Wolf in the Shadows - Marcia Muller [5]
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Dave Fry, manager of the Econocar lot on the frontage road near SFO, looked like a very depressed individual. I could see why. His desk in the office shack was heaped with unprocessed paperwork; the windswept lot was full of unrented cars; the terminal shuttle bus stood idle. I saw only one other employee, a young Asian man who sat on the step of the bus, looking as down in the dumps as his boss. When I showed Fry my identification, he sighed and shrugged—obviously expecting some kind of trouble and resigned to it.
“That car was returned after office hours on Saturday,” he told me. “What they do, they drop the keys and paperwork in the lockbox outside, and we bill their credit cards.”
“May I see the paperwork?”
Fry looked at the desk in front of him, mouth turning down. “Someplace here,” he muttered, pushing a couple of piles around, then lifting another and peering under it as if he hoped a pair of helping hands might reach out to him. After a few moments of fumbling, he worked a folder free of the stack; it had a yellow Post-it note stuck to its flap. “Hey, that’s right,” he said. “The car you’re asking about is the one that came in damaged.”
“Damaged how?”
Fry examined the envelope. “Dented right front quarter panel and busted headlight.” He held it out to me.
I took it and examined the Post-it note. The message on it said to bill all charges for repairs to American Express, and the writing wasn’t Hy’s. His was more like printing—bold and sprawling. This was fine script that reminded me of Hank Zahn’s nearly illegible scribbling.
Quickly I looked inside at the contract, where the credit card had been imprinted. It had Hy’s name on it and also that of the Spaulding Foundation. I took my notebook from my bag and scribbled down the credit-card number and expiration date, then handed the folder back to Fry. “There’s no one at all on duty here after hours?” I asked. “Not even a security guard?”
He motioned through the window at the lot. “Lady, does our volume of business suggest that we could afford a guard?”
He had a point. “Is the car still here on the lot?”
“Yeah. It’s not going into the shop till tomorrow.”
“May I have a look at it?”
Fry’s eyes narrowed. “The car wasn’t used … well, like in a crime?”
“Not to my knowledge. This is just a routine skip trace.” Didn’t I wish.
He nodded. “Then I don’t see any reason you shouldn’t take a look. Space thirty-four, back against the fence. Hasn’t been moved since it was returned. You’ll have to find it yourself; I can’t leave the office.”
I went outside and crossed the lot. The Cressida was pulled in, nose against the fence, badly dented and very dirty. I ran my finger over the damaged quarter panel, and it came away with a coating of fine gray-black dust, like ash. I went around and slipped into the driver’s seat. It was drawn up so that a much shorter person than Hy—or than I, for that matter— could drive it.
The shaky feeling I’d experienced when I first saw the Citabria in the tie-down at the airport returned. Questions flooded my mind: How had the car gotten damaged? Why hadn’t Hy returned it himself? Who had? I didn’t speculate on the answers, merely turned my attention to a systematic search.
Nothing in the glove compartment but the owner’s manual. Nothing in the ashtray. A couple of Styrofoam cups that had contained coffee on the passenger’s side floor. Some loose change caught in the crack between the seat back and bottom. And shoved down beside the seat, a map. I pulled it out and unfolded it.
It was a Triple A road map of the area south of San Jose where Highway 101 cuts through Santa Clara and San Benito counties on the way to Salinas. A smaller area was circled in red felt-tip on the portion that had been folded out, and in the margin Hy’s hand had written, “Ravenswood Road.”
Ravenswood Road. Something familiar about that. Where …?
I closed my eyes, pictured the stretch of highway; I’d driven it any number of times over any number of years, en route from San Francisco to my parents’ home in San Diego. You bypassed Morgan Hill and