The Big Cat Nap (15 page)

Herb explained what happened, then Harry piped up, “I think it’s the alternator.”

Victor listened. Terry, who didn’t know Harry, discounted what the attractive woman said.

“If Harry didn’t farm, she’d be working for you, Victor.” Herb smiled.

“Given what’s happened to us, I could use a good mechanic.” Victor shook his head.

“It has to be a shock and a strain for you, Victor. I’m sorry.”

“Thanks, Reverend. The best thing I know to do is to keep working. And I go to each of my shops at least once a week. It helps to get away. Terry here can’t. I think it’s harder for the boys.”

“I want to know what the sheriff is doing,” Terry grumbled.

“The best he can.” Harry quickly defended Rick and, by extension, Cooper.

“You’re right, Harry,” Victor agreed. “It takes time, and even if they know who did it or have a good idea, they still have to gather enough evidence to run them in.”

Harry looked at Terry, who had a smear of grease on his forehead. “I guess you guys are all pretty close.”

“We have a few beers. Race our cars.” Terry shrugged.

An idea occurred to Harry. Like most of her ideas involving curiosity about others, it would come to a bad end.

That evening she called Cooper, told her about Herb’s truck, and asked her if she could run over the VIN number.

“I can, but that’s not going to tell you anything,” Cooper said.

“Why not?”

“It will tell me and CarMax, for instance, if the car has been in a wreck. Won’t tell me anything about the repairs, which is what you’re after since his truck was just repaired. Right?”

“Right. But surely there are repair records.”

“Only insurance companies can access those.” Cooper paused a minute. “From a law-enforcement perspective, we don’t care about repairs. We want to know if the title, the registration, the license, is current, expired, et cetera, and we’d like an accident record.”

“But what if the accident is caused by a fault in the vehicle?”

“That’s not my job.”

“Hmm.”

“Harry.” Cooper’s voice rose. “I don’t know where you’re heading with this. I’m kind of afraid to find out.”

E
ver want to do this?” Harry sat in the empty bleachers with BoomBoom, her childhood friend, competitor, sometimes enemy, and friend again. They were alone at the Central Virginia Hot Rod Track over in Augusta County, next to Albemarle County.

“I’d love it. Alicia, on the other hand, would be apoplectic if I started drag racing.”

Alicia Palmer, a former movie star, was BoomBoom’s partner in life—a big surprise to both of them, but it was working out just fine.

“You could use her Mustang.”

“Harry, she’d kill me.” BoomBoom laughed. “That’s her baby. Funny, she has the money to buy any car in the world, including those gorgeous Bentleys, but she wanted that metallic candy-apple-red Mustang.”

“It is pretty cool. Soup that baby up and I bet you’d win some of these races. Top fuel dragsters spend over two hundred grand on those things. ’Course, you wouldn’t need to spend that much at this level. Could just fire up what I call a door slammer.”

BoomBoom wondered how the dragsters managed, given the expense of low-level racing. “Even if it’s a door slammer, every penny goes into their rod. The ReNu guys weren’t rich.”

“That’s what Cooper said about Nick Ashby. All his money got poured into his STI. Raced it as a sports compact. After the police
picked over and through his car, they gave it to his mother. What a little gem that car is. Tons of power, plus it starts in all weather, goes through snow, and, being a Subaru, lasts forever.”

“Maybe Nick’s mother will sell it to you.”

A light shone in Harry’s eyes. “Oh, God, to cruise around in a torpedo with four wheels. Ever wonder how you and I wound up being gearheads?”

BoomBoom shrugged. “Actually, no. Remember in our junior year when the boys took over that straight stretch from the old Del Monte plant to the train depot? Two in the morning and all of us stood guard to watch out for the cops.”

“Fab.” Harry grinned.

“What was really fab was, after they all ran their heats, I took out the old Trans Am and just smoked them. Ha.” She slapped her thigh.

“Gallop down Memory Lane.”
Pewter, on the bleachers with Mrs. Murphy and Tucker, sniffed.

“Makes them happy.”
Tucker lay down, head on paws.

“I suppose, but the dumb stuff they talk about: drag racing, who got their ears pierced—
”

“In ancient Egypt, cats had pierced ears and wore gold earrings,”
Mrs. Murphy interrupted.

“You’re making that up,”
Pewter replied.
“Although we were gods—then again, we still are.”

“I’m not making it up. Mom has pictures in one of her history books of a cat statue with earrings.”
Mrs. Murphy looked out over the quarter-mile track.

“I wouldn’t want to be a god,”
the corgi wisely stated.
“You’d never be real, never truly one of the pack. I want to belong to my pack, which”
—a long sigh followed this—
“I guess is Harry, Fair, and”
—another long pause—
“you two.”

Mrs. Murphy kissed the dog, licking her nose.

“Cats don’t belong in packs.”
Pewter thrust out her chest.

“Well, you can stay by yourself, then,”
the tiger quickly said, as she bounded down the bleachers to follow the two women who’d started walking the track.

“Did you know this place was this well organized?” Harry asked the beautiful BoomBoom.

“No. I figured it was just a quarter-mile asphalt strip. Obviously the owners sank some bucks into this.”

Both women observed the Christmas-tree lights for each driver’s lane. The top two were small amber lights; below these in a straight line were three large amber lights, then a green, and last a red light. It really was a mess of lights. A high control tower on the side afforded a clear view of everything. It resembled a small control tower at an airport, except it was built of wood.

“Let’s go peek inside the tower.” Harry ran to the stairs, taking them two at a time. Putting her hands around the edges of her eyes, she peered through the window in the door. The tower top was all windows, 360 degrees.

BoomBoom bounded up behind her. “It’s a panel like a big computer keyboard, kinda—headphones with a little speaker on one side, lots of switches. Two seats, so two people work this. The track lights have to be automatic, so they must set them off from up here.”

“Good P.A. system. And those huge clusters of night lights like at baseball games have to cost a fortune!” Harry exclaimed. “Anything electrical, computer-driven, isn’t cheap.”

“How about the salaries? I expect there are people groundside who are connected to the tower. There’s so much potential for danger—I mean, one blown tire as you’re hauling down that track. Can you imagine the cost of the insurance policy?” BoomBoom shook her head.

“When we were in grade school, before all this technology, wasn’t there a death here?”

“Wasn’t at this track but at the old dead-end road near what’s now the Augusta County offices. The car blew up; they couldn’t get the driver out.” BoomBoom grimaced. “Those days it was just guys getting together and racing. The sheriff’s men left them alone, because they weren’t creating traffic problems and the road was abandoned.” She thought a moment. “ ’Course, that eventually caused problems. As the road deteriorated, cracks and potholes appeared. I think that’s why the racers finally left. I don’t know who built this track. Must be successful, though—still here.”

“Coop’s investigating the track, because Nick raced here. So do some other mechanics at ReNu. She’s not much of a gearhead, so she asks me questions. You know what was weird? The first guy who was killed, Walt, had photos of orphan cars with hoods that stretched into next week. Well, draped over engines, hoods, the trunk, or lolling inside those great leather interiors—tops down, of course—were women, uh, tops down.”

Peals of laughter rolled out of BoomBoom. “You’re kidding. Car porn?”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly porn. Think of it more as a deep appreciation of metallic and feminine curves.”

They came back down, the wooden steps reverberating with their footfalls. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker awaited them.

“Would a calendar of naked men and great old cars turn you on?” BoomBoom punched her old buddy on the arm.

“I don’t know. Depends on the man. Depends on the car. Some hunk splayed over the hood of a 1961 Corvette would catch my eye.”

“Fifty-seven Thunderbird,” BoomBoom fired back.

“Pervert.”

“Look who’s talking.” BoomBoom laughed, then became more serious. “Harry, curiosity killed the cat.” The blonde looked down at the tiger. “Sorry, Murphy. Harry, I know you found Walt’s body, and this other guy worked with him.” Harry nodded as BoomBoom continued, “I wonder if drag racing isn’t connected to Nick’s death. Don’t know about Walt—you said he didn’t race. But seems to me all of the mechanics at ReNu knew about racing. This drag track is small local one but look how much money went into it,” BoomBoom concluded.

“What do you mean?” Harry asked.

“People look for patterns, connections. The first connection is, both men worked at ReNu, both good mechanics. The second is this place. And if they find bountiful women pimped on cars on Nick’s computer, well, that will be the third, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that those ties are crucial. They may be, they may not, but what I’m trying to tell you is, be careful. Two men are dead. Let’s not add one woman.”

“I’ll protect her,”
Tucker barked.

Pewter remained on the bleachers. She enjoyed looking down at them.

“Yeah.” Harry paused a long time. “I did nearly get you killed once years ago. I’ll behave.”

The two women had apprehended a killer inside a building. Although the murderer had a gun and had fired at will, both women had remained in command of themselves.

“I hope so. Now, the next question is, when do you want to watch the drag races? I know you’re going to do it, and I’d better come with you.”

“Friday.”

L
ooking up at Dr. Nelson Yarbrough’s incredible silver hair, Harry, mouth wide open, gave thanks that the former UVA quarterback chose dentistry as his profession. He was so careful as he leaned over her. She’d chipped a tooth trying to dismantle the hydraulic pump on her 2750 John Deere.

As the good dentist patiently worked, he asked in his rumbly voice, “I’ve seen a lot of teeth, Harry, and yours are good ones, but I’ve never known anyone to chip a tooth on a tractor.”

Once his hands were out of her mouth, she replied, “John Deere. Good steel.”

“Mmm-hmm.” He smiled, getting back to work as Beverly, his assistant, handed him the bonding agent.

Nelson and his wife, Sandra, also a dentist, had in their youth been one of Albemarle County’s more glamorous couples. The years had not leeched away their good looks; however, now the kindness shone through. The pair, along with able assistance from Alice Hill and JoAnne Burkholder—a former county commissioner for Greene County—kept patients happy. Amy Doss and Holly Cox kept their teeth clean. One could tell a great deal about a business by the attitude of the people who worked there. This was the only dental office Harry had ever walked in to where the first thing one heard was raucous laughter.

She did recall being in Larry Hund’s office and witnessing a pretty teenager being dumbfounded when confronted by the dentist’s movie-star looks. Charlottesville seemed to specialize in interesting dentists.

Once out of the office, her tooth looking good as new, Harry trotted up the outside wooden stairs to Blue Ridge Embroidery. Evan Gruber was coming down.

“Morning, Evan. Good to see you again.”

“Harry, what brings you here?”

“Picking up some T-shirts for St. Luke’s. Flag Day party. It’s a big annual do. The kids love it; I do, too.”

Evan rubbed his chin, covered with a fashionable two-day stubble. Fashionable though it might be, it certainly gave his girlfriend brush burn.

“Isn’t that the day you put flags in the cemetery?”