Witness Chase (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (9 page)

“So, just the Speedster’s for sale?” he questioned.

“Technically, but hey.”

The way Vine said that, Ganjon could tell he needed cash.

They walked over to the Speedster, one of the world’s all time most beautiful vehicles, best known as the car that killed James Dean. Porsche hadn’t built that many to start with and the ones that were left were definitely classics. You’d see one on the road every now and then but those were kit cars. This particular one was an original, a 356 Super 90, powered by a 90 horsepower flat-four engine and capable of 110 mph.

“Everything’s original,” Vine said. “The paint, the interior, everything.”

“A survivor, huh?”

He felt under the front fender, looking for signs of body damage, found nothing, proceeded to the rear and, under the driver’s side rear panel, felt a jagged edge.

“Do you have a flashlight?”

Vine looked hesitant.

“Yeah, what is it?”

“Have you had some body work done back here?”

“No, of course not.”

Vine left for a minute and returned with a flashlight. Ganjon got down on his back under the car and Vine joined him. “See this rough edge? That’s not supposed to be like that. This back quarter panel’s been replaced at some point.”

“Couldn’t be.”

They got back up.

“You didn’t know about that?” he questioned, with a tone like he’d be really pissed if Vine was being less than honest.

“No, honest to God.”

“Okay,” he said. “In the future, be more careful when you buy these things. Did you ever get a full documentation of the history?”

“Yes, I think so . . .”

Ganjon shook his head.

“That’s the problem, when cars are passed on like this with a blank title. You’re never sure, unless you got someone like me doing the research for you. This one’s been damaged, at least to some degree, at some point.”

The shock on Vine’s his face was tangible.

“Screw me.”

“That obviously affects the value,” he said in his most sober voice. Vine said nothing. “That panel’s aftermarket.”

He continued the inspection.

“Well, you still have the original manufacturer’s plate in the door jam,” he said. “At least that part wasn’t involved in the accident.” Always give them something positive, it increases your credibility. He looked around some more underneath with a flashlight. “The numbers are matching up, that’s good. At least it’s a numbers car.” He found the books and maintenance records in the glove box and thumbed through them.

The paint did look like the original lacquer, but it was faded a little too much and had road rash on the nose. The passenger seat had a water spot in the leather that would never come out. The back taillight had a crack but that could be replaced. The outside mirror was aftermarket.

“As far as everything being original,” he said, “that used to be the way people looked at cars like this. Now, unless it’s an absolute pristine survivor, they want it original, but restored to Concours standards. This particular unit is a long way off the mark. Good paint alone will run thirty grand. The interior needs to be gutted; you’re looking at big bucks there, to get it right. The whole car needs to be torn down to the frame, sanded and painted. We don’t know what condition the engine is in without doing a diagnostic. And we still have the major problem of the accident.”

Vine looked distraught, beautifully, wonderfully distraught. They stood in silence for a couple of seconds, then Vine said, “So what do you propose?”

Ganjon looked as if he was perplexed.

“Honestly, I don’t think my client’s going to be interested in this particular unit, he doesn’t like to mess with fixing them up too much. Let me call him though, you never know.”

“Do you need a phone?”

“No,” he said. “I have a cell, if you could just give me a moment.”

Vine went back in the house, leaving him alone in the garage.

HE DIALED JAY YORTY’S CELL,
his red one, and got connected immediately. Yorty was a 28-year-old Miami brat who spent all his energy on the club scene, being visible, snorting coke and getting laid. His money came from a combination of old family trust funds, plus well-timed real estate investments. For the past few years he’d been busy buying and selling classic cars, having a lot of fun and making some good money at it. Ganjon was his eyes and ears, his personal broker, the man who flew around the country, kept him away from the bad eggs and made the good ones come home. Ganjon had a dozen more clients just like Yorty, which was more than he needed.

“Jay, it’s John.”

Yorty seemed anxious to hear from him.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Working hard on your behalf, as always. Listen up, here’s the deal.” He described the vehicle, walking around it as he talked. Near the end, he added, “She’s a beauty. There was some bodywork done on the rear panel but it was minor and won’t affect the value. The panel itself is still original. The important thing is, it’s a numbers car. The rest is just sweat and money.”

“Damn,” Yorty said with obvious excitement. “So what do you recommend, price-wise?”

He thought about it. “Okay, he bought it twelve years ago.” Then he gave him the price, which he knew would give Yorty a big old boner.

“What, he told you that?”

“No,” he smiled. “He wasn’t smart enough to pull the bill of sale out of the records.”

“Jesus. He stole it.”

“Which is good for us,” he said. “Right now, as it sits, its worth twice what he paid, all day long. But I beat it up pretty bad and he’s real jumpy about the fact it was damaged, which it was, but no big deal. If you could get it for, say, his original investment plus a hundred thousand, you’d be way ahead. You could leave it like it is, or get it up to Concours for another hundred or so. Either way, you’d have some serious equity and a damn fine vehicle.”

“Do you think he’d go that low?”

“He needs the money,” he said. “If you came up with immediate cash, I mean the full purchase price in his hands tomorrow, that might get him to do something stupid. He can justify the price because he’s still making a small fortune on it.”

IT TURNED OUT THAT VINE AGREED
with the proposed purchase price, with a ten grand bump. Forty-five minutes later Ganjon had a duly executed agreement in hand.

Walking back to the Camry under a clear cerulean sky, he felt the warm rush of the closing and smiled. The transaction meant a twenty-five thousand dollar commission for him, and Yorty paid like clockwork. That would bring his total earnings to one-fifty, year-to-date.

Not bad considering it was only April.

Equally important, Yorty would love the car and be slobbering all over himself for another deal.

WHEN HE LEFT VINE’S, HE TOOK BELLEVIEW WEST
to Santa Fe Drive and then headed south, parallel to the Rocky Mountain foothills. He let his thoughts turn to Megan Bennett. The road was now only one lane in each direction and taking him into the country, farther and farther away from Denver. Crowed residential communities gave way to less crowed ones, which gave way to farms and horses.

The sky was bigger now.

Black-and-white Magpies dotted it.

He came to a side road and turned right, towards the mountains, floating up and down through rolling hills with the window open and a perfect April day overhead. Five miles later the asphalt dead-ended at a dirt road. He turned left, even deeper into the country. To his right about a mile off, giant Cottonwoods snaked through the land, sucking up to a small river. Two miles later he came to a private dirt road. Hanging on a split-rail fence was a sign—For Sale—with a phone number that you could barely read anymore.

He stopped, pulled it off, and threw it as far as he could out into the brush, just as a precaution.

LAST WEEK HE CHECKED THE PROPERTY
first, found it to be unoccupied, then called the number on the sign and met an elderly man by the name of Ben Bickerson there a couple of hours later. His daughter, Cheryl Miller, actually owned the house, but she moved to Oregon two years ago, and was currently on vacation in Australia. Bickerson, who lived on the next farm over, was supposed to be selling it for her, but wasn’t trying too hard, just in case daughter-dear decided to come back. Ganjon made him an offer to rent the place for one month for one thousand dollars.

“What for?” Bickerson questioned.

“Have you ever heard the phrase, Publish or Perish?”

Bickerson was an old-time farmer with a scarred nose that suggested he’d had a chunk of sun cancer cut out of it. “Can’t say as I have.”

“It’s used at colleges,” Ganjon explained. “When you’re a professor, you either have to keep publishing articles to show how smart you are, or you go get a job pumping gas somewhere. So what I do every year is find a quiet place to hole up, without any distractions, and stay there until I get my writing done.”

“So, what, you’re a professor then?”

“Guilty, I teach at D.U. Professor Frank Janks.”

“D.U.?”

“University of Denver.”

Bickerson cocked his head. “So you’re a smart fellow.”

“Not really,” Ganjon said as humbly as he could. “All I ask is that I don’t get any distractions while I’m here. If you’re inclined to rent it, I have cash with me . . .”

That was that.

In hindsight, he probably could have gotten it for five hundred, but who cares?

HE TURNED DOWN THE DIRT ROAD,
covered with weeds. It snaked through rabbit brush for more than a half mile and ended at an old farmhouse with a barn next to it. Rusted hulks of automobiles and dead farm machinery cluttered the grounds. He recognized the outline of a 1962 Olds, perched on cinder blocks. He drove past the house, parked by the barn and got out. The sunlight immediately warmed his face and threw a strong shadow under him. It felt so damned good.

He was a million miles from nowhere.

The air was absolutely still without even the faintest hint of a breeze.

He couldn’t remember a quieter place.

The tall bulky doors of the barn were closed. He muscled one open and stepped inside. The odor of rotten hay and wood impregnated the air. It was cemetery quiet and almost impossible to see. A few streaks of sunlight intruded from the roof, illuminating an airborne dust that glimmered against the dark background.

He picked his way into the structure one step at a time.

The black silhouette of a tractor squatted at the far end of the building, and even in the dark, to his untrained eyes, he could tell it was ancient. Empty horse stalls occupied the wall to the right. A makeshift wooden ladder lay on the ground, broken and decayed.

He smiled and found a place to sit down. There was work to do, but it could wait a few moments. He closed his eyes, unzipped his pants and allowed the fantasy of Megan Bennett to float up to the top.

Soon baby.

Very, very soon.

Chapter Nine

Day Three - April 18

Wednesday Night

____________

KELLY LEANED AGAINST THE BRASS RAILING
on her loft terrace, six floors above LoDo, and turned her face into the cool of the night. It felt good. The voice of Billy Holliday came from a CD player in the living room and wandered through the air like smoke, out the open sliding doors and into the night, painful and lamenting, with tales of broken hearts and love gone wrong. Down below at street level people flowed in and out of sports bars and restaurants, laughing, and sometimes talking so clear and loud that she could actually make out strings of words. Usually they made her feel happy, which is one of the reasons she stretched to buy the place. But tonight the motion and activity seemed just that, so much motion and activity.

D’endra Vaughn’s death wouldn’t leave her alone.

She had no watch on her wrist right now but guessed it was almost nine-thirty. She had a deposition scheduled for eight in the morning and ordinarily would be heading to bed. Tomorrow, she’d get a whole day sitting in the same room as opposing counsel Mitch Phillips, a whiny little lawyer-man who liked to paper the file with correspondence so full of lies and half-truths that she seriously wondered about his mental health. She was defending, so it’d be relatively easy, apart from having to breathe the same air as that jerk. She could get to bed as late as eleven, if she wanted, and still be more than rested enough.

What to do?

Lightning crackled in the distance.

Rain was coming.

The air smelled of it.

She wandered back inside. The place made her feel comfortable, it always did, with minimal furniture, all contemporary, expensive and earth toned, accented by splashes of color from an occasional throw pillow, a hot pink lamp, a bright yellow coffee maker.

She was safe.