Brett Battles - Every Precious Thing

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.

They breezed through L.A. but got caught behind a traffic accident in Corona that slowed them to a crawl for about twenty minutes. Finally they pulled into the driveway of Alan Lindley’s house in Riverside, not far from the University of California campus. The neighborhood was old and quiet, the houses probably built in the 1960s or ’70s.

Heat assaulted them as they climbed out of the El Camino. Riverside was on the edge of the desert, and summers could get pretty toasty.

The door swung open before they reached it. Standing just inside was a man in his late thirties. Hugging his leg and peeking around from behind him was a little girl.

“Logan Harper?” the man asked.

“Yeah,” Logan said, holding out his hand. “You must be Alan.”

A quick nod accompanied the handshake.

“This is my dad, Harp,” Logan said. “And our friend Barney.”

“Harp. Barney,” Alan said, shaking each man’s hand. He reached down and hoisted the girl up. “This is Emily.”

“Hi, Emily,” Logan said.

The girl tucked a knuckle into her mouth, then turned and planted her face firmly in her father’s shoulder.

“Come on in,” Alan told them.

He led them through a small entryway into a large, open-plan living area. The furniture was a cross between the new and the old, an eclectic mix that worked well together. On the wall hung a TV playing a cartoon, the one with the sponge character Logan had seen on T-shirts.

Alan set Emily on the couch. “Daddy’s going to talk to his friends for a few minutes, okay?”

She looked at Logan and the others warily.

“You want some goldfish?” Alan asked.

Emily’s eyes brightened and she nodded. “Goldfissss, yes!”

Alan looked at Logan and the others. “Give me a second.”

He went over to the kitchen area, and returned a few minutes later with a small plastic bowl of orange goldfish crackers.

“Here you go, sweetie.” He handed the bowl to Emily, and she immediately settled back on the couch and popped a cracker into her mouth, her attention now fully on the TV.

Alan watched his daughter for a moment, then said, “Why don’t we go over here?”

He led the group to the dining room table, a long oak affair that looked like it could have once been a door to an old church.

Once they were all seated, Alan said, “Callie tells me you can help find Sara.”

Logan raised a palm. “I think it’s a little too early to know that yet. If I can, I will.”

“I’ll take whatever you can do.”

Alan’s desperation wasn’t limited to his face. It encased him like a parka.

Across the room, Emily laughed at the TV. Her father’s gaze flicked to her, his eyes softening for a moment before worry filled them once more.

“Why don’t we start at the beginning?” Logan said. “How did you and Sara meet?”

“My job keeps me pretty busy,” Alan said. According to Callie, Alan ran a small accounting firm. “To keep it from driving me crazy, I got in the habit a few years ago of attending some of the free talks they give at the university. I’ve always enjoyed history, so anytime they had a lecture like that, I was probably there. It was a great way to not think about numbers. Sara and I met at a discussion about the terracotta warriors. You know, in China?”

Logan nodded.

“She was with a couple people I knew. We all got to talking, went out for coffee, and, well, she and I started hanging out.”

“Did she start talking to you first? Or you her?”

The muscles in Alan’s face tensed. “I know what you’re thinking, but she didn’t come after me. I went after her. Hard. She tried to break up several times while we were dating, but finally she gave in.”

Logan knew there were manipulators who could make a person like Alan think they’d done all the work. Was Sara one of these? He had no idea, but knew it was best not to share that thought at the moment.