Rich people, Phoebe thought.
They were both sweating and breathing hard. Nick lay down and stretched out on his back. Phoebe did the same. They were both trying to be as still and quiet as possible. Phoebe turned her head to look at him. There was just enough light coming in from underneath the doors, to see each other.
She couldn’t decide whether Nick looked disreputable or handsome, or both. Before she realized what was happening, he leaned over and kissed her.
At that same moment they heard several sets of running heavy footfalls burst into the room. They both froze, their faces remaining at point blank range as they listened to the docent ask in a thin pedantic old lady voice if the visitors would like to hear the history of the library.
Apparently these particular visitors weren’t interested. The clomping of boots continued through the room and left by a side door that was on the main tour route.
A minute later Nick and Phoebe heard a loud, Pssst. Nick crawled over to the door and silently opened it just a crack. He peeked out and the old lady gestured with both arms, like a traffic cop, to indicate they should come down the stairs and then go out through the French doors on the opposite side of the room.
Nick and Phoebe quickly made their way down the staircase and passed through the French doors the docent unlocked for them. They found themselves on a loggia at the back of the house. There was a stupendous, life-changing panorama of immaculate rolling lawns bordered by vast artistically arranged forests, and rows of blue mountains beyond. The view was heart-stopping. So was the drop.
“Oh joy,” said Nick, as he leaned over the loggia balustrade and took in the sheer stone wall, forty or fifty feet to the immaculately maintained lawn behind the house.
“It is recommended that you not attempt to reach the garage and the vehicle you arrived in,” the old woman said, “but instead make your way round to the front of the chateau. There will be cars available there.” Then she pointed to a heavy-duty copper drainpipe that was held onto the wall with sturdy copper clamps. It ran in a straight line from the roof down the entire back of the house, passing within inches of the loggia railing.
Nick smiled at the woman, then he swept her up into a romantic embrace and kissed her on the lips with a loud smacking sound. “Thank you,” he said, obviously meaning it.
Phoebe was wondering what had gotten into him, but didn’t have time to ask before he stepped over the balustrade and gripped the sides of the drainpipe. He turned a pirate’s smile on her, said, “Follow me,” and began a long careful slide toward the ground.
As soon as Phoebe’s feet touched the ground they started a long sprint around the side of the gigantic house and uphill toward the parking area at the front.
“Well, that was fun,” Nick wheezed. “I’ve always wanted to see the chateau.”
Phoebe burst out laughing, even though she could hardly breathe. Her lungs were on fire. Now that they were running across the grass, the horror of heights left her. She realized Nick was great fun. Phoebe hadn’t had fun in a long time. She’d spent the last few years getting old instead.
Now she realized that even though her lifespan might be considerably shorter than she’d previously imagined, at least she’d enjoy the time left to her.
That seemed like a fair trade.
Chapter 28
Because they’d arrived from the back and been preoccupied since then, Phoebe and Nick had no idea that an antique car show and rally was getting set up around the edges of the formal driveway in front of the house. As they burst around the corner and ran along the parterre, they became aware of the dozens of restored antique convertibles lining the drive. The splendid cars were backed in so the grilles faced out. Proud owners stood nearby in period costume.
Phoebe jogged past the automobiles reading the names drawn in florid script on small cardboard signs that rested against the windshield of each car. Most of them were brands she’d never heard of: Berliet, Amilcar, Delaugère Clayette & Cie, Ballot, Chenard-Walcker, Cottin & Desgouttes, and De Dion-Bouton. Phoebe adored cars, especially ones like these. She much rather have a vintage vehicle than jewelry or furs. She never wore jewelry and was a vegetarian, but she did drive, a lot.
Phoebe slowed down and got practical. She checked each car she race-walked passed it to see how the floor pedals were configured, if the vehicle required a metal crank to be started, if it required a key, and, if so, was the key in the ignition.
She formulated a plan. She continued down the row of cars, scanning another group of vehicles: Turcat Méry, Doriot Flandrin Parant, Rayet-Liénart, Hotchkiss, Mors, Sizaire Fréres et Naudin, and Unic. The value of each car was written at the bottom of each placard. The numbers were in five figures.
Phoebe veered toward a car that’s engine happened to be running. The vehicle was a bizarre concoction of wood in the shape of a boat mounted on a rolling chassis. She checked the floor. It was a right hand drive, but had three normal looking foot pedals. The one on the right was long and narrow, the two on the left were square-ish and the same size.
In a flash she leaped into the driver’s seat. She literally had to leap because the car had no doors. She shouted to Nick, “Get in!”
He did a double take, then ran around to the other side, stepped up on the running board, and hopped in. Phoebe put the car in gear and floored it. In mere seconds she’d cleared the tall gates at the entrance to the chateau. Nick got himself settled in the passenger seat and looked for a seatbelt. There wasn’t one.
In the rear view mirror Phoebe could see bemused spectators, smiling tourists who were waving at them in delight, and an enraged couple in costume who were attempting to give chase on foot. She was relieved to note there were no henchpersons in sight.
Just as the splendid car raced away, three men dressed in black jumpsuits emerged from behind the house barely in time to see Nick and Phoebe disappear into the decorative forest that surrounded the estate.
Phoebe’s friends were convened around the biggest table in White Oak at the café in Hamilton’s Store: Leon, Ivy, Waneeta, Jill, Doc, Lester, and Fate.
Jill, the owner, set a plate of deviled eggs in the middle of the table along with a pitcher of sweet tea. “If you want anything else, get it yourself,” she said, and took a seat.
Leon, Ivy, and Waneeta filled everyone in on the parts of the story they knew. They had no idea where Phoebe’s new job was, or if she’d been able to show up for it.
“What next?” Doc asked. Now retired, he’d been Phoebe’s mentor since she was a little girl.
“Let’s all just sit tight close to a phone at our usual hangouts and wait. I’m pretty sure one of us’ll be gittin a call before too long,” said Lester. Since Lester and Fate were professional criminals, they were the experts in this kind of situation. Everyone nodded at Lester’s sensible advice, then the meeting broke up and they all went their separate ways.
Phoebe and Nick gained a considerable lead thanks to their spur of the moment grand theft auto. They were miles from the chateau by the time their pursuers were able to regroup and recalibrate. They were helped by the chateau guards who locked the main gates as soon as they realized one of the antique cars had been stolen.
Nick twisted around and rummaged in the back seat of the boatmobile. He retrieved a magnificent wide brim hat with feathers on it. He offered it to Phoebe, but she shook her head. Next he held out a vintage Hermes scarf. She took that asked him to steer while she tied it around her head Grace Kelly style. She suspected at her age she actually looked more like the Queen, but she still enjoyed wearing a $300 scarf.
She put her hands back on the steering wheel and next Nick flourished an extremely elegant pair of round retro sunglasses. She put those on, too.
He waved a pair of old-style driving gauntlets toward her but she shook her head. Nick tossed the feathered
hat into the back with the gloves, a pair of antique driving goggles, and a flat tweed cap.
The windshield of the car was made of two horizontal pieces of glass. The top half was capable of being tilted like a louver to create an opening between the two halves. Old school air-conditioning, Nick presumed, although it was plenty windy with it closed. The view on his side was being blocked by a cardboard placard, so he raised up and reached across the top of the windshield and plucked the sign out from underneath a windshield wiper.
He read the text to himself, then said to Phoebe, “You have stolen a 1914 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost Boat-Tail Skiff.”
They exchanged bemused smiles. Despite their desperate circumstances, Phoebe felt younger than she had in years. Nick resumed reading the description of the car aloud.
“‘The Silver Ghost was the most comfortable luxury car ever built and the only one available that was quiet enough to allow for normal conversation at speed. The automobile ran in complete silence without a puff of smoke—a feat that could not be matched at the time and has never been duplicated since.’”
The engine was extremely quiet, but road noise and wind sounds were still there.
“‘The construction of skiff bodies on an automobile chassis was primarily a French innovation,’” Nick continued. “‘Boat-shaped automobiles were designed specifically to cheat the wind.’”
“Love that old language,” Phoebe sighed. “It’s so poetic. I’ve heard the phrase land yacht, but I never realized somebody had actually made one. Or that I’d be driving it!”
“Blah, blah, blah … something about steam power, quadricycles, and flying tricycles,” Nick said. “Bottom line, this baby has 48 horsepower and will go 75 miles an hour.”
“Quadricycles?” Phoebe asked.
“We’re in one,” Nick said, “ a vehicle with four wheels. I guess they didn’t call them cars yet.”
“Flying tricycles?”
“You got me there. Hey, here’s something that explains why this thing looks like a boat. Some fabulously rich rowing fanatic went to a car maker—at the turn of the century it was apparently common for rich people to have custom cars manufactured to order—and the guy told the car maker, ‘Make me a torpedo without doors.’
“‘But how will you get in?’ asks the car maker.”
“‘One will step over,’ says the rich guy.”
“‘And the ladies?’ asks the car maker.”
“‘Well, they will also step over,’ says the rich guy. ‘We will finally see their legs!’”
Phoebe snorted, and thought, but didn’t say aloud, Men. Where all lines of thought eventually converge on women’s body parts. Men had their own idiotic variation of non-Euclidean geometry.
“So,” Phoebe said, “some French guy was rich enough to commission the only car in the world that was silent and built almost exactly like a boat so he could sail on dry land at 75 miles an hour and maintain civilized conversation.”
They traded a quick glance with raised eyebrows.
“Not a French guy. This particular car was owned by a gentleman from Cairo,” Nick said, then set the placard in the footwell of the back seat.
“Do you think they’re still following us?” Phoebe asked.
“Oh, I’m certain of it,” Nick said. He took a long look at Phoebe in her scarf and sunglasses. She was the picture of chic, vintage adventure.
“I don’t understand why they didn’t shoot us. Don’t they wanna kill you, or do you think they intend to torture you first?”
Nick drew a deep breath and pondered her question. “I believe we can feel fairly certain they intended to kill me—based on the whole throwing-me-out-of-the-helicopter episode. I suppose they were reluctant to shoot us in front of all those people at St. Cloud. But now I’ve embarrassed them by remaining alive several times despite their best, highly professional, efforts.
And, of course, now they’ll be annoyed with you, too. Being outwitted, humiliated in public, by a woman is bound to get on the nerves of even the most egalitarian male assassin. So, I’d say the odds favor at least a modicum of torture, and then death, for us both.”
They each thought about that, but were surprised to find it didn’t really frighten them as much as perhaps it should. They’d exhausted their fight or flight hormones at this point. Nothing was particularly scary any more, at least while they were on the ground, at least for a while.
“The new development is that I’m pretty sure we’ve got new set of pursuers now.”
“Why?” asked Phoebe.
“Because this car, the one you stole, is worth $1.2 million dollars.”
Chapter 29
Phoebe stiffened her arms, leaned back as far as possible, and took her foot off the gas. The car rolled a long way, then gradually came to a stop. She looked at Nick slack-jawed.
“Oh. My. God,” she said. “I think I’m gonna throw up.”
She stood up so she could clamber out of the doorless car. Then she got out as carefully as she could, trying not to scratch anything.
“We can’t just stop,” Nick said. “We have to keep going.”
Phoebe shook her head violently and then burst into tears. She was horrified at what she’d done. Phoebe was crazy about cars. She couldn’t believe she’d raced off in a one-of-a-kind museum piece. An irreplaceable bit of automotive history.
How could she, on her first attempt, have stolen one of the most expensive cars in the whole wide world? She’d never be able to forgive herself. She’d never be able to pay for the damage either.
Her life was ruined. How could she have been so stupid. She’d gone insane. That’s what a few moments of fun would get you every time. Regret. And years of incarceration.
“I … can’t,” she said, holding a hand over her mouth. “I can’t hurt it any worse than I already have. These roads,” she waved her hand, “are too rough for …. .”
“Then I’ll drive,” Nick said easily, and he moved over into the driver’s seat. He rummaged in the back seat for male attire, then slipped the Red Baron goggles on, donned the leather gauntlets, slapped the flat cap atop his head, and took hold of the steering wheel with gusto. “Come on, old girl,” he said. “Can’t have you losing heart now.”
Phoebe took her shoes off and carefully stepped over the side of the boat body and into the passenger side. Her nose was still red from crying. Nick put the car in gear and took off as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Out of all those cars, why did I have to pick this one?” Phoebe moaned. “I didn’t mean to. I did it because I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to steal any of the ones that weren’t already running. I don’t know how to crank start a car, do you?”
“Nope,” said Nick, smiling, obviously enjoying himself. He’d been smiling continuously since they’d stolen the car.
After a few minutes Phoebe realized it, and said, “You’re a really good driver.”
“I used to drive a lot, professionally,” he said.
“You were truck driver?” Phoebe asked. She couldn’t picture it, but of course she didn’t know him, not really. “Why’d you quit?” Phoebe asked.
She wondered if it had to do with the agoraphobia, which he seemed to be totally over, probably on account of some inability of the human brain to stack more than half a dozen death scenarios at a time, combined with adrenal exhaustion.
“I got tired of it,” he said. “I mean how many times do you need to drive around in a circle until you grasp the concept?”
“What?”
Then he pressed harder on the gas, and said, “I drove racecars.”
It took a few minutes for Phoebe to adjust to riding in a $1.2 million museum exhibit piloted by a singularly strange stranger who’d just confessed to being a racecar driver.
; She considered his rhetorical question about how many times a person had to go around a track to learn a concept, and had to admit that she’d been going around and around the same, or similar, tracks for most of her life and she still didn’t understand much.
Phoebe didn’t know what to think about anything anymore. The longer she lived, the fewer opinions she had. Life was complicated and we all came into it totally inexperienced. The older she got, the more she resisted second-guessing herself or anyone else. You did the best you could, then you moved on. End of post-game critique.
She looked out at the passing landscape. What a paradise. And riding in an open top car, made it even nicer. “I’m not sure what this says about my life,” Phoebe said, “but I’ve gotta admit, being chased by homicidal maniacs with you is more fun than any date I’ve ever been on.”
He shot her a glance, gave her a rakish smile, and said, “What if this is my idea of a date?”
Gradually, as Nick drove masterfully through the woods at speed, Phoebe pulled herself together and began to relax. She removed the cell phone from of the little bag she was wearing on a lanyard under her tunic and was thrilled to discover it still worked even after all her hijinks.
Waneeta’s answering machine picked up and Phoebe left a message requesting a callback immediately.
Next she dialed Lester.
Lester was the head of the two-man crime wave that was headquartered in White Oak, the tiny rural Tennessee mountain community where Phoebe lived. Lester ran the biggest car theft ring in the southeast. He was also a sociopath. But, for reasons known only to God, he liked Phoebe and was always nice to her. He’d come through for her before in an awkward and dangerous situation, so she knew she could count on him if she needed his help again.
Carolyn Jourdan - Nurse Phoebe 02 - The School for Mysteries Page 11