His Frozen Heart

by Nancy Straight

  “Original was maroon. I’d keep it the same.”

  In my mind I had envisioned a canary yellow with black interior – I knew I’d seen one like that in a hot rod magazine, but making those kinds of changes to the interior would be way more than a hundred dollars.

  “Okay. When do I bring in the money?”

  “First day. Kravitz is expecting it.” Without another word, he stood up from our kitchen table, pulled his jacket off the back of his chair and began walking to the entryway.

  “Wait!” I couldn’t let him go back out dressed like that. It was too cold. He gave me a weird look, but I held up a finger, “Just give me a minute. Don’t go anywhere.”

  I ran to the mud room by the back door where there were more boots, mittens, gloves, hats, and scarves than Wal-Mart. I grabbed a black ski cap, a black sweatshirt, and a pair of black leather gloves, then sprinted back to where he waited by the front door.

  Handing them over, “Here, it’s freezing out there.”

  His eyes narrowed on me, “I’m not a charity case.” To think just a few hours ago I’d never seen his eyes, now I had the privilege of them glaring at me.

  “I didn’t think you were. Friends help each other out. Just say thank-you.”

  Dave cocked his head to the side as if studying me. I added, “It’s dropped twenty degrees in the last hour. It’s not as warm now as when you left your house. Take them, you can give them back if you don’t want to keep them.”

  He shook his head as if he intended to turn me down, but I grabbed his shoulder and said, “Look, if you’re going to do the body work on my car, I’m pretty sure you’re going to need all your fingers. Just take them.” I forced the pile of winter attire at him and walked back to the kitchen.

  Half an hour later when I bundled up to go outside to finish removing the snow from the steps, they had already been shoveled, and someone had put salt down to stave off any ice that might try to appear overnight. I started to find Dad to thank him when it hit me that Dad hadn’t left his home office all afternoon.

  A warm glow sparked inside me. Dave must have done it before he left. We still weren’t friends, but this was what put us on the path to being more than acquaintances.

  Chapter 8

  The air from my car’s vent was blazing as I stopped reminiscing about Dave in high school. Mr. Sanders was watching me from inside the store. I gave him a friendly wave as I eased my car out of the parking lot. I rested my wounded hand on the top of the steering wheel, using my good hand to shift and to drive. As soon as I turned onto the main street, the frigid outside air took my breath away, blowing straight at me through the hole in my windshield. The car’s heater was doing the best that it could, but my feet were in hell while I worried an icicle was forming on my nose. I had to scrunch down to try to see through the glass under the hole. To top it off, the sun was glaring through the cracks around the hole, making it almost impossible to see.

  Ten minutes later I pulled up outside Bodies by Brewer to see several sweet classic muscle cars parked in front, peeking out from the piles of snow around them. The two-story building was made of cinder block. I couldn’t guess how many times the blocks had been painted over, but the top coat was gray and was desperately trying to separate itself from the building. Two large roll-up doors staring at the street were closed. The sidewalk in front of the shop had been shoveled after the last snow storm, revealing cracks running its length. Large naked maple trees stood on either side of the building. A retaining wall was crumbling behind the building. The place reminded me of a scene from a Tim Burton movie.

  I had a clear view from my car of the door on the front of the building. The door had been painted the same Navy Warship Gray as the rest of the building with a single small window in its center. A closed blind blocked my view into the shop through the glass, but a sign hung in front of the blind indicating the place was open. Other than the glass in the door, the building didn’t have any windows on the first floor. It was just after 8 AM, but the place looked locked-up tight. Someone may have forgotten to turn the sign around before closing last night.

  I started to have second thoughts about being here alone. No one knew I was here, and Kendra hadn’t been embellishing anything. It felt like I should be wearing a bullet-proof vest if I were going to leave the safety of my car. Trash cans lined the curbs, several of them knocked over and in the street. A vacant building stood directly across from the garage; from the weathered paint on the door, it used to be a drycleaner. A large window to the right of its door was boarded up with a “keep out” sign in the corner. Bushes and trees sprinkled throughout the neighborhood were overgrown, and several of the sidewalks hadn’t been shoveled all season. Junker cars seemed to be collecting in one driveway several addresses down from the garage, and I couldn’t help but notice many of the nearby homes sported bars on their windows. Our neighborhood wasn’t the high-rent district by a long shot, but compared to this place, we were living on Boardwalk.

  I thought of Libby’s still body in a hospital room right now. She had been attacked in our home. The weight of what I was about to do crashed in on me – I needed to ask Dave how I could find the predator who had attacked Libby, left her for dead, and then came after me last night. Dave and I had never been that close, and despite my attempts to befriend him in high school – he remained a near stranger. A lot could happen in two years – he could have gone from an angry lonely teenager to a killer. He might even have been the one responsible for what happened to Libby.

  Dave had seemed happy to see me at Bank Shot yesterday evening. It was strange that he had wanted me to call him Mark, and he had seemed so charming and charismatic compared to the boy I had known. He had told Teddy to respect Libby, and it was obvious the two of them knew each other. It hit me in that moment – after Libby and I left, he could have been the one to tell Teddy where we lived – or at least where I lived. I’d seen it on television lots of times: without making a scene in public, the criminals find their mark, follow them home and attack.

  Had Dave had a hand in what happened last night?

  I sat in the warmth of my car, trying to decide what to do. I could just give the police Dave’s name and address. They were investigating. A flash of Libby in her hospital bed shot through my mind. Investigating may be the police’s job, but the Dave I knew would never have been mixed up in anything like what happened last night. Remembering how shy he was, if the police did come to ask him questions, he might shut down and tell them nothing.

  “Don’t be a baby, Candy.” I told myself aloud as I eased out of my car, as if the sound of my voice could calm all the crazy thoughts shooting through my head. A few feet from the gray door, I stopped and noticed there had been no traffic on the street and no passersby since I arrived. If anything happened to me inside, there would be no one to hear my cries for help. This was a bad idea.

  I should just call the police and tell them I remembered seeing Dave at the bar, and he knew Teddy. They could ask him what he knew. Doing this on my own, I might end up sharing a room with Libby at the hospital, which wouldn’t do either one of us any good.

  Sprinting back to my car, I reached for my car’s door handle when I heard a voice call from inside the shop through the open front door, “Candy? Candy, is that you?”

  I stood frozen behind my car. Crap. “Um, yeah. I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d say hi. It looked like you weren’t open.”

  “Naw, I’m open, come on in. I just unlocked the door.”

  Great, now if I didn’t go inside, what would he think? My hand rested on the cold door handle as thoughts assaulted my mind. Did he tell Teddy where I lived? Did he know the guy who tried to shoot me last night? Were they friends? Self-preservation took control of me, “Maybe some other time. I just remembered I have to be somewhere.”

  A disappointed look shown on his face, “Are you sure? I haven’t seen you in forever.”

  Forever? He saw me last night. Maybe he didn’t count see
ing me when he was pretending to be some other guy. My body went on high alert when I remembered how he wanted me to call him Mark. “Sorry, I’ll come back another time. I need to. . . go visit a friend – she’s expecting me.”

  I swung my heavy door open and crawled inside the still warm car. I turned the key in the ignition and the car instantly responded with its throaty rumble. Just as I was ready to pull away from the curb, I saw a finger poking through the bullet hole in my windshield, and I screamed like a little girl. What was he – an Olympic sprinter? How the heck did he get to my car so fast?

  Dave motioned for me to roll my window down. This was preferable to getting out of the car. I rolled it down a couple turns as I heard his disappointed voice say, “I thought this was a social call. Sorry. I can replace your windshield if you want.”

  My windshield? That was the least of my worries right now. Fear gripped me as I considered he might be partly responsible for putting the hole in it to begin with. I stammered, “It’s okay, I’ll take it to a glass place later.”

  Dave looked confused. He stood beside my car in the freezing cold wearing a thin black hoody over a gray t-shirt and jeans. I bet if I could see his feet through my car’s door, he would be wearing scuffed up black motorcycle boots, too. Dave squatted down next to my car, peering in through my partially rolled down window, and asked, “So, was this a social call or business?” With his face just inches from mine, my breath hitched. Dave’s looks had changed dramatically since high school. His hair was styled, trimmed neatly, his face was freshly shaven, and his deep brown eyes held mine. His cologne invited me to roll my window down further.

  Before my hormones could let me do something really stupid, I reminded myself that there was a good chance he was somehow involved with what had happened last night. I put my hormones in check and stopped surveying him.

  Dave’s voice sounded different, not the scared kid I’d forced to talk to me in high school, but a man. When I looked at his face, his eyes were staring back into mine. I couldn’t remember him ever holding my gaze for any length of time, and it was a full ten seconds before I realized I was the stalker watching him. I stammered, “Social, sort of. It’s not important. I need to go.” I pressed the clutch and put the car into gear, ready to pull away.

  In a pleading voice, Dave said, “Come on, five minutes. I’ll make hot chocolate.” He opened my car door in a gentlemanly way, trying to coax me out of the car.

  I forced a smile, not wanting to give away just how frightened I was to be here. There was no one else that I could see inside. Going in there with him would be a mistake. Anything could happen. For all I knew, he had a wood chipper out back to dispose of bodies on the premises.

  I tried to tug the door closed from his hand, when he asked, “What, you got something against hot chocolate?” I was prepared to snarl in his direction when I saw he had the brightest, widest smile I’d ever seen him wear. Dave Brewer knew how to smile? Even when I’d forced him to talk to me in high school, no matter how funny the story was I was telling him, he barely ever smirked. Here, now, it looked like he was practicing for a Crest commercial.

  It disarmed me. Not just his smile, but his choice of words – the same thing I had said to him the day he told me he was going to restore the outside of my car. I couldn’t help but smile back at him. “Nothing against hot chocolate; I just forgot I had to be somewhere. I’m late.”

  Still holding my door open, peering down at me he offered, “If you’re already late, what’s another five minutes?”

  I didn’t know what to do. My mind was telling me to get out of here, but something about this Dave in front of me – was a draw. All those times I’d only ever seen his guarded shell, I was sure, somewhere deep down, this Dave existed. He looked and acted like a different person, as if he finally decided he wanted to be a part of the human race.

  I caved, cutting the ignition. “Five minutes, then I have to go.” I grabbed my phone and put it in my pocket, so it would be at the ready if I needed it.

  I followed Dave inside a tiny reception area which smelled like lemons. The inside was a stark contrast to the dilapidated exterior. Shiny white floors glared up at me from below, without a speck of dust on them. The smell of lemon permeated the air, not the light lemony scent from an air freshener, but powerful lemon from an industrial cleaner. On the desk was a fine leather appointment book, opened to today’s date with very neat handwriting annotating appointments sporadically throughout the day. A two burner coffee pot set in the corner, one with hot water and one patiently waiting for the morning coffee to be brewed.

  Dave took two white mugs from a cup tree and set them on a white marble countertop by the brewer. He ripped open a couple packages of instant hot chocolate, added the water and stirred them, then handed a cup to me. “I don’t have any toast to offer you, but there are some fresh bagels and cream cheese in the refrigerator.”

  My stomach lurched at his offer, my last meal having been the dried up chicken wings at Bank Shot. I shook my head to decline, but he took one out, ripped it in half and handed a piece to me. The toast reference meant he must have been having the same flashback I’d had on my drive over. I tore a piece of the bagel off and let it melt in my mouth.

  As I looked around, I wasn’t sure what to make of the immaculately clean showroom. Any garage I had ever been to had been – grungy. “Um, what kind of garage is this?”

  “Restorations mainly. Sometimes I do a little repair, but most of the cars that come through here are on their last leg. It’s my job to get them off life support and back to their glory days.”

  “This place is yours?”

  “Yeah, well, mostly. I have a silent partner who helped me get it off the ground.”

  I tensed when I remembered Teddy had called Dave “Boss” last night. I could guess who his silent partner might be as my fingers began shaking in earnest. I wrapped them more tightly around the mug to try to calm them, and ended up spilling some hot chocolate onto the pristine floor. “I’m sorry.” Without a moment’s hesitation, Dave grabbed a napkin near the brewer and wiped up my dribbles on the floor.

  I set the mug down. My fingers absently traced the smooth surface of the marble countertop, as I plied for more information. I wondered if he would own up to who his silent partner was. “Anyone I know?”

  Dave’s smile stretched across his face, “The only person other than you who ever gave me more than a dirty look in high school.”

  His answer caught me off guard. Confused, I asked, “Kravitz?”

  “Yeah, he helps me out on the weekends and when there are breaks during the school year, sometimes even on snow days.”

  My fingers seemed to like his answer and picked the mug back up. I brought the hot chocolate to my lips. I couldn’t remember the last time I had had a cup. It was sort of a luxury item; when it came to groceries, Libby and I could rarely afford to buy anything like this. He interrupted my silent pity party by setting his mug on the counter. Dave motioned for me to take a seat in the leather chair behind the desk and perched himself on the desk next to me. “So, what are you doing these days? College?”

  “Yes. Here in town.” Until he mentioned it, I’d completely blown off the fact that I had school today. It hadn’t even been twelve hours since the attack last night at the station. If necessary I could bring in a copy of the newspaper tomorrow. No way would my professors give me a hard time for skipping today.

  He leaned back against the wall and confessed, “I had always pictured you as a sorority girl. I bet you live on campus and are the life of all the parties.”

  Was that a slam? Trying not to take offense, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Dave wrapped his fingers around his mug innocently, “Oh, come on. With your looks and personality, you’re bound to be pretty popular on campus.”

  “Okay, I’m not sure if I should be offended or thanking you for a compliment.”

  Another bright smile formed when he said, “Say thank-you.�
� For the first time since I walked in, Dave’s eyes left mine. He stood up from the counter, walked to the sink, washed then dried his cup, and hung it back on the cup tree. As I watched him, I wondered if he had grown since high school, then it hit me: he looked taller because he was standing up straight. How had I never noticed how tall he was? He was well over six feet. While I was ogling him, he caught me off guard as he confessed sheepishly, “I always had the biggest crush on you.”

  Who was this guy? What happened to the introverted loner who couldn’t even make eye contact with me? I laughed, “A crush? You’re not serious.”

  He turned and looked at me, his voice sincere, “I am serious. You were out of my league back then.” His smile wavered when he added, “You still are.”

  The warmth of a blush spread on my cheeks – not the reaction I would have expected. “I don’t know. I don’t own my own business or anything. You look like you’re doing okay for yourself. What else have you been doing since graduation?”

  His cheeks darkened as his eyes hit the floor. “Not much. Working mainly. I’ve gone to the high school a few times to help one of Kravitz’s students. He’s got one kid who reminds me a lot of me. He’s laser focused on cars, but doesn’t have the most supportive home life. He was in the same spot as I was: plenty of talent, no money. I found an old Charger that he’s restoring now.”

  “That’s pretty cool of you. Is it for one of your customers?”

  “No. I rescued it from a farmer’s barn and hadn’t gotten around to the restoration. When I found it, it had been buried under a pile of rusty equipment, bird droppings, and two decades worth of dust. The kid loves it. He doesn’t know it, but I’m signing the title over to him as a graduation present.”

  “Wow, that’s pretty awesome of you.”