FRIDAY morning was clear, sunny, and nearly ten degrees Celsius, or pushing fifty on the old Fahrenheit scale. We were getting what looked like an early spring in Eastern Ontario, thankfully. By now, the start of the third week of April, the shop was already busy with the early bird customers wanting their sports cars sorted out after five or six months of hibernation. The pace would accelerate right through to late June, and then level off a bit.
I parked the MGA on the forecourt of the shop just after 8 a.m., to find Marjorie already at her desk.
“You’re early, Marj; how are you?”
All I got was a curt “Fine” as she continued going through stacks of invoices.
I filled up a mug from the coffee machine and then walked through to my own office to go through the mail. Presumably, a problem had developed last night with Marjorie’s “Mr. X” of the moment. We all knew from experience it was better to just leave her alone.
The rest of the gang started drifting in, and the day proceeded. JP set off to pick up a box of oil filters and the repaired radiator for the Mark II. Dougald fiddled with the TR6. Reg finally appeared and stuck his head in my doorway, looking not too much the worse for wear.
“How did the ’A perform, Guv’nor, or need I arsk?”
“Ran like a charm, and stopped on a dime, Reg. Good job.”
He performed a mock bow, and then cracked his knuckles.
“What next, then, oh exalted one?”
“Well, the toilets need a good scrubbing – immediately – you miserable serf.”
“Would that be after I licks up the spilled engine oil, or before?”
We carried on for a bit like this. It’s something of a ritual.
Eventually, we agreed that he would try adjusting the Sprite’s clutch play to see if it cured that problem. Otherwise it was going to be an engine out job. Meanwhile, JP came back with filters and the Mark II’s re-cored radiator. Dougald downed tools on the TR6 to install the Jag’s rad so we could get that svelte saloon off the main hoist, freeing it for other cars, probably the Sprite. The Midget, needing only a minor tune-up, was at the end of the queue. I would tackle that after lunch.
Marjorie’s mood seemed to lighten as the morning progressed. She left a message for the MGA’s owner that it was ready to be picked up, then reminded me about the lawyer’s XK150S. Dougald agreed to start work on it tomorrow morning, Saturday, to begin with, although he wanted to be at home in the afternoon to clean up his garden now that all the snow had melted away.
By nearly lunchtime, I had sorted out the mail, signed lots of utility payments, and spoken to the Triumph club president, who thanked me for holding the technical session the previous night and booked his own blaze orange Spitfire in for Monday. The president of the Jag club, Jim Bartlett, had also called me on my direct line. This guy was extremely demanding, and a pain in the arse with it. Very rich from high-tech stocks he managed to sell off before the last technology bubble burst, nothing but the best would do. This day his immaculate black E-Type needed a minor service and cleaning. He would be able to bring it in at 1 p.m. for collection at 5.
“Hmm. Well, Jim, I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”
“But I was counting on it.”
For types who didn’t drive their cars that much, preferring to trailer them to shows and events so that only a little dust-off was needed to win a trophy, it was best to appeal to their gigantic egos.
“Jim, we want to do a good job here on your car. If you brought it here today, it would be a Friday afternoon rush job, and I don’t think either of us would be satisfied with that.”
I went on like this at some length, being careful not to look directly at Marjorie, who I could see out of the corner of my eye was making silent choking and gagging gestures. Bartlett and I finally settled on Tuesday, a day I told him his car would get the attention “it deserves.”
“Conn, you are so full of it,” Marjorie said.
“Marj, it’s sort of true.”
“But he’s such a jerk.”
“I know, but hey, we’ll take the business.”
Most of the Jag club people were well-heeled. They had to be since their cars are about the most expensive to maintain properly. Thanks to Dougald’s expertise with classic Jaguars, we were the garage of choice for most of this club’s members and I wanted to keep it that way. I wasn’t above a little customer soft-soaping. We were running a business after all.
We offered detailed cleaning as an extra service to all our clients. Demand from Jag club members especially had turned this into a nice little money maker for us. JP had shown himself to be adept at this work, going through lots of Q-tips, rags, and every type of leather, vinyl, cloth, carpet, chrome, bodywork, and glass cleaning product available. He had put together his own small suitcase of supplies and specialized probes and implements for getting into hard-to-clean places and woe betide anyone who raided it. The other upside of this was that JP was learning a lot about these cars as he cleaned them inside and out.
Lunchtime came. As usual, everyone but I went off the premises to one of any number of bistros in the neighbourhood. I encouraged this, actually, since it was important that they got out for some fresh air and a break from the garage environment. JP, Reg, and Dougald usually went together for soup and a sandwich at the coffee shop chain store down the street, while Marjorie was often escorted to lunch by one of her beaus.
As I munched on a cheese and tomato sandwich at my desk, a truck pulled up at the front of the shop hauling a flatbed trailer loaded with the gunmetal blue S-Type. I went outside and walked toward the truck.
“Mr. Anderson?” the mustached driver asked.
“Yes.”
His passenger leaned forward for a look.
“I’m Bill Tate, Public Works,” the passenger said, pulling an ID card out of his shirt pocket and handing it to me across the driver.
“Okay, you’ll have to take it round to the back and unload it there,” I said.
By the time the driver had reversed the rig into our back compound, up the ramp, and through the rear bay door into the shop, Dougald, Reg, and JP were back from lunch.
Taking his time, the driver lowered the flatbed, unchained the car’s wheels, set up wheel ramps at the rear of the flatbed, and winched the car off. The driver drove his truck and the now empty flatbed out the way he’d come. JP trotted behind to secure the sliding rear compound gate once the driver was on his way.
“I’ll explain all this later, guys. Leave it alone for now,” I said to Dougald and Reg, who were staring at the sedan. I took Tate through to my office and closed the door.
Thirtyish, blondish, but already balding and slightly overweight, Tate was wearing the federal government junior officer “uniform” – khaki trousers, dark blue blazer, black wingtips, white button-down shirt, and nondescriptly patterned red tie.
He declined coffee and sat there flipping the catches on his government-issue dark burgundy briefcase. In it would be a book of taxi chits, his bilingual calling cards, a cell phone, a few file folders, and probably his lunch.
“I guess we’d better get the work order filled out, Mr. Anderson …”
I held up my hand.
“Before we do that, I’ll bring Marjorie in, but first, a couple of questions … Bill, right?”
“Sure.”
“What do you know about this car?”
He looked puzzled.
“My supervisor told me to organize collecting it from the Quebec Sûreté compound in Gatineau. We use a tow truck service.”
“I thought Public Works had its own tow trucks, and servicing garages, too, for that matter.”
“We’re closing all that side down. Everything gets contracted out now. It’s all about reducing capital expenditure.”
Public Works is the procurement department for Canada’s federal government. Whether it’s one computer or an entire office building, fifty complete workstations or a crate of toilet paper, if it’s used by one of Canada’s nearly half a million federal public servants, Public Works organizes the supply of it one way or another.
I looked through my internal office window at the car in question.
“We serviced this car before. Were you involved in that?”
“No.”
“Okay, perhaps our old file will show that.”
I thought some more. Tate obviously didn’t know much about the circumstances around this car, and probably couldn’t care less.
I could see that Marjorie was back from lunch and waved to attract her attention.
She poked her head through my office doorway.
“Marj, I left an invoice in your in-tray last night. Jaguar S-Type from three months ago. Can you get it, your own file for the car, and you might as well bring in a new work order form.”
Marjorie had perked up completely over lunch, and sashayed away from my office doorway with a toss of her hair. She breezed back in with a file folder, a fresh work order form, and the invoice my former DM had given me last night before the Triumph club members arrived. I reached for the invoice, and looked at it again more closely than I had when Jill Bryson had handed it to me.
According to the Britfit invoice, the second page of the work order form, Dougald had serviced the car January 5. In the signature block area for whoever took receipt of the car was an illegible scrawl.
I asked Marjorie for her file, and she handed it over.
In it was the first form, the work order. In the customer block was a stamped imprint showing Public Works and Government Services Canada with its Gatineau headquarters address, phone, and fax numbers. On the Contact line was a similar scrawl. Could have been “BS” something. I looked at the other pieces of paper in the file. A PWGSC requisition form, a second copy of the invoice with Marjorie’s jottings, and a buff stub showing that a cheque had indeed been issued and sent to us for the full amount on January 27. Three weeks between submitting an invoice and receiving payment was lightning speed for government departments.
I looked at Marjorie, started to ask her one thing, and then changed my mind.
I turned to Tate.
“This is a general service and clean-up, right?”
“Yeah. When can you get it done?”
“Probably by Tuesday unless we find something untoward in the mechanical line. You’ll leave your card?”
“Oh sure, sure. Thanks a lot.”
I left Marjorie and Tate to sort out the work order and changed into my overalls to tackle tuning up the Midget. Paperwork was all well and good, but it was time to get my hands dirty.