“But I suppose Mrs. Battle would get most of it. And Savannah has her trust fund. I don’t think she needs any more money.”
“Eddie?”
Sally glanced in the direction of the carriage house. “They don’t appear to be scraping dimes together. And I know for a fact that Dorothea Battle makes big bucks.”
“How do you know that?” asked Michelle.
“My best friend does her nails. Dorothea likes to brag.”
“Well, some people never have enough money,” suggested King.
“I just don’t see that being the reason,” said Sally stubbornly.
“If not money, then what else?” He stared pointedly at the young woman. “I guess you probably haven’t been here long enough to know about Bobby’s adulterous past.”
“Oh, I know more than you think,” blurted out Sally. “I mean—” She stopped and looked at her dirty boots.
“It’s okay, Sally,” assured King, hiding his pleasure that she’d bit on his bait so quickly. “Do you know a lot about that because maybe Bobby made advances toward you?”
Sally shook her head. “No, it was nothing like that.”
“So what, then?” pressed King. “It really could be important, Sally.”
She remained silent a bit longer and then said, “Come on with me.”
They walked past the stables and servants’ house and down a paved roadway, eventually arriving at a large brick two-story building with eight old-fashioned wooden garage doors. There was an antique gas pump with a glass bubble top out front.
“This is Mr. Battle’s private garage. He has, or had, a collection of antique cars. I guess Mrs. Battle owns them now.” She pulled out a key and they entered.
The floor was covered in a black and white checkerboard pattern. The shelves held dusty trophies from antique car shows. In front of seven of
the doors, sitting perfectly aligned with one another, were vintage cars ranging from a Stutz Bearcat to an imposing vehicle with cloth top and a round grille that the placard on the stand in front proclaimed to be a 1906 six-cylinder Franklin.
“I’d heard that Bobby collected old cars, but I didn’t know his collection was this extensive,” said King as he looked around.
“He has a bunch more on the second floor. There’s a special elevator that takes them up and down,” said Sally. “He used to have a full-time mechanic to take care of them.” She walked down to the last space and stood. King and Michelle joined her. There was no car here. They looked at her questioningly.
She hesitated for an instant. “Look, you didn’t hear this from me,” she said. They both nodded in agreement. “Well, there used to be a car that sat right here. It was huge, you know, one of those big Rolls-Royces you see in the old movies?”
“What happened to it?” asked Michelle.
Sally hesitated again, as though debating whether to tell them.
Sensing this, King said, “Sally, you’ve gone this far.”
“Okay, it was over three years ago. It was late at night, and I’d slipped down here just to look around. I wasn’t supposed to have a key, but the mechanic who used to work here took a liking to me and gave me one. I was inside looking around when I heard a car coming. It was then that I noticed that one of the cars wasn’t there. The door started opening and I saw the headlights. I was scared to death and sure I was going to be fired if they found me here. I ran and hid over there.” She pointed to a tower of fifty-gallon oil drums that sat in one corner. “The Rolls pulled into the garage and the motor was cut off. Mr. Battle got out and he looked bad. I mean really bad.”
“How could you tell? Wasn’t it dark?” asked King.
“There’s an automatic trigger on the doors. At night when the doors go up, the lights come on in here.”
“When you say he looked bad, how do you mean?” asked Michelle. “Sick? Drunk?”
“No, like he was really upset, worried.”
“Did you ever find out what about?” asked King.
“No. Anyway, like I said, he looked bad, but then all of sudden he started smiling and then he started laughing. Laughing! Well, he did, until she showed up.”