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“What’s missing?” I demanded. “What’d they take?”
She sighed, looking a little bit rattled. Which scared me, because Janice never looked rattled.
“Well the Bel Air’s gone,” she said. “No big loss there, that thing was rusted down to the guts, but—”
“But it had a big block V-8 in it,” I finished for her. “A good one, too.”
“Yes.”
“What else?”
Janice rose and strode over to the window. She pointed out toward the back end of what we were calling ‘the boneyard’.
“See that storage container with the door open? Number 3?”
“Yeah?”
“They cut the lock on that. Bolt-cutters or something, big ones too. Found the shank on the ground in two pieces. Looked like melted butter, or—”
“Janice!”
“Anyway, they sacked just about everything good. You had rims in there, but they left those. They took all the hoods and doors, though. I’m still checking the inventory, but we’re missing stuff from the Superbird, the 69’ Charger, the Grand Prix, and the Skyliner. A bunch of Camaro stuff too. Seats, maybe.”
My heart sank. My hands curled into fists.
“Definitely seats,” I said miserably. “They’re gone too?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck.”
It so stupid, not installing outside surveillance cameras. Especially after the last time. Then again, we’d hope it was an isolated incident. That someone had just shown up with a flatbed and dragged off one of the old renos because they wanted a project.
But now we knew differently.
“Oh yeah,” said Janice, with a little more hesitation. “And they almost got the Thunderbird.”
For a split-second, all the blood in my veins turned to ice. “Almost?”
“Yes. I think they were towing it. It must’ve fallen off the chain, or—”
As fast as I’d come up the staircase I was sprinting back down, so fast that I almost face-planted into the wall at the bottom. I cleared the doorway and ran up the side of the building, to where Warren was kneeling beside the Thunderbird in the mud.
“Is it fucked?” I asked quickly. “Is the frame bent?”
“Don’t think so,” he said. “Haven’t even looked at it yet.”
I dropped down to his level, sliding beneath the chassis to get a look for myself. But Warren wasn’t looking at the T-bird. He was examining a pair of parallel ruts set deep into the mud.
“Tire tracks,” he explained, pointing. “They made two trips, look.”
Sure enough, two sets of distinct tire tracks led back and forth to our broken gate. Whoever loaded up our stuff took their sweet time. And they were so unconcerned with getting caught, they’d even come back.
“I can’t believe no one said anything,” I growled. “Somebody must’ve seensomething.”
“In last night’s rain?” Warren shook his head. “That storm was the perfect time to do something like this. They had the cover of night, the veil of a downpour. We don’t have a dog in the yard. We don’t even have any cameras…”
“We can’t afford cameras,” I pointed out. “Besides, last night they wouldn’t have done jack shit anyway. Nothing would’ve showed through that rain. Maybe you’d see the blur of some tail lights, and that’s about it.”
