CLOSE TO DEATH an addictive crime thriller and mystery novel packed with twists and turns by ELIZABETH GUNN

Author:ELIZABETH GUNN [GUNN, ELIZABETH]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books crime, mystery and suspense thrillers
Published: 2022-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Zeb wasted ten minutes trying to figure out why he couldn’t pull the cover off the Buick before Doris came out of the house and said, ‘You have to crawl under and . . . you know.’

‘What?’

‘Undo the ties.’

He laid on his back and pushed under with his heels. Pebbles bit into him, and cobwebs brushed his face. The ties had some kind of metal fasteners that clipped them to each other in a mysterious way.

Doris kept saying, from somewhere near his feet, ‘What’s the problem? They’re not complicated.’

‘They are when you’re upside down with crap falling in your face.’ Every time he moved, dirt fell off the bottom of the car. Something had just crawled over his arm. Besides, he didn’t trust the cement blocks holding up the front left corner — what if this old heap fell on him? His brain parodied his own answer from yesterday’s argument about light bulbs: Then you won’t need any more money ever — won’t that be a saving?

Just before whatever was biting his ankle bored all the way in to the joint, he figured out how to squeeze the end of the clip so the jaws opened and— ‘OK, I got it,’ he said, and scooted around undoing ties as fast as he could so he could slide out of there while he still had some skin left.

He stood up and pulled. The cover slid off at his feet. He kicked it aside, or started to, but Doris yelled as if he’d kicked her personally. She grabbed one end and started a show-and-tell about how she wanted it folded. It took a steady stream of instructions — back up a little, keep it taut so it won’t wrinkle, now put these two sides together like this.

‘Folding lessons are fun,’ he said, ‘but I was counting on fixing the car some time today.’

‘Me, too,’ she said, ‘right after we finish the folding.’

He got the jack out of the wheel well where the spare tire wasn’t. ‘Seems to be missing,’ Doris said, looking vaguely around at the yard as if the spare might have wandered out of the car and curled up by the shed. ‘Have to see about that.’

But then setting up the jack . . . he tried it from the outside, kneeling on the cement, reaching in. He couldn’t tell when he had it centered under the frame. And now that he’d been under there he couldn’t stop thinking that if the jack wasn’t set right, this junker was going to fall on him.

So in the end he got under the car again with the saber-toothed ants and stayed there till he was sure the jack was placed just right under the spot that was marked for it.

‘Um,’ Doris said, when he set the crank in place on the jack, ‘let’s be sure the hand brake is on.’

Goddamn, she was right. He had taken one of those ‘Car Repairs for Dummies,’ courses in high school and he remembered that admonition now.

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