Hot Wheels and High Heels

by Jane Graves

  “Uh-huh. I heard.”

  “See, I told you it couldn’t last. Didn’t I tell you it couldn’t last?”

  “It lasted . . . what? Fourteen years?” He returned to his Naugahyde throne in the living room and snapped open his newspaper. “Pretty good run, if you ask me.”

  “Other people are living in her house, for God’s sake!”

  “It’s big enough. She won’t even run into them.”

  Lyla huffed with disgust and turned to Darcy. “Forget your father. You know how useless he is in a crisis. Sit down.”

  She dragged Darcy to the kitchen table and slid into a chair beside her, grabbing her cigarettes and lighting one with the practiced flick-puff-exhale of a thirty-year smoker. She tossed the lighter onto the kitchen table, her brows drawn together and her mouth drooping in a taut, worried frown.

  “So you’re telling me there’s no money left? None at all? He took every penny?”

  Oh, God. It sounded way worse when somebody said it out loud. “Yes,” Darcy said, her voice shuddering. “Every penny.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening. Didn’t you put anything away? Anything at all?”

  Darcy felt like a fool. Sure, now she could see she should have developed an alternative plan somewhere along the line, like maybe siphoning money from their joint accounts and sticking it under the mattress. Hindsight sucked.

  “I have a hundred and eighty-three dollars in my wallet,” she said. “Plus a few pesos.”

  Lyla groaned, taking several short puffs on her cigarette, interspersed with a lot of eye shifting and fingernail tapping. She had long since given up the idea of rising to the top of society as a whole, but she could damn well be the cream of the crop at Wingate Manufactured Home Park. Unfortunately, most of that status came from the fact that her daughter was married to a chief financial officer at a big corporation in west Plano and lived in a gated community of homes worth over half a million dollars. Those buzz words piqued all kinds of interest among people who watched Wheel of Fortune and dreamed of winning a plasma TV.

  “So, what did you do?” Lyla asked.

  “I haven’t done anything yet,” Darcy said. “I just found out.”

  “No. I mean, what did you do to make him leave you?”

  Darcy drew back. “I didn’t do anything!”

  “Of course you did. It’s not hard to hang on to a man once you’ve hooked him. Even a rich one. You had to have done something.”

  “I’m telling you, I didn’t do anything! Everything was fine when I left, and then when I came home—”

  “Oh, God. It was the sex, wasn’t it? You stopped giving him sex.”

  Darcy groaned. “Mom—”

  “Haven’t I told you how dangerous that is? If you don’t give a man sex, he’s out the door. Haven’t I told you that?”

  “If it’s so damned dangerous,” Clayton muttered from the living room, “how come I don’t get any?”

  Lyla hurled a look of disgust over her shoulder. “Because I’m hoping you’ll leave.”

  Darcy closed her eyes, wishing she’d had the foresight to put her fingers in her ears and la-la-la her way through that. Why did every visit to her parents’ house have to be a trip through Dysfunction Junction?

  She remembered the first time she’d shown her mother Warren’s house. Lyla stood in the entry, gazing around as if she’d passed through the gates of heaven and was basking in paradise. Then she’d pulled Darcy aside and gave her a simple three-point plan on how to hang on to the rich man she’d managed to snag: Stay thin, don’t let even one strand of gray hair show, and never, ever have a headache at bedtime.

  “Maybe there’s another reason he disappeared,” Lyla said. “After all, maybe this wasn’t his fault. Maybe he has a brain tumor. Did you stop to think about that? Brain tumors make people do crazy things.”

  Darcy gave her mother a deadpan look. “Do you actually think he has a brain tumor?”

  “Hard to say. When we were over at your house last Christmas, he seemed a little distracted. Then again, if he’d had a brain tumor last Christmas, he’d probably be dead by now.” She ground out her cigarette and reached for another one. “You know, I read in the Star about a man who was abducted by aliens. Disappeared just like that.”

  “Uh-huh,” Clayton said. “Warren was abducted by aliens. And the head alien said, ‘Sure, take a few days to sell your house before we beam you up.’”

  “Like you know what happens in outer space?” Lyla snapped, then turned back to Darcy. “Anyway, the guy’s wife thought he’d run off with another woman. I guess in a way he had, since it turned out he was having sex with a little green woman with great big eyeballs.”

  Over the years, Darcy had trained herself not to picture Warren doing it with anyone else since she’d had the feeling a few times that he might have been. But not once had she imagined that the other woman was . . . well, an otherworldly woman.

  “He wasn’t abducted by aliens,” Darcy said, as if somebody had to.

  “Then what’s your explanation? Do you suppose it is another woman? Is that what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is she younger than you?”

  Darcy looked at her mother dumbly. “If I don’t even know if she exists, how do I know if she’s younger?”

  “Oh, she’s younger. Believe me. They’re always younger.” She glanced at the sunflower clock on the kitchen wall. “Clayton! Go take a shower. We’re due at the clubhouse in forty-five minutes.”

  “You’re leaving?” Darcy asked.

  “Have to,” Lyla said. “Monthly potluck. I’d stay home, but I’m the committee chairman this year. If I’m not there, Roxanne will move in and take all the credit.”

  Roxanne LaCroix was Lyla’s neighbor across the street who was supposedly her best friend, but both of them had elevated backstabbing to an Olympic event.

  “You can come if you want to,” Lyla said.

  Darcy thought about the clubhouse, which consisted of a Coke machine, a scruffy pool table, a galley kitchen with yellowed linoleum, and plenty of folding tables for bingo night.

  “Uh . . . no, thanks,” Darcy said.

  With a squeak of his La-Z-Boy, Clayton rose from his chair and came to the kitchen table, newspaper in hand. “You can stay in the spare bedroom,” he told Darcy. “Your mother will feed you. Here’s thirty bucks to fill up your gas tank.”

  “My gas tank?”

  “After you look at these.” He tossed the newspaper down on the table, then ambled down the hall.

  Lyla glanced at the section of the paper he’d given Darcy, then whipped around and shouted, “You want her to get a job?”

  But Clayton had already disappeared. If he was going to drop a bomb, he knew to stay clear of the fallout.

  Lyla huffed with irritation. “Didn’t I tell you he was useless in a crisis?”

  For once, her mother was right. After all, Darcy had been an employee once—a receptionist at a big manufacturing company—and she hadn’t liked it in the least. She had to be at her desk at some ungodly hour of the morning, she got only an hour for lunch, and as much as she liked talking on the phone, after a while the ringing drove her nuts. If Warren hadn’t worked there as a senior accounting manager and eventually taken her away from all that, she’d have been forced to rethink employment as a means of making a living.

  Marry rich, Darcy. It’s your only hope.

  She’d heard those words from the moment she realized boys didn’t have cooties to the day she said “I do.” Her mother believed every woman needed a man to take care of her, and the richer he was, the better. And if you couldn’t find a rich one, you made do with whatever you could get and then spent the rest of your life bitching about the monthly shortfall and trying to make him into something he wasn’t.

  Lyla stabbed out her cigarette and rose from the table. “I have to go do my hair. In the meantime, I suggest you make a few phone calls and see if you can find your husba
nd. And when you do, tell him you’re sorry for whatever you’ve done, and then pretend nothing ever happened.”

  “Sorry? What do I have to be sorry about?”

  “Whatever you did to make him leave you.”

  “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? I didn’t do anything!”

  Lyla shook her finger like a cranky schoolmarm. “Do you like pretty clothes? A big house to live in? Lunch at those fancy restaurants? You’re not twenty-five anymore, you know. Do you think you’ve still got what it takes to snag another man who can give you a lifestyle like that?”

  Darcy felt a slap of reality. Her impending birthday hadn’t meant a thing to her two hours ago when she had the money to look thirty. But now she pictured her roots growing out. Her Botox wearing off. The lump of Play-Doh her body was going to become if she couldn’t pay Vlad to push her to exercise.

  As those horrific thoughts swept through her mind, she quivered with dread. All she wanted was for Warren to surface with some kind of plausible explanation—or even a not-so-plausible one that was at least semi-believable—so she could get her life back again and pretend all this had never happened.

  Lyla went to her bedroom to make herself as presentable as nature would allow. Darcy found leftover chicken in the fridge for Pepé, and then she fixed herself a drink with the only ingredients she could find: diet Coke and Wild Turkey. After her parents left the house, she drained that glass and filled another one, then picked up the phone and made calls to Warren’s friends, his golf buddies, and his CPA. Nobody had seen a single hair on his mostly bald head. Or, if they had, they weren’t telling her.

  She hung up and took stock of her situation. It didn’t look good. She had a hundred and eighty-three dollars, a couple of suitcases full of clothes that would be perfect as long as she moved to a Mexican resort for the rest of her life, and a dog she loved dearly but who was about as useful in a crisis as dryer lint.

  But she did still have her Mercedes. Thank God she still had that.

  She glanced out the window and adored her car for a moment, taking a mental tour of the interior, with its walnut door panels and its heated seats and its Thermo-Tronic climate control, not to mention the intoxicating smell of the black leather seats. Maybe everything else in her life had gone to hell, but no one was taking her car away from her.

  Except maybe those guys out there stealing it.

  Chapter 3

  As John unlocked the door of the Mercedes Roadster, he experienced the same thrill he always did whenever he was in the presence of a truly extraordinary vehicle. He couldn’t wait to feel the walnut-inlaid steering wheel beneath his palms, smell the leather, hear the thunder of three hundred horses under the hood. It was a convertible, earning it extra points, and firemist red with black interior, which were exactly the colors he would pick if fate ever chose to drop fifty thousand discretionary dollars in his lap. It was getting near dusk, but he’d bet this baby would glow in the dark.

  Parked behind the Roadster was a ’91 Corolla, blue with rust accents, with a Jack-in-the-Box antenna ball and a purple rosary hanging from the rearview mirror. Since that vehicle was typical for those that resided at Wingate Manufactured Home Park, the Mercedes Roadster stuck out like a champion show dog in a pack of mangy mutts.

  Tony gave a low whistle, running his hand over the fender of the car with utmost appreciation. “Man, one of these days I’m going to buy one of these instead of stealing other people’s.”

  “Yep,” John said. “Nice car. Now, keep an eye on that double-wide until I can get it out of here.”

  He unlocked the driver’s door and opened it so he could check out the vehicle identification number, careful as always to see that the numbers matched. Nothing on earth caused a bigger mess than grabbing the wrong car.

  “The VIN matches,” John said.

  “Okay, then,” Tony said. “I’m out of here. There’s a certain depressed woman who needs me tonight. I’ll just give her a call. . . .” He paused. “Uh-oh. We’ve got trouble.”

  John heard a door slam. He looked over his shoulder to see a woman tearing down the front steps of the double-wide, teetering on ridiculously high heels as she ran across a lawn that was more weeds than grass. Christ, a woman could break an ankle in shoes like those.

  “Hey, you!” she shouted. “Get away from my car!”

  John stood up. She halted in front of him, coiling her perfectly manicured hands into fists and resting them on her hips. And he couldn’t help noticing the tight white pants that followed the curve of those hips and the lime-green off-the-shoulder shirt she wore that was just short enough to reveal an inch of skin below it—smooth, tanned skin that said she was a poolside lounger who wore just the right SPF. And her hair—long, dark, and silky—looked as if she’d just stepped out of a shampoo commercial.

  Although she was nice to look at, he’d discovered long ago that high-maintenance women only made his life hell, and she was clearly one of those. Anytime one of them popped up on his radar, he ran the other way.

  She flicked a strand of dark, glossy hair over her shoulder and skewered him with an angry glare. “What are you doing with my car?”

  “Returning it to its owner.”

  “I am its owner.”

  “Nope. This car is owned by Atlas Financial Services.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m repossessing it.”

  She drew back with a stunned expression. “Repossessing it?”

  “That’s what happens when you don’t make the payments.”

  “Hold on. Wait a minute. Payments? What do you mean, ‘payments’?”

  Not only was she high maintenance, she was dumb as dirt. Dangerous combination. It meant she had the basic motor function to start shopping but not enough brain power to tell her when to stop.

  “It was financed,” he told her. Slowly, so she’d get the picture. “By your husband.”

  “No. There are no payments. My husband has plenty of money. He pays cash for everything.”

  “Maybe for everything else, but not for this.”

  “You’re not listening to me,” she said sharply. “You clearly have the wrong car.”

  “Nope. The VIN matches.”

  “VIN?”

  “Vehicle identification number.”

  “Maybe somebody gave you the wrong number.”

  “And the wrong number matches? What are the odds?”

  He turned to get into the car, but she grabbed his arm. “Hey! I’m telling you you’ve made a mistake!”

  John let out a breath of irritation. He rarely bothered to explain himself, but since it might be the quickest way out of here, he pulled the repossession order from his pocket.

  “Warren McDaniel,” he read. “Is that your husband’s name?”

  “Yes. But you must have the wrong Warren McDaniel.”

  John rattled off the social security number. “Is that your husband’s?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Is this a Mercedes SLK350 Roadster?”

  “Of course it is. But—”

  “The vehicle identification number matches.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “And the loan is sixty days delinquent.”

  “Well, you say it is, but—”

  “So tell me where I’m out of line by taking this car.”

  She snatched the order out of his hand and tore it up, tossing the pieces into the air for the evening breeze to carry away, then planted her fists on her hips again.

  Tony’s eyes widened. “Oops,” he told her. “Big mistake. John’s real funny about his paperwork.”

  “Will you shut up?” John snapped. “I’ll handle this.”

  Tony held up his hands in surrender and went over to lean against the fender of his 4x4, popping a Tic Tac and not even bothering to hide his smirk of amusement. John, on the other hand, was not amused in the least.

  “That did you no good at all,” John told her. “I don’t have to have p
aperwork to take the car.” He slid into the convertible and stuck the key into the ignition.

  “Wait a minute. Where did you get a key?”

  “Some loan companies keep a copy. Makes life easier when their cars have to be repossessed.”

  “They can’t do that!”

  “They can until the loan is paid off.” He shut the door.

  “No! You are not taking my car!”

  The hell he wasn’t.

  He started the engine and revved it a little. As he was reaching for the gearshift, though, she circled around the front of the car, turned, and leaned against the hood.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “Get out of the way!”

  She didn’t move, so he laid on the horn. She jumped a little but stayed put.

  Shit. What now? He couldn’t keep honking. If he did, pretty soon an audience would gather, and in his profession that could only lead to disaster.

  He looked over his shoulder. Unfortunately, the crappy Corolla parked behind him hadn’t decided to move of its own accord. It was hugging the Roadster’s bumper so close he had no room to back up.

  Enough was enough.

  John ripped open the door and strode around to where she stood. “Get away from the car.”

  She held the fingers of one hand in front of her, apparently overcome with a sudden need to inspect her fifty-dollar manicure.

  Okay. He could physically remove her. Hell, he could pick up three of her and never break a sweat. But as soon as he did, she’d start screaming, and the neighbors would come running, and assault charges would be filed, and he sure as hell didn’t want to deal with any of that.

  “I said get away from the car,” he repeated, injecting as much venom into his voice as he possibly could. Intimidation was his strong suit. This expression and this voice had brought felony suspects to their knees. But she merely glanced at him nonchalantly as if to say, You are absolutely boring me to death, then went back to checking out her perfectly polished nails.

  “I’m warning you,” he said. “I’m a very stubborn man.”

  “And I’m a stubborn woman.”