Car Heaven (Book 2 - Katie Prentice, Ghost Interpreter)

Chapter Thirty-One

Griff

After lunch, I phoned Tori and Blake to let them know that Katie and I were heading over to the shop. When we got there, we entered the shop floor. It was a large garage with six different mechanics on duty. None of them remembered doing any of the work on the cars detailed in many of the invoices. "I saw one of those cars the other day", said one of the mechanics. "There was no work done on the engine block. I could tell, because I had to do some work on the engine block myself and the engine mounts were rusted closed. I had a hard time getting the engine block out. And it says here that the engine was replaced. Are you sure this invoice came from this shop?"

"Yes", I said. "These invoices came from your files."

"That work was never completed."

Another mechanic wandered over. "These invoices say that Hal signed off on the work, but he rarely worked on the cars himself. He never signed off on anything."

"That's true", said the first mechanic. "He liked to walk around the shop and talk to the clients, but he rarely did any work himself. He said that he'd been a grease monkey for most of his life and he was happy to hang up his overalls."

"How was he doing financially?"

"He earned enough to carry two people who didn't work on cars, both Doug and himself. And they were paid well. Doug earned enough to always be buying parts for his Mustang, and Hal drove a new Camaro. They were doing alright financially."

"How was his marriage?"

"I think it was on the rocks", said the second mechanic. "He always talked about his great fuck, but whenever his wife came in the shop, she seemed angry."

"What about?"

"I don't know. But she would come in screaming and swearing at him."

"Okay. Thanks for the information." I turned away and went to talk to the other mechanics, but all they could do was reiterate the fact that his wife was always angry, and that Hal hadn't worked on the cars himself.

Katie

"What does this all mean?" I asked as I followed Griff out of the shop.

"I suspect his wife was pushing him to earn more and more to satisfy her whims. From looking at his personal accounts, great amounts were being siphoned off to another account. The other account is in his wife's name. I don't know if Hal knew about it."

"Wouldn't he figure that out when he looked at their accounts?"

"He wouldn't necessarily know. Not everyone shares financial responsibility equally. It's not a practice that would make me happy. While I don't mind if you have your own account with the money you earn, I want the money I earn to be our money."

"I don't want a separate account. I know that the money I earn isn't much compared to how much you earn, but I want our decisions to be our decisions, made together."

Griff smiled, stopped on the way to his car, and gave me a kiss. "That sounds nice." He slung his arm over my shoulder and walked over to the car. "Can you call Hal?" he asked as we got to the car and Griff beeped it open.

"Okay", I said. "Hal?"

Hal appeared in the back seat. "What did you find out?"

"Did you know your wife had a separate account?"

"She did? She was always telling me that we were broke." I started repeating everything to Griff.

"Did you never look at your accounts or know how much money you were bringing in?"