Lexi Crane lay in her clawfoot bathtub with strawberry-scented bubbles up to her armpits, her right leg dangling over one side.  She ran a dry toothbrush over her teeth slowly, and contemplated the two objects before her. 

The first, standing on the closed lid of the toilet, was a black leather briefcase with elegant white piping.  It was closed and locked, but she had already tried the combination, a not-so-wild guess, and it had opened.  She had locked it again without looking inside.

The second, propped up on the windowsill, was a cheerful greeting card with a painting of a classic Jaguar racing car on it.  The sight of the graceful green D-type made Lexi happy, but she didn’t smile.  Inside the card were carefully written, slightly cryptic directions to a place she’d never seen but knew was called the Minilite Bar, and a date:  01-14-97.  Two days hence.  Lexi hadn’t memorized the directions, but she had seen that they took her through St. Louis, which meant she had at least a seven hundred-mile drive ahead of her if she wanted to see the Minilite Bar.

She scratched the toothbrush back and forth, a lackadaisical parody of brushing her teeth, and let her gaze drift slowly from the card to the briefcase and back again.

Read more…

She awoke early the next morning, before dawn had even considered staining the sky, pulled on a T-shirt and a skirt without looking to see which ones they were, and crept through her own house like a burglar.  Dobie was a sound sleeper–he’d even learned to sleep through her occasional need to dance to deafening music at dawn.  Victor, on the other hand, was much more likely to rouse if he heard skulking around.  That made sense, him being Dobie’s bodyguard and all, but it was annoying.  Lexi felt like being unseen and unnoticed.  It was annoying to have someone keeping tabs on you in your own house.

She knew where all of the creaks in her house were, and avoided them.  The seventy-year old stairs were silent as she descended slowly.  Lexi didn’t turn on any lights; the moon on the snow outside cast enough illumination through the windows that they weren’t necessary.  She knew where everything was, anyway.  Down the stairs and around the corner; she went through the ballroom, lit through the big windows up front, then through the dining room and to the kitchen.  Her new countertop gleamed in the cold light.  Lexi wanted snacks, and was in the mood to play frugivore.  She filled a grocery bag with off-season apples, cans of sliced peaches and pineapple, and a lone banana.  There was half a bottle of orange juice left, and she took that as well. 

Overhead, the floor creaked, and she heard the door to the room next to Dobie’s click shut.  Dammit, that was Victor, no doubt using his freakish powers of observation to determine that she was in the kitchen at an odd hour.  Seemed like they would have gotten used to her doing things at odd hours by now, but whenever Lexi was up on her own schedule, Victor popped his head in to see what she was up to.  It wasn’t a pleasant, friendly kind of attention either. 

He was coming downstairs.  Lexi felt even more like a burglar, clutching her bag of fruit and fruit products, as if it wasn’t her kitchen at all.  Her heart pounded.  Victor couldn’t do anything, of course–he was the guest, after all–but Lexi was determined to leave without being seen. 

He was at the bottom of the steps, shoes clicking on the foyer’s tile floor.  Did he ever take his shoes off?  Lexi took two steps across the kitchen and slipped into the secret staircase next to the refrigerator.  It led directly to her room, and she pounded up the steps, heedless of the noise, perhaps even making more than she needed to. 

In her room, she stuffed her feet into boots, not bothering to tie them.  In the dark, she found a flannel shirt that had been Ren’s, her trusty bomber jacket with truck keys, gloves and hat stuffed in the pocket, and after considering that it was January in Michigan she grabbed a pair of socks and tights as well. 

Lexi realized that she didn’t have a suitcase.  Crap.  It wasn’t that there wasn’t one in the room; she didn’t own one.  She paused for a moment to listen, and couldn’t hear Victor.  She knew he wouldn’t come up the staircase that led directly to her room though; neither he nor Dobie would violate that barrier of privacy. 

She heard the kitchen light switch click.  Okay, he was in the kitchen.  She proceeded to put on all of the clothes she’d gathered, stepping out of the boots so she could don socks.  She pulled a pair of pants off the dresser and struggled into those as well, hiking them up under her skirt.  Lexi stuffed a change of underwear into one pocket, another pair of socks into another, and crammed a second shirt into the bag with the fruit.  The Road Associates’ greeting card went in as well.  She touched the briefcase, which she’d left on the windowsill, wanting to take it with her, but if she did Dobie would think she wasn’t coming back.  It had to stay behind for now.  Ren would understand, wouldn’t he?  Lexi forced herself to leave it behind.  Thus packed, she went to her door, counted to three, then yanked it open and ran out. 

She pounded down the hallway, jumped down the short flight of steps to the landing, and made for the front door.  Victor assumed she was on her way to the kitchen, and she didn’t hear him moving her way until she opened the front door.  Lexi slammed it behind her and ran for her truck, bounding through the foot of snow that was on the ground.  The pre-dawn air was dry and frigid and delightful, the bone-cold moon glowing above her.  She reached the truck before Victor got the front door fumbled open, threw her bag inside, and dove after it, immediately crouching down below the level of the windows.  It was all part of whatever game she was playing, she knew, since even if he hadn’t seen her jumping into Grizzle, it wasn’t like she had that many places to hide. 

That didn’t matter, though.  Lexi stayed down and slipped the key into the ignition, bounced her foot on the gas pedal, and cranked the rusty old red Ford to life.  With the truck running, she felt bold enough to sit up.  She waved at Victor as she put the truck into gear.  The radio came to life, spinning a mix tape that dated to high school, and The Clash began to wail from tinny, dash-mounted speakers.  “Sharif don’t like it!” Lexi yelled, and spun the rear tires in the snow, fishtailing dramatically down the drive. 

The roads had been scraped relatively clean, and by the time the sky started shifting to blue and turning the rest of the world shades of azure she was burning south on the state highway, angling for Detroit and points south. 

She wanted to drive faster, but it had been less than two months since she’d done a really necessary but really dumb thing in New York, and the less she antagonized the highway patrol in any state, the better.  Lexi was content to roll with the sparse traffic, listening to her scruffy truck clatter away underneath her.  Switching off the radio, she was content to enjoy the history of the battered old F-250.  Her father had bought it new two years before she was born, and had it until he died.  Everything about it had the familiarity of a well-worn glove; the faded red paint on the broad hood, the way the rising sun winked on the crack in the windshield and even the way the wind roared through the homebuilt ladder rack on the equally homebuilt pickup bed.  Grizzle felt like home in a way that her house didn’t right now, not with Dobie and Victor cluttering the place up.

That was a bit uncharitable, of course.  Lexi liked having company; when the two men from Ile du Soleil had agreed to come and meet her friends for her “Orphans’ Christmas,” she hadn’t minded that they stayed after Molly and Cygnet and Nikki and the rest trickled home.  They had gotten into it, too–Dobie had even presented everyone with scarily expensive (and in some cases, even more scarily appropriate) presents.  Dobie had never even met Liz or Cygnet before, so they were understandably humbled and confused to be presented with brand-new, high-end component stereo systems by one of the richest men in the world.  Lexi felt happy by association–she’d had nothing to do with the presents, but getting Dobie together with her friends had been a good thing for everyone involved.  Dobie had almost relaxed, at one point.  Victor had gotten even more relaxed, and Lexi had a strong suspicion that he’d fucked Cygnet.

It wasn’t that she disliked Dobie, but something about him made Lexi bait him constantly.  He was a Rich Bastard, the typical hyper-affluent white male with a stick up his ass and no concept of what life in the real world was like.  She had come from decidedly more humble (and occasionally roach-infested) beginnings, and he thought he understood her but had no idea.  This was alternately amusing and frustrating.  Lexi wondered if she considered him a friend, or just a toy.  She could lean in either direction, and it seemed to be at least partially independent of how he was treating her.  Lately though, he had started looking at her like she was some sort of exotic creature he’d never seen before.  It wasn’t a look of infatuation or love, just curiosity and incomprehension.  She was glad.  The attention brought her a measure of somewhat guilty pleasure, and she enjoyed being something that he had no experience with, even if it was mainly because she wasn’t one of the high-maintenance debutantes that were no doubt always throwing themselves at him.  It was charming, the look he gave her.  At least it was when he wasn’t treating her like an idiot to be tricked with shiny objects.

“These thoughts are too heavy,” she said aloud, and lightened her grip on the steering wheel, feeling it vibrate with the tires’ humming against the pavement.  The truck talked to her, and it said that everything was going just fine, thank you, the gasoline and air were mixing and swirling down the carburetor into the engine, the spark plugs were firing, the crankshaft was spinning and the transmission was twisting the driveshaft which was turning the wheels against the road, as fine as you please. 

Lexi felt the same way.  Ren tried to creep into her thoughts and spoil the mood, and she didn’t let it happen.  She could feel the grief behind her, but if she kept her foot down and didn’t look back, it wouldn’t catch up.  Staying in the real world was better.  She’d spent too much time out of it, since Ren had died.  It was hard.  Every little new thing she saw, she wished she could share with him, show to him.  Thinking that he was looking over her shoulder like all of the other ghosts helped a little bit.  Not much, of course.  Not enough.

Full dawn, the city of Flint and the last of Grizzle’s gas came at about the same time, so she coasted into a Shell station for fuel and a pay phone.  She bought a twenty-dollar calling card and twenty-three gallons of regular unleaded.  She considered calling someone, Molly maybe, then decided against it.  Lexi liked the sensation of being off the grid, and didn’t feel like having anyone at all know just where she was right now.  The cats had an automatic feeder and water bowl, and would be fine for at least five days–it was unlikely that Dobie or Victor would think to feed them. 

The rusty old Ford sped south.  She planned to drive until she was within a hundred miles of the Minilite Bar and then find a hotel. 

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.”

Molly got her first-ever call about her ghost column from a nervous-sounding teenaged girl who said she worked at a Barnes & Noble that had just opened in Woburn.  The store was haunted, everyone knew, and maybe she could come down and see?

“I’d love to come and see,” Molly said, her heart pounding with excitement.  “Would you like me to write it up?  Do you know the building’s history?”

“Um, no,” the girl said.  “I guess you’d better ask the manager about that.  He told me I should call you.”

Molly hoped they didn’t expect her to get rid of the ghost, assuming there was one.  She made an appointment to drop by the store on Wednesday evening, and was so excited about it that she allowed herself forty minutes to make a drive that was less than twenty miles.

The bookstore had been spread through three stories of an old apartment building.  It felt more like an old used bookstore than a chain, and Molly guessed that was the idea.

The girl who had called was named Rebecca, and her manager was Tim.  Neither of them was much over twenty, but they had clearly both seen Ghostbusters, judging by the way they looked at her when she arrived, armed with only a notepad.  Clearly disappointed by the lack of high-tech equipment, they nevertheless answered her questions with the deference normally shown to highly trained professionals.  Molly wondered if she should tell them that she didn’t have much of an idea what she was doing:  this was only the third allegedly haunted place she’d ever really visited, and the only ghosts she’d actually seen had been a smeary apparition while she was in junior high school, and then Marion Maddox’ ghost, at Lexi’s house.  And, for the record, she’d peed herself when she had seen it, on the night before Christmas, though this was not widely publicized trivia in light of the likelihood that Lexi and Cygnet would never let her live it down.  Rebecca and Tim didn’t need to know this, of course, and Molly tried to sound as if she did this all the time.  “What have you seen?” she asked.  It was as good a place as any to start.

“Mostly books on the floor,” Tim said.  “They fall off of the shelves.  In the morning there are always a lot of them scattered around, or stacked up.”

Molly was tempted to make a glib-sounding comment about the similarity to “Ghostbusters,” but she didn’t.  Rebecca added her own two cents about feeling like something was watching her.  And there was a guy named Greg who said he had seen something up there, but he had quit that same day.  Both of them looked at her as if they were watching a master craftsman at work.

“What about you?  Have you seen anything?  Felt anything strange?”  Even though she had no idea what she was doing, Molly felt very excited and professional.  This was much better than writing a de facto gossip column.  It was something different, it was all hers.  Yeah, she could do this forever.

Neither Tim nor Rebecca had felt anything strange.  “Seems like it’s always cold up there,” Rebecca offered half-heartedly.  “We sound pretty stupid, don’t we?”

Molly pursed her lips and shook her head.  She wasn’t a ghost hunter, so reliable reports didn’t much matter.  As she listened to them, she realized that writing stories about places that were reputed to be haunted but actually weren’t might be just as interesting as the ones that really were.  She could mix them up; some weeks she’d have real ghost stories, other weeks there would be hoaxes or local legends, from wherever she could find them.  All she had to do at this point was find out the building’s history; what it had been before, who had lived or worked there.  There was always some angle that suggested why a place might house a restless spirit.  Just like that, she’d practically finished a column.  She wanted to jump up and down and shout with glee.

Of course, while she was here it couldn’t hurt to take a look around.  “You said things happened on the third floor?”

Tim nodded.  “It’s the children’s section.  We closed it for the afternoon, so you could do tests or whatever without anyone else around.”

Jesus, they were taking her seriously.  Molly wished she’d brought a camera, or a fancy-looking computer, or some random piece of equipment.  Then she realized that she was thinking like a guy, and headed for the stairs.  She stopped at the foot of the steps, ducking under the tape they had put up.  “If you hear me screaming and running, move this tape so I don’t trip,” she said with a grin.  Tim and Rebecca looked at each other and nodded. 

They obviously weren’t going up with her, which was a good thing, since she didn’t have anything exciting to do.  Molly went up.

The top floor was even more preternaturally silent than the average bookstore, with no other patrons in it.  Neat old building aside, it was a fairly typical Barnes & Noble kids’ section; bright colors, a reading area, kid-sized shelves, and lots of places to sit.  Molly wandered aimlessly, looking up and down each of the rows.  There were no books on the floor.  The narrow-ish stairwell blocked the sounds from the lower floors , so the only noise was the hum of the heating system.

So where would a ghost go, on the third floor of a bookstore?  Molly investigated the restrooms and elevator, then walked along the front wall of the store, looking out the windows.  With the bricks of the outside wall exposed, she could see where the apartments that had once filled the building had been torn out.  The windows were still apartment-sized, and they had Barnes & Noble banners in them, sort of jaunty.

She made a complete circuit of the floor and then walked straight through the middle.  There was a classics section, and Molly found a hard-bound copy of Stuart Little.  It was one of the first books she’d read as a child, and she picked it up.  She’d had a whole collection of hardbound books.  What had happened to them, anyway?  She had a large book collection filling a nice mahogany shelf in the study, but not much fiction.  Hell, a third of the books were Richard’s, and he’d just never taken them away.  Maybe she’d buy this, for nostalgia’s sake.  There were no children, nor nieces and nephews in the pipe, but Katharine’s daughter was getting close to reading age, and it’d make a nice present.  Maybe Tim and Rebecca would give her a ghost-hunter’s discount.

There was a closed checkout counter in the center of the room, and Molly walked past it.  Still looking at the Stuart Little book in her hands with an oblique smile, Molly turned around to go and put it back, and came face to face with the clearest, most distinct ghost she’d seen to date.

It was a little girl, of eight or nine.  She had pale skin with a dusting of freckles, and auburn hair.  She wore a crisp white blouse with a necktie, and a dark blue velvet skirt.  Molly could see the pile of the velvet, and a small embroidered flower at the hem.  The girl wore glasses.

She fought the equally powerful urges to run screaming and to rush the little girl with the book upraised to scare her off.  Molly turned so she wasn’t looking directly at the child any more, and pretended to look at the closest shelf, which held an elaborate Madeline display.  The ghost did the same, her hands passing through some of the books stacked on the counter.  The topmost book on the stack tilted and flipped onto the floor.

When the ghost moved around one side of the counter, Molly went to the corner where it had been.  The air temperature dropped fifteen degrees as she passed into the area.  Jeezus, she thought.  This is really happening.  Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel it in her neck.

“Have you ever read the other Stuart Little stories?” the girl asked.

Molly nearly jumped and screamed.  Still not looking at the ghost except out of the corner of her eye, she said, “No.  But I liked this one when I was a little girl.”

“I like it too,” the ghost said with a child’s absent half-interest, moving toward the curtained front windows.

Molly racked her brain, trying to think of something else to say.  “How about Charlotte’s Web?” she asked, thinking of the other books she’d read as a child.

“That one made me sad,” the girl said.

“Me, too.  But it had a happy ending.  What…what else do you like to read?”

“I don’t know.”  The ghost had disappeared behind a shelf so Molly couldn’t see her any more.  One of the front curtains twitched, as if someone was looking furtively out.

“I read a lot of grown-up books when I was your age,” Molly said.  Her throat was dry, and she swallowed with a click.  “I read Call of the Wild, and Frankenstein.  Scary books.”  There was no answer.  “Do you like scary books?”  Jeezus, that’s a great thing to ask a frickin’ ghost, Molly thought.  It’s your first communication with the dead, couldn’t you come up with an intelligent question?

The girl didn’t answer, though.  Molly went around the shelf that had hidden her from view and saw that she was gone.  The air was frigid; her nose and toes where chilled, not to mention the trembling that wasn’t climate-related.  The little girl was gone.

“Are you still here?” she called, walking quickly toward the stairs.  There was a chance that it was just a customer, a kid who’d come upstairs in spite of the tape.  And who just happened to make the temperature drop in a sharply defined section of a centrally-heated room. Molly told herself she was just making sure, even though her gut feeling was that there was no need, she knew what she’d just seen.  She practically ran back down the stairs, and made an effort to compose herself before Tim and Rebecca saw her again.

She didn’t even need to tell them, though.  They could tell by the look on her face (God knew what it was) when she got back downstairs to tell them they could open the third floor again, if they wanted to.

“Did you see anything?”

Molly nodded, her mind elsewhere.  She needed to write all of this down, and Tim and Rebecca were standing between her and the couches.

“Did the ghost move that book?  Is it evidence?”

She was still holding Stuart Little.  She considered telling them that it was, to see if they’d let her take it gratis, but shook her head.  “No, I just want to buy it.  Your ghost is a little girl of about eight years old, with red hair and glasses, by the way.  If I can find out who she was, I’ll let you know.”  She headed for the couches.

“Wow!  So there’s really a ghost?”

“There is really a ghost,” Molly said, sitting down and taking her notepad out of her purse.  She spent the next twenty minutes writing every detail of the encounter, and then she made a very poor sketch of the store’s layout.  A camera was definitely a must-have, next time.

Molly left Woburn on a cloud.  She didn’t feel like keeping the news to herself that this ghost-story thing was going to work, it was really going to work out.  She called Katharine and left a cheerful message on the machine, and did the same at Lexi’s.  Hellfire, why couldn’t anyone ever be home when you had big news?

Her plan for a celebratory dinner was cut short.  When Molly got home, there was a message in her e-mail telling her that she was losing her job at the newspaper.  So much for new journalistic beginnings.  Following that was a message from Dobie Cassarell.  Having messages left on her machine by multi-billionaires took some of the sting out of the job loss thing, at least.  “I’ll be in Boston tomorrow on business,” Dobie’s elegantly accented voice said, “and thought I might treat you to lunch, if you’re available.”  He gave a time and a place to meet him instead of asking her to call back, so clearly he was assuming she was available.  She got the feeling that people were rarely not available for Dobie Cassarell.

He was almost certainly wanting to talk about Lexi, considering that he’d been staying at her house since Christmas.  Lexi had said that nothing untoward (or interesting) was going on, but if Dobie was going around behind her back for information maybe there was something beneath the surface.  He was delusional if he thought she’d give up dirt on her best friend over a nice lunch, but that was his problem.

“I ought to ask you for a job,” Molly said, switching the answering machine off.

Something about the anonymity of a hotel room appealed to Lexi.  Cheap room, expensive room didn’t matter.  A hotel room was faceless; it was hers, but only temporarily.  No need to worry about cleaning up, or making sure everything was in the right place.  There weren’t any uncomfortable memories to stumble across either, except for those she might make.  And yet, even though the maintenance was someone else’s problem, even though she was a guest, she was free to do anything she wanted to.  She could stack the beds up so that she had a monster-bed four mattresses high.  She could throw French fries at the television.  She could masturbate on the floor, if she really felt like it. 

Maybe she would.  Maybe she already had.  The hotel room didn’t care either way, and that was the wonderful thing about it. 

The feeling of aloneness inspired by her unexceptional little Days Inn room in the middle of Missouri was pleasant, too.  Lexi wanted to be alone and unfindable for a while.  She slept wonderfully, and awoke nervous about the Road Associates’ “test,” supposedly to take place at the Minilite Bar, on the Missouri-Arkansas border.  She didn’t want to socialize, but that part of it was unavoidable. 

She repacked, glancing briefly in the mirror to make sure she was more or less presentable (and that there wasn’t too much devilry in her eyes, considering what she’d been up to the previous evening) and checked out quickly. 

Grizzle started easily, and blew a welcome warm breeze from the vents.  The snow on the ground was a few days old, and the air was cold but dry.  She’d encountered a patch of glare ice or two on the way down, but otherwise it was just cold.  It felt good to be driving again.  The relentless mechanical dance of the road trip was a good feeling, full of potential and constant change, and infinitely better than moping about the house for eight months.  If Ian hadn’t kept her all drugged up…oh, but that was past, she wasn’t thinking about that any more.   

What was present was that her big old truck needed washing.  There wasn’t a shiny spot left on the paint job, but she still wanted to get the salt off, to slow down the oxidization of the rest of the truck.  Lexi checked the cheap digital clock Velcroed to the dashboard:  seven-thirty.  Too early for a car wash.  She’d find one before the meeting, then.  The invitation card hadn’t said whether her car ought to be presentable or not.  On one hand, it would be good to show up in a nice, shiny, obviously loved car.  On the other hand, she didn’t have one.  Ian had sold the entire collection, and all she had was Grizzle, some derelict old cars she’d found on her property, and a bunch of unassembled Crane-Packards.   But maybe they’d see that the old ’69 Ford was special, too. They were the same age, and he’d been in her family since he was new.  Shit, she and the truck were all that was left of the Crane family that smiled out of curling Polaroids.

Dammit, she was thinking too much about it.  Lexi found a McDonald’s, and swung into the drive-thru.  Grizzle had a habit of snorting whenever she put the clutch in, and the noise made Lexi smile.  Sometimes she shifted just so the truck would make the noise.  And if the Road Associates were as cool as Glen (and Ren, incidentally) had said they were, they’d appreciate that, and understand why it was cool, and that would be that.  She didn’t need to worry about whether Grizzle was clean or not. 

She ordered a delightfully slimy breakfast and smiled big at the teenager manning the window. 

“Your total’s four sixty-three.  That’s a nice old truck,” he said. 

“Thanks,” she said, counting out change in her hand.  “But don’t call him ‘old, he doesn’t like that.”

The moment of silence that followed suggested that he had no idea what that meant, but wasn’t about to show it.  “Yours?” 

Lexi looked over at the empty passenger seat with an amused giggle. “Whose else would it be?” 

He blushed.  “I dunno, your boyfriend’s or something.  It got the 460?” 

She tilted her head modestly.  “No, just a beat-up old 390.” 

“It sounds mean.  You got a cam in it?” 

Lexi laughed, and pulled away from the window, leaving the kid to figure it out for himself.  Chances were, he wouldn’t have been impressed to hear that Grizzle just had a big hole in his muffler.  “My truck lives to work!” Lexi yelled, pulling back into traffic, such as it was.  There wasn’t much to the urban area she was in; hotel and its captive Shoney’s on one side of the freeway, a string of gas stations and fast food restaurants on the other, and then the two-lane road faded off into what was probably Redneckia in both directions.  Did this even count as a town?  She figured there was probably a cluster of houses and a “historic district” not far off, if she felt like looking for it, but she didn’t really.  There wasn’t time.

Then she saw Danny Packard.

Daniel Packard was Ren’s younger brother.  Lexi had never gotten to know him; he was very much his mother’s son, and had naturally hated Lexi from the start.  He hadn’t even condescended to talk to her since Ren’s death.  Disapproving looks, one of his specialties and more than a little bit creepy coming from a guy his age (a year younger than she was) were all that he bothered to give to Lexi.  It was no great loss.  She didn’t like him either.

It was understandably strange therefore to see him out here in the middle of Missouri, far from the marble-floored, heated-towel racked comfort of the Packard mansion and getting into the rear passenger side of a new Mercedes S-Class at the BP station.  Lexi saw him at the same time that he saw her, and in the moment that their eyes locked she saw that he looked annoyed.  Maybe he’d just had to pump his own gas?  Did he even know how?  She wondered what he saw in her eyes, or if he actually even saw her face.  The way the Packards looked at her, she imagined sometimes that they automatically superimposed some other face over hers.  For all she knew, when they looked at her they saw Imelda Marcos, or Rudolf Hess.

Whatever face his brain registered, Danny looked even angrier when he saw Lexi.  He threw himself into the car, presumably barking orders to the driver as he did so because the Mercedes’ lights snapped on and the car rocketed forward.  Lexi looked in her rear view mirror as she passed, and saw the big sedan bouncing over the curb in her direction.

On an impulse, she turned onto the freeway, westbound. Was Danny following her?  She didn’t think so.  She’d have noticed a cream-colored S-Class if she’d seen it earlier.  So it was probably just a weird coincidence, and she was being paranoid…oh, wait, the Benz was getting on the freeway behind her.  And it was still accelerating.

Lexi let Grizzle run up to the speed limit, passing a semi along the way, then backed off the gas.  Danny Packard’s Mercedes loomed large in her rearview, then set up shop about six inches away from her rear bumper.  “Oh, no you don’t,” Lexi said, and sped up.  She sort of hoped he wouldn’t try to chase her, since there was no way her old Ford pickup was going to outrun an S-Class Benz on the freeway.

No luck.  The Mercedes matched her speed to 75, then 80, then 85, and that was all Grizzle had.  He was out of his depth, with this high-speed travel thing.  She jerked the wheel to the left and stomped on the brake, neatly slipping into the fast lane as Danny’s Mercedes plowed on past.

The driver was good.  He got on the brakes almost as soon as Lexi did, and matched her speed again, barely a car length ahead of her.     

She considered spinning him.  She had learned how, from Ren, and the dirty trick was a huge no-no on the race track but perhaps today might be a good time to practice.  As she started to maneuver into position, the Mercedes sped up, pulling slightly away.  Okay, so he knew that trick too, he’d been to anti-terrorist school.  Lexi backed off.  “This is high school shit!” she yelled as the Mercedes’ brakelights flashed again and she swerved and downshifted to keep from running into the back of them.

She couldn’t run him off the road anyway.  The last thing she needed was another incident involving a Packard.  Lexi lifted off the gas again, giving the Mercedes some room.  A feeling of helplessness began to creep over her, the hateful “you-can’t” feeling that it had taken her the past few months to beat into submission.  But now there really wasn’t anything she could do.  Whatever game Danny Packard was playing–and it was a game at this point, she thought, swerving yet again as the Mercedes feinted toward Grizzle–there wasn’t anything she could do to make him stop.

The Mercedes sped up, then got in front of her and began pacing her.  Did he plan to hassle her all the way to the Minilte Bar, then?  What would the Road Associates think if she showed up with Danny in tow?  Or, in the lead, as it were.

And on top of everything else, her sausage McMuffin was getting cold.  “These things are inedible when they’re cold, you know!” she yelled.

Without warning, Danny’s driver stood on his brakes, bringing the Mercedes almost to a halt.  Grizzle’s drum brakes were no match for modern German engineering, and Lexi got on them hard enough to lock all four tires, lifted off the brakes to regain control, swerved, and still creamed the back of the Mercedes, a hard offset impact.  The bone-jarring thud and sight of the trunklid buckling provoked a flashbulb flashback to the accident that had taken Ren’s life, and then it was gone and she was skidding to a barely-in-control stop in the breakdown lane. 

The Mercedes didn’t stop.  Lexi could see serious body damage on the right rear, a smashed taillight, a crunched trunklid and bumper, but Danny’s driver kept going. 

She sat behind the wheel for a moment, breathing hard, gripping the wheel to keep her hands from shaking.  “You insane fuckball!” she shouted.  That was a good word, fuckball. She had learned it from Nikki.  It fit Danny Packard well. 

The only other vehicle on the road was the orange and blue Roadway semi truck she’d passed, and the driver pulled onto the median a bit beyond her, jogging back.  “Are you okay?” he asked, his breath fogging in the cold morning air.  Lexi’s response was a nod.  She was listening to Grizzle’s idle, which had turned choppy.  The impact had probably played havoc with the automatic choke.  “Sumbitch didn’t even stop.  What an asshole.  Was he tryin’ to hit you?”

She nodded as an answer, experimenting with removing her hands from the wheel.  That went well, so she got out of the truck next.  This part was instinct; she knew what to do now.  Assessing the damage took her to another place in her mind, and the fear and confusion faded into the background.  Grizzle had taken a good shot to the face, lost his left-side headlight and much of the grille, and the front bumper was never going to be the same.  The fender was tweaked, too.  In fact, it looked like the radiator had taken some of the hit; brilliant green antifreeze dripped ominously from beneath the bumper.  The frame wasn’t bent.  Lexi conducted her inspection in silence, only half-listening to the trucker’s monologue. 

“I can radio a cop,” he said as another car shot past on the freeway.  “I hope you got that sumbitch’s license number.  If you didn’t, I’ll get on the radio.  He’ll go by another big truck soon, and we’ll find out who he is.  Ain’t gonna be another busted up white Mar-cedes out on this road, I’m sure.”

Lexi gave him a smile.  “That’s sweet of you,” she said, “but I have to go.  I have someplace to be, and if I let someone like that stop me from getting there, then he wins.  And he’s not going to win.”

The man looked uncertain, but saw something in her eyes that kept him from arguing.  “Long as you’re sure you’re okay, sweetheart.”

“I am.  Thanks for stopping.”  She got back in the pickup, gave the gas an experimental prod.  The idle was still off, but Grizzle smoothed out with higher revs.  Her breakfast sandwich was still warm, too.  Perhaps the day wouldn’t be a total loss after all. 

A perfectly coiffed, perfectly manicured and perfectly maintained fortysomething woman whose name was Coco was saying, “I’m really, really sorry, Ms. Snow, but we’re going to have to revoke your membership.”

Molly sat quietly, in shock.  She’d thought to herself that it was strange to get a call from the Greenwood racquet club asking her to come in and talk to one of the supervisors, but to drop by just so they could kick her out?  It was so much like high school she felt on the verge of a flashback to the tennis team.  “I don’t understand.”

“It’s standard policy when there’s a complaint, especially one involving a minor.”  Coco folded her hands gravely.

“Now I really don’t understand.”

“There have been complaints about improper behavior between you and some of our younger guests,” Coco said.

“What kind of complaints?” Molly didn’t want her voice to go up, but couldn’t help it. 

Coco looked at the paper in front of her.  “Improper behavior, lewd conduct.  There have been several complaints that your behavior has been inappropriate toward some of the young men here.”

“What young men?”  She racked her brain, trying to think of anything she’d ever said to an underaged club member.  She couldn’t recall ever having spoken to any of the idiot teenagers at Greenwood during the three years she’d been a member here.

“I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to disclose the names of the complainants.  Please don’t assume this is a presumption of guilt.  Greenwood will not be pressing charges–”

“Pressing charges?”

Coco held up her hand.  “We will not be pursuing legal action of any kind.  This is a private club, and we’d rather avoid any scandal of any kind.”

“So you throw me out just on someone else’s say-so, and I don’t get to defend myself?”

Coco actually looked hurt.  “It’s not that simple, Ms. Snow.  The club bylaws clearly state–”

Molly stood up, because if she remained seated she was going to throw an obscene Italian hand gesture she’d learned from her uncle.  “Don’t bother explaining to me, Coco.  It’ll just make me angry.  Are there provisions for any kind of a private hearing, for me to defend myself to the club management?  I can’t recall ever having even spoken to any of Greenwood’s younger members, and this accusation is ridiculous.”

“I’m sorry–”

“Of course you are,” Molly said, and headed for the door.  She was hoping to clean out her locker and leave quietly, before Coco could decide that she needed to be escorted out by security.

She wasn’t quick enough.  

Grizzle made the rest of the trip without complaint, though the temperature gauge did creep up slightly. 

The first thing Lexi learned from the Road Associates was that the bar called the Minilite didn’t exist.  She followed the directions, and they led her to a ratty looking party store in the middle of Nowhere, Missouri.  She assumed she was in the right place because of the hardware in the parking lot.  There were two Porsche 356 coupes that perhaps ought not to have been out in the salt but were cheerfully dirty nonetheless.  She noticed a Taurus SHO sports sedan, a nice Audi 5000 wagon and a BMW M3 sports coupe among the group as well.  Professional-grade hardware all, but nothing particularly exotic.  There was a Volkswagen Rabbit pickup nearby too.  She wasn’t certain that it was related–but then saw it had New Jersey plates and oversized wheels from a sportier, newer Volkswagen, so she guessed that it was.  All seemed to be in good condition, but none of them was particularly clean except for a bright yellow Chevrolet Suburban, which looked out of place among the sports cars.  The air was cool but clear, and a group of men standing clustered near the cars perked up at her approach.  She recognized Glen Grant, the only of the Roadies whom she’d met.

Glen broke away from the group and came to her window.  “You made it,” he said.

“Am I in the right place?  The bar–”

“Exists in our hearts,” he said with a melodramatic grin, laying a theatrical hand over his chest.  “Whenever we say to meet at the Minilite, we just follow the directions till we get where they lead.”

“Who writes them?”

“Harold, usually,” he said, indicating a fiftysomething man sitting in the open tailgate of the yellow Suburban.

“Am I early?”

“No, you’re just in time.  Do you know you’re leaking coolant?”

She’d had time to think about an explanation for Grizzle’s body damage.  “There was a deer,” she said, and didn’t elaborate.  She hadn’t been by herself with a large group of strangers since Ren’s death, and she suddenly didn’t want to meet any of them.  She needed something to hide behind, something to take the attention off of her, especially now that they were all looking.  Was she dressed right?  Was she smiling enough?  Was she good enough?  They were going to be disappointed, she knew it.

Lexi let Grizzle take the brunt of the attention.  Out of habit, she connected the Road Associates with their cars.  She could meet their cars, that was perfectly fine, and she’d get to know the owners later, perhaps.  Glen was the easiest to speak to, since she’d met him already.  He was an automotive journalist, and had been along for part of the ride when she’d driven to New York.  He was an inch taller than she was, about five-eight, and had a cheerful knit cap pulled down over his prematurely balding head.  His mustache had grown bushy since she’d seen him last, and he had a roundish head so it gave him a terminally jolly look.

“You didn’t drive your Healey,” Lexi said.  She knew Glen had a little British sports car, but not what else he drove. 

“It’s put away for the winter,” he said.  “We Michiganders don’t have the luxury of driving our toys year-round like these crazy Porsche guys from Texas and California.  Let me introduce you to Dick Sheehan and Jim Grayson, the Porsche 356 twins.  Gary’s got a 911, but he couldn’t make it so you’ll have to meet him another time.”  Dick was in his mid-thirties and solidly built, with a barrel chest and a physique that seemed built for vigorous activity.  His red hair and freckled face and hands suggested that he’d turn lobster-red after ten minutes in the sun. 

“Is yours the red A or the cream B?” Lexi asked, referring to the cars’ model designations.  Dick had a firm, workman’s hand handshake and a toothy grin.

“Red,” he replied.  “And it’s a Carrera 2,” he added.  “My day job is just a cover for my secret identity as a man who restores and races vintage Porsches.”

“And Volkswagens,” Glen added.  “And NSUs, and DKWs any other weird German cars that find their way into your hands.”

“Neat,” Lexi said.  “Do you have a superhero name?  You should.  Most superheroes couldn’t drive an old race car as far as you just did.  Can you imagine?  Batman would be lying by the side of the road in the fetal position by now.  Crying.”

Dick and Glen both laughed.  “That’s a priceless image.  It’s nice to meet you, Lexi.”  He seemed like he wanted to say something else, but stepped aside so Glen could introduce her to the other Porsche driver.

“Jim owns a race shop in Houston, called Excessive Fours.  They specialize in violently turbocharged and supercharged Hondas and Volkswagens.”

“We just finished a VR6 conversion into a Scirocco,” he said.

Lexi’s smile felt fake.  Should she smile all the time?  It was too late to stop now–if she suddenly stopped, they’d think she had taken a dislike to someone.  “Fun.”  Hearing about cars she couldn’t see (even if someone had put a cool new engine into a cool old car) was always less interesting than the vehicles that were at hand.  “Did you have anything to do with the Rabbit pickup?” she asked, pointing at it.

“No, that one’s all Ray Tully’s,” he replied.  Glances from Glen and Dick told Lexi that Ray Tully was the short man with the chest-length salt-and-pepper beard who was currently squatting and looking under Grizzle.  Ray wore an insulated coverall and was almost as wide as his five-foot two inch height, so he resembled nothing so much as a fantasy-movie dwarf.  “He dropped a GTI motor and suspension in there.”

“It’s just a parts schlepper,” Ray said.  He knelt in front of the truck, then slid partway underneath.  “You crimped the lower rad hose inlet,” he said.  “Gonna have to fix that before we drive.”

“We’re driving?” Lexi asked, realizing it was a dumb question even as it came out of her mouth.

“It’s what we do,” Dick said.

“That’s because you know how to live.  So who belongs to the Suburban?” she asked.  It was a relief that she didn’t have the only truck in the group.  Chasing a bunch of performance cars all day wouldn’t have been much fun.  Well, actually maybe it would have.

“That’s Harold’s,” Glen replied, indicating one of the three older men who had only approached as closely as Grizzle’s tailgate.

“Who is he and where is he from?” Lexi asked.  She reached into the truck’s broken grille and popped the hood.  Dick stepped in and lifted it, pulling a penlight out of his pocket to inspect the radiator.

“If it’s all right,” he said, catching her glance.  She nodded, thinking she ought to help but not wanting to turn her back on the question she’d just asked.  The urge to run screaming surfaced briefly.  She didn’t have to do this, she could just go home and hide and never come out again, and the people who mattered would come to see her there.

No, that wouldn’t do.  She walked with Glen to meet the last three Road Associates.  “Harold Farrington is from Chicago,” Glen said.  “His car is put away, like mine, so he’s driving his tow vehicle, just like I am.”

Lexi shook Harold’s hand as he talked over her shoulder.  “Two questions, Mr. Glen.  One, what’s wrong with driving a truck even when it’s not towing anything, and two, what the hell do you tow with that Audi?”

“It pulls a small racer just fine.  And it’s more fun to drive than a truck.”

“Says you,” Lexi retorted, which made Harold and the other two laugh.  Where Harold had a full head a white hair and a comfortably plump build, the other two men looked like they’d lived hard lives.

“She’s got some spunk,” said the shorter of the two.  “Charlie Spennato,” he said, introducing himself with a handshake and touching Lexi’s elbow.  Charlie was slight, with a seamed, cadaverous face, thin white hair and bright, mischievous blue eyes. 

“Where are you from, and what did you drive here?”

“She gets right to the important stuff, doesn’t she Harold?  I’m in the SHO Taurus there, and I drove up from Tucson,” he said.  “And I’m a Gemini, and I like sunsets, tequila and long walks on the beach.  How about you?”

“I’m a Taurus,” Lexi said, “and I like fruit juice, neon, and movies about zombies.”

“If you do windows, we’ll get along just fine,” Charlie said.

The last Associate punched his shoulder lightly.  “Behave yourself, Spennato,” he said, his voice pure mesquite-smoked Texas.  “You’re talking to a lady.”

Charlie made a show of looking Lexi up and down and arched an eyebrow at her boots, bomber jacket (which was similar to his, except hers was black, his brown) and gray urban camouflage pants.  “Am I, now?  She dresses like my grandson.”

“Don’t mind him, he spent too much time in New York City as a child.  Roger Ellison,” the Texan said.  He had as much Texas in his appearance as in his voice, as his face was seamed and permanently tanned with years of sun.  Roger’s black hair was shot through with gray, but with his faded jeans and rattlesnake-proof boots, he might as well have been wearing a Stetson to top off his outfit.  “And, before you ask, I’m driving that little BMW there, and I’m from Plano.  Charlie here sold Jaguars and MGs in Dallas back in 1960, so you’ve got to understand that he’s still learning how to talk to human beings.”

“That’s a laugh, coming from a guy who spent his youth out in the desert racin’ tumbleweeds,” Charlie shot back. 

Roger didn’t rise to the bait.  “This is a nice box,” he said, indicating Grizzle’s custom bed.  “The rack is fabbed in real nice, good strong stuff.  Probably gonna outlast the cab.  What did you use, quarter-inch steel?”

“It was my father Bert’s truck, and he did the work,” Lexi said, instantly comfortable.  “I helped a little bit, but I never had his patience, so my welding kind of sucks.  It doesn’t break, but it’s not pretty.  The floor and hardpoints are diamond-plate.  And he boxed in the bumper, to protect the trailer wiring.”

Roger and Glen both squatted to look at Grizzle’s sturdy rear bumper.  “What are the taillights from?” Glen asked.

“A Chevy Monza coupe.  We went to the junkyard together and he let me pick them.”  The memory made her smile.

“Right, now I see it.  This lip of metal threw me off.  That’s a nice touch though, protects the lens.”

“Clever guy, your dad,” Roger said.

“Sort of.  It’s a bitch to change the bulbs.  It takes slender fingers.  Guess what I got to do a lot as a teenager?”

“The truck has been in the family since it was new,” Glen explained to Charlie and Roger. 

“When did he weld up that bed?” Roger asked.

“The original one rusted through when I was in ninth grade, and Bert started the new one that summer.  So, ’86 or so.  I learned to drive in it while the bed was off.  He was always talking about making a matching bumper for the front, but didn’t get around to it before he passed away.”  A thought flashed through her head that if Grizzle had gotten a big tough front bumper, she’d have done a lot more damage to Danny Packard’s car and probably not lost her radiator.  Maybe she should make her own.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Roger said.  Charlie nodded sympathetically.  “Aw, no, did you let Ray and Dick get up under the hood already?”

“They’re looking at the radiator,” Lexi said.  “And I ought to be helping.”  She went back to the front of the truck.  Charlie and Roger followed; Glen stopped halfway there to talk to Jim.  Dick and Ray were in the process of removing the radiator; two well-stocked toolboxes had appeared on the ground in front of the truck and a pan had already been procured to catch the coolant they’d drained.

“You’re gutting Grizzle?”

“I’m going to drain the radiator and put some JB Weld on this crack,” Ray said.  “Might be able to bend it back into shape a bit, too.  It should hold fluid after that.”

“With some wire we can get a headlight hung in here, too,” Dick said, indicating the crunched fender.  “It won’t be pretty, but it’ll get you home.”

Lexi looked where he was pointing and nodded.  “I’ll start pulling the harness around,” she said.  “It’ll be easier to pull the fender off when I get home.”  She looked at the damage again, and sighed.  “Oh, well.  I was going to replace it anyway, right?”

“A woman after my own heart,” Dick said.

“Okay, I’m not going to attach any special significance to this, but I can’t help but notice that our first female nominee got into a wreck on the way to the Bar,” Charlie said. 

Roger was about to admonish him, but Lexi stood up for herself.  “That’s okay,” she said, climbing up on the fender so she could reach the wire she had to unplug.  “The deer that caused the accident was obviously a guy.  He couldn’t get out of the way because his balls were too big,” she added.

For a moment she worried that she’d made an enemy, but Charlie laughed along with the others; he could take as good as he gave.  “All right, Little Miss Zombie Movies, score one for you.  So where are we going for lunch, all?”

“I was just discussing that with Harold,” Roger said.  “He knows a great pizza place in St. Louis, and I know a fun little state highway that’ll get us there in five hours or so, if we hustle.  How long is the radiator going to take?”

“Twenty minutes,” Dick said, and Ray grunted in agreement.

“Thank you for doing this,” Lexi told them.

“Nothing I wouldn’t do anyway,” Ray said.  He seemed to be blushing.

“Anyway, you’ll get your turn.  Anyone want to take a bet as to whether we’ll be fixing my car before we get to St. Louis, or Jim’s?”

“Who’s going to be fixing what?” Charlie asked.  “I’ll keep the light on for you when I get there.”  His tone suggested that he was kidding, and would pitch in just as readily as any of them. 

“I’ll take some of that action,” Glen said.  “Did you ever get that clutch taken care of?”

“It’s got a whole new transmission since Road Atlanta,” Dick said.

Lexi helped Dick and Ray repair Grizzle’s headlight and radiator, and got donuts and coffee from the gas station as a reward for them.  By the time the group took to the road, caravanning behind Harold’s Suburban, she was glad to be back alone with her truck.  She liked everyone well enough–except maybe Charlie, who was stuck in the 1940s–but the stress of being around new people was beginning to make her second-guess herself.  Should she have gone to Ile du Soleil instead?  What would Ren have wanted her to do?  And that was a stupid thought, not just because he was gone but because he wouldn’t have made her choose.  Dobie had made her choose, and now she was wondering if she’d chosen right, and on the verge of hating him for forcing her to make the decision.

Stop it, she thought, trying to lose herself in driving.  It was engaging enough, working to hustle Grizzle through the corners with enough speed to keep the Audi and BMW behind entertained but not so much that she’d end up losing the light rear end on an unexpected patch of ice.  The old Ford truck behaved itself, though, and when Jim’s Porsche ultimately did break down about an hour out of St. Louis, Charlie piped up and suggested that they use Grizzle to tow it, to a chorus of chuckles.

Lexi wanted to pitch in and help with the Porsche, but its owner made it clear that he had everything well in hand.  “The rest of you drive on ahead,” Jim said.  “I’ll get her taken care of, and meet you.” 

“You sure you don’t want one of the trucks to stay behind?” Harold asked.

“If I can’t change a wheel bearing by the side of the road in thirty-degree weather, I will have to commit suicide right here,” Jim said.  “There is no honor in being towed.”

“Ain’t no frostbite in it, either,” Roger pointed out.

“I’ll stay with him,” Charlie said.  He patted Jim’s shoulder.  “I’ll be in the car with the heat on.  You need a hand, don’t hesitate to call a tow truck, and don’t wake me up,” he joked.  The caravan continued, one Porsche 356 and one Taurus SHO lighter. 

When they reached the appointed dinner place, a pizza parlor that shared its parking lot with a Red Roof Inn, the sun had vanished beyond the horizon, but Lexi insisted on taking the time to meet each of the Road Associates’ cars before going in.  She hadn’t done it at the gas station, but now that she’d traveled with them, she wanted closer looks at them all.  It was also a convenient buffer because she didn’t feel up to conversation yet.  She had caught meaningful looks from Harold and Ray both, and could tell that they wanted to ask about Crane-Packard but didn’t want to bring it up for some reason.  Which was just as well, since she didn’t want to talk about it.

The other men went inside; Glen stayed out with her while she walked slowly around Ray’s Rabbit pickup, unaware of the smile that had spread across her face as she inspected the little custom truck.

“I think they like you,” Glen said.

“Is that good?  I’ve lost the ability to socialize, I can’t tell.  I feel like an idiot and I keep wanting to apologize for not being as fluffy as I usually am.  I’m just…there’s a lot on my mind.  I don’t know if I can explain exactly.”

Glen wanted to tell her that he suspected being around a bunch of car people had yanked Ren into her thoughts, and she was missing him even if she didn’t realize it, but refrained from presuming.  “Don’t worry about it,” he said.  “Just be yourself.  That’s all we ever do.  We’re used to gearheads who like cars better than people–look at Ray, after all.  Roger and Dick get the same way sometimes.  We’re okay with it.”

“Doesn’t make much of a first impression,” Lexi said, squatting next to Ray’s pickup.  The front bumper had been removed and replaced with a thinner unit that she recognized as having come from a European Volkswagen.  “Have you talked to Molly?”

“A few times,” he said, instantly fidgety.  “We email a lot.”

“Good.”  Lexi wasn’t in the mood to hassle him, and the urge to play matchmaker was getting buried under her own insecurities anyway.  She stood up and blew out a cloud of breath.  “So, I haven’t disappointed everyone, then?  I was wondering if I should scramble to borrow some exotic iron to show up in, instead of Grizzle.”

“Glad that you didn’t,” Glen replied.  “It’s not about having the coolest car.  It’s about loving the one you have.”

“That’s easy to say, coming from someone who’s got a nice collection going already.  Not that I don’t love my truck dearly, but it’s getting to be spring, and I’m going to feel the urge for a sportycar soon.  I may do something rash with my meager cash flow.”

“You’re welcome to borrow my Austin any time you want,” Glen said.  The way he said it suggested that this was not an offer he made lightly.

She cooed at him and gave him a shoulder bump to let him know she understood.  “That’s super-sweet, and I’m going to hold you to it.  But it’s not the same when it’s not yours.”

“I understand completely,” Glen said.  “Shall we?” he asked, indicating the restaurant.

“No better time than the present.”

They found the rest of the group at a table with a pitcher of beer and breadsticks.  “Pizza’s on the way,” Roger said as Lexi found a seat next to Harold, who had saved it for her.  “And there’s a salad bar for the old farts like me who can’t take the grease.”

Dick was halfway through a story, the rest of the group listening raptly.  “So he’s driven this big Chevy pickup all the way down from Colorado, with the snowplow still attached.  Now, we’re almost to San Antonio, and nobody has any idea what to make of this pickup with a giant shovel on the front of it.  I mean, every cop and good ol’ boy we pass is just turning and staring, and you can practically see every one of them mouthing the words, ‘whut the hell?’

“We’re out in the hill country somewhere, coming up through Johnson City, and the road is a big four-lane with a forested slope on one side and a pretty big drop-off on the other.”  Dick’s hands sketched out the topography he was describing in the air.  “We come around this bend, and there’s a cop in the right lane–there’s no shoulder–helping someone who’s got a flat tire, and there’s a car coming from the opposite direction, and there’s a Lexus behind us.  That’s when two deer come bounding out into the road, side by side.  Gary has nowhere to go, and we just slam full-on into them at sixty.”

“Gary’s another Road Associate,” Glen told Lexi.  “He, Terry and Art couldn’t make it today.”  She nodded.

“Now, the snowplow’s raised up, but it’s got hydraulics that allow it to tilt forward and back,” Dick said, tenting his fingers to demonstrate.  “So the first deer’s weight tilts the top edge back, and flips both of them right over the top of the truck.  Ba-bam!  I saw antlers, then hooves spinning around like a rotisserie, and then they were gone.”  The rest of the Associates were already in various states of hysterics, but Dick pressed his comic advantage.  “The first one goes up in the air at least twenty feet, and comes straight down on the hood of the Lexus behind us.  It looked like fur-covered torpedo bomb.  Trashes his hood, goes sliding up over the windshield and takes that out, and God knows what it did to the sunroof.  The second one flips up under the first one, gets about half as much air, and lands right in the bed of our pickup.

“Gary doesn’t even stop.  He rolls that unlit stogie he always has from one side of his mouth to the other and says, ‘Stupid sumbitch,’ and keeps going.”  A fresh round of laughter went around the table.  “About two miles later, the cop catches up to us and pulls us over.  He didn’t give us a ticket.  He just kept saying, ‘I never seen anything like that before!  Goddamn, I never seen anything like that before!’”

“You and Gary shouldn’t be allowed out without supervision,” Harold said between chuckles.  

“Hey, I’m not the one who got it mounted and put it up in the garage, am I?”

“How about you, Lexi?” he asked with a paternal knee-pat so casual that she wasn’t sure he was aware that he’d done it.  “Did your deer today manage a triple axel?”

“It got good height,” she replied, automatically tumbling into an Olympic sportscaster’s voice, “but he didn’t stick the landing.  That’s going to cost him the bronze, Doug.  It’s always disappointing to see a young athlete make a mistake like that when it matters so much.”  This time the laughter was for Lexi. 

“Are you drinking?” Ray asked, indicating the beer.  “We’ve got rooms blocked out at the hotel.”

“Beer makes me stupid,” Lexi said, declining.  “Besides, I may just have to try and drive home.  I didn’t budget for a hotel room.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Roger said.  “Arguing over the bill takes all the fun out of dinner.  It all balances out in the end.”

“You could maybe build each of us a Crane-Packard,” Ray added jokingly.

“I don’t know if the DMV would like that,” she said.  “I suspect they weren’t too happy about what I did with the last one.”

“Now that’s a story I’d like to hear,” Roger said.  “Glen told us some of it, but he don’t never get anything half right.  It sounds like a wilder ride than La Carerra.”

“And you would know,” Harold added.

“You raced in La Carrera Panamericana?” Lexi said, perking up.  The famous, early 1950s seat-of-the-pants race run on public roads in Mexico was one she had always loved to read about.  It made her feel as though she’d been born too late and missed all the fun.

“52, ’53 and ’54,” Roger said.  “Me and Squeezer Mackenzie took turns wrestling a ’49 Oldsmobile through the desert.”  He glanced over her shoulder, and she looked to see that Charlie and Jim had arrived.

Lexi rolled her eyes in delight, imagining Roger forty years younger, his hair plastered with dust.  “That’s so cool,” she said.  “But I’m going to have to swap stories about New York later.  It was kind of personal, and I’ve got other stuff on my mind.  Did I mention that I passed up a free trip to Ile du Soleil to be here?”  She heard it coming out of her mouth before she’d really decided that she wanted to talk about it, but it was too late now. 

Thankfully, the mention of the island nation immediately spun the conversation in a new direction.  “Now that is a fun, fun place,” Charlie said, pulling out a chair for himself.  Roger pushed the rapidly diminishing pitcher of beer toward him, and he poured himself a cup.  “Any of you ever been?  All kinds of terrain, beautiful roads, mountains and salt desert.  And no national highway patrol.”

“No cops?” Ray asked.  “How the hell’s that possible?”

“Small government,” Harold said.  “They have a federal law enforcement division, and local PD, but since there aren’t speed limits outside the major cities, there’s not much reason to patrol ‘em.”

“It’s like a great big tropical Montana,” Dick said.  “Sign me up.”

“Well, it’s not as simple as that,” Charlie said. “They handle the roads the Libertarian way.  There aren’t any cops to hassle you, but that means there’s no one to come help if you crash and burn in the middle of fuck-all, either.  Pardon my French.  You run off the road, you’re on your own.  It’s pure Wild West down there, once you get outside the tourist traps.”

“Well, that’s no surprise,” Dick said.  “They change politics so frequently that I imagine the people who live there have trouble keeping up.”

“What do you expect from a place that was a bunch of uninhabitable salt flats?  Wasn’t any use to anyone until man invented the airplane and we built an airbase there in World War Two.  And then they never used the damn thing.  Do you know how the guy who called himself the king of that place got his throne?” Charlie asked, looking to Glen and Lexi with a challenge in his eyes.  She could tell that he knew the answer, and for some reason assumed that the youngest Road Associates didn’t.

She knew, and didn’t wait to see if Glen did.  “He was related to the pirates who crash-landed there and starved to death a couple hundred years before,” she said.  “So he showed up, called himself King Khorbin, and said the place was his.  And nobody argued, since it was the Fifties and he wasn’t a Communist.”

Harold nodded.  “He was a crazy old bastard.”

“But he made his own country.  Got people down there and turned it into a tourist destination.  Ile du Soleil’s a pretty big place, and it’s got no industry to speak of, except for some phosphate mining.  It’s all tourism.”

“Wrong,” Charlie said, wagging a finger at Glen.  “It’s all money.  During the Cold War, Khorbin liked to remind the boys on Wall Street that Ile du Soleil wasn’t going to be a target for anyone’s nukes and thus made a good place to stash all the things you might not want to have blown up.  It’s the Switzerland of the South Pacific.  Lots of money goes through Solei.  Crime, too.  No telling how many mob connections old King Khorbin had when they finally threw him out.  This was before you were born,” he added, nodding toward Lexi.

“No, it wasn’t,” she said, letting a bit of her annoyance show.  She didn’t want to be treated like the child of the group, even if she was the youngest.  “It was in the late Seventies, and I vaguely remember it happening.”

“What’s always struck me as being ass-backwards,” Roger said, “is that the conservatives in Ile du Soleil would be considered liberals in the U.S., and vice versa.  When I read the news coming out of that place, I can’t tell who stands for what.”

“Too complicated for you?” Charlie asked, sounding only slightly condescending. 

Roger was used to being razzed by his old friend, and let it go.  “Like right now, you’ve got a party ascending in power that the Solei news calls ‘liberal.’  Except that they’re talkin’ about censorship, and stricter government controls over almost everything.  That ain’t what we call liberal.”

“In case you noticed, they ain’t here,” Charlie said.  “Not everyone plays by Texan rules.”

“World would be a better place if they did,” was the reply.

“Why does it seem like every five or six years someone changes the whole system of government in Ile du Soleil?” Ray asked suddenly.  Lexi looked at him, surprised.  He hadn’t seemed to be paying attention to any conversation that didn’t directly involve cars.  “After they booted Khorbin, seems like there’s been a new bunch in charge every time you turn around.”

“Think of it as a grand tradition of shaking the cage,” Harold said. 

“It’s about time for it to happen again,” Charlie said.  “The ‘liberals’ have been getting more and more of a foothold in parliament in recent years.  The Old Guard is moving slowly out, and the Republican and Socialist parties are fragmented among other issues.”

“Who’s the Old Guard?” Lexi asked.

“Mostly Khorbin loyalists.”

“Why are so many people still loyal to him?” Glen asked.  “The last ten years or so of his life were terrible to the Solei people.”

Charlie shrugged.  “Depends on your point of view.”  He killed his beer and signaled the waitress to bring a new pitcher.

“Glen has a point,” Dick said, turning to Charlie.  “The people who thought Reaganomics was such a great thing in the Eighties clearly didn’t remember what was going on in Ile du Soleil fifteen years before.”

“Reagan also never killed anyone,” Glen added.

“King Khorbin never killed anyone, either.”

“Well, sure,” Glen said.  “Henry Ford never beat up any union organizers–Harry Bennett did.  Same difference.  Even if Khorbin never got his hands dirty, he was the one calling the shots.”

“No pun intended,” Lexi said, biting her lip to kill a giggle. 

Only Dick heard her, and gave her a grin before continuing.  “Which brings us back precisely to my concern with these ‘liberals.’  They call themselves a Green party, but that’s a misnomer.  They’re loudly anti-Khorbin, but they’re not that much different than he was.  You’d have to be in Ile du Soleil to understand, I guess, but on home ground it’s pretty well understood that the Greens are just as violent and subversive as King Khorbin allegedly was.  The difference is that they haven’t got a leader whose face can be put on a placard and waved around.  Their repressive political agendas are backed up by social ones as well.”  Dick turned to Lexi.  “Since we are who we are, I think the most important thing is that they’re introducing anti-pollution legislation.  Radical crusher bills.”

“I’ve heard of that,” Glen said.  “They want to make it prohibitively expensive to own a car that’s more than five years old, isn’t that the case?”

“Exactly.  And they’re backing it up by pushing bills to order scrapyards and car dealers to turn old cars over to the government, for a moderate reimbursement.  The next step is to make it nearly impossible to get them registered, or to resell them.”

“But that’s stupid,” Lexi said.  “Well-maintained old cars don’t pollute any more than new ones.”

“It’s not hard to squash a bunch of apparent clunkers and call it environmentalism,” Harold said.  “Who in his right mind is going to argue?”

“But what about the lower class?” Glen asked.  “Jesus, Ile du Soleil’s got almost no middle class as it is, isn’t that true?”  Charlie and Harold both nodded.  “So the people who can barely afford new cars now won’t be able to get transportation they can afford any more?”

“Probably not,” Harold said.  “You still want to call the Greens liberals?”

“I call them shortsighted.”

“I call them crazy.  A government of young guys who hate cars.  That’s just not right,” Lexi said.

“They are planning to add more public transportation.  For what it’s worth.”

“Well, not everyone enjoys the ‘every-man-for-himself’ system.”  Roger’s throaty voice cut through the conversation.  “Not that it’s all bad.  But sometimes I wonder if they haven’t taken the small-government thing a bit too far.  Do y’all know that corporations have been setting up shop in Solei because they know they can do pretty much whatever they want?  Dangerous factories, lax law enforcement, legal loopholes aplenty.”

“It’s a rich bastard’s paradise,” Lexi said.  She was standing her fork on end and rotating it slowly.

“So what was this trip to paradise that you passed up about?”

“Dobie Cassarell invited me to go see his collection, actually.”  She put the fork down.  “I’m pretty sure he was just trying to keep me from coming here.”

“Aw, is he jealous because we like you better than we like him?” Charlie mocked.  “What a putz.”

“Okay, Lexi, now we’re going to test you,” Dick said suddenly.  “Why did we want to bring you into the fold, and not Mr. Cassarell, with all of his millions?”

“Billions,” Glen corrected.  “He made the Forbes list again.”

“Either way.  Do you have any idea what makes you one of us, but not him?”

“Other than political correctness?” she asked, arching an eyebrow at Charlie. 
“I assume it’s because Dobie likes cars, but they’re commodities to him.  I don’t think he knows how to talk to them, or love them as anything other than investments and trophies.  Although, for the record, he’s like that with pretty much everything, from what I’ve seen. Maybe it’s curable.”

“Gold star,” Harold said, smiling.  As a fresh pitcher of beer arrived, he took it and stood, ready to pour.  “Gentlemen, will you join me in toasting our newest Roadie?”

For Lexi, that was perhaps the most embarrassing part of the day, but it was mercifully short.  The conversation turned to homebuilt garages then, and people began drifting off to the hotel for bed.  Lexi, Harold, Ray and Roger eventually left Dick and Jim, who seemed intent on closing the restaurant.

As they headed across the cold parking lot to the hotel, Harold touched Lexi’s elbow, and she held back with him.  “You told a little fib,” he said.

Her heart leapt into her throat.  What was he talking about?  “Did I?”

“I don’t know what happened to you on the way here, but I know you didn’t hit a deer.  Not unless they’re painting them metallic white these days.  Whatever you hit left some paint behind.”  Lexi opened her mouth to respond, and he held up his hand.  “I imagine it’s pretty embarrassing, getting into a wreck on the way to a meeting like this.  Don’t worry about it.  Shit happens.  ‘Long as everyone’s okay, you pick yourself up and keep going.”

“It wasn’t like that.”  She tried to meet his eyes, but looked at her own feet instead, ashamed at having been caught in a baldfaced lie.  Harold reminded her uncomfortably of her father. 

“Wasn’t like what?”

“It…it wasn’t an accident.  Someone…look, I don’t want to talk about it.  Can’t talk about it.  But it wasn’t my fault, and I’m not being defensive.  If I mess up, I’ll admit it.  Bert brought me up right,” she added.

Harold smiled, put his arm around her shoulders and swung her around, starting toward the hotel again.  “I can see that,” he said.  “And I’m not going to pry.  But remember, if you need our help, just call.  You’re family now.”

“And one day, perhaps I will ask you do to a favor for me,” Lexi intoned, channeling Vito Corleone.  Harold laughed, and held the door for her. 

Molly found herself on the front step of a private club in Boston she hadn’t known existed.  And there was no reason for her to have known, or ever to have noticed; the door was unmarked and unremarkable, an entryway sandwiched between two high-end retailers.  Had someone pointed it out to her, she’d have assumed it was the door of some legal firm, or even a maintenance entryway.

But when she paused in front of it, looking at the address Dobie had given her, a face appeared in the reinforced-glass window and then the door opened.  “Come in, Miss Snow,” a well-dressed doorman said.

When the door closed behind her, the city sounds were cut off completely.  A short, undecorated hall led to another nondescript door, and through that she stepped into a different world.  In this place, everything was made of either wood, fine cloth or leather, with an occasional touch of silver or chrome.  Where the walls were not framed by glass cases of books or art, they were hung with drapes.  The ceiling was a series of luminescent panels that suggested real daylight instead of electric lighting, and resembled neither.  At the far end of the room, a pianist gently worked the keys of a grand piano with casual, effortless skill.

It took Molly a moment to realize that it was basically a restaurant; the tables were cleverly placed such that wherever one sat, your table seemed like it was the only one in the place.  As she was led through the room, Molly caught glimpses of elegantly-dressed shoulders and legs here and there, but there was always a drape or exotic potted plant intruding before she caught sight of a face. 

Dobie rose to greet her as the doorman brought her to the alcove he waited in.  “Molly,” he said, taking her hand and bowing.  The steward melted away as if he’d never been there.  “So good to see you.”

“When a man is this nice to me, I can’t help but get suspicious,” she said with a smile.  She knew Dobie had been staying at Lexi’s house–the place was big enough that it couldn’t necessarily be considered staying “with” Lexi–since Christmas, and generally approved of him.  He respected the fact that Lexi wasn’t interested in anything more than friendship, as far as she could see.  If there was anything wrong with him, he came off as being a bit pompous and out of touch at times, but then that might have been the dozen-year age difference and the fact that he hadn’t grown up in America. 

“No need for it, though I can understand why you’d be on your guard.  I suppose my message was rather curt and sudden.”

“Mm-hmm,” she agreed, nodding.

“Well, I bear no sinister news,” Dobie said.  “I am on my way home, and I had a layover in Boston with a few hours to kill between flights.”

“Don’t tell me you’re flying commercial?”

“Of course not,” he said, as if chartering a plane for himself were the most normal thing in the world.  Then again, in his world it is, Molly reminded herself.  “We’ve stopped for refueling and a crew change before we leave for Los Angeles, then home.”

“Such an inconvenience,” she said.

“Not at all.  I’m glad for the opportunity to stop by.  So, how are things?”

She looked at him with her head angled, considering.  Most people didn’t really want to know how “things” were when they asked, but Dobie seemed honestly interested.  She remembered from Christmas that he was an information sponge; he listened to what people said, which was how he’d been able to determine within hours of their arrival at Lexi’s Christmas Eve dinner that Nikki and Dori needed a VCR, and to get one to the house in time to be a Christmas present for them.  With that in mind, she decided to tell Dobie how “things” were.  “I can sum life up in one sentence; I lost my job and I’m being audited.  How about you?”  She left out the part about being kicked out of her tennis club; that was too embarrassing to go into.

He had to good grace not to look sorry for her.  “Every setback an opportunity in disguise,” he said.

“You’re lucky that Lex is the violent one, because statements like that make me want to choke the crap out of you.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound glib.  I’ve ordered lunch for us already, I hope you don’t mind.”

“Depends on what you ordered.”

“Well, it’s a shame the lobster is out of season, but the Kobe beef filet is a good substitute,” he said.  As he spoke, a server smoothly slid a perfectly rounded ounce of caviar in front of her. 

Molly blinked at the plate in front of her, then at him.  “Good God, Dobie.  I may have to have sex with you just so I don’t feel guilty for eating this.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Way to stomp a girl’s ego, Mister Man.  And I was kidding, by the way.”

“Of course you were.  I’m sorry if you’re offended–that wasn’t my intent.  What happened to your job?”

She shrugged.  “Who knows?  Newspapers get reorganized all the time.  New writers coming in, departments merging, you know.  My little perch just got absorbed into someone else’s.  It happens.”

“And the tax audit?”

“Also one of those things I’m told just happens.  If I get called for jury duty, the circle will be complete.”

Dobie suspected that Molly’s troubles were more than mere coincidence, but said nothing.

“What’s funny–well, I suppose it’s not funny, really–is that I ended up getting a sort of life lesson from all of this.  The auditor came to my house, to go through my home-office files, you know.  She’s this skinny little weaselly woman with big glasses, even has a little overbite that makes her look like a ferret.  It took her about three hours to get on my nerves–she’s got this passive-aggressive way of asking for things, it drives me crazy.  And everything is somehow my fault, as though my entire purpose in life is to cheat Uncle Sam out of his rightful percentage of my staggering twenty-thousand dollar annual income.  Why are you making that face?”

“You’ll be angry if I tell you.”  He had blinked because he’d realized that the watch he was wearing cost more than she made in a year.  Dobie hadn’t really considered that before.  Lexi gave the impression of living frugally by choice, and he assumed naively that her friends were the same way.  But that wasn’t it at all–they were actually just poor, all of them, Lexi included.  He was even aware that Becka Packard had conspired successfully to leave Lexi destitute.  How was it that this fact slipped his mind so easily?

Molly smiled.  “Well, now I have to hear.”

“No, really.  I’ve heard plenty about what you’re like when you’re angry,” he said with a smile.  “Do carry on.”

“What has Lex been saying about me?”

“Only the most gentle and flattering words, of course.”

“Liar.  Anyway, I freaking yelled at her.  She was whining her way through another question, and I just snapped.  I can’t even remember what I said, but it was something about her being raised by reptiles.  And then I stormed out of the room.  I figured it was better if I just avoided her for a while.

“So, a couple of hours later, I walk past the room.  She’s been going at it for six hours, and she’s taking a lunch break, of sorts.  She just opened up a can of tuna and ate it right there at the desk, as quiet as could be, staring out the window, and she looked like she wanted to cry.  It was about the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know exactly.  I think I just realized all of a sudden that her job really sucks.  As frustrating as it is for me, she has to go through this every day.  It’s not her fault–I’m just an assignment, and she doesn’t have a choice.  It made me stop and think, about how much of a bitch I was being.  I took her some crackers and tea, and she just looked up at me like she expected me to smack her.”

“Maybe someone did, once,” Dobie said.  “I’ve heard of that happening.”

“I can believe it.  People are terrible, terrible things.”  She shrugged, hands fluttering to punctuate her words.  “Anyway, I look at this skinny, thirty-something lady with the buck teeth and the first thing I think is that she’s probably never had an orgasm in her life.”

He laughed, and she chuckled with him.

“You laugh, but I’ll bet it’s true.  She’s got at least another two days at my place, so I made her breakfast today, nothing special, and I threw together a hot lunch for her before I left, too.”

“Did that get her to open up?”

“Not much.  I think she’s afraid it’s a trap.  But it isn’t.  Really, I decided–no hard feelings.  At least not toward her.  I could even be friends with her, I think–I always had a soft spot for the shy, nerdy kids, because I was one, even though no one else seemed to realize it at the time.  If I ever get my hands on the deputy director of the IRS though, all bets are off.”

“Your wrath is a terrible thing indeed,” Dobie said. 

“So what’s new with you and Lex?  Did she finally kick you out?”

“No, I had business to attend to, and I believe she is off testing for the Road Associates.”

Molly frowned; the phrase was vaguely familiar.  Oh, right, the car club that Glen belonged to.  She nodded in comprehension.

Dobie wanted to ask her if she knew where it was, or if Lexi had called her, but it wouldn’t do to seem like he was prying.  This lunch was his chance to get to know Molly, after all.  She’d be a much better source of information if it wasn’t obvious that was his primary reason for getting to know her.  “The elections are soon, and I thought it best to get home.  I also admit it felt somewhat strange, knocking about her house when she wasn’t there.”

“Is someone taking care of her cats?”

“She didn’t leave any instructions.”

“Then she’ll be home in a few days.  She and Ren set up this automatic feeder that would take care of them for almost a week.  They had to travel a lot, when they were working on Crane-Packard.  Hell, they traveled a lot for no reason, too.”

“Yes, Warren was quite the jet-setter.  Never happy in one place for too long.”  Their lunch arrived, creating a convenient break in the conversation.  Once they had settled in to eating, and Molly had finished waxing rapturous over her food, he asked, “So tell me about your job situation.  Have you anything lined up?”

“Not yet.  I put a couple of resumes out, nothing I really want to do, just wage-slave type work.  I was thinking that it would be nice to focus full-time on my column, and see if I can sell enough papers to make a living at it.”

“I’m sure you could.  You’re a fantastic writer.  If you’d like, I could talk to some newspaper owners I know.  I might even be able to make some introductions and recommendations.”

“It’s all about the networking,” she said, raising her glass.

“That it is.  The ghost-story column you were talking about at Christmas is the one you’d like to write full-time, correct?”

Molly nodded, trying not to let her excitement show.

“That’s a brave thing, relying on a freelance writer’s income.”

“Brave isn’t the word I’d use.  But then, I really love doing it, and everyone keeps kicking me and telling me to just go with what I love, and the rest will follow.  I’m trying to hold my breath and wait for it to work out.  Besides, it’s not fair that all of my friends are getting their dream jobs.  Cygnet’s in radio, Katharine’s a perfect housewife–and that’s her dream job too, don’t get me wrong–and Lexi…well, you know.  For all intents and purposes, it worked out, before life intervened.”  It wasn’t the first time that it had crossed her mind to wonder exactly how successful Lexi and Ren’s car company would have been if he hadn’t died.  Crane-Packard had been quietly dissolved shortly after Lexi’s nervous breakdown, much to the lament of many car enthusiasts around the world. 

Dobie nodded.  “Such an unfortunate situation,” he said.

“A whole confluence of them,” Molly replied.  “So, should I send a resume to you?” 

“No need.  I’ll put you in touch with the right people, and your work should speak for itself.  I think I know some editors who are looking for a column like yours.”

“Thank you for the help.  And the compliment.  You’d better not just be buttering  me up so that my friend will have sex with you.”

“Furthest thing from my mind,” Dobie said truthfully.  To emphasize this, he steered the conversation away from Lexi entirely for a while, to fashion and antiques, both of which were favorite subjects of Molly’s.  He kept the conversation amiable, and let her talk.  Somehow, it was easier to do this with Molly than it was with Lexi.

An hour, a dessert of sorbet and a cup of coffee passed quickly.  As Molly made her goodbye and left, Dobie watched her go with a pleasant sigh.  He remembered a brief and somewhat uncouth conversation with Danny Packard (it was regrettably difficult to have a conversation with Danny that wasn’t uncouth) about Molly’s endowments, which were considerable, to be sure, but Danny did not seem to have noticed that she had fantastic legs as well.  Dobie shook the thought away with a flick of his eyebrows as Victor appeared at his elbow.  “I need Arthur Day’s number,” he said, taking out his phone.  Victor tapped it up on the Palm Pilot and handed it to him.  “So nice to be calling him from the same time zone, for once,” Dobie said over his shoulder.  “Is our flight still on schedule?”

“The car arrives in ten minutes.”

“Just enough time,” he said, dialing.  “I want you to stay here tonight.  Find this auditor of Molly’s, and show her a good time, if you would.  Dinner, whirlwind romance, sex, the works.  I’m sure it’ll be the thrill of her life.  Meet me in Los Angeles if you can, or at home if you can’t.”

Victor merely nodded, showing neither enthusiasm nor trepidation at Dobie’s orders.  It wasn’t the first time.

Dobie’s call was completed.  “Arthur!  So good to catch you in the office.  Look, I haven’t got much time, I’m off to catch a plane, but I wanted to talk to you about a good friend of mine who’s just getting her feet wet with a newspaper column.  I’d really appreciate it if you’d give her a look and see about adding her to one of your syndicates.”

Dobie and Victor were gone when Lexi got home.  It wasn’t a surprise, though she did feel a twitch of disappointment that they hadn’t hung around for three days waiting for her to get back.  She felt like she’d discovered a limit to the abuse Dobie would put up with. 

It took about twenty minutes to wander through the big, quiet house (it hadn’t been this quiet in months, and Lexi found herself suddenly loath to fill it with noise just yet) and make sure everything was more or less as she’d left it.  It was, except that Dobie had taken the briefcase.  That was also disappointing, but not unexpected.  Lexi consulted the answering machine, which was full to bursting with twenty-five messages.

While the machine played, she poured herself a glass of grapefruit juice.  Three of them were Molly.  Well, that meant she was in trouble.  Molly wouldn’t leave more than three messages, but you could assume that she’d called about five times per message.  Eddie Sharp, Nikki’s boss, had left a message telling her that Dobie had called him looking for her.  Cygnet had left a similar message.  After that there was a call from a journalist, someone from a publication too boring for her to remember the name of.  After that, someone who wanted her to build another Crane-Packard.  And another.  And another.  The machine played her a litany of voices, all of them male, all of them wanting her to build just one more Crane-Packard.  Some were polite, some were boisterous, some were rich bastards who assumed that if they waved enough money she’d do it.  How had they gotten her number, anyway?

She looked down at the machine, which had been sitting on the floor since she’d gotten annoyed with the cheap phone stand and burned it in the fireplace just before Christmas.  The friendly voice that was currently speaking made a long, impassioned plea for one of the cars she and Ren had designed, and spoke lovingly of the rest of his collection.  He had some really nice cars, and really wanted to add a Crane-Packard to the stable. 

Lexi scowled and flipped the empty glass out of her fingers.  It tumbled, fell and shattered on the floor next to the answering machine.  “Mendacity,” she sighed.  “Just leave me alone.”  She hadn’t built a car for Ren and blown it up on his grave as a publicity stunt.

She had no choice but to call Molly, of course.  “Why the hell did you take off for two days and not tell anybody where you were going?” was the first thing out of Molly’s mouth.  “You’ve been scaring the shit out of everyone!”

“Who’s ‘everyone?’”

“Well, let’s see.  I didn’t know where you were.  Cygnet didn’t know where you were.  Nikki didn’t know.  Josie didn’t know.  Dobie was staying in your house and you just disappeared out from under his nose.  Shall I go on?  I’ve had a little knot in my stomach for two days, Lex!”

She felt honestly bad.  “Sorry.  I just…there were a lot of things going on, and I had to take off.”

“I know.  Road Associates, right?”

“You talked to Glen, eh?”

“Yes, I did.  He got home yesterday.  But did I hear from you?  Noooo….”

“It’s not going to work to claim that I had farther to drive, is it?”

“No, it isn’t,” Molly said.  “You drive faster than he does.”

“Well, not right now.  Grizzle’s all torn up.”  She told Molly about Danny Packard.

Molly had no problem aiming her vitriol at a new target.  “Spoiled, psychopathic son of a bitch!” was her response.  “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.  But my truck is bent.  He runs, but not happily.  I’m going to have to install a new radiator and find front-end pieces, which will actually be kind of fun.  But I’m not going to send Numbah Two Son a thank-you card any time soon.”

Molly made an inarticulate sound of irritation.

“Really, I’m okay.”

“I think you just have no sense of potential danger.  He could have killed you!”

“I’m sure he wants to,” Lexi said, her voice uninflected.  “Lucky for me, I’m not interested in dying any more.  And actually I might have been exaggerating a bit about the radiator.  Ray and Dick did an amazing job fixing it, and in a parking lot even.”

“Well, I’m glad everything’s okay,” Molly said with a sigh.

“It is, more or less, except that I’ve got a thousand messages on the answering machine from people wanting me to build Crane-Packards for them.”

“It is your fault for pulling one of the greatest marketing stunts of all time, you know.  Using a race car to outrun all of the cops in New York and New Jersey–for real, not in a movie–is bound to make the boys want one, babe.”

“Rainier wasn’t a race car,” Lexi replied absently, knowing it made no difference to Molly.  “And I’m not making any more.  I can’t.  It’s not right to build them without him.”  She didn’t say Ren’s name, but Molly knew who she was talking about.  “And I just decided I don’t want to talk about it any more.  How are things on the Snow estate?”

“Weird.  Everything went to shit all at once–I lost my job, and then this IRS audit came down.  They send a field auditor to my house and everything.”

“Oh, Mol.  You lost your job?”

“Reshufflings of the journalistic deck,” she replied.  “Nothing personal, of course, but the totem pole no longer includes me.”

“They can go suck each other’s totem poles,” Lexi said.

“Save your evil thoughts, the story’s got a happy ending.  I had lunch with Dobie Cassarell–he came through Boston on his way out of town, and took me out to a lunch so good that it made me question my value as a human being.  I’m not kidding, I might be willing to perpetrate genocide just to eat at this place again.  Anyway, I told him about the job thing, and he got me in touch with the North American News Syndicate, and they’re going to add my column!”  Molly laughed as Lexi squealed in delight.  “So, just like that, I’ve got a two-year contract and a real-life income.  They say it’s a trial period, but what it means is that I’m not going to starve in the meantime.”

“So cool!  We should celebrate with vodka.”

“We should.  I’ve been walking on air, I can’t think bad thoughts about anyone.  I even got Annabella, the auditor, to come out of her shell a little bit.  We had a fascinating conversation about the pros and cons of one-night stands this morning.”

“You can make friends with anyone, can’t you?”

“When I’m in a good enough mood?  Yes.  It is my secret power.  Now, tell me you want to hear all about Dobie pumping me for information about you.”

“Did he?”

“No.  But I got the feeling that his taking me out to lunch was more than just him happening to be in town and wanting to look at my boobs.  Which he didn’t, not even once.  And he hardly mentioned you, but if you took off on him the way you did on everyone else, I get the feeling he wanted to know where you went.”

“Oh, shit,” Lexi said mildly.  She’d had some vague notion that she might be rid of him, though she didn’t know if she was glad about it or not.

“Why’s that?  Trouble?”

“Not directly.  He just…he wants something from me, some intangible, and I don’t know what it is.  I probably can’t give it to him.  But it won’t stop him from trying, because he’s that kind of guy.  And I’ll let him, because I’m that kind of girl.”

“He seems like an okay guy.  Apart from the money, even.”

“No, I know, it’s my problem.  On two levels, in fact, because in a sick way I like the attention.  Some little part of me feeds on it and doesn’t care who it comes from.  Do you know that I went out with Dave and Tim in college just because they were really interested in me?”

“Um, yes.  It kind of showed.”

“I didn’t care one way or another for them, I just responded to their interest in me.  It was kind of a scary thing to learn about myself–hey, what do you mean, yes, you backstabbing whore?  Whose side are you on?  Anyway, I was reminded of it, because he invited me to go back to Ile du Soleil with him, right before the Road Associates thing.”

“Oh my God, are you serious?”

“Mm-hmm.  He wants to show me his etchings–er, his car collection.  I don’t know if the invite is still open at this point.”  She opened the refrigerator, looked around for a while, and then closed it.  She hadn’t eaten anything since getting back to the house, but nothing seemed to appeal to her.  “Do you think I should go?”

“To Ile du Soleil?”

“No, to McDonald’s for a box of Chicken McNuggets.  Of course, to Solei.”

“Gee,” Molly said, her voice filled with a level of sarcasm normally reserved for maternal Italian guilt trips, “let me think about this.  A free tropical vacation at the house–no, make that the estate–of a worldly, blindingly rich and handsome bachelor who routinely dates supermodels.”

“Yah, that’s the problem, isn’t it?  If it weren’t for him, I’d go in a heartbeat.  With him there…well, I think Dobie’s one of those guys who doesn’t realize that Gatsby was kind of an asshole.”

“Well, if I could pass for you, I’d go in your place.  Especially if Danny Packard is roaming the highways gunning for you.  Speaking of which, what if he shows up at your house?”

“What if he shows up at Dobie‘s house?  They are friends, you know.”

“I believe the guy code requires that Dobie protect you, if that happens.  Up there, you’re by yourself.”

Lexi sighed.  “I don’t know if I feel like having a vacation right now.  I need to fix Grizzle.”

“Maybe Dobie will spring to ship your toys, too.  He’s infatuated enough.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, I do.  Go, Lex.  You’re getting out in the world and living again, and it makes me happy to see it.  Insanely jealous, of course, but don’t let that stop you.  Don’t pull that Brian Wilson crap again.  And tell me where you’re going, no matter what you decide, you hear?  If you disappear on me again, I swear on my grandmother’s grave…”

It was good to be home. 

Dobie Cassarell sat in his darkened office, which overlooked the rear of the estate he’d carved out of a decent slice of real estate near Marjori, Ile du Soleil.  As he had hoped it would, his settling close to a mid-sized town with little to recommend it had brought a measure of respect to the place.  Since he’d settled here seven years ago, Marjori had grown a great deal more sophisticated, and even sported a decent nightlife.  Dobie couldn’t help but feel partially responsible.  He was proud of the little town, whose lights were just barely visible over the horizon.

The phone chimed softly, and Victor moved from his statuelike position next to the door to answer it in a low murmur.  “It’s Lexi Crane,” he told Dobie a moment later.

Ever vigilant on his monitoring devices, even from halfway around the world, Victor had already relayed the gist of the conversation Lexi’d had with Molly the day before to him, so he knew that she was calling to accept his invitation.  Now, how long should he let her be uncertain as to if he’d still fly her down?  Dobie considered before deciding to answer, and took the phone from Victor.  “Lexi!” he said, grinning so the smile would make it into his voice.  “So nice to hear from you!”

“Okay, you don’t need to be sarcastic,” she said.  “I’m sorry I took off the way I did.  Well, maybe not sorry I did it, it was something I needed to do, but I’m acknowledging that it was a really rude thing to do.  And thank you for not leaving my door unlocked when you left.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said.  “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Well, you know.”

“No, I don’t,” he teased.  “You haven’t said anything yet.”

“My briefcase is gone.”

“Your briefcase?”

Lexi sighed.  “You’re going to be a twerp about this, aren’t you?”

“Perhaps.  What’s a twerp?”

“I…” she faltered, at a loss.  “Okay, fine, be like that.  You gave me a briefcase, the one that Ren gave you.”

“And you assumed it was yours?”

“Don’t be a dick, Dobie,” Lexi said.

Sensing that he was pushing her too far, he backed off.  “Yes, I have it.  I’m sorry, I assumed you weren’t interested in it, so we took it with.  I take it my assumption was incorrect?”

“I had something to go and do,” she said.  “I was coming back.  I’m back now.”

“May I ask where you went?”

“I have a feeling you already know.”

It was Dobie’s turn to sigh.  “Perhaps.  So why do you ask about the briefcase?”

“Because it’s mine.”

“I see.”  He was itching to suggest that she come to Ile du Soleil, which was what he wanted, to have a chance to deal with her on his own territory for a while, but he wasn’t going to ask her.  He wanted her to ask him.  He’d been chasing her long enough.  “Well, it’s here.  Would you like me to ship it to you?”

There was a long moment of silence.  Dobie let her consider, imagining her chewing uncertainly on her lip.  “Not exactly,” she said.  “I think I’d like to come down there.”

His smile broadened again.  “Would you, now?  I didn’t think you were interested, after all of the times I offered.”

“You’re assuming things again.  The time wasn’t right,” Lexi said.  “And you make me nervous.”

“Nervous?”  Dobie was taken by surprise, but kept it out of his voice.  “Why would I make you nervous?”

“Because, stupid, you never tell me why you really want me around. You keep telling me what you think I want to hear, and that’ll never work with me. You have to get at least a bit closer to the truth.  I thought you’d have figured that out about me by now.”

He sighed, and smiled, leaning back in his chair to look out the window behind him.  “It’s not enough to say that I just like having you about?”

“No,” she said, unmoved.  “Cute puppy-dog eyes don’t work for you.  And I’m sure you could buy someone cuter than me.”

“Fair enough.”  He swiveled his chair around, looking out the wide window behind him.  “I’m looking at a beautiful, sunny day.  It’s about eighty degrees, with no humidity, and the water in the pools is perfectly blue.  I’m looking at a black-and-white rabbit that’s browsing in one of the flower gardens.  I keep a few rabbits on the property, you know.  They’re a family good luck charm.”

“I suppose that’s kinder than just using their feet,” Lexi said.

He laughed.  “Yes, it is.  I wanted to share my life with you, the way you’ve shared your life the past few months.”  If she wanted a grain of truth, he’d give it to her.  “And I must admit to being somewhat jealous of you.”  She didn’t respond, so he continued.  “Yes, jealous. What I’d really like is for you to come and show me what I’m missing.  You always tell me that there’s something I don’t get about cars, no matter how I try.  So I’d like for you to show me what it is, because I don’t see it.”

“I don’t think it’s something that can be shown, Dobie.”

“Will you try?”  The connection was good enough that he could hear her tapping her finger on something as she considered.  Dobie wondered if she was using the phone in the kitchen or the one in her bedroom.  “I’d be willing to give you a consultant’s fee,” he added.

Lexi made a wordless curse of irritation.  “If you ever offer me money again, Dobie, I will punch you in the face.  Have you ever been punched in the face?”

He pursed his lips.  “Not since secondary school.”  The door opened soundlessly, and Dobie swiveled the chair around to see Victor coming back in.  “There’s no need to resort to assault.  I was just trying to sweeten the deal, so to speak.”

“You chose the wrong way, pumpkinhead.”

“I see that I did.”  He let her stew in silence for a few more moments. 

“That’s okay,” she said with a sigh.  “I do want to come and visit,” Lexi said, and Dobie made a fist of triumph.  He waited for her to ask if he’d pay for it.  “I don’t suppose you’ve got any frequent flyer tickets you could offer up?”

“Hmm, let me check my desk drawer…”

“Oh, don’t be facetious.  We’re not all billionaires, you know, and thousand-dollar plane tickets don’t grow on trees, at least not in my yard.  But if you have such a bush, I’d love to have a cutting.”

“My apologies.  I meant no offense.”  He still wanted her to ask him specifically to pay for her trip.  “I did mention that you’ll have access to my collection, yes?  To drive.”

Lexi gasped.  “Any of them?”

Dobie hedged a little bit, realizing that she’d take him up on it.  “Well, maybe not some of the rarer cars…”

“I am packing as we speak,” she said.  “Should I bring a swimsuit?”

“By all means.  Of course, anything that you need, I can provide.”

“And you will.  Don’t go anywhere, I’m on my way.”  Lexi left Dobie with a dead line.

“Well,” he said to Victor.  “That was good news.”

“She’s coming here?”

He nodded.  “Arrange a flight for her, if you please, before she wastes her meager income flying herself down here.” 

“Something changed her mind.”

“Danny Packard, most likely,” Dobie said.

Victor merely nodded.

“You still don’t care for her, do you?”

“I’ll like her better when I know her motives,” Victor said. 

“I’m sure they’ll reveal themselves in due time.  Have you found out what Danny was about?”

“Not yet.  I have a call in to his driver and should hear back some time today.”

“What about Molly?”

“Nothing definite, but Becka is almost certainly behind her losing the job and the audit.  She’s also had some social setbacks–she’s been barred from her racquet club, and her credit scores have taken a subtle hit.  So, she’s got Becka’s eye, for the moment.”

Dobie nodded.  After Lexi had blown up the car on their property, Molly had been there to threaten the Packards–actually threaten them!–with legal retailiation should they attempt to press charges against Lexi.  Apparently Molly had used her skills as a reporter to uncover Becka’s behind-the-scenes attempts to destroy Lexi’s life, and was prepared to make them public.  Dobie didn’t know the whole story, but whatever Molly had discovered was potentially damaging enough that Becka had not only dropped her own charges against Lexi, but pressured the NYPD not to imprison her either.  It made sense that the elder Packard would turn her lens on Molly.  “Is there anything else?” Dobie asked, turning over the newspaper.  The Greens had won the election, and the front page was dominated by a full-color photo of a smiling Carino Rhoades.  Damn.  Parliamentary positions were still being decided, but it was looking like the balance of power had tipped again.  Dobie didn’t plan to get involved directly; it was best during times like this to play turtle, and wait until the political landscape had settled down.  Solei politicians were fond of making examples, after all.

“One other apparent target of Becka’s,” Victor said.  “Ian Warnock.”

“Warren’s friend?”  Ian had been Lexi’s caretaker during the eight months that she’d been off the grid.  “I wonder why?”

“Not sure.  He’s getting the same treatment that Miss Snow is, however.  I suspect he was tangentially involved.  The Packards had direct dealings with him as well, after Warren’s death.”

“Interesting,” Dobie said, already losing interest.