Dead Man’s Switch

by Tammy Kaehler

  Ten pairs of eyes swiveled to me.

  “Kate?” Ian invited.

  “He’s right. I wouldn’t be out there if I didn’t know I could win. Call it ego, confidence, arrogance—whatever. That’s what I’m working with. There are things we can control: driving, pit strategy, tire wear. The things out of our control? They’re infuriating. Tire blowout. A yellow just after you’ve made a green-flag stop. But someone else ending your day? That’s the worst, because it’s not an act of God like a tire, but an act of someone’s stupidity that’s killed the win.”

  “Speaking of which,” Mr. Active-Fit said to Jack. “You’re sure you won’t have the same problems the Viper had? And the other cars the last couple of races?”

  Jack acted quickly to reassure the people who paid lots of money to see his cars finish the race. “We’re doing everything possible. Everything’s being checked three, four, five times by experts. I won’t lie to you and say we know exactly what it is and how to fix it, but everyone in the ALMS is working on it.”

  Mr. Purley leaned forward to look at me. “You really think you can win the race on Monday, Kate?”

  “Sure. The entire team’s good enough. And anything can happen.”

  “Just look at what happened today.” Benny’s expression was devilish.

  Mrs. Active-Fit had a question. “But, Kate, won’t it be strange being the only woman?”

  I smiled, used to this one. “Not really. It matters less in this sport than any other.”

  She and the car wax guy looked confused, so I elaborated. “In football or hockey,” I nodded to Mr. Active-Fit, “the athlete’s size is everything. You wear sized equipment and your mass helps you advance or defend. In racing, Mike and I wear the same size car. Once you get into that car, we’re all the same in bulk and power. Racing is about concentration. About always driving the correct line through a corner, driving the car at the edge of its capabilities, more than it’s about sheer muscle mass. Sure, the C6.R is heavy—heavier than most cars—and you can feel that, but it’s really well-balanced—besides, I have to manipulate it, not carry it. It’s more about concentration, hand-eye coordination, and general fitness than the ability to bench press your own body weight.”

  “What can you bench, Katie?” Ian smirked.

  “My body weight,” I shot back, making everyone laugh.

  “You’re a pistol,” Ian said to me, then turned to the rest of the group. “And she’s right. Aside from Mike here, you notice how most drivers are short and small? Kate’s size? Hell, my size, since I’m only a couple inches taller. You’ve got to be smart more than you’ve got to have brawn or mass. And don’t go thinking this isn’t a ‘real’ sport either, I’m fed up with that attitude.”

  Confusion was apparent on the face of the tan-themed car wax guy. “I’m not sure I understand. But I’m sorry, I’m new to this.”

  Ian was off and running, gesturing with his arms around the server distributing our soups and salads. “See, as a former driver, I know whereof I speak. Here’s where you have to start. Imagine holding something—your salad plate there—at arm’s length in front of you. Not so hard, right? For one, two, three hours at a time? In an enclosed space that’s 120 degrees? At 150 miles per hour? Then, the G-forces. Your head and helmet weigh twelve or thirteen pounds. You’re going around a corner at speed—hell, in the Climbing Turn here you can pull three Gs in these cars. Suddenly your neck has to hold thirty-six to thirty-nine pounds upright. And your torso has to keep three times its normal weight from flopping around.”

  He took a bite of salad and poked his fork in the innocent questioner’s direction. “I’ve seen the toughest, fittest driver climbing out of the car bruised and battered after a two-hour stint—and exhausted. It’s hard work.”

  The tan guy was cowed. “I didn’t mean to—”

  Jack took pity on him. “No, of course you didn’t. It’s just Ian’s favorite soapbox.” Jack lifted his glass in Ian’s direction.

  “No lad, hell, I wasn’t yelling at you.” Ian shook his head. “But I can’t tell you how many times we get comments about ‘the drivers aren’t really athletes.’ Just because it’s a sport where the short and lean ones aren’t at a disadvantage.”

  “They mostly have the advantage.” Jack topped off the wineglasses he could reach and passed the bottle to the rest of us. “It’s almost harder for the really big guys, right, Mike?” Mike was taller than both me and Ian—close to six feet. But anything taller than my own five-foot-three seemed way up there.

  Mike poured more wine. “It’s like airplane seats. Kate’s got more room in them than I do. My knees are about in my armpits. Easier for her to get to things in the car than for me. Easier for her to get in and out of that small window opening.” He flashed lots of teeth, his hair flopping around his face. “Wouldn’t trade it though.”

  “What about you, Jack,” asked Mr. Purley. “Did you ever drive?”

  “Tried. Couldn’t ever get comfortable, just didn’t fit. So I started running things instead.”

  “You didn’t ever race?” Mrs. Purley spoke for the first time all evening.

  “Go-karts, when I was little. But I grew pretty quickly.”

  “And you come from a racing family,” Ian commented. “Your dad raced?”

  “Dad, three uncles, and my grandfather. All in local series, local circuits in the south. Growing up twenty minutes from Daytona Beach, what else would you expect?”

  I captured Jack’s attention. “Did you think you’d end up a driver?”

  “Of course. That’s what my family did, hobby and work. My granddad ran a car repair shop, and dad and his brothers grew up banging on cars, racing them on the local dirt tracks, and fixing them again when they wrecked. My generation of kids is also all in racing. It’s what we know—but I’m the only one running a team.”

  I heard the pride in the last statement and saw that Mike, Benny, and Ian recognized it too.

  “Yes, this team is everything I ever wanted.” Jack raised a glass to everyone. “And I want to thank each and every one of you for being part of it, for supporting us, for driving for us, for mentioning us on-air. In spite of what we’re dealing with. I can’t thank you enough for your support, and I’m very proud of each and every member of the team.”

  We all toasted him and drank.

  Jack put his glass down with a thump. “Enough of that! Eat up, people! Drink more. We’ve got a day off tomorrow, then it’s back to the grindstone.” Our entrees arrived, and Jack issued commands. “Benny, Ian, time to earn your keep. Charles, tell them what’s new with Racegear.com, so they know what to say about us when our car’s in the lead.” He said the last with a wink at me and Mike. I cut into my steak.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  It wasn’t until dessert that the discussion became valuable for me. Ian, with scores of races here in his past and numerous glasses of wine under his belt, became animated describing the effect the track could have on the field and racing strategy.

  “The thing is, this track’s a rectangle.” Ian plunked his elbows on the table, chopping his hands through the air, outlining the shape. Benny rescued his water glass from the onslaught. “It’s a big equalizer, because there’s not much straightaway. Those factory-backed Corvettes have more power than you, but they don’t have the straight line to use it and build speed—a little, but not a lot. And you’ll all corner about the same, so it’ll even things out. Not like Road America or Salt Lake City where the faster cars can really get away from you on the long straights. Lime Rock’s a narrow track and short in length. It’s going to be crowded. And you know what? Those short sides aren’t for passing.

  “You two,” he waved a finger at first me, then Mike. “Don’t try to pass unless you’re on the long sides of the rectangle. It’s a momentum track—you don’t want to get caught behind slower ca
rs and have them break your momentum. Keep your heads. You ought to be in good shape here.”

  The car wax guy found his voice. “How much have you driven at Lime Rock, Kate?”

  “About twenty minutes today.” He and the other sponsors waited for me to go on. “That’s it. I’ve been around the track in a street car, but in the racecar, just today.”

  Jack swooped in. “Now, don’t worry. We’re in good hands. Our Kate here is one of the quickest studies I’ve ever seen. I remember a couple years ago in the Star Mazda series, at—where was it, Kate? Portland?” I nodded, recognizing which story he was going to tell.

  “It was her first race at that track. First race in a Star Mazda car—one of the little open-wheel guys. She qualifies eighth out of fifteen—not so bad for her first time. At the start she gets pushed out of line and drops back five places. But damn if she didn’t come through the field to win the race!”

  The Purleys and the Active-Fits turned to me with wide eyes. I smiled. “My first win in Star Mazda. First race. A great day.”

  “I saw that, and I thought to myself, watch her.” Jack thumped his fist on the table. “Watch that girl, she’s going to be good. And hell, by the end of twenty minutes today, she was lapping at race speeds. We’re going to do just fine.”

  With that, Jack pushed back from the table and stood, the rest of us slowly following suit. As the group migrated to the porch of the hotel, settling into the wicker sofa and chairs I’d occupied earlier with Holly, Mr. Purley spoke next to me. “A ringing endorsement.”

  “It was nice of him to say.”

  “Doesn’t it make you more nervous? The pressure?”

  “I get nervous, sure. But I thrive on that kind of pressure. It’s part of my job.”

  Mike and I dragged over four more chairs from the other end of the porch, though I perched on the railing, leaning against a post and facing the day’s last light.

  Jack emerged from the hotel bar with two more bottles of wine and a waitress behind him carrying glasses. We kept chatting about the local area, the race, the sponsors’ companies, and the team.

  Sandham Swift had at least a dozen sponsors. Car title privileges—“the Number 28 Sandham Swift Racegear.com Corvette”—cost about a million dollars for the season, and other sponsor contributions ranged from the low to high six figures.

  Racing is expensive, and it’s fueled by sponsor dollars. Kids racing go-karts have sponsors. Fourteen-year-old drivers sell raffle tickets door-to-door to raise money. And for their money, sponsors get various sizes and placement of their logos on the car, team wear, and advertising. Plus lots of entertaining, before, during, and after the race. Driving the car was almost the least that a racecar driver had to do. The dinner wasn’t how I’d have chosen to spend my evening, but it paid my salary. I kept chatting.

  A half-hour later, Benny and Ian were the first to leave, promising to see us the next day—at the track or in a bar somewhere, noted Ian—and instructing us to put on a good show for the cameras on Monday, as they’d be talking about us. The Active-Fits left shortly thereafter, thanking everyone. The car wax guy faded away after them, and the Purleys were the next to make their excuses. Jack walked a few feet to the stairs and spoke quietly with them.

  Mike, Tom, Stuart, and I sat in silence for a couple minutes. The sky was dark, and even with the low lights on the patio and the lamps on the village green in front of the inn, we could see stars. The warm air smelled of plants and dampness. I was surprised that Stuart was still there and that he’d been a pleasant dinner companion. It had to be the marketing background.

  Three drivers swung open the doors of the inn and walked out onto the porch. I didn’t know two of them, but the third was Jim Siddons, the Porsche driver who’d glared at me before practice and bumped me with his car. They paused just outside the door, the other two nodding to our group and Jim sneering, then they moved to the empty chairs at the other end of the porch and sat down.

  I turned to Mike. “Talk about an attitude problem. Did Wade get into it with him, too?”

  “Yep.”

  “Figures.”

  I moved to a chair next to Tom and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “Let me ask you guys something. It’s hard to believe everything I’ve heard—to reconcile it. I mean, I met Wade, drove with him once. He wasn’t all that bad—” I remembered his unexpected attack the previous night. “Until yesterday he wasn’t. But if he was so awful and evil, how did everyone put up with him?”

  “He wasn’t always awful. And he wasn’t evil. That’s extreme.” Tom sounded shocked.

  “I was exaggerating. But you also haven’t heard the stories of on-track bumping and threats of revenge.”

  “I think I’m glad I haven’t.”

  Stuart set his glass on the coffee table. “I believe the short answer is he wasn’t always a negative personality—he could be charming. He’d been at this level of professional racing for more than a dozen years. In fact, I think that became a problem for him. It was all routine—boring, perhaps.”

  “How could racing ever be boring?” Tom’s sentiment echoed my thoughts, but I smiled at how naïve it sounded spoken aloud.

  Stuart shook his head. “Not the activity on-track. But everything else? Entertain the sponsors, make nice to the fans, give diplomatic quotes. He’d learned the ropes over the years.”

  “Done it all, paid his dues,” I murmured. “Maybe that was the problem. He expected more success than he had?”

  Mike wrinkled his nose. “I’ve only been with the team a couple years, but if you said to me Wade thought the world owed him a favor, I’d say you’re right. He’d gotten more demanding and cranky, that’s for darn sure. He was always prickly, but it got to where I’d leave every race feeling guilty or responsible for something my co-driver had done.”

  “No one held his behavior against you, Mike,” Stuart commented.

  Mike looked like he’d eaten a lemon. “I know. I was still associated with him. What always freaked me out though, was how he’d talk about keeping score.”

  He saw our blank looks. “That’s what he called it. ‘Keeping score.’ He’d make notes about different races and other drivers. His own personal timing and scoring, he told me when I asked. He was hostile and creepy, hunched over that little black notebook in the pits, scribbling away about vendettas, I guess. I wonder where that notebook went.”

  I sat up straight. “A black notebook?”

  Mike nodded.

  “I saw it today.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll try to find it again.”

  Stuart wore his familiar severe, dictatorial expression. “If you do, Kate, give it to Detective Jolley.”

  “What does she need to give to the cops?” Jack was standing next to us again, and the Purleys were on the other side of the porch railing, walking down the ramp to their car.

  Tom forgot to use his quiet voice. “The notebook of Wade’s that she found.”

  I detected a hitch in Mrs. Purley’s stride, and she started to turn to us, but Mr. Purley spoke to her quietly and they continued on their way. I also noticed a stillness at the other end of the porch, and I glanced over to see Jim and the other two drivers watching us.

  Jack frowned. “Notebook? I didn’t know he had one. But sure, Kate. If you find anything of Wade’s, give it to Jolley—unless it’s proprietary team info.”

  Stuart stood and shook Jack’s hand. “Thank you for the meal and the company. I enjoyed both.” He nodded to the rest of us. “Kate, I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  I’d forgotten my appointment with Jolley. My nerves sprang to life again. “See you then.”

  The rest of us stood also and dispersed to our rooms: Tom, Mike, and Jack back inside the main doors, and me down the steps to reach my room at th
e back of the Inn. I circled to the west, through the parking lot. There wasn’t much light to see where I was going, and I watched the ground to be sure I didn’t trip on anything.

  “Kate.”

  I jumped, my heart thudding. “Stuart. You scared me.”

  “Sorry. I just wanted to say be careful.”

  “What? Driving? OK.” My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I could see him shake his head. Locks of hair curled onto his forehead.

  “No, in general. Be careful. Stop asking about Wade. Think about driving and leave him alone.”

  “I’m not asking a lot of questions.”

  “Yes, you are. It’s the talk of the paddock. Everyone knows you’re asking who didn’t like Wade.”

  “Well, but I have to—”

  His voice was knife-sharp. “No, the police have to, not you. And don’t you think someone would find it a threat? Like Wade was a threat? I know I would.”

  I was stunned. I had to admit I hadn’t given much thought to discretion, just to getting myself clear. I felt a twinge of fear.

  I took a deep breath, heart again thumping hard. “What the hell do you mean, ‘you know you would?’ You would what? Find me a threat?”

  “I’m just giving an example. A friendly warning.”

  “That’s great. Helpful. And I’m supposed to sit back and have the police and the paddock think I’m guilty?”

  Stuart sighed. “Just leave the questions to the police. I’ll see you in the morning.” He walked to his car.

  I muttered about the nerve he had telling me what to do as I rounded the back corner of the hotel and reached my door. Number 16, it was the second in a row of five doors that opened onto a small lawn between our rooms at the back of the inn’s main building and the carriage house, now renovated into a half-dozen more guest rooms.

  “Deserted and dark, great.” There were lights above each room, mostly spotlighting a welcome mat, and not illuminating much else. I blinked heavily in the transition to bright light and raised my key to the lock.