The Big Cat Nap

Harry and Susan had just set foot in the kitchen when the wall phone rang.

Harry picked it up. “Hello.”

“You’ll never guess,” Franny breathlessly spoke. “They found my tires.”

“Where?”

Susan helped herself to iced tea, then moved next to Harry to hear better.

“A warehouse at Zion Crossroads.”

At the junction of I-64 and Route 250 in Louisa County was Zion Crossroads. For so many years it had been sleepy and nondescript, but in the last ten, it had morphed into a hotbed of business, food, and gas. I-64 could carry one all the way to St. Louis if traveling west. Then it turned into I-70, rolling through until the Rockies. Even those drivers on a short hop to Richmond pulled in, grabbed a Coca-Cola or coffee, and stretched their legs.

The old lumberyard was still there, but to the locals it seemed yet another storage business appeared every day. Good for the coffers of Louisa County.

Susan offered Harry a sip as she got her ear close to the receiver.

“Susan’s with me. A real eavesdropper.” Harry smiled. “How did they find the goods?”

“Well, Rick put out a report, went all over. Computers really are amazing, and one of the girls at the cash register at McDonald’s remembered a semi stopping. Nothing unusual there, but she looked out as the driver pushed up the big door in the back and two men jumped out. She saw the tires. Didn’t think anything of it. An officer from the Louisa County Sheriff’s Department mentioned to her that the storage units popping up were great places for contraband. She’d read about the robbery in the paper, remembered it, and told the officer. Anyway, they managed to convince the U-Store-It owner to open the bigger units.”

“Thought they had a double lock. The storage key plus the unit owner’s key.”

“Harry, they do, but we all know those units aren’t that hard to break in to. The storage owner checked his books first, discounting anyone he personally knew, then cut the locks off the others. Presto! Bingo!”

“Isn’t that something? So whose name was on the unit?”

“That’s just it. False name. Paid cash. We can hope they come back at some point to remove the tires, when the contraband is not so hot, but that presupposes no one will talk. A big hope.”

“True.”

Susan said into the receiver, “When do you get your tires back?”

“Don’t know, but they’re in Albemarle County now, wherever Rick puts stolen goods. Bet he had to rent a big unit. I can’t imagine the sheriff’s department routinely has enough space for stolen goods as large as mine. But isn’t that something? One alert citizen. I’m going out there and giving that girl a new set of tires.”

“What a nice thing to do.” Harry was always impressed by Franny, who unfailingly did the right thing.

“Anyway, couldn’t help myself. Had to call my group support buddy.”

“We’ll celebrate after this week’s meeting.” Harry took another sip of Susan’s cold tea. “Franny, do you know where totaled cars go?”

“To auto heaven, where else?”

“Smarty. I assume that when a vehicle is written off as totaled by the insurance company, it’s towed to a salvage yard and the insurance company owns it.”

“Makes sense, but insurance isn’t my field. I just know I pay too damned much for all my policies.”

“It’s cheaper to die. Then again, maybe it isn’t. Isn’t the average cost of a funeral seven thousand dollars?”

“Now, why do you know that? Harry, you’re ghoulish. I don’t want to know the cost of the average wedding.”

“Twenty thousand,” Susan called into the phone.

“That can’t be right.” Franny was horrified.

“I think it is,” Susan replied. “ ’Course, in Albemarle, it’s probably more.”

“Is your daughter in love?” Franny asked.

Susan’s daughter, Brooks, was still in college.

“No, but Ned and I are planning ahead. We don’t want to be bankrupted when the time comes. Thank God our other child is a son.”

“More power to you.” Franny meant it. “I missed the reproduction boat.”

“There’s still time,” Susan teased her.

“I sincerely hope not.” Franny giggled, still buoyant over her good news.

“She’s right, Franny. A woman in England gave birth in her sixties,” Harry told her.

“You know,” Franny became thoughtful, “it’s wonderful. If a woman wants to do it, good for her. Used to be we only had but so much time, whereas men could go on and on. I wasn’t ready at twenty. I’d be a disaster now. Oops, someone at my door. Harry, I’ll see you at group.”

“Great news, girl.” Harry hung up.

“She’ll need to be peeled off the ceiling.” Susan reached into the fridge to refill her glass.

Three ice cubes clinked into a glass, tea over that, and Susan handed Harry her own glass.

“Susan, do me a favor. Call Vivien Bly and ask her where Safe and Sound takes totaled cars.”

Sitting down at the kitchen table, Pewter now in front of her at eye level, Susan bargained. “Tell me why I’m doing this.”

“Are you going to eat anything?” Pewter put on her sweetest puss face.

“Pewter, get off the table,” Harry ordered.

“She’s not going to listen to you.” Susan stared straight into Pewter’s gorgeous eyes.

“You really like me, don’t you? I like you, too. How about some tuna? I like turkey, too.”

“Fatty, fatty, two by four,” Tucker sang under the table. The gray cat pointedly ignored the corgi.

“Harry,” Susan demanded.

“All right.” Harry sat opposite Susan, whose pageboy haircut looked so good on her. “I expect everything is taken out or off squashed vehicles and sold. The hulk is then sold for scrap. Logical?”

“Well, if they do it to human bodies, I’m sure they do it to cars,” Susan agreed.

“I have a hunch. That’s why I want to find Tara Meola’s car. I looked at Herb’s radiator and I, um, have a hunch.”

“Tell me.”

“Not until I’m more sure. I don’t want to look stupid and I don’t want to point the finger.”

“I understand not pointing the finger, but looking stupid? You might want to revise that.”

“I love you, too.”

Smirking, Susan whipped out her cellphone, dialed. “Vivien, Susan here.”

“Still on for Friday?”

“I am. I sure hope the heat has cooled down by the time we go out.”

“Should. Well, that’s what coolers on your golf cart are for. I can taste one of my frozen daiquiris now.”

“I’ll sure want one when we’re done. Vivien, I was wondering if you could help me,” Susan asked.

“I can try,” she replied, a hint of eagerness in her voice.

“You and Latigo are still building Safe and Sound. You know auto insurance.”

“It interests me. It’s what brought Latigo and me together. His first wife, although she really did help start the business, wanted to spend his money. I want to make it,” she forthrightly said.

“As you know, Harry and I serve on the vestry board at St. Luke’s. Your husband kindly wrote the reverend’s 1994 Chevy off. What happens to that truck? I assume it’s stripped for anything of value.”

“Yes, it is. Sometimes we tow the vehicle to a salvage yard. If the motor and other parts are quite serviceable, we tow it to ReNu, where those parts are removed, sometimes refabricated, if you will, or simply put on the shelf until they can be used again.”

“So they’re rebuilt?”

“Sometimes they don’t even need that. They’re serviceable with a little fixing up. But what’s left if they’re not serviceable is always sold for salvage. As you know, those prices go up and down like waves in the ocean. Anything having to do with cars, steel, rubber, oil—the prices are volatile. Last year, metal salvage went through the roof. Our profit from that salvage shot up seventeen percent.”

“I’d throw a party.”

Vivien replied, “I bought a new set of clubs.”

“What salvage yard do you use?”

“Haldane’s Salvage in Stuarts Draft. There used to be yards on Avon and Avon Extended.” She cited a street in Charlottesville. “The congestion, traffic especially, made us switch to Stuarts Draft. Easier to get the vehicles in.”

Stuarts Draft is a small town between Charlottesville and Staunton.

“You’ve satisfied our curiosity. See you Friday.”

Harry walked over to the wall phone, pulled a phone book for Augusta County out of the drawer, located the salvage yard in the yellow pages, and dialed.

After ascertaining that Safe & Sound had dropped off fifteen vehicles at Haldane’s Salvage in the last two months, Harry asked, “Do you know who used to own those wrecks?”

“Most times we do,” said Mildred Haldane. “We have paperwork on everything—what’s been removed, what’s left,” the older woman replied with pride. “We’re environmentally concerned. No battery-acid leaks around here.”

“That’s a big job.”

“It is, but we’re the best.”

“Would you mind checking your records to see if you have a busted-up Explorer once owned by Tara Meola?”

“Pulling it up right now.” Silence followed. “Still here. Hasn’t been crushed yet. Now, that’s a process if you’ve never seen it. A big car reduced to a metal cube—a big cube, but it’s amazing.”

“Ma’am, that car was stripped down, right?”

“Oh, yes. Had two wheels left. Even the steering wheel was removed.”

“Why were two wheels left?”

“The other two cracked. These days, wheels are one unit. In the old days, they were steel. Now it’s all aluminum, one unit. They’re lighter, so it saves gas. That’s why it costs about four hundred dollars to replace them. Tires, easy. Wheels aren’t anymore.”

“Cracked?”

Happy to be knowledgeable, Mildred chirped, “See it all the time. Cheap stuff. You’d be surprised at what I see down here. Sometimes they’ve been welded, which changes the molecular structure. Makes it brittle. See copycats of the original wheels—you know, cheap replacements. People can’t tell the difference.”

“The two cracked wheels—could they have been replaced?”

“Cheap, cheap, cheap. Looks just like they came from Ford, though. The destroyed wheels were replacements from an earlier accident. I’d bet on it. Whoever originally owned this Explorer probably did that,” Mildred clucked.

“Ma’am, thank you. You’ve been very helpful.” Harry hung up the phone, stood leaning against the counter. “Susan, I’m getting the picture.”

Vivien was also getting the picture. Susan’s highly unusual questions alerted Vivien to something brewing. Miserable as Latigo’s philandering made Vivien, she loved him. She’d protect and stand by him.

He didn’t deserve it.