FREEZER BURN

By Gayle Carline

BUY NOW

PROLOGUE

Such exquisite hands. What a pity to waste them.

Long, tapered fingers balanced the size of the palms perfectly. Half moons shone in the nails, which were strong and rounded, and extended the line of the hand. The porcelain skin blushed the slightest pink, although it seemed to be fading quickly.

The shadow knelt in the darkness, eyes glowing.

I'd better use the electric knife. No, the hacksaw.

Under the sliver of moonlight, deft hands opened the toolkit and went to work.

CHAPTER 1

"Miss Menopause?"

"Benny, it's Minn-ee-OH-pa," Peri corrected him as she sat behind her desk, reading the Private Investigators Legal Manual.

Benny Needles stood in the doorway. He was the kind of man who made you want to disinfect your eyeballs when you looked at him. Short and swarthy, he considered himself Dean Martin's twin. Although he plucked his overgrown uni-brow and curled his thinning hair, he failed to convince anyone. The slim dark suits that had made Martin look like a pencil made Benny look more like a wide-tip marker. If you stood fifty feet away and squinted, Benny might resemble Dino. Of course, it would help if you'd been drinking.

"Ah, Miss Minnie–you know I can't pronounce that."

He slunk into her office and plopped his weight onto a chair; the smell of Aqua Velva rushed to fill every corner. Sitting across from Peri, he picked up a mesh pencil holder from her large wooden desk and rolled the pencils around.

"Just stop calling me 'Menopause'," she told him. "How did you even find me?"

"Aunt Esmy came over last Thursday. She said she saw you in Albertson's and you told her about this place." Benny looked around the tiny office.

"Nice digs," he said. "You keep it real clean."

Peri looked up from her studying and sighed. "What do you want?"

"I got a job for you."

"I'm not cleaning your house, Benny. I'm a private investigator now."

"But you used to clean houses, Miss Meno-Miss Peri." He fidgeted. "No kidding, I really did lose something. I'd pay you to find it for me."

Peri leaned back, and studied the white speckled ceiling. "What is it?" she asked, expecting a lame excuse for an investigation.

"It's my ice cube tray."

At least Benny didn't disappoint her.

"You want me to find a freakin' ice cube tray?"

"It's not just any tray." Benny’s voice reached a high, nasal whine. "It's my Dean Martin ice cube tray. It was used to make Dino's drinks on the set of Ocean's Eleven. He autographed it."

"Someone actually conned you into buying that?"

Benny rose up from his chair, pounding a chubby fist on the desk. "It's been authenticated." He eased back down. "I paid five hundred bucks for it on eBay."

"Okay, Benny," Peri said. "But I gotta charge full rate, two hundred fifty an hour plus expenses."

"No problem."

Reaching into her desk organizer, she pulled out a notebook and opened it to write. "Where'd you see it last?"

Benny stared at the ground, sheepish. "In my freezer."

Peri frowned. "Benny–"

"Don't yell at me. I know it was wrong, but I just wanted one scotch on the rocks with Dino's ice cubes."

"Benny, you don't even drink scotch. You hate alcohol."

"I just wanted to try it, and now my freezer's all snowed in and I can't find the tray and I'm afraid that Dino's signature will get rubbed off or something."

Peri looked at her potential client. She needed the money, but she knew he didn't want her sleuthing services. He wanted her to clean his house, the way she had cleaned it for his mother. Not only had she left that career behind, she didn't want to get sucked into dusting and organizing his ever-increasing collection of souvenirs.

Maybe she didn't need the money that badly.

"So hire a housecleaning service. They'd be a lot cheaper."

Benny's hands wrung together as if each finger tried to strangle the others. "I know Miss Peri, but what if they use too much heat or dig too hard and ruin my tray? I used to watch you clean Mama's good china. You're the only one I can trust to be gentle, to get it out of my freezer in one piece."

His plea tugged at her. She couldn't say she actually liked him, but she felt a kind of loyalty to the little guy. His mother was her first housecleaning client, and Peri had watched Benny grow from geeky boy to awkward man.

"Okay." Peri reached into the bottom drawer and pulled out her travel hairdryer. "I was about to go get some lunch anyway. I'll meet you at the house in thirty minutes."

"Oh, good, I'll go straighten the place up," he said, and scampered out.

"Yeah, you do that," she told the closing door.

Peri glanced around the room while she dug into her bag, searching for her car keys. She thought about Benny's assessment. A twelve by fifteen cubbyhole, it contained exactly one desk, two chairs, and a small file cabinet. She liked it because it had a window overlooking the building's atrium. She had leased it because, at three hundred dollars a month, she could work it into her monthly budget and still afford beer.

Someday, she hoped to be able to afford Grey Goose vodka.

She looked at the name on the door: Peri Minneopa, Private Investigator. Cleaning Benny's freezer didn't quite fit the job description, even if she was looking for a lost object.

"What the hell," she said, sticking her hairdryer in her oversized, leopard-print tote. "It's a paycheck."

After filling up at the Arco Station, Peri pointed her blue Honda sedan east on Yorba Linda Boulevard and headed toward a little side street behind the post office. The sun had finally burned off the June gloom, a morning haze typical of early summer in southern California. She turned off the wide avenue, divided by palm trees and colorful flowers, onto the quiet, residential street. The temperature was supposed to hit the 70's by mid-afternoon, just another perfect day in southern California.

She pulled up in front of Benny's place, a small, older bungalow that served as a buffer between an indistinguishable tract of two-story, stucco homes and the parking lot of Our Redeemer Lutheran Church. The house had originally belonged to Benny's mom and was well-known for its quirky charm by everyone in the neighborhood.

While Mrs. Needles lived there, the salmon pink house with cobalt blue trim had been meticulously maintained, down to the waist-high white picket fence around the front yard. Plaster gnomes sat in the immaculate flower garden, and wind chimes played a cheery, if incessant, tune from the porch.

After his mom's death, Benny lived there alone. It didn't take long for the neighborhood curiosity to become the neighborhood eyesore. Large strips of paint peeled away from the house, the fence was missing pickets, and weeds had strangled the gnomes.

"Come on in, Miss Peri." Benny played with the doorknob as he held the door open.

Once inside, Peri paused, taking in the chaos Benny called home.

"Wow, Benny, you got a lot more…stuff…than the last time I was here."

Peri knew Benny had turned the house into a shrine to Dean Martin, but she didn't realize how much memorabilia he had amassed in the year since his mother had died. The living room, wallpapered in Dino, had posters from all of Martin's movies, plus autographed pictures of the Rat Pack at their peak.

The space, crammed with mismatched furniture Benny had collected from various Dean Martin movie sets, looked like a warehouse. Peri counted two couches, five chairs, a set of bar stools, and at least six accent tables in the small room. Every table contained a bookend or ashtray or other piece of flotsam that had been 'authenticated' as belonging to his idol, and all of it needed serious dusting.

As Peri surveyed the mess, she thought she could hear the sound of Mrs. Needles spinning in her grave.

"This way, Miss Peri," Benny said, as he cleared a path to the kitchen.

Peri entered the room and inhaled. The smell that had greeted her at the door became full-bodied in the kitchen. Most people shut their noses down at bad odors, but she found them fascinating. She detected peanut butter, rancid chicken, and mildew, among other things, and noted the bad sock smell actually decreased here.

"Fridge is in the corner," Benny told her.

"I know." Peri walked over to the ancient, white General Electric. "I've always wondered, how old is this thing?"

"I dunno, Mama got it the year Daddy went to work for GE–maybe 1956."

"Wow, fifty years old and still ticking," she said. "Just like me."

She looked around for someplace to set her bag, but the counter, the table, and even the chairs were covered in dirty dishes. Finally, she hung it on the back of a chair and opened the freezer, bending her tall frame slightly to look inside.

"Geepers, Benny, how long did it take to get this way?"

"The seal's broken," he replied. "It gets frozen over real quick."

"Pardon me for saying so, but, if you've got enough money to buy all of that Dino crap, why can't you splurge on a new fridge?"

Benny looked as though she had asked him to burn his Matt Helm posters. "Miss Peri, I don't use the freezer that much. I have to have my memories."

Peri plugged in her dryer and began melting the crystalline layers of ice, scraping them off into a trash can. The condensation had frozen and re-frozen so much that, below the crystals, it was like trying to melt concrete. As she worked, she pulled plastic bags out of the freezer, filled with shriveled unknowns. She tossed those into the trash can, too.

"Find anything yet?" Benny asked after a half hour.

Peri growled, wiping the sweat off her temples. "Yeah, I found out you're a bigger slob than I thought possible."

"No, I mean the tray," he replied. "Did you find the tray yet?"

"Benny–" She reminded herself that he was a paying client. "Could you open a window or something? It's like an oven in here."

As she slid her hand further into the freezer, something grabbed her back, gliding their fingers along her wrist and settling their palm against hers. Surprised, but curious, she grasped the object and pulled it out.

"What the hell–"

Sealed tightly in a plastic bag, wrapped in gauze, was the shape of a human hand, each finger distinct, curved slightly in an eternal handshake.

"Um, Benny?" Peri held the bag up to the light.

He moved a little closer, stretching his neck upward to get a better look. "What is it?"

"Offhand? I'd say it's," Peri paused. "A hand." She placed her hand around the back of the palm, stretching her fingers to match the ones in the bag. "A right hand. What's a hand doing in your freezer, Ben?"

Benny shook his head, his face pale. "Not mine," he told her. "It's not mine."

"What do you mean, not yours? How did it get in there?"

"I don't know. I didn't put it there." He stared at the bag, his eyes bulging from his ashen face.

"Are you telling me a stranger walked into your house and left a severed hand in your freezer?" she asked. "What, for fun?"

"No…I don't know…no." Beads of sweat formed at his hairline. "I'm telling you it's not mine. I haven't put anything in there since I put the ice cube tray in. That was two weeks ago."

Peri thought for a moment. "Well, let's unwrap it and see what it really is. Maybe it's some weird leftover you just forgot." She looked around the room. "Do you have any surface in this place that might be clean?"

"Sure," he said. "I never use the patio table."

Benny opened the sliding glass door. A small concrete slab took up half of the miniscule yard, shaded by a patio cover of narrow wood slats. In the center of the slab sat a round metal table with a glass top and four chairs. It surprised Peri to see it all so spotless.

"Geez, Benny, your backyard is cleaner than your whole house."

"Oh, I hose this part down every night," he told her, then shuddered. "Bird poop."

Peri laid papers down on the table and went to work. She put on disposable gloves and removed the object from the bag. The faint smell of cold decay greeted her immediately. She used tweezers to unwrap the gauze, trying to preserve all of the evidence for a forensic examiner, just in case. As she peeled back each layer, she noted a large bulge on the ring finger. The last of the material removed, Peri sat down and looked at the object in front of her.

"So?" Bennie asked from his position of safety in the kitchen. "What is it?"

"Well, it ain't meatloaf," Peri replied. "Stay back, Benny, it's kind of gruesome."

She turned the hand around, engrossed and repelled at the sight. Two bones peeked out from the wrist, rough and jagged from being hacked off. Muscles, tendons, flesh also looked ragged, as if cut by a dull knife.

The skin had a yellowish tinge, and was slightly wrinkled. It reminded Peri of a chicken's foot. A really big chicken's foot, with pink fingernail polish, and an enormous ring.

A ring like no other she'd seen. Diamond shaped, it stretched between the knuckle and the first joint of the ring finger. The outer edge was a vine of clear stones, cut in the shape of leaves, punctuated by large round jewels at the corners. Inside, another layer of green, jeweled leaves overlapped the outer row. At the center perched a remarkable stone, the size of a marble, with the facets cut so that when she looked down, it resembled a rose.

"Wow," Benny said, behind her.

Peri jumped. "God, Benny, don't sneak up on me like that."

She saw his eyes fixed on the ring, moist and glowing with desire. "How much do you think it's worth?"

Putting the hand and the gauze back into the bag, Peri stood up.

"I don't know," she said, "but it's time to call the cops."