something glinted bright red under the sun. The Mustang! Jack took off. Soon the car was in plain sight. Two men were hunched over it, doing God only knew what while a cluster of people watched. Jack’s heart started to pound, and not just from the running.
“Hey you!” he hollered when the men were within earshot. They straightened and casually turned to face him. A few feet shy of the car, Jack ground to a halt. Reeling from shock, he glanced from face to identical face. The little thieves were barely five feet tall and couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds each. Could they be dwarves? Identical, car-napping dwarves?
“How old are you?” he demanded, dripping sweat and gasping for air.
“We’re twelve, but we’ll be thirteen next week,” one of the boys replied with obvious pride.
Flabbergasted, Jack took a moment to absorb that. “Twelve? But…you’re not even old enough to drive!”
“We drive very responsibly, sir,” the other boy assured him.
“He’s right. They do,” a man in the group said. Peach-colored ice cream circled his mouth and dripped off his chin onto a dark blue mechanic’s uniform with the name Ted stitched across one breast pocket.
“Which one are you?” Jack asked the boy who’d just spoken. The twins had matching dark hair, matching Jughead ears, matching everything.
“Terry, sir.”
“I’m Tommy,” the other one said. “Nice to meet you.”
It was then that Jack spotted the yellow chamois resting atop the Mustang’s shiny hood. The boys hadn’t been vandalizing his car—they’d been buffing it to a fine polish. Helpless to do anything else, Jack burst out laughing. While the little thieves exchanged frowns, he tossed his head back and laughed until he couldn’t laugh anymore.
Sobering, he trained a stern eye on them. “Listen, boys, you can’t just go around relocating people’s cars.”
“Why not?” they asked.
“Never mind.” Jack opened the driver’s side door and tossed Elvira Jackson’s tea rose onto the passenger seat. His cellphone was still there, along with his leather satchel and laptop computer. There was cash lying around, too, but the boys hadn’t touched it.
“Hummer car,” the man with the messy face said as the twins stepped away from the Mustang, giving it one last, reverent look. “Is that the original paint job?”
Jack ignored him. “Listen, I don’t suppose either of you know the way to Darville Dairy?” he asked the twins.
“I do,” Tommy answered. “Just take highway seven to…”
“No way!” Terry cut in. “It’s a lot faster if you follow Main Street to county road nineteen…”
2
“SO MS. DARVILLE, what gave you the idea for Peach Paradise?”
Sally leaned across the patio table and spoke into the banana Trish held out to her. “Well, actually, Ms. Thomas—um, that is your name, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Trish huffed. “How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“Ten more times. There are so many lawyers impersonating reporters around here, it’s hard to keep your names straight. Anyway, I got the idea from a peach.”
“Fruit talks to you?” Trish started to twitter.
“Yes. Just this morning, this very banana said to me, ‘Help! I think someone is going to eat me.”’ Sally grabbed the fruit from Trish’s hand, peeled it and devoured a third in one fatal bite. Trish bowed her head for a moment of silence and they both collapsed in giggles.
Sally couldn’t help herself. She just had to say it again. “Aren’t I clever, Trish? Didn’t I pull it off beautifully?”
Trish rolled her eyes. “Yes, Sal. For the last time, you are very, very clever. And yes, you did manage to get the attention of the Vancouver Satellite. I don’t know how you got it, but you did. Still I have doubts about this whole thing.”
“Really?” Sally batted her blond eyelashes furiously. “I’m shocked. You never have doubts.”
“Ha ha. The thing is, I’m surprised the Satellite picked up your news release. This isn’t their turf and, frankly, Sal, they usually go after bigger stories than this one.”
“Is that so?” Sally returned with faint sarcasm. “Obviously they do think it’s a big story.”
“Obviously. The question is—why?”
“Because it is, of course. And if you must know, I don’t care one bit why they’re interested. The Satellite has half a million readers. Do you know what that kind of exposure will do for Peachtown? For the entire valley?”
“I know what it will do,” Trish replied cautiously. “I’m just concerned that you’re being overly optimistic. Let’s face it, you don’t know what the guy is going to write.”
“Yes, I do. He’s going to write what I want him to write.”
“Really? How do you figure that?”
Sally blinked. “Because it’s my story, silly.” Honestly, for someone so smart, Trish just didn’t get it sometimes.
“Sally, why do I think you’re going to steamroll over this poor guy like you steamrolled over the revitalization committee last year?”
“I did not steamroll over those people.”
“Oh yeah? Then why do most of them have unpublished home phone numbers now?”
Sally sniffed and looked away. As a town councillor, it was her job to question the decisions made by council’s various subcommittees. It wasn’t her fault if they couldn’t handle constructive criticism.
Trish lifted her auburn curls and fanned her glistening neck with that week’s edition of the Post. “Anyway, I’ve had lots of experience with reporters. I just don’t want you to be disappointed when your big story ends up being ten lines at the bottom of page twenty.”
Sally dismissed that possibility with a shrug, but she understood what Trish was saying. If she asked nicely enough, Charlie Sacks would publish her grocery list. But the Peachtown Post wasn’t the Vancouver Satellite. Not by a long shot.
Weary of the argument, Sally rose and took yet another look down the narrow driveway zigzagging from her hillside cottage through a stand of crab apple trees, down to county road nineteen. It, in turn, forked left to Peachtown and right to the city of Kelowna. Depending on what map he’d used, Jack Gold could be coming from either direction.
“I thought you weren’t anxious,” Trish teased her.
“I’m not.” From old habit Sally reached up and smoothed back her dark blond hair, already pulled so tightly into a ponytail it couldn’t have come loose in a hurricane.
Trish
