by Gayle Roper
“What you see out there are not necessarily my finer pieces.” He waved toward the showroom. “They’re the ones my customers like and recognize. The bulk of the collection is at home.” He grinned. “I love cars of any size!”
Then he described his security system to protect his collection in much more detail than I wanted to know. As he talked, I thought that the retail car business must be more lucrative than I’d ever imagined. We were talking a big-bucks hobby.
Finally we got around to Bill Bond.
“Wonderful, wonderful man,” Mike assured me. “Such a tragedy.”
“Have you any idea why someone would shoot him?”
He gravely shook his head. “I can’t begin to imagine. What is it they always say? Cherchez la femme?”
Sure, I thought cynically. Blame it on some poor woman.
I sat forward. “Do you think Bill had a woman tucked away somewhere?” And did he beat her too? I wanted to ask.
Mike quickly held up his hands in denial. “No, no. Bill was not the kind of man to have a girlfriend on the side. I was referring obliquely to his wife.”
“His wife?”
Mike looked uncomfortable. “She’s…” He paused. “Let’s just say she’s unusual.”
“How?” I asked bluntly.
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s all speculation.”
I waited a minute, but it was obvious he wasn’t going to talk about Tina anymore. Had he just suffered a slip of the tongue, or had he meant to cast doubt on her character, to turn the eyes of people to her as a probable culprit? I wondered what he’d say if I told him that at the time of Bill’s death she was trying to sleep off the battering given by the man everyone at Hamblin’s seemed to consider so wonderful.
Mike took me into Bill’s office where a picture of his family sat prominently on his desk. Tina smiled warmly at the camera, Jess and Lacey leaned against her legs and Bill sat behind her, arm lovingly about her shoulder.
A picture’s worth a thousand words, they say. Sometimes pictures lie.
“He was a dependable man, always here when I needed him,” Mike said, staring at the picture. “We’re going to miss him!”
“Did he ever lose his temper with your salesmen?”
“Never. Now why do you ask that?”
“With the customers?”
“Absolutely not.”
“So you don’t think he had a temper problem?”
“I’m not sure what you’re insinuating, but I don’t think I like it.”
I smiled and changed the topic. “Tell me some Bill stories so I can get a feel for him.”
“The customers liked him because he told them jokes and made them laugh.”
I waited expectantly, but that was it.
I tried again. “I understand he liked to wear a shirt and tie instead of the staff shirts.”
“He had good taste in clothes and liked to dress formally.” I hated interviews like this one where the person appeared polite and cooperative but gave me nothing. The question I had to ask myself was whether the stonewalling was on purpose or not. I made another leap in subject matter.
“How did Bill get along with Tom Whatley?”
Mike blinked. “They got along fine. Why wouldn’t they?”
“Bill was sales manager, but Tom was top salesman.”
“Bill was proud of Tom.”
“No resentment? No jealousy?”
“Bill was a wonderful, wonderful man.”
Yeah, yeah, so you’ve said. “Do you think Bill’s shooting has anything to do with Tom’s disappearance?”
Mike looked surprised. “I hope not. I do. If they’re linked, I’m going to start thinking that Hamblin Motors is the object of some strange vendetta.”
I tucked that highly speculative comment away for later thought. “Have you heard from Tom since he went missing?”
Mike shook his handsome head. “Of course not.”
That line at least had the ring of truth.
“Why do you think Tom Whatley has disappeared?”
“Men run away for all sorts of reasons.” Mike smiled hesitantly. “I’d say cherchez la femme again, but this time I wouldn’t mean the wife.”
I forced myself to smile back, thinking of Edie and her pain. Another woman, ha!
After a half an hour, I bid Mike adieu and walked thoughtfully to my car. I thought of the various things he had told me about Bill, bothered by the fact that none of them had substance. Where were the “I’ll never forget the day that Bill…” stories?
I turned as I walked across the macadam lot and looked back. Mike had returned to his toy showcase as soon as I walked out the door. As I watched, a big man came from the back of the building and joined him in front of the showcase. I realized I was watching the same two men talk as I had on my previous visit. Mike Hamblin, owner, and Joey Alberghetti, head repair guy.
Something was definitely off-kilter here at Hamblin’s. I knew it. I just didn’t know what it was yet. Was it Mike? Was it Joey? Was it Bill and his meanness still polluting the air? My great hope was that when Tom regained consciousness, he could tell us things that were now unclear.
I put my hand on my car door handle and pulled. Nothing happened. Locked.
I reached into my purse and began rummaging for my keys. I couldn’t find them. I dumped the bag onto my trunk lid and swished things around, searching. No keys.
I thought back to my arrival at Hamblin’s. I’d pulled into the lot. Parked. Turned off the motor. Jumped like an idiot at a knock on the window. Smiled sweetly at Howard. Stepped out. Pushed down the door lock.
A chill slid up my back. I peered into the car and there, dully reflecting the parking lot lights, hung my keys in the ignition. When Howard knocked on the window and I began talking to him, my pattern was disrupted.
I’d climbed out without the keys.
SEVENTEEN
Without much hope, I tried my other car doors. All locked. Why did I have to pick this evening to become responsible? Now I’d really be late for Curt’s shindig.
I walked back to the showroom. Surely Mike had one of those long pieces of metal that slid down into a door and popped the lock. I pulled the showroom door open.
Mike and Joey, their backs to me and their attention on the showcase, didn’t hear me. I paused as I tried to think of how I might ask for help without sounding like an idiot.
“You found a good deal this time, Mikey.” Joey was patting the showroom model that Mike had brought from his office. “Is there a shelf that’s high enough for it? It’s one big baby. You know we’re going to have to kill her.”
“The shelves are all adjustable. We can make one high enough with no trouble. Why should we kill her?”
“Because she’s going to figure it all out any minute now.”
“Her? She’s just a cute little chickie. Nothing to worry about.”
Joey shook his head. “Don’t you read? She’s that reporter who already solved a couple of crimes.”
“Her?” Mike was aghast. “That little thing?”
“Her.” Joey polished the front fender of the model.
“Don’t you think someone’s going to start noticing that all these dead people have a connection to Hamblin Motors? If she can figure it out, so can the cops.”
“All the bodies have to do with the News, Mike! Except for Barnard, but he don’t count. Besides he was found in a News reporter’s house. With the girl dead too, that’s where the cops’ll look.”
“You hope.”
“She goes, Mikey.” Joey’s voice was steel.
My skin crawled and I looked at the door. Could I risk opening it again?
Mike stared at Joey. “You like killing, don’t you?”
Joey thought about the idea for a second. “I don’t think I like it so much as I don’t mind it.”
“You’re sick.”
Joey grinned. “If you say so.”
“I still wish yo
u hadn’t done Barnard. He was the best courier we ever had. Dumb and dependable is a hard combination to find.”
“He was trying to get out, Mikey. He kept muttering about how his kid was doing drugs. He couldn’t deliver them anymore now he saw what they did. All his wife did was cry. Garbage like that. He was even starting to go to church!”
“Church?” There was horror in Mike’s voice. “Barnard?”
Joey nodded. “To pray for the kid, he said.”
“Pray.” Mike’s voice was full of disgust. “I hate it when a good man gets a guilty conscience.”
Joey nodded. “I put him in Tom’s garage as a warning, you know? I mean, I had to put him somewhere, right? And no one knew he ran for us. It’s not like anyone’d think, aha! Barnard, Tom, Hamblin’s, drugs.”
“You’d better be right about that.” Mike looked at Joey. “But explain to me how you ever saw a warning in dumping the body.”
“The body said, this is what happens to people who mess with us. People who start to think about talking.” He ran a gentle finger over the roof of the model car. “Are you going to have it restored?”
“I haven’t decided. I kind of like it like this, but collectors are used to restored pieces.”
“So restore it then. Not that you’ll ever sell it.” They both laughed.
“Just be careful, Joey. It’s dangerous playing games with oblique threats.”
“She knew what the threat meant,” Joey said softly.
Mike looked up from his showcase. “She?”
“Tom’s wife. I called her.”
“What?” Mike stared openmouthed. “You’re crazy! What did you say?”
“I told her that she shouldn’t say anything to the cops or else.”
“Or else what?”
“She’d get what her old man got.”
Mike stared until Joey began to fidget.
“Don’t worry.” Joey’s manner was defensive. “She didn’t know it was me.”
“You’re an idiot!”
“I’m not!”
The men glared at each other, and I could feel the waves of their animosity wash over me. If politics made strange bedfellows, apparently crime made stranger ones still.
Drugs! Hamblin Motors was somehow a center for drug trafficking. And the dead man in Randy’s car was a courier, a dumb but dependable courier who’d developed a conscience. Unbelievable!
Taking a deep breath as if to calm himself, Mike turned back to his cars. “Look at the detailing on the interior of this baby. That’s why it’s so valuable. Be careful, Joey. I don’t want to be taken down because you decided to play games.”
Once again Joey’s gentle hands played with the model. He gave a short laugh of pleasure. “Look! The front seat tilts forward! Don’t worry, Mikey. I’m careful. And we’re still going to have to kill her.”
Mike sighed. “It’s a shame. She’s sort of cute, you know? So serious when she asks her questions.”
I was afraid to move, afraid any motion would attract their attention. But if they turned…
“We wouldn’t have to do her if you hadn’t gotten carried away last night.” Mike rubbed the roof of his model with a soft cloth.
“Well, you should have seen him last night. He must have gone after his wife again. His knuckles were all bloody and he had blood stains on his shirt. But it was the gun he was waving that made me sort of nervous.”
“Bill had a gun?” Mike was incredulous.
“He said it was to keep that Tina in line. She wanted to leave him and take the kids and he wasn’t going to let her.”
“He should have let her go and gotten someone he liked.”
“Mikey, for a smart man, you’re dumb. It was the beating he liked.”
Mike shuddered. “That’s sick.”
“Maybe, but it’s power. And so was the gun.”
“The man was a miracle at selling cars, but he couldn’t keep his hands off his wife. And he was going to shoot her too? Nuts.”
“He was falling apart before my eyes, needing a fix so bad he was shaking and sweating. Ugly.” Joey snorted. “And the gun. Any fool can pull a trigger. It was me or him, let me tell you. The guy was going to shoot m— Hey, the trunk opens too!”
“That’s a rumble seat, buddy, not a trunk.”
I listened, unable to believe what I was hearing. Models and murders—and my murder!—discussed in the same casual tone of voice.
“Rumble, schmumble,” Joey said. “If you move that Model T and that Oldsmobile on the second shelf to the other case, you could lower that shelf and have plenty of room for the model. Our weak link, besides that girl—and she’s easy to fix—is Tom. If he shows up, we’re in deep trouble, and I mean deep!”
“I don’t think he’s going to show, not after all this time. He’s dead somewhere.”
“You wish.” Joey reached into the case and pulled out two of the cast-metal cars. “I know I hit him—I just don’t know how bad.”
“Next time you’ll shut your office door before you hand out any bags.”
“How was I supposed to know he was still here? He should have been long gone. Instead he drives that car off the lot and into the garage as cool as you please. He pulls up right next to my office. ‘Hey Joey,’ he calls out the window. ‘This car’s got a knock like you wouldn’t believe. You’d better fix it before we show—’Then he realizes what he’s seeing. Me and Bill and him stare at each other for a minute, sort of frozen like. Then he hits the gas. I run after him and take a shot. I know I got him because the car swerves into that light post out there.” He jerked his head toward the lot.
Mike grunted. “He’d better be dead, Joey. I’m not taking the fall for your stupidity.”
Joey straightened to his full height and glared at Mike.
“Don’t try and threaten me with your size, Joey. I’m in charge here, and don’t you ever forget it. You’re a rich man because of me.”
“If it hadn’t been for me, you’d never have made the original contacts, and don’t you forget that,” Joey countered.
Mike grunted as he set the glass shelf on the newly positioned supports, then took his prize and slipped it into the case. “Nice.” He nodded with satisfaction.
“Nice,” Joey agreed. He handed one of the toys to Mike and they started to turn.
Suddenly reality slapped me across the face, and I dropped to the floor, hugging a sports utility vehicle of some kind. If they found me, I knew all too clearly what would happen. The only question was whose car they would put my corpse in.
I could hear the men walking across the showroom to the other toy showcase. Under cover of their footsteps, I slipped under the SUV, thankful for the high-slung chassis. I crouched against the inside of the front passenger tire, making certain that nothing like a foot or the hem of my new red coat stuck out. All I had to do was stay here as quiet as a mouse until they left. Then I could get out of here, call William and report what I’d heard.
It seemed such a good plan when I made it.
“Hey, Mikey,” Joey called in an excited voice. “She’s still here.”
My heart stopped midbeat.
“What do you mean, she’s still here?” Mike’s voice had a chill that froze my blood.
“That white Sable out there?” I could just imagine him pointing. “I saw her climb out of it, talking to that imbecile Howard.”
“Then where is she?”
I pressed myself against the tire and prayed. I heard the two of them moving around the showroom, looking in all the sales cubicles, opening the door back to Bill Bond’s office.
“We’ve got to check the garage area,” Joey called as he went through the door to the offices.
I strained to hear whether both of them had left the showroom or if it was just Joey. I didn’t have to wait long before I heard the click, click, click of Mike’s feet as he slowly circled the showroom once again.
As he moved away from me down the inside wall, I dared to turn and study the
distance between my hiding place and the door to the outside. Surely I could make it to and through the door when he was at the far end of the room. All I had to do was make the parking lot and run screaming into the street. There was enough traffic that I would be safe.
I rolled to my knees, preparing to making my mad dash. I shook off my coat on the theory that in my black dress I’d be harder to spot as I ran. I glanced back over my shoulder to see where Mike’s feet were.
And looked directly into Joey’s eyes.
He was crouched on the far side of the SUV, and fast as a striking snake, his large, calloused hand fastened about my ankle.
I screamed. I hate screaming women. I read about them in novels all the time, and they always sound so wimpy. I joined their ranks without a second thought.
And when he began to pull me inexorably toward him, I screamed again. I also began kicking at his hand with my free foot, landing more blows on my own ankle than his hand. Once he hissed in pain, and I felt a surge of victory. Then I missed and the heel of my dress pump rasped over my ankle, shredding my stockings and drawing blood. He saw and smiled nastily.
Suddenly both ankles were imprisoned by those cold hands and I was pulled ignominiously from beneath the car on my stomach, my little black dress rutching up to my thighs, getting all wrinkled and dusty, certain to make Curt feel less than proud when he saw me. Not that it probably mattered. I was in grave danger of not making it to Intimations or anywhere else ever again.
I grabbed frantically at the front tire of the SUV as I slid past.
Oh, dear Lord, help!
I dug my nails into the rubber, wrapping my hands about the back of the tire where it met the hub. I managed to slow Joey down, and then, to my surprise and relief, bring him—or rather me—to a stop.
He released my legs, and I began to scramble back under the car, hope burgeoning. How premature. With daunting ease, he stood, leaned over and grabbed me about the waist.
My body jackknifed as he tucked me under one arm. The air rushed out of my lungs like I was a leaky balloon. My fingers lost their precarious hold on the tire, and I tore several nails as I scrabbled for another grip. I slammed the back of my head against the lower edge of the driver’s door, striking hard enough to paint a field of stars and red flashes behind my eyelids.
