“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.”
Looking 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?”
Harry nodded. “Everyone does. All over America.”
His question answered, Evan pointed with pride. “I got a new truck.”
Harry turned around to look. A quilted stainless-steel refrigerated truck sparkled in the sunshine.
“Wow.”
“Ford truck; the bodywork was done down in Richmond. I mean, that sucker can frost you.” He beamed. “Full of dressed free-range chickens. Need to deliver them to Fresh!”
“I saw you unloading a few days ago. I don’t recall you being in the poultry business.”
“Not me. I just pick up the orders. I give anything extra, left over, to the Salvation Army.”
“Good for you.”
“Mostly drunks. Still.” He shrugged.
Harry didn’t know if those who used the venerable organization’s services were drunks or not. She did know that about fifty-four million Americans went hungry each day. The figure so overwhelmed her that she always hoped it wasn’t true but feared it was.
“Haven’t been down there in years.”
“I go every day. Sometimes I use my old pickup to haul furniture to them, too.”
“That’s good of you, Evan.” She hesitated a moment. “How long have you delivered to Fresh?”
“Two years, give or take. I go over to the valley; still some poultry farms there. Stick to birds. Beef, lamb, pork, won’t do it. It’s not that it smells bad right away, but the odor lingers. Whatever you put in the freezer unit after that soaks up the odor.”
“Never thought of that.” And indeed Harry had not. She continued, “How do you define a free-range chicken?”
“I don’t. I just pick up chickens when the poultry farm calls. They all look the same to me.” He then quizzed her. “You found Walt Richardson. He used to work on my trucks.” Evan, not one to miss the opportunity to express his many opinions, held forth on the murders of the two mechanics at ReNu. “I’ll bet you it was drugs. When a man kills a woman, it can be lots of things, but men killing men: drugs.”
“You’ve got a point there.”
Leaning down toward her, he half-whispered, “They’re all in on it. I tell you, Harry, this crap goes all the way to the White House. Insider trading, stock-market manipulation, Ponzi schemes, and drugs. You don’t think half of Congress isn’t bought with drug money?”
“I never thought about it.”
“You should. As long as drugs are illegal, no taxes. Pure profit. Everyone on the take has a big—I mean big—reason to keep the stuff illegal.”
“Yes, I can see that.” Harry really wanted to get going and pick up those T-shirts.
“Tell you something else. This is a rich town. It’s full of good weed, good coke, and all those pills the doctors write prescriptions for. I mean, there are all kinds of druggies, right?”
“Guess so.”
“Meth. Out in the county. Lots of meth. It’s not a city drug. If those two dead men had bad teeth, meth. Otherwise, weed or blow. You just wait and see.” With a self-satisfied grin, he tipped his baseball cap and descended to his silver truck.
Harry sighed, pushed open the door to Blue Ridge Embroidery.
The proprietor, Greg, his ginger hair catching the light, looked up. “Heard the whole thing. Thought maybe I’d save you, but Evan was on a roll, wasn’t he?”
“Isn’t he always, but, hey, Greg, at least he didn’t lecture me on how we’re descended from aliens.”
“Maybe he is.” Greg laughed as he unfolded one of the T’s for Harry to inspect.
“Perfect. Just perfect.”
“Red T’s, white, blue. The flag looks good on everyone.”
“Herb’s idea to use a small Old Glory over the heart turned out perfect. St. Luke’s was founded before the Revolution.”
“Beautiful, beautiful church. Let me help you carry these down the stairs.”
Harry paid him with a St. Luke’s check and they toted the boxes to the bottom. “Where’s the Mrs.?” she asked.
“In the embroidery room.”
“Business good?”
Greg smiled a slow smile. “Coming back. We had two and a half bad years.”
“We all did. You didn’t go under. Neither did we.
You’d be surprised at how many people don’t call the vet when times are tough. Fair will work with them, spread the payments out, but they figure the horse will just cure himself.”
“Kinda cruel.”
“Is,” Harry flatly stated. “Sometimes I think I don’t understand people at all.”
“I know what you mean,” the nice-looking man agreed. “Hearing Evan’s analysis of the ReNu murders brought that to mind. You think you know someone, a neighbor, an acquaintance. Then you find out he’s beating his wife or, in a situation like this, he’s killed those two men. It’s almost always a man.”
“You know, Greg, I think you’re right, though I’m willing to bet more women kill than we know. They’re just smarter about it.”
He laughed. “Hey, I knew that when I got married. Not that she’s a killer,” he hastened to add. “But my wife sees so much that I don’t. I’m focused on the job.”
“Greg, you underrate yourself.” Harry thought him a good businessman. “But I do know what you mean about being fooled by people. ’Course, you can be fooled in good ways.”
“Right. Let’s concentrate on that.”
The thick odor of high-test gasoline, rich exhaust, and burning rubber assailed Harry’s nostrils. The screaming of the engines, on the other hand, thrilled her, just as Beethoven thrilled a music lover.
Waves of heat wiggled up on the tarmac from the exhaust pipes. Friday night, 7:00 P.M., the sun was still about two hours from setting at this exact spot in Waynesboro. The temperature was still in the high seventies, the day’s warmth hanging on.
Racing continued throughout the weekend, but Friday nights drew the fellows fresh from work, eager to roll and without big-enough wallets to compete with the Saturday men. The semipros used Central Virginia Hot Rod Track on Saturdays and Sundays. Those big dogs knew how to use the bleach box—also called a burnout pit—to heat their tires before reaching the staging area. Warm tires held the track better. But even the fellows with lighter wallets knew how to get their front tires just right. The staging lights were lit, next the big ambers, then green, and vroom. Sometimes a driver would miscue and the front end of his car would stand up: sure way to lose a race. The top fuel dragsters could do a quarter mile in 4.9 seconds at close to 200 mph. But even at the lower level, the driver’s body was subjected to close to 4.9 g-force pressure. It was a wild high.
True to her word, BoomBoom accompanied Harry. Alicia was in Richmond for a fund-raiser for the Virginia Historical Society and was only too happy to miss the noise and smell. Fair accompanied Alicia, as he, too, adored history and would read anything about Virginia history. So it worked out perfectly for both couples, each member having an escort, each member doing what he or she truly wanted to do.
The two women perched high on the bleachers.
Conventionally gorgeous, BoomBoom drew many an appreciative stare. But the men then looked at Harry, a far more natural-looking woman. Two good-looking women new to the viewing stands lifted spirits. The two high school classmates wore short-sleeved thin blouses, Bermuda shorts with espadrilles. BoomBoom fanned herself with an old-fashioned palm-frond fan, the kind that used to be given out in church during the summers.
“What do you think a paint job like that costs?” Harry indicated a flaming orange—a kind of burnt orange—on a Camaro with the black numeral 15 on each side.
“Metallic painting costs more, and that’s an unusual color.” BoomBoom squinted. “I guess five thousand for starters. I mean, to get that depth of color would take countless applications, and the paint would need to be really thin.”
“Bet you’re right. God, when you think of the money spent on these cars, it’s pretty overwhelming.”
“Yes, it is, but the people I worry about are the ones who don’t have a passion. The ones who always worry about the money and how everything has to make sense.”
“Are you criticizing me?”
“No. You worry about money too much, but you don’t lack passion. You love your horses, the farm. I’d have to say you even love your crepe myrtles.” BoomBoom laughed.
Before Harry could reply, the air shattered as a lower-level drag racer thundered down the strip. Bounding up the bleachers came a perspiring Victor Gatzembizi with Latigo Bly.
“Harry, my model. This little track has never seen such pulchritude.” Victor threw out his arms, then told BoomBoom and Latigo about Harry modeling his wife’s fortieth-birthday present.
Latigo, less effusive, simply asked after Victor’s tale of the fabulous necklace, “What brings you ladies over the mountain?”
“We live so close, we finally decided to see the action.” Harry smiled as Victor plopped down next to her, Latigo next to BoomBoom.
“Some good mechanics here. More importantly, some good drivers.” Victor swatted at a mosquito. “My whole crew is down there, and they’re good drivers, if I do say so myself.”
Latigo nodded. “Some of his boys might have made a career in racing, but it’s so tough. A person has to have the personality for it; it’s not just skill.”
“What do you mean exactly?” Harry’s curiosity, never far from the surface, was piqued.
Latigo, who had indulged in a bit of discreet plastic surgery, crossed his arms over his pecs. “A man—well, a woman, too—has to really want to win. But more than that, they must hate to lose. In 1966, Shirley Shahan was the first woman to win a national title, and she wanted to win every bit as much as the guys.”
“Really?” BoomBoom turned to fully face him. The effect was immediate: He straightened up and smiled broadly.
Victor chimed in. “He’s right. Those pros, traveling from race to race, would rather win than eat. There’s a high with it. Has to be. I don’t have it. Raced some, truly enjoyed it, but I didn’t care if I was the center of attention.”
“Performer personality,” Latigo said with conviction. “Now, there are a few drivers on the NASCAR circuit who are introverted, but most are hams. Love the cameras, love the interviews. Same with the dragsters.”
“What about the women?” Harry shrewdly observed. “Groupies.”
“The groupies are there, not quite to the level of rock stars. The funny thing is, a fair number of the big guys come from backgrounds where women are placed on a pedestal. They might go to bed with groupies, but sooner or later they want a real partner. The secret always is to look at a man’s mother.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” BoomBoom thought of her late husband, who, she felt, probably suffered whippings from his mama into his early forties. Kelly Craycroft, some years older than BoomBoom, never had quite enough backbone for her. After his death, a string of paramours filled her life. She finally woke up realizing that all that activity kept her from facing his death and her own inner pitfalls, as well.
Harry, on the other hand, observed closely but rarely had a clue as to the emotional underpinnings of human behavior.
“Speaking of rock stars, where’s your entourage?” Victor teased Harry.
“Home. The fumes and noise would upset them. It’s even pretty overwhelming for us.”
Latigo, in a pleasant manner, said, “Bobby Foltz, Victor.”
“Ah.” Victor shifted his attention to the track, where Bobby drove up to the starting line. “One of my boys, Bobby Foltz.”
Both Harry and BoomBoom kept quiet as they watched Bobby’s four-year-old Dodge Charger line up next to a really souped-up new Charger. They could see the helmets on the drivers, which obscured their features.
The green light flashed; the speed of the acceleration was stunning.
“Oh, my God,” Harry blurted out. “They need parachutes to stop.”
Bobby won the heat.
“Parachutes are used for cars exceeding a hundred fifty miles per hour. This class is close but no cigar.” Beaming, Victor stood up. “Excuse me, ladies.”
Latigo remained behind. “Vic gives his men full support. He’s a wise boss. Then again, he loves drag racing.”
“W
as Nick Ashby any good?”
Latigo replied, a bit sadly, “Yes, and he was a good kid, too. This has hit Vic very hard. Hit all of them hard. They all race and work together. A close-knit group.”
“Even Walt Richardson?”
Latigo half-laughed. “Harry, you’re impossible.”
She sheepishly grinned. “I can’t help myself. I get to wondering, you know.”
“I could put some masking tape over her mouth.” BoomBoom pretended to look in her Pierre Deux cloth bag for tape.
Latigo enjoyed BoomBoom’s teasing. “Harry, Walt marched to a different drum. Now and then he’d come out to the track. He worked on the other guys’ cars, but he didn’t race. Actually, Walt was more interested in classic cars.”
Harry wanted to say, “I know.” Wisely, she kept her mouth shut.
“They haven’t made any progress yet, I don’t think—on the murders, I mean,” BoomBoom said.
“I thought it would hurt Vic’s business, but it hasn’t. Of course, his shop is the one we always recommend to our clients who’ve had accidents. No one does such good work so reasonably.”
“ReNu does seem to do the work for less.” BoomBoom just made conversation as she focused on the next race. She was really getting into this.
Harry was, too, but Harry could get sidetracked. “So the murders didn’t hurt Victor’s business?”
“No. Vic encouraged the fellows to keep racing in Nick’s memory. He made a contribution to the Classic Car Club of Virginia in Walt’s name. He’s keeping up morale.”
Fanning faster as a result of both the heat and the fumes, BoomBoom asked, “Latigo, why didn’t you found a life-insurance company? Why auto?”
Flattered to be questioned about his life choices, Latigo replied in his light but pleasing voice, “Death, really. When I started Safe and Sound, the company was painfully small—myself and three others, one of whom was my first wife. I didn’t want to call on people when someone passed away, and neither did Nola.” He named his first wife, who left the marriage far richer than she entered it.
The Big Cat Nap Page 11