« Mrs. Whitfield! Do you hear me?! » the dealer screamed. His name was Arthur Vance, proprietor of Blue Ridge Heritage Classics on Airport Road in Fletcher. « I have two armed sergeants from the North Carolina State Highway Patrol standing at my transaction counter! Beside them is a senior investigator from the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs and a special agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation! They just locked down my showroom floor! They impounded my transport trailer before we even unhitched the straps! They told me if I so much as touched the kickstart on that machine, I’m being charged under Title 18 of the United States Code with unlawful commercial possession of sovereign national defense property! »
Margaret’s face lost every drop of its manicured pink flush. The triumphant sneer she had worn since nine o’clock that morning—the look of a woman who had finally purged her husband’s soul from her pristine suburban garage—fractured into jagged lines of pure confusion.
« Vance… Mr. Vance, stop yelling! » Margaret stammered, clutching the receiver with both trembling hands, her knuckles turning chalk-white. « It’s an antique motorcycle! A rusty 1947 Indian Chief! It’s sat in Harold’s shed since nineteen-eighty-one! It belongs to my husband! As his legal wife, under North Carolina marital law, I have the statutory right to liquidate joint household chattel— »
« Shut up! Just shut your mouth, woman! » Vance shrieked, the sound of heavy boots echoing over polished showroom tiles in the background, accompanied by the cold, metallic rattle of handcuffs being drawn from leather cases. « You handed me a forged North Carolina duplicate title! You signed Harold’s name on the bill of sale! Do you have any idea what that machine is?! The VIN isn’t a civilian sequence! It doesn’t start with a civilian assembly code! The stamped plate on the left crankcase reads: *PROPERTY OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY — SPECIAL TECHNICAL ORDNANCE CORPS — SERIAL NUMBER ZERO-ZERO-FOUR*! »
Vance took a ragged, wet breath that wheezed through the speaker.
« They’re asking me where Harold Whitfield is, Mrs. Whitfield! They’re asking if Harold is alive! Because according to the Department of the Army’s historic archives in Fort Bragg… Colonel Thomas Whitfield’s dispatch machine was designated as a classified national memorial in nineteen-seventy-five! It carries an active, permanent federal preservation lien! And it cannot be sold, transferred, or moved across a county line without an executive order signed by the Secretary of Defense! »
Beverly dropped the bottle.
The heavy green glass shattered against the ceramic kitchen tiles in an explosive spray of foam, crystal, and cheap domestic champagne that soaked the cuffs of Trevor’s khaki trousers.
