The Big Cat Nap

towed to a salvage yard and the insurance company owns it.”
    “Makes sense, but insurance isn’t my field. I just know I pay too damned much for all my policies.”
    “It’s cheaper to die. Then again, maybe it isn’t. Isn’t the average cost of a funeral seven thousand dollars?”
    “Now, why do you know that? Harry, you’re ghoulish. I don’t want to know the cost of the average wedding.”
    “Twenty thousand,” Susan called into the phone.
    “That can’t be right.” Franny was horrified.
    “I think it is,” Susan replied. “ ’Course, in Albemarle, it’s probably more.”
    “Is your daughter in love?” Franny asked.
    Susan’s daughter, Brooks, was still in college.
    “No, but Ned and I are planning ahead. We don’t want to be bankrupted when the time comes. Thank God our other child is a son.”
    “More power to you.” Franny meant it. “I missed the reproduction boat.”
    “There’s still time,” Susan teased her.
    “I sincerely hope not.” Franny giggled, still buoyant over her good news.
    “She’s right, Franny. A woman in England gave birth in her sixties,” Harry told her.
    “You know,” Franny became thoughtful, “it’s wonderful. If a woman wants to do it, good for her. Used to be we only had but so much time, whereas men could go on and on. I wasn’t ready at twenty. I’d be a disaster now. Oops, someone at my door. Harry, I’ll see you at group.”
    “Great news, girl.” Harry hung up.
    “She’ll need to be peeled off the ceiling.” Susan reached into the fridge to refill her glass.
    Three ice cubes clinked into a glass, tea over that, and Susan handed Harry her own glass.
    “Susan, do me a favor. Call Vivien Bly and ask her where Safe and Sound takes totaled cars.”

    Sitting down at the kitchen table, Pewter now in front of her at eye level, Susan bargained. “Tell me why I’m doing this.”
    “Are you going to eat anything?”
Pewter put on her sweetest puss face.
    “Pewter, get off the table,” Harry ordered.
    “She’s not going to listen to you.” Susan stared straight into Pewter’s gorgeous eyes.
    “You really like me, don’t you? I like you, too. How about some tuna? I like turkey, too.”
    “Fatty, fatty, two by four,”
Tucker sang under the table. The gray cat pointedly ignored the corgi.
    “Harry,” Susan demanded.
    “All right.” Harry sat opposite Susan, whose pageboy haircut looked so good on her. “I expect everything is taken out or off squashed vehicles and sold. The hulk is then sold for scrap. Logical?”
    “Well, if they do it to human bodies, I’m sure they do it to cars,” Susan agreed.
    “I have a hunch. That’s why I want to find Tara Meola’s car. I looked at Herb’s radiator and I, um, have a hunch.”
    “Tell me.”
    “Not until I’m more sure. I don’t want to look stupid and I don’t want to point the finger.”
    “I understand not pointing the finger, but looking stupid? You might want to revise that.”
    “I love you, too.”
    Smirking, Susan whipped out her cellphone, dialed. “Vivien, Susan here.”
    “Still on for Friday?”
    “I am. I sure hope the heat has cooled down by the time we go out.”
    “Should. Well, that’s what coolers on your golf cart are for. I can taste one of my frozen daiquiris now.”
    “I’ll sure want one when we’re done. Vivien, I was wondering if you could help me,” Susan asked.
    “I can try,” she replied, a hint of eagerness in her voice.
    “You and Latigo are still building Safe and Sound. You know auto insurance.”
    “It interests me. It’s what brought Latigo and me together. His first wife, although she really did help start the business, wanted to spend his money. I want to make it,” she forthrightly said.
    “As you know, Harry and I serve on the vestry board at St. Luke’s. Your husband kindly wrote the reverend’s 1994 Chevy off. What happens to that truck? I assume it’s stripped for anything of value.”
    “Yes, it is. Sometimes we tow the vehicle to a salvage yard. If the motor and other parts are quite serviceable, we tow it to ReNu, where those parts are removed, sometimes refabricated, if you will, or simply put on the shelf until they can be used again.”
    “So they’re rebuilt?”
    “Sometimes they don’t even need that. They’re serviceable with a little fixing up. But what’s left if they’re not serviceable is always sold for salvage. As you know, those prices go up and down like waves in the ocean. Anything