The Race (Isaac Bell 4)

“Yes. She is not yet tamed.”

“Is your father’s flying machine dangerous?”

“Shall we say ‘interesting’?” Danielle Di Vecchio replied with an elegant smile. And at that moment, thought the tall detective, they could be thousands of miles from Massachusetts, flirting in a Roman salon.

“Where is it?” he asked.

The Italian woman’s dark-eyed gaze drifted past Bell, out the window, and locked on the hilltop. Her face lighted in a broad smile. “There,” she said.

Bell looked out the window. What on earth was she imagining?

The truck with the flat tire had towed its wagon to the crest of the hill. “A boy,” she explained. “A nice boy. He loves me.”

“But what is he doing with your father’s machine?”

“My father took it with him from Italy. His creditors can’t touch it here. It is his legacy. My inheritance. That boy helped my father in America. He is eccellente meccanico!”

“Not artista?” Bell asked, testing her reaction with a smile. He could not be sure, but she seemed as sane as he was.

“Artists are rare, Mr. Bell. I’m sure you know that. He wrote that he was coming. I thought he was dreaming.” She jumped up and waved out the window, but it was unlikely that he could see her. Bell passed her the hem of the white curtain. “Wave this. Maybe he’ll see it.” She did. But he did not respond, his gaze likely on the myriad barred windows.

She slumped down on the window seat. “He’s still dreaming. Does he imagine I can just walk out of here?”

“What is his name?” Bell asked.

“Andy. Andy Moser. My father liked him very much.”

Isaac Bell was struck by a wonderful possibility. He asked, “How fast is your father’s monoplane?”

“Very fast. Father believed that only speed would overcome winds. The more speedy the aeroplano, the safer in bad weather, Father said.”

“Faster than sixty miles per hour?”

“Father hoped for seventy.”

“Miss Di Vecchio, I have a proposition for you.”

13

“MR. MOSER, YOUR SITUATION is about to improve vastly,” Isaac Bell said to the sad-faced mechanician who was grilling a frankfurter on a fire he had built a safe distance from the crated American Eagle monoplane.

“How do you know my name?”

“Read this!”

Bell thrust a fine parchment-paper envelope he had lifted from Dr. Ryder’s writing desk into Moser’s grease-stained hand.

“Open it.”

Andy Moser slid a finger under the seal, unfolded a sheet of writing paper covered in an elegant Florentine cursive script, and read slowly, moving his lips.

Isaac Bell had seized an opportunity to help the beautiful Italian woman while helping himself solve the vexing problem he had warned Archie about. The field of competitors vying for the Whiteway Cup was growing so large that too many support trains would be jockeying for the same railroad tracks. Keeping up with Josephine’s flying machine to guard her life would be a nightmare even with the help of the auto patrols that Archie had envisioned.

But what, Bell had asked himself, if he took “the high ground”? With his own airship, he could ride herd on the race. He could watch Josephine in the air while he stationed men ahead at the racetracks and fairgrounds that would provide infields to alight on.

Danielle Di Vecchio needed money to plead her case to get out of Ryder’s asylum.

Isaac Bell needed a speedy airship. He bought hers.