The Big Cat Nap

having to do with cars, steel, rubber, oil—the prices are volatile. Last year, metal salvage went through the roof. Our profit from that salvage shot up seventeen percent.”
    “I’d throw a party.”
    Vivien replied, “I bought a new set of clubs.”
    “What salvage yard do you use?”
    “Haldane’s Salvage in Stuarts Draft. There used to be yards on Avon and Avon Extended.” She cited a street in Charlottesville. “The congestion, traffic especially, made us switch to Stuarts Draft. Easier to get the vehicles in.”
    Stuarts Draft is a small town between Charlottesville and Staunton.
    “You’ve satisfied our curiosity. See you Friday.”
    Harry walked over to the wall phone, pulled a phone book for Augusta County out of the drawer, located the salvage yard in the yellow pages, and dialed.
    After ascertaining that Safe & Sound had dropped off fifteen vehicles at Haldane’s Salvage in the last two months, Harry asked, “Do you know who used to own those wrecks?”
    “Most times we do,” said Mildred Haldane. “We have paperwork on everything—what’s been removed, what’s left,” the older woman replied with pride. “We’re environmentally concerned. No battery-acid leaks around here.”
    “That’s a big job.”
    “It is, but we’re the best.”
    “Would you mind checking your records to see if you have a busted-up Explorer once owned by Tara Meola?”
    “Pulling it up right now.” Silence followed. “Still here. Hasn’t been crushed yet. Now, that’s a process if you’ve never seen it. A big car reduced to a metal cube—a big cube, but it’s amazing.”
    “Ma’am, that car was stripped down, right?”
    “Oh, yes. Had two wheels left. Even the steering wheel was removed.”
    “Why were two wheels left?”
    “The other two cracked. These days, wheels are one unit. In the old days, they were steel. Now it’s all aluminum, one unit. They’re lighter, so it saves gas. That’s why it costs about four hundred dollars to replace them. Tires, easy. Wheels aren’t anymore.”
    “Cracked?”
    Happy to be knowledgeable, Mildred chirped, “See it all the time. Cheap stuff. You’d be surprised at what I see down here. Sometimes they’ve been welded, which changes the molecular structure. Makes it brittle. See copycats of the original wheels—you know, cheap replacements. People can’t tell the difference.”
    “The two cracked wheels—could they have been replaced?”
    “Cheap, cheap, cheap. Looks just like they came from Ford, though. The destroyed wheels were replacements from an earlier accident. I’d bet on it. Whoever originally owned this Explorer probably did that,” Mildred clucked.
    “Ma’am, thank you. You’ve been very helpful.” Harry hung up the phone, stood leaning against the counter. “Susan, I’m getting the picture.”
    Vivien was also getting the picture. Susan’s highly unusual questions alerted Vivien to something brewing. Miserable as Latigo’s philandering made Vivien, she loved him. She’d protect and stand by him.
    He didn’t deserve it.

M rs. Murphy slept behind Harry’s computer. Pewter sacked out on the tack trunk, while Tucker lay flat in the center aisle of the barn for the cooling breeze. Crickets chirped, and the peepers in the pond sang loudly, melodious songs punctuated by deep bullfrog calls. Flatface lifted off her nest, venturing out for one of her evening food runs.
    Thin tendrils of charcoal clouds floated above the Blue Ridge, now looming and dark. All those thousands and thousands of miles away, white-hot stars sent down their light to shine over those once-mighty mountains. Flatface, flying low, never gave the history of the Blue Ridge Mountains a thought. This geographic phenomenon was all the huge owl knew. Most humans didn’t give the mountains a thought, either, but those who did knew that, before our species walked on earth, the Blue Ridge soared higher than the Alps and the Rockies. The Atlantic Ocean rolled much closer to them than today.
    Harry sat glued to her computer. No T1 lines served her rural community, or most rural communities, for that matter. She had to use an ntelos Air Card, which, though better than nothing, could be slower than she wanted.
    “Dammit, hurry up.”
    Mrs. Murphy opened one golden eye.
“Mama, you need to go to bed.”

    Checking the bed-table clock, Fair thought the same thing. He’d fallen asleep reading
The Utility of Force
, which he’d been intending to read for years. A good