William Arden: Hot Wheels

“Haven’t seen Amy since I was a little girl,” Aunt Mathilda said. “I knew she’d gotten married, but I didn’t realize that was thirty years ago. I never knew she had any children.”

“Four,” Ty said. “All grown up now. The others are still in Babylon. I figured it was time to see the rest of the country.” His eyes were bright as he looked at the yard full of discarded treasures. “You sure do have a lot of good stuff here.” Then he became aware of the Corvair right in front of him. “Hey, where’d you get that beaut? That’s a classic!”

Instantly Ty’s head was inside the Corvair engine with Pete. They jabbered, pointed, and tossed automotive talk around as if they were old friends.

Pete straightened up and ran a hand through his reddish-brown hair. “I’ve checked or replaced everything, but I can’t get her to run at all,” he complained. Ty laughed. “And you never will, Pete. Look, you’ve put an alternator in the electrical system.”

“Sure.” Pete nodded. “You can’t get electricity to run the engine or charge the battery without an alternator.” Jupiter and Aunt Mathilda looked from Ty to Pete with glazed eyes, understanding nothing.

“In this car you can’t do it with one,” Ty said. “The Corvair’s an old car — it has a generator, not an alternator! Wasn’t there a long, round black cylinder you replaced with the alternator?”

Pete rummaged under his workbench. “This?” Ty took the cylinder and bent into the engine with Pete’s tools. He quickly made some connections and tightenings. “Everything else looks fine,” he said. “Get in and try her.”

Pete climbed into the Corvair and turned the key. The car coughed once and started! It gasped and wheezed and sputtered, but it ran.

“Wow!” Pete grinned. “How do you know so much about cars?”

Ty smiled. “Been working on them all my life. That’s what I figure on doing out here. I’ll get a part-time job at some garage, sun and surf the rest of the time. There’s more cars out here than anywhere, right? I just need a little time.”

He looked at Aunt Mathilda. “I figured maybe I could stay here until I get settled. I can sleep anywhere, eat almost anything. One of those old trailers’d be fine. Anywhere I can unroll my bedroll. I don’t want to be any trouble.”

“No,” said Aunt Mathilda. “I mean, of course you’ll stay across the street in our house.”

“Well, thanks a lot. That’d be fine,” Ty said.

“Great!” Pete exclaimed. “You can teach me stuff. I mean, you sure know cars, Ty.”

“He sure does,” a voice suddenly said behind them.

They turned to see two men in suits and ties looking at Ty. They weren’t smiling.

“Especially,” the taller man went on, “cars that don’t belong to him. That’s why he’s under arrest!”

Jupiter and Pete didn’t know the tall, sharp-faced man who glared at Ty. But they recognized the dark-haired shorter man — Detective Roger Cole of the Rocky Beach Police.

“What’s wrong, Detective Cole?” Jupiter asked.

“This is Jupe’s cousin Ty Cassey,” Pete explained. “He’s from New York.”

“Your cousin’s in trouble, Jupiter,” Detective Cole said. He was a small, quiet-looking man with friendly blue eyes and a reassuring smile. But he was serious now as he nodded to the cold-eyed taller man. “This is Detective Sergeant Maxim from Grand Theft / Auto, guys. He has some questions to ask.”

Sergeant Maxim stared at Detective Cole, and then at Pete and Jupiter. “You know these kids, Cole?”

“Yes, Sergeant, and so does the chief.”

“So who are they?” Maxim snapped.

“They’re sort of private detectives,” Cole explained. “They’ve helped us a lot over the last few years.”

Jupiter handed the startled sergeant one of the new business cards he’d designed.

“Mostly we find things for people, explain odd happenings, problems like that, Sergeant. But sometimes we’ve helped Chief Reynolds on cases that turned out to be more serious,” Jupiter explained.

He didn’t tell the sergeant that he had started The Three Investigators even before the guys were in high school. Or that the police had often been totally baffled until Jupiter, Bob, and Pete found the answers.

Sergeant Maxim stared at the card. “You mean the chief lets teenagers mess in police cases?”

“It’s more like they bring us cases that we never even knew existed,” Cole said.

“Well, they better stay out of my cases,” Maxim growled. “And that starts with this one.” He turned to Ty. “Read this guy his rights, Cole.”

Detective Cole explained Ty’s right to remain silent and to have a lawyer, and warned him that anything he said could and would be used against him in a court of law.

“Okay, you want to tell us how you happen to be driving — a stolen car?” Maxim said.

Jupe quickly said, “Maybe you should wait to talk to a lawyer, Ty.”

Aunt Mathilda, who had stood in stunned silence ever since the two detectives appeared, went pale. “Lawyer?” She looked at Jupe and Pete. “You don’t really think…?”

“I don’t need a lawyer,” Ty said. “It’s all a mistake.” He laughed. “I’ll bet the guy’s brother reported the heap stolen just because I was a little slow getting it to him. He probably thinks I’m joy-riding somewhere.”

“Guy?” Detective Cole said.

“You want to start from the beginning, pal?” Sergeant Maxim said.

“Why not?” Ty said. “I got nothing to hide. I was hitchin’ through Oxnard day before yesterday, stopped a while in a club to have a beer and hear some hot music. The place was rockin’ so good I stayed around, got to talkin’ to this Latino guy Tiburon — something like that, anyway. I never was too good with names. We got friendly, I told him I was on my way to Rocky Beach to meet my cousin. So around the time the joint was closing he says to me would I do him a favor and help myself too?”

Ty grinned. “Always like to help myself, so I listen. Seems he’s driving his brother’s Mercedes, promised to get it back next day. Says he’s met this cool chick who wants to drive up to Santa Barbara, but she’s got her own wheels. So he wants me to take the Mercedes back down to his brother in Rocky Beach. He’ll buy the gas and pay me a hundred to do it. I mean, how can I say no, right?”

Sergeant Maxim broke in. “You’re saying you never met this guy before?”

“Never been in Oxnard before,” Ty said. “Never even heard of the place.”

“That was two days ago,” Detective Cole said. “How come you’ve still got the car?”

Ty grinned again. “Well, it was late that night, and yesterday was so darn nice I took some swims, looked around the canyons. I mean, what’s a nice day for?”

“You just sort of drove around,” Sergeant Maxim said. “Sightseeing.”

“And today?” Detective Cole asked.

“Last night I slept in the car, and this morning I had to meet Cousin Mathilda,” Ty explained. “I was going to return the car to Tiburon’s brother next.”

He smiled at them. Heavy silence descended like a tent over the salvage yard. Pete and Jupe glanced at each other. Aunt Mathilda didn’t seem to want to look at anyone. Sergeant Maxim stared at Ty.

“That’s a bigger whopper than they cook up at Burger King,” he said finally. “If you think we believe — ”

“Tell you what,” Detective Cole said quickly, “why don’t we all just go and talk to this brother, Sarge?”