Death at the Wheel by Kate Flora Page A

my car on weekends, otherwise the mound of trash would overwhelm me, but I'd been busy. I vowed that as soon as I got home, no matter how late, I'd hoe it out. My mother would die of embarrassment if she ever had to ride in my car. Besides, I had the vague feeling that clean cars were like clean underwear. I wouldn't want to get in an accident and have emergency personnel haul me out of the wreckage through a mountain of greasy wrappers and the dregs of a dozen cups of coffee. I could picture the headlines: Slightly damaged car condemned by Health Department.
    "Mrs. Kozak?" Someone dropped a heavy hand on my shoulder and interrupted my reverie about trash. I glanced sideways at it. He was a nail biter. "May we look in the trunk?"
    My stomach clenched as I nodded and said brightly, "Go right ahead. But I warn you, it's as bad as the rest of the car." And I never once uttered the words "take your hand off me, you pig." Under my jacket, I was sweating. It was only a matter of time before it soaked through. I felt like there was a giant red light on my forehead flashing "guilty" into the deepening darkness. I watched as they pulled out the beach chair, my rain boots, the picnic blanket, a spare raincoat, an umbrella, a canvas tote bag full of books, the shopping bag with my dry cleaning, the briefcase I'd just stowed in there. Hot Eyes held it up, initial side away from him. I beamed mental messages at him, telling him not to turn it around. If he did, my goose was cooked.
    "What's in here?"
    "Stuff I keep thinking I'll get around to reading. Boring financial stuff."
    "You don't mind if I look?" he said, reaching for the zipper.
    I considered grabbing the case and running but the image of the stooges with their eager hands by their guns deterred me. Well, Thea, I thought. This is it. Your golden opportunity to go to jail. Look at it as a chance to see how the other half lives. Or an opportunity to keep Julie company. A chance to see Andre mad. My stomach tightened. Bright smile in place, I said, "Of course not."
    Slowly—or so it seemed to me, for whom time had become deranged—he unzipped the case, stuck in his hand, and pulled out a sheet of paper. I held my breath, waiting for the explosion as he discovered intimate details of the relationship between Julie and Calvin Bass lurking in my trunk.
    "Very interesting," he muttered. I leaned over and looked at the paper. The heading was the Metro-Boston Real Estate Board and the page was covered with charts and graphs about demographics and sales prices.
    "I'm glad you think so," I said. "I find it all rather dull." Relief was followed by a sense of futility. I'd taken the wrong papers. Hot Eyes and his companions were bound to find the right ones soon, and there was nothing I could do.
    He put the papers back in the briefcase and the briefcase back in the trunk. "Okay, let's put this stuff away and get on with what we came to do." They piled my stuff back into the trunk and slammed the lid. "You can go, Mrs. Kozak, but let me give you some advice. The next time a murder suspect asks you to go to her house and do anything, talk to the police first. You could have gotten yourself in a heap of trouble."
    "I'm sorry," I said. "It never occurred to me that there would be a problem."
    He just walked away, shaking his head, the Connecticut cops behind him. I could almost hear him thinking "dumb broad." I wanted to scoop up a handful of the gravel, dirt and leaves from the gutter and fling it after him, but it would have been stupid. I was lucky that they hadn't dug farther into the case and found the letters I'd stuck in there. Otherwise, I'd just risked an ulcer for a bunch of old statistics.
    I got in the car and started the engine. In the aftermath of fear, though, I was shaking too much to drive. I closed my eyes and put my head down on the wheel, waiting for the trembling to stop. All that for nothing. I hadn't gotten what Julie sent me to get. I took a deep breath and