Dolly's timeless power and grace. Ted and Sheena turned and marched for the main entrance, suddenly swinging their overstated briefcases and grinning at each other.
Okay. I took my foot off Dolly's brake and I backed her out until we were clear of the van, which took several seconds. Then I wrenched her steering wheel left and spurted forward with an engine thrust no one could ignore.
I braked in front of the briefcase buddies with a deliberate squeal.
They'd turned to regard my car with dropped jaws as I lowered the passenger side window.
"Delilah ... ?" Undead Ted began, his face turning pale saffron.
Sheena strutted toward Dolly.
"Delilah Street and her Cadillac clunker, my, my. I thought you'd hitched a ride out of town on a Kansas twister."
"No. That teensy little tornado missed me. Don't you two look sharp. Must have had a lunch date with the new management. Care to share the contents of those briefcases with a fellow reporter?"
"It's ... it's nothing," Undead Ted spilled. Of course it was something, something they didn't want anyone to know about.
Sheena keyed his shin with her spike heel.
"Looks like payday to me," I said, watching Ted writhe in intimidated silence. What a wimp.
Sheena was advancing as if she was about to do the same damage to Dolly's shiny black side.
"Don't worry," I called, waving my hand. "Lucky for you I'm just visiting."
I accelerated before Sheena's foot could connect with anything but air.
Unfortunately, air is all around us and Sheena was a weather witch.
I hit the power button to lower the top, but that took mucho seconds. They had more time to waste in the fifties and less nimble technology. Dolly accelerated while I punched the side window button closed.
The shadow creeping over me was not just the descending top, but a nasty black cloud the size of a railroad car. My rearview mirror told me raindrops were falling on Dolly's trunk. We sped down the endlessly curving drive. Hailstones were moments behind.
I needed to hit the main street faster. I could hear the brittle pings on the driveway behind me. At a crosswalk near the parking lot's other end I roared Dolly onto the broad intersecting sidewalk and then cross-country on WTCH-TVs expansive green lawn, under a landscaped grove of maple trees, over the street curb - ouch on the springs! - down a few blocks, and under a gas station canopy.
"Cool wheels, lady," exclaimed the teenaged male store clerk who'd rushed out to ogle Dolly. He cocked an ear at the hail ping-ponging off the metal canopy above us. "That rainstorm came up quick."
"Easy come, easy go," I said. Sheena wouldn't want any inexplicable weather phenomena reported too close to WTCH. "I don't need fuel, although this is a thirsty big girl."
"What year?" he asked, following me as I circled Dolly looking for damage, as puppy-doggish as Undead Ted was these days. "Maybe fifty-eight, sixty? Biarritz! I heard Cary Grant owned one of these."
I stopped cold. "You know who Cary Grant was?"
"Sure. He was a movie star back in the last century. They owned a lot of cool cars. Can I look under the hood?"
Wouldn't you know Dolly would get a proposition in Wichita and I wouldn't?
"Sorry. I've got to get going. But you can polish her tail fins and trunk before we leave. Don't want any dust spots on that finish."
"Gollee, no."
I provided a flannel cloth from the glove compartment and he went to work.
You were really thumbing your nose at fate back there, Irma noted as I finally pulled back onto the main drag under a clear sky. You should have had the kid check Dolly's shocks.
I ignored her until she went away.
THE DAY WAS still young and the boys and I hadn't planned to meet back at Tallgrass's place until much later. I suspected some beer-accompanied reminiscences of mutual FBI days would occupy them after the pasture inspection.
Before my visit to Wichita delved too far into my uneasy past, I decided to do some less scary snooping on my own behalf. Dolly seemed inclined to cruise the familiar neighborhood past the station, so we veered together to the site of my rented bungalow, which a mighty specific tornado had torn off its foundation.
What a jolt to see a half-completed house already going up on the site. I'd liked my life and my little house and dog and doing a paranormal reporting TV job I thought was important, informing people about their brave newly supernatural world. ...
Construction was idled today, but