Death at the Wheel by Kate Flora Page A

brother-in-law?"
    "I would have," he said. "My brother-in-law Calvin was a horny scumbag who had to dip his wick into everything that moved. He cheated on my sister and bullied her and put her down until he broke her spirit. I didn't shed any tears when I heard that fucker was dead. No sirree! Except for leaving Julie alone with those two little ones, but Cal wasn't interested in being a father anyway. Practically went nuts when the second one wasn't a boy! He only used 'em for show, know what I mean? He used to rag her somethin' awful about how she had to dress and behave and how the girls had to dress and behave and how she had to talk and what clubs to join." He stopped abruptly. "You get my drift?"
    "He was very controlling?"
    "I guess that's what you'd call it. I think a man's got to keep a woman under control, don't get me wrong, but there's a kind of a deal that goes along with that, and he didn't keep the deal. Plus he was a complete shit to live with. You can quote me on that. Never missed anything. The house had to be just so and his food just so or the man would have a fit. She was the sweetest little thing... Dee... Julie was."
    Now that I had him going, Dunk, as he urged me to call him, was on a roll. "She changed her name?"
    "Bet your ass." I never bet my ass on anything, but I didn't tell him that. The phone rang.
    He snatched it up, barked his name into it, listened for a minute, and pawed through the papers on his desk. "Thursday! Listen, dickhead, I've got a business to run here. A trucking business. Which means I need my trucks. You said Monday." He listened again. "Did you try Bilodeau? Well, try him. If I'd known you'd take this long, I'd have done it myself. No, ass-wipe, sitting in an office hasn't made me forget a thing. I can still put an engine together faster than you can take a piss." He listened again. Barked a laugh. "I just might take you up on that. Okay. Okay. Try Bilodeau and get back to me. I'll bet he's got something lying around." He threw the phone down. "Where were we?"
    "You were telling me about Julie changing her name."
    "That was Cal's idea, too. Fell for her when she was named Deanna, but it wasn't classy enough for him, so he suggested Julie. Told her never to let on that she'd come up the hard way. The two of 'em invented a whole story for her about her rich family and her proper upbringing. Guess a smart mill town girl pulled herself up by her bootstraps wasn't good enough for Mr. Calvin 'self-important' Bass. No way. He's got to take a real smart, capable, college-educated girl like that and make her act like some kind of country club twit. Way he had her behavin', you wouldn't think the girl had a brain in her head. He even had her believin' she didn't."
    "Where did Julie go to college?"
    "You don't have to sound so surprised," he said, frowning. "Dee was determined to get out of here and make something of herself. Until she met that jerk. Best damned mechanic on my crew, but she wanted to leave this town behind and do something respectable. Not that I blame her. We come up hard, me and Dee. I guess it was harder on a girl, growing up poor like we did, treated like trash 'cuz we didn't have a father and our mother was a drunk. Dee went to Wheaton. Studied economics and sociology. Honors and everything. She was going to be a smart social worker and help people like us."
    He shook his head. "Then she meets that asshole and love turns her into mush. 'S funny, you know. How all that ambition could vanish and leave her just like a piece of clay. All his fault, you know." He glared at me as though I might dare to disagree, unconsciously clenching his freckled fist, the muscles in his arm dancing, but it was unnecessary show. It was already very clear to me that sensible people didn't disagree with Dunk Donahue. At least not openly. Even when he was calm, anger hung around him like a red cloud.
    Dunk's story of their childhood was a far cry from the life of privilege Julie had