No Right Turn

by A. J. Stewart

  “How do you know she didn’t do it?” Danielle asked Missy.

  “I’m her mother,” Missy said quietly. Then with more effort, she said, “Eleven cars off the island. She couldn’t. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It didn’t,” I said. “Until I realized it wasn’t Ansel Brasher. The exact second I knew it wasn’t him was the same second I knew who it was. I figured it out last night. When we visited with you, Missy. You were watching old photographs. And everything fell into place. See, I thought Brasher was the guy who took you to the race track when you met Dale, but last night I saw a photograph from that night. Up on your big screen. The guy who took you that night was Rex Jennings. The guy who drives the development cars for Dale. The guy who he trusted to deliver his F-88 from Michigan.”

  “Rex is a family friend,” said Angie, spinning back on her stool to me. “He’s known my dad forever, and despite what you think he would never hurt Dad.”

  “I agree. And that’s why nothing made sense at first. But I met Rex. He drove me to the track in Charlotte. He looks the part, but he’s not your stereotypical truck driver. Or maybe he is. Maybe they’re all hard-looking guys with soft marshmallow centers. Either way, he told me how he’d been around at the beginning, when Missy and Dale met. It didn’t click then how he knew that. Because he was the guy who took her there. But unlike Ansel Brasher, he didn’t harbor a grudge.” I stepped to the bar, and reached between Danielle and Missy and picked up the sweet tea that Missy had left there for me. It was too sweet for my liking, but it wet the whistle. Not as well as a beer, but enough to do the job. I stepped back and leaned on the end of one of the booths.

  “Quite the opposite. Missy, you told me that the guy who brought you the night you met Dale probably didn’t want the job of being your boyfriend. I thought it was false modesty. But it wasn’t. He didn’t want the job. You and Rex dated, but like lots of young couples, the spark just wasn’t there. But you remained friends.”

  “Lifelong friends,” she said.

  “He spoke of you and Dale like lifelong friends do. And he told me how he met someone else. The love of his life. The woman he married and had kids with. But he told me how the life on the road destroyed his family. He lost them before he realized what he was losing. I guess they got tired of never having a husband and a father at home. He told Dale what was happening, and Dale took him off the long-haul routes and had him drive locally for the development team. But it was too late. His family had already checked out, emotionally if not physically. And he knew that it was his fault.”

  “He’s a good man,” said Missy.

  “You know, I think he is. He’s sad about the mistake he made, but he’s a good man. And that’s why he didn’t want Dale to make the same mistake. To ruin his life—and yours—by making the same mistake he made. That’s why when you asked him to, he agreed to steal Dale’s F-88 Oldsmobile.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  “Miami, this is getting tiresome,” Angie said.

  “There’s a method to the madness,” I said. “But I assure you that Rex did take the cars. I have video evidence of him leaving the island carrying a transporter trailer with no race team signage, and then reappearing with a DBR-branded NASCAR hauler. The vehicle transporter was big enough to hold all of Dale’s cars, but the NASCAR hauler couldn’t fit more than two or three. They’re designed to carry a lot of other stuff. And there’s a half-hour time gap between the two.”

  “Time enough to switch trailers,” said Danielle.

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” said Angie.

  “It does, I’m afraid,” I said. “There’s proof enough to put him away.”

  “You can’t do that,” said Missy.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re right. He did it for me.”

  Angie dropped her sweet tea onto the bar. “Mom?”

  “I’m sorry, Angela Jean. You must think me a fool.”

  “No, Mom, I don’t.” Angie looked her mother over. Missy had aged years in seconds. The pep that permeated her had gone. “Why?” whispered Angie.

  “For you and for me. Mr. Jones was right. Everyone at the race team knows you should be running the team. You do the important things anyway, but you have to do it from Palm Beach instead of being in Charlotte and getting the credit you deserve.”

  “Mom, I’m happy enough.”

  “No, you’re not, Angela Jean, and neither am I. I spoke with Rex many times after his family left for Colorado. It nearly killed him. It’s hard when a man loses everything through his own negligence and he knows it’s no one’s fault but his.”

  “But. . .”

  “And he didn’t want Dale to make the same mistake, did he?” I said, watching Missy. “He didn’t want his lifelong friends to feel his pain. He knew you were unhappy, Missy.”

  “But you weren’t unhappy,” said Angie. “Were you?”

  Missy looked at me, the messenger, and then at her daughter. “I haven’t had a husband for a long time. I’m not complaining about my life, sweetheart. I’ve had a wonderful life. I’ve got you. We’ve had a lot of good times. But I have more days behind than in front of me. And I don’t want to spend them watching old photographs of the glory days. I want to go and do things that don’t involve race tracks. I want to take walks on the beach, I want to sip drinks while overlooking, I don’t know. . .”

  “The Champs-Élysées,” I said, recalling her trip to Monaco.

  “Yes,” she said. “I haven’t seen Paris, or London or Tokyo. I’d like to. And I’d prefer not to do it alone.”

  “Why didn’t you talk to him?” Angie asked.

  Missy smiled but said nothing.

  I said, “Same reason you haven’t told him to move aside. Because you both love your dad, and you both know that he’s petrified.”

  “Petrified?” asked Danielle, and then she put her hand over her mouth to push the words back.

  “Yeah, he’s scared out of his mind. Because like Missy, he knows the days ahead are fewer. And he knows that he isn’t required at DBR anymore. He knows Angie runs the show already, in truth. I saw the place. It’s a well-oiled machine. He’s the reason it exists at all, but now he’s not needed. And he can keep denying the truth as long as he holds on to the mantle.” I let Angie think about that for a while and punched some words into my phone and sent a text message. Then I said, “What I don’t get is whose call it was to take all the cars?”

  “It was a joint thing,” said Missy. “Originally I planned to remove only the F-88. When Dale said he was having Rex truck it in, it was the last straw. He spends more time with his silly cars than he does with me.” Missy took a sip of tea. “Dale was supposed to be here for the delivery, but then he would fly back to Charlotte as he always did. There would be time for Rex to wait and then come back to the house. But the hurricane came and Dale wasn’t here and Rex delivered the car and he saw the opportunity. He called me.”

  “I saw that on the video,” I said. “He makes a call just before he closes the garage door.”

  “Yes. He said if taking the F-88 didn’t do it, surely taking all the cars would make a point. I agreed.”

  “What point?” asked Angie.

  Missy shook her head. “I don’t know, honestly. Rex and I talked it through and it seemed to make sense. If we took his latest car, maybe he would focus more time at home. And I guess if we took them all, he might focus more time on me.” She sighed. “It all seems so foolish, now.”

  “Wait,” said Angie. “We have video. Rex didn’t take the cars. They’re there on the video.”

  Missy looked at me. “Mr. Jones?”

  “I think you’ve been underestimated all your life, Missy,” I said. “You have the college degree, not Dale. You did the books back in the beginning, and I’ll bet you could be running the show now if you hadn’t let your daughter take on that role. Everyone sees the pretty race driver’s wife. No one would suspect that you could learn to operate the video security syst
em. But you did.”

  Missy nodded. “It’s amazing what you can teach yourself on the internet.”

  “It is,” I said. “You learned how to operate the servers and the video. Then when Rex closed the door, having delivered the F-88, you stopped the video.”

  “But I went back to my office,” said Angie. “You weren’t in the computer room.”

  “She did it remotely,” I said. “Just how you set me up to view it.” I said to Missy, “Where were you? In the bedroom?”

  “Kitchen,” she said. “Watching the truck.”

  “So Rex goes in and gets all the cars into the truck. Must have taken a while.”

  “Less than half an hour. He’s been doing it for forty years.”

  “And all the while the video isn’t going. But then there’s a problem. If you start it again, we’ll all see the missing cars.”

  “Exactly,” said Angie.

  “So I’m guessing you took some video from the previous day and pasted it in place.”

  “I don’t think it’s a cut-and-paste thing,” said Angie.

  “It’s not,” said Missy. “It’s more complicated than that, but that is essentially the idea. It was raining already the day before, so the driveway was wet.”

  “And the driveway was the only evidence of the hurricane,” said Danielle. “And it was sheltered. The other video is inside, behind hurricane shutters.”

  “So how did you know, Mr. Jones?” asked Missy. “That the video wasn’t real?”

  “Two things. The first was the palapa.” I gestured outside the French doors. “I could see the reflection of the palapa in that television. There’s a security light on the deck and I noticed it. But we have one, just the same at our local bar. The owner, Mick, said it got blown away before it even got dark. Yours got blown away, too. But not on the video. It was still there when the power went out. Which didn’t make sense. It’s on the windward side of the garage. Longboard’s Kelly’s is a ways back from the water. So if Mick’s got blown away, why didn’t yours? Because the video wasn’t live.”

  “Not exactly conclusive,” said Angie.

  “No, but it got me thinking. So I timed the video. There was no timestamp on it, which I understand isn’t unusual with home security. But the timer didn’t match the end of the video. See, I was on top of The Mornington hotel just after the power went out there. The whole island was black. So your power had to have gone out as well, at the same time. But the hotel’s video had a timestamp on it. According to it, there was a half hour difference between when their power went out and when yours did. A missing half hour. The half hour it took Rex to load the cars and get away.”

  I looked at Missy to confirm I had it right. I had it right. She was looking at the top of the bar, or through it. She was looking somewhere I couldn’t see.

  “It’s over,” she said. She took a deep breath. Then she looked at me with a determination in her eyes that I hadn’t seen before. A resolve. “Angela Jean had nothing to do with this,” she said. “It’s all me. Not Rex, either. He was an unwilling accomplice. Whatever happens now, Dale, the police, the insurance. It’s on me. Angela Jean knew nothing.”

  I liked her style. She was a mother protecting her child, yes, but she was also taking responsibility for her actions. The world needed a few more people who did that. So I walked over to the bar and flicked a button on the console. The garage burst into light. White and antiseptic and empty.

  “She might not have been involved, Missy, but she knew. That’s why she never put in the insurance claim. Because she knew something was up, but she couldn’t reconcile what her brain told her that thing was.”

  I left the pub. I opened the door to the garage, then just walked out. I ambled across the vacant space. My boat shoes squeaked on the polished concrete. I walked three-quarters of the way to the roller door and I waited. I hoped they were following. Nothing feels as foolish as making the big dramatic gesture that nobody understands. But they did. Or maybe Danielle directed them out. She understood me and my dramatic gestures.

  Danielle and Angie and Missy Beadman gathered around me. Danielle smiled like she wondered what the hell I thought I was doing. Angie looked exhausted and perplexed. Missy looked worn but relieved that the truth had broken free of the cage.

  “What happens now, Mr. Jones?” Missy asked. “I am willing to cooperate with the police. I understand you are duty-bound to let the insurance company know what has happened, but I do ask that you don’t implicate Angela Jean.”

  “There’s a problem there, Missy,” I said.

  “Which is?”

  “I can’t think why police should come. Technically, I suppose, you wasted their time, and I’m sure they’ve got some kind of rule against that. In your favor, it’s Palm Beach, and the only person’s time you wasted was Detective Ronzoni’s, and it’s hard to tell wasted time from useful time with him. Otherwise, I’m not sure what crime you committed. You didn’t legally steal the cars. They might be your husband’s toys but any judge is going to call them communal property, and you can’t steal something you own.”

  “But Rex took them,” Missy said.

  “Because you asked him to. That’s not burglary, that’s delivery.”

  Missy looked at Angie and then back at me. “What about you, Mr. Jones?”

  “What about me?”

  “We wasted your time.”

  “Unfortunately, not a crime. Besides, you’ll get an invoice from me.”

  “What about the cars?” Angie asked.

  “Indeed,” I said, wandering over and hitting the button to raise the roller door. It was a long, slow reveal. The door took forever. Eventually, it opened. The transporter trailer sat with the back ramp down onto the driveway. It was full of collectible cars. Ron stood by the ramp like a showcase model, waving his palms out at the cars. Lucas stood on the other side of the ramp, arms crossed. He was the only guy I knew who could drive a big rig. There wasn’t much he couldn’t do. We had borrowed the rig from the guy who had delivered the wood for Mick’s new fence at Longboard’s. The cost for a couple hours was a tank of diesel and two cases of beer.

  Lucas stepped up into the trailer and unclipped the first car. It was a Model T. He wheeled it down and Ron helped him get it into the position it had been before the hurricane.

  “I don’t understand,” said Missy. “You found them?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Will you tell Dad what happened?” asked Angie.

  “You asked me to tell you first if I found the cars. I know you did that because you were protecting your mom. So I’m telling you first. I found the cars.”

  “But Dad?”

  “He’s my client,” I said. “I have to tell him I found the cars.”

  Both Angie and Missy nodded.

  “The where, how, why and when, I leave to you.”

  “Mr. Jones?” Missy looked at me like I was telling a joke she didn’t understand.

  “Mrs. Beadman, I’m just a PI. I’m not a counselor and I don’t profess to have the secrets of the world all worked out. But if you’re asking, I’ll tell you that I think you need to have a chat, as a family. You need to lay it all on the line. Because right now there’s a thread of sorrow running through your family, and from the outside looking in, I can’t help feel like you’re just one tough conversation away from all being pretty damned happy.”

  Chapter Forty

  Demolition crews are a force of nature. The guys working for Rucci the contractor showed up the next day ready for action. They looked like a lynch mob without the torches. Rucci told them where to start and they hit my house hard. They removed all the furniture that remained, and the appliances and leftover belongings, and carried them up into a moving van, which disappeared to an undisclosed location that Rucci assured me would be safe for the duration. Then the guys entered with crowbars and sledgehammers, and before I knew what was happening, the living room floor was gone and the kitchen cabinets were in a waste ho
pper that had taken up residence in my driveway.

  I handed Rucci the cashier’s check that had been delivered by courier from Great Southeast Permanent. I hoped for the sake of all the other people whose homes lay in pieces that Great Southeast was indeed more permanent for the thirty million they would not have to cough up to Dale Beadman.

  “I can’t bank a cashier’s check made out to you,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll go to the bank right now.”

  “No hurry. We’ll be here for a few weeks.”

  “About the kitchen,” I said.

  He cocked an eyebrow.

  “I didn’t think it was damaged,” I said.

  “Sal thinks you need a new kitchen.”

  “Sal thinks?”

  “It’ll be better. You’ll see.”

  I didn’t see. It looked like a bomb had hit my house. My mouth just sat open as I watched it get ripped down to the studs. Rucci slapped my back.

  “Don’t worry. It always looks worse before it looks better.”

  He strode into the house to direct traffic. I wandered out the back. Two guys were maneuvering a boat trailer down the side of the yard. It was a tight fit but they got it through. One of the guys hitched a line to the boat that lay on my grass. I helped him keep it straight as the other guy worked the winch to pull the boat up onto the trailer. The speedboat looked in fine condition considering it had run aground. The guy behind the winch stepped off the trailer and shook my hand.

  “Thanks for calling,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d see her again.”

  “Glad to help,” I said. Ron had used the boat’s registration to track down the owner, and I was glad to have my unobstructed water view back.

  It didn’t stay unobstructed for long. Lucas dropped off a tent that he used to go what he called bushwhacking in the Everglades. It was a good size. A main room in front with no floor and then two bedrooms with plastic floors. I put it up facing the water, not the house. It took me longer than was necessary to erect it, but once it was done I had a place to live. I had kept back the mattress off my bed from the moving truck, and it took the entire area of one of the bedrooms. I put sheets and pillows in there and then I dragged two loungers across the lawn and positioned them overlooking the water. Right where my neighbor’s pool would have been.