Bell, Book, and Scandal

anymore until the next billing month starts.“
    “Good Lord! I didn’t know you could do that! I’ve been afraid to let my kids have one for fear they’d run up huge bills. You remember when Denise stupidly called that psychic hot line and I got a bill for a hundred and seventy-five dollars?“
    “Of course I remember. You tore through the phone company like Sherman through Atlanta to remove the charge. Anyway, I’ll see how well the kids respond to the plan. And I’ll hunt down any suspicious numbers when I receive the bills.“
    When Jane got into her ancient, disreputable old brown station wagon to go to the grocery store, it wouldn’t start. She called Triple A and they sent a guy out right away.
    “I’m sorry to say, Mrs. Jeffry, that this is beyond fixing unless you want to put thousands of dollars into it to get it running again. Where do you want it towed?“
    Jane was crushed to have lost her old familiar wheels. On the other hand, it was a relief. She’d driven the big wallowing station wagon for too many years already. It embarrassed her to be seen in it. It had once been brown but had faded to a motley tan. The carpets were stained with Kool-Aid. There’d been a crack creeping across the windshield for the last several months. She’d known for a long time that she ought to rid herself of it while it still got her around.
    “I certainly don’t want to put money into the poor thing. And I have no idea where to tow it to,“ she said.
    “May I make a suggestion?“
    “Suggest away, please!“
    “There are lots of charities that will take a car off your hands and you receive a tax break for the donation at the blue-book rate.“
    “It’s certainly not worth the blue-book rate. And it doesn’t even run. How would I deliver it to them even if they were foolish enough to want it?“
    “They’d have it towed at their own expense,“ he said with a big grin.
    “What charities?“ she asked.
    “I’m not sure. I’d guess the Salvation Army. But it’s a guess. I had a customer who donated a dead clunker that was worse than this one to the Kidney Foundation. Got a computer? Look on the Internet for places that take them.“
     

Two
     
    Jane gave up on shopping and cruised the Internet. At noon, she heard a truck fall into the hole at the end of her driveway. She apologized to the driver of the tow truck.
    “Never mind. I should have seen it and straddled it,“ he said. “Is this the car we’re taking away?“ He said this as if it were among the worst he’d hauled off for a long time.
    “Poor old car,“ Jane said. “It’s gotten me through becoming a widow, driving the car pools for a hundred years, hauling birdseed, groceries, and assorted misbehaving children. I’m afraid of what its fate will be. It’s served me well.“
    The tow truck driver looked at her as if she were slightly mad.
    Shelley, having heard the noise, came to her kitchen door in her jeans with an apron over a T-shirt. She looked out for a second, then disappeared.
    By the time the station wagon was gone, Shelley had reappeared looking as if she’d just come from a beauty shop and stopped off at a very expensive dress shop.
    “Why are you dressed so well?“ Jane asked. “Because this is what I wore last night to one of Paul’s dinners for his employees. It was the closest thing at hand. Where’s your car going? What’s wrong with it now?“
    “Nearly everything’s wrong with it. I’m donating it to a charity“
    “What? Somebody wants that car?“
    Jane felt herself very nearly tearing up. “I think
    they’re probably having it gutted and crushed. So they can sell the metal as scrap.“
    “Jane, it’s a vehicle. Not a person.“
    “I know that, Shelley. I’m also having a new driveway put in and acquiring a new friend.“
    “A new friend?“
    “A Jeep. You’re too dressed up to go with me. Change your clothes to ‘business casual’ as they’re calling it in the ads on television. We have an appointment to buy the car this afternoon at two-thirty. Would you drive me? I have no wheels of my own.“
    “A Jeep? Good idea. One of those really big ones, right?“
    “No. It’s a new, smaller one called a Liberty.“
    “How did you find out about it?“ Shelley asked as Jane trailed along while Shelley headed for her own kitchen door.
    “I looked it up on the Internet. Called Mike after he got out of his nine o’clock class at college and asked him a few questions about what I needed for