“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.
Mrs. Murphy slept behind Harry’s computer. Pewter sacked out on the tack trunk, while Tucker lay flat in the center aisle of the barn for the cooling breeze. Crickets chirped, and the peepers in the pond sang loudly, melodious songs punctuated by deep bullfrog calls. Flatface lifted off her nest, venturing out for one of her evening food runs.
Thin tendrils of charcoal clouds floated above the Blue Ridge, now looming and dark. All those thousands and thousands of miles away, white-hot stars sent down their light to shine over those once-mighty mountains. Flatface, flying low, never gave the history of the Blue Ridge Mountains a thought. This geographic phenomenon was all the huge owl knew. Most humans didn’t give the mountains a thought, either, but those who did knew that, before our species walked on earth, the Blue Ridge soared higher than the Alps and the Rockies. The Atlantic Ocean rolled much closer to them than today.
Harry sat glued to her computer. No T1 lines served her rural community, or most rural communities, for that matter. She had to use an ntelos Air Card, which, though better than nothing, could be slower than she wanted.
“Dammit, hurry up.”
Mrs. Murphy opened one golden eye. “Mama, you need to go to bed.”
Checking the bed-table clock, Fair thought the same thing. He’d fallen asleep reading The Utility of Force, which he’d been intending to read for years. A good read, but he was so tired he conked out, the book falling on his muscled chest.
Setting it aside, he rose and slipped his robe on. Harry wasn’t in the kitchen or the living room, where she’d sometimes fall asleep reading, especially in winter in front of a roaring fire. Walking to the screened-in porch, he spied a light spilling out onto the pasture. She was in the tack room.
Stepping out, he observed the ever-changing sky, the silver stars punctuating the late-June night. Somehow, those June and July nights never seemed as pitch black as a January night.
“Honey.”
Startled, she looked up. “You scared me.”
“It’s one in the morning. Come to bed,” Fair said.
“I lost track of time.”
He grinned devilishly. “Are you out here watching porn?”
“No. I leave that to our congressmen.” She laughed. “Come inside and pull up a chair for a minute.”
“I’m trying to sleep.” Pewter lifted her head.
“I got to thinking about Tara Meola’s Explorer and Herb’s truck being classified as totaled. Made no sense to me, since I knew the Chevy was still pretty good and, after talking to Coop, the Explorer had sustained damage but she thought a repair might be possible.”
“Uh-huh.” He had no idea where she was heading.
“I also knew that both vehicles had been repaired at ReNu for very minor infractions a few years before those later accidents.”
“Define ‘minor infraction.’ ” He pulled his robe tighter, for the night air had a little chill.
“Six months before she was killed, Tara Meola rolled over a concrete divider in a parking lot, screwing up a wheel. When Coop investigated the fatal crash, she also investigated Tara’s driving history, asking Safe and Sound to pull up her VIN number. Insurance companies can run a VIN number through for prior claim information. A dealer can’t. A dealer can run the title, get some idea of vehicle history. That’s it.”
Fair said, “So no one knows the true history of the car.”
“Kinda. I can’t figure it all out. What I do know is there are no rules or legislation concerning aftermarket prices and therefore no reliability statistics or safety information. Also, no one admits using aftermarket parts for repairs.”
“Yes.” He was still wondering when she was coming to bed.
“The other thing is if a car is totaled and the insurance company writes it off as totaled, there is no investigation. You don’t know what went wrong with the car.”
“Presumably there was a collision of some sort.”
She turned to him. “What if the collision was caused by a cheap remanufactured part? What if, say, you are hit like Tara by a deer and the part cracks, gives way, you name it? Also, that Explorer had a repair from a prior owner’s small accident—at least according to Mildred at the salvage yard. I’m onto something, but I don’t know exactly what yet. I think Safe and Sound is part of it. Why three men are dead from ReNu has got to be connected to the insurance company.”
“There’s no reason that Latigo Bly would murder or have murdered three mechanics.”
“We don’t know that. Seems to me that old profit motive has reared its head up again.”
“How’d you find this aftermarket stuff?”
“Searched all over the Internet, using ‘cars,’ ‘collisions,’ ‘auto.’ Finally found the website for the Automotive Education & Policy Institute.” She had found incredibly useful information at www.autoepi.org.
“That’s what you’ve been reading all this time?”
“There’s a lot of fascinating stuff here, and I’m working hard to absorb it all. Kinda overwhelming, really, but what I get loud and clear is this: If someone smashes into our Ford dually, we’ll be directed by our insurance company to go where repairs are cheapest. The company may not pay the full repair at a shop not on their preferred list. And those ‘preferred’ shops are where they use copycat parts. But we’ll never know it. Wouldn’t you rather have the truck repaired with a genuine Ford part, even if it costs more?”
“Yes, but we aren’t paying. Well, I suppose we do pay with our premiums.”
“Right, and so does every other American paying those premiums. The insurance company wants to retain as much of that premium as possible, so they go with cheap repairs.”