His Frozen Heart (10 page)

I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.
Her beauty was still visible through her delicate hands draped
gracefully beside her covered-up body. Libby’s clear polish on her
fingernails shined up against the white blanket covering her. Her
toes were covered up by the blanket, but I knew she wore an emerald
green polish with white daises appliqued on them, because mine
looked the same. We had done them together three nights ago. I
tried not to look at her face, but to concentrate on the rest of
her. Larry squeezed my side a second time, silently prodding me to
walk away.

I turned to him and saw tears pouring
down his face. He didn’t share in my guilt, nor was he looking for
the parts of her that this monster hadn’t touched. Larry only saw
the woman he had given his heart to, dancing with the reaper before
his eyes. I wrapped both my arms around him and whispered, “She’s
going to be okay. It’s Libby. She’s too tough to let something like
this take her away from us.”

The doctor saw us walking toward the
door. He handed me his card. Answering my unspoken question in his
clinical tone, “We will keep her sedated for at least another two
days. Call me anytime if you want an update on her
condition.”

“
Thank you. I’ll be back
later to check on her.”

I could sense he wanted to tell me
that looking through the window at her wouldn’t do either of us any
good, but gratefully he said nothing. As Larry and I emerged into
the waiting room, I could see the first rays of dawn showing
through the large windows. My mind was slowly breaking free of the
guilt that had been weighing it down. That guilt was quickly being
replaced by the need for vengeance. Whoever this monster was, I
wanted him caught. I wanted him to pay. I wanted him stuck in a
room with machines keeping him alive.

The police were doing their
investigation, but the key to everything might not be video tapes
and finger prints. The key might be the one person who could not
only tell me who the dirt bag was, but also tell me where I could
find him.

I gave Larry a quick hug. He saw I
didn’t intend to stay in the waiting room and asked, “Where are you
going?”

“
I’ll be back. I need to
see what I can find out about who did this.”

“
The police are already
doing that. If she wakes up, one of us should be here.”

The doctor had already told us both
that Libby wouldn’t be waking up any time soon. I forced a smile at
him as I brushed a stray tear from his cheek, “I’ll be back later.
I’m going to see what I can do to help the cops.”

Almost absently he answered, “Someone
should know something.”

I was that someone. I did know
something, or at least I knew someone who might know something – I
had to find Dave. I gave Larry a soft kiss on the cheek. “I’ll be
back later. You look like hell. You should get some rest. You don’t
want Libby to see you like this when she wakes up.”

Larry’s eyes clouded again, but he
nodded and told me, “Be careful.”

Chapter 7

Dave Brewer had been at the bar last
night. He knew that creepy Teddy guy. If anyone would know where to
tell the police to look for Teddy or the guy who tried to turn my
safety cage into Swiss Cheese, he would.

I hadn’t seen or talked to Dave in
almost two years. The two of us had been thrown together by
circumstance. We had been sort of friends but hadn’t kept in touch
after graduation. He acted strange at the bar last night. He really
wanted me to call him Mark, but given what had transpired the last
few hours, I could see why he wouldn’t want those guys to know his
real name. I googled Dave’s name on my phone, and a half-dozen
David Brewers popped up – none of them seeming to be the right
one.

He had been a talented mechanic, so
maybe he worked for one of the dealerships in town. I could try
calling the local service departments. My heart sank as I thought
about randomly calling every repair shop in the city looking for
him. Even if I stumbled across someone who knew him, I would sound
like a stalker. There had to be another way. It hit me – Kendra
Brennan.

Kendra had always been the busybody in
our class who seemed to know everyone, all their business and then
some. I hated talking to her because she was a gossip, but if
anyone might know where to find him, she would. I looked at my
watch: it was after 7 AM. I opened the Facebook app on my phone and
searched for her – she had already posted something 10 minutes ago.
I typed a personal message, “Hi Kendra. I need your help. Can you
call me as soon as you get this?” I inserted my phone number,
hating the fact that she would now be able to call me whenever the
mood struck her, and pushed “send.” Less than 30 seconds passed
before my phone rang.

Her syrupy sweet voice blared through
my phone, “Caaaaaandy! I haven’t seen you since high school! How
are you?”

She hadn’t seen me since high school
for a reason – I didn’t like her. I hated that I needed her help,
but I did, so I made my voice sound happy to hear from her. “Hi
Kendra, thanks for calling me. I need to get in touch with Dave
Brewer, and I thought you might know where I could find
him.”

“
Dave Brewer? That greasy
loner guy who was in our class?”

“
Yeah, he did some work on
my car, and I need to talk to him. Any idea where he might
be?”

“
I think he works in a body
shop on the west side. Not someplace to go after dark, if you know
what I mean.”

The west side? That narrowed it to
fifty or so possibilities. “Any idea what the name might
be?”

“
Brewer’s Body, or Body by
Brewer or something. I drove by there once – very ghetto. Hey, I
have a great mechanic if you’re looking for one! It’s my
boyfriend’s brother – he’s amazing. Al can fix anything from a
mower to a semi-truck.” She added in a sing-songy voice, “He’s
single, too.”

That was just like Kendra. Not only
was she in everyone’s business, she was forever trying to be a
little matchmaker. “Thanks, I just need to get a hold of Dave, but
I’ll give you a call if I ever need a mechanic.”

Gushing, she asked, “So did you hear
my big news? I’m sure you did. I posted like fifty times on
Facebook, and I changed my profile on Twitter.”

Oh brother, did I even want to know?
“Um, no, I haven’t really been paying attention. What’s new with
you?”

“
I got accepted to do a
year at Oxford in a study abroad program! Eeep, I’m so
excited!”

Trying to match her enthusiasm, “Wow,
that’s great, Kendra.” What I really wanted to say was, “Wow, I’m
thrilled I have another spoiled rich friend with parents who have
more money than sense” – but I kept my thoughts to
myself.

“
I’m going next fall and I
can’t wait . . .” She went into full-blown excited-school-girl
mode. I promptly engaged my tune-out mode. Maybe it was jealousy,
maybe I just didn’t want to hear a blow-by-blow account of how she
was going to experience college at a prestigious international
university while I was still trying to figure out how I would ever
pay back my own student loans to go to college in my hometown. I
tried several times to interrupt, but she just kept talking. She
wouldn’t even let me wedge in a word to let her know I needed to
hang up.

After enough details that I wanted to
find a blindfold and a firing squad, she finally took a breath and
I politely let her know I had to go. I wished her luck in her
semester abroad and hung up. I opened the browser on my phone and
quickly found “Bodies by Brewer Repair and Restoration” on Google.
It didn’t have a website, but the yellow pages on my phone said it
opened at 8 AM. That gave me just enough time to catch a cab back
to the gas station to pick up my car and be there when the place
opened.

The cab I had phoned from the hospital
dropped me right next to my car, which was patiently waiting for me
on the frozen parking lot. Mr. Sanders was inside the convenience
store working the register. Part of me wanted to go inside to say
hello, but looking at him through the puckered glass stopped me
short. Fear I had carefully tucked away until now rushed in on me
like a tsunami. I stood paralyzed, too scared to take a step toward
the store. I took a deep breath and tried to force my feet forward,
but they had grown roots.

A black sedan pulled up next to pump
one as a flashback of the Nova crashed on me. I ducked down below
my fender, my lungs sucking in air faster than a Kirby while my
hands began to shake uncontrollably. I closed my eyes, forced an
exhale before I could hyperventilate, and told myself it wasn’t the
Nova. He wasn’t here. No one was going to shoot me.

Peering around my bumper at the
offending car, relief washed over me when I saw it was a Nissan
Maxima. It looked nothing like the Nova with the matte finish and
mag wheels that had been parked in the same place last night.
Gritting my teeth and forcing my muscles to work, I stood up
slowly, looking around to see if anyone had witnessed my little
freak out.

Satisfied that Mr. Sanders hadn’t
seen, nor any of the patrons, my eyes settled on my Chevelle. The
hole in the windshield was even more pronounced in the daylight
than it had been last night. The bullet had gone through the
windshield, the driver’s seat, and the back seat.

I took a step toward it to get a
better view, my fear evaporating as anger began to emerge. My hand
felt the jagged edge of the hole. Parts for old cars were next to
impossible to find, and when I could find them, they cost an arm
and a leg. I took a more thorough look to see if he had shot
anywhere other than the windshield. A sigh of relief escaped me
when I learned the damage was isolated to the windshield and the
seats. My car had been perfectly restored. I was pretty sure the
seats could be repaired, but if nothing else, I could get by with
some black duct tape for the time being.

I loved my car. It didn’t look like
anyone else’s. It didn’t sound like anyone else’s, either. I’d
never seen another one like it. It was a 1966 Chevelle Super Sport.
I’d bought it off an old guy when I was fifteen for six hundred
dollars. The car had been a bucket of rust that wouldn’t start, but
I saw the potential. I bought it my sophomore year, a full year
before I could even drive.

Shaking my head at the irony, my car
was how I met Dave Brewer to begin with. I sat down in the driver’s
seat, cranked the engine, turned the heat on full-blast, and waited
for it to warm up. My mind wandered back to my first meeting with
Dave. It was hard to believe that it had been five years
ago.

My high school offered classes on
vehicle repair; one of the requirements to sign up for the class
was every student had to have a broken car. This one definitely
qualified. Still all aglow from my six hundred dollar bargain car,
I went to the guidance office to sign up for the automotive repair
class as an elective in the fall semester.

The guidance counselor refused to let
me sign up. She said the class was only offered during the same
periods as AP English and Chemistry. She refused to let me slide
out of either class, which was bogus. Her reasoning for not letting
me register was that I was listed as “college-bound,” and auto
repair was reserved for “non-college-bound” students. I left the
guidance office frustrated beyond belief. Never one to take “no”
for an answer, I decided to work a different angle.

Mr. Kravitz was the teacher who taught
the auto repair classes. My freshman year I had gotten busted
skipping school. I wasn’t smoking dope, I wasn’t running amuck
around the city; I just took the day off to hang out with friends –
all of whose parents excused the absence. My parents refused to
lie: mine were pissed and wanted to make sure I learned my lesson.
In addition to them grounding me and taking my phone away, the
school sentenced me to three days detention. My parents thought the
school’s policy was too light, so they called the school and
demanded I serve two weeks instead of the typical three days. The
only good that came from it was I got to know the teacher who
seemed to be the permanent detention teacher, Mr.
Kravitz.

After my two weeks of detention, an
unheard of long sentence for such a minor rule infraction, he was
always really nice when he saw me in the hallways. I thought he
might be able to help me get registered for his class. Making a
beeline from the guidance office, I bounded into his empty shop and
saw him elbow deep in an engine. “Um, Mr. Kravitz, hi. Do you have
a second?”

He stood up, grabbed a rag from the
fender of the car he was working on, and wiped some grease off of
his hand. “What can I do for you, Miss Kane?”

I plastered on my most winning smile
and said, “I just came from Guidance. I tried to sign up for your
Auto Repair class this fall, but they told me I couldn’t register.
I was hoping you might be able to help.”

He looked at me from my toes to my
head. It hit me that my wardrobe choice wasn’t helping me make my
case. I was wearing sandals, a short white skirt and an Hawaiian
print top in pastels. My pink fingernails and toenails had
appliques of flowers on them which matched my Hawaiian shirt
perfectly. He wore blue coveralls, brown leather work boots, and
seemed to have permanent grease stains etched under his
fingernails. Mr. Kravitz shook his head. “I’ve got limited class
space, and it’s already full.”