Excerpt of Dangerous Curves by Judith Skillings

Chapter One

Prufrock measured out his life in coffee spoons.

Rebecca sympathized with the compulsion. She would have delighted in counting out days of productive work, cars delivered on time, payrolls met. Nights of uninterrupted sleep. Or borrowed books of poetry read and returned.

Instead her life was littered with dead bodies.

Val's panicked call had come around eleven o'clock on what had been a normal Tuesday morning. His cackle echoed through the line, competing with the background voices of men at work, the buzz of official activity. Rebecca's first fear had been a logistics mix-up at the docks. Val giggled, said no. Her second fear was worse -- a twisted fender, shattered headlamps, a wire wheel bouncing along the berm of the Washington-Baltimore Parkway.

She closed her eyes. "Tell me you didn'twreck the Bentley."

The day before, she'd received a package from Todd Shelley- - a prayer rug he'd haggled for in some Turkish bazaar. Pinned to it had been a four-color postcard of the interior of Santa Sophia with the message: "Pray for the Bentley. 'Something that made the car go broke. And it must have been important 'cause now it don't go at all.' " The quip was from NASCAR driver Michael Waltrip. Shelley was trying to be funny. Rebecca had not been amused. Especially when she read the postscript saying that the 1925 3-Litre would arrive in Baltimore on July 22.

Three days ago.

Val, her youngest mechanic, had begged a flatbed from his cousin's wrecking yard. That morning, he took Paulie and left Vintage & Classics at seven for the Dundalk docks in Baltimore. Instead of being on their way back with the car, they were being hassled by District police.

Val yelled into the phone to be heard over a siren coming closer. Cops wanted to search the 3-Litre. Said they had probable cause, didn't want to wait. Wanted him to sign a consent form. No way was he letting them near the car. That wasn't his call. And, no, he couldn't contact the owner. The guy was schlepping around China in a Hispano- Suiza.

Then an officer had come across Rebecca Moore's name on the transit papers. He said she'd do.

Rebecca had pressed the phone to her ear, sagged against the rough edge of a workbench and stared at a splat of oil on her steel-toed boots. Palms sweating, she heard Val screech that blood was dripping through the floorboards of the Bentley.

Rebecca downshifted, flicked the turn signal and exited the Capitol Beltway at Route 214, Central Avenue. She was in the easternmost point of the District of Columbia, a far cry from the Capitol. She poked along until she reached Division Street, took it north. With each turn the per capita income dropped, as did her spirits. Midway down Fifty-sixth Street she squeezed the MG against the curb behind a station wagon with four flat tires. She was out of the car before Jo Dela-croix, her friend and lawyer-in- need, could locate the pull cord to open his door.

Across the street, the Bentley baked in the sun. It was chained to a flatbed, draped with yellow scene-of-the- crime tape. The green paint was streaked with fingerprint powder. The tonneau was unsnapped and flung back, falling over the tail end of the car like a serape. The rear door was open. An amorphous bundle hugged the floor.

Emergency medics wheeled a gurney toward the car. A large man in a polyester suit stopped them. One nodded; the other bounced on the balls of his feet. A gust of wind slapped the wrapper from a Whopper against the leg of her jeans. She bent to peel it off, reluctant to take her eyes from the Bentley. It was déjà vu all over again. Last crime, the car had been in her restoration shop with a splatter of blood on the door edge. This time it was parked in a run-down city neighborhood, drenched in the stuff. There was no sign of either Val or Paulie.

What was the car doing here?

Chained to the rollback, it squatted in front of Naomi's Boutique like an automotive hunchback, shadowing a display window already obscured by orange plastic to protect Naomi's goods from sun fade. The surrounding block was littered with abandoned vehicles, emaciated row houses branded with graffiti, storefronts boasting metal grilles for after-hours protection. Derelicts huddled amid garbage cans. One balanced on a lid, stared at the Bentley like the lookout in a crow's nest. Next door an Hispanic pretended to restack produce while he watched the policemen. A homeless woman, layered in cast-off clothing too warm for the day, stepped on and off the curb, mumbling.

Val had complained about a stupid bag lady. Said that while they were in the store, she'd crawled onto the flatbed to nap in the sun. Beat cops spotted her. Crossed the street to roust her. When she rolled off and stood up, her backside had been covered in blood that wasn't hers.

Rebecca sensed Jo standing an arm's length behind her.

He waited for her to turn before informing her that the employees had been taken to the Sixth District Police Headquarters on Forty-second Street for questioning. An officer would drive him there. Rebecca nodded. She would follow the transporter to the impound lot and see the car safely stowed, then join them. Val Kearny was just eighteen; Paulie Antrim was a naive rich kid, amused at life. She fretted over what they'd already said to the police. They needed their lawyer.

She needed her workers.

Rebecca started across the street. The man in the shapeless suit glared as she advanced, blocked her progress midway. He was the size of an average football tight end, six-two, maybe six-four if the hunched shoulders ever straightened. He introduced himself as Lieutenant Theodore Schneider. He flashed his badge, widened his stance to center his bulk ...