Marnie almost choked on her coffee. “Wait. What? Somebody went to prison?”
“I thought I told you that. Jericho used to steal cars. He would sell them to some guys who parted them out to repair shops. He got caught and did five years for grand theft auto.”
“Whoa. Wow. When?”
Tessa shook her head. “I could have sworn I told you all about this.”
“Tessa. When?”
“He was young. Twenty, I think. That was ten years ago. He did those five years and he’s been out for about five more. But right after his release, he got arrested down in Mexico for drug dealing. Gabe got him out of that one.”
Marnie remembered Gabe from the wedding—tall, well-dressed, slick. Really good-looking. “Gabe’s the family lawyer, right?”
“That’s right. And as it turned out, the thing in Mexico was a bad rap, a complete setup.”
“Jericho wasn’t really dealing?”
“No. It was just some trumped-up charge because he talked back to a policeman down there. Gabe got it thrown out.”
“So that was what you meant last night, when you said that Jericho has turned his life around …” Marnie thought of the spark of fury in his eyes when she’d joked about his sending her to jail for stealing his bike. His reaction made a lot more sense now.
Tessa explained, “Ash says Jericho was always the rebel of the family, the one with no interest in doing anything his father wanted him to do, ever.”
Davis. That was their father’s name. Marnie vaguely remembered the older man: thick, white hair, a commanding presence, a firm handshake and icy green eyes.
Tessa frowned and ran her finger around the rim of her teacup. “Davis is trying harder now to be a … kinder man than he once was. But he’s a tough character. And he was building a dynasty, you know? He wanted his boys to get good educations and come to work for the family company. He had no patience for a troubled son, and no respect for Jericho’s considerable mechanical skills. Ash said his dad once yelled at Jericho that he didn’t need a damn grease monkey for a son. If he wanted his car fixed, he’d take it to a shop.”
“What a bastard.”
Tessa sighed. “Well, yeah. Davis can be a real jerk, it’s true. But as I said, he’s been working on lightening up—and speaking of people’s fathers …”
Marnie moaned. “Oh, no. In case you didn’t notice, I’ve been putting that off.”
Tessa had on her wise-big-sister look again. “You have to let them know what’s going on.”
“No, I don’t.”
“What if Dad or Gina calls you in Santa Barbara?”
“They’ll try my cell if no one answers. And if Mark picks up in Santa Barbara, he’ll tell them I’m here, safe, with you.”
“Marnie.” Tessa said her name and then just looked at her. In her bed in the corner, Mona Lou let out a long, sad sigh.
Marnie grumbled, “You are going to make such a good mother. You’re so damn sure of what other people need to be doing.”
“Call home.”
Marnie said darkly, “And you know what will happen when I do.”
Tessa broke eye contact first. “Don’t worry about Grandpa.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“You’re not calling him, you’re calling Dad and Gina.”
“I don’t have to call him. As soon as Gina and Dad know, Grandpa will find out. He always finds out. And you know how he is. He’ll probably drive that old wreck of a Cadillac all the way here to Texas, just to give me some advice.”
“Come on, Marnie. He’s over ninety. His days of driving long distances are done.”
“Think again. He’s Oggie Jones.”
“He only does it out of love.”
“Well, right now, I don’t need Grandpa Oggie’s special brand of love.”
“Marnie. Phone home.”
Making that call wasn’t as bad as Marnie had expected it to be. Gina clucked over her and her dad asked her if she needed money.
Why did everyone suddenly want to give her money? It was a little insulting and a lot reassuring. They loved her, she knew that. They wanted to do what they could to make sure she was okay.
She told them to hug her half brothers, Brady and Craig, for her, and hung up feeling good that they knew what was going on. Hey, she could get lucky and they wouldn’t even tell her grandfather about her situation.
Well, a girl can hope….
Next, she called her birth mother in Arkansas. That was a short conversation. Marybeth Lynch Jones Leventhaal had remarried recently and her new husband was a widower with five young children. Marybeth also ran a busy real estate business. That didn’t leave her a lot of time for chatting on the phone. Marnie’s mom said she loved her and to call if she needed anything.
After that, she debated whether to call San Antonio Choppers and ask for the partner, Gus. Or to ask for Jericho first?
And then she decided it would work more in her favor just to show up and apply for the job. After all, she reasoned, it would be harder to turn down a needy relative in person than it would be on the phone.
Northwest of the 410 loop, on a stretch of dusty road studded with flat-roofed strip malls and used car lots, Jericho’s shop was housed in a barnlike structure of gray-painted brick.
The shop’s name, San Antonio Choppers, was written big and bold above the front entrance in a sort of Gothic/heavy metal–looking script on a logo shaped like a bat—or maybe a winged shield. A high chain-link fence topped with coils of barbed wire rimmed the wide circle of parking lot that surrounded the building.
Marnie drove through the open gate and parked her Camry across a stretch of blacktop from the door, next to a Harley that looked like it had been around since World War II, with handlebars wrapped in black tape and a hand-stitched rawhide seat. Feeling a little out of place, she got out of the car, straightened her snug denim skirt and walked tall across the asphalt to the thick steel front door with the wide pane of glass on the top.
Even from outside, she could hear the muffled beat of loud music, and the scream of some metal-slicing saw. And pounding. Someone was pounding with a heavy hammer—probably on steel. There were big bikes in a row close to the door and a number of mean-looking customized antique cars as well. One of the cars bore a giant plaque across the trunk that read Pedestrian Killer.
Marnie refused to be daunted. She marched up to that heavy door and yanked it wide.
The music got louder, so did the pounding and the scream of sawed metal. And she was only in the office, which had a high counter, a desk and file cabinets behind it. Beyond the desk and file cabinets, there was a waist-high sliding window that ran the width of the far wall, mirroring the windows that flanked the front door. Through the glass of the far window, she could see the cavernous shop itself and the men working in there. She counted at least six lifts and a welding area back in a distant corner, and steel-railed stairs going up to another level. It seemed a pretty big operation.
On the customer side of the counter, there was sort of a makeshift gift shop setup, stacks of T-shirts and sweatshirts with the San Antonio Choppers logo, a carousel draped with keychains. She spotted hats and skullcaps bearing the shop logo, and even what looked like rolls of San Antonio Choppers wrapping paper. The display could use a little tidying.