AMES SLOWED THE CAR TO take the sharp turn down to the Van Eyck garage. He very nearly stopped altogether, so daunted was he to be once again facing Tina Van Eyck, but he reminded himself this was work. His job was to find out about the damage to the car that had been found. O’Brien was back at the station, finally tracking down the licence plate.
He pulled up in front of the garage and could see the lights inside the bay through the small windows at the top of the bay doors. The tow truck was parked at one side of the garage. They must have already backed the car in, and he hoped they were looking at it now. He took a deep breath, and then got out, grateful that the parking area and the path to the door were beaten down so he wouldn’t get snow inside his rubber overshoes.
He pushed open the door to the office attached to the working bay, and called out, “Hello? Mr. Van Eyck?”
“In here,” Van Eyck said. He extracted himself from under the hood of the car and came forward, wiping his hands on an oily rag. “Sergeant Ames. Good to see you. Tina, it’s Sergeant Ames!” he called out toward the back of the shop.
Ames removed his hat. His eyes had to adjust to the dark of the repair bay. “Is that the car?”
“That’s the one. Tina and I pulled it out of the snowdrift. A bit of a mess inside. The grill was smashed in and it damaged the radiator, which in turn pushed into the fan.”
“Ah,” said Ames. “Oh, hello, Miss Van Eyck.” Tina had come out of the shadows and now stood just behind her father.
Flashing him a massive smile that did nothing for Ames’s determination to be professional, Tina nodded. “Sergeant.”
“So,” continued Ames, “the car must have hit something nearby? Wouldn’t all that damage have stopped it in its tracks?”
The mechanic was about to answer when the phone rang in the office behind Ames. “I’d better get that. Tina, show the sergeant the damage and explain.” He hurried past Ames to pick up the phone on the desk.
“You better come through, then,” Tina said. She was wearing coveralls and a thick wool shirt, and her hair was mostly obscured by her usual workaday turban.
Ames pulled his eyes away from the blond curls that had escaped the turban, and reminded himself firmly that this avenue of possible romance had long since left the barn, or perhaps, he amended, the garage, and tried to focus on the engine into which she now shone the trouble light.
“In answer to your question, no. The car could have gone on for some distance. As you see, the radiator was beat up, and this pushed against the fan, here.” She pushed the light farther into the engine and pointed. Ames leaned in to look.
“And there,” she continued, “the housing for the fan belt is a little bent, but the belt held on. And the water didn’t drain all at once from the radiator, so there was still a bit of life in her.”
Ames was about to stand up when he looked at the fan belt again, and then went to move the trouble light closer, managing to graze Miss Van Eyck’s hand in the process. “Oh, sorry,” he said. With a glance, Tina gave him the light to hold, and looked toward where he pointed. “The fan belt is quite worn along here, on this one side. Could that be a sign that the car was driven some distance, rubbing against the bent housing?”
Tina stood up and beamed at Ames. “Bingo! Well done, Sergeant. That’s exactly right. My guess is it was driven with the belt sawing away on the bent housing, until the radiator emptied. Now, I couldn’t say how it got into that ridiculous position off the road. The driver could have driven off on purpose, but why? Or the driver could have lost control of the vehicle trying to keep it going when it was dying, or just simply skidded and lost control. The conditions certainly have been bad, especially for inexperienced drivers, for example.”
“It might depend,” Ames said, handing back the trouble light, “on whether the driver wanted to hide the car or not, say, if it were stolen. At least until the snow cleared up, and they’d gotten clean away. What is your speculation about what the car could have hit?”
“Dad and I thought about that, didn’t we, Dad?” Mr. Van Eyck had rejoined them and was nodding.
“It wasn’t something stationary like a tree. You can see the dent in the bumper, here,” he said as Tina shone the light to where her father pointed. “It’s a good strong bumper, to be sure, but whatever it hit flew up, landed on the hood, and cracked the windshield.”
Ames saw the windshield properly in the light for the first time. Whatever it was had hit the windshield mainly on the passenger side, but the cracks continued right across to the driver side. “It must have been hard for him to see where he was going,” he suggested.
“One headlight out as well,” said Van Eyck, showing Ames where Tina was now shining the light. The passenger-side headlight glass was broken, and the bulb inside cracked.
“So it hit something that was not stationary: an animal, a person?”
“That’s about the size of it, Sergeant. Have you got the other half of this accident somewhere?”
Ames nodded. “We may have. A man from just a ways up the road was found dead. We think it was a hit and run. I mean, he wasn’t found dead here, he was found dead on the other side of town; that’s why I wondered about how far it could travel with that damage. Well, thank you, both. I’d best get back and let the inspector know. Trouble is, we have another car in town that’s banged up as well.” Ames put on his hat. One of them was bound to be the one. He’d have to have a closer look at the car they’d taken from Gaskell’s workmate. “At least I feel like I know what to look for.”
“I can come and have a look at it for you, if you like,” Tina offered, glancing at her father.
“Oh. Would you? That would be helpful.” Ames tried to rein in his enthusiasm for this idea.
“Yup. I can go up to town and meet you after I’ve cleaned up here. Will that do?”
“Gosh, yes. Thank you!”
“Won’t you stay and have a cup of coffee, Sergeant? We were just going to take a break ourselves,” Van Eyck said.
“Thanks all the same,” Ames said with genuine regret. “Inspector Darling will want to get my report.”
Tina walked Ames out to the car. “Thanks for attending to it so quickly,” he said.
“All part of the service. What’s on at the movies?”
“Oh,” said Ames, his hand on the door handle. “I’m not sure. I . . .”
“Well, why don’t you find out? I might want to stay on and see it after I’ve looked at the car and had a bit of dinner,” Tina said.
“WELL,” SAID TINA, cocking her head thoughtfully. “This one has been through the wars as well. You can see that whoever drove it ran into things all the time. Dents and scratches along the sides, a dent in the back bumper. I’d say he backed into a post rather than got rear-ended. That would look different.”
They were standing in the alley behind the police station where Gaskell’s car had been towed. It was rapidly getting dark and a wind had whipped up and was tunnelling through the alley. Tina’s green winter coat hem was lifting, and she had her arms crossed to keep the heat in. Ames’s hat was pulled down and he had his hands in the pockets of his coat.
“It wouldn’t surprise me. From what we know of him I’d be amazed to learn he was ever sober, including when he was on the road. What about this, in the front? The fender is bent badly right here and there’s a crack along the bottom of the windshield, though nothing wrong with the grill like we saw in the other one.”
Tina nodded. “It is possible it hit an animal or something. This bend on the right side of the hood could have come from something landing on it. Too bad there’s no way to tell when it might have happened. But you want to know if he could have hit your dead guy.”
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact.”
“Let me go on record as saying this car could have hit someone, but given the damage on the other car, I’d bet on that one.”
“Hmm. Right. That’s something anyway. Let’s get inside out of this gale.” He took her elbow gently and guided her along the slippery alleyway around to the street and the front door of the station, where the lights were already on, giving it an almost cheerful air.
“This car was borrowed by a workmate of the victim’s,” he said, stamping his feet on the mat just inside the door. “They weren’t on very good terms.”
O’Brien, who was packing up to go home, looked up as they came in, and nodded, with a slight lift of the eyebrows indicating his surprise at seeing Ames and the woman he thought of as “the lady mechanic” together, she in a very becoming red hat. In the corner, Terrell was at his desk with the phone receiver to his ear. He hung up the phone and jumped up, waving at Ames and almost betraying excitement.
“Miss Van Eyck, how nice to see you,” he said, approaching them. “Sergeant, here’s something interesting. Thanks to Sergeant O’Brien we’ve finally found out who that car is registered to!”
O’Brien, not wanting to let Terrell have any of the credit, said, “Miss Rose Scott. Now then. What do you think of that?”
“Miss Scott?” Ames frowned. “That accounts for her missing car, anyway. Does the inspector know this?”
Shaking his head, O’Brien took his hat off the stand. “You won’t find him, I’m afraid. Already decamped. And the night man is not in yet, so one of you will have to hold the fort. Good night, everyone.” He was not known to stay past his appointed quitting time. His wife had dinner on the table at five, and O’Brien never liked to miss a meal.
When the door had closed on the desk sergeant, Ames, Tina, and Terrell stood uncomfortably for a moment in silence.
“It’s good to see you, too, Constable Terrell,” Tina said finally. “I hope the sergeant here isn’t working you too hard.” She had a soft spot for Terrell because he’d handled a situation she’d found herself in the previous month with extraordinary delicacy. She wondered for a moment why she wasn’t contemplating going out to dinner and a film with him instead of Ames, who, she maintained, had been an absolute ass on that occasion.
“He only works me as hard as he works himself,” Terrell said gallantly. Another silence.
“Listen, I’ll get myself off. I can see your day isn’t over yet. Dad will be happy to see me back in time for dinner after all,” Tina said. She was holding her handbag in both hands, looking from Ames to Terrell, and then turned to leave.
Ames leaped to open the door. “I could—”
“No, you couldn’t,” she said, smiling. “You heard him. You only work him as hard as you work yourself. You can’t leave him alone here after that testimonial. However, I am prepared to give this another try. How are you fixed for Saturday? I’ll drive in and meet you.”
“No, no. I’ll come and pick you up.” He pulled himself into a more confident pose. “Look, if this is to be a proper date”—there, he’d said it—“then I pick you up, and I take you back.”
“Are we calling it that? A date?”
“We are,” he said, more bravely than he felt. She was quite capable of pulling the rug out even after she’d invited him to stand on it.
“Fine, then. See you on Saturday at six. Don’t be late.” She turned to go. “Oh, and I feel I should warn you. I’m not the easiest person in the world.”
“Things seem to be all right with you and Miss Van Eyck,” Terrell observed when Ames was back inside.
“She’s not actually snapping my head off, if that’s what you mean.” Not that he didn’t have some misgivings about what “not the easiest person” might mean, or why she’d produced that observation just now. “Now, what does this all mean?” Ames plunked himself into O’Brien’s chair. He felt a combination of bitter disappointment that he was not heading off to dinner and a film with Tina Van Eyck right then and elation that he’d had the sheer face to insist that Saturday would be a proper date. A date between two people who liked each other. She hadn’t objected. That was something. And he had a fleeting thought that for once it wasn’t so clear who had actually had the upper hand in the conversation. “Miss Van Eyck had a look at Gaskell’s car, and it, too, could have hit someone, though she felt the car we now know is registered to Miss Scott is the more likely candidate. Now, that is one for the books. But, we have two cars, either one of which could have killed Gaskell. One puts Mackenzie in the frame, especially as he owed Gaskell money; the other puts . . . who in the frame? Miss Scott? But surely not, because she is knocked out on the floor of her cottage at the time. Miss Keeling? We now know she threatened him.”
Terrell pulled up a chair. “It is more logical, on the face of it, that it was Mackenzie. They might easily have gotten into a quarrel when they’d been drinking, there was the rankling money issue, and who knows what insults were traded, and God knows what else. If on the other hand it’s Miss Scott’s car that’s done the hit and run, we have to look for a Mr., or Miss, if we like Keeling, X. Someone who hit Miss Scott and stole her car. Then, sometime in the course of the night, drove it all the way to town and beyond, hit Gaskell, and then drove the car most of the way back, abandoned it, and went . . . where? Are we back to looking for the elusive Miss Keeling?”
“It’s a sorry old world if people go around running each other over because they’ve borrowed money and haven’t returned it,” commented Ames. “I’m not sure about Miss Keeling, but I certainly had the feeling that Mackenzie was not telling the whole truth. The car is damaged in the right sort of way, or right enough, anyway. He drove the car to Castlegar, and our corpse met his end on the road between Castlegar and Nelson. That’s a lot of coincidence gathering in one place. I’ll bring him in for questioning tomorrow. It’s a confounded nuisance that Miss Scott can’t remember things properly, and we still have no idea where Miss Keeling is!”