The Art Whisperer (An Alix London Mystery) (22 page)

T
hey sat for another minute without moving, and then Alix switched on the ignition long enough to open the windows. Neither of them was quite ready to be up and about yet, but they needed the fresh air.

“Alix,” Ted said, “what the hell just happened?”

“We lost our brakes.”

“Yes, but I mean
why
did we lose them?”

“How would I know? I’m no expert, Ted.”

“You know a lot more about cars than I do. That makes you the consultive expert of the moment. Why do brakes fail?”

“Oh, a whole lot of things. I don’t know . . . Low hydraulic fluid levels, overheated brake pads, or worn calipers, or the rotors could fail, or
any
of the parts could fail.”

“Any ideas on which it was?”

“None of the above,” she said. “Not all of a sudden, like that. There would have been signs ahead of time—squeaks, spongy stops, something. And there weren’t any; I would have noticed. Besides, I got this car from Marathon; they’re a big agency, they would have checked it before they let it out. And I doubt if I’ve driven twenty miles since then. So then . . .” A shrug.

“That’s what I thought,” he said solemnly. Clearly, his mind was working toward the same conclusion hers was. They each knew what the other was thinking, but neither wanted to say it. It was Ted who took the leap. “So then . . . what? Did someone cut the brake line or something?”

“Like in those old movies?”

“Frankly, I’ve only seen it in old movies myself, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen outside of them.”

“Actually, it does.”

“It does happen?”

“No, it does mean it
doesn’t
happen.”

This was too much for Ted to handle in his present woolly state. “It does mean it doesn’t . . .”

“Happen outside of them. Old movies.”

They were both more or less aware that the conversation they were having was not only faintly ridiculous but a little surreal. They’d just been through as hair-raising and dangerous an experience as one could expect to live through and emerge with all bones intact, and yet their conversation was calm and quiet, without expression, and they sat not looking at each other but still staring blindly through the windshield. They probably weren’t technically in a state of shock, but they were pretty numb.

“And the reason it happens only in old movies,” she said, “is because, back in the forties and fifties, there was a single brake line that came out of the master cylinder, which then split into four different lines, one to each wheel. So all you had to do was cut that single line, and the brakes on all four wheels failed.”

“And now?”

“Now there are either four separate lines that come out of the master cylinder, or two lines that then split into two each—I think that’s what these Subarus have. So cutting a single line would still leave the brake pads operating on at least two wheels—and we had
nothing
, believe me.”

“Are the brake lines easy to find? Would you have to take the engine apart to get at them?”

“What? No, you could just pop the hood or else get underneath without doing even that. Why?”

“Well, what would stop somebody from cutting
all
the lines? Might have taken a lot of work in the old days, but a cordless hacksaw or shears would make pretty quick work of today.”

“I suppose that’s true,” she said thoughtfully. “Still, I’d say it’s impossible in this case.”

“So then, what did happen?”

She shrugged.

They sat for another few moments, continuing to surface from their dazes. “I have a brilliant idea,” Ted announced.

“Mm?”

“Let’s get out of the car and look under the hood and
see
if they’ve been cut or not.”

“Would you even recognize what a brake line looks like?”

“No, but I bet you would.”

They both laughed, and that seemed to ease them out of their zombie-like states. Alix pulled the inside hood release and they climbed out of the car, each with a few grunts acknowledging bruises they hadn’t been aware of. The car was even worse off than they’d realized, with a twisted frame, a broken front axle, four flats, and pieces that led all the way back to the road, like the bread crumb trail in
Hansel and Gretel
, only this one was made of broken lights, bumper parts, hubcaps, and assorted pieces of undercarriage.

The hood had buckled, but the outside catch still worked. Once Ted wrestled the hood open and got it propped, Alix leaned over and looked into the engine compartment. Ted leaned over and looked at Alix.

“They
are
cut,” she murmured incredulously. “Both of them. Somebody actually cut them. I can’t . . . I don’t . . .” She shook her head.

“Show me,” he said.

She indicated two pre-bent metal tubes, each about the thickness of a pencil, that emerged from a steel cylinder—the master cylinder—and disappeared into the recesses of the interior in different directions. Both of them had inch-wide gaps in them a foot or so after they came from the cylinder, where they would have been easy to reach, either from above or below.

Alix was scowling down at them. “I see it, but I don’t believe it. I’m telling you, this couldn’t have caused it.”

“Alix, I don’t understand.” Ted was showing a glimmer of impatience. “These tubes, they transmit the brake fluid, the hydraulic fluid, to the, what are they, the brake pads—”

“To the calipers, actually, which transmit the force to the pads, which press on the drums or the discs, which—”

“All right, all right. The end product is, it’s the pressure from the fluid that stops the wheels from turning, right? So if the lines are cut, the hydraulic fluid doesn’t get through and the wheels keep going round and round and the car doesn’t slow down. That would be the
point
of cutting them, wouldn’t it? And that’s what happened to us. So what am I missing here?”

“Well, think about it. When would the lines have been cut?”

“I don’t know. What’s that got to do with it?”

“Whenever it was, obviously it had to be before we started out from the museum, correct?”

“Obviously. Probably during the night. Where do you park it?”

“On the lot at the hotel, and there’s no lighting, so it wouldn’t have been that hard to get at without being seen, so let’s assume that’s when it was done. And it had to be last night, not before. I only got this car yesterday.”

“Okay. Last night. So?”

“So how did I get to the museum this morning? How did I stop when I got there?”

“All right, maybe somehow it was done after you were parked at the museum. I know that’s more unlikely, but—”

“So then how did we get all the way out here before the brakes finally failed? I stopped at the Villa to change, I slowed to turn onto Palm Canyon, I stopped for the light at Amado, stopped for the light at San Rafael just before we turned onto this road, slowed down probably two dozen times on the way. Did I do all that without any brake fluid? No way.”

“Ah.” Ted leaned back against the side of the car, nodding. “I see what you’re saying,” he said slowly. “Damn. Well, we’ll—”

He broke off for the third or fourth time to give a smile and an A-OK sign to a passing driver who had slowed to offer assistance. Funny, Alix thought, the van, the vehicle that had been directly involved, had gone on its way without a backward glance, as far as it was possible to tell, but now, almost everybody driving by was showing concern.

“I better make a couple of calls,” Ted said, taking out his cell phone. “Marathon, you said the agency was? They’ll want to send out a tow.”

While he did that Alix scowled hard at the cut lines—and there was no question about their having been purposely, maliciously severed. Brake lines were made of heavy-gauge stainless steel; they simply did not burst or tear on their own. That got her thinking . . .

“Okay, they’re on their way,” Ted said. “And let me call Jake too. He’ll probably want to come out himself if he’s available.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. This would be a new case. The All-Knowing Skull may have other ideas on who to send.”

He looked at her, one eyebrow raised. “I have no idea what that means, but I want Jake, and I’m betting I can get him out here.”

“You know, I feel like I’m personally keeping the Palm Springs Police Department in business,” Alix said. “I wonder what they used to do before I showed up.”

Ted smiled at her. “Things do seem to have a way of, er, becoming interesting when you’re around, don’t they?”

“It’s a knack I’d be glad to give away if I could. Listen, let’s go back to where the car was when the brakes failed. There’s something I want to look for.”

They walked back to the approximate spot and Ted made his call to Jake while Alix systematically scoured first the road itself (nothing) and then the swaths of desert on either side of it. There were more waves and smiles to motorists on their way to and from the tram.

“Oho!” she cried, just as Ted finished his call. She bent to snatch what looked like a three- or four-inch length of narrow green hose or tubing from the ground a few feet from the edge of the road.

“Jake’s on his way,” Ted said. “Oho, what? What is that thing?”

“Come, I’ll show you.” She tightened her fist around it. “I knew it!”

He had to trot to keep up with her as she ran excitedly back to the car, and when they reached it, its hood still propped up, she held up the flexible green tubing like a magician showing off a trick, said “Watch this!” and fitted it onto one of the cut ends of the nearer brake line, then bent the tubing into a U-shape and fit its free end onto the other segment of the brake line, thereby closing up the gap.

“I think I’m sort of seeing where you’re going with this . . .” Ted said, “but I’m still a little . . .”

“Well, I couldn’t figure out why there was a
gap
in the lines. That takes two cuts instead of one, and one cut would have done the job. And then it occurred to me . . .”

The hydraulic fluid in the lines is put under tremendous pressure when the brake pedal is depressed, she explained. A stainless steel brake line can take that pressure without bursting—or swelling, which would also lower the pressure in the line. Rubber tubing can take some pressure too, but only up to a point. Whoever did this was counting on the rubber segments standing up to relatively soft stops, but bursting or popping loose at the first really hard stop—when the car was moving fast and had to stop quickly; when it was a matter of life and death, in other words. And that was exactly what happened.

“So,” Ted said, “he was just hoping you’d eventually run into a serious situation, a critical situation, when you really needed the brakes . . . and they wouldn’t be there. The fact that it happened now, right here, was just coincidence?”

“Unless you think that guy that ran us off the road was in on it, yes, but I can’t imagine that.”

More waves and we’re-okay-thanks smiles to a couple of drivers.

“Ted, this thing is all very clever, but it’s not exactly a surefire way to get rid of someone, you know. After all, we’re still here.”

“Yeah, thanks to some fancy driving on your part. But what you said about its being pretty iffy is true. I’m assuming this was a kind of first try. If it didn’t work, or didn’t happen at all, he’d try something a little more certain. Which means he couldn’t be in that much of a hurry to . . . to deal with you; that he’s got time enough to make another try.”

“To kill me, you mean—we may as well say it, don’t you think? It would also mean that I can expect another try at it. That should make the next few days even more exciting.”

Ted let out a pent-up breath. “Whew. This is all really hard to believe.”

“What? That someone’s trying to kill me? If you ask me, it’s getting to be pretty old hat. Seems to happen just about every other day.”

“No, not that someone’s trying to kill you—that
two
people have been trying to kill you.”

“Two people? How do you figure—” She slapped her forehead. “Oh, my God, I must still be in shock or something. Of course it’s two people. If Clark was the first one—”

“He
was
the first one,” Ted reminded her.

“But he sure can’t be number two, can he?”

“Not very likely, I’d say.
Hi there, we’re fine, thanks for checking
. So then, who? Do you have any idea at all?”

“No, there
isn’t
anybody. Clark was the only one with a stake in the Pollock.”

“Then maybe it’s not about the Pollock, maybe it was never about the Pollock, maybe it’s about something else.”

“Ted, honestly, there
isn’t
anything else. I’ve just been doing my work, keeping to myself. I mean, maybe I’ve ticked off somebody without meaning to—”

“Naw,” Ted said. “You? Surely you jest.”

Alix gave him a sour smile. “—but there certainly hasn’t been anything to get myself killed over.”

“Alix, maybe it’s got nothing to do with the museum at all. Maybe . . .” Ted was looking down the road over her shoulder at a dark blue, unmarked sedan approaching from the city. “Here comes the man you need to be talking to about this, and there’s the tow truck right behind him.”