“I don’t think it’s a matter of not having pushed hard enough,” she said, immediately feeling bad for making that suggestion. “I think it’s more just a case of a fresh set of eyes and maybe a little more interest in some of these cases versus others,” she said. “These drive-by shootings will drive me crazy. The fact that he went quiet for a few years is enough to really get me.”
“Did anybody check recent parolees?” he asked suddenly.
She looked over at him, frowned, and said, “I did, but nothing popped. A relationship could easily be why he stopped. Although it often happens that when they get into a relationship with another person, their need to do whatever it is that they’re doing stops. Until they get angry over a breakup or something, and they start all over again.”
He shook his head. “I just don’t get that mentality.”
“Whether we get it or not doesn’t change the fact that it’s there,” she said.
“Agreed,” he said.
With that, they pulled up to their destination. The house had been sold the year after her husband’s death. As they got out, they went and checked with the neighbors on either side. There were only six houses on this block, with a corner store at the end. They checked with everybody, talked with whoever they could. Two of the people remembered the older couple; one remembered the truck.
“He was always playing with that thing. He’d spend every Sunday out there, tinkering around with it.”
“Did you go over and talk to him about it?”
The neighbor, who couldn’t have been more than fifty, nodded. “Yeah, my dad was a tinkerer too,” he said. “So it brought back memories every time I went over with a cup of coffee in my hand, just to see what George was up to.”
“What was he up to?” Rodney asked curiously. “I’m not a car junkie myself, so I never really understood what they did.”
The other gentleman laughed. “Sometimes he was just cleaning it. Sometimes he was changing the oil because it had been parked too long. Sometimes it was, you know, just brushing up on the lugs on the wheels. Sometimes he was tweaking away under the hood.” He shook his head. “He always just seemed happy doing it.”
“And what about other people? Did he often do this alone, or were there people who would come over and visit, besides you?”
“A couple of us used to hang around there. I think it was more a little like a men’s coffee-shop atmosphere that gave us an excuse to visit for a few minutes and to get out of the house, you know?”
From inside the house a woman’s laughing voice called out, “I heard that.”
He grinned. “A couple younger kids hung around every once in a while, but they just had no concept of the value a truck like that had for him.”
“Did anybody ever try to buy it from him?”
“Sure, one kid from the mechanic’s shop around the corner used to come by. I mean, I call him a kid, but he was probably twenty-seven, twenty-eight back then. He really wanted it. I think he also thought it should go cheap, and that’s where the discussion ended. Of course, old man George would never sell it cheap. This truck was the love of his life,” he said, with a big smile.
“Got it,” Kate said, with an understanding nod. “And, of course, for the youngster,” she said, with emphasis, “it would have been something cheap because it was old and something he could fix up.”
“Exactly, but George never did sell it.”
“Did they ever argue about it?”
He shook his head. “Not that I know of, although the kid was a little bit more emphatic about wanting it than he should have been.”
“And what about selling it? Did George ever look seriously at selling it?”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think he was at all interested in going that route. I know, when it was stolen, he was devastated, and that was hard on everybody. He was pretty upset.”
“And nobody saw anything? Nobody heard anything?”
“That was the odd thing because that truck, when you started it up, made a huge vrooming sound,” he said. “I mean, the carburetor system on it was huge. I’m pretty sure he had some straight-pipe modification in there because, when it turned on, it was noisy. So I don’t know how the thief got it out of the garage without half the neighborhood noticing.”
“Now that is an interesting point,” she said, staring at him. “How could they have gotten it out of there, without the owners hearing it?”
“Well, George was definitely short on hearing,” he said, “but you’ve got to consider that his wife should have heard it.”
“Yes, absolutely,” she frowned, as she thought about it and looked across the street to where the house was. The garage was right there at the side of the road. “I suppose somebody could have put the truck in Neutral, and they could have rolled it out into the street a couple houses down before starting it up,” she said.
He nodded. “It’s possible. I also figured that, if somebody knew anything about trucks, they might have done something about that noisy muffler before stealing it.”