The next morning Steve walked into Affordable Auto again and found Forrest sitting behind his desk, sipping at a mug of coffee. “So did you get anything worked out?” Forrest asked.

“I heard back half an hour ago,” Steve told him. “There are still a few loose ends, but we ought to be able to clean them up in a few minutes.”

“You’re kidding. I can’t get bank approval on a car loan that quickly.”

“This time you’re not dealing with a bank and their loan committees and procedures,” Steve said. “You’re dealing with people who like to get things done. Anyway, you can have the outstanding Halston, McFadden stock for six hundred thousand.”

“Sorry, but I can’t do it,” Forrest shook his head. “I could maybe raise a hundred grand if I re-mortgaged my house, and that would take a bank three months to get off their dead asses.”

“Like I said, you’re not dealing with a bank. Look, I don’t just represent Halston, McFadden. I also represent a venture capital outfit named Macomber-Calligan. Ten years, six percent, but they want all your Hansen-Baldwynn stock as collateral.”

“You’re kidding! You can do it, and that quickly?”

“Once again, you’re not dealing with a bank. Are you interested?”

“Are you kidding? Of course I am!” Forrest replied, obviously excited. He sure hadn’t been expecting this to happen. “But look, is there any way we could get another hundred thousand, maybe two on that deal?”

“Possibly. What do you have in mind?”

“Mostly I need some walking-around money to fix a few things until I can get that zoo back under control. Among them, I’d like to bring in a bunch of real auditors who can go through those books like a colonoscopy with a wire brush. There’s a chance we might be able to recover some of the money those people embezzled, and we might even get someone sent to jail if we get a little lucky. You wouldn’t happen to know an auditing firm that could do a job like that, do you?”

“Not off the top of my head but I know where to find out. Anything else?”

“Look, if we do this, I want to do it right. That means walk in there with the sheriff at my back, maybe a few lawyers, an auditing firm, and some new people. I mean, there are some heads that need to roll, and Ben, the sales manager is on the list right after Junior.”

“How about that receptionist who’s more interested in doing her nails than actually working?”

“Oh, you mean Junior’s squeeze, Jodi,” Forrest snorted. “She shows just what a bobble-head he really is, doesn’t she? She’s down about fourth on the list, right after the service manager. There are a couple salesmen who need new jobs as tail gunners on garbage trucks, too. Anyway, my point is that there’ll have to be a little cash spread around here and there to be able to drop everything on him at once.”

Boy, is this guy vindictive or what? Steve wondered. He sounds about like Phil would if he were to get his hands on someone from Shawtex. “All right, I’m pretty sure I can make it eight instead of six. It’ll take me one phone call to get it wired down. The same terms all right?”

“God, I like doing business with you, after having caught all that shit from Junior. Of course it’s all right. How soon can we do this?”

“It’s obvious that there’s going to have to be some paperwork done. If it’s a huge hurry I could probably have it heading this way by FedEx this afternoon, but it probably would be best if I had a couple days.”

“Hell, I can’t get my end of the deal set up that quickly, especially if I don’t want Junior to know about it,” Forrest shook his head. “Getting some good, solid auditors is probably going to be the tough one.”

“I’ll work on it. It’d probably be best to bring in someone from out of town, anyway.”

“Work on it then. Are you going to be doing anything else the next two or three days?”

“Not that I know of,” Steve told him, “but let’s face it, I’m a troubleshooter as much as anything, and you never know when trouble is going to come at you. What do you have in mind?”

“I’m thinking mostly to have someone be a second pair of hands.”

“Give me ten minutes to get the changes rolling at my end, and you’ve got them, unless something comes up, of course.”

“Go for it. Jeez, I never thought I’d see the day when this would happen. How do you get things done so quickly?”

“It’s what I do,” Steve replied, not really wanting to let Forrest know what he’d been doing only a few days before. “Believe me, don’t ask me to sell a used car, because I’d be terrible at it.”

“I don’t believe that for a second. In ten minutes you’d probably sell the whole goddamn lot.”

“That would be easier,” Steve laughed. “Let me go outside and make a phone call.”

A few minutes later Steve was on the phone with Ann, who had said she would be waiting up to hear from him. “He hopped on it like a cat on a mouse,” he reported. “Really, it’s not a bad deal for him, but you sure could feel the anticipated revenge flowing off him like the water off Niagara Falls. He ought to be able to clean the place up better in days than we could do in years. He has a couple good ideas, like bringing in some really pissy auditors to see who can get shipped up the river for embezzlement.”

“Is it really that bad, sir?”

“He thinks it is and to look at it superficially from outside, there’s a good chance he’s right. Anyway, write the Macomber-Calligan deal up for eight hundred thousand instead of six hundred. Part of what he wants the extra money for is to hire the auditors.”

“Certainly, sir. It sounds like a wise precaution under the circumstances, and I’m sure Mr. Taylor would approve if he weren’t asleep.”

“We also need to come up with the auditors, and some real mean ones, at that, and preferably a name firm from out of town. He’d like to have them here sooner, rather than later. We’re talking maybe a couple days. I think he wants to strike just about five minutes after the stock transfer.”

“That may not be easy, sir. There is a firm in Dallas we’ve used in the past that does emergency audits. It won’t be cheap but if there is something to be found they will find it.”

“Get going on that, then, and let me know when they can get here. I’m going to spend the time until the paperwork gets here helping Baldwynn get his ducks in a row. The longer this deal waits, the higher the chance Hansen Junior will have to find out about it and try to cover his tracks.”

“I appreciate the need for moving quickly, sir. I’ll call them right away and let you know as soon as I can.”

“Thanks, Ann. I know this is cutting into your sleep, but speed is of the essence.”

“There are times that sleep is secondary to the thrill of the hunt, sir. Enjoy yourself and be prepared to give us all the interesting details when you return. I know it may not seem like it to you, but you’ve livened things up around here considerably. Mr. Taylor sends his good wishes and said he wished he were in good enough shape to be there to watch you, as he said, pluck this chicken.”

“I’m actually looking forward to hearing the squawking myself, Ann. That Junior joker rubbed me the wrong way even before he opened his mouth.”

“Enjoy yourself, Steve,” she giggled. “Keep in touch.”

Steve had ended the call before it struck him: she’d actually called him by his first name – and without prompting! Was it just being up late and maybe a little off her guard? Or what?

What was it about that woman, anyway? Why was she getting under his skin?

That was a subject that was going to need some thought, but not just now. There was too much else to do.

There was actually quite a bit for Steve to do during the next couple of days. There was no doubt that Forrest Baldwynn was looking to get his pound of flesh out of Junior’s hide, and he didn’t miss very many tricks. Fortunately Ann was able to arrange for the auditors out of Dallas, and they would be there on time.

However, there wasn’t much for Steve to do in the evenings. A couple of online books helped him to pass the time, but he missed the social interaction. One night he called up his old sort-of-girlfriend Teri just to chat with her a bit, and was surprised to find her at home: she was, after all, engaged to one guy and dating two others, which kept her social schedule a bit on the full side. While he liked Teri in a way, Steve was very glad that things had never gotten very serious with her.

One night, he was sitting in a steak house waiting to be served. For lack of anything better to do, he pulled a nickel from his pocket, took the tip of a steak knife and decided to see how hard it would be to scratch and maybe carve a design into a nickel. He’d had some art classes in the distant past, after all, and knew quite a bit about working metal, at least from the viewpoint of doing it with a machine in a production environment.

It proved harder than he thought, and he suspected that they’d hardened the composition of the coin in the days since Stinky Antonelli. A little web searching after dinner seemed to confirm the notion. Maybe the old time hobos needed little more than a nail to carve their creations, but from what he’d found on the Internet, modern nickel carvers used a wide range of engraving tools. The modern artists made some very intricate and beautiful pieces, too. Maybe it would be fun to learn to do that, he thought.

Maybe not though as it looked like there was a good chance he’d be doing a lot of traveling in the near future and it would be a little inconvenient to haul a major tool kit along with him. Still, maybe Uncle Homer had been right – maybe he needed some kind of a hobby to relax his mind. He could see how people doing a lot of traveling could find themselves in bars every night anesthetizing themselves with alcohol, but he wasn’t much of a drinker and didn’t feel like starting. So perhaps the idea had some merit after all.

Fortunately the dull evenings didn’t last too long. Four days after his first meeting with Baldwynn, there was a breakfast meeting in the banquet room of a family restaurant not far from his motel. There were a number of people there; along with Forrest and him, there were four accountants, two lawyers, the local sheriff and a deputy on-duty, and several more uniformed officers off duty. They spent a while getting their plans worked out, and a few minutes before nine in the morning they set out for Hansen-Baldwynn Buick-Cadillac.

Steve and Forrest led the charge into the building, with the sheriff and a couple deputies right on their heels; for some reason no salesmen tried to stop them to ask if they were interested in buying a new car. They headed right for Junior’s office, totally ignoring Jodi looking up from working on her nails as she said, “You can’t go in there! They’re in a meeting!”

There was no telling what Junior and the sales manager were actually doing but it didn’t look very much like work to Steve; in fact, it looked like a euchre game. “I thought I told you to get the fuck out of here and stay out,” Junior said when he saw who the intruder was.

“No,” Forrest said. “It’s you who has to get the fuck out of here and stay the fuck out.”

“What the fuck are you talking about old man?” Junior sneered. “I own this fucking dealership.”

“You, or at least your father, owns forty percent of it,” Steve told him, pulling out a letter and tossing it on Junior’s desk. “This certifies that Halston-McFadden has sold their stock to Mr. Baldwynn here. He now owns sixty percent of the business.”

“I told you to get the fuck out,” Baldwynn added. “Now beat it.”

“Where do you think you get off pulling this shit? I’m talking to my lawyer before I do any fuckin’ thing.”

“Fine with me,” Forrest replied. “He can talk to my lawyers, and they’re right outside.”

“You ain’t pullin’ this fuckin’ shit on me,” Junior said, getting up from his desk and rushing Baldwin, fist in the air.

The sheriff and a couple of deputies interceded before Junior could get within range. In the melee that followed Junior took a swing at one of the deputies, which wound up with Junior on the floor, handcuffs on his hands behind his back. “What the fuck are you doing this to me for?” Junior whined from the floor.

“Because you’re an asshole, maybe?” Forrest grinned, and turned to the sales manager. “Ben, get lost,” he said. “Don’t even go to your desk. I’ll have someone go through it and box up anything that doesn’t look like company property.”

“But . . .”

“The man said out,” Steve smiled. “I suggest you do it now.”

In a minute or two order had been restored, such as it was, and Junior was sitting in a cage in the back of a patrol car. “Nice of him to take a swing at a deputy,” Forrest grinned. “That ought to simplify things a lot. Let’s see how the rest of this is going.”

Forrest and Steve went back out into the main room to discover that the company’s bookkeepers were being kept out of their office by a rather large deputy, and a couple of auditors were going through the records, while another was starting to paw through the sales manager’s desk. There were still a couple of auditors waiting. “All right,” Forrest said, pointing at Junior’s former office. “That ought to be where the good stuff is.”

“You know,” one of the auditors grinned. “Most people think that accounting is a dull subject, but boy, I sure love assault auditing. It’s so much fun I’d almost pay someone to let me do it. I mean, when it happens you just know you’re going to find something good.”

“The more, the better,” Forrest laughed. “Have fun, guys.”

It would be unfair to call the rest of the day dull, but the excitement was definitely over with, except for the occasional evil cackle from one of the auditors or sometimes more than one. It was the kind of sound that could eventually mean years behind bars for someone who deserved it. Steve and Forrest settled down at a couple of little-used salesmen’s desks and started the process of really regaining control of the dealership.

While the business was technically closed for the day, the plan was to re-open with a substantially new management. Forrest had already lined up several people to fill vacancies that he opened wholesale in the first ten minutes of his taking over control. Among those going was Jodi, who was told she’d be wise to cut her nails before she applied for a job as a grill girl at the burger shack up the street. The new sales manager was the owner of Affordable Auto, who had agreed to pitch in on the deal temporarily to help get things going.

Just to make life interesting, Pete Robinson, the ad salesman from the Democrat, showed up early in the afternoon, responding to a call from Forrest. The two of them holed up briefly, and Robinson soon was heading for the door with a big grin on his face. “Made his day,” Forrest said. “That’s something your extra money is going for, some nice, big ads to announce the grand re-opening under new management. We’re going to get this place rolling again, and quick. There’s going to be rumors all over town about what happened here today and we might as well cash in on them.”

“Good enough. No point in letting grass grow under your feet, after all.”

In the middle of the afternoon Junior’s lawyer showed up to protest everything. “My understanding from Mr. Hansen is that there was an agreement about a right of first refusal on a stock purchase from Halston, McFadden,” he complained. “I want to know why this wasn’t honored.”

“I have copies of all the documentation with me,” Steve told him. “You can examine it if you like. However, nowhere in there is there a mention of any such agreement.”

“But it was a verbal thing, a handshake arrangement,” the lawyer protested.

“There’s no record of it,” Steve told him firmly. “If there was an informal agreement, it would have been made with the Senior Mr. Hansen on a personal basis, and certainly wouldn’t have extended to the Junior Hansen.”

“But a gentleman’s agreement should be honored.”

“If there is no proof of an agreement, there is no enforceable agreement,” Steve replied. “Besides, Junior is no gentleman in the first place.”

“We can get an injunction,” the lawyer protested.

“On what grounds?” Baldwynn’s attorney cut into the discussion. “I’ve examined those documents, too. Now, if you can find some proof of some kind of written agreement, we can talk business. In the meantime, don’t waste the judge’s time.”

“We’ll just by god see about this,” Junior’s attorney huffed.

Baldwynn’s attorney turned to Forrest and Steve. “That’s lawyer talk meaning he knows he doesn’t have a leg to stand on but he wants to act like a bully. Don’t sweat it. Every minute he talks the auditors are turning up something else to hang the little twerp with.”

“Honest to god, I hate to see it come to this,” Forrest said. “Senior was a good man and we had a good working relationship, but it really pissed me off to see Junior throw it all away.”

Things didn’t even settle down at closing time; the auditors kept working and finding more trouble for Junior. Baldwynn sent out for pizzas, and the off-duty but uniformed deputies kept intruders out.

By that time Steve reasoned that Uncle Homer and Ann must be up by now, and that he ought to report in, so he went outside, pulled out his phone, and called them. “Everything seems to be under control on this end,” he told them after he gave them a summary of the day’s activities. “If Baldwynn missed a trick, I didn’t see it. He even had a crew from a sign company out taking the name ‘Hansen’ off the building. He’s going to be months getting all the loose ends tied up, but at least he’s going to be the one doing it and not us.”

“Better him than us,” Uncle Homer agreed. “He’s likely to have a lot better idea of where the bodies are buried. I’ve always found that it’s easier to find someone who’s really angry at something and give them the tools to do the job. They tend to be a little more motivated. So how much longer before you’re wrapped up and are heading back this way?”

“A day or two, no more. Like I said, Baldwynn is not missing much, and he seems to have things pretty well under control. It’s just that he’s busier than Rocky going after a bunch of bird feeders right now.”

“Steve, before Ann has a chance to say anything, I should probably warn you that’s not the safest of all possible allusions to use right now.”

“He did it again, huh?” From what Uncle Homer had told him, he’d only seen a tiny bit of the ongoing battle between Ann and Rocky.

“Yes, sir,” Ann broke in. “I’m afraid I’m still a little too soft-hearted to take the .22 to him, but I would appreciate it if you were to do so.”

“No way, Ann,” he laughed. “You’re the one who’s better at seeing in the dark.”

“All right, sir,” she sighed. “I’ll try the live trap again, but I’m afraid he’s figured out what it is and stays away from it.”

“Ann, I’ll ask around and see if I can think of something. Anyway, I’m about done here, and I should be heading back your way shortly.”

“Take care, Steve,” Uncle Homer told him. “Some other things are starting to come to a boil.”

Steve was in a good mood when he went back inside. The auditors, a couple of deputies, and Forrest were still working on the pizzas and laughing a little at some of the things that had been found – like the cocaine in the sales manager’s desk. Ben was going to have some explaining to do on that one – and to a judge at that. “You seem pretty happy,” Forrest grinned.

“The boss’s secretary is having a major battle with a raccoon getting into her bird feeders,” he explained. “It’s been kind of funny to hear about. The coon does most of the winning, and she’s the kind of person who doesn’t like to lose. She just lost another one.”

“You ought to talk to my son-in-law,” Forrest said. “He had the same problem, coons and squirrels. He built a real battleship of a bird feeder. Bigger than somewhat, a cage with quarter-inch steel bars to keep the coons out, and a smaller wire mesh inside to keep the tree rats out. The birds can get right through between the coon bars, and then reach through the squirrel wire. The whole feeder is heavier than somewhat to keep coons from knocking them over.”

“Sounds like it might work,” Steve said. “I don’t suppose he’d build me one or two of them?”

“Sure he would, he has a little sideline business with them. They’re not cheap, though.”

“Big deal. Like I said, she doesn’t like to lose.”

“I’ll give him a call and tell him to bring one right over.”

Fifteen minutes later the pizza was gone, but Baldwynn’s son-in-law Dick Travis had showed up with a demo bird feeder. It only took Steve one look to see that it would be a major escalation in the Ann vs. Rocky arms race. “I’ll take two of them,” Steve told Dick.

“I don’t have two ready to go right now, but I can have them in a couple of days and I can ship them to you.”

“That’d be fine, I wouldn’t have room enough for them in the car, anyway.” Steve paid him cash up front for them, and they stood around talking for a couple of minutes. Dick was a young guy; it didn’t seem to Steve that he was necessarily the smartest guy in Pendersburg, but he was likeable and enjoyed working with his hands. Nothing wrong with that, he thought.

Besides, Ann might be happy to see them. Steve liked to see her happy once in a while, and that might hold her until Rocky figured out how to use a hacksaw.

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