Classic Calls the Shots

by Amy Myers

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by Amy Myers from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Recent Titles by Amy Myers from Severn House

  The Jack Colby, Car Detective, Series

  CLASSIC IN THE BARN

  CLASSIC CALLS THE SHOTS

  MURDER IN THE QUEEN’S BOUDOIR

  MURDER WITH MAJESTY

  THE WICKENHAM MURDERS

  MURDER IN FRIDAY STREET

  MURDER IN HELL’S CORNER

  MURDER AND THE GOLDEN GOBLET

  MURDER IN THE MIST

  MURDER TAKES THE STAGE

  MURDER ON THE OLD ROAD

  MURDER IN ABBOT’S FOLLY

  Writing as Harriet Hudson

  APPLEMERE SUMMER

  CATCHING THE SUNLIGHT

  QUINN

  SONGS OF SPRING

  THE STATIONMASTER’S DAUGHTER

  TOMORROW’S GARDEN

  TO MY OWN DESIRE

  THE WINDY HILL

  WINTER ROSES

  CLASSIC CALLS THE SHOTS

  A Case for Jack Colby, the Car Detective

  Amy Myers

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published 2012

  in Great Britain and in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  Copyright © 2012 by Amy Myers.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Myers, Amy, 1938-

  Classic calls the shots.

  1. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title

  823.9'14-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8150-2 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-233-7 (ePub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Jack Colby has his own website and blog (www.jackcolby.co.uk) although my husband, James Myers, runs it for him. Jim plays a large part in writing his novels too, because without him the novel’s engine wouldn’t be going anywhere. With his extensive knowledge of classic cars, he has collaborated with me throughout on the creation of Jack Colby and Frogs Hill Classic Car Restorations and the cases in which they are involved, and I’m greatly indebted to him.

  That Jack Colby sees himself in print is due to my agent, Dorothy Lumley of the Dorian Literary Agency, who kept her hand on the steering wheel, and to my publishers Severn House, who drove the novels past their finishing post. Along the way Jack was spurred on by Amanda Stewart, Gaynor Banyard, Tom and Marie O’Day, to whom many thanks. For specialist information I am grateful to Ian Stanfield, works manager of the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, and to Roy Dowding of the Gordon-Keeble Owners Club and editor of its magazine Keebling. Among other sources, a Classic Cars for Sale web article on the Auburn; The Auburn, Cord and Duesenberg Museum in the US; and, for the story of Ramble, Secret Service by Christopher Andrew and Blackwood’s Magazine were particularly helpful.

  The plot and characters of Classic Calls the Shots are fictional, as are many of the specific locations in the novel, including Piper’s Green, Stour Studios, Syndale Manor, the Gladden and Helsted estates and car parks, and also Shotsworth Security, Oxley Productions and Jack Colby’s Frogs Hill Classic Car Restorations. Lenham, Charing, Pluckley and the Syndale Valley, however, are real Kentish villages, as timeless as the North Downs themselves.

  ONE

  ‘Nicked from a film set? You’re joking, Dave.’

  He had to be. No crook in their right senses would steal a 1935 Auburn, even to order – especially from such a high-profile location. This Auburn is so rare and so beautiful that car lovers all over the world would faint in ecstasy if they were lucky enough to see one. As for stealing it: no way, for the same reason no one would pinch a Leonardo da Vinci. A slight exaggeration perhaps, as this car can still be bought, provided you’ve just had a lottery win in the six-figure range. But stealing such an eye-catching stunner is a breathtakingly risky job.

  ‘No joke,’ Dave’s voice said gloomily at the end of the line. ‘It’s Bill Wade’s – or was.’

  Detective Superintendent Dave Jennings heads the Kent Police Car Crime Unit, and calls on the services of Jack Colby of Frogs Hill Classic Car Restorations, namely myself, whenever he sniffs something out of the ordinary about a classic car theft. As now. An Auburn 851 SC Boattail Speedster? I was hooked.

  ‘Tell me about it, Dave.’ I’d pay him to get this job. I knew about US film director Bill Wade. Who didn’t? He lived in Kent for part of the year, no doubt living off the fat of the profits of his blockbusting Running Tides, which burst upon the world ten years ago. There’d been films in between, of course, but the one currently in production, Dark Harvest, was tipped to be its successor.

  ‘Pinched from Stour Studios, near Lenham. Know the place?’

  I did, because Running Tides had been shot there. I was still working overseas in the oil industry then, but Dad had been as excited as a boy with his first Dinky car because he’d taken a shine to the film’s star, Margot Croft. He had caught a glimpse of her while the filming was in progress, but then his heart was broken because she committed suicide not long after it finished.

  ‘I take it you’ve checked the usual channels?’ I asked Dave. That Auburn must have broken all speed records on its way to its new owner if Dave was calling me in. His own team was excellent.

  Dave likes talking in sound bites when there’s something major afoot. ‘Yup. Waste of time. Not a pro job.’

  ‘Joyriders?’ I asked. This was looking weirder by the minute.

  ‘Went last Thursday night. Now Monday, so would have shown.’

  A sigh of relief from me. That meant there was indeed a case and it was mine. ‘When do I start?’

  ‘Now. You’re booked in with the bereaved. At his request.’

  ‘Bill Wade himself?’ This was turning into a very good day.

  ‘Get your old jalopy on the road, and Jack . . .’

  There had to be a snag. ‘Tell me the worst.’

  ‘If I knew what it was, I wouldn’t need you. But I don’t like the sniff of this case. There’s something wrong somewhere.’

  I’ve hired my beloved 1965 Gordon-Keeble out to film production crews on several occasions, so I’ve visite
d film sets before. Not so often that I wasn’t looking forward to visiting this one, however, despite Dave’s dire predictions. Usually there’s a combined mass of cast and crew milling around together with a forest of technology in the form of cables, sound equipment, lights, cameras, dollies, boom arms, Steadicams etc. Amidst this, they are chatting, rehearsing, shooting, preparing, sipping coffee, studying scripts, call sheets and storyboards or adjusting make-up, hair or costumes – you name it. Humdrum workaday stuff, or so it seems, but at the magic words ‘Going for a take’ they spring into action like a Ferrari from the starting grid, and humdrum turns into magic.

  I was looking forward to visiting Stour Studios, which are on the outskirts of Lenham village in the Headcorn direction. I once went to a recording of a TV show in the famous Maidstone Studios at Grove Green, but when I arrived at Stour Studios in my daily driver Alfa, they proved to be a different kettle of fish. They were not nearly as big as Grove Green, they were privately owned by Oxley Productions, and it was clear that at least currently it was entirely devoted to Dark Harvest – and therefore to Bill Wade. I checked in at the security gate, returned a friendly grin from the guard, swept into the car park on the right and wended my way to reception with high expectations.

  I knew that the studios had been converted from a farmhouse and its outbuildings, because I had visited the farm as a child with my father and been entranced by the baby piglets running about. It looked rather different now. The former granary, barns and outbuildings now made a compact complex round a central court; some had been converted, some torn down and rebuilt from scratch. Even so they’d made a good job of making the studios easy on the eye and the huge canteen I passed looked welcoming.

  A large sign pointed to reception in the Georgian red-brick building that used to be the farmhouse, but now had a more businesslike air. The ground floor had been converted to provide a large modern entrance area – one that needed the word ‘cold’ before reception, however. At the desk to my left a grey-haired man in perhaps his late fifties and a severe-looking woman probably a few years younger were deep in what I would term ‘animated discussion’ of which the only words I caught were ‘cow’ and ‘serve her right’ apart from the accompanying F-words. On a better day she might have been attractive, and the man rather jolly, but today was clearly not a good one.

  ‘Yes?’ the woman snapped.

  ‘Police,’ I said curtly, in as good an imitation of Rebus as I could manage.

  She stared at me as though this confirmed some long-felt suspicion.

  ‘Here to see Bill Wade,’ I added.

  ‘Sign in.’

  I signed.

  ‘Upstairs – turn right, first door,’ the man told me. ‘Sooner you than me,’ he added gloomily.

  The directions were redundant, because as I went up the stairs the noise emanating from Bill Wade’s office indicated where the action was. A woman’s shrill voice produced the only distinguishable words through the closed door.

  ‘I don’t want him around.’ A pause, then an emphatic ‘Him or me, Roger!’

  I was flummoxed. I’d never heard anyone produce that particular cliché before. Maybe that wasn’t Bill Wade’s office and this was a rehearsal, a script read-through – or had Hollywood really reached rural Kent?

  Then I heard a low distressed murmur of men’s voices. Two, I thought. ‘Honey’ was the only word I caught. This was getting better by the minute. Surely it was a script-reading.

  ‘It’s no good, Bill. You’re ganging up against me. I won’t have my professional judgement disregarded,’ Mrs (or so I deduced from the ‘honey’) X continued in a higher pitch.

  ‘Angie . . .’ Both male voices provided this chorus.

  ‘Is he staying or going?’ Angie demanded.

  ‘Goddammit, Angie, give me a break. I’ve got a car to find.’ One of the males seemed to have reached breaking point.

  This was a man after my own heart. Settle the car question first. It’s usually easier. If that was Bill Wade, he deserved both his Auburn and my best efforts to find it.

  The door was pulled vigorously open and a woman swept out. She was a shining processed blonde of about forty, and would have been a stunner if it hadn’t been for the compressed lips and angry red flush. She was immaculately clad in stylish jacket and trousers, but there was no camera tracking her. This lady’s anger was for real. She honoured me with a sideways look as she stalked past me, which implied that if this had been a better day there might have been a second look. She need not have bothered with the first because she wasn’t my type.

  Already I felt there was a touch of film noir about the situation, and I pressed ahead into the office, even more curious as to what I might be walking into. There were indeed two men there, and wearing my Philip Marlowe hat I quickly appraised the scene. Marlowe would have recognized it. Man sitting behind impressive and uncluttered antique desk, a man I recognized as Bill Wade from press photos. The other man was pacing up and down by the window and from the ‘Roger’ I’d just heard, it wasn’t rocket science to deduce that this was Roger Ford, co-owner and producer of Dark Harvest. I had done some speedy Internet homework before I left home.

  Bill Wade was quite something. Give him a field cap and he could have passed for Field Marshal Montgomery, wiry, pent-up energy, fifties, lined face, and ready to shoot on sight, and not just film. Whoever Angie was, I’d back Bill in a fight. Probably. His chair partly swivelled round as Roger Ford, currently staring grimly out of the window, as in all the best office scenes, said:

  ‘He’ll have to go, Bill.’

  Time to introduce myself. ‘Jack Colby. Here about your Auburn, Mr Wade.’

  Instant attention from both men, and Bill Wade’s gimlet eyes focused entirely on me.

  ‘You’ve found it?’ he barked at me.

  ‘Sorry, not yet. You asked to see me.’

  ‘We did.’ It was Roger who answered. ‘We need that Auburn back and quick.’

  Roger Ford’s co-owner of Oxley Productions and Stour Studios was his wife, Maisie, who came from some multi-billion-pound manufacturing company in the States. Ford was a big man in all senses. He was about my height, six feet, but a lot bigger where the hamburgers lodge. He too must have been in his fifties, grey-haired and with that assured companionable look that comes with success. A look that in my experience can quickly change to steel when matters go awry. As now, it seemed. I addressed Montgomery, however. ‘I understood it was your personal car, Mr Wade?’

  I knew it was. I’d seen articles about it. The car he’d owned for twenty years or so. A left-hand drive, one of the dozen or so hand-built 1935 Auburn Speedsters out of a total of just under a hundred styled by Gordon Buehrig. With its flamboyant body design and advanced technical specifications, this Auburn was truly a car for kings and film stars, among them Clark Gable. And his choice was Bill Wade’s too. There were iconic photos of him driving around in it during the making of Running Tides ten or eleven years ago, in which he was often with the star with whom his name was ‘linked’, as they say: Margot Croft, my Dad’s pin-up.

  ‘Right,’ Bill replied, eyes briskly gorging out my innermost secrets, ‘but it’s appearing in the movie. Which is why it was here and not locked up at my place.’ If Oxley Productions had been found wanting, there was no suggestion of that in his voice.

  Dave had emailed me a briefing, so I now knew Bill Wade lived in Mayden Manor, which was buried in the countryside near Sissinghurst. The Auburn however had disappeared from the studios complex three days earlier during the night of the third to fourth of June. As Bill’s eyes bored into me, I could see just why Dave had called me in. I braced myself.

  ‘What’s your security like?’ I asked.

  ‘Good,’ Roger Ford leapt in quickly. ‘Magnetic pass needed to get in after ten. Anyone trying to get out of the gate without a pass brings the guards here in minutes. CCTV, which shows no sign of the car, security lights, no permanent guard between eleven p.m. and five forty-five a.m
., but the grounds are patrolled every two hours. Nothing suspicious reported.’

  Bill was pacing round the room like a leopard on the prowl, but he wasn’t saying anything. I found that odd. If I’d had an Auburn pinched, and there was the slightest flaw in security, I’d have been screaming blue murder, but he wasn’t. Even Roger Ford was relatively low key.

  Dave had briefed me on the theft and security, but there’s nothing like speaking to the horse’s mouth for picking up any bad breath that might be around. ‘Garage then: forced locks? Any stolen passes reported?’

  ‘Neither,’ Roger told me.

  ‘So our car chum had both a pass and access to the keys.’

  Bill Wade stopped pacing and fixed me with a look that made me glad I wasn’t on one of his sets. ‘A lot of people work here late, Jack.’

  ‘Do they sign in or out, regardless of whether there’s a guard on duty?’

  ‘They’re supposed to,’ Roger growled, ‘but don’t always bother.’

  ‘How many passes?’

  ‘Around a hundred and fifty,’ Roger shot at me in defensive mode. ‘That’s the permanent crew and staff. The cast and background – extras – sign for temporary ones. It’s high at present. So double that.’

  Great. ‘And the car keys?’

  ‘Master keys in the security booth. Locked,’ Bill added drily, then came in for the quiet kill. ‘You’re not some Poirot, Colby. Forget how and who. Just get that Auburn back by next Monday.’

  Seven days? Just like that? I goggled at him, struggling for sanity. ‘You must know what you’re asking.’

  Roger Ford weighed in. ‘We do. We need it. It’s too expensive to reshoot scenes we’ve already shot in London. What are the chances? Dave Jennings said you had contacts.’

  ‘I do, but not to produce stolen Auburns out of a hat. What about one of the new replicas?’

  ‘At Oxley we only use the real McCoy,’ Bill snapped.

  I bit back the words ‘let McCoy find one then’ and asked, ‘Why’s it so important? Cars are usually kept in the background in films.’ Not if I had anything to do with it, of course, but then usually I’m not consulted.