Night Of The Living Head, A Sam And The Junkman Murder Mystery

By Marilyn Salzano

Halloween is living up to it's reputation," says Sam. "It's like our combined electromagnetic energy temporarily rips open a portal to a dimension filled with only God-knows-what that's been banned from our universe eons ago."

Samantha Dvorshak and Tony DeFranco once again join forces in 'Night of the Living Head' to solve yet another strange and grisly murder.
On a warm October night while holding a fun Halloween party the unsuspecting duo begin to feel that other forces are at work. Their friends and relatives are nervous. There's a feeling of dread in the atmosphere. Aunt Vilma is splashing Holy Water all over the place.
Something is out of kilter.
To their dismay they soon uncover the source of the bad vibes and take it upon themselves to solve this particularly unusual and baffling crime using their amateur private eye skills. The perplexing clues left at the murder scene takes them on a convoluted trail that leads to a circus, a UFO encounter group, and an assortment of freakishly mean suspects.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marilyn Salzano
• Release date: Dec 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005314774

Marilyn Salzano

Marilyn Salzano grew up in New Jersey and is of Polish/Hungarian decent. She has been a painter and storyteller often writing stories to go along with her paintings. Now she writes full time and paints the covers for her books. The art mentioned in this book are her own original paintings. Several of her short stories have won honorable mention awards in the prestigious 'Writer's of the Future Contest'. Marilyn lives in upstste New York with her husband Joe.

Book preview

NIGHT OF THE LIVING HEAD

A SAM AND THE JUNKMAN MURDER MYSTERY

BY

MARILYN SALZANO

Copyright

Night of the Living Head: A Sam and the Junkman Murder Mystery

Copyright 2021 Marilyn Salzano

All rights reserved

Cover art and design by Marilyn Salzano

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book is dedicated to all my New Jersey buds.

Special thanks to Joe, my husband and Italian-American cultural consultant.

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

EPILOGUE

About the Author

Other Titles By Marilyn Salzano

CHAPTER 1

It was a lazy golden October morning the day before Halloween. Usually it rained the whole month and the kids had to wear garbage bags over their costumes to trick or treat but so far we’ve been lucky.

I was lounging on my parent’s porch swing eating a toasted poppy seed bagel with cream cheese when my friend Tony pulled up in his humongous black steroid driven pickup truck. He strolled up the walk and plopped himself next to me stretching out his long legs. He was dressed in faded jeans, a black tee shirt, and silver reflective sunglasses. While taking a bite of my bagel I surreptitiously scanned his taller than six foot frame. My eyes moved up to his chiseled chin, straight nose, and sensuous mouth. He’s a hunk all right.

What are you doing? he asked.

Isn’t it obvious? I’m eating a bagel.

You were scoping me out, weren’t you?

Get real, I said.

Are there anymore of those?

I sighed, got up and went into the house. I came back a few minutes later.

Here, it’s the last one.

He took a bite and made a disgusted face. What is this?

It’s marble with onion, garlic, and salt. It’s Pop’s favorite.

That’s a ridiculous combination. I can’t eat this.

Break it up and throw it to the birds.

We watched as even the birds shunned it.

Tony is my best bud since diaper days. He’s a tall, gorgeous Italian man with black hair and chocolate eyes. We’re just friends…right now. I’m staying away from romance since I fled from Roland, my weirdo ex-boyfriend, and the dark nether regions of upstate New York.

I’m Samantha Dvorshak, but everyone calls me Sam. I’m slim, five-foot eight with hazel eyes and shoulder length light brown hair with red gold highlights. I’m from the great state of New Jersey and once thought the grass was greener someplace else. So I left to go to art school where I soon discovered that the tenured timeworn professors were more interested in spouting their protest era rhetoric then teaching art. So I left college and decided to roam the small towns of rural New York, where I met Roland.

Come to our farm, be surrounded by the forest and commune with nature. Be free, wild, and never pay taxes, he enticed like a true anti-establishment hustler.

So I did. Let me tell you there’s nothing free about being a hippie. You have to wear raggedy clothes, hate the government, eat weeds, and never consume meat. It was that last thing that decided it for me. Oh, and also Star Trek. What would Kirk or Worf say about that lifestyle? I can just imagine. So I ran back home to New Jersey as fast as my little Polish slash Hungarian legs could carry me. Mom and Pop were so happy they said I could live with them as long as I like.

I have something very cool to show you, said Tony grinning.

What, some weirdo antique you dug up at your uncle’s dumpsite or another Jersey Devil artifact? Tony’s is obsessed with JD. His great grandpa told him that when he was a child it once tried to climb through his bedroom window. He threw a baseball bat at it and it flew off.

No, I purchased a resort vacation home away from all this noise and smelly traffic.

I looked around sniffing. There was no traffic. A clean salty ocean breeze drifted in from the shore. We live in Little Creek, New Jersey, a ten-minute drive to the Great Atlantic Ocean.

Tony has money, how much he’ll never let on, so I had images of a rustic log cabin surrounded by sweet smelling pine trees and at the edge of a crystal clear lake.

When did you to buy it?

The other day. A friend gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse.

That sounds like something from ‘The Godfather’ movie.

Very funny. Come on, I’ll take you there.

Let me change first.

Why? You look fine.

I looked down at myself. I had on baggy pink and white-stripped pajama bottoms, a green ‘I Love Lucy’ T-shirt, and Mom’s black rhinestone flip-flops.

Well, okay.

We got into his truck and drove to Old Main, turned right, and went the half-mile to the Little Creek River where we made another right onto River Road.

"So where is this place?

You ask too many questions, but it’s just down the road.

What’s it like?

I don’t know.

How many rooms does it have?

I don’t know that either.

You don’t know how big it is?

No.

You bought it sight unseen?

The seller showed me a picture of it. Tony dug into his pocket, pulled out a chocolate tootsie pop, a linty liquorish stick, and a creased up photo. He smoothed it out on his pants and handed it to me.

I studied it from every angle possible. Tony all I see is a bunch of trees in the rain and the edge of something white behind them.

He said that’s the best he could do because it was too cold to stand around taking pictures.

I stared at him a long time.

What?

I held my hand against his cool forehead. Have you been feeling ok? Did you have a fever when you bought it? Tony you’re a sharp businessman. This looks like a very loony transaction on your part.

Tony owns a groovy and prosperous antique/junk shop in Little Creek. I personally know he frequently makes a killing on some obscure rusted contraption he’s dug up in his uncle’s old junkyard.

I trust this guy, was all he said.

What guy?

His name is Billy.

I sighed. Okay.

We drove in silence past Willie’s Winery, Dobie’s Dairy, and fields of dried yellow and red horse corn. After a while Tony started talking again.

We’re almost there. It should be right around the bend. He stopped the truck. This is it.

This is what? We gazed upon a sea of pumpkins. He turned onto a bumpy dirt road that ran through the pumpkin field on one side and a pine forest on the other. The truck lurched up and down and side to side like we were in a small boat in a windstorm.

How far do we go?

Right up there, he said pointing.

Up ahead, next to a stand of evergreens, was a mound of pumpkins higher than Tony’s truck. He stopped the truck and we got out.

So where’s this fabulous resort?

He looked around. "There. I see something behind those trees. He rushed ahead of me and stopped dead. I ran up next to him. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry.

Well, it could use some work, he said.

A beat-up nine foot, older than the hills, rinky-dink aluminum trailer sat surrounded by briar bushes and dried weeds. A big branch lay across the dented roof and vines trailed into a broken window. The door was bent and it took the two of us to yank it open. We stood staring at the interior. It looked like a family of chimps had lived in it for five years.

I shook my head in disbelief. Are you kidding me? This thing’s a piece of junk.

Yeah, but I own the ground it’s sitting on.

I looked at the acres of land dotted with pumpkins.

Wow, you did good. How much of this is yours?

He walked back to the truck, rummaged around, and came back holding a yardstick. He placed it next to the trailer. About three feet out from the body all around.

Three hundred feet, you mean.

No, three feet.

So when you walk off the steps you’re basically on someone else’s property."

Correct.

Tony, you’ve been taken.

He hung his head. I know.

How much did you pay for it?

I traded the scary cuckoo clock that never stops ticking. Billy came over one day and fell in love with it

Really? Is he a devil worshiper?

No. Just nuts. I couldn’t resist getting rid of the damned thing.

Damned is right.

It was the strangest cuckoo clock I’d ever seen. It stood four feet high, made from black Ebony, and carved with skulls, leaping stags, winged serpents, and demons. It was crafted in Slovakia in the 1700’s. Every hour on the hour a little door with shutters opened and out popped a tiny girl with a basket of flowers in one hand and a kitten cradled in her other. She’d spin around a few times and then duck back into her little house. What an existence.

The sonorous booming ticking never stopped and drove Tony crazy. He tried to sell it to back to a Slovakian museum but they advised him to bury it somewhere far away from home and family. In fact, no one wanted the creepy thing so while he waited for the right unsuspecting customer to come along he kept it in an old rusted refrigerator out in back of his shop where he couldn’t hear the ticking.

Well, good riddance. That thing gave me the willies, I said.

Ditto.

So, what are you going to do with this hunk of junk?

He looked at the trailer, the mound of pumpkins, and out across the field. You know, we could have some fun with this. Halloween is tomorrow.

You mean like a haunted trailer house? I asked getting excited. I love Halloween.

Exactly. We’ll dress up, hang plastic skeletons, black cats, and fake spider webs. Maybe your aunts can come and tell scary stories.

My three aunts thrive on telling bloodcurdling stories of their childhood growing up in their fortified stone house surrounded by the deep dark forests of Hungary. True stories—they say.

We’ll get the neighborhood kids to carve pumpkins. Benny, Honey, and Gabe are always begging to help us, said Tony.

We should clean the camper out before we go, I said.

OK.

We went indoors and stared at the jumble of junk. Stuff was piled up on the counter, table and chairs.. Bags, pizza boxes, and newspapers littered the floor.

You go through the cabinets. I’ll clean out the drawers, said Tony. There might be stuff we can use here. He rummaged around a few minutes then called me over. These are receipts from places that closed down years ago.

Like what?

Hot Dog Harrys, Olga’s Diner, and, oh man my favorite, Larison’s Turkey Farm.

It was like dinner at the Walton’s, I said.

He held up a faded ticket stub.

What’s that? I asked.

An entrance ticket for Palisades Amusement Park. So sad, I loved that place. Remember the baby giant octopus?

Yeah, that was hilarious. I put the ticket in my purse. I’ll frame it and hang it in my bedroom.

The cabinets were filled with plastic food containers, plastic dishes, forks, and knives.

Man, this guy was a real advocate of the disposable culture, said Tony. He opened a closet door that was crammed to the ceiling with toilet paper.

What’s with all the T.P.? he asked.

Depression era habits, I said. My Grandma does the same thing.

Hey, Tweety and Sylvester drinking glasses, said Tony.

Will they sell?

I’m keeping these for myself. We can drink Hershey’s chocolate milk and read comics like when we were kids.

That made me feel all gushy.

I took a cracked mirror off the wall. I’m going to throw this out. Hey, there’s an envelope stuck in back.

Let me see that. I handed it to Tony. Oh man, it’s tickets to the 1962 wrestling match when the Hungarian Blimp defeated Miguel Torres in 1962.

Pop says we’re related to him, I said.

"Miguel Torres?’

No silly, the Hungarian Blimp.

Do you want them?

Sure, Pop will get a kick out of it. So why would they hide it there? I asked.

Maybe a surprise gift they forgot about.

Maybe.

We filled a couple garbage bags with trash then wiped down the table and counter and swept the floor.

Looks good as new, said Tony.

Hardly, but it’s ok for our party.

We threw the trash bags in the back of the truck .

Okay, let’s go to your shop.

We hopped into the truck and carefully drove over the hard packed ruts and bumps. When we got to town we headed down Old Main, turned right onto Burt street, and another right on Titus Street. Tony’s place was on the corner across from Patsy the Barber, the shoe repair shop, and next to the store of inexplicable happenings.

His shop is called ‘Tony’s Stuff’ because there is no real way to describe the things in there—from the ancient to the newly deceased, strange and awesome creatures of myth and legend, to obscure inventions that maybe once had a purpose but we’re hard-pressed to figure out exactly what. I glanced at the store next to his. The windows were covered with dark paper.

Who’s your new neighbor?

I have no idea. They were making a racket all night: squawking, twittering, and pig grunting, I think. Whoever they are, they’re not going to like it in there.

The shop next door has historically been the scene of bizarre and unnatural goings-on. Nobody ever lasts more than a couple months.

Well, keep your eyes and ears open and let me know what’s happening over there.

Always.

Have you acquired anything new these days? I asked looking around. It was a veritable storehouse of unrecognizable inventions from the past and perhaps, according to Tony, the future.

There’s this, he said proudly holding up a gray lumpy rock. It’s a genuine moon rock.

Where did you get it?

Englishtown Flea Market. This old guy said he got it from his brother who got it from his best friend’s uncle’s cousin who bought it from a good friend of Buzz Aldrin.

That’s some lineage.

Yeah, but what’s even more remarkable is that it had a lunar worm living inside it. It died when I opened it up. Apparently it was an anaerobic creature.

I picked up at the shriveled inch long buff colored thing.

Tony, This is a Chinese noodle.

He took it from me and examined it closely. Then to my horror popped it into his mouth. He chewed and rolled it around then swallowed it.

Yes, my little bubble bursting friend, he said with a sigh. That’s exactly what it is. A bit stale though.

How could you just put something like that in your mouth? It could have been poop.

Lunar worm poop. He turned and went over to a dusty shelf. I was lucky enough to acquired this when I was in Europe, a human arm bone covered with teeth marks. Very sharp human teeth marks.

Where’d you get it? I reached out for it.

Don’t touch it, He shoved my hand away. It still might have venomous saliva on it.

I just stared at him. Is he beginning to believe all this ridiculous stuff? That would explain the trailer transaction.

I dug it up on the border of Hungary when I was on a relic hunting trip with some friends.

I’m your friend. How come I wasn’t invited?

He leaned close to me and hissed, Because you were upstate frolicking with old baldy.

Roland started going bald three months after I met him. Too much nettle juice, I believe.

I never frolicked in my life, I shot back.

He dismissed me with a wave. Anyway, this is supposedly the marks of a human flesh eater that lived in a castle hundreds of years ago. He folded his arms across his chest. And we all know who that is.

Who?

He stared at me. Forget it.

Just then a woman with a little boy came into the store. Tony went to talk to them. The kid ran around going nuts over all the weird stuff.

Mommy, I want this, the boy yelled holding up a bunch of small bones strung together. What is it?

Nobody knows for sure, said Tony. It could be all that’s left of the hand of an alien that crashed on earth or the toe bones of a giant from the misty past.

A giant? Really? He is face was flushed. Mom, we have to buy this.

She looked at it and grimaced. No way are we bringing home a pile of smelly bones. She turned to Tony. Giant indeed. She left in a huff with the kid staring wide-eyed at Tony.

Mister, I’ll be back someday. Don’t sell the bones.

You’ve really honed your sales pitch, I said with admiration.

Sales pitch? I only tell them what I believe is the truth, with some embellishments of course.

Of course. We can hang the bones in the trailer for the party. What else do you have?

I have a dead stuffed Dodo bird.

It would have to be dead to be stuffed.

It wasn’t that dead when I first saw it. A few weeks ago it was waddling around the Great Black Swamp Reserve. A couple of hobos throttled it and were ready to make soup when I happened to walk by. I had to give them ten bucks for it.

No way, Dodo’s have been extinct for years.

So they say.

It would have been worth a fortune alive.

Yeah, but I would have kept it. It’s kind of cute, don’t you think?

I stared at the scraggly thing. Three feet high, short stubby legs, feet with four fat ugly black claws and a huge green hooked beak.

I don’t think ‘cute’ is a word I’d attach to one of those. Dodo is more accurate. I noticed its head was tilted at a weird angle. Why didn’t the taxidermist straighten the neck?

I wanted it to represent the thoughtless callousness of todays society.

The Hobo’s?

Yes.

But they were hungry.

"When you get fat and lose your hunger that is when you know