The Heir Who Quit Luxury novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Showroom

Theo confronts Doug in his own showroom and refuses to trade Blair for Frankie's lot, then comes back to find Carter offering Frankie a quarter of a million dollars.

Hensley Chevrolet sat on Woodward Avenue.

Brass letters over the door. Forty new trucks under the lights.

A mezzanine above the showroom floor where Doug kept his office, so he could look down on everybody.

I walked in Monday at ten with the letter folded in my back pocket.

A salesman in a purple tie came at me with a smile.

"Help you find something?"

"Doug Hensley."

The smile went away.

"Mr. Hensley doesn't see walk-ins."

"He'll see me."

I didn't have to wait.

Doug came down the glass stairs with a coffee in his hand, already laughing.

"Look who it is. You here for the porter job? Changed your mind?"

There were customers on the floor.

A young couple by a Silverado. An old man in a Tigers jacket. Four or five salesmen.

They all turned.

I held up the letter.

"You bought Doyle's note."

"I buy a lot of notes."

"You called it. Thirty days. That lot's been there forty years."

"And it'll be there forty more," Doug said. "With my name on it."

He pointed through the glass, east.

"That corner gets twenty thousand cars a day. I'm putting a Hensley used superstore on it. The Doyle girl's sitting on a gold mine and selling Kias."

"She's not selling."

"She doesn't have to. That's what a note is, son."

He came closer and dropped his voice.

He didn't drop it much.

"But I'm not a monster. I'll make you an offer."

"I've had one of your offers."

"This one's better." He smiled. "Stop seeing my daughter. Walk away clean. And I'll give the Doyle girl ninety days instead of thirty."

The couple by the Silverado stared at him.

The old man in the Tigers jacket made a disgusted noise.

I looked up.

Blair was standing at the mezzanine rail in a white blazer.

She had a coffee in her hand too.

She'd heard every word.

She didn't say anything.

She just watched me.

"No," I said.

Doug blinked.

"No?"

"I'm not trading Blair for a lot. And I'm not trading a lot for Blair. You'll get your eighty-four thousand. On time."

"From where? Your paper route?"

His salesmen laughed.

The one in the purple tie grabbed a bucket from beside the service door.

He fished out a big yellow sponge and lobbed it at me.

It hit my chest and fell, wet, on my shoe.

"Practice," he said.

The floor laughed again.

Doug laughed the loudest.

I picked the sponge up.

I squeezed it out into his bucket, slowly, and set it on the hood of a sixty-thousand-dollar Tahoe.

"Leaves a water spot," I said. "You should get that buffed."

I walked out.

At the door I looked back once.

Blair hadn't moved from the rail.

She lifted her coffee to me, a little.

I didn't know what it meant.

I drove back to Eight Mile with my hands tight on the wheel.

Thirty days.

Eighty-four thousand dollars.

Forty cars, and half of them were older than me.

I did the math at every red light, and it didn't get better.

When I pulled up to Doyle's, there was a black Maybach parked across the gate.

My stomach dropped.

Carter was leaning on the hood of a Buick LeSabre with his sunglasses pushed up in his hair.

Frankie stood in front of him with her arms crossed.

Pop was in his lawn chair with his cane across his knees, watching.

There was a check lying on the Buick's hood, held down with Frankie's tire gauge.

I got out of the truck.

"What's going on?"

Carter turned and smiled.

"Theo! I was just making your boss an offer."

"Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars," Frankie said. Her voice was flat. "Cash. For the lot. He says he'll pay off the Hensley note himself."

I looked at Carter.

"Why?"

"I like the corner." He shrugged. "Twenty thousand cars a day."

"You're working for Doug now?"

"I don't work for anybody, cousin."

Frankie's head turned toward me, sharp.

"Cousin?"

"Distant," Carter said. "Very distant. He's the poor side."

He tapped the check with one finger.

"That's three times what this place is worth, Miss Doyle. Your father gets his medical bills paid. You get out of the grease. Everybody wins."

"And Theo?" Frankie asked.

"Theo finds another job." Carter smiled at me. "I hear there's an opening washing cars."

Frankie looked at the check for a long time.

I watched her look at it.

I watched her look at Pop, at his cane and the side of his face that didn't move.

Then she looked at me.

She didn't look angry.

She looked tired, like a woman who'd been tired for two years.

"Give me one reason I shouldn't take it," she said.

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