The Perils of Paulie (A Matchmaker in Wonderland)

by Katie MacAlister

  I hopped out of the car, dialing Dixon’s number as Melody, with a worried expression, drove over to the section of the parking lot reserved for us. The second team member immediately began unstrapping the tires and boxes and placing them in a pile.

  “Paulie?”

  “Oh, thank god,” I said, relief swamping me at the sound of Dixon’s voice. “You’re OK. Wait. Are you OK?”

  “Yes.” His voice was clipped, a sure sign he was either angry or upset. “Rupert has a broken leg. Samuel has two broken ribs and a suspected collarbone fracture. Anton is being looked at now, but he might have a broken wrist.”

  “Holy shit! What happened to you all?”

  “Who’s hurt?” Melody asked, running up to me as best she could in the corset and long skirt. “It’s not my dad and Tessa?”

  I covered the mouthpiece. “No, it’s Rupert, Samuel, and Anton. They’re all at the hospital. Dixon, what happened? Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine. I was out of the way getting a tire ready to change when the damned Essex car started rolling forward and plowed over Rupert and Anton.”

  “The Essex guys drove over you?”

  “No, they weren’t in the car at the time.”

  “Then what—never mind. What hospital are you at?” I asked, and made a mental note when he told me. I glanced around frantically, needing to be with Dixon, but knowing I couldn’t take the Flyer out. I covered the phone again and yelled at the crew member to call me a cab before continuing with Dixon. “OK. I’m going to get a taxi and get out to you.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Melody said, pulling out her phone to text her parents.

  “Melody is coming, too.”

  “There’s no reason for either of you to go to that trouble,” he said, exhaustion and despair rich in his voice.

  “Of course we’ll come. I want to be there to help you with Rupert. I assume that he’ll have to go home, which is such a shame. Is it a bad break?”

  “No, just a hairline fracture, but he can’t drive. Paulie . . .” His voice broke, and for a moment I thought he might be crying. “Paulie, if Anton is hurt and can’t drive, either, that leaves only me to drive our car. Roger won’t allow me to drive the whole way by myself, and there’s no one else to fill in. We’ll be out of the race.”

  “No!” I shouted, then apologized. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to blast your earballs that way. Hold tight, Dixon. Don’t worry about what might happen until we know the worst about Anton. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  I won’t go into the hellish nightmare of the next hour trying to get a taxi at a busy time of night and finally getting to the hospital a good forty miles away. By the time we found Dixon, I had worked myself up into a righteous swivet. I would not let Roger send Dixon home!

  “Oh! Your pretty face!” I exclaimed when I rounded the emergency room curtain to find Dixon sitting on a chair next to an empty bed. “I thought you said you weren’t hurt? Where’s Rupert?”

  “Off having a walking boot put on.” Dixon grimaced, a cut above his eye already having been cleaned up and taped closed. He had what looked like a bruise forming on his cheekbone, and the faintest hint of a black eye. “I hit my head on the car when it was jammed forward, that’s all. It’s nothing like what the others have experienced.”

  “Good news!” Roger stuck his head into Rupert’s cubicle. “Anton just has a mildly sprained wrist. Should be OK in a few days with icing treatment.”

  “Thank god,” Dixon said, starting to rub his face wearily, but flinching when he hit a bruised spot.

  “That’s great,” I said, relieved that Dixon’s team wouldn’t be out of the race. “How’s Samuel?”

  Roger’s expression turned serious. “Broken ribs and collarbone. He’s going to spend the night in the hospital, but he’ll definitely not be in any shape to continue on. The other two Esses are spending the night with him, I understand. Must get one of the PAs to take their car to the hotel . . . Now what?” He had been looking at a text message while he was talking and quickly punched in a number to call someone. “What’s going on? Where are the Hausfraus? What? That’s impossible! How did that— Well, were they drinking?”

  Dixon, Melody, and I all looked at one another.

  “Drinking?” Melody asked softly. “The German ladies?”

  “For Christ’s sake . . . no, it is a direct violation—we’ll have to enforce it, but this is just the last straw. If we lose any more teams there won’t be a race left.”

  We waited in anticipatory silence for him to hang up, which he did, and turned to face us. “The Germans are out. They were tagged by some off-duty cop and the driver failed a Breathalyzer test.”

  “Man,” I said, not knowing what to say. “That’s awful.”

  Roger ran a hand over his bald head, riffling the fringe. “I made it quite clear to everyone what the rules were. I didn’t just have you lot sign a statement saying you knew the rules. We had two meetings going over them—two meetings.” He turned to us. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew if you were caught drinking and driving that the whole team would be disqualified?”

  “Yes, absolutely,” I answered at the same time that Dixon and Melody added their affirmations. “That’s why we wouldn’t let Louise have wine with lunches. I feel awful for the Fraus, though.”

  “Then you can feel bloody terrible for me, since the whole race is falling apart around me!” Roger said before stalking away, the phone to his ear again.

  Rupert was wheeled in just as Roger left.

  “How do you feel?” I asked. “Stupid question, I know, but it’s all I have right now.”

  “I’ve been better, although the pain meds are working now,” he answered, getting to his feet. He looked tired, with lines of pain around his mouth as he stood and made some tentative steps under the auspices of a nurse. I waited until she gave him the final instructions and went to get him his paperwork before saying, “I’m so sorry about this, Rupert. The race won’t be nearly as entertaining without you.”

  “Can’t be helped,” he said with a sigh, then gave me half a smile. “To be honest, there weren’t as many women as I thought there would be. This—” He lifted his foot a little, then made a face. “This should be worth some serious sympathy points at home, however.”

  “You’ll go to Elliott and Alice?” Dixon asked, gathering up Rupert’s coat along with his.

  “Probably. Alice and Mum will fuss over me to no end, whereas there’s no one in my flat but two blokes who’d tell me to get off my arse if I asked them for anything.” He gave Dixon a long look. “I expect you to win this blasted race in my honor—you know that, don’t you?”

  Dixon looked tired. “I’ll try, but no promises. Come on. Let’s get you back to the hotel.”

  “Where’s the De Dion?” I asked when we slowly worked our way out of the emergency room, meeting up with Roger, Tabby and Sam, and Anton at the entrance. All four looked grim. One of the production assistants had gone to get Roger’s car.

  “It’s here. There’s a PA guarding it and the other car.”

  “I think our wounded heroes should travel in comfort back to the hotel,” Roger decided when his car arrived. “Dixon, can you take the ladies with you in the De Dion?”

  “We’ll drive,” I said, glancing quickly at Dixon’s battered face and general demeanor of exhaustion.

  Roger got Anton and Rupert installed in the back of his comfortable car and headed off with them, while the production assistant who had been left with the car faced the Esses’ Zust car with disfavor. “I’ve never driven it before,” she said, looking hesitant.

  Melody patted her on the arm. “I’ll drive it. You can ride with me, all right?”

  “That would be lovely. Thank you,” the PA said, and they went off.

  I was a bit nervous about driving a car I wasn’t used to, especiall
y given the nature of the last few hours, but the De Dion was a smaller car than the Thomas Flyer and it was a dream to drive in comparison with our big white beast. “Now you can tell me exactly what happened,” I yelled over the engine as my phone’s GPS found a route that avoided the freeway back to the hotel (I knew the De Dion wouldn’t be able to cope with freeway speeds). “What happened to the Zust that it ran into you if no one was in it? And what were they doing with you?”

  “We’d stopped to fix a tire. Turned out it was two tires. The Esses stopped behind us to see if we were all right, and when they found out it was just a blowout, they started getting back into the car. Something happened, though, and the brakes slipped, causing it to roll forward.” He ran a hand over his face again. I badly wanted to tuck him into bed and kiss his owies. “Samuel was between the cars and threw himself down, but the front grille of the Zust caught him and pushed him against the De Dion, which in turned rolled forward, knocking Rupert down and going over his leg. Anton was standing a bit off to the side, and he lunged toward Rupe to pull him out of the way but hurt his wrist in the process.”

  I digested this picture of disaster, frowning with both the concentration and the thought needed to drive a strange car. “The Essex car slipped its brakes? How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know.” Dixon looked bleakly out at the night, making my soul hurt with the need to comfort him. “Sanders was just climbing in behind the steering wheel when it started to roll forward. He said that perhaps the brakes hadn’t set right and the movement of him getting in might have bumped something.”

  “But . . .” I made an inarticulate gesture. “How can brakes come undone like that?”

  “Evidently they didn’t do much to modernize the brakes.” Dixon sounded so tired, I hated to make him talk, but I didn’t quite understand what had happened. “They were refreshed, as Roger calls it, to make sure they worked, but they weren’t wholly modernized. From what I understand, it’s entirely possible that the brakes can give way in certain circumstances. That’s why we were told to always put large stones in front of or behind the wheels when they were parked.”

  “I thought that was just because it looked period for the cameras,” I said, horrified at the thought that the Flyer could suddenly take off on its own, and made a mental note to never park it on even the slightest incline without several rocks to hold its tires in place.

  “It isn’t just for show, although . . .” He stopped, looking thoughtful.

  “Although what?”

  It took him a good two minutes before he answered. “I can’t help but wonder if the Esses intended something to happen, and Samuel just got unlucky.”

  I flashed him a horrified glance. “You think they deliberately ran into you?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head, then immediately added, “It’s just that I had an odd conversation with them at the beginning of the race, and it keeps coming back to me.”

  “What on earth did they say?”

  He took a deep breath. “They said they were the villains of the race, that they intended on acting in such a manner, noting that it had Roger’s approval because it would make for interesting film, and they proceeded to pick my brain as to ways they could sabotage other racers.”

  “They didn’t! Holy crapballs. Did you tell Roger?”

  “Almost immediately, and the fact that he wasn’t in the least bit concerned gave truth to Sanders’s claim that they were doing so with Roger’s blessing.”

  “Yeah, but that’s playacting villainy, surely,” I said, negotiating a roundabout carefully before striking out on a highway that would lead us to our hotel. “Just for the cameras, not real actions intended to hurt people.”

  “I came to that conclusion after speaking to Roger, but now I’m not so sure. You have to admit, the race has been hit with a number of disasters.”

  “Yes, but I think that’s par for the course. Did you read up on the original race? They lost all but two cars in the trip across the U.S. We still have three left, and we started out with less cars than in 1908. Plus, there’s the issue of Samuel. Would they be willing to risk him just to take out Rupert?”

  “I don’t think the plan was to harm any of us, per se. Rather, I think that if the attack was deliberate—and we can’t know that it was—then it was focused on the De Dion and not its human occupants. None of us were in the car at the time, after all.”

  “Which means you would be vulnerable if it moved,” I pointed out, but had to agree with him. “I just can’t believe any of the Esses would do that. They seem like such nice guys.”

  Dixon was silent, but I could see he was thinking deep thoughts. I left him to it while I focused on getting us back to the hotel in one piece, an hour later handing over the car to the waiting crew member with much relief.

  “My room or yours?” Dixon asked once we had picked up our room key cards, and followed me to the elevator.

  “Yours, I think, but I’ll go to mine to change once I get the corset off,” I said, eyeing him. He looked at the end of his strength. I made a resolve to not tire him out, knowing he needed rest more than he needed mind-blowingly fabulous sex.

  I followed him to his room, asked him to unlace me, and then told him to take a shower and relax. “I’ll bring us some dinner, and we can eat here, OK?”

  “That would be wonderful,” he said, smothering a yawn.

  By the time I took a shower, got into comfy jeans and a sweatshirt, and had room service deliver a couple of burgers to my room, an hour had passed. I carried the food to Dixon, who was still awake, but barely.

  “I think you need sleep,” I said after we had eaten, collecting the trays and depositing them outside the room. “I’m going to my own bed, if you don’t mind.”

  “Why don’t you sleep here?” he asked, not making any protest about the lack of sexy-times.

  “You’ll sleep better without me bumping into you and waking you up,” I told him, and blew him a kiss from the door. “Get lots of sleep, Dixon. Because tomorrow I might not be so considerate of your tender sensibilities.”

  He chuckled tiredly. “I’m counting on that. I’ll just check on Rupert to make sure he’s all right, then turn in for the night.”

  “Sleep well.” I closed the door softly and made a beeline to the front desk, where I forced a clerk to tell me which room Roger was in.

  “I have a few things to say,” I told him when he answered the door, pushing past him uninvited. Inside were two of the production assistants, both film teams, Graham, and one of the wardrobe ladies who I knew had flown out to check our garments before we left the U.S. “Sorry if I’m interrupting a meeting, but I want to know what’s going on with the Esses trying to kill Dixon’s team. Did you look at their car?”

  “Yes, of course,” he answered, surprising me. He waved toward Graham, who was sitting on the bed with a laptop perched on his knees. “We went over it, as well as the Engaging Englishmen’s car, to make sure it didn’t suffer any damage.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the Essex car’s brakes that was at all evident,” Graham said in agreement.

  “Which means it was done deliberately? Dammit, Roger, those men could have been killed or permanently injured! You can’t let the Essex team go on being villains, not if they are taking very real actions to eliminate the competition.”

  “Pish,” Roger said, startling me a little. I hadn’t pegged him for the sort of man who said words like “pish” in serious conversation. “It was an accident, nothing more. The Essex Esses simply neglected to put the stones in front of the wheels, and since there was evidently a slight incline, the car simply slipped its brakes with the result that, sadly, two more racers are going home.”

  For the first time, I noticed a frazzled component to Roger’s expression. No doubt he was feeling the stresses and strains of all the accidents. “How do you know it wasn’t
a deliberate accident? I know Dixon told you what the Esses said about being villains and working up plans for eliminating people—”

  “They were rehearsing bits for the camera, nothing more,” Roger said, waving my concern away. “Now, Paulie, dear, as much as I’d love to stand here and chat with you, we really must proceed with our production meeting. We have the cars to get loaded on the plane tonight, and we’re waiting for a fax from the Kazakhstan embassy, and of course there is everything to get packed and loaded onto the charter plane by morning.” While he spoke, he shooed me to the door, giving me a gentle push through it before adding, “It’s all very tragic, I agree, but I assure you that with the exception of the engine corrosion, none of the accidents were intentional. The police are very confident they will track down the source of the acid used on the engine, so you can sleep tonight secure in the knowledge that there is no nefarious plan afoot.”

  “But—”

  He closed the door in my face. I considered knocking until he opened up so I could continue my argument, but the realization that I had no more proof that the Esses were behind the accident any more than I had proof that Anton was working for my father had me turning and walking quickly to my room.

  July 26

  From: Julia

  Hey, babe! Angela says you’re in SF tomorrow? I can pop into town and meet you for lunch. Am dying to see you in your suffragette threads.

  July 26

  To: Julia

  We get on plane at 8 a.m., so no time for lunch. I sent you selfies!

  July 26

  From: Julia

  Yeah, but it’s not the same as seeing you in person. How was cross-country drive?

  July 26

  To: Julia

  It would take hours to tell you. This evening one car ran into boyfriend’s and took out his brother and other car’s member. Germans got snockered and were given boob.

  July 26

  To: Julia