by Ann McMan
He narrowed his eyes. “You’re still trying to insist that I didn’t see that damn Camaro, aren’t you?”
“David . . .” she began.
He held up a hand. “I don’t wanna hear it. Every other person in the county saw that fuel-injected demon from hell, and I don’t hear you suggesting that they’re all crazy.”
“I haven’t suggested that you’re crazy.”
“You haven’t said that you believe me, either.”
“Okay. All right.” She sighed. “Against my better judgment, I’ll admit that there is some evidence to suggest that the storm’s debris field, which happened to contain Deb Carlson’s car, caused part of the damage to the town. And, by the way, that same debris field also contained my Jeep. But I don’t seem to be hearing any apocryphal news reports about it going on a similar, three-county rampage.”
“There’s nothing remarkable about that,” David said.
“Why not?”
“Duh? You must be kidding me.”
She thought about that. “No. I don’t believe that I am.”
He rolled his eyes. “Really, Cinderella. What self respecting tornado would pick your boxy, uninspired Iacocca-mobile over a sexy, turbo-charged street rod?” He slowly shook his head. “Where’s the market share in that?” He laid a hand on her shoulder. “You really need to get out more, or at least upgrade your satellite service.”
She looked confused. “What does my satellite service have to do with this?”
“Nothing. But if you expect me to be the one to undertake your cultural education, I’m going to need prime time access to something besides C-SPAN and the Weather Channel. This joint is about as cutting-edge as the Bates Motel.”
She gave up and shoved the box she had been packing into his hands. “Shut up and carry this downstairs.”
He took the box from her and glanced down at its contents. Then he reached into it and lifted out a VHS copy of The Best of the Mary Tyler Moore Show.
“I rest my case.”
Maddie held up a hand. “I’ve got five fingers here—one of them is for you.”
David headed for the back stairs, and she could hear him laughing all the way down to the kitchen.
IN FACT, DAVID had been telling the truth about the real culprit behind much of the storm damage at the inn.
And he wasn’t alone in spinning a tall tale of devastation.
People said that God must have been gunning for Deb Carlson—or, at least, for her car. It wasn’t enough that a hailstorm transformed its spectacular crimson paint job into a mobile ad for Clearasil. No, the final indignity occurred when the tornado roared through the parking lot at Junior’s body shop in Troutdale, and picked her pride and joy out from a line-up of other hail-damaged cars to be the one it chose to tango with.
Caught up in the maelstrom, Deb’s Camaro blazed a path of destruction across three counties that went from the front page of the weekly paper right into the annals of history.
The storm tossed the car around like a tea bag—dropping it down, only to haul it right back up again. Rumor had it that Deb’s car accounted for forty percent of the total storm damage sustained in Jericho alone. Farm Bureau claims adjusters who raised eyebrows at the epic reports were stunned when beleaguered homeowners produced actual pieces of the fire engine red car as evidence.
Bert Townsend even had actual cell phone video of Deb’s Camaro as it tore through the plate glass window of Food Bonanza, and took out most of the fresh produce aisle.
Just as quickly, the car got sucked back out, and roared up Route 58 toward Mouth of Wilson, leaving a trail of broken glass, Vidalia onions, and Georgia peaches in its wake.
Bert later told a Roanoke-based TV crew that it was like the car had joined forces with the storm.
“It was like Elijah, his self, was driving it,” he said. “A real chariot of fire.”
“How so?” the reported asked.
Bert shrugged. “Well, the car kind of dropped down out of nowhere, all gentle-like. And it was right side up, too. Then it just turned itself around, and took off—head first—right through them plate glass windows.” He scratched his head. “It was in the store about two minutes before it come flying right back out. And dern if the lights wasn’t on, too.”
The reported looked confused. “You mean the lights were on in the supermarket?”
Bert shook his head. “Nope. The car lights.”
“The car headlights were on?”
Bert nodded. “At first, I thought that was mighty peculiar, too, but the storm knocked out the power in town, and it probably was pretty dark in there.”
Deb’s car made cameo appearances in at least six other locations across the area, before finally coming to rest across three center lanes at the Bixby Bowladrome on U.S. 21.
People who knew her joked that this would be the closest Deb would ever get to a perfect 300 bowling score. Her team from the glass factory, the Crystal Cougars, was better known for its prowess at picking up cans of Budweiser (and married men), than picking up spares on league night.
Rita Chriscoe, who ran the shoe rental and concession counter at Bixby’s, agreed, but told a Gazette reporter that it would have been a better story if Deb had still owned her old car—the one she drove before she bought the Camaro with that settlement money from the carpal tunnel lawsuit.
“What kind of car was that?” the reporter asked.
Rita took a long drag off her cigarette. One of the only good things to come from all this damn storm damage was the fact that they could smoke inside the building again. With half of the roof missing, it wasn’t like anyone would complain.
“It was one of them Oldsmobile Tornadoes,” she said.
“Tornadoes?”
Rita nodded. The smoke from her cigarette wound up around her head like a halo. “A beauty, too. Dark blue. Eighteen-inch rims with spinners.” Her eyes were dreamy. “Nice.”
“What happened to the car?” the reporter asked.
Rita shook her head. She was scraping dried nacho cheese sauce off a rack of bowling balls that had the misfortune of being stored next to the snack counter when the storm hit.
“You know, it was the damndest thing. That Tornado was parked over at Junior’s right next to the Camaro.” She lowered her voice. “Some of us think it was god’s way of saying that GM shouldn’t have stopped making Oldsmobiles.”
The reporter nodded. “You mean like some kind of automotive natural selection?”
At first, Rita looked at him with a blank expression. Then she picked up another ball covered with orange-colored splatter. “Yes,” she said with finality. “Just like that.”
Tim Bixby even posted a photo of the bright red street rod on his Facebook page, with the caption, “Muscle Car Takes Bowling Alley By Storm.” Then he convinced Bert Townsend to post his cell phone video on You Tube. Within three days, the story had gone viral, with more than two-hundred-and-twenty-four-thousand people indicating that they “liked” the quirky, multimedia monument to Deb’s misfortune.
The local Chevy dealer in Jefferson even talked about making the car the centerpiece of a storm recovery fundraising effort. Residents of the county who had sustained damages attributable to the marauding car were invited to submit photos that would become part of a permanent display in the dealership showroom.
Within six weeks of the tornado, all of the Chevy dealers in southwest Virginia and North Carolina had depleted their inventories of red Camaros.
At home in Jericho, Henry tried to talk Maddie into buying one of the now legendary cars to replace her Jeep, which had been destroyed by the storm. Maddie, horrified by this idea, took pains to explain to Henry that buying a car that looked like the one that had demolished part of Uncle David’s Bed and Breakfast would be too painful a reminder for the distraught innkeeper.
Thank god.
Chapter 5
ON SATURDAY MORNING, Maddie and David sat together at the kitchen table, drinking coffee.
; Maddie was reviewing some notes Lizzy had made on patients she had seen at Mt. Rogers during her clinic hours on Wednesday night. There was no tornado damage at that altitude, but there were some minor injuries related to high winds and monsoon-like rain.
David was sorting through a large pile of mail he had retrieved from the post office the day before, and was busily ripping reply cards out of magazines. A tower of tiny cards rose up from the table. It was nearly as tall as Henry’s box of Cheerios.
Something in one of the publications caught his eye.
“Yo, Cinderella?” he said. “Have you ever had any surgeries using Transvaginal Mesh?”
Maddie put down her coffee cup. “Excuse me?”
“If so, you could stand to make a lot of money in this big class action lawsuit.” He held up a glossy, two-page ad in the copy of In Style magazine he was perusing.
She sighed. “Do you lie awake at night trying to invent new ways to make me insane?”
David looked offended. “Of course not. I’m just trying to help out.”
“Help out? How, exactly?”
He flipped through a few more pages of the magazine. “Well, now that you’re really the only breadwinner in the family, I thought the extra income might come in handy.”
“By suing the manufacturer of a product used to repair prolapsed uteri?”
He nodded enthusiastically.
She sighed. “I’d rather sell my eggs on eBay.”
David looked her up and down. “Really? Think you have any left that haven’t calcified?”
Henry walked into the room, cutting short Maddie’s response.
“Maddie?” he asked. “When we talk to Daddy this week, can I show him my piece of the red car?”
Maddie looked at him in confusion. “What piece of the red car, Henry?”
David cleared his throat and started collecting his magazines and pile of postcards. “I have to get going. I need to have Astrid at the groomer’s before nine.”
“Wait a minute.” Maddie held out a hand to stop him. She turned back to Henry. “What piece of the red car are you talking about, buddy?”
Henry looked back and forth between them. “The one that Uncle David gave me yesterday.”
“Uncle David gave you a piece of the car?” she asked.
He nodded. “I can keep it, can’t I, Maddie?”
Maddie sucked in a cheek and turned to David. “Care to elaborate?”
He shrugged. “The contractor found a tiny, insignificant piece of it beneath the rubble at the back wall of the inn. I thought Henry would like it as a souvenir, so I brought it here for him.”
“Tiny?” Maddie asked.
“Yes. Totally tiny.”
“And insignificant?”
“Completely.”
Maddie turned to Henry. “Where is it, sport?”
He pointed toward the yard. “It’s outside behind the barn.”
“Why is it outside, Henry?”
“Um.” He looked at David, who was suddenly very interested in contemplating his thumbnail. “It’s too big to fit in my bedroom.”
“Really?” She looked back at David. “What piece of the car do we have, David?”
He shrugged. “It’s an interior piece.”
“An interior piece?”
“It might be part of the . . . dashboard.”
“The dashboard?”
David was growing exasperated. “Is there an echo in here? Yes, the dashboard. Okay?”
Maddie sighed. “Henry? Would you do me a big favor and go and ask Syd if she’s ready to have me help her with her bath?”
“Okay, Maddie.” He ran off toward the front of the house.
“Walk, buddy!” Maddie called after him.
She faced David. “You gave Henry the dashboard of a car? Are you insane? This isn’t a chop shop.”
“Cool your jets, Cochise. It’s not the whole dashboard, just the good part.”
“What the hell does that mean? The good part?”
He sighed. “The part that has the steering wheel.”
Maddie sagged in her chair. “Great.”
“I wish you’d just relax once in a while. It might be fun to trick this thing out for him.”
“David, I’m already having a hard enough time, convincing him that buying one of those absurd cars as a replacement for the Jeep would be too painful a reminder for you, and then you bring him the damn dashboard as a souvenir.”
“Yeah . . . about that. Why not buy a Camaro?”
Maddie looked at him like he had just suggested that she dye her hair orange and have her tongue pierced. “You must be joking?”
“Oh come on, Cinderella. We both know that you flashed through puberty at warp six. Why not take a thoughtful pause and embrace all those developmental stages you skipped?”
“I don’t need to buy a muscle car to reclaim the excesses of my lost youth. All I need to do is have a conversation with you.”
David leaned forward in his chair. “Admit it. You know you’d look hot, roaring around in one of those things.”
“I’d look ridiculous.” Maddie picked up a file folder.
“See? This is what I’m talking about.”
Maddie looked up at him over the rim of her glasses. “What is what you’re talking about?”
“This. Your complete denial. It’s so textbook.”
“You’re nuts.”
“Am not.”
“Are, too.”
“No. Wait.” He sifted through his pile of magazines until he found the one he was looking for. “There’s an article about this phenomenon in here.” He flipped through the magazine until he found the interview he was looking for and held it out to her. “See?”
Maddie glanced down at the flashy interview with Dr. Laars Pänz, the latest messiah of the self-help movement. “Oh come on, David. Not this dude again.”
“Hey . . . don’t knock him. I’ll have you know that he was on Conan last week. Conan. The man’s a guru. And a legend.”
“The man’s a fraud.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“Why would I be jealous of someone who legally changed his first name to Doctor?”
David huffed. “Maybe because he’s making a fortune on the talk show circuit, while you spend your days lancing boils.”
“Whatever.” Maddie returned her attention to her files.
David sighed. “Hey. What was Henry saying about seeing his dad?”
Maddie looked at him. “Didn’t we tell you? We’ve been able to set up some Skype sessions for Henry and James. They can talk to each other about once a week now.”
“That’s great. Any idea about how much longer he’ll be stuck in Afghanistan?”
Maddie shrugged. “We’re hoping that he’ll be included in this next round of troop reductions.”
“And if he is. What will that mean about Henry?”
“We don’t know.”
They turned to see Syd standing in the doorway.
“Hi ya, Pegleg.” David hopped up to pull out a chair for her.
“Good morning, husband.” Syd made her way to the table and bent over to kiss the top of Maddie’s head. “And good morning, wife.”
Maddie wrapped an arm around her waist. “Hey, you smell good.”
“Bathing does tend to yield such happy results.”
Maddie looked up at her in surprise. “You already took a bath?”
Syd nodded. “I thought it was about time I figured it out.” She lowered herself onto the chair David pulled out for her and handed him her crutches.
“To answer your question,” Syd said. “We don’t really know what will happen when James comes home.”
“You’ve had him for a year and a half now,” David said.
Syd nodded. “And James has been wonderful about that. There’s no doubt about how grateful he is that Henry has been here with us.”
“But,” Maddie interjected, “Henry is his son, and we can’t forget that.”
“No matter how much we’d like to,” Syd added.
Maddie took hold of her hand.
David shook his head. “I guess we all knew there was a chance it wouldn’t last forever.”