At least he wasn’t going to be sleeping on the floor again tonight. He doubted Sara would welcome him into bed with open arms, but she appeared to be getting over some of her anger. Things had been going so well between them before Jo had called, and it was easy to blame someone else for his recent problems. The truth was that it was starting to seem like every day with Sara was one step forward and two steps back. The fact that he had asked her to marry him at least four times and each time been basically slapped in the face was beginning to grate as well. There was only so much he could take.

Jeffrey turned onto a gravel drive, thinking that between the farm and Dale Stanley’s place, his Town Car was going to look like it had been through a war zone.

Jeffrey parked behind what looked like a fully restored Dodge Dart. “Damn,” he whispered as he got out of his own car, unable to conceal his appreciation. The Dodge was cherry, dark blue with tinted windows, jacked up in the back. The bumper was seamless, bright chrome sparkling from the security light mounted to the garage.

“Hey, Chief.” An extremely tall, skinny man wearing work coveralls came out of the garage. He was rubbing his hands on a dirty towel. “I think I met you at the picnic last year.”

“Good to see you again, Dale.” There weren’t many men Jeffrey had to look up at, but Dale Stanley was practically a beanstalk. He looked a lot like his younger brother, if someone had grabbed Pat by the head and feet and stretched the young policeman a good twelve inches either way. Despite Dale’s towering height, there was an easygoing air about the man, as if nothing in the world bothered him. Jeffrey put his age at around thirty.

“Sorry I had to ask you to come so late,” Dale told him. “I didn’t want to upset the kids. They get nervous when a cop pulls up.” He glanced nervously back at the house. “I guess you know why.”

“I understand,” Jeffrey said, and Dale seemed to relax a bit. Patrolman Pat Stanley, Dale’s little brother, had been involved in a pretty intense hostage situation a few months ago, barely escaping with his life. Jeffrey couldn’t imagine what it was like to hear about something like that on the news, then wait for a police car to pull up to tell you that your brother was dead.

“They don’t even like the sirens on TV,” he said, and Jeffrey got the feeling Dale was the kind of guy who scooped up spiders and took them out of the house instead of just killing them.

Dale asked, “You got a brother?”

“Not that I know of,” Jeffrey told him, and Dale threw back his head and laughed like a braying horse.

Jeffrey waited for him to finish before asking, “We’re right on the county line, aren’t we?”

“Yep,” Dale agreed. “Catoogah’s that way, Avondale’s here. My kids’ll go to the school up on Mason Mill.”

Jeffrey looked around, trying to get his bearings. “Looks like you’ve got a nice place here.”

“Thanks.” He motioned toward the garage. “You wanna beer?”

“Sure.” Jeffrey was unable to hide his admiration as they walked into the shop. Dale ran a tight ship. The floor was painted a light gray, not a drop of oil in sight. Tools were suspended on a Pegboard, black outlines showing where everything belonged. Baby food jars containing bolts and screws hung from under the top cabinets like wineglasses in a bar. The whole place was lit up bright as day.

Jeffrey asked, “What exactly do you do here?”

“I’m restoring cars mostly,” he said, indicating the Dart. “I’ve got a paint shed out back. The mechanicals are done in here. My wife does the upholstery.”

“Terri?”

He tossed Jeffrey a look over his shoulder, probably impressed that Jeffrey remembered her name. “That’s right.”

“Sounds like a pretty good setup.”

“Yeah, well,” he said, opening a small refrigerator and taking out a Bud Light. “We’d be doing okay except for my oldest one. Tim sees your ex-wife more than he sees me. And now my sister is sick, had to quit her job over at the factory. Lot of stress on the family. Lot of stress on a man, trying to look after them.”

“Sara mentioned Tim has asthma.”

“Yeah, pretty bad.” He twisted the top off the bottle and handed it to Jeffrey. “We’ve got to be real careful around him. I gave up smoking cold turkey the day the wife took him back from the doctor’s. Tell you what, that liked to killed me. But we do what we have to do for our kids. You don’t have any, do you?” He laughed, adding, “I mean, not that you know of.”

Jeffrey made himself laugh, though considering his circumstances it wasn’t very funny. After an appropriate interval, he asked, “I thought you did metal plating.”

“Still do,” he said, picking up a piece of metal from his worktop. Jeffrey saw it was an old Porsche medallion, plated in shiny yellow gold. The set of fine-tipped paintbrushes beside it indicated Dale had been working on filling in the colors. “This is for the wife’s brother. Sweet ride.”

“Can you run me through the process?”

“Plating?” His eyes widened in surprise. “You came all the way out here for a chemistry lesson?”

“Can you humor me?”

Dale didn’t stop to think it over. “Sure,” he agreed, leading Jeffrey to a bench in the back of the shop. He seemed almost relieved to be in familiar territory as he explained, “It’s called a three-step process, but there’s more to it than that. Basically, you’re just charging the metal with this.” He pointed to a machine that looked like a battery charger. Attached were two metal electrodes, one with a black handle, the other with a red one. Beside the machine was another electrode with a yellow and red handle.

“Electricity runs positive from the red, negative from the black.” Dale indicated a shallow pan. “First, you take what you want to plate and put it in here. Fill it with solution. You use the positive, clean it with the chrome stripper. Make it negative, activate the nickel.”

“I thought it was gold.”

“Nickel’s underneath. Gold needs something to stick to. Activate the nickel with an acid solution, banana clip the negative to one side. Use a synthetic wrap on the end of the plating electrode, dip it into the gold solution, then bond the gold to the nickel. I’m leaving out all the sexy parts, but that’s pretty much it.”

“What’s the solution?”

“Basic stuff I get from the supplier,” he said, putting his hand on top of the metal cabinet above the plating area. He felt around and pulled out a key to unlock the door.

“Have you always kept that key up there?”

“Yep.” He opened up the cabinet and took down the bottles one by one. “Kids can’t reach it.”

“Anybody ever come into the shop without your knowing it?”

“Not ever. This is my livelihood,” he said, indicating the thousands of dollars’ worth of tools and equipment in the space. “Somebody gets in here and takes this stuff, I’m finished.”

“You don’t ever leave the door open?” Jeffrey asked, meaning the garage door. There were no windows or other openings in the garage. The only way in or out was through the metal roll-door. It looked strong enough to keep out a Mack truck.

“I only leave it open when I’m here,” Dale assured him. “I close it up when I go into the house to take a piss.”

Jeffrey bent down to read the labels on the bottles. “These look pretty toxic.”

“I wear a mask and gloves when I use them,” Dale told him. “There’s worse stuff out there, but I stopped using it when Tim got sick.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Arsenic or cyanide, mostly. You pour it in with the acid. It’s pretty volatile and, being honest here, it scares the shit out of me. They’ve got some new stuff on the market that’s still pretty nasty, but it can’t kill you if you breathe it wrong.” He pointed to one of the plastic bottles. “That’s the solution.”

Jeffrey read the label. “Cyanide free?”

“Yeah.” He chuckled again. “Honest to God, I was looking for an excuse to change over. I’m just a big ol’ pussy when it comes to dying.”