Hot Wheels and High Heels

by Jane Graves

  After getting the gist of the situation, the cops managed to pry everything away from her but the bottle of wine, which she had a death grip on. The new homeowners just shoved her handbag at her and waved at the cops to take her away, figuring it was more important to get rid of the crazy woman than it was to have a nice red with dinner.

  She scooped up Pepé on her way out the door. Young cop escorted her to her car while old cop spoke to the new homeowners. He came back a few minutes later to tell her that the people had no desire to press charges in spite of the way she’d behaved, as long as she swore she would never step foot in their house again. She countered that the prenup she’d signed didn’t cover the things in the house she and Warren had bought since they were married, so he had no right to sell them. Old cop said fine, but that was something that had to be sorted out between her lawyer and her husband’s, and for now it would be best if she just left the neighborhood.

  Darcy’s hands shook as she started her car and backed out of the driveway. She drove down the alley and swung back onto Briarwood Lane just in time to see the cops take a left onto Thornberry. As soon as they were out of sight, she did a one-eighty in the cul-de-sac and headed back down the street, stopping at the curb to have one last look at her house.

  Her house? It wasn’t her house.

  It had never been her house.

  At that moment, she wished Mercedes-Benz had taken luxury one step further and installed a corkscrew in the dashboard. Then again, it was probably a good thing they hadn’t, or she’d be chugging that two-hundred-dollar bottle of wine like a can of Old Milwaukee.

  Okay. She had to get a grip. Talk to Warren. Find out why he’d done this to her. She pulled out her cell phone and called Warren’s office to talk to his secretary. If anyone would know where he was, Lucy would. She was an earthy little woman utterly lacking in fashion sense, which gave her that much more room in her brain for things like efficiency and professionalism and organizational skills. So Darcy was surprised when the woman greeting her sounded a little befuddled. She told Darcy she hadn’t seen Warren for the past two days, and he had a client presentation this afternoon. Did she have any idea where he was?

  Stunned, Darcy hung up the phone. This couldn’t be happening. Warren had kissed his job good-bye, along with that big, beautiful paycheck?

  That led her to another thought that made her even queasier than before. Warren could subsist a long time on the profit from the house, but not in the style to which he was accustomed. But if he piled a few more assets on top of it . . .

  Darcy called information, who then connected her to their bank. She asked about their checking accounts. The perky little clerk on the other end informed her that all three of them had been cleaned out and closed two days ago.

  Darcy’s stomach did a slow, sickening heave, and she had to swallow hard to get rid of the feeling that she was going to throw up. She yanked out her credit cards, flipping one of them over so she could dial the 800 number on the back. The customer-service rep informed her that recent large purchases plus a big cash advance had run the card right up to its limit.

  No. Not her credit cards. Please, God, not her credit cards.

  She knew it was pointless, but she called about the others, too. Same story. Now she knew the whole ugly, painful truth: Warren was a one-man demolition team hell-bent on destroying her life.

  Darcy gripped the steering wheel so hard her fingers ached, and she took deep breaths to drive oxygen back to her brain so she wouldn’t keel over onto the passenger seat. Not one dime of cash was left, not one dollar of open credit. Warren had all kinds of other investments, but she didn’t have a clue what they were.

  As if he’d left any of them for her.

  Glancing back at the house, she saw a tear-clouded image of the new homeowners peeking out the plantation shutters, clearly wondering if she was on the verge of going nuts and taking hostages. That led her to yet another revelation. They would be sleeping in her bed tonight. She wouldn’t.

  Despair edged into panic. Where was she supposed to go now?

  She thought about her friends, only to realize that most of them weren’t really friends at all. They were women she went to lunch with, women she shopped with, women she went to Cancún with while her husband was yanking her life out from under her. But they weren’t really friends if she was afraid to not show up to something for fear she’d be the one they talked about. Carolyn was the only one she’d even consider staying with, but Carolyn’s husband didn’t like her friends dropping by for coffee, much less moving in.

  Finally she realized that, outside of a homeless shelter, there was only one place she could go that wouldn’t cost her money or cause unnecessary gossip in the circles she and Warren ran in. And the thought of it made a shudder undulate down her spine.

  You’ve got no choice. It’s that or share a bathroom with forty other women.

  She wiped her eyes so she could see enough to drive, then started her car. She left her neighborhood and drove down Preston Road. When she reached Park Boulevard, she gritted her teeth, turned left, and headed toward east Plano.

  Ten minutes later, she drove into Wingate Manufactured Home Park, her eyes still so clouded with tears that the place almost looked habitable. She pulled to the side of the road in front of the double-wide on lot 38G, a vinyl-clad structure with plastic shutters and a limp metal awning. A pot of pink geraniums sat beside the front door, wilting in the heat, and Christmas lights drooped over the picture window in the living room. “Clayton, take down the damned lights,” her mother would say, and her father would say, “Not if I’m gonna have to put them up again next year.”

  Darcy sat in the car a long time, unable to bear going inside, overcome by the most terrible feeling that she had come full circle when all she’d ever wanted to do was stay put halfway around.

  Chapter 2

  When John Stark looked up from his desk to find himself staring down the barrel of a gun, he really wasn’t all that surprised. From the moment the kid had walked into his office, his swaggering gait and screw-you expression said he had more bravado than brains, and that was always a reason for a heads-up.

  As usual, John’s instincts had been right on target.

  “So, whatcha think now, repo man?” the kid said, holding the gun at a ninety-degree angle with his elbow locked, like in every B-grade gangbanger movie ever made. “Still think I need to make up those back payments? Huh? Or are you gonna give me back my damned car?”

  John let out a silent sigh. If anyone else had been in the office, the kid might have thought twice about pulling this crap. But Tony was out on a repossession, Amy had left for class, and the floozy of a clerk John had hired a few days ago wouldn’t have been much help even if he hadn’t fired her this afternoon. Then again, maybe she could have asphyxiated the kid with a can of Aqua Net, or stabbed him with a nail file, or maybe just talked him into a coma. In her hands, any of those weapons could have been deadly.

  John tried to remember if he’d seen the kid before in his former life, maybe busted him for drag racing or picked him up for shoplifting, but no bells rang. He was maybe nineteen or twenty, as tensely coiled as a starving pit bull, with an angel-of-death tattoo on his upper arm and the reshuffled nose of a street fighter. At six-three, two-twenty, John’s size alone made most men think twice about messing with him, and if the only weapons between him and this kid had been their bare hands, he could easily have taken him down. Unfortunately, a firearm had a way of evening things out.

  John stood up carefully and moved around his desk. “I’ll give your car back. But like I said, you have to make up the back payments, pay the impound fee—”

  “Bullshit! I don’t have to make up no back payments!”

  John cringed. Profanity he could tolerate. Any accent in the world was fine by him. But for God’s sake, did the kid have to use a double negative?

  “If I don’t have the appropriate paperwork,” John said, “I can’t release the car. Yo
u’ll have to take it up with your finance company.”

  “I’m taking it up with you.”

  The kid shook the gun, and a heightened sense of uneasiness slid along John’s nerves, telling him he’d better tread softly. This kid was a little more agitated than the average person whose car had turned up missing, which told John that a little crack might be swimming around in his veins, which made this situation more unpredictable than he cared to mess with.

  He weighed his options. One repossession was hardly worth getting blown away over. Then again, if he got in the habit of simply handing over the cars he’d taken the time and trouble to legally steal, he’d have armed deadbeats lined up around the block demanding their vehicles back.

  “Hey, repo man! I’m talking to you!”

  John held up his palms. “Take it easy.” He carefully opened a file drawer and pulled out a key ring. “Here’s the key to the impound lot. Just take your car and get out.”

  He lobbed the key to the kid. But—doggone it—his aim was off.

  Way off.

  The kid lunged for the key and missed. It clattered to the tile floor, and the second the kid’s gaze turned south to follow it, John stepped forward, clamped his hand on the kid’s wrist, and backed him against the wall. He smacked the gun from his hand, then pushed him facedown on the ground and planted a knee in his back. With one hand pressed to the kid’s neck, he held his face to the floor, and with his other hand he reached for the cell phone in his pocket.

  While he was having a word with the 911 operator, the door to the outer office swung open and Tony walked in. He glanced into John’s office, stopping short and staring down at the kid. “Damn. I leave for an hour and miss all the fun?”

  John flipped his phone shut and looked at Tony. “Grab the cuffs from my desk drawer.”

  Tony gave him the handcuffs, and in seconds John had the kid subdued. Then he came to his feet, wincing at the dull pain that throbbed in his knee.

  “So, what’s the deal?” Tony asked. “Did you feel like taking a trip down memory lane and arresting someone?”

  “He wanted his car back. Pulled a gun.”

  “Bad move, kid,” Tony said. “Guess you didn’t know who you were messing with. Next time you might want to think twice before pulling a gun on the nice repo man.”

  That prompted the kid to let out a string of curse words directed at everything from Tony’s parentage to his intellect to his religious affiliation. The kid might have been a little deficient where proper English was concerned, but John had to give him points for creativity.

  A few minutes later, the cops showed up, two guys John had never seen before, both of them so young that he wondered if the Plano PD had taken to trolling high schools looking for recruits. He told them what had happened and that he would come to the station later to make a statement. They stuffed the kid into the back of a patrol car and took off.

  John collapsed in his desk chair with a heavy sigh. I should have listened to my family and gone with the Subway franchise, he thought. Unfortunately, eight years as an auto theft detective with the Plano PD had taught him more about repossessing cars than making sandwiches. After all, who knew more about how to steal cars than a cop who went after car thieves?

  Tony tossed some paperwork onto John’s desk. “Got the Viper.”

  “Any trouble?”

  “Nah. The guy about wet his pants when I said I was repossessing his car. All he was worried about was the neighbors seeing me.”

  Well, that was nothing new. Most of John’s business involved repossessing the high-dollar assets of west Plano doctors, lawyers, and other assorted bigwigs whose fortunes were tied to stock market trends and overspending wives. Those guys rarely gave him the kind of trouble he got from lowlifes whose fortunes came from dealing drugs.

  Tony looked around. “Hey, where’s the girl? Uh . . . What was her name?”

  “Rona? Fired her this afternoon.”

  Tony blinked. “Now why did you go and do that?”

  “She had the brain of an amoeba.”

  “Brain? Who was looking at her brain?” Tony popped a Tic Tac into his mouth. “We finally get a decent-looking woman around here, and you get all hung up on competency. What’s the matter with you?”

  “I have a business to run.”

  “I was going to marry that woman. Till death do us part. I was in love.”

  “You were in love with her thirty-eight Ds.”

  “No. We had a cosmic connection. I could feel it.”

  “What was her name again?”

  Tony blinked, then gave John a smug smile. “Rhonda. You thought I didn’t remember, didn’t you?”

  “No, buddy. You’re right on top of things.”

  “So why’d you fire her? I mean, specifically.”

  “She painted her nails at her desk. Stunk like hell, but I let it go. She talked on the phone for an hour. I looked the other way. Then she started to file.”

  “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Until I heard her singing the alphabet.”

  Tony winced. “Well, if she could get most of the way to Z—”

  “I swear to God I’ll vote for a chimpanzee in the next presidential election if he promises to do something about the damned educational system.”

  “Did she cry when you fired her?” Tony asked.

  John winced at the memory. “Of course. And that made the experience even more enjoyable.”

  “So right now she’s probably feeling pretty down, huh?”

  “I expect so.”

  Tony raised his eyebrows. “You have her home number, right?”

  John shook his head, wondering if he’d been like Tony at twenty-eight, looking around every corner for an opportunity to get laid. He guessed he must have been. But late-night liaisons with predawn departures just didn’t do it for him anymore, and no woman had ever come along whom he cared to get permanent with.

  Of course, being a loser in the marriage department had made him a real standout in his family full of . . . well, families. At their last reunion in Tyler, his female relatives from across the state of Texas had chattered about him in hushed whispers, speculating how such a handsome man could have reached age forty-two without making it to the altar at least once.

  “Look how he’s tossing back the Jack. I bet he has a drinking problem.”

  “Maybe the trouble’s down south. Size may not matter, but functionality’s another thing entirely.”

  “Suppose all that macho’s for show? Uncle Raymond the bricklayer went queer, you know. I mean, who’d have ever thought that?”

  After that weekend, John had left believing that “bless your heart” was actually his last name.

  If he’d been living a few centuries ago, everyone would have just said “he’s not the marrying kind” and let it go at that. Now they speculated on exactly which part of his anatomy or personality was defective and thanked God those mutant strands of DNA hadn’t infiltrated their branches of the family tree.

  The truth was that while he had no shortage of women in his life, marriage just didn’t appeal to him. Never had. Maybe it was because he’d watched virtually everyone he knew walk into matrimony and right back out of it again. It took some guys two or three times to get the picture. It was as if they were hitting themselves in the head with hammers and trying to figure out where all the pain was coming from.

  “Go ahead,” he told Tony, flipping open a file and scribbling down the number. “Give Rhonda a call. I’m sure she’ll be delighted to hear from you.”

  “Yep. As long as I tell her what a bastard you were to fire her.”

  The phone rang, and John picked it up. After a short conversation, he hung up with a smile of satisfaction.

  “What’s up?” Tony asked.

  “Got a line on a car. It may not be there for long, though. Mind dropping me off so I can pick it up?”

  “Sure.”

  John grabbed a key from his desk drawer, gra
teful he had one for this particular car. Hot-wiring could make a mess of a steering column, and there was always danger of damage whenever he grabbed one with the tow truck. Those were usually his only options, but every once in a while he dealt with a company that kept a key for every vehicle it financed in case somebody stopped making the payments. And that meant all he had to do was unlock the car and drive it away, which was the easiest five hundred bucks a man could make.

  As he and Tony closed up shop and headed out, John felt a whole lot better than he had a few minutes ago. Yeah, it had been a hell of a day, but he had no doubt that getting behind the wheel of a sweet little Mercedes Roadster was going to perk him right up.

  Darcy grabbed Pepé and trudged up the wooden steps that led to her parents’ front door, wincing as they groaned painfully, shrunken as they were from years of shriveling in the blazing Texas sun. She knocked, and a few seconds later her mother came to the door wearing a pink bathrobe, her hair in a towel. When she saw her daughter’s state of distress, her eyes got big and horrified. She shoved the screen door open and pulled Darcy inside.

  “Darcy? What’s wrong? You look like hell. Have you been crying? What’s happened?”

  It was the rapid-fire interrogation of a woman who lives with the absolute certainty that some dreadful event is always lurking just around the corner, waiting to snatch her up in its cold, clammy grasp. Of course, she was never right about that, and Darcy’s father never let her forget it.

  Today, though, Lyla Dumphries was going to be vindicated.

  Darcy gave her the gist of the situation, and Lyla wheezed in a breath and grasped her throat as if she were stroking out.

  “Did you hear that, Clayton? Warren left Darcy. Just like that. He left her high and dry without a dime to her name!”