The only sound in the empty showroom was the discreet hum of the air-conditioning, and the occasional squirt of a spray bottle from a man in a coarse blue jumpsuit, cleaning the windshields. Late-afternoon sun poured through mullioned windows that bordered the room. Reproductions of Chippendale end tables flanked the entrance, which opened on to five spanking-new, factory-delivered Jaguars of various colors. Each car gleamed under its own set of track lights, like babies in a multiracial nursery.
“But nobody told me about this,” said the confused salesman. His navy blazer roughly matched Sal’s and his loafers were almost identically tasseled. Am I good or am I good? “I should have been told.”
“We sent the fax yesterday,” I said authoritatively. “It would have mentioned me, Miss Jamesway.” I had my hair knotted back and my glasses on, in case he recognized me from the newspapers. “And your name is Mr.-”
“Henry.”
“Well, Henry-”
“No, Mr. Henry,” he corrected. “I don’t recall any fax.”
“That’s odd. The home office said they’d take care of it.”
“The home office? You mean Detroit or Mahwah?”
“Mahwah.” It was more fun to say.
“Then it would have come directly from Jim Farnsworth, the CEO.”
“Yes, that’s right. Jim said his assistant would send it.”
“But we didn’t get it.” Mr. Henry patted his dark hair, which was combed and slightly perfumed, like a groomed Scottish terrier.
“No matter. We’re here now. We don’t want to keep Mr. Livemore waiting, do we?” I nodded at Uncle Sal, who was standing beside a sparkling Rose Bronze Van den Plas XJ12. His arms were folded imperiously over his skinny chest and he frowned at the Cream interior of the car in as British a manner as possible, as per my instructions. I’d ordered him to keep quiet because his English accent had proved to be a cross between Crocodile Dundee and Batman.
“Mr. Livemore? I don’t recall that name.”
“That’s because he rarely leaves Coventry. He’s the operations manager at Brown’s Lane, and he hates to travel.”
“Operations manager, you say? He’s rather old for the job, isn’t he?”
“Yes, but experience tells, don’t you know. We really should get on with it. It’ll only take a few minutes.”
“But it’s not procedure. We have our procedures, our channels of authority here-”
I leaned close to him and whispered, “It’s my job on the line. Cut me a break, will you? I’d do the same for you.”
His brushy black mustache twitched, his blue eyes were as bright as the XJS in front of us. Sapphire, they called the color, with an Oatmeal interior. Six cylinders and $66,200 of gorgeous. But since I was pretending to help build these beauties, I did not drool on the showroom floor. “I don’t like this at all, Miss Jamesway,” he said.
“Please? I need this job. I’m a single mother, trying to make a living.”
He softened. “Oh, all right. Where do you work, Miss Jamesway? England or the U.S.?”
“I go back and forth.” Between truth and falsehood. “Now, as I said, Mr. Livemore has been very concerned about the paint quality on the black models in recent years. Have you had any complaints about the black paint?”
“Exterior enamels? Not that I recall. Most of our customers are very satisfied, very loyal.”
“Have you had complaints from your customers about chipping? Particularly around the doors? In the black models?”
He thought a minute. “No.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sal run his finger along the polished side of a Kingfisher Blue XJ12 Coupe. His greasy fingertip made a streak like a slug’s trail on the car’s virgin surface. “Mr. Livemore would like to locate the owners of black Jaguars in the area. He wants to contact these customers to see if they are as satisfied as Jaguar wants them to be. Do you have such a list?”
He blinked. “Not per se, no. We have a list of the cars sold in a year, but not by color. We sell many black cars, as you know. It’s one of our most popular colors after British Racing Green.”
Over my shoulder, Sal was opening and closing the long door of a Flamenco Red XJS Convertible with a Coffee interior. The ca-chunk sound echoed harshly, the only rugs in the room were squares under each Pirelli. Ca-chunk, ca-chunk, ca-chunk. The convertible door closed fluidly each time, but Sal grimaced like an Uberfieldmarshal.
The salesman caught Sal’s expression. “He’s very thorough, isn’t he?”
“It’s his job to be very thorough,” I said, wanting to wring Sal’s stringy neck.
“Maybe I should call my manager. He’s at the dentist, but he has a beeper.”
“No, you wouldn’t want to bother your boss. You know what Mr. Livemore would do to me if I called him at his dentist?” I glanced at Sal, who was climbing into the driver’s seat of the low-slung convertible. His puny frame vanished into the cushy leather seat. “Let’s just get on with it, can we? Before Mr. Livemore starts testing the ashtrays.”
“But the ashtrays are fine!”
“How about the electrical system?” The automatic windows on Fiske’s car stuck constantly and the door locks were possessed.
“The electrics have improved since the quality controls we’ve instituted with Ford.”
“Yeah. Right. This is me now, not Autoweek,” I said, and he winced. “Look, I know how popular black is. That’s why they’re so concerned, back in England, that the paint on the black models is chipping and flaking.”
“Flaking, too?” His face went white. Glacier White, to be exact.
“Mr. Henry, just so I understand the scope of the problem, I would guess there are hundreds of black Jaguars sold by this dealership.”
“Hundreds? Thousands would be more like it, including the leases.” His hands fluttered to the knot on his rep tie. “Chipping, really? You would think I would have heard about it.”
“It occurs on very few models, but Mr. Livemore wants us to stay on top of the situation. Uphold the quality of the marque. Don’t you agree?”
“By all means.”
“And you’re the only Jaguar dealer in the greater Philadelphia area, is that right? There’s one in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and none in Delaware?” I’d let my fingers do the walking.
“Yes,” he answered, distracted by Sal, who had found the convertible’s pristine shoulder harness and was snapping it back and forth. It retracted with a high-quality craakkk and the salesman flinched each time, like it was a rifle shot.
“Do you think I could see your list of cars sold or leased in the past, oh, three years?” Then I would have a list of everybody with a black Jag in the area. Maybe one of them had reason to frame Fiske. “I can pick off the black cars myself.”
“That would take an enormous amount of time. It’s a huge number.”
“I have an assistant. In Mahwah. Mr. Farnsworth’s assistant.”
Mr. Henry shook his head slowly. “Maybe I should call my manager.” He walked toward a desk located behind a glass partition before I could stop him.
Shit. “Mr. Livemore!” I called to Sal. “Perhaps you should come along. We may be phoning the manager.”
Sal turned in the car seat, his eyes barely clearing the headrest, then began to climb out of the car.
“Come quickly, Mr. Livemore!” I said, panicky. I flashed on a scene of me manacled before the ethics committee of the Pennsylvania bar and hurried to Mr. Henry’s desk, where he was reaching for the telephone.
“I’m shocked!” shouted a British voice from behind me. It was Sal. His face was Signal Red and his scowl was deep as the pile on a floor mat. “That’s what I am, shocked! Put down that phone!”
Mr. Henry froze and the receiver clattered onto the cradle.
“How dare you!” Sal thundered. He stood taller and straighter, his scrawny shoulders squared off in their shoulder pads. Even his accent had sharpened up, he sounded like Pierce Brosnan as Remington Steele. I was dumbfounded. So was Mr. Henry.
“How… dare I?” the salesman asked uncertainly. “Call my own manager?”
Sal glowered at him. “This is shocking! You, my good man, you are in charge here, are you not?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you-as you Americans say-trying to pass the buck?”
“I’m not, sir.”
“Do you have the information my client requested?”
Client?
Mr. Henry nodded. “But I need authorization to get the printouts.”
“I’m giving you authorization!”
“But I mean from my own management-”
“I am your management, my good man. I am your management’s management!”
Mr. Henry looked puzzled, rapidly discovering that Uncle Sal was a confusing person to be around. But this time it was paying off. “It will take at least a day to get that information.”
“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?”
“Yeh.”
“I like this song.”
“Your mother, she liked it, too.”
Out of left field. “Did she like music?” I had no idea.
“Loved it.”
“Really?”
He nodded.
I wondered. “What else did she like?”
“She liked to dance. She never sat still. She liked to go, your mother.”
I guess. “That why she left, you think?”
He nodded again.
“Go where, though?”
“Anywhere. She liked action.”
“Action?”
“Attention, like.”
I considered this. A Canadian blonde among the dark Italian butchers, grocers, and bakers, like a yellow diamond on a coal pile. A woman who liked to go, married to a man who wanted only to stay. “She didn’t really fit in, did she?”
“Like a sore thumb.”
“She never would have stayed, would she?”
“Not for long. Vito was the only one who didn’t see it comin’.”
It hurt inside. For my father, then for me. “You don’t think I’m like her, do you?”
“Nah. You got dark hair.”
So he wasn’t Phil Donahue. Morrones weren’t known for their introspection. “I meant her personality, not her looks.”
“Nah.”
“Not even a little?” I almost hit a Saab in front of me for watching him, but Sal’s only reaction was to shake his head. “Uncle Sal?”
“Can you turn up the radio, Ree?”
I laughed. “Is this the end of the conversation, Unc?”
He nodded, then smiled. “She was a wise guy, too.”
Our highway entrance came up suddenly, City Line Avenue onto the Schuylkill Expressway, and I turned onto the on-ramp. I thought about pressing him on the subject, but let it go. It was the longest talk I’d ever had about my mother, and somehow it was enough. More words wouldn’t make it any clearer, or any different. It was up to me to figure out anyway, for myself.
“The radio, Ree?” Sal asked again.
“Sorry,” I said, and cranked the music way up. The clarinet and horns blasted in the wind as Benny Goodman hit the chorus and we hit the open road. At this hour, rush-hour traffic was going the other way. “You can at least catch the end of the song, huh?”
“Yeah. I like the end.” The wind was stronger now that we had picked up speed. I pressed the button to close my window. Sal fished in his jacket pocket and found the Ray-Ban aviators I’d bought him, then slipped them on like a flyboy.
“Lookin’ good, Uncle Sal,” I shouted over the drums.
“You know, Ree, I kinda liked bein’ a lawyer,” he shouted back. “Maybe we’ll do more lawyer stuff.”
Like cheating and lying and perpetrating fraud? “Whatever you say, Mr. Livemore.”
He paused. “Ree?”
“What?”
“Can’t you make this crate move any faster?”
I smiled. Uncle Sal liked to go, too. Everybody did, a little. “Hang on, handsome. Hang on.”
And he did.
Sing, sing, sing.