One Track Mind Read Free

business. Lori once knew the castle well, for her father and McCorkle had been close friends from boyhood. Now both men were dead, and Halesboro seemed diminished by their loss.
    The castle, like the speedway, had fallen into neglect. It stood uninhabited, but wonder of wonders, it had recently been purchased by a mysterious buyer who planned to restore the buildings and grounds. Did he mean to make himself a truly lordly retreat? Or did he have grander plans—ones that might help the whole community?
    And who was this person? Among guesses were a politician, a famous entertainer, a reclusive millionaire, an Arab potentate, an award-winning film director—gossip abounded, as always in a small town.
    In the meantime, the buyer’s people—architects, decorators, landscapers and so forth—were busy, but the buyer, it was said, wouldn’t appear until renovations were complete.
    Well, Lori reasoned, if McCorkle Castle came back to its full glory, maybe that would help at least the city of Halesboro. Uncle June used to give special tours of the gardens andpart of the castle itself on special weekends. Lori had loved going to the castle, where Uncle June always teased her by calling her princess.
    Well, she was far from a princess now. Her whole life had changed. On a plateau below Bin Birnum, the mountain dominated by the castle, was Halesboro Speedway. She looked at it from the distance, not believing that the Devlin Corporation would wipe away every sign of its existence.
    Well, whatever happened, she’d pick herself up and go on. Somehow. But the taste of failure was like bitter ashes. She headed for the road to the speedway, and the Mustang tried to distract her from her larger troubles by sounding as if it were gargling bottle caps.
    She finally reached the parking lot. She tried not to notice how badly the building needed paint, the fence needed repair, and that ragged verges of grass, untended, were balding in spots. The lot should be repaved. And inside? Inside, she knew that things were worse.
    She pulled into her parking place. Other vehicles were in the lot because she had to rent the track out for summer sessions of driving school, and she heard the sound of motors that roared and buzzed like giant wasps.
    The battered Ford truck belonged to Morrie, the caretaker, and the perfectly restored ’57 pickup was Clyde’s. Clyde was the aging maintenance supervisor, who’d somehow kept the place patched up enough to handle the little business it had. The rusting foreign compact belonged to Jimmy Pilgram, a young high school dropout and Morrie’s part-time assistant.
    When she put the Mustang into Park, it tried to keep moving. She stopped it, at last, and swore under her breath, for she had to admit it, the car was giving off signals of transmission trouble. And what would that cost?
    She got out, slammed the door and went to find Clyde. Well, the Devlin money would pay for the transmission, she supposed, trying to find the silver lining in the cloud. She met Clyde, his Halesboro cap pulled down to cover most of hisgray hair. His basset-hound expression told her there was more bad news.
    “Clyde?” she said apprehensively.
    His seamed face twisted in disgust. “Last night, some kids or somebody shot out two sets of the night lights. I don’t know what gets into kids these days. And there’s graffiti on the outside of the east fence. I got paint to cover it, but those lights are expensive, and this is the fourth time this year somebody’s done it. Damn delinquents…”
    Lori patted him on the back, thanked him for keeping her informed and asked if he had time to glance at her transmission. He said yes and he’d ask the driving school’s chief mechanic to look, too. He shambled off, looking depressed. He, too, knew the track’s end was near.
    She went inside to her father’s old office, which also needed painting, and sat at the antique desk that had belonged to her grandfather, Judge Simmons.
    She’d been