"What?" I stared at him, not sure I had heard correctly.
"Money," he repeated. "Green bills with the head of Washington or Jefferson or some other political personage of note on them, sometimes also referred to as 'dough' or 'cash'. How much of it do you make per year? I understand that you are a veterinarian. As far as I have been able to determine, the country's veterinarians make an average $91,250 per year, ranging from $50,480 to $141,680. Now, assuming that you are not completely incompetent and at the bottom of this scale, this is still hugely below the proceeds my grandson generates. What do you have to say to that?"
"Um..." I said.
Wow, Cassidy! Great way to make an impression.
Beside me, Elliot threw his grandfather a glare out of those deep, dark eyes of his that would have had me quailing in a corner. Old Mr. Winslow didn't even blink.
"Since we are on the subject of money," he continued, not waiting for my reply and piercing me with those sharp eyes of his, "how much money do you currently have in your bank account? I assume that it is not more than one measly million dollars?"
"Err... not really."
Okay... Second error of the night. Number one: judo-throwing the butler through the air. Number two: not owning a million plus dollars.
"I thought as much. Humph." He speared a piece of lobster with his fork and bit it in two without bothering to remove the shell. "Have you been previously convicted?"
My eyes went wide. "What?"
"Convicted. By the police. For a crime. Winslow Enterprises is an international corporation with billion dollar interests in respected branches of industry, young lady. I'm sure you'll understand we cannot afford to have our name connected to that of a criminal. Thus I asked: have you ever been convicted?"
No, Sir. The cops have never been able to catch me, so far. But they did find one of the four bodies.
I very, very briefly considered giving this reply. It would have been fun, just to see the look on the gnarled old face. But Elliot's hands appearing suddenly over mine and squeezing brought me back from fantasy to reality.
"Grandfather..." he said, warningly.
Turning my hand into his, I squeezed, to signal him that it was all right. It was a legitimate question after all. I mean, how should old Mr. Winslow know that his son's girlfriend wasn't a car thief, or a confidence trickster or, oh, let's say a serial killer? Such things happened in the best of families.
"No, Sir," I said with a friendly smile. "I have never been convicted."
Not yet, that is.
"Humph. Where do you come from, exactly?"
"Alabama, Sir."
"Where in Alabama?"
My hand tensed involuntarily, and I felt Elliot look at me, a slight marring his lovely brow.
"It's just a small town, Sir. I'm sure you haven't heard of it."
The old gentleman's eyes narrowed. "Try me."
Thankfully, his wife chose this moment to intercede on my behalf. "Oh, Joseph! Leave her alone, will you? The poor girl is quite nervous enough, I'm sure, without being subjected to your inquisition."
"Humph. So you are allowed to ask her questions, and I am not?"
"No, Joseph. You are allowed to ask her anything you want, as long as you avoid the subjects of her monetary position, her status, her morals, her dress, her ancestry, and most of all her hidden motives in dating our grandson, which, by the way, she doesn't have. Understood?"
"Humph!"
The rest of the dinner passed in about the same happy atmosphere. With Elliot's hand in mine and his grandmother's cheerful chit-chat and friendly smiles to distract me, I just about managed to ignore the suspicious looks hurled at me from across the table. I had to say, for someone who had been so eager to see his grandson married off, Mr. Winslow was being less than enthusiastic. But then, a twice-widowed karate-practicing veterinarian was probably not the type of woman he had hoped his grandson would meet at Club Hesperides.
Although somewhat more circumspect in her choice of topics, Mrs. Winslow's inquisition was no less effective than her husband's. In the course of the evening, she managed to extract from me my hobbies (reading, martial arts, visiting the zoo), my favorite pets (cats, rabbits and worms), my favorite food (coffee, although she kept protesting this wasn't actually a food), my favorite drink (also coffee), my lucky number (nine, like the number of a cat's lives) and my favorite song (Killing Me Softly).
Finally, to lighten the atmosphere a bit and hopefully reduce the intensity of his glares, I asked Mr. Winslow: "What do you like to do?"
"Me?" He raised an elegant silver eyebrow.
"Yes. I'm sure you don't spend all your time working for your billion-dollar corporation, do you?"
"Well, no. As a matter of fact, I collect cars."
My face brightened.
"Miniature cars? I knew a guy in college who did that, once. He used to take them to these races and drive them around with a remote control..."
"No!" Mr. Winslow snorted. "Not miniature cars! Real ones!"
"Oh." My mouth fell open, slightly. An image appeared in front of my inner eye of the three sleek, shiny cars I had seen standing outside in the driveway. Together, they probably had cost a million dollars or more. To imagine ten of these, or twenty or even more... good God! Collecting cars? How much money exactly did this man have?
"Would you like to see them?" he asked, a spark of eagerness suddenly in his eyes. "My collection, I mean? It's just downstairs."
No! Please, no cars! I don't want to spend my evening staring at cars! I don't want to have to listen all evening to boring guy talk about cylinders and horsepower and camelpower or whatever it's called! I don't even want to see a single exhaust pipe!
The broad smile that I somehow managed to lure onto my face and trap there actually looked halfway genuine.
"Yes, please! I'd be delighted!"
"But we haven't had dessert yet," little Mrs. Winslow protested.
"Oh, scrap dessert!" Pushing back his chair, Mr. Winslow got to his feet and marched to the door. Elliot, I noticed, while waiting politely for me to rise, looked longingly after his grandfather.
"Don't tell me you're infected with this insanity of the male species, too?" I whispered.
One corner of his mouth turned up. "Haven't you noticed yet that every time I come to pick you up, it's in a different limousine?"
"What? No, you don't!"
"Yes, I do."
"Well... they all look the same to me."
The corner of his mouth twitched again. "I've noticed."
My elbow hit his ribs, hard. He didn't even wince, but bowed his head. "Why, thank you. So kind of you to offer me your arm."
I couldn't keep from grinning myself. "You're welcome."
"Although traditionally, that's my job."
"I'm a modern woman."
"You there!" Mr. Winslow's voice came from the next room. "Stop flirting and get a move on!"
Sighing, I let Elliot slide his arm through mine and started towards the door.
"Your grandfather is not very romantic, is he?"
"How did you guess?"
"Women's intuition."
"Oh, my dear!" Mrs. Winslow appeared beside us. "I hope you enjoyed the dinner. Did you? I asked Elliot what you liked, but I'm afraid our cook isn't quite the sort of cook to produce hamburgers. I hope the steak was all right, too? And the lobsters? I really love lobsters. They make you feel like you've really worked for your food when you finally get to the meat, and it tastes twice as good as any other. Last year, Joseph and I were in Miami, and we ate freshly caught lobster at this wonderful little seaside restaurant that was simply..."
With her happily buzzing around us and Mr. Winslow marching ahead, we crossed a medium-sized room with a few bookshelves and then entered a long corridor, at the end of which awaited steel doors.
"Open!" Mr. Winslow commanded, and the doors promptly obeyed. My mouth followed their example.
"What the..."
"Voice recognition software," Elliot whispered into my ear. "One of Winslow Enterprises' research areas. Don't ask, or you'll get a lecture."
I nodded, keeping quiet. Beyond the set of steel doors, an elevator the size of a small bedroom awaited us, with several blinking panels and railings all around the walls.
Planting himself firmly in the middle of the elevator, Elliot nodded to the railings. "Grab hold."
"Why?" I asked. "Is the—"
I didn't get to finish the sentence.
"Down!" Mr. Winslow's hard voice commanded, and we jumped into warp speed. Downwards.
"Aah!"
I was nearly knocked off my feet, managing just in time to grab hold of something before my face hit the metal floor. Looking up, I saw that the thing I had grabbed onto wasn't the metal railing, but Elliot's arm. Its muscles were just as smooth, and nearly as hard, but in a much more interesting way. He looked down at me, hanging on to his arm for dear life, amusement sparkling in his dark eyes.
"I should perhaps have mentioned that cars aren't the only thing my grandfather likes fast."
"Thanks so much!"
"Although I must say..." One of his hands slid around my waist to hold me more tightly. "I'm actually glad that I didn't."
And suddenly, so was I.
From the corner, there came a noise of delight, and looking over, I saw Mrs. Winslow staring at the two of us with wide, hopeful eyes. As soon as we were gone, she was probably going to start making wedding plans and picking out cribs and toys.
"Cassidy." Elliot's voice made me turn back. "Careful. Three, two, one..."
I braced myself. Just in time: the elevator thudded to a halt, and my spine was probably rammed through my skull up into the air. At least it felt like it.
Ding.
With a soft sound, the elevator door slid open.
"There you are," Mr. Winslow proudly proclaimed. "My collection!"
My mouth, once again, dropped open. I really had to get my jaw muscles under control!
But this was simply...
If I had liked cars, I would have said "wow" or "awesome."
As it was, I just thought "insane!"
I had expected ten or twenty cars—two dozen at the most. Instead, I was standing on a railed platform at the top of a multi-level subterranean garage. As I watched, white and blue lights sprang to life along the walls, flooding the enormous space. Around a central, circular free space, level upon level rose up, each containing at least eighty, maybe ninety or a hundred cars! It was like a scene right from the Batcave.
Except there were no bats.
But there were cars. A lot of cars. And not any cars, either, but row upon row of mint condition old-timers, sleek sports cars and elegant limousines. Holy moly! How rich was this guy?
Mr. Winslow was watching my stunned expression with a smug face. "Nice, isn't it?"
"Yeah, it's... it's quite impressive."
"Are you interested in cars?" he asked, and I saw the glint of the fanatic in his eyes.
"Yes," I lied, painting another bright, eager smile on my face. "Absolutely!"
Beside me, Elliot made an indistinguishable noise. I stepped on his foot.
"Then please follow me!" Mr. Winslow exclaimed. For the first time since I had walked into this house, something akin to a smile threatened to appear on his face. "I'd be more than happy to show you around!"
"Why, thank you!" I batted my eyelashes like the advertisement girls on TV always did. "That's so nice of you!"
And the two of us started down the walkway that lead along the wall. Elliot caught up to me after a few moments.
"What are you doing?" He whispered in my ear. "You don't have a clue about cars! You regularly forget how to switch the windshield wipers on."
"Shut up!" I hissed. "He doesn't have to know that!"
"Here we have one of my finest pieces!" Mr. Winslow exclaimed. "A Ford Model-T. One of the first mass-produced cars ever. With this car, Henry Ford became one of the richest men in America. It is a symbol of American entrepreneurship and ingenuity!"
"Oh. How nice." I eyed the thing in front of me, which looked more or less like a collection of empty sardine cans with wheels at the bottom. "So nice and, um... black."
"Yes, isn't it wonderful? Since this was the first car to be produced at an assembly line, the production was so quick they couldn't get any colors to dry quickly enough. Black was the only color that meant they didn't have a bottleneck in production."
I eyed Mr. Winslow with misgivings, and quickly leaned over to Elliot's ear. "Is your grandfather quite right up there? Why would they have bottles in car production?"
"A 'bottleneck' is the term for when some difficult step in production takes longer than other steps and holds up the whole process," he murmured back.
"Oh."
"And this one, though modern, is another fine piece! They started production just a few months ago, and since they did the fastest car in the world is finally American again! You can see from the form already that..."
Mr. Winslow's voice became background noise—like the gurgle of a mountain stream, rather pleasant, but not really something I could understand and pay attention to. We walked through row after row of oldies, middlies and younglies, or whatever the new ones were called. Some were big, some were small, and they all had different names and numbers and special features that Mr. Winslow felt compelled to explain in detail. The old gentleman really had to be an enthusiast, because he never once noticed that all I ever said was "How nice! and "How wonderful!" He didn't even notice how often I yawned.
Mrs. Winslow did, though.
"Don't worry, dear," she murmured, appearing beside me, squeezing my hand. "Only one-hundred seventy-four cars left on this level."
"Is that supposed to reassure me?"
She laughed, lightly. "Well, it's the best I can do."
I threw a glance up at Elliot on my other side. "He seems to enjoy himself."
Mrs. Winslow rolled her eyes. "Men! They're all the same."
"Um... how many levels are there after this one?"
"Many. But as I said, no need to worry. I'll make him stop when we're through with this one."
"Thank you!" Closing my eyes for a moment, I breathed out a sigh of relief. "You're a lifesaver!"
She squeezed my hand back, and when I opened my eyes again I saw a warmth in her gaze that made a lump appear in my throat.
"You are, too, Cassy," she whispered, and glanced at Elliot. Then her warm gaze flicked back to me. "I had almost given up hope that he'd ever find anyone."
I was just about to answer, when suddenly, my head jerked around. "What was that?"
"...five-hundred twelve horse-power," Mr. Winslow was saying. "This is a real racer. And the interior, of course is...."
Only then it registered with him that I had spoken. Frowning, he turned towards me. "What did you say?"
"I said what was that?"
"That, my dear young lady, is a Ferrari—"
"No, I don't mean the car! I meant that noise." I waved in the direction of the row of cars in front of us. "It came from over there."
Everybody looked around.
"I didn't hear anything," Elliot said.
"Neither did I," confirmed Mr. Winslow. "Now, to return to the Ferrari..."
He resumed his verbal stream of technical details.
"Strange," I muttered, half to myself. "I could have sworn I heard something, like metal on metal."
Elliot squeezed my hand. "This place is pretty big. It was probably just an echo."
Somebody cleared his throat. "Oh really, buddy? Echo? Look down here."
I looked down—and jumped back with a yelp! Right in front of me, a pair of long legs was sticking out from beneath a massive black Range Rover.
What the...!
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Hello there, my fellow homicidal maniacs!
I hope you enjoyed Cassy's first interrogation? ;) Mr Winslow would probably feel right at home at the FBI, in my humble opinion.
Now the big question is - who is the new character that is about to be introduced? Any guesses? ;)
Cheers
Sir Rob