"What brings you to darken my door?" I asked.
"I came to see if you'd look at a car for a friend of mine," he said.
"Vee-Dub?"
"Buick."
My eyebrows climbed in surprise. "I'll take a look, but I'm not set up for American cars-I don't have the computers. He should take it somewhere they know Buicks."
" She's taken it to three different mechanics-replaced the oxygen sensor, spark plugs, and who knows what else. It's still not right. The last guy told her she needed a new engine, which he could do for twice what the car's worth. She doesn't have much money, but she needs the car."
"I won't charge her for looking, and if I can't fix it, I'll tell her so." I had a sudden thought, brought on by the edge of anger I heard in his voice when he talked about her problems. "Is this your lady?"
"She's not my lady," he protested unconvincingly.
For the past three years he'd had his eye on one of the police dispatchers, a widow with a slew of kids. He'd never done anything about it because he loved his job-and his job, he'd said wistfully, was not conducive to dating, marriage, and kids.
"Tell her to bring it by. If she can leave it for a day or two, I'll see if Zee will come by and take a look at it." Zee, my former boss, had retired when he sold me the place, but he'd come out once in a while to "keep his hand in." He knew more about cars and what made them run than a team of Detroit engineers.
"Thanks, Mercy. You're aces." He checked his watch. "I've got to go."
I waved him off, then went back to the transmission. The car cooperated, as they seldom do, so it didn't take me long. By the time my new help emerged clean and garbed in an old pair of Tad's coveralls, I was starting to put the rest of the car back together. Even the coveralls wouldn't be warm enough outside, but in the shop, with my big space heater going, he should be all right.
He was quick and efficient-he'd obviously spent a few hours under the hood of a car. He didn't stand around watching, but handed me parts before I asked, playing the part of a tool monkey as though it was an accustomed role. Either he was naturally reticent or had learned how to keep his mouth shut because we worked together for a couple of hours mostly in silence. We finished the first car and started on another one before I decided to coax him into talking to me.
"I'm Mercedes," I said, loosening an alternator bolt. "What do you want me to call you?"
His eyes lit for a minute. "Mercedes the Volkswagen mechanic?" His face closed down quickly, and he mumbled, "Sorry. Bet you've heard that a lot."
I grinned at him and handed him the bolt I'd taken out and started on the next. "Yep. But I work on Mercedes, too-anything German-made. Porsche, Audi, BMW, and even the odd Opel or two. Mostly old stuff, out of dealer warranty, though I have the computers for most of the newer ones when they come in."
I turned my head away from him so I could get a better look at the stubborn second bolt. "You can call me Mercedes or Mercy, whichever you like. What do you want me to call you?"
I don't like forcing people into a corner where they have to lie to you. If he was a runaway, he probably wouldn't give me a real name, but I needed something better to call him than "boy" or "hey, you" if I was going to work with him.
"Call me Mac," he said after a pause.
The pause was a dead giveaway that it wasn't the name he usually went by. It would do for now.
"Well then, Mac," I said. "Would you give the Jetta's owner a call and tell him his car is ready?" I nodded toward the first car we had finished. "There's an invoice on the printer. His number is on the invoice along with the final cost of the transmission swap. When I get this belt replaced I'll take you to lunch-part of the wages."
"Okay," he said, sounding a little lost. He started for the door to the showers but I stopped him. The laundry and shower were in the back of the shop, but the office was on the side of the garage, next to a parking lot customers used.
"The office is straight through the gray door," I told him. "There's a cloth next to the phone you can use to hold the receiver so it doesn't get covered with grease."
I drove home that night and fretted about Mac. I'd paid him for his work in cash and told him he was welcome back. He'd given me a faint smile, tucked the money in a back pocket, and left. I had let him go, knowing that he had nowhere to stay the night because I had no other good options.
I'd have asked him home, but that would have been dangerous for both of us. As little as he seemed to use his nose, eventually he'd figure out what I was-and werewolves, even in human form, do have the strength they're credited with in the old movies. I'm in good shape, and I have a purple belt from the dojo just over the railroad track from my garage, but I'm no match for a werewolf. The boy was too young to have the kind of control he'd need to keep from killing someone his beast would see as a competing predator in his territory.
And then there was my neighbor.
I live in Finley, a rural area about ten minutes from my garage, which is in the older industrial area of Kennewick. My home is a single-wide trailer almost as old as I am that sits in the middle of a couple of fenced acres. There are a lot of small-acreage properties in Finley with trailers or manufactured homes, but along the river there are also mansions like the one my neighbor lives in.
I turned into my drive with a crunch of gravel and stopped the old diesel Rabbit in front of my home. I noticed the cat carrier sitting on my porch as soon as I got out of the car.
Medea gave me a plaintive yowl, but I picked up the note taped to the top of the carrier and read it before I let her out.
MS. THOMPSON, it said in heavy block letters, PLEASE KEEP YOUR FELINE OFF MY PROPERTY. IF I SEE IT AGAIN, I WILL EAT IT.
The note was unsigned.
I undid the latch and lifted the cat up and rubbed my face in her rabbitlike fur.
"Did the mean old werewolf stick the poor kitty in the box and leave her?" I asked.
She smelled like my neighbor, which told me that Adam had spent some time with her on his lap before he'd brought her over here. Most cats don't like werewolves-or walkers like me either. Medea likes everyone, poor old cat, even my grumpy neighbor. Which is why she often ended up in the cat carrier on my porch.
Adam Hauptman, who shared my back fence line, was the Alpha of the local werewolf pack. That there was a werewolf pack in the Tri-Cities was something of an anomaly because packs usually settle in bigger places where they can hide better, or, rarely, in smaller places they can take over. But werewolves have a tendency to do well in the military and secret government agencies whose names are all acronyms, and the nuclear power plant complex close by the Hanford site had a lot of alphabet agencies involved in it, one way or another.
Why the Alpha werewolf had chosen to buy land right next to me, I suspect, had as much to do with the werewolf's urge to dominate those they see as lesser beings as it did with the superb riverfront view.
He didn't like having my old single-wide bringing down the value of his sprawling adobe edifice-though, as I sometimes pointed out to him, my trailer was already here when he bought his property and built on it. He also took every opportunity to remind me I was only here on his sufferance: a walker being no real match for a werewolf.
In response to these complaints, I bowed my head, spoke respectfully to his face-usually-and pulled the dilapidated old Rabbit I kept for parts out into my back field where it was clearly visible from Adam's bedroom window.
I was almost certain he wouldn't eat my cat, but I'd leave her inside for the next week or so to give the impression I was cowed by his threat. The trick with werewolves is never to confront them straight on.
Medea mewed, purred, and wagged her stub tail when I set her down and filled her food dish. She'd come to me as a stray, and I'd thought for a while that some abusive person had chopped her tail off, but my vet said she was a Manx and born that way. I gave her one last stroke, then went to my fridge to scrounge something for dinner.
"I'd have brought Mac home if I thought Adam would leave him be," I told her, "but werewolves don't take to strangers very well. There's all sorts of protocols they insist upon when a new wolf comes into someone else's territory, and something tells me that Mac hasn't petitioned the pack. A werewolf won't freeze to death sleeping outside, however bad the weather. He'll be all right for a little while."
"Still," I said, as I got out some leftover spaghetti to nuke, "if Mac's in trouble, Adam might help him." It would be better to introduce the subject gently when I knew what the boy's story was.
I ate standing up and rinsed out the dish before curling up on the couch and turning on the TV. Medea yowled and jumped on my lap before the first commercial.
Mac didn't come in the next day. It was a Saturday, and he might not know I worked most every Saturday if there were cars to fix. Maybe he'd moved on.
I hoped Adam or one of his wolves hadn't found him before I'd had a chance to break the news of his presence more gently. The rules that allowed werewolves to live undetected among humankind for centuries tended to have fatal consequences for those who broke them.
I worked until noon, then called to tell the nice young couple that their car was a lost cause. Replacing the engine in it would cost them more than the car was worth. Bad news calls were my least favorite job. When Tad, my old assistant, had been around, I'd made him do them. I hung up almost as depressed as the hapless owners of the shiny, decked-out, well-loved car now destined for a boneyard.
I scrubbed up and got as much of the gunk out from under my nails as was going to come and started in on the never-ending paperwork that had also fallen to Tad. I was glad he'd gotten the scholarship that allowed him to head to the Ivy League college of his choice, but I really missed him. After ten minutes, I decided there was nothing that couldn't be put off until Monday. Hopefully by then I'd have an urgent repair, and I'd be able to put off the paperwork until Tuesday.