Lisa Scottoline - Running From The Law

“Right as rain!” Sal said, morphing into Rex Harrison. On steroids.

“And my manager would have to approve it.”

Shit. I should have realized it. I couldn’t get the records this way, but I could subpoena them now that I knew they existed. Time to fold ’em. “Mr. Livemore, perhaps we should go and seek the proper authorization. We can obtain it today or tomorrow, then come back.”

“My word! How can you say that! And look at this man’s desk! It’s abdominal!”

Say what?

“This is a travesty!” Sal flipped inexplicably through the papers on Mr. Henry’s desk, scattering them in a corporate hissy fit. I think he was trying to create a diversion even though nobody was breaking for the perimeter, and I gathered he had seen too many old war movies. “A mockery!”

“Please, Mr. Livemore!” Mr. Henry yelped, watching in horror as all of his papers flopped onto the floor, until the only thing on his desktop was a black three-ring binder and a cup of cold tea. “Please, sir!”

“What kind of order is this? What must our customers think when they come here? Disorder! Catastrophe! In short you have a ghastly mess!”

Sal was segueing into Mary Poppins, but I didn’t have time to watch. I was intrigued by the salesman’s black binder, which held a stack of forms filled in in a hasty pencil. There was a blank for the customer’s name, address, and trade-in, and business cards had been stapled to the top right of the forms. As Mr. Henry bent over to pick up the papers, I read the top form upside-down. At the top of the form it said in a pretentious font: TEST-DRIVES.

“But I usually keep it neater than this,” Mr. Henry said apologetically, his arms full of slipping papers.

“I should hope so!” Sal said. “In England we keep everything neat and clean. The telephone booths are red, did you know that? They have windows. Clean windows!”

Mr. Henry nodded. “I saw. On a commercial.”

Undoubtedly the same commercial Sal had seen. The ersatz Mr. Livemore was ad-libbing dangerously, leaving Alistair Cooke territory and entering the Irwin Corey zone. I wanted to get out before he blew our cover completely, but the notebook nagged at me. “Is this a log of test-drives?” I asked.

Mr. Henry nodded.

“Do you go with the customers on the test-drives?”

“Not usually. Most of our customers take the car out alone.”

“Wot?” Sal exploded. “You just give a customer one of our Jaguars? You just let them drive away with it? As if it weren’t worth nothing?”

Mr. Henry looked like he was starting to wonder. If he read the newspapers, he could catch on any minute now. “We lend the car. Our clientele doesn’t need me riding along with them. We do ask for the customer’s driver’s license.”

“Do you make a copy of the license?”

Two papers fell from the salesman’s grasp. “I make a Xerox of it, then I throw it away after about a week.”

Hmm. “Is there a time limit on how long you let the customer test-drive the car?”

“I should hope there is!” Sal interrupted. “I should hope so, for your sake! I should report this to my posteriors in Coventry!”

Eeeeek.

Mr. Henry looked from Sal to me, and back again. “Well, not usually. We trust our customers. Some of them, our manager lets them have the car for the whole afternoon.”

“Shocking!” Sal said, and I shot him a warning glance.

“How long do you keep the log sheets for?”

“I hope they are disposed of right away!” said Sal the Major General. “And neatly! In the rubbish!”

“In fact, sir, I keep mine for six months,” Mr. Henry said.

“That’s an outrage! Disorder! Democracy! In short you will have a ghastly mess!”

Mr. Henry turned to me for succor. “But some people don’t buy right away, and I keep the addresses that I log in. They make a good mailing list. No one I’ve dealt with ever mentioned anything about the paint chipping, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

Not exactly. What I was wondering was whether it were possible to commit murder on a test-drive. Patricia’s carriage house was only fifteen minutes from here. “Do you let the customer test-drive any model they wish, Mr. Henry?”

“If the one they want is available. Usually I lend them a demonstrator. Our most popular model, the XJS Coupe.”

“Is it black?”

“Yes.”

Bingo. Except that Fiske’s model was a Sovereign, so was Kate’s. “Do you let them test-drive a Sovereign?”

“The Daimler? No, we don’t usually have one on hand, they’re scarcer. They look the same as the XJS anyway from the outside.”

Boy oh boy. The jackpot.

“Well, I never!” Sal barked. “Never!” He was about to speak for the British Empire again, but I gave him the high sign when Mr. Henry bent over for more paper.

“Yes, Miss Jamesway?” he asked, not understanding. “Wot is it?”

Wot a whiz. You could draw a line across your throat and Sal would think you were talking necklaces. “Mr. Livemore, perhaps we should go. We can continue our investigation in Mahwah.”

“Ma-what?” Sal said, more Ringo Starr than anything else.

I jerked a thumb toward the Chippendale entrance and stopped short of saying ime-tay to am-scray.

Sal nodded and gave me a jaunty thumbs-up, game as any World War II doughboy. “All righty. Tally-ho! Pip pip.”

Pip pip?

Mr. Henry and I stared at him in stunned silence.

Later, we drove back toward the city with the convertible top down, the sun so low in the sky it reflected in the car’s outside mirrors. I was drafting a subpoena in my head for the dealership’s sales and test-drive records, but Sal wanted rave reviews. “Didn’t I do good?” he kept asking.

“Until you started chewing the scenery.”

“What?” Wind buffeted his thin gray hair and his Adam’s apple protruded like a figurehead. “What does that mean?”

“It means you did great. Terrific.”

He grinned so broadly that the silver edge of his eyetooth caught the sunlight. “It was like I was in the movies. It was like I was a movie star.”

“You sure were.”

“I was like Cary Grant or something!”

If he were still alive. “Yep.”

“Didja like what I did about his desk?”

“I liked what you did about the desk.”

“Didja like when I told him I was shocked?”

“I liked when you told him you were shocked.”

“He was gonna call and I stopped him!”

“You sure did. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.” It was true, actually. “I mean it.”

Sal squinted against the wind. “Why did we have to leave?”

“Because we found out what we needed to know.”

“Oh.”

“Okay?”

“Okay,” he said, but he seemed to deflate visibly in his seat, like a child after all the birthday presents have been opened.

“You had fun, huh?”

He nodded.

“Fun is good, Uncle Sal.”

He didn’t say anything, just kept squinting as the wind blew his wispy hair around.

“What do you do for fun, Unc?”

He thought for what seemed like a very long time. “I like music.”

“What kind of music? You a rap fan, MC Sal?”

“No, no.” He didn’t even smile.

“What then?”

“Big band. Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey. Like the old 950 Club.”

“What’s the 950 Club?”

“On the radio. In the afternoons.”

“Like now?”

“Yeh,” he said, without checking his watch. “They don’t have Ed Hurst no more, but they got the music.”

I turned on the radio and scanned until I reached the station. Even I recognized the song “Sing, Sing, Sing.” “That’s Benny Goodman, isn’t it?”