Curious Minds (Knight and Moon 1)

“It might be a little messy in here,” Riley said, leading him to the Mini and unlocking the door. “I wasn’t expecting a passenger.”

Emerson looked down at the tiny car with the black-and-white checkerboard roof. “What is this?”

“This is my car.”

“It’s small.”

“It’s a Mini Cooper.”

Riley reached in and cleared the passenger seat of a folder containing random legal documents, a pair of running shoes, a fast-food bag that had held her breakfast sandwich, and a couple crumpled candy wrappers. She was almost sure that her suit skirt was long enough to cover her hoo-ha when she bent over, but she gave the skirt a subtle tug just to be sure.

“Cute,” Emerson said.

Riley straightened. “You meant the car, right?”

“What else would I mean?”

“You never know,” she said. “Please get in. And watch your head.”

Riley neatly slipped behind the wheel, and Emerson folded his six foot two form into the passenger seat as best as he could. He pulled a weather-beaten rucksack in with him and settled it on his lap.

“Sorry about the lack of leg room,” Riley said. “I had to get the smallest car I could find. That’s the only way I can fit into the little parking space they gave me at work.”

“Blane-Grunwald gave you a bad parking space?”

“Well, not bad. It’s just…well, it is bad, but I’m a rookie, so it’s only to be expected. It’s okay.”

“That’s inexcusable. I’ll talk to Werner about it.”

A bolt of panic shot through Riley’s stomach, and she made a silent promise to speak more carefully in the future. It was a promise she made often, with varied results. Werner Grunwald was Günter’s brother. He was the Grunwald of Blane-Grunwald. The head honcho. The topmost of top dogs. The last thing she wanted to do was come off to him as somebody who whined to clients about petty things like company parking spaces.

“Thank you, but it’s not necessary to talk to Werner about my space,” she said. “Honestly, it’s really not necessary.”

“No problem. Consider it done,” Emerson said. He opened his door, planted a foot on the ground, and wrangled himself out of the Mini. “I’m not comfortable in this. We’ll take one of my cars today.”

Riley did some mental swearing, unfastened her seat belt, and followed after him. The driveway led around the side of the house and ended in a large parking area that backed up to a multi-bay garage. A humongous old Jayco Redhawk Class C motorhome with tinted coach windows was hunkered down in front of the garage. Coming from north Texas, Riley knew her RVs, and she knew this monster slept five and sucked gas faster than you could pump it in.

Emerson walked past the Jayco without so much as a passing glance and rolled one of the garage doors up, revealing a mind-boggling collection of classic cars. Everything from muscle cars, like a ’65 Shelby Mustang, to luxury dreamboats like a ’39 Rolls-Royce Phantom III Cabriolet, to funky little cult cars like the Zastava 750 were lined up row on row in the pristine garage. Bright overhead pin spots bounced light off the polished chrome and glass.

Riley was mesmerized. Her father, when he wasn’t busy being a county sheriff, had spent his weekends tinkering with a ’64 Pontiac GTO. He read automotive magazines, was devoted to NASCAR, and dreamed of owning his own fleet of muscle cars. And Riley, her wild red hair bunched back in a ponytail, had been his pit crew, handing him wrenches and nut drivers and ratchets while he operated on the GTO with the precision of a brain surgeon.

She had inherited her father’s love of old cars, so she looked at this garage the way some women would look at a display of every Manolo Blahnik shoe in existence.

“Oh man,” Riley said.

Emerson dispassionately surveyed the garage. “My father collected things. Wives and cars mostly. Not that he worked on the cars, or even drove them. He just liked to own them. So other people couldn’t, I think.”

He stopped in front of a ’93 Bentley Turbo R. “I guess we could take this one,” he said. “What do you think?” he asked Riley.

Riley would rather have taken the ’74 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am that was peeking out from behind the ’69 Dodge Charger Daytona Hemi, but she was too intimidated to voice an opinion.

“This is a beautiful car,” she said, eyeing the butter-soft leather seats and the dashboard of pure, not imitation, walnut.

“It was always Larry’s favorite.”

“Larry?”

“My chauffeur. He used to drive me to school when I was ten.”