Dead In The Water (Rebecca Schwartz Mystery #4) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

beyond redemption. And why? To impress our friends, that’s why. There is no other reason, believe me.” He paused, wrinkling his nose. “You may be wondering why I drive this undersized excuse for a transportation machine. Well, Sylvia got the good car. It’s only temporary, I assure you.”
    He turned into a lot shiny with new BMWs, and that was okay with me. If he wanted to get his vicarious car jollies through me, I’d be glad to go along with the gag—I was sorry now I’d scared him away from the Mercedes lot, but I’d try to make it up to him. I prepared to get rabidly excited about Beamers. Maybe I’d even insist on driving a Jaguar. If there was a Rolls in Monterey County, I might take it for a spin.
    But I did have one needle to deliver. “Esperanza told me you’re such a reverse snob you won’t even get an answering machine.”
    “Rebecca, read my lips. I am from the Southland, where we worship the automobile. We’re talking religion here.”
    “Praise Henry Ford and pass the cell phone.”
    “But Esperanza’s damn right about those dumb machines. A stupid toy for stupid people who keep hoping someone will have something interesting to say to them sometime.”
    “That’s certainly what I hope when I play my messages. You sound like someone from another century.”
    “Only in certain areas. I’ll tell you something—as soon as I can afford a nice car, I
am
getting a phone for it.” He gave me his million-dollar smile. “It’s the L.A. way.”
    He led me over to a metallic-finish convertible, somewhere between bronze and silver, very discreet, very professional.
    “This one might do,” I said.
    Julio was walking around it, admiring from all angles. He patted it. “Gorgeous little 325i, aren’t you, baby?” His tone had turned to baby talk. Sometimes I feel men and women will never begin to understand each other, and there’s no point trying.
    His hand still caressing the paint job, he looked back at me, reluctantly, I thought. “I really like these better than the 560 SLs, which would run you at least sixty-five. Little baby like this, you could probably get for thirty-five.”
    My knees turned to Jell-O. Humor him, I told myself. This whole adventure is for his amusement. It’s nothing to do with you. “Let’s look at it in red,” I croaked.
    “Are you getting a cold?” he said, but the late-arriving salesman, not nearly so Johnny-on-the-spot as Black Magic, had now caught up with us and sailed into his role: “Yes, ma’am, I’ve got one that’s going to make you forget you ever heard the name Mercedes, Saab, Jaguar, anything else.”
    “Red?”
    “Just like this one, only the color a fire engine gnashes its teeth and dreams about being.”
    The salesman was hardly taller than me, and wiry, dressed in an absurdly fashionable baggy suit, like something you’d wear to a South of Market nightclub but otherwise wouldn’t be caught dead in. It was a shiny olive, with a small print in it. One lock of hair trailed down his silly-looking back, and his voice was shrill. It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d looked like Jabba the Hut. Julio was hanging on every word, and the words had started to come with the speed of semiautomatic weapon fire. Me, I was more or less tuning out.
    Idly, I followed the two of them, mentally sketching a picture for a kid’s book—a sleeping fire engine, closed eyes where its windshield should be, great gnashing teeth set into its hood. All the cars on the lot looked pretty much alike to me. That is, they did until I spotted one that looked different. Very different. Somebody’s trade-in probably.
    It looked entirely out of place on that lot, exuding as it did a quiet dignity yet earthy charm. It was a car that looked like it could go anywhere, indeed practically seemed to be in motion already, though it was just sitting there lording it over the Beamers. If you scratched the paint, it wouldn’t be a major tragedy, it would just give it more character, as if it needed any. This was a car with the character of a stagecoach or a hansom cab, maybe even the Orient Express.
And
it was a convertible every bit as snappy as those little 325s.
    I stopped dead.
    “Rebecca? What is it?”
    “I didn’t know they came in white.”
    “White? Why not white? We’ve got every color you can name and then some.
Sure
they come in white,” said the salesman.
    I walked, as if in a trance, toward the car I knew I had to have.
    “Rebecca!” shouted Julio.