People are surprised at my slavish devotion to my
Caddy, but the heavy steel frame, powerful muscle of the
V-8 engine, and sleek lines are far sexier than most men I
know. I love this car, and besides, with only a little oil and
gas, it's still there in the morning.
It was going to be a hot one, but I didn't care. I wasn't
even bothered that I still hadn't fixed the air-conditioning. It
was a quiet Sunday morning, paperwork was finished, and I
was going to take my "baby" out for a ride.
I slid back the heavy doors of the barn and gawked at the
empty space where I'd left my Caddy. The canvas car cover
lay on the straw floor like a discarded magician's prop.
There was nothing inside but a lone moth gently circling in
a dusty sunbeam. I waited for the trick that would make my
Caddy reappear. But no amount of magic was going to pull
all that muscled steel out of an empty piece of cloth.
"Ricky! You thieving rat!"
I turned on my heel and stomped back to the house,
cursing at his duplicitous, underhanded, sneaky… Finishing
with an expletive, I pushed through the back door and into
the kitchen where my dad, BP cuff on his right arm, was
dutifully entering the results of his morning routine into a
journal.
A Dead Red Cadillac
23
"What's caught in your craw this morning?" he growled
as I attacked the kitchen phone.
"Ricky stole my Caddy!" I growled back, dialing
numbers into the wall-mounted old rotary phone. Dad
thought cell phones were part of the fast lane and should be
avoided at all costs.
Too annoyed to deal with the antique, I hung up and
bounded up the stairs. Sitting on my bed, I fiercely punched
in the numbers on my cell phone and started calling people.
I called Ricky first. Of course, no answer there. Though the
car was mine by decree of our divorce two years ago, Ricky
was obviously still unable to let go.
Then I called everyone else I could think of who might
know the whereabouts of my car and/or Ricky.
Twenty minutes later, I gave up, punched in the sheriff's
office and Caleb's direct line. The ring lasted less than half
a sparrow's croak before it was knocked off its perch by a
deep, if preoccupied, male voice. "Sheriff Stone."
I bawled into the phone, "Ricky stole my Caddy."
"Lalla? How's your dad?" he drawled, irritating me no
end with his ploy to get me to slow down.
"Working on inner enlightenment. Now will you please
focus on me here—I said, Ricky stole my Caddy!"
He sighed into the phone. I could hear his old office
chair creak as he sought a more comfortable position. "You
don't have to yell."
I did feel a little guilty for yelling at him. After all, he
hadn't stolen my car. I started again, slower this time. "It's
either at his house, his car lot, or his latest girlfriend's."
"Ms. Bains," he said, the humor sneaking into his voice,
"don't tell me you've misplaced that cherry red Cadillac. It's
kinda hard to hide, you know." The chair creaked again,
and I thought of Caleb, his phone to his ear for anyone who
RP Dahlke
24
would need a careful, considerate listener. Caleb owed the
chair and his job as Sheriff of Stanislaus County to his dad,
who died in a shootout about the same time my mother
died. I love Caleb Stone as my best friend in the whole
world. He's a veritable Job of patience to my frequently
irritable nature. But right now, I wasn't up to patient or
considerate. I wanted Caleb to find him. Now!
I tried begging. "Caleb, please? I've called everybody I
can think of. I've got people looking from Ripon to
Merced."
"Mmm-mm."
"I'm telling you, if he takes it as far as Fresno, he's dead
meat."
"Awright, settle down, Lalla. You want to report it
stolen? Come in and we'll write up a report."
Uh-oh, this could get complicated. Ricky and I had
history, and it wasn't pretty. The Caddy was my trophy
from our divorce, and though I secretly enjoyed the joshing
I got for my choice of ride, I didn't want to see this most
recent escapade get ratcheted all the way up to the nightly
news.
"Uh, do we have to do it so formally? Can't you just tell
some of the guys to be on the lookout for it?"
Caleb, being one of the few who knew my angry history
with Ricky, also liked to rib me about it. "So, that's a no-go
on the wanted posters?"
"Just tell the guys to look for it, will you?" I asked, and
hung up.
Still restless, I went downstairs to finish telling my dad
the bad news.
He slammed his napkin down on the table and glared up
at me. "Can't you get along with your ex without getting
A Dead Red Cadillac
25
Caleb involved? He does have criminals to catch, you
know."
"My missing Caddy may not be important to you, but I
got that car fair and square, and I mean to keep it. And
what're you all grumpy about?"
"Not that you would care, but I'm a sick old man, and I'd
like to die with what's left of my reputation intact."
For the last two years my dad would use any and every
incident that didn't suit him to remind me he was a
recovering heart patient. "What now? Did you decide my
plane crash was my fault after all, or is it my ongoing tug of
war over Ricky's prized possession?"
He pushed back his chair and stood. The expression on
his face said he was again disappointed in me.
I was flustered and disappointed because no matter what
I did, how hard I tried, I seemed to stumble across trouble.
And I had to admit, he was right. After all, I was the one
who'd found my mother's body, burned her suicide note,
and neglected to tell my father or my brother. And I am still
paying for that guilty sin.
"I can't tolerate infidelity," I said, hoping to have the last
word.
He turned at the door. "You don't have to prove it to
me."
"Believe me, I wasn't trying to prove anything to you."
He tipped his bushy eyebrows at me, the gesture saying
volumes about what I was trying to prove—that I didn't
need New York or modeling or a husband to fulfill my life,
that I was good enough to run a crop-dusting business for
my old man, that I measured up to the son he lost, and that
neither of us was at fault that my mother chose to end her
life.
Ten minutes later, the phone rang.
RP Dahlke
26
"I have good news and bad news," Caleb said.
"Hurry up and tell me. I can take it." I was picturing
Ricky hightailing it for Mexico with his latest honey in my
Caddy. But that wasn't what I got.
"Ricky says he didn't take your car, and I have to believe
him."
"And that's the good or the bad news?"
"Well, I'm afraid that it's the good news."
Oh, God, I hate it when he does this. Typical Caleb,
succinct to the point of anguish, and I groaned my
impatience into his end of the phone.
"Okay, okay. Ricky doesn't have your car, because we
found it out at Turlock Lake."
"Turlock Lake? What—"
"Wait a minute and I'll tell you. The Caddy's big fins
were seen sticking up out of the muck."
"In the water? Oh no! She'll be ruined!"
"Lalla, are you sitting down? 'Cause that's still not the
bad news."
I held onto the phone by its long curling extension cord
and slid down the wall until my butt was settled on the
polished oak floor.
"Lalla? You there?"
I ran a finger along the groove of the scarred and
battered floor that once held up a crowd of thirsty miners.
Noah liked to tell visitors he found gold dust in the cracks
when he salvaged the boards from a "forty-niner" hotel
being torn down to make room for a highway.
"Yes," I said. "I'm here."
A small portable radio my dad kept tuned to a weather
channel on the kitchen counter cheerfully announced the
time and temperature. It was seventy-eight degrees and
A Dead Red Cadillac
27
rising. Then the announcer encouraged us all to have a nice
day.
By the time Caleb told me the rest of it, my teeth had
started a rumba and my shoulders were quaking as if I were
sitting in a blizzard.
"You'll need to verify that it's your car and talk to the
investigating detective," he said.
"Detective? Why a detective?"
"Can you drive here, or do you want me to come out and
pick you up?"
"Don't you mean, bring me in?"
"It's simply an appointment. You need to make a
statement, and if you're feeling feisty, I'll go with you."
I mumbled that he should wait outside of the old
courthouse and hung up. With palsied hands, I grabbed the
nearest set of keys and drove our old farm truck into
Modesto.
I ignored the familiar rattle of the loose drive shaft, the
torn vinyl headliner, the missing passenger door handle, and
the growing spider web of broken windshield.
Of all the answers to the whereabouts of my car, not in a
million years would I have guessed that my Caddy would
be found tailfins sticking out of the shallow end of Turlock
Lake.
And behind the wheel, neatly buckled into her safety
belt was none other than the blue ribbon winner in this
year's county fair's jam-making contest, Patience McBride
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