to pop up any second.

  After about thirty seconds the patrolman hauled himself back out. I guess it didn’t take very long to establish the facts and get the heck out of there.

  Bobby Sloan pulled up in a white sedan.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” he said as he got out.

  I shrugged. “Wish I was.”

  He walked up and squeezed my shoulder. “Salem Grimes. Reporting a dead body. Now here’s something you don’t see every day. Every week, maybe, but not every day.”

  “I was minding my own business, Bobby, I swear. I just looked up and saw the body falling out of the dumpster. It was my civic duty to report it.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and wished I’d been able to lose those thirty pounds already. I was never comfortable around Bobby, but he’d kissed me the last time I saw him, and I still didn’t know why. The moment he stepped into the alley, that kiss was all I could think about.

  Bobby ordered me to stay put and went over to talk to the patrolman. I dropped onto the ground at the edge of the alley, beside the truck driver. He sat with his legs in front of him, arms on his knees, and shook his head every few seconds.

  “Kind of weird, isn’t it?” I asked, feeling sorry for him. The sight of that limp body tumbling into the truck ran over and over through my head, but, to be fair, the guy did look worse than I felt.

  He turned to me. “You don’t think there’s any way I’d get fired for this, do you?”

  “Why on earth would you get fired?”

  He shook his head again. “I don’t know, b ut I keep getting fired, and I was really hoping this job would last a while. I don’t really know where I’d go from here.”

  I knew what he meant. Probably from driving a dumpster truck there weren’t many places to go. “I work in a dog grooming shop. We’re always looking for people to bathe the dogs. Maybe I could train you.”

  “I’d have to be trained to bathe a dog?”

  “You’d be surprised.” I stood and brushed the dried grass of my jeans. I held out my hand. “Come on. Let’s just walk down to the other dumpster and back. Get some air.” That truck was starting to reek.

  And okay, here was the really bad part: I began to feel kind of sad about my double meat cheeseburger and fries. That was bad; I knew it was bad. More proof – as if I needed it – that I’d replaced my addiction to alcohol with an addiction to food. Out of the frying pan and into the fat pants. On the upside, I hardly ever picked fights with total strangers after I had a stupendous-size order of fries and a king size Snickers bar. I was usually too sluggish.

  Bits of trash littered the alley, and I realized that some of it could be evidence. “Some of this stuff could have blown out of the truck.” I toed what looked like a cash register receipt.

  “Yeah, we leave crap all over town,” the driver said. “It blows out all over the place.”

  We walked slowly up and down the alley, but I had no way of knowing what was a clue and what was just regular old garbage. I saw two crushed soft drink cups, four more receipts, a diaper, a torn piece of orange t-shirt with “acon” written in a font that looked like bacon, and a Nerf bullet.

  “That guy was naked,” I said, bending to pick up the fabric. “I wonder if this was his shirt.”

  “Hey!”

  I sprang back like I’d seen a snake.

  The patrolman stomped down the alley toward us. “I told you two to stay beside the truck. Don’t touch anything out here. We have to get forensics out here.”

  “We were just looking for clues,” the driver said. He pointed to the Nerf bullet. “Could be something.”

  The patrolman jerked his head toward the truck. “Get back over there.”

  “Grump,” I said under my breath as we walked back. I had mixed emotions – I wasn’t sure if I should be upset or relieved that I had not ordered bacon on that burger, since it had ended up on the ground anyway. I wondered if I could go back and tell the manager what happened. Maybe they would give me a free Sympathy Bacon Burger, like a hero, kind of.

  But then again maybe they wouldn’t, since I’d almost mowed down one of their carhops. Probably better to go to a different Sonic from now on.

  Bobby finished talking to new people who had shown up and came over to me and the driver. “Tell me again what you saw.”

  I took a deep breath. “I was sitting at Sonic, waiting for my order, and I saw the truck pull up. The dumpster lifted up and the body came tumbling out with all the trash. So I followed him down the alley to tell him.” I jerked a thumb toward the truck driver. “That’s all I did.”

  He stuck his hand out to shake Bobby’s. “Dale Coffee. Nice to meet you, sir.”

  “Dale, I’m Bobby Sloan. Sorry we have to meet under these circumstances.”

  “Me too,” Dale said sincerely.

  “Tell me what you saw.”

  Bobby had on his cop face. The thing about Bobby is, he’s always had a cop face. Maybe that was one of the things that fascinated me about him.

  It was only fear of what else God would throw at me that kept me from going back to Sonic for my burger. I had several heads of bro
ccoli at home and a Fat Fighters recipe that promised a dish so good, “it’s like crack!” I had serious doubts about that, but maybe I wouldn’t have to gag it down.

  Viv’s Caddy was parked on the concrete pad beside my trailer at Trailertopia. Irrationally, I thought at first it was a coincidence that she showed up on the same day I found a (another!) dead body.

  She trotted out onto the front porch as I was coming up the steps. “You found another one! Way to go!” She pumped her wrinkly old-lady fists in the air.

  “You are such a weirdo,” I said as I trudged past her and into the house. “A, it’s not a celebration and B, how did you know? It happened, like, forty-five minutes ago.”

  “Police scanner,” she said as she followed me cheerfully back into the trailer. Viv was retired, rich off the efforts of husband number six or seven – maybe both – and had nothing else to do but look for trouble. “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know. Some naked guy.” I dropped into the cracked recliner and hauled my dog, Stump, into my lap. “Did you hork up anything else disgusting while I was gone?”

  “She’s good,” Frank said. Frank was my next door neighbor and Stump’s babysitter. He rarely looked away from the television, but was able to carry on a decent conversation anyway, when he didn’t lapse into Spanish. “She did try to eat some pecans from the backyard but I stopped her.”

  “Stump,” I chided her, scratching her ears. “There are no pecan trees around here. If you found a pecan it must have been brought here by a rat or something. Do you want to be eating rat leftovers?”

  “You’re better than that, Stump,” Frank said as he flipped through channels.

  I heaved a deep sigh and leaned back in the chair, wondering if it would be feasible to just stay there until tomorrow. Now that the shock was wearing off, I felt a little bit traumatized. I didn’t like this finding dead bodies thing. It freaked me out.

  Then I felt guilty for being so self-involved when someone else had just lost their life and a family somewhere was mourning the loss of a loved one. Trauma and guilt, and I couldn’t drink. I was closing in on two hundred days sober.