I forked up another bite of cake. “But what he didn’t figure on was that his car had been built into a hot rod.”
“So?” the Dewlap grunted.
“So what Kane didn’t understand and what you don’t either, Dooley, is that a hot rod isn’t just one car, it’s a whole lot of cars. It’s a big pile of different parts that have been pieced together to make an all-new and unique set of wheels. And as you swap the new parts in, you trade off or junk the old ones.
“After Lee got done gowing his A up, pretty much the only part of the original vehicle that was left was the body, and that wasn’t where Kane stashed the loot. When Kane discovered that the really important part was missing, he had to come back here to find out what Lee had done with it.”
“Okay! Fine! Fantastic!” Dooley roared. “Where’s the money now!”
My grin widened. “I have it.”
“Whaaaaaaat?!”
“I’ve had it all along. I just didn’t know it. When Lee and I were building our beasts, Lee decided he wanted to build an A-V8, a Model A with a V-8 engine. The easiest way to work that particular conversion is to swap in the frame from a later-model 1932 Ford. The Deuce was set up to accept a bent eight.
“But I was gonna run a Model B engine in my rod, a straight-four, so I could still use the original Model A frame. The one from Lee’s car was in good shape, so I traded him a front axle and a spring pack for it. Lee’s old frame is out there under the A-Bomb right now.
“Now, when I was working on that frame I noticed there was something kind of funny about it. It had already been partially boxed in.”
“Boxed in?” Dooley questioned.
“Yeah, it’s something you do when you build a serious racing rod. You weld side plates onto all of the frame member’s girders to make the car stronger and stiffer and improve the handling. You just don’t see a boxing job done on a stock car. But a partial box job had been done on the frame of Albert Kane’s Model A. Beyond it saving me some work, I didn’t think much about it at the time.
“But I got to thinking about it again this evening, so I got under and drilled through those old side plates.”
I dug a greasy envelope out of my jacket pocket and dumped its contents in the middle of the table. “This stuff came out with the drill bit. The fibers are from some kind of asbestos wrapping and the shreds of paper are—”
“Money!” Dooley exclaimed, poking at the little green fragments with a stumpy finger.
“Exactamundo! From a tight, flattened roll of bills. Kane was a machinist and a shop man and he was the aces with an acetylene torch, either cutting or welding. He welded the stolen money into the frame of his car, behind those side plates, figuring it would be the last place anyone would ever think to look. And it was.”
“I’m impounding that car until we can get that money!” the Dewlap roared.
“Ah, put it in the fridge, Dooley!” I snorted back. “I’m not going anywhere. Tomorrow morning I’ll take the Bomb over to Payne’s Shell station and pop those side plates off. You and a rep from the wire mill can stand around and count as I dig the dough out for you.”
“I guess that’ll be all right,” Dooley grumbled. “I suppose if you intended to keep it for yourself, you wouldn’t have told anyone about it.”
“Hey, Dooley, what can I say? I considered it. Who wouldn’t? But it would have meant leaving Lee’s neck on the chopping block. Besides, it would have killed all the kicks around here.”
“Kicks? Whaddaya mean?” Dooley asked suspiciously.
“I mean, with that twenty grand I could build me the hottest soup job the state of Indiana has ever seen! Dirt-track competition would be a walkover, nobody would ever want to drag race with me anymore, and you, the sheriff, and the Indiana State Police combined wouldn’t have a chance of catching me out on the roads.”
I shook my head. “Where’s the sport, man? Where’s the sport?”
The Jury Box
by Jon L. Breen
Copyright © 2006 Jon L. Breen
How broadly can the crime-mystery-suspense genre be defined? Consider two new novels, one written for an audience of adults, the other for teenagers, but both able to cross those boundaries and find receptive readers. Whether they are truly crime novels is arguable, but they are certainly structured as mysteries. Both have apparent supernatural overtones, the extent uncertain to the end, and include some unconventional detection. Pigeonholes aside, both are highly recommended.
**** Sally Beauman: The Sisters Mortland, Warner, $24.95. In a complexly constructed, beautifully written novel that is just as unconventional a family saga as it is a mystery, multiple narrators cover three decades in the life of the titular sisters, whose summer of 1967 ended in gradually revealed tragedy at the family home, a medieval Suffolk abbey. The book is longer than it needs to be — few 432-page novels aren’t — but the characters and their relationships are enthralling, believable, and constantly surprising. Most of the questions posed are answered, but the reader is left wondering about the motivation for the central act and how much of the supernatural element is real and how much purely psychological.
**** Brent Hartinger: Grand & Humble, HarperTempest, $15.99. Two high school students — one a popular athlete and Senator’s son, the other a geeky outsider — are troubled, by premonitions and nightmares respectively. In alternate chapters, they are brought to an astonishing surprise ending, unlikely to be anticipated but fairly clued for the reader detective. The immensely talented author is a master of structure, but even without the stunt conclusion, the well-realized characters would grip readers of all ages.
**** Max Allan Collins: Road to Paradise, Morrow, $24.95. It is now 1973, and Michael Satariano (Michael O’Sullivan) has the relatively legit job of managing a Lake Tahoe gambling resort when holdovers from his criminal past necessitate his killing once again. This remarkable piece of sustained storytelling is the best of the trilogy that began with the graphic novel (later great film) Road to Perdition. (Collins is so generally good on period detail, it’s a shame one of his characters misuses the phrase “begs the question” in the currently trendy and abominable fashion.)
**** Lisa Scottoline: Dirty Blonde, HarperCollins, $25.95. Federal Judge Cate Fante’s compulsion to pick up men in sleazy bars threatens her career when murder and blackmail follow her reluctant decision in a case charging theft of a TV series concept. Of the many legal thriller writers in current practice, Scottoline ranks in the top handful by virtue of her people, plot, humor, and vivid Philadelphia background. This is among her best.
*** William Bernhardt: Capitol Murder, Ballantine, $25.95. In a Washington, D.C., federal court, Ben Kincaid defends Senator Todd Glancy, Democrat of Oklahoma, on charges of murdering intern Veronica Cooper, with whom he had a video-documented sexual relationship. Bernhardt’s trial action is so excellent, some buffs may resent leaving it so often for the investigation of a vampire cult. The main clue is admirably fair, but experienced readers will already have guessed the killer, unless they think the least-suspected-person gimmick is too ancient for contemporary recycling.
*** Kerry Greenwood: Cocaine Blues, Poisoned Pen, $23.95. The first novel about roaring-’twenties amateur detective Phryne Fisher, published in Australia in 1989, concerns Melbourne’s drug and abortion industries. The tricky plot, lively writing, likable flapper sleuth, and superb sense of period will delight readers who have already read (or will be motivated to seek) later books in the series already issued by Poisoned Pen.