One Track Mind Read Free Page A

outlining the next year’s events calendar. She’d hoped to line up seven more driving school sessions, a 500-mile race, and a car show—pretty much the same as this year’s schedule.
    But now there wouldn’t be a next year’s schedule. She stared, half-sad, half-philosophical, at the tentative list. She picked it up, folded it neatly in half and dropped it into her dented waste can.
    She looked at the room’s dull green concrete walls lined with photos from better times. In a folder on the left hand side of her desk was the contract from Devlin. She supposed she should phone their representative and say she was going to accept it so they’d start the final procedures.
    But then she pushed the folder farther away, setting her mouth at a rebellious angle. She’d tell them later. At the last possible minute. She’d take them down to the last lap before giving them the satisfaction of letting them know they’d won.
    What she needed to do was start drafting letters that Halesboro Speedway was shutting down. The employees should know first. She was down to a skeleton staff, but at least with Devlin’s money she could give them two weeks’ severance pay.
    But it was going to be hard, and it would hurt. Some of these people had been with the speedway for more than twenty years. Clyde had been there thirty-one. She’d hoped to give him a retirement party in four years; it wasn’t going to happen.
    That almost made her teary, but she brushed angrily at her eyes and started making a list about closing down. The driving school would have to find a new home, so would the Super Stang Fest in August…
    Would there be contractual troubles? Lawsuits? She prayed not, thinking again of Martin Grott’s question: did she know how close she was to bankruptcy?
    Until her father’s decline, she’d never had to worry about money. She’d never had to understand money, and she and Scott were at least comfortable on two salaries. When she could no longer bear her husband’s coldness, lies and affairs, she’d been too proud to ask for alimony or any more than her fair share of what they owned.
    She kept the house and the furniture she’d inherited from her grandmother. She was naive, for she’d never wanted for anything in her life.
    Like Uncle June used to tease, she’d been a princess. Well, she was a princess no longer. That wasn’t as painful as failing to save the Halesboro Speedway, even though she knew now she’d been playing Don Quixote, tilting at windmills, believing she could triumph over giants.
    Yes, pride did go before fall, didn’t it?
    Well, suck it up and get to work. She gritted her teeth, picked up her pen and on a legal pad began to draft the hardest letter she’d ever written in her life.
    “Dear staff and friends,
    “I deeply regret to inform you…”
    She’d written and scratched out and rewritten, and re-scratched her way through a paragraph when the phonerang. Startled, Lori almost jumped, for few people called her these days.
    Who needs money from me now? she wondered, but she thought she knew. Clyde was calling her to tell her the transmission was fading fast and had to be replaced. She picked up the receiver with foreboding. Not the transmission, she thought. Please. She’d have to buy a whole kit. How many hundreds would that cost?
    “Hello?” she said, trying to disguise the quaver in her voice. “Lori Garland here.”
    But it wasn’t Clyde; the voice belonged to a stranger. “Miss Garland, this is Judith Stribley of Jennings, Jennings and Jennings Law Firm…”
    “Yes?” Dark thoughts danced through Lori’s mind. This must be another agent of Devlin. They were out of patience and withdrawing their offer. The bank would foreclose. She would file for bankruptcy.
    “Ms. Garland,” said the Stribley woman, “You have a property, a speedway for sale about two hours from Charlotte. I’ve asked about for information on the property and the terms. My client would like to offer you a