Mahoney's Camaro

by Michael Clark

  “As long as you don’t send us piggies to market,” said Mahoney. He threw in a trio of hog snorts, quickly imitated by the crew.

  Ada rolled her eyes. She brought out the tray of Biddy’s warmed bannock from the oven. As the plates were wiped clean with the bread, Mahoney noticed that Biddy hadn’t come back in. He got up from his chair to look outside. She was standing in the driveway, leaning against the driver’s door of the Hot Rod. He looked closer. She was talking. Talking to someone who wasn’t — or maybe was — in the car. “Shit.”

  “Shit what?” said Fiddler. “Is Gramma okay?” He started to get up from the table.

  “Yeah, left my lights on. I’ll go turn ’em off.” There were plenty of signs along Manitoba’s highways advising drivers to turn on their headlamps for added safety, a tip that Mahoney figured was believable enough to exit the house and check on Biddy without someone tagging along. He grabbed his half-eaten piece of bannock from the table.

  Mahoney exited through the shop’s side door. Biddy was chatting up a storm. No one had to tell him who she was talking to. Mahoney thought about how to play it. For all he knew, Biddy talked to dearly departed relatives on a weekly basis, so it was worth a shot. “Hey, Biddy, who you talking to out here?”

  “Oh, just talking to Heather. I was going to bring her some stew, but I don’t think she’s too hungry.”

  Mahoney looked inside. Heather Price must have been hiding, most likely in the Supertuner. “Uh, that’s nice. So, what did you two, uh, talk about?”

  “Mostly about your wallet.”

  “My wallet?”

  Biddy gave him a crooked smile with her squint. “Sounds like some lady gave you quite the show last night for a lotta money.”

  His jaw dropped. Mahoney had just learned two things about the spectral resident inside his Hot Rod: she wasn’t gone, and she wasn’t exclusive. She had played a game of spectral hide-and-seek with the medium, probably laughing her ghost head off about the whole thing after Mahoney locked up the garage for the night. No amount of burnt twigs, carny spells, and stacks of fives and twenties were going to get her to leave the Hot Rod. Sweat was starting to run down his back. Who the fuck is she going to make friends with next? What’s she going to tell them? He grabbed on to the coolest composure he could muster. “So, uh, Biddy. Did, uh, did Heather . . .”

  “What about her?”

  “So, like, she’s still in there, right?”

  “Yup,” said Biddy. “She’s still in there. Said something about going home.”

  Home. He wasn’t any closer to getting the answer. “Biddy, what does Heather mean by home.”

  Biddy started to hobble back towards the house. Maybe she didn’t hear me. Mahoney stared at the empty Hot Rod. He kept staring inside as he called to the eldest Fiddler on the property. “Hey, Biddy?”

  “Yawp?”

  “Did Heather say what she left in her apartment?”

  “Nothing.”

  Mahoney turned to look at her. “Nothing?”

  Biddy squinted at Mahoney, shielding her eyes from the noon-day sun with her left hand as she steadied herself with her cane. “Nothing in the house. She said it’s in the car.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  June 23, 1985

  7:52 p.m.

  The Falcon was finally running. Petkau had to search the inner crevasses of his tool cabinets for the four pins needed to hold his Thunderbolt-style fiberglass hood in place. The car was still a long way from an oversized trophy at the annual World of Wheels car show at the convention centre. It needed paint, interior, a matching set of wheels, and a rear bumper that wasn’t bent. For now, it was a driver. The crew took turns putting it through its paces down Highway 44. They worried that the Cleveland block was overheating, even though the gauges said otherwise. The culprit was the engine’s tight fit. Petkau wouldn’t have any interior heat issues on cool summer cruise nights.

  The late hour and another meal from Biddy and Ada had sapped the energy of the crew. Fiddler still had to drive his mother and grandmother back to Peguis. Scheer was beat. Petkau would probably be up till late, continuing his tweaks and checks on the Falcon. Mahoney waved heartily at the crew and the two extra Fiddlers as he backed out of the driveway.

  He took the slow-and-easy cruise home, choosing to tune into the Hot Rod’s small-block song instead of the Supertuner. He checked his rearview mirror often, wondering if Heather Price would make an appearance. She must have taken the night off.

  When Mahoney backed into his driveway a little after nine, Diana was relaxing in a better lawn chair from her open hatchback, sipping on a wine cooler that must have come from the Playmate cooler next to her. He had told her he’d be home by eight-ish. Mahoney waved as he reversed to the garage door. Mahoney could see that Diana was in the mood as she approached, judging from the lack of bra and the half-buttoned Daisy Dukes in danger of slipping off her hips. She closed the overhead door, then did the same to the side door. Mahoney watched her stroll towards him as he leaned on the Hot Rod’s nose. She pounced. They squeezed, pulled, and bit till it hurt just enough to still please. Mahoney traded positions, yanking down her Dukes as he lifted her up onto the Camaro’s hood. He plunged into her with pleasurable ease. “How you doin’?”

  Diana wrapped her legs around Mahoney’s torso as he thrust. “Pretty . . . good . . . now!” The position wasn’t as comfortable as originally thought. Less than a minute later, she pushed Mahoney off and invited him back into the rear as she steadied herself against the front of the Camaro. Mahoney figured that it could have been because of the heat from the hood, the engine still going through its cooling ticks. Judging by the noises that weren’t the engine cooling down, the new position was anything but a mood killer. That is until the noises changed. The first change was the lack of noises coming from Diana. She then started to make new noises that could have been mistaken as pleasurable if they were heard through the paper-thin walls of a cheap hotel room. But from where Mahoney stood, the new noises sounded wrong. Mahoney stopped. Diana’s noises did not. She pushed herself off the Camaro, backing up quickly into the closed garage door, her Daisy Dukes still around her ankles. Mahoney looked back to the Hot Rod. Heather Price was looking out of the windshield, in her full-scare best, with extra silt, full whiteout eyes, and flowing hair that looked like a cut-and-perm from the House of Medusa. Mahoney calmly hoisted up his pants as Diana exhibited both cower and confusion. He decided that introductions were in order. “Diana, Miss Heather Price. Heather, Miss Diana McRae.”

  Diana continued to cower at the garage door. The words didn’t come easy, but she managed to push out a few. “What . . . the fuck . . . is THAT?”

  Mahoney continued his matter-of-facts as he knew them. “That is Heather Price.”

  Diana inched closer, hitching up her shorts. “Who . . . the fuck . . . is Heather Price?”

  “She’s the one they found in the car.”

  “Which car?”

  “This car.” As soon as Mahoney said it, he realized that he’d never got around to explaining to Diana the events surrounding the arrival of the donor shell for the Hot Rod. “She, uhm . . . they found her, uh . . . handcuffed to the steering wheel.”

  Diana’s look was now 60 percent fear and 40 percent disgust. “Wait a minute. Are . . . are you saying I’ve been riding around in a car that someone . . . that she killed herself in?”

  Mahoney thought about it before he answered. “Well, I’m not a hundred percent —”

  “A hundred percent what?”

  “That she killed herself.”

  “And that’s why this . . . this thing . . . is sitting in your car?”

  Mahoney was starting to get frustrated. He looked at Diana, then back at Heather, still wearing her Halloween. He spoke to Heather first. “Hey, could you turn off the Nightmare on Elm Street for a minute?”

  Diana wat
ched wide-eyed as the image that Mahoney knew would forever haunt her dreams melted away into an attractive redhead. As Diana tried to process the transformation, something happened that Mahoney had yet to experience, so much so that it put him on immediate edge; Heather opened the driver’s door of the Hot Rod. He watched as the first red boot contacted the floor, then the other. Heather raised herself up out of the Camaro, with her right hand on the top of the door. Mahoney couldn’t see what the left hand was holding until Heather moved out from behind the driver’s door; her fingers were holding up her acid-washed jeans. She walked to the front of the Hot Rod.

  Diana broke the silence, using Mahoney as a shield. “What . . . the FUCK . . . is going on?”

  Heather looked at Mahoney, slightly perturbed. “So, you haven’t told her anything?”

  Mahoney rolled his eyes. He motioned to Diana. “Does she look like I told her anything?”

  Heather tried to peek around Mahoney to get a better look. Diana was still visibly upset, her face a mess of tears and running makeup. Heather tried to lighten the mood. “You should probably spring for the waterproof stuff, instead of that cheap Zeller’s shit you got on.”

  Mahoney saw Diana’s eyes go wide. For a moment, Diana looked like she might retaliate, but the fight within her calmed down quickly. Mahoney figured that it might have been the realization that going toe-to-toe with someone from the afterworld could have consequences that a Band-Aid couldn’t fix. Mahoney looked at Heather’s left hand. “So, what’s up with your jeans?”

  Heather looked down at the wad of acid-wash denim that was bunched up in her hand. She looked back at Mahoney. “These jeans . . .”

  Heather unfolded the wad of denim, holding the jeans up with both hands. She held the waistband of the jeans in front of her. The image looked like those on the weekly women’s magazines that were displayed near the cashier lanes at the neighbourhood Safeway. There was at least eight inches of space between Heather’s torso and the waistband of the jeans. “These aren’t my fat pants. They’re —”

  Mahoney finished her realization. “Somebody else’s.”

  Heather looked at Mahoney. “Yeah. Somebody else’s.” She looked down at her red boots. “I can’t remember the last time I wore these.” She secured the pants again as she examined the sweater. She peeked down the front of it. She held her pants open to peek down them. “Uhm, where’s my gitch?”

  “What gitch?”

  Heather checked again. “My gitch. Bra, panties.” She looked inside the Camaro as Mahoney and Diana watched. She walked to the back of the car. “Are they in the trunk?”

  “There was nothing like that in the trunk,” said Mahoney. “This is all you’ve had since you . . . since you, uhm, arrived.”

  Heather kept looking at her ensemble. Then it hit her. “I didn’t dress myself!” She looked at Mahoney and Diana, their looks still puzzled as Heather became more elated. “I didn’t dress myself! Someone else did! I DIDN’T KILL MYSELF!” Heather raised her arms in victory, jumping up and down as her jeans hit the floor around her ankles. The bottom of her sweater covered most of her, when she wasn’t jumping up and down. “I DIDN’T KILL MYSELF! I KNEW IT! I FUCKING KNEW IT!”

  Mahoney and Diana watched as Heather continued her celebration. About a minute later, Heather stopped jumping. She pulled up her pants, bunching the extra denim into her left hand. She steadied herself against the Camaro with her right hand. She looked at the pair, then asked the question that neither of them could know the answer to. “So who killed me?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” said Mahoney. He remembered what Biddy had said at Petkau’s. “Heather, Biddy said you told her that there was something in the car, something you need to get, uhm, home. What is it?”

  Heather thought about it. “The car . . .”

  Mahoney asked again. “Heather, what’s in the car?”

  “I don’t, I mean I know it’s . . . something is in the car. I need it to get home. I just don’t—”

  Diana finished for her, “You don’t know what it is.”

  Heather nodded in agreement. “I don’t know what it is. All I know is that it’s in the car. I need something in the car to get home. I don’t know how I know that. It’s just . . . just, there.”

  Mahoney asked the question that had been nagging him ever since he had heard Heather mention the destination. “Heather, where is home?”

  Heather looked at him. “It’s not here.”

  Chapter Thirty

  June 23, 1985

  10:12 p.m.

  Mahoney slid the barrel bolts into place on the side door of the garage. Once the door was padlocked, he walked over to the open hatch of Diana’s EXP. She was leaning against the driver’s side of the car, rocking back and forth, her arms folded in front of her in some form of self-hug. Mahoney wasn’t sure if she needed or wanted his reassurance. The late Heather Price had calmed down considerably after the realization that she hadn’t put herself behind the wheel of the Camaro on the night of her passing. Someone else had, someone who had felt that the action was necessary, someone who had dressed her in whatever was handy, including a pair of jeans that might not have even been for a woman. Someone who had no idea that Heather Price never went commando, even in her comfy clothes. Someone who didn’t know that she hated the green sweater, that the red boots always gave her blisters. Someone who was in a hurry. Someone who wanted her dead. Someone who didn’t know, or care, that she was still alive.

  Heather had returned to the confines of the Hot Rod cabin, slowly fading from view as Diana and Mahoney watched.

  “That must be how a ghost goes to sleep,” Diana had whispered. Mahoney could tell Diana had plenty of thoughts cascading through her grey matter. Maybe everything she had ever been taught, believed, or perceived about the afterlife had been tossed firmly on its head. Mahoney decided to give her a nudge. “Hey . . .”

  Mahoney reached for her, slowly, cautiously, but surely. She hesitated, eventually moving to the safety of his arms. He dispensed with something resembling an apology. “I didn’t mean to freak you out like that.”

  Diana’s voice was muffled against his chest. “You didn’t freak me out, but she sure as hell did.”

  “I should have told you about her.”

  “I would have said you were nuts and lost your number.”

  “That would have been fair.” Mahoney rubbed her back as they rocked. About a minute later, something stopped Diana. She pulled back enough to look Mahoney straight on. “So, uhm, you two haven’t . . .”

  “Haven’t what?”

  “You know.”

  “No, I don’t think I do.”

  She went for blunt. “You haven’t fucked her have you?”

  Mahoney looked at her — you’re nuts written all over his face. “She’s a ghost! I don’t even think that’s possible!”

  “But what if it was possible? Would you fuck her?”

  Mahoney had to think about it for a moment. Heather Price would have been more age appropriate. The flowing red hair trick was pretty cool. Diana snapped her fingers at him. “You want to, don’t you?”

  “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

  “It’s not like you’d be cheating. I mean, she is dead and all.”

  “This is getting weird.” Mahoney turned away from Diana, walking slowly down the side of her car. She followed, cutting off his escape. “It’s not like it’s that hemophilia stuff or anything.”

  Mahoney blinked. “I think you mean necrophilia.”

  “Oh, so you have thought about it!”

  Mahoney let out a hard exhale. “Look. This is all really weird shit, and I’m still trying to figure it all out. Biddy . . .”

  “Who’s Biddy again?”

  “Fiddler’s grandma. She figured out that Heather was still in the car after Madame Marie�
�”

  “Madame who?”

  “Marie, reads tarot cards and stuff. She did her witch doctor shit on the Camaro, said that Heather was gone, then she came right back again this morning. Biddy starts talking to her at Howard’s place, says Heather wants to go home, just like she told me the other day. Maybe it’s Heaven, maybe it’s Hell, maybe it’s the fucking loony bin for all I know. Wherever she’s going, she needs something, says it’s in the car. That’s the problem.”

  “Why is that a problem?”

  “Heather’s car is at work, the storage compound. I towed it there the other day. I didn’t even know it was hers until I dropped it on the ground and brought in the paperwork.”

  “Isn’t that place twenty-four hours?”

  “Well, yeah, but that doesn’t mean I can start poking around. At the least, they’d can my ass.”

  Diana pondered the dilemma a little more. She looked over at her EXP. “What if we had a better way in?”

  June 23, 1985

  11:37 p.m.

  Jerry Waller was checking his accounting for the night, parked in front of the Patricia Hotel on Main Street. The crack was a hit, especially with the hardcore clientele that used the Main Street hotels as their shooting and smoking gallery. He had taken a run through the Manitoba Housing projects in North Kildonan and planned to visit the St. Vital properties when the next call to the south end came in. He had rolled up to the Patricia after outfitting most of the roomies at the New Occidental Hotel with fresh rocks. The only initial complaint from his customers was their lack of pipes, though Waller knew that there was nothing more ingenious than a junkie in need of a fix. He hoped to hit the Leland by one, the McLaren by two. He still had to keep tabs on a couple of his regular girls at the Savoy. He wanted to take a run at the one that Larry Ballendine had been favouring, the one he kept saying was crazy tight.