“Where you going now?” Joaquin asked Logan.

“Hey, not It,” Manny said again. “You guys heard me, right?”

Joaquin gave him a quick glance, then looked back at Logan, waiting.

“It’s a…family thing,” Logan told him.

“How long?”

“Don’t know. Could be a few days.”

Joaquin groaned. “Fine.” In a louder voice, he said, “Manny, you get the Miata.”

“Hey, that’s not fair,” Manny said. “I called not It.”

“Yeah, and last I checked in the mechanics guidebook, there’s no not-It rule.”

Manny glared at Logan. “Thanks a lot.”

“Don’t look at me,” Logan protested.

“You’re the one leaving, aren’t you?”

Though Logan was tempted to help get the Miata project started while he waited for Harp to show up, doing so would mean he’d have to go home again to get cleaned up. Instead, as soon as Joy, their office manager, got in, he helped her go through some paperwork and put together a supply order that she could call in later.

When he’d dropped his father off the night before, they’d agreed to meet at eight a.m., but it wasn’t until almost eight thirty when Joy said, “Your dad just pulled up.”

Harp had lost his driver’s license a few years earlier, and relied these days either on the high school kids he hired to chauffeur him around, or rides from his friends.

Today’s victim was Barney Needham, a retired doctor and Harp’s fellow member of a small group of elderly men who called themselves WAMO, which stood for Wise Ass Old Men, and yes, they knew the letters were in the wrong order.

As Logan stepped outside, his father was transferring a couple of suitcases into the back of the El Camino.

“Dad, we’re not going to be gone that long,” Logan said.

“This isn’t all mine,” Harp said, as if it should be obvious. “One’s Barney’s.”

“Barney’s?”

“He didn’t have anything to do, so I invited him along,” Harp explained.