CHAPTER FOUR
Callie called Alan and set up a meeting for the next afternoon. The problem was, Alan lived in Riverside, about an hour’s drive east of Los Angeles, and at least seven hours from San Francisco. Logan and Harp decided that since Cambria was halfway between the two, the best thing would be to drive home for the night, check in at the shop in the morning, then finish the trip to Alan’s.
“I can be there if you need me,” Callie offered.
Logan shook his head. “We should be okay.”
“You’re sure?”
“Unless you think it would be better.”
“Alan’s a good guy, just a little wound up about things.”
“I’d be surprised if he weren’t.”
“If you need me, just call my cell,” she said. “I’ll be at Dad’s house. We’re going to go through some of his things, but it won’t be a problem if you’d like to talk.”
Harp put his arm around her back. “We’ll call only if necessary.”
She paused, then smiled. “I can’t thank you both enough. Alan’s always been a good client, but honestly, he’s not the reason I want to do this. It’s Emily. Someday, when she’s older, she’ll want to know what happened. I’d like Alan to be able to tell her.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Logan said.
Driving south, Logan listened absently to a ball game on the radio, the announcers’ voices helping him focus on something other than how the hell he was going to help Alan Lindley. At some point, he heard paper rustling, and looked over to see Harp reading the copy of
“You want me to turn the radio down?” he asked.
There was a delay of several seconds before his father glanced up. “What?”
Logan pointed at the volume control. “Is this too loud for you?”
Harp shifted his gaze to the dash as if he’d just noticed the radio was on. “No, it’s fine,” he said, returning to his book.
Logan lowered the volume anyway, but if his father noticed, Harp made no comment.
“That’s not going to make you sick, is it?” Logan asked a few minutes later.
Another delay before another “What?”
“Reading in the car. It’s not going to make you sick?”
“No.” Harp’s tone made it clear he thought that was a stupid idea.
Another few minutes passed. “Dad. What was the envelope Len left?”
Harp kept his eyes on the book. “Just something your uncle and I talked about once.”
Logan could tell it was a lot more than nothing, but he had no idea what it could be. The envelope had said MANILA. As far as Logan knew, Harp had never been to the Philippines, and if it was the name of someone his father knew, it wasn’t anyone Logan had ever met.
But he didn’t push. His father had had a heavy couple of days. Len’s passing was tough enough, but the book seemed to have affected him even more.
When Harp was ready,
Logan was the first one to arrive at Dunn Right Auto and Repair the next morning. That wasn’t unusual. Unless he was taking the day off, he was always the first one in. He turned on the lights, opened the bay doors, and started the coffee maker. He then went into the office and checked the work orders on the vehicles he’d had to leave for the others to take care of while he was up north with Harp.
With one exception, all his projects had been completed and picked up by their owners. Reentering the garage, he saw that Joaquin, the garage’s head mechanic, had arrived.
“Thought you weren’t coming back until this afternoon,” Joaquin said.
“Change of plans. I see no one got to Mrs. Galloway’s Miata.”
“Are you kidding? I tried to get Artie on it, but neither him nor Manny would touch it.”
“What about you?”
“I’m not touching it, either.”
The fact that the Miata needed a new transmission wasn’t the problem. It was Mrs. Galloway. To say she was a pain in the ass would have been an understatement. Whenever she brought her car in, it was a scramble to see who could make themselves scarce first.
“One of you is going to have to deal with it now,” Logan said.
“What are you talking about?”
“As soon as Dad gets in, he and I have to go out of town again.”
“Not It!” someone yelled out behind them.
Joaquin and Logan turned toward the bay door. Manny had just walked in, his bag lunch in one hand, sunglasses in the other.
“Where you going now?” Joaquin asked Logan.
“Hey, not It,” Manny said again. “You guys heard me, right?”
Joaquin gave him a quick glance, then looked back at Logan, waiting.
“It’s a…family thing,” Logan told him.
“How long?”
“Don’t know. Could be a few days.”
Joaquin groaned. “Fine.” In a louder voice, he said, “Manny, you get the Miata.”
“Hey, that’s not fair,” Manny said. “I called not It.”
“Yeah, and last I checked in the mechanics guidebook, there’s no not-It rule.”
Manny glared at Logan. “Thanks a lot.”
“Don’t look at me,” Logan protested.
“You’re the one leaving, aren’t you?”
Though Logan was tempted to help get the Miata project started while he waited for Harp to show up, doing so would mean he’d have to go home again to get cleaned up. Instead, as soon as Joy, their office manager, got in, he helped her go through some paperwork and put together a supply order that she could call in later.
When he’d dropped his father off the night before, they’d agreed to meet at eight a.m., but it wasn’t until almost eight thirty when Joy said, “Your dad just pulled up.”
Harp had lost his driver’s license a few years earlier, and relied these days either on the high school kids he hired to chauffeur him around, or rides from his friends.
Today’s victim was Barney Needham, a retired doctor and Harp’s fellow member of a small group of elderly men who called themselves WAMO, which stood for Wise Ass Old Men, and yes, they knew the letters were in the wrong order.
As Logan stepped outside, his father was transferring a couple of suitcases into the back of the El Camino.
“Dad, we’re not going to be gone that long,” Logan said.
“This isn’t all mine,” Harp said, as if it should be obvious. “One’s Barney’s.”
“Barney’s?”
“He didn’t have anything to do, so I invited him along,” Harp explained.
Logan came within half a second of saying he didn’t think that was a good idea, but then checked himself. Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing. While Logan appreciated his father’s interest in Alan’s problems, Harp had the habit of unintentionally getting in the way sometimes. If Barney came along, maybe they could keep each other entertained.
Logan shrugged. “One of you will have to sit in the middle.”
“Not It!” Barney yelled out.
