Hot Wheels and High Heels

by Jane Graves

  All at once, Lyla leaped out of her chair and made shooing movements with her hands. “Pepé! Off the sofa!”

  As Pepé scrambled away, Lyla turned to Darcy. “That dog’s behavior is atrocious. He needs a good trainer.”

  “Trainers cost money.”

  “You used to have plenty of that, and still you did nothing.”

  “Mom—”

  “It’s a good thing you never had children. They’d have turned into juvenile delinquents.” She gasped. “Darcy! He’s peeing in the corner again!”

  Darcy put her hand to her forehead. “It’s because you’re shouting at him, Mom!” she whispered loudly. “You can’t shout at him!”

  “Of course I can shout at him! It’s my house, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not arguing with your right to shout. I’m just telling you—” She let out a heavy sigh. “Oh, never mind. I’ll clean it up.”

  “I’m going across the street to Roxanne’s. Her dog doesn’t pee on the rug.”

  “That’s because she keeps him tied up in the backyard.”

  “Which means he can’t pee on the rug.”

  Lyla glared at Pepé, and he stared up at her as if she were Medusa with a headful of writhing snakes. Then Lyla grabbed another pack of cigarettes and her keys and left the house, shutting the door behind her with a huff of disgust.

  Darcy went to the kitchen for the P-B-Gone she’d bought yesterday, knowing she couldn’t stay there much longer. Dog shrinks cost a fortune. Then again, so did people shrinks. Eventually she was going to go nuts, commit matricide, and end up in an institution for the criminally insane.

  Okay, so maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. At least she’d have free room and board, along with the precious solitude only a rubber room could provide.

  After she cleaned up the mess, Pepé trotted over, and she scooped him up to calm his delicate nerves. She had to get out of there before she turned into one of those sad little people who had no means of support, who lived in their parents’ basements and watched infomercials. She needed an apartment of her own. But how long would it be before she could get the money together for that?

  She looked down at her wedding ring.

  No. She couldn’t do it. Even though it was the only thing she had left with any value at all, it was also the only thing she had left of her former life, and she just couldn’t let it go.

  She sighed. If only she made the kind of money John and Tony did for bringing in cars, she could have an apartment deposit in no time.

  Wait a minute.

  Darcy froze as an idea entered her mind. She turned it over, examined it from all angles, and after a few moments, she came to a stunning conclusion.

  Forget being a clerk. She could become a repossession agent.

  All John had done to go after her Mercedes the first time was get the key from the finance company. If she hadn’t interfered, he’d have just driven it away. All that had been required was a key and a driver’s license. Like she couldn’t handle that? Amy did say John had been trying to hire another repossession agent. He just didn’t realize that someone was right under his nose.

  A sense of excitement built inside her, making her feel like a prospector who’d happened onto a vein of gold. She pictured checks for hundreds of dollars rolling in with dazzling regularity, in contrast to her piddly biweekly salary. This was the solution to her problem. Only one thing stood in her way.

  She had to talk John into letting her do it.

  “No way,” John said. “You get that out of your head right now. I am not teaching you to repossess cars.”

  Darcy leaned forward and rested her forearms on his desk. “Just give me one good reason why you won’t.”

  If John needed any more evidence that Darcy was a lunatic, this was it. What a hell of a thing to get hit with first thing Monday morning.

  “I don’t have to give you a reason. I’m the boss.”

  She sat back in her chair, eyeing him with irritation. “It’s because I’m a woman, isn’t it?”

  “That doesn’t help your case any.”

  “Are you really that sexist?”

  “It’s not sexism. It’s just a fact that in this business, the bigger and badder you are, the less likely people are to give you any crap.”

  “Tony’s not as big as you are, yet he manages to do the job.”

  “Tony doesn’t need size with that mouth of his. He could talk anyone into anything.”

  “I’m good with people, too.”

  “I’m not talking about polite chatter at tea. I’m talking about the ability to talk your way into and out of difficult situations. People in this business can be a pain in the ass to deal with. They don’t want you to take their cars. Some of them go to great lengths to keep you from doing it. Say, like, combative women who cry, throw fits, and steal keys.”

  He could tell she wanted to come back at that, but for once she was smart enough to hold her tongue.

  “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll do both jobs. You let me do a repo every now and then, and I’ll still take care of the administrative stuff.”

  “It’s not as easy as it looks.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s so tough about putting a key into the ignition of a car and driving it back here?”

  “Some of the dealers keep keys on hand. Others give us the key code, and we have to go to a locksmith to get the keys cut. But for most of the cars, we have to use other means to take them. Sometimes we use the tow truck. Sometimes we pick the locks to break in, and if they’re older cars, we hot-wire them. Do you know how to do any of those things?”

  “Well, no. But you can let me do the ones that have keys, and you guys can do the rest.”

  “Wrong. I’m not handing you the easy ones.”

  “Then teach me how to do the other stuff.”

  “Nope.”

  “Come on, John! You got five hundred dollars for bringing in my car!”

  “I deserved twice that for having to deal with you.”

  Darcy sat back and glared at him. “Did anyone ever tell you how unreasonable you are?”

  “I don’t have to be reasonable. I’m the boss. And if you want to keep drawing a paycheck, you’ll go back out there and do what I hired you to do.”

  He stacked up some papers on his desk, stuck them in a file folder, and stood up. “I’m going to be out of the office for a few hours. While I’m gone, I want you to get the direct mail ads together so they can be sent out today. And while you’re at it, wash every thought you’ve had about repossessing cars out of your mind, because I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

  With that, he circled his desk to leave the building, feeling her go-to-hell look boring into his back all the way out the door.

  As John was leaving the building, Darcy shot him a really scathing go-to-hell look, then returned to her desk to resume her low-paying, dead-end job. But she wasn’t going to have to do it for long. John might have said no this time, but she wasn’t deterred. What he didn’t know was that she had another quality she hadn’t even unleashed yet. She never took no for an answer.

  She just hadn’t yet figured out a way to make him say yes.

  The trouble was, if he wouldn’t let her go after the jobs they had keys for, he’d have to teach her how to hot-wire a car or grab one with the tow truck. And getting him to do that clearly wasn’t going to happen.

  With a heavy sigh, she started in on the task John had commanded her to, muttering under her breath the whole time. Because I’m the boss. If she heard that man say that one more time, she was going to scream.

  By the time she finished running off copies of the letters, stuffing the envelopes and attaching the address labels, it was lunchtime. Once again, Taco Hut was calling to her. It was becoming an addiction more powerful than heroin, and if she didn’t kick the habit, her hips were going to be as wide as a city bus.

  Just one more day. Then you can start that twelve-step program at Burrito Eaters Anonymous.
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br />   She grabbed her purse and left the building, locking the door behind her. As she was opening Gertie’s passenger door, she heard the rumble of a truck engine. Turning around, she saw Tony coming through the gate with a late-model Lexus on the back of the tow truck. He waved to her, then circled the building to put it in the impound lot.

  Darcy looked after him longingly. It seemed like such an easy thing to do for such a large amount of money. But if John wouldn’t show her—

  And that was when it struck her.

  If she could grab a car and bring it in all by herself, he’d have to pay her for it, and he’d also have to admit she could do the job. But that would require her to have skills he refused to teach her.

  Fortunately, John wasn’t the only repo man around here.

  She walked around the building and down to the impound lot. Tony already had the car down off the truck, and she still didn’t know how it was done.

  “Hey, Darcy.”

  “Hi, Tony. Nice-looking car you picked up. Did you have any trouble?”

  “Nope. The guy works in an office building near Park and the Tollway. He’d driven it to work. I don’t think he ever even knew I took it.”

  “You know, I was pretty confused myself when John came back for my car that night. By the time I got out there, he already had it up on the truck, just like you had this one. And I thought to myself, Now how in the world did he do that?”

  “So you didn’t see him do it?”

  “He said it was repo magic.”

  Tony made a scoffing noise. “Magic, my ass. Watch.”

  He hit a lever, and slowly the bed of the truck began to tilt down until it met the pavement.

  Oh . . . so that was how it worked.

  She watched exactly where Tony hooked a tow chain underneath the carriage of the car.

  “Now, if we have to use the tow truck,” he said, “sometimes it means we haven’t got a key, which means we can’t get inside to release the steering column, which means we can’t tow it behind the truck. But that also means it won’t roll up the ramp when we pull it.”

  “So what do you do?”

  “Just give it short little jerks like this.”

  He hit another lever, then quickly released it several times, inching the car up the ramp.

  “If the tires aren’t rolling, doesn’t that mess them up?”

  “Nah. Not if you’re moving the car over a short distance like this.”

  In less than a minute, he had the car up there. Then he hit the lever and tilted the bed of the truck horizontal again.

  “That’s all there is to it?”

  “Yep.”

  “No wonder John grabbed my car so quickly. So you don’t have to be strong to do this?”

  “Nope. The truck does all the work. And John went first class with this one. Automatic transmission, cruise control, air conditioning, power everything.”

  Darcy couldn’t believe it. This was what John told her she wasn’t qualified to do?

  “You make all that money just doing that?” she asked.

  “Well, there is a downside every once in a while. Sometimes people shoot at you.”

  Darcy gulped. “What?”

  “Oh, that hardly ever happens,” he said, pulling out a Tic Tac and popping it into his mouth. “If you don’t push people, they generally don’t push back. I can usually leave them smiling.”

  Particularly if they’re women, Darcy thought.

  “Thank you for the explanation,” she said to Tony, giving him a smile of gratitude. “I like knowing how you gentlemen do your jobs.”

  “Anytime, sweetheart.”

  Okay. She had the knowledge. Now all she needed was a target.

  She went to Taco Hut, grabbed lunch, and by the time she came back to the office, she was already hatching a plan. It involved the tow truck, Larry Howard’s Corvette, and a nice big check John was going to be forced to write when she brought the car in. All that remained for her to do now was keep her eyes open for a time when nobody else was at the office so she could grab the truck and put it to good use.

  Over the next several days, Darcy watched for her opportunity, but it was Friday before it materialized. John announced on Thursday that he was taking Friday off. Amy was going to be in class all afternoon. And Tony was spending the day going to the banks and finance companies who had responded to their direct mail advertising to drum up some new business.

  Which meant she’d be in the office by herself.

  A week ago she’d have never considered doing what she was thinking about doing now. But now that she saw how simple it was going to be . . .

  Look out, Larry.

  At three o’clock on Friday afternoon, Darcy pulled the tow truck into the alley behind Larry’s house. He lived three doors down from the house Darcy had occupied for fourteen years, which was why his ex-wife, Gail, and Darcy had been friends. The Howards’ divorce had been a contentious one. In the end, Larry had gotten the house, and Gail had gotten everything else, which was only fair considering what a cheating bastard Larry had turned out to be.

  With a bit of maneuvering, Darcy backed the truck into the driveway and brought it to a halt near the garage door. She got out, her heart beating like crazy. She couldn’t have imagined a scenario under which she’d be stealing a car, but then again, she couldn’t have imagined a scenario under which she’d be desperate for the five hundred bucks she was going to get for stealing a car, either.

  Because Larry’s house was on a corner lot, it was a simple matter to leave the truck in the driveway, then circle around the house and walk to the flower bed near the front porch. Once there, she searched through the river rock surrounding the base of the shrubs. When she didn’t see what she was looking for, she was afraid her plan was going to be foiled before it even got under way.

  Wait. There it is.

  She picked up a rock that was a little bigger and a different color than the others. It really wasn’t a rock at all. Holding her breath, she turned it over and slid open the compartment.

  Bingo.

  Darcy knew Gail Howard had hidden this key against the possibility that someday she’d lock herself out of her house, because Darcy had been with her when that day came to pass. Now the key opened the door for Darcy just as easily as it had for Gail.

  Once inside, Darcy moved quickly to the kitchen, through the utility room, and opened the door to the garage.

  There it was. Larry’s Corvette.

  By night he was Midlife Crisis Man, tooling around town in—as Gail always put it—his shiny red substitute penis. By day, though, he was a real estate agent, which meant he opted for a big old Cadillac to haul prospective buyers around to look at homes, which meant that right now the Cadillac was out and the Corvette was in.

  Darcy hit the button to the garage door opener. She hooked up the car, and in no time she had it loaded on the truck. She couldn’t believe it. It really was as easy as Tony had said. She closed the garage door, locked the rear door, and hid the key back inside the rock.

  She hopped back into the cab of the tow truck, and as she carefully pulled out of the alley back onto the street again, she could barely drive for all the back-patting she was treating herself to. She couldn’t wait to see the look on John’s face when she pulled into the impound lot with this car. He’d have to admit she could do the job, and she’d push to do it again. Her bank account would grow, and soon she’d be able to buy some new clothes. She’d be able to keep her hair appointments so she wouldn’t go gray. Drive a respectable car. Eventually she could buy a modest condo in west Plano, where she’d use what she’d learned all these years watching HGTV to create chic décor on a dime. And when she was finally back to her old self again, she’d be the kind of woman who could turn the head of a wealthy, important man, and the world would be right again.

  Ah. Life was going to be good.

  When she arrived back at the office, she was thrilled to see John in the parking lot, getting out of his car.
She didn’t know why he was here on his day off, but she was glad he was. Maybe he’d cut her a check on the spot. If he did, she was heading to the mall as fast as Gertie could get her there.

  She pulled into the lot, brought the truck to a halt, and killed the engine. As John approached, she opened the door and hopped out.

  “Darcy?” he said, looking stunned. “What have you done?”

  “What does it look like?” she said with a grin. “I repossessed a car.”

  “But . . . I don’t get it. How did you . . . ?”

  “I saw this repossession order come across my desk a few days ago,” she said, excitement bubbling up inside her. “Turned out I knew the guy. Larry Howard. He’s the ex-husband of a friend of mine. He and Warren used to hang out at the country club together. I know his ex-wife, so I knew she used to keep a house key in one of those fake rocks in their flower bed. So I went to Larry’s house, got the key, opened his front door—”

  “You what?”

  “Don’t worry. He wasn’t there. I called ahead to make sure he was at work. He’s a real estate agent, so he drives his Cadillac to work, which meant his Corvette would be in his garage at home. Sure enough, it was. I just hit the button for the garage door, hooked the car up, pulled it up the ramp, and”—she waved her arm at the car—“voilà.”

  John’s eyes widened, a look of subdued panic edging across his face. “Are you telling me you took a car from a locked garage?”

  “Yep. I told you I could do the job. You didn’t believe me.” She folded her arms with a smile of supreme satisfaction. “I believe you owe me a repossession fee?”

  But for some reason, John didn’t seem to be in any hurry to grab his checkbook and a pen. And she noticed he wasn’t exactly smiling. In fact, he looked downright pissed.

  “John,” she said carefully, “what’s the matter? Is there something—”

  “You can’t take a car from a locked garage! It’s against the law!”

  Darcy recoiled. “Against the law?”

  “Yes!”

  “But why? He wasn’t making his payments!”

  “That doesn’t mean you can break into his garage to take the car! And you sure as hell can’t take a tour of his house when he’s not there! That’s breaking and entering!”