Arthur Hailey - Wheels

Chief Arenson knew all about well-heeled women shoplifters and their supposed motivations, so the money aspect did not surprise him. More interesting was the suspect's unwillingness to give information about her husband or to telephone him when allowed the opportunity.

Not that it made any difference. The interrogating officer had routinely checked out ownership of the car she was driving, which proved to be registered to one of the Big Three auto manufacturers, and a further check with that company's security office revealed it was an official company car, one of two allocated to Mr. Adam Trenton.

The company security man had let that item of information about two cars slip out, though he hadn't been asked, and the police officer phoning the inquiry had noted it in his report. Now, Chief Arenson, a stockily built, balding man in his late fifties, sat at his desk and considered the notation.

As the police chief well knew, plenty of auto executives drove company cars. But only a senior executive would have two company cars - one for himself, another for his wife.

Thus it required no great deductive powers to conclude that the suspect, Erica Marguerite Trenton, now locked in a small interrogation room instead of in a cell - another intuitive move by the desk sergeant - was married to a reasonably important man.

What the chief needed to know was: How important? And how much influence did Mrs. Trenton's husband have?

The fact that the chief would take time to consider such questions at all was a reason why suburban Detroit communities insisted on maintaining their own local police forces. Periodically, proposals appeared for a merger of the score or more of separate police forces of Greater Detroit into a single metropolitan force. Such an arrangement, it was argued, would ensure better policing by eliminating duplication, and would also be less costly. The metropolitan system, its advocates pointed out, worked successfully elsewhere.

But the suburbs - Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Troy, Dearborn, the Grosse Pointes and others - were always solidly opposed. As a result, and because residents of those communities had influence where it counted, the proposal always failed.

The existing system of small, independent forces might not be the best means of providing equal justice for all, but it did give local citizens whose names were known a better break when they, their families or friends transgressed the law.

Presto! - the chief remembered where he had heard the name Trenton before.

Six or seven months ago, Chief Arenson had bought a car for his wife from the auto dealer, Smokey Stephensen. During the chief's visit to the dealer's showroom on Saturday, he recalled - Smokey had introduced him to an Adam Trenton from the auto company's head office. Afterward and privately, while Smokey and the chief made their deal about the car, Smokey mentioned Trenton again, predicting that he was going higher in the company, and one day would be its president.

Reflecting on the incident, and its implications at this moment, Chief Arenson was glad he had dawdled. Now, not only was he aware that the woman being detained was someone of consequence, but he had the further knowledge of where to get extra information which might be helpful in the case.

Using an outside line on his desk, the chief telephoned Smokey Stephensen.

Sir Perceval McDowall Stuyvesant, Bart. and Adam Trenton had known each other and been friends for more than twenty years. It was a loose friendship. Sometimes two years or more slipped by without their meeting, or even communicating, but whenever they were in the same town, which happened occasionally, they got together and picked up the old relationship easily, as if it had never been set down.

A reason, perhaps, for the lasting friendship was their dissimilarity.

Adam, while imaginative, was primarily a master of organization, a pragmatist who got things done. Sir Perceval, imaginative too and with a growing reputation as a brilliant scientist, was essentially a dreamer who had trouble mastering each day's practicalities - the kind of man who might invent a zipper but subsequently forget to zip up his own fly.

Their backgrounds were equally at variance. Sir Perceval was the last of a line of English squires, his father dead and the inherited title genuine. Adam's father had been a Buffalo, New York, steelworker.

The two met in college - at Purdue University. They were the same age and graduated together, Adam in Engineering; Perceval, whom his friends called Perce, in Physics. Afterward, Perce spent several more years gathering scientific degrees as casually as a child gathers daisies, then worked for a while for the same auto company as Adam. This had been in Scientific Research - the "think tank" - where Perce left his mark by discovering new applications for electron microscopes.

During that period they spent more time together than at any other - it had been before Adam's marriage to Erica, and Perce was a bachelor - and they found each other's company increasingly agreeable.

For a while, Adam became mildly interested in Perce's hobby of manufacturing pseudo-antique violins -into each of which, with peculiar humor, he pasted a Stradivari label - but rejected Perce's suggestion that they learn Russian together. Perce set out on that project alone, solely because someone had given him a subscription to a Soviet magazine, and in less than a year could read Russian with ease.

Sir Perceval Stuyvesant had a lean, spindleshanked appearance and, to Adam, always looked the same: mournful, which he wasn't, and perpetually abstracted, which he was. He also had an easygoing nature which nothing disturbed, and when concentrating on something scientific was oblivious to everything around him, including seven young and noisy children. This brood had appeared at the rate of one a year since Perce's marriage which took place soon after he left the auto industry. He had wed a pleasant, sexy scatterbrain, now Lady Stuyvesant, and for the past few years the expanding family had lived near San Francisco in a happy madhouse of a home.

It was from San Francisco that Perce had flown to Detroit specifically to see Adam. They met in Adam's office in late afternoon of a day in August.

When Perce had telephoned the previous day to say that he was coming, Adam urged him not to go to a hotel, but to come home to stay at Quarton Lake.

Erica liked Perce. Adam hoped that an old friend's arrival would ease some of the tension and uncertainty still persisting between himself and Erica.

But Perce had declined. "Best if I don't, old boy. If I meet Erica this trip, she'll be curious to know why I'm there, and you'll likely want to tell her yourself in your own way."

Adam had asked, "Why are you coming?"

"Maybe I want a job."

But Sir Percival hadn't wanted a job. As it turned out, he had come to offer one to Adam.

A West Coast company, involved with advanced electrical and radar technology, required an executive head. Perce, one of the company's founders, was currently its scientific vice-president, and his approach to Adam was on behalf of himself and associates.

He announced, "President is what we'd make you, old boy. You'd start at the top."

Adam said dryly, "That's what Henry Ford told Bunkie Knudsen."

"This could work out better. One reason you'd be in a strong stock position." Perce gave the slightest of frowns as he regarded Adam. "I'll ask you a favor while I'm here. That's take me seriously."

"I always have." That was one of the things about their relationship, Adam thought - based on respect for each other's abilities, and with good reason. Adam had his own solid achievements in the auto industry and Perce, despite vagueness at times and his absent-mindedness about everyday matters, turned everything he touched in scientific fields into notable success. Even before today's encounter, Adam had heard reports about Perce's West Coast company which had gained a solid reputation for advanced research and development, electronically oriented, in a short time.