Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 38, No. 13, Mid-December 1993

Robbie twisted his head toward the corner of Sarah’s office, his brown eyes pleading for help. P. J. McLean winked reassuringly. The air conditioner rattled in the background, straining to overcome the room’s rising temperature.

Mercy stared defiantly at the five other people jammed into an elegant office better suited for one-on-one frays. The cunning intelligence burning behind her eyes overpowered the beauty of her high cheekbones and sensuous mouth, which twitched with something like contempt. “I’ll let my stepson the lawyer do the talking. It’s why he’s here.”

Trent Archer’s ears turned scarlet, and his muddy eyes roamed Shallott’s Oriental carpet before settling on a vacant spot between Carl and Robbie Sutton. “But there was a similar problem. When the boy damaged my car.”

“I promised you that Robbie wouldn’t touch customers’ cars again, but—” Sutton twisted his shoulders “—my boy likes to help around the garage and I can’t watch him all the time.”

Archer’s fingers twitched across his thin mustache. “Did your boy touch my father’s car?”

“No!” The denial exploded from Robbie, who looked around panic-stricken before pulling his head back in, turtlelike.

McLean, sickened by the boy’s terror, said gently, “Then you did not put power steering fluid in Mr. Rex Archer’s brakes?”

Robbie shook his head violently.

McLean stared out Sarah’s window at the distant Siskiyou Mountains, etched against the Southern Oregon skyline, before letting his gaze settle on Trent Archer. “Well, somebody did.”

“Look, we all know the boy has, ahh, problems,” Archer said. “We know without doubt that he put the wrong fluid in my car six months ago. I’m willing to believe it was an accident. We know my father left his Blazer with Sutton to have the brakes worked on, and we know power steering fluid was found in his brake cylinder by the sheriff’s lab.”

Sarah leaned forward. “Examined at your suggestion?”

“Yes, well, under the circumstances.” Archer sounded defiant.

McLean toyed with a pencil as a conversation he’d had two days before gnawed at him. A mail truck driver he knew had made the same mistake and spent a harrowing two hours limping out of the mountains in first gear. The power steering fluid froze his brakes so badly that he had to replace the entire hydraulic system.

He was a fire investigator, not a mechanic, but this case looked like a loser, something Sarah didn’t want to hear, ever. The boy’s manful efforts to keep from crying jerked McLean back to his own childhood, and the day he learned his father would never come home from the VA hospital. His fist contracted, and the pencil snapped. He scanned the room, more in annoyance than embarrassment, and decided that no matter what the odds, Robbie deserved a chance for a defense.

At the moment, Trent Archer’s eyes were lingering on Sarah’s breasts. His smile was humorless, confident. “If you want to risk a trial, that’s your business. There’s no doubt brake failure led to my father’s accident and subsequent death.”

Sarah leaned back in her blue leather chair, fingers steepled as she contemplated Archer and his stepmother. McLean, studying the couple’s profiles, wondered if calling someone two years his junior “mother” stuck in Archer’s throat. He examined the lawyer’s spindly thirty-year-old neck and figured almost anything would jam.

Sarah’s voice was soft, persuasive. “You’re absolutely certain you want to put this family,” she nodded toward Robbie and Carl, “through the agony of a court proceeding that you may well lose?”

Mercy Archer rose abruptly. “This has gone far enough. We’ve tried to be fair to you people. My husband is dead and—” she pointed a bejeweled finger at Robbie “—that boy is responsible. My stepson,” she gave Archer a curiously flat stare, “found his father’s body, desecrated, burned, mangled.”

She scowled across the room at Sarah. “We’ve suffered a terrible loss. Terrible. I’ll have no more of this. Come, Trent.”

Trent rose with a faint air of embarrassment, a twisted smile locked in place, and brushed against Mercy as he swung the door open. She hissed, and there was a short, angry exchange in the outer office before the front door banged shut.

Carl Sutton stared after them, his jaw muscles etched in hard ridges. “That man blames my boy, thinks I’m a fool and yet when he needed a tire changed, it was me he called.” His work-roughened hands squeezed his thighs. “Maybe I am a fool, since I changed the damn thing.” He rose reluctantly, shook hands with McLean and Sarah, and left quietly, a protective arm around his son’s shoulders.

McLean moved to Mercy’s still-warm chair, nudged it around to face the desk, and slouched down. Sarah’s sour look mirrored his own feelings.