A Murderous Yarn (19 page)

The mayor, red-faced and sweating—his suit was made of heavy wool, and it wasn’t
that
cool—made a brief speech honoring the people who found and restored these venerable ancestors of road travel. He said he’d be on hand again in New Brighton to greet in person every driver who completed the journey. He held up a dull gold medallion the size of his palm and said this was what the run was about, this was the prize to be given to every car that finished the run. “Good luck and God speed!” he concluded.

He stepped back and a man with a big green flag came out from behind the guard shelter. The two American Legion veterans crossed to Betsy’s side of the starting line, and Betsy checked the time on the big old pocket watch Adam Smith had fastened to the top of her clipboard. She looked at the 1902 Oldsmobile standing in quivering eagerness behind the line painted on the blacktop. The man twirled his flag, and on dropping it, the Legionnaires fired their rifles. The Oldsmobile tottered across the line and rolled past the crowd cheering him on. Betsy put a checkmark next to the Oldsmobile’s banner number and wrote the time down: 7:12
A
.
M
.

By 8:30, most of the veterans had departed, and so had perhaps half the crowd. Some were headed for Buffalo to watch the cars arrive for lunch, while others had seen what they came to see and were headed somewhere else. Betsy could see Charlotte and Marvin now, making their way closer to the starting line, looking for
Sergeant Steffans—who was closing in from behind. They did, however, see the deputy sheriff off to their right, moving toward them. Assuming he was heading off Adam Smith, they altered course, toward the starting line.

There was a roar of big engines as the follow-up trucks started up, preparing to follow the line of antique cars.

Betsy looked down the short line of cars still waiting to begin their run. Lars was at the very end, behind Adam in his Renault.

Charlotte and Marvin came close to the guard shelter to watch two deputies and Jill approach as a 1908 Buick in a bright shade of orange came up to the starting line. A fast
pipe-pipe-pipe
started coming from the car, but it slowed in tempo as the driver came to a stop, waiting for the green flag. The piping was obviously connected to the motor somehow, and by the grin of the driver, something intentional. The flag dropped and the car scuttled past the spectators, who made up in noise what they lacked in numbers. The piping, which had increased to a warble as he raced his engine, cut off as he turned out of the parking lot onto the street.

Next was the 1912 Winton, a woman behind the wheel wearing a pinch-brim cap turned rakishly backward and her male passenger, in shirtsleeves, waving grandly; then the 1911 Marmon, whose driver sounded its
ooooooo-gah!
over and over as he raced out of the lot. Betsy noted the time of each, then turned to watch Adam pull up in his huge and beautiful Renault touring sports car.
He should have someone wearing Erte clothing in the backseat, perhaps with an Afghan hound,
thought Betsy, smiling at him. While she would never
give up the right to wear trousers, a car like Adam’s called for old-fashioned elegance.

The deputy stepped out into the starting lane behind the Renault.

Adam waved to the flagman, who raised his flag. The flag fell and the Renault pulled away and was gone, to the astonishment of Charlotte and Marvin.

Steffans, now immediately behind them, said something, and it was Charlotte who realized first what was about to happen—and she helped Marvin get away. She raised a bloodcurdling scream and flew into Steffans, knocking him down. She fell on him, clawing and scratching and still screaming. People behind them hastily backed away.

Marvin hot-footed it across the starting line, brushing past Betsy—who was stupidly frozen to the spot—to the huge four-wheel-drive SUV, where he did a very credible stiff-arm block on the heavyset man who tried to get in his way.

The heavyset man fell, Marvin jumped in the vehicle, and the man did a spectacular leap from the ground, much like a freshly landed fish, landing out of the way as the SUV bolted forward.

Betsy found her voice and yelled, “Stop him!” as Marvin roared out of the lot.

One of the deputies trying to untangle Steffans and Charlotte looked up and raced off, bound for his patrol car at the far end of the lot.

Jill stepped in to grab Charlotte by the hair with one hand and her arm with another. “That’s enough!” she said.

Betsy ran to the Stanley, wrenched open the door,
and said, “Let’s go!” (Though she later remembered it as, “Follow that car!”)

Lars shoved the throttle all the way open, the steamer’s tires screamed, and Betsy was flung back into her seat. By the time she got herself untangled, the Stanley was flying up the street, actually gaining on the SUV. Lars grabbed a brass-headed knob and the Stanley’s whistle gave a long blast, causing innocent cars to swerve out of their way.

Marvin slewed crazily making the turn onto the highway, but the SUV was surefooted enough to cling to the road. Marvin got back into the right lane and floored it, and the big gas engine responded with a will.

So he must have been horrified a few seconds later to look in his rearview mirror and see an antique car still gaining on him.

Betsy, hanging on to the gas lever, was yelling encouragement at Lars, who had a fierce grin on his face.

But as they closed the gap, Betsy began to worry. How would they make Marvin stop? Was Lars going to try to pass him and cut him off? What if Marvin just crashed into them? Suddenly the Stanley’s rooflessness, its lack of seat belts, made it a very dangerous place to be.

The SUV’s brake lights came on, and the gap closed swiftly.

“He’s giving up!” said Betsy, vastly relieved. Lars shut down his throttle, and Betsy remembered how weak the primitive brakes were. They were going to overshoot. Lars would have to stop down the road and turn around. No cars oncoming, good. She looked behind. No flashing lights and sirens, just a single private car, well back.

But Marvin wasn’t finished yet. There was a grassy lane across the broad ditch that ran alongside the highway, an access lane for a farmer to get into his field. The SUV swerved onto it and crashed through the pipe-and-wire gate into the pasture. Grazing cows, startled, began to move.

Lars braked, but the Stanley was already past the lane.

“Hang on!” yelled Lars and the Stanley bounced off the highway,
down
into the wide ditch, and t-W-i-S-t-e-D its way up out of the ditch. Chuffing under the load, it nevertheless went through the barbed wire fence as if it wasn’t there.

The SUV was ahead of them, climbing a steepish slope, bouncing and skidding, flinging sod, mud and worse in all directions. Cows, only as alarmed as calm and stupid animals can get, scattered slowly.

The Stanley might have been on a country road, climbing the hill smoothly and effortlessly.

On the other side of the slope were the remains of a woodlot: stumps and fallen logs, heaps of brush, mud-holes. The SUV swerved and slid between the obstacles, bottoming here and there. A hubcap flew off. Marvin tried to dodge back toward the highway and snagged his exhaust on a stump. It tore loose and suddenly his engine was very loud.

The Stanley went over everything. This was common terrain when it was on the design board, and its big wheels kept the underside clear of obstructions. Lars, after years of hard driving, with special law-enforcement training and the amazing Stanley to ride, kept thwarting Marvin and his SUV’s every attempt to regain the highway.

Betsy, hanging on like grim death, watched the SUV finally dodge wildly around the last heap of brush, then crush another barbed wire fence. They were still on downhill terrain, and the SUV gained speed as it roared into a field that some hopeful farmer had plowed, harrowed, and planted with corn that had sprouted into neat rows of green about eight inches high. “Got ’im now!” Lars crowed, though Betsy couldn’t see how.

The SUV destroyed the sprouting plants in their hundreds as it veered down the gray-black field. It started up another slope, this one steeper than the last, slowing as it went, fishtailing madly, earth and small green plants flying in all directions. The big whip aerial on the back was flailing as if wielded by a mad driver and the horses under the hood were real and needed beating to greater effort.

Lars was by now close enough that some clods struck his windshield. By the time they reached the top, the SUV, despite its roaring engine and whipping aerial, was barely making any progress at all—and blocking its passage was a white board fence. On the other side, a dozen flesh and blood horses stood, heads raised in amazement.

The SUV lacked momentum to break this fence down. By twisting the wheel hard, Marvin managed to turn and start along it, Lars close behind.

“He’s going to get away, isn’t he?” said Betsy, as the SUV started again to build speed.

“Nah, there’s another fence up ahead. I’ll corner him there.”

And he did. Marvin tried to turn, but Lars was crowding him in his outer rear quarter, and Marvin ended up hard against the fence, too close to open his door. Lars
shut the throttle down and leaped out of his car all in one movement. Before Betsy could even think what to do, Lars was sprawled across the hood of the SUV, pointing a gun at Marvin through the windshield, yelling at him to shut the engine off.

Marvin shut the engine off and raised his hands.

Lars called, “Betsy, blow the whistle until you see some backup coming.”

Betsy pulled the brass-headed knob on the dash, sending the horses in the meadow into wild flight. She blew a long and then a row of shorts, then a long again. She kept doing it.

It seemed like a long time before a farmer drove up on an immense tractor, curious to know what these people were doing in his field. He had a cell phone in a pocket.

“So it was Marvin after all?” said Godwin from a stool in the corner. He was wearing immaculate white shoes, socks, and trousers, and not anxious to get anything greasy on them. His pearl-gray silk shirt was also vulnerable and he hitched the stool just a little bit farther from the wall where, he was sure, spiders lurked. Godwin was not afraid of spiders, but surely their little feet were dirty from crawling up and down that dusty wall. If one got on him, it might leave a
trail
. He had a date with John for dinner, and John had sounded very quiet and gentle when he’d called yesterday. Things were going to be all right, probably, but Godwin always felt more confident when he was dressed especially well.

“No, it was both of them,” said Betsy.

She was sitting on a low rolling chest designed to be sat upon, made of plastic, used by gardeners who didn’t
like stooping or kneeling but who had a long row to plant or weed. She was wearing denim shorts and a sleeveless pink blouse, although she was getting too old to be going sleeveless, except among friends.

But everyone present was a friend. Jill was there, sitting on the workbench, her bruises from the fight with Charlotte making bold purple comments on her smooth complexion.

And Lars, of course, since this was his barn. He was in his grubbiest jeans and T-shirt, under the Stanley, “swaging the boiler”—banging a shaped metal plug up the numberless copper tubes, making them round again. It was a long, long job. He’d divided the tubes into areas, and worked on one area at a time; otherwise, he’d fall into despair at the large number there were to swage.

During the wait for backup to arrive, the boiler had run itself dry. Lars should have told Betsy to shut it down, close off the valves, but he’d been concentrating on keeping Marvin from doing something stupid.

Betsy took most of the blame. She should have thought of it, paid attention to the gauges. But the Stanley had sat there in silence and she had fallen into her internal combustion habit of thinking a silent car was a car shut off, and so the boiler was scorched.

“How do you know it was both of them?” asked Godwin.

“Because that was the only way everything fit. She was the one who pulled the trigger. She shot him early in the morning of the Excelsior run, as they were getting ready to leave the house for St. Paul. Then she called Marvin, and he came over and took Bill’s body over to the lay-by in the trunk of his car. Charlotte followed
with the trailer they hauled the Maxwell in. It was Marvin who drove the Maxwell in the run, not Bill.”

“But surely people talked to Bill,” objected Godwin. “How could they mistake Marvin for him?”

“Actually they didn’t really talk to him. Charlotte stayed with Marvin until he was parked. She talked to Adam and to anyone who came by, until Marvin was well under the hood and able just to grunt at anyone who tried to talk to him.”

“Why would Marvin help her like that?” asked Godwin.

“Because they were lovers, had been for years. Everything was okay until Bill started spending more time at home. Then he got suspicious. Marvin wanted Charlotte to divorce Bill, but Marvin wasn’t a wealthy man. And while Bill wasn’t taking care of his high blood pressure, he may have had his suspicions about Marvin confirmed before he had that fatal stroke everyone was anticipating.”

“Golden handcuffs,” said Godwin sadly.

“Yes, at least in part. But also, tyrants don’t make loving husbands.”

“What do you think, she just decided she’d had enough and shot him?” asked Jill.