Dobie woke late, and realized that Lexi hadn’t run.  Most mornings she got up at the crack of dawn, ran through the house as if the demons of hell were at her heels for twenty minutes, and went back to bed.  She called it “doing a pell-mell,” and offered no explanation as to why she did it.  Certainly aerobics would have been more productive.  Sometimes instead of running, she’d play music and dance for half an hour. Both habits were hard to sleep through, so Dobie had gotten used to waking up on her terms and politely pretending that he could sleep through it. 

On this particular morning, though, there was no pell-mell.  Victor had breakfast ready for him, as usual. 

“Is she still in her room?” Dobie asked. 

“No.  She left in her truck at about a quarter to five.  She left the briefcase behind.” 

Dobie slapped the dining room table with his open palm, irritated.  The dishes rattled.  She’d gone to the Road Associates meeting.  They were going to test her, and she was going to become one of them, and she’d gone without him instead of accepting his invitation to go to Ile du Soleil.  He had thought that she would at least invite him to come along, or tell him that she was going. 

Victor folded his beefy arms.  He didn’t sit, though there were seven empty chairs.  “I wish you’d just fuck her so we could move on,” he said.  Dobie gave him a fiercely disapproving glare.  “I’m just speaking frankly, sir.”

“Too frankly,” Dobie replied.  “I understand your exasperation, but don’t presume to know my motives.”  Victor’s reply was a nod.

Trouble was, he didn’t entirely know them himself.  It was too early to call anyone at home–it would be late evening in Ile du Soleil–but he knew there would be half a dozen messages asking when he was returning to the estate.  The elections were coming up soon, very soon, and he’d spent over a month in the States, missing important Christmas parties and soirees to hover around Lexi.

Prior to that, Dobie Cassarell had heard a lot of horror stories about Lexi Crane.  He should have known better; the majority of them were first- or third-hand directly from Becka Packard herself.  Becka painted a picture he had little interest in elaborating upon; Lexi was a leech, the story went, riding Ren and his family’s money for fun and prizes, as it were.  She had manipulated Ren into turning his back on his family.  She had threatened Becka, warning the woman not to try to come between her and Ren if she ever wanted to speak to her son again.  And, in the end, she’d somehow orchestrated the accident that had taken his life, and squirmed out of it in court by playing dumb and heartbroken.  She was a mean, spiteful little sponge, likely as not on the lookout for a new single rich man to bleed dry.

“She doesn’t fit the legend,” Dobie said, thinking of this.  He drummed his fingers on the table, ignoring his breakfast.  “All the things anyone says about her are the same things Becka Packard says, and yet, when I’ve met her, that’s not what’s there.  There was a light in her eyes, when she was with Ren, and it went out when he died.  I saw her just before and just after.”

“And after she set off the car bomb on his grave?” Victor asked.  “You invited her back to your hotel suite, with her friends.  Should I presume to know your motive?”

“Arthur asked me to, actually.  He was afraid Becka was going to try to have her killed.”  The elder Packard had been apoplectic, and with good reason–the family graveyard was on the grounds of their Staten Island estate, and there was still some disagreement as to whether Lexi might not have intended to bomb the house and taken a wrong turn.  The quarrel between Lexi and one of the world’s wealthiest families had only escalated with Ren’s death, it seemed.  “He asked me if I would see to getting her out of sight, and fly her back to Michigan.”

“Why did he ask you, I wonder?”

“He knew that I knew her in passing, and that we’re both car enthusiasts.  She’d speak to me before she spoke to most other friends of the family.”

“You did talk cars, didn’t you?”

Dobie nodded, remembering the conversation they’d had.  Lexi had gratefully cleaned herself up, wolfed down breakfast as if she hadn’t eaten in days, and wrapped herself in a robe.  Intent on making conversation, Dobie had told her about his latest acquisition.  “This might interest you,” he had said, and told her everything he could remember about the 1951 Ferrari 212 Berlinetta: it was chassis number 0112E; it had raced in the Mille Miglia in 1953 and 1955; it had been completely restored, with a 225 engine.

“You might,” was her reply.

He had endeavored to prove her wrong; flying her back home again was easy, and he wasn’t surprised when she invited him and Victor to stay for a few days in her big, old house in Arcadia.  The condition of the place made him want to refuse politely, but it was another piece of the puzzle.  If she was a mere golddigger, why was she content to live in this house that needed at least a million dollars of renovation before it would even be remotely habitable?

Once she was on her own territory, he’d seen yet another side of her.  She had bleached a fresh white streak in her hair, and told him, “I have to put things right, before I can go forward,” hunched over a cup of hot chocolate.  “I woke up today with the nagging feeling that I’ve crossed some line, broken some boundary, and there’s no going back.  But I don’t know where the line is, or what it represents.  I don’t even know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.”  After saying that, she had torn the house apart.  Piles of rubbish had been hauled away in her truck or shoveled into the fireplace.  She tore down drapes in some rooms, and removed the furniture from others.  When she was done, several rooms were completely empty, and when they were bare to the walls, she tore out the wallpaper.  She enlisted Victor’s help in ripping out the old lathe in the basement and in two bedrooms upstairs, a violent job that in spite of the cold outside left both of them sweating, topless (the woman had a shocking lack of modesty) and covered in plaster dust.  That done, she’d spent an equally frenetic week hanging new drywall and painting it.  The place still looked like a wreck when she was done, but she had effectively smoothed the roughest edges.  It suited her, somehow.

At Christmas, she had invited a gaggle of friends to visit, and counted Dobie and Victor in their number.  He had stayed in Arcadia instead of going to a number of significant get-togethers, and didn’t doubt that tongues were wagging as to why.  He couldn’t deny that he found himself fascinated by Lexi and her friends though.  He wouldn’t have thought it possible to put together a Christmas gathering for so many without a full housekeeping and culinary staff, but the guests had chipped in and made a highly irregular yet heartwarming occasion out of it.  Dobie had stayed on after the holidays, with her blessing, and spent the better part of two months on sabbatical in Lexi’s house.

And now she’d gone and taken off to join the Road Associates, without so much as explaining what she was doing.  Dobie had been pushing to join the Road Associates for almost six years.  His entreaties had been both subtle and blunt; nothing seemed to work.  Membership to the club was by invitation only, and although non-members were invited to many of their events, it was of course not the same thing.  Dobie knew the cars they liked, and bought and sold fantastic examples with regularity.  He made the rounds of the show and concours circuits, and attended all the right events.  He smiled and shook the right hands, and got into the right tours.  Yet they still didn’t invite him.  There had to be some way to prove to the world’s foremost bunch of car nuts that he was one of them, but of course their formula was a secret.  And yet Lexi, who’d been all but out of the world for six months and never run a single vintage race that he knew of, was being invited.  She’d just auctioned off her entire car collection, for God’s sake!  How did that make her more dedicated a car person than Dobie (who, incidentally, had bought several cars at that sale)?  It didn’t make sense.  On some level, he realized, he had expected Lexi to agree that it wasn’t fair, and perhaps to refuse their invitation in protest.  Which was, in retrospect, a silly conceit.  If Lexi had proven one thing, it was that she thought little of social politics.

Victor interrupted Dobie’s thoughts with a polite cough. “If I may?”

Dobie picked up his grapefruit juice, nodding.  He looked out the window.  The cold seemed more biting here than at the ski resorts both of them were used to.  There was something bleak about it.  Dobie had to admit that despite Lexi’s cheerfulness, the weather here was beginning to depress him.

“I’ll agree with you that she’s interesting.  She’s too damn interesting, in fact.  If I were to speak freely, I’d tell you to get rid of her.”

“I’m not sure that I even have her in the first place,” Dobie said.

“Believe me, I’ve noticed.”

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this uncharacteristic frank talk, Victor?”

“She has enemies.  Not just the Packards.  She’s run afoul of arms smugglers in Detroit, and at least three international agencies are watching her, even though she hasn’t left the country in two years.  This includes the Ravens.”

Dobie turned to look at Victor at the mention of Ile du Soleil’s spy network, one of the most comprehensive (and, considering Ile du Soleil’s position on the world’s political stage, one of the most superfluous) in existence.  “Is that so?”

The bodyguard nodded in response.   “She’s also been getting phone calls and letters.  Requests from people who want her to build more Crane-Packards.”

“I seriously doubt she’d do that.”

“Be that as it may.  That chase through New York got national attention, and she couldn’t have bought better publicity.  There are only twenty-four of the original cars, but it’s known she has the parts to build more.”

Dobie nodded.  If he hadn’t known Lexi personally, he might have been one of the men making offers, in fact.  Ren’s death and Lexi’s subsequent breakdown had transformed the Crane-Packard sports car from a promising startup to a historical footnote in an instant.  The cars themselves were magnificent, muscular works of art, and the added cachet of having outrun the entire New York City police department (though Lexi’s driving deserved much of the credit) had sparked renewed interest.  “How does that affect us?”

“I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before a would-be customer finds his way up here, and I would rather not become her sales department.”

“Agreed.  We’ll leave.”  He considered.  “I want to know if any of her friends knows where she went, though.”  Victor didn’t groan, but might as well have.  Dobie ignored the waves of exasperation that emanated from his friend.  “What’s the name of her friend who lives near Detroit?  The short girl?”

“Nikki.”

“That’s right.  Get her on the phone.”  Dobie checked the clock.  It was almost eleven.  Victor handed him the cell phone a moment later, already ringing.

Dobie recognized the female voice that answered, and spoke cheerfully.  “Hello, Nikki, this is Dobie Cassarell.  I was–”

“Dobie?”

“Yes, that’s right.  I–”

“How the fuck did you get this number?” Nikki snapped.

“I do apologize,” he said, taken aback by her sudden anger.  He struggled to formulate an explanation of how he might have gotten the number–he didn’t know how Victor found these things out, actually–and was too startled by her hostility to pull a coherent response together.

“I don’t give this number out.  Don’t call me at this number.”

“I am just trying to find out if you know where Lexi–”

“No.  If she wanted you to know, she’d have told you,” Nikki said.  “Don’t ever call this number again, unless I give it to you.”  The line went dead. 

“Well, that was unproductive,” Dobie said. 

“Should have called Molly instead,” Victor suggested.

“I considered it, but she’s in Boston.  I was hoping that Lexi would have stopped to see her friends in Detroit.  If she’s going to the east coast, she wouldn’t be there yet.  Still, I’m sure Molly won’t mind being taken out to lunch.  Why don’t we surprise her?”

“I’ll get the car packed,” Victor replied. 

“Good man.  Could you also leave behind something to notify us when Lexi gets home?”

“Absolutely.”