Jack forced his fingers to be still as he drew a shallow breath. Five years of pounding the backroads for small-town newspapers across the lower mainland had taught him there was no point in losing it with guys like—he glanced at the boy’s name tag—Dudley here. The Dudleys of the world, he vaguely recalled from those long forgotten days, couldn’t be rushed under terrorist threat.
Back then, Jack had customized a smile for people he had nothing against but hoped never to see again. He flashed it now. “Care to share your thoughts, Dudley?”
The teenager nodded in the general direction of the window separating the tiny impoundment office from Peachtown’s main drag. “Well, see, we have these identical twins here in town—Terry and Tommy Trubble? Anyway, they’re sorta the town pranksters.” He rolled his eyes. “Well, okay, the county pranksters, if you wanna be, you know, real accurate.” His voice dropped to a whisper as he leaned closer to Jack. “You won’t believe this, but one time they…”
“My car, Dudley?”
“Oh, right. Well, the fact is, sir, they like to move cars.”
“Move cars,” Jack repeated dumbly. “You mean steal cars.”
Shock turned Dudley’s zit a singularly unattractive shade of red. “Oh no, sir! They don’t keep ’em. They just hot-wire ’em and then relocate ’em.” His vacant gaze suggested that no further explanation should be necessary.
“Uh-huh, and just for the record, Dudley, where exactly do they relocate them to?”
The boy cleared his throat. “Well now, that depends on a number of things.”
Grasping the counter’s edge with both hands, Jack arched his aching back and let his eyelids droop. It was bad enough that he was here. It was bad enough that he was here to cover a story about ice cream. It was bad enough that he was here to cover a story about ice cream because he’d acted like—how had his editor put it?— “a spoiled celebrity.” This headache he definitely didn’t need.
In addition to everything else, he was hot and tired and hungry. The inside of his mouth felt like sandpaper, and his legs were stiff and cramped after the four-hour drive east from Vancouver. The drive he had foolishly undertaken in his prized Mustang. The prized Mustang which was now missing.
Just thirty minutes ago, he’d parked it across the street from Cora’s Café and gone into the restaurant for directions. While he stood there nodding like a puppet, a woman he presumed to be Cora had passed a pleasant twenty minutes disagreeing with the restaurant’s lone patron about the fastest route to Darville Dairy. Jack had eventually tuned out the debate and inched toward the door.
They were arguing the merits of highway number seven versus county road nineteen when he slipped outside and saw that the Mustang was gone. For one hellish moment he had stood there gawking at the empty parking space, convinced it was an optical illusion created by the heat. It wasn’t.
“So,” he said to Dudley. “On what sort of things does it depend?”
Well, it being Saturday and all, Dudley explained, the twins probably had relocated the Mustang to the Darville Dairy Bar. Lots of folks would be there today, ’cause of Peach Paradise. The twins might have taken the car to the bakery just three blocks from here, which, Jack would want to know, gave out free pastries on Saturdays. Course apple turnovers were no competition for Sally Darville’s fabulous new ice cream, and being that you could spot a red Mustang that close—what the heck, you could spot one in a blizzard, couldn’t you?—most likely the bakery wasn’t the place. Yesterday they definitely would have taken it to Peach Pit Park….
Jack squeezed his eyes shut. “Where are they most likely to have taken it today, Dudley?”
“To the dairy bar, sir. That’s your best bet.”
After getting directions, Jack thanked the boy and made haste for the door.
“Hey, wait a minute!” Dudley called after him. “You’re that hotshot reporter from the Vancouver Satellite. Cracker Jack Gold, right?”
Pleasantly surprised, Jack turned around. Could his reputation have traveled this far? It seemed unlikely. Then again, it wasn’t every day that a thirty-four-year-old reporter won the Gobey Award. To his knowledge, until now no one under the age of fifty had ever won it. So, maybe…
He nodded as humbly as a man headed for stardom possibly could. “I am indeed. I take it you’re familiar with my work?”
“Nope, never heard of you. Sally said you were some kind of hotshot, was all.”
“Oh,” Jack muttered. So much for fame.
Opportunity sprang to life in Dudley’s big brown eyes. “So, you’re here to get the big scoop on Peach Paradise, right?” He slapped his thigh and cackled merrily.
Jack chuckled along with him. It was pointless to tell the boy he’d already heard that one a dozen times back at the Satellite— along with a dozen other stupid jokes involving peaches, cream, sugar, waffle cones and reporters whose heads get swelled by major awards and end up in small towns, writing about dairy fat.
“Well, Sally sure is excited,” Dudley gushed. “A feature story in the Satellite. Imagine!”
“Yes, imagine. Thanks again, Dudley.”
“You be sure to have a nice day, Mr. Gold.”
Stepping outside, Jack nearly collided with two apple-cheeked matrons in flouncy dresses. Each wore a straw hat laden with plastic grapes and carried a basket of freshly cut roses. Certain he was about to get nailed, Jack mumbled an apology and tried to sidestep the women. The tallest of the two seized him painfully by the arm. “Hello there. You must be that hotshot reporter from Vancouver. The one who got that—what did Sally call it?—a gopher trophy?”
“Actually ma’am, it was the Gobey Award. And if you don’t mind…”
“So it was. Aren’t you just the handsomest thing. Isn’t he handsome, Elsa?”
“Oh, he is, Elvira,” the much shorter woman agreed. She had the funniest little Betty Boop voice Jack had ever heard.
“Thank you, ladies, but…”
“What’s your name, sonny?” the one called Elvira asked. “Sally told me, but my memory’s not what it used to be.”
“Jack Gold. I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m awfully late…”
She drew a sharp breath. “Gold. What an interesting name. We’ve got a cousin, Goldfisher Elmont Jackson, but everyone calls him Goldy. That’s what’s we’ll call you. Won’t we, Elsa.”
“Oh yes, indeed. Goldy. Yes indeed.”
“Ah, actually, I prefer Jack. And I really do have to move along.”
“We’re the Jackson sisters,” Elvira said without missing a beat. “Our granddaddy, Elmont Jackson, founded this town. Didn’t he, Elsa?” Her grip on Jack’s arm tightened.
“Oh yes, he did, Elvira. He certainly did.”
“You’re here to get the big scoop, aren’t you?” Elvira looked at Elsa for confirmation of her comic genius, and together they cackled like two tipsy hens at a barnyard bash.
Jack’s arm went numb. “Yes ma’am, I am.”
“Well, you must come to dinner. Mustn’t he, Elsa?”
“Yes, he absolutely must.”
Dinner? Not likely. Jack was getting his car, he was getting what he’d come here to get and he was getting out. “Thank you, ladies, but I’m only in town for a couple of hours.”
Elvira snickered. “A couple of hours. Now isn’t that funny? That was what Charlie said, wasn’t it, Elsa?”
“Oh