“Accidents happen on motorcycles.”
“Your limo already had two holes in the trunk lid. Now it has three more on the side. Five bullet holes total. My bike has no bullet holes.”
***
Several days later, the body shop, where I hoped to have the bullet holes taken care of, smelled of oil and grease and paint, and, in an odd counterpoint of scent, the heavy aftershave of the corporate-executive type guy ahead of me who was monopolizing the body shop owner’s time.
We’d been waiting for almost twenty minutes now, but on and on this guy went about his bill. Yes, he admitted it matched the estimate, but the estimate had been unfair, an overcharge on the labor, and the car hadn’t been available until a half hour later than it was promised.
I paced to the grease-smudged window and stared out. The limo was out there, the three fresh bullet holes lined up like peep-holes along the side. Fitz picked up a tabloid lying on a chair and showed it to me. Several faces stared back at me. Rulfson and his wife. Mary Beth. Sloan. Another woman named Liz, the mysterious other wife, whose face was now also familiar because tabloid reporters had chased her down. At least this issue didn’t have a close-up of those bullet holes in the limo.
I didn’t need to read the lurid article. I knew most of the sleazy details all too well by now.
Senate-hopeful Mark Rulfson, the man who for several years had led two lives, one here in Washington, another, under a different name, married to a woman in Tennessee. Mary Beth finding out about this when Tennessee Liz, who’d moved to California, told Trafalgar about it in a channeling session. Liz had thought she was entitled to some compensation in this, but Trafalgar had advised her to forget it and move on with her life. Mary Beth, however, had jumped on the information and collected incriminating documents with which to blackmail Rulfson. She’d kept the amounts small for several years, but, with his run for the Senate, apparently figured she’d hit the big time and went for the gold.
The sheriff’s department had re-opened the investigation into Mary Beth’s murder and identified fingerprints in the kitchen where she was killed as belonging to Rulfson. A search warrant served at his home had turned up Mary Beth’s necklace and other jewelry. I couldn’t help wondering why he hadn’t gotten rid of them, but, fortunately for the good guys, the bad guys make mistakes.
The charges against Tom has been dropped. The stolen blackmail money has never been recovered. India got her gun back with a warning about needing a concealed weapon permit if she carried it.
Sloan Delaney was still in custody on both old California charges and new charges here. But not murder. No one’s bullet killed Mark Rulfson. Gun in hand, he died of a heart attack there in his Mercedes.
I felt sorry for Rulfson’s wife, the one who’d been campaigning with him, who seemed to be a confused bystander in this. That was how I also felt about myself. A confused bystander with three bullet holes in her limo.
Three bullet holes on which I was now trying to get a repair estimate if I could ever get through this unexpected glut of customers.
Besides the corporate-exec type guy, a woman in new looking jeans and boots was going over paint colors with the other partner in the shop. This color was too yellowish, that one too tan, and that other one had a terrible pinkish tinge. What she wanted was palomino, to match the horse she’d just bought. My grumpy thought was, let’s re-paint the horse. Maybe that’d be faster.
Finally she left, only to be replaced by a dark-suited guy who elbowed right in ahead of me. “Hey!” I said, “I was here first.”
“This’ll only take a minute. I have an important meeting at the hospital.” With a look that said my time couldn’t possibly be as valuable and important as his.
“Okay, that’s it,” I muttered. “I’ve had it. He can’t be much of a body-shop guy with all these problems.”
“It’s not the body’s shop guy’s fault some of his customers are jerks,” Fitz protested. “He’s still a great body shop guy, the best around.”
I stared at Fitz in astonishment as the word Bingo, like an oversized comic-strip balloon, popped into my head.
“You okay?” he asked as I stood there blinking at him.
“Can I do a couple of word substitutions for you?”
He looked puzzled. “Now?”
“Right now.”
“Okay.”
“How about God for body shop guy, and followers for customers.”
Fitz put it together awkwardly. “It’s not . . . God’s fault some of his . . . followers are jerks. He’s still a great God.”
“Exactly.”
He repeated the words as if reviewing them for accuracy. “It’s not God’s fault some of his followers are jerks. He’s still a great God.”
“Right.”
I started to say more, to lay it all out like instructions in a pamphlet for putting a bicycle together. All those Christians who’d been bad examples to Fitz in the past – the landlord and mechanic and husband with mentally-ill wife? Don’t judge the Lord on the basis of their flaws. All those Christians who are bad examples now – the unfaithful husband and the shyster car salesman? Don’t use them as a measure of the Lord’s goodness either.
But, for at least once in my life, I shut up. Sometimes less is more. And I could see something dawning on Fitz’s face without any more push from me. Go, Lord! I cheered.
Fitz didn’t say anything more right then. But on Sunday he was in church with me, and I could see he was thinking hard. We drove home, where I had a pot roast already in the oven for dinner. India and the Harley were in the driveway. She was tinkering with the handlebars.
“There’s something I want to ask you,” Fitz said thoughtfully while we sat there in the car.
His tone said this was Important Stuff. Which meant what? I grabbed a gulp of air. Because what popped into my head? Proposal! I never figured a proposal would happen just sitting here in the car on a Sunday midday, but why not?
“Yes?”
“I met this guy at the marina the other day.”
I looked at him. I haven’t been on the receiving end of too many romantic declarations, but I didn’t think this sounded like one.
“I think he’d like India. Do you think she’d be interested in meeting a guy?”
When I got my thinking adjusted . . . okay, I was relieved, wasn’t I, that this wasn’t a prelude to a proposal? . . . I said, “I don’t know. What kind of guy?”
“Biker.”
“She’s never said anything about guys, but she might go for a biker type.”
“Rides a Harley.”
“Even better.”
“I was thinking I could have a barbecue on the boat. I’ll invite him. You invite her.”
“Sounds good. How’d you meet him?”
“He and some other guys were down at the marina. One of them has a boat. I got to talking to him. Nice guy. He has a motorcycle sales and repair shop over in Olympia.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“The thing is,” Fitz said as he fidgeted with the leather covering on the steering wheel, “there might be a problem, considering her attitude.”
“Attitude?”
“He’s a Christian biker. This was a whole group of Christian bikers. With tee-shirts that say, ‘We ride for Jesus.’”
Oh yeah, problem.
But not one you can’t overcome, is it, Lord?
“You get your Christian biker there, and I’ll see that India shows up too.”
Even if I had to get on that Harley with her to do it.
End
BOOKS BY LORENA McCOURTNEY
THE ANDI McCONNELL MYSTERIES:
Book #1: Your Chariot Awaits
Book #2: Here Comes the Ride
Book #3: For Whom the Limo Rolls
THE IVY MALONE MYSTERIES SERIES:
Book #1: Invisible
Book #2: In Plain Sight
Book #3: On the Run
Book #4: Stranded
Book #5:
Go,Ivy,Go!
THE JULESBURG MYSTERIES:
Book #1: Whirlpool
Book #2: Riptide
Book #3: Undertow
THE CATE KINKAID FILES MYSTERIES (also available in paperback)
Book #1: Dying to Read
Book #2: Dolled Up to Die
Book #3: Death Takes a Ride
CHRISTIAN ROMANCES
Three Secrets (Novella)
Searching for Stardust
Yesterday Lost
The author is always delighted to hear from readers. Contact her through the blogsite at:
http://lorenamccourtney.wordpress.com
Or on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/lorenamccourtney
For Whom the Limo Rolls Page 27