Chapter 2 - Cold Engines & Hot Lines
The thermometer outside the kitchen window read nineteen degrees. In Portage County, late November didn't ask for permission; it drove an icy wedge under every loose shingle and tested every battery cell in town.
I was at the shop by six-thirty. The blue neon sign of *Whitcomb Auto Repair* buzzed through the freezing fog. My left hip felt like somebody had driven a dull wood chisel into the joint, but I refused to limp in front of my crew. Mack, my lead mechanic who had worked side-by-side with my late husband Thomas since 1989, was already filling the drip coffee maker with dark roast.
"You look stiff as a frozen tailpipe, Boss," Mack rumbled, eyeing the way I braced my arm against the steel door jamb. "Black ice on the porch?"
"Something like that," I said. "Just a pest that needs putting down."
Before Mack could ask another question, gravel crunched violently in the front lot. Headlights slashed through the shop's frosted front windows. A silver Audi S5—a car Grant Voss couldn't afford on his junior loan-officer salary if his life depended on it—skidded to a halt in front of Bay 1, blocking the customer lane.
Grant didn't bother shutting his engine off. He slammed the German car's door and stormed into the front office, the chime above the door rattling against the glass. He had swapped his Thanksgiving cashmere for an Italian wool topcoat, but his face was flushed red, his tie loosened, and his eyes wild.
"You embarrassed me in front of my family, Leona," Grant barked, slamming an open palm down onto the laminate counter where my service tickets sat. "You declined that card while Wallace and his business partner were standing right behind me. Do you have any idea how that looks?"
Mack stepped out of the bay, wiping grease from his forearms with a red rag. Mack was six-foot-two and had arms like cured hams. He didn't say a word; he just leaned against the doorframe, watching Grant like an uninspected tire with a visible bubble on the sidewall.
I didn't blink. I didn't raise my voice. I took a slow sip of black coffee, set the mug down on a work invoice, and looked Grant up and down.
"You kicked a sixty-four-year-old widow to the floor in front of twenty people yesterday, Grant. If you think your credit card embarrassment is your biggest problem this morning, your head is softer than I thought."
Grant let out a sharp, dismissive breath, waving his hand as if swatting away a fly. "It was a joke! A family joke. Everyone laughed. Even Arden laughed."
"Arden didn't laugh," I said coldly. "Arden cried for an hour on the phone this morning when I showed her the eight thousand four hundred dollars you stole from my account to buy your father golf clubs and pay for your Columbus hotel rooms."
Grant’s complexion instantly shifted from angry red to chalk white. His throat bobbed. He glanced sideways at Mack, who took half a step forward, his jaw tight.
"That... that was a temporary float," Grant stammered, dropping his voice an octave. "Arden and I have joint household expenses. I had every intention of balancing it at the end of the fiscal quarter. It's a technicality, Leona. You're blowing this completely out of proportion because your pride is hurt."
"A float?" I picked up a manila folder from the desk and tapped it against the counter. "In Ravenna, Grant, signing another person's name on a business line without authorization is called identity fraud and grand larceny. And starting today, the float has sunk. The mortgage transfer is canceled. The emergency card is melted down. And the forty thousand dollars I loaned you for that house? I want it back. All of it."
Grant sneered, recovering his arrogance. He leaned over the counter, trying to use his height to crowd me. "You gave us that money, old woman. It was a gift. There's no paperwork. You can't touch that house, and you can't touch me. You turn that card back on by noon, or Arden won't be visiting you for Christmas. In fact, you'll never see your grandkids again."
The air in the room went dead cold. Mack took another heavy step, his fists balling up, but I raised my hand.
I looked at the boy my daughter had married. For six years, I had held my tongue while he belittled her, while he spent every dollar she brought home from her teaching job, while he acted like the lord of a manor built on my sweat.
"Grant," I said, my voice deadly quiet. "You have sixty seconds to get that leased piece of German scrap off my property before Mack hooks it up to the wrecker and drops it in the municipal impound lot. And as for the paperwork on that house? You really should have asked what kind of business records Thomas and I kept before you kicked my chair."
Grant stared at me, his eyes narrowing with a flash of panic. He didn't say another word. He spun on his designer heels, bolted out the door, jumped into the Audi, and tore out of the lot, spraying gravel against the chain-link fence.
Mack let out a low whistle. "Want me to follow him, Boss?"
May you like
"No," I said, opening the manila folder. "The law moves slower than a wrecker, Mack, but it crushes a whole lot harder. Call Bob Kowalski down at the title office. Tell him Leona needs the deed vault opened."
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