I spotted no police surveillance tagging along as I walked on to the bank. I could only think that Sergeant Bohler had given up in fatigue and headed home to sleep.
Inside the bank, it was business as usual, meaning there was no business, as usual. The gloom; the ancient behind the teller window; the son sitting, indifferent to the lobby at his back as he puzzled over a child’s crossword puzzle; even the bitten, lone chocolate-chip cookie lying unclaimed on the plastic plate were all as they’d been the last time I was there. This time, the ancient could find no reason to deny me my cash, so I withdrew the last of Marilyn Paul’s retainer and headed down the few blocks to the city garage.
The Jeep was parked outside. Its lower half glistened red and rusty and normal in the morning sun, but higher up things had changed. The faded black tatters and discolored plastic windows were gone, replaced by a new vinyl top with new, clear windows. The new top was bright green.
Booster must have seen me walk up. He came out, bleary-eyed. ‘Nice, huh?’ he asked, a bit tentatively.
‘Christmassy,’ I said.
‘Ah, the red … and the green, I get it.’ He managed a hopeful smile. ‘Your Jeep is a work in progress,’ he said, pointing to the rust. ‘That will eat up more of the red paint, and in four or five years your Jeep will be mostly green and brown, like camouflage, in the woods. Then it won’t be so Christmassy.’
‘Why?’ I asked, warming to the notion of motoring about in something that was itself more warming than the flapping shreds of my previous top.
‘We drove the Jeep out back and removed the seats and the carpet for the power-washing phase. The kid doing it was new, and not practiced with a nozzle, though in fairness your vinyl had deteriorated past fragile and was mostly a collection of ribbons. The kid blew your shreds right off the metal bows. Some of them went in the river and, well …’ He pointed up into an old oak by the water.
I followed his gaze. There, flapping proudly high in the tree, was a strip of sun-faded vinyl, a remnant of my former top.
‘Fortunately one of my clients had an inexpensive replacement,’ he said, meaning a chop shop.
‘Green?’ I asked him. ‘I’ve never seen a green top. And won’t such an unusual one be easy to trace, and tie my Jeep to another crime—?’
He stopped me with a raised hand. ‘Out of state situation, Dek. The owner and what’s left of his green-topped Jeep are long gone.’ Then he added, ‘I’m only charging an extra fifty for the top, and that includes installation. Plus, you can now see out of windows that are clear and not fogged like severe cataracts. You’ll be dry and safe for years.’
The improvements were a bargain, indeed. I peeled off two hundred and fifty dollars and gave it to him. ‘Did a tail ever show up last night?’
‘That’s another reason why installing the new top was wise, if it was a cop. Someone pulled up across the street after you left.’
‘Unmarked sedan?’
‘Someone in a bad-ass black Ford pick-up truck, thousand dollar chrome wheels with big off-road tires. It was a fifty-thousand-dollar ride, at least.’
‘Too flashy for a cop?’
‘Cop or not, whoever was watching maybe thought you brought your Jeep in for a new top instead of a cleanse, so that’s a good thing, too. Speaking of cops, we put your Jeep up on the hoist to do the underside. Want to guess what else we blew off with the power washer?’
‘A button?’
He nodded. ‘A nice little GPS transmitter – expensive, better than the cops typically use to keep track of someone. I threw it in the river. Don’t get cocky. They’ll find a way to attach another one.’
I drove home, red bodied and green topped, tempted to break out singing ‘Silent Night’ in salute to my wonderfully silent new top. And when I pulled up to the turret, things were even better. Amanda’s old white Toyota Celica was parked at the curb.
I found her sitting on the bench down by the river. ‘You still have the Toyota,’ I said in obvious admiration. It was the car she’d owned when we first met.
She gestured at the water flushing debris to the west. ‘I’ve missed this.’
‘I’ve missed you missing this.’
She leaned closer to me. ‘I’m playing hooky,’ she whispered, as though someone might be listening.
Her breath warmed my cheek. I missed that, too.
‘Let’s go someplace like we used to do. Let’s just get up and go,’ she said, watching my eyes for enthusiasm. It was a major step forward, coming over so spontaneously, and must have taken some courage. ‘Or … you already had plans,’ she said, grinning.
‘I need to go somewhere.’
‘Last night you said you had to go to Reeder, Oregon and the trail of Willard Piser posing as Dainsto Runney?’
‘It’s even more of a horse race now to see whether it’s Bohler or Marilyn’s killer that gets me tagged for Marilyn’s murder. Bohler followed me after I left your place.’
‘Oooh,’ she said, ‘your plans fit so nicely with my plans.’ She told me exactly how.
‘No,’ I said.
‘You’ll fly coach,’ she said, and linked her arm in mine.
We walked up the hill to the street and she laughed her good laugh at the sight of the Jeep. ‘Your Jeep …’
‘Elegant, yes?’
‘Santa will retire his reindeer, for sure,’ she said. ‘A green top on a red Jeep.’
I could only preen.