Monica Ferris - A Murderous Yarn

“Strange the photographer didn’t notice when he took the picture that there was a vacuum cleaner still on the running board,” Betsy remarked. The car was gleaming on the outside, so she assumed the inside had also been cleaned and polished.

“It’s not a vacuum cleaner, it’s for when you stop to take on water,” said Lars, rising to point at the device with a big forefinger. “It just sucks it up out of a well or a pond or even a ditch. But you can pull into someone’s yard and use their hose, too.”

“Wow!” said Betsy, thinking how thrilling it would be to have a Stanley Steamer chuff up in front of the shop to ask for a bucket of water. How even more marvelous to be riding in a Stanley. What a thrill!

But Jill didn’t smile, and Lars, realizing at last how deep in the doghouse he was, knelt again. “I know I should have talked to you before I decided to buy it,” he said. “And if you say no, I’ll call back and tell him I’ve changed my mind.”

Betsy closed her eyes and crossed her fingers.

She heard Martha say, “I’ve always wanted to ride in an antique car.”

Then Alice said, “We could make costumes. Waists and long skirts, and great big hats with veils.”

Godwin said, “We could find boaters and celluloid collars, and make spats and close-fitting trousers! Oh you kid!”

Betsy hadn’t thought about costumes. Oh, Jill just couldn’t say no!

Phil added, “I could renew my boiler license easy, if it would make you feel better about this.”

“Please?” said Betsy.

Jill let out a long breath. “Oh, what the heck. I’m not living dangerously enough already, arresting drunk drivers and the occasional murderer Betsy scares up. So sure, Lars honey, go tell the doctor with the bad heart you’ll take his crumpled car off his hands.”

A few weeks later, Betsy was preparing to close Crewel World for the night. It was a little after five. The last customer had just left. She ran the cash register, made sure there were no sales slips loose on the desk, took forty dollars out of the register to keep as opening-up money for tomorrow, signed the deposit slip Godwin had made out and sent him off with it and the day’s profits.

Then she hurried upstairs to give Sophie her evening meal, put the money into a locked drawer, and change into wool slacks and a heavy sweater. She grabbed her raincoat and a knit hat, dashed back down the stairs and out the back way to her car.

Lars had called in the afternoon to say that he was back with the Stanley, and did she want a ride? She’d been so excited she nearly forgot to ask him for directions to his new place.

It was less than five minutes away, out St. Alban’s Bay Road a mile and a half, to Weekend Street, a narrow lane about three houses long. Lars, having concluded the sale of his hobby farm, had rented a very modest cottage at the bottom of the lane. It was surrounded by middle-size trees and a lot of brush, but it had a big yard. A driveway led behind the house to a small red barn.

Beside the barn was a long, low, white trailer, like a multihorse trailer, except this one had no windows. It was hitched to Lars’s dirty blue pickup truck, which apparently hadn’t gone to the buyer of his farm.

Betsy steered her car onto the weedy lawn, got out, and went through the open double doors of the barn. Close up, the barn was relatively new, sided vertically with aluminum “boards” and floored with cement. The oil stains on the floor and the big electric winch that ran on an overhead rail announced that this shed was no stranger to people who worked on engines. A workbench along one wall had a vise on it and a pegboard above it with the outline of numerous tools, though the tools presently on it didn’t always match the outlines.

Lars and Jill were both there. Jill, in jeans and windbreaker, had her hands in her back pockets and a worried look in her eye. Lars was just grinning.

The backside of the old car was higher than their heads, a rich, gleaming green. There was no rear bumper, and the single taillight, near the left fender, was a brass oil lamp with a round red eye.

The tires seemed tall, perhaps because they were narrow. Betsy asked, “What if you get a flat? Do you have a spare?”

Lars said, “No, the spare’s on it. I’m going to have to order a new tire. But I hope it never gets a flat. They have inner tubes and they’re harder than hell to change. But these are fine, and they last a long time,” he added hastily, not wanting to discourage his patron.

He went to wheel a long, narrow, many-drawered steel chest out of the way so Betsy could walk around the car. “He sold me the tool chest, too.”

Jill muttered, “ Takes lots of tools, I see.”

“No, it doesn’t,” retorted Lars. “No more than most old cars, anyhow. It’s just that some of them are… different.”

“How did he wreck it?” asked Betsy, coming to the damaged fender and noting that the big brass headlight was smashed as well. She thought the bulb had been torn out until she saw the other headlight didn’t have a bulb, either. They must not make the kind of bulbs it took anymore.

“Last time he had it out, he was run off the road by a gawker. You got to watch for those gawkers, he told me. Anyhow, the wreck triggered a heart attack, so he figured he’d better sell.”

“Can you get new headlights, too? I see there aren’t any bulbs in these.”

“They don’t come with bulbs, they’re acetylene. But they aren’t very bright, so we don’t run at night.”

“Can you start it?” asked Betsy, coming the rest of the way around it. “I mean, right now? Or is there something wrong with the motor, too?”

“It runs fine,” Lars said firmly, glancing at Jill. “Dr. Fine taught me how to start it and had me do it alone a couple of times. It’s not hard, but you can’t do it fast. His personal record for getting it powered up was seventeen and a half minutes.”

Lars got out the owner’s manual and consulted it, then checked to make sure there was water and the two kinds of fuel in adequate amounts. The car had several gauges, but not, apparently, a fuel gauge. Lars used a wooden ruler dipped into the tanks to determine fuel levels. “It holds twenty-five gallons of water, seventeen gallons of unleaded gas, and two gallons of Coleman gas, plus a gallon of steam oil, which is a blend of four-hundred-weight oil and tallow.”

“Four hund-” began Jill, but was interrupted by Betsy’s exclamation: “Tallow?”

“Uh-huh.” Lars, having produced a handheld propane torch from the tool box, was twisting the knob. The torch began to hiss and he lit it with a cigarette lighter. “Y’see, this isn’t an internal combustion engine, it’s a steam engine, so the rules are different. She runs real hot, so you need a lubricant that can take it. He says you get used to the new rules, and they’re good ones, and real safe, only different. Dr. Fine says there’s people in Wisconsin who own Stanleys, and they can help me. Plus there’s a big club I’m gonna join, it’s international, so there’s a good support group.”

Jill remarked to the ceiling, “Unlike AA, these people help you stay with the sickness, not get clean.”

“What?” said Lars. Adjusting the flame of his torch, he hadn’t been paying attention.

“Nothing, nothing,” said Betsy, waving a shushing hand at Jill. “Go on, Lars.”

“Anyhow, this club can tell me where I can get the stuff I need to keep her running.” He put a big, caressing hand on the intact front fender, then went to the back of the car and turned a flat steel knob on a copper tank. Then he went to the front-Betsy and Jill following-and began playing the torch through a pair of silver-dollar-size holes at the base of the hood, which, Betsy suddenly noticed, was shaped like a fat oval, not flat on the sides like ordinary cars.