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of a
truck
?”
    “I don’t want you to take pictures of anything.” She seized the strap of his camera bag and relieved him of it, then slapped a key into his hand. “I want you to make it start.”
    “Huh?”
    She tapped the toe of her cowboy boot on the gravel. “You said small-paper experience. I don’t know about the
Port Royal Register
—”
    “Port Regis.”
    “Whatever. But here at the
Spectrum
we all pitch in to do whatever it takes to get the paper out. And if I can’t get this truck started, I can’t get the week’s issue to the printer down in Santa Carla by six o’clock tonight. In all the years I’ve owned the
Spectrum
we’ve never missed press time.”
    “So if everybody pitches in to get the paper out, why haven’t any of them already gotten the truck started? Or offered you the use of their vehicles?”
    McGuire’s mouth drooped and she suddenly looked tired. “A couple of them tried and gave up. And I don’t like to drive other people’s vehicles.”
    Meaning other people didn’t like to lend theirs to her. “How about calling a garage or Triple A?”
    “I have a…problem with the local garage. And I accidentally let my Triple A membership lapse. Can you fix it or not?”
    Fortunately, he’d spent most of his life poking his nose into various engine compartments. “I can fix it.”
    It wasn’t an old truck—1999 Ford Ranger, and appeared to be well maintained. But when he eased himself into the driver’s seat and tried to turn it over, the idiot lights flashed and bells rang, but there wasn’t even a click, just the faintest of hums.
    “It’s not the battery,” he said.
    “I know that! It was the first thing the others checked.”
    He jiggled the gearshift lever, depressed the clutch, turned the key again. Nothing. “This an alarm system?” he asked, pointing to a unit with a blinking red light mounted beneath the dash.
    McGuire came over and peered through the open door. “Yeah. The dealership put it on because there had been a lot of thefts off their used-car lot. I didn’t want to pay for it, and they were supposed to make an appointment to have it taken off, but they never got back to me. I don’t even know how it works.”
    “Raise the hood, will you?” While she did, he set the ignition to Start. When he went around to the front of the truck, he found McGuire staring at its innards with a bewildered frown.
    “I hate mechanical things,” she said.
    “Maybe if you knew more about them, you’d like them better. D’you have some pliers?”
    “There’s a toolbox in the bed. I’ll see.” She went away, came back with a pair. “These okay?”
    “Yep.” He took them from her and went to work connecting the ignition wire directly to the solenoid. The engine roared, then began to purr.
    McGuire smiled as if the sounds were the opening notes of a favorite symphony. “What was wrong with it?”
    “Well, it could be a problem with your starter, but my guess is that the truck’s paranoid.”
    “It’s
what?
”
    “The kind of alarm you have prevents theft by keeping the vehicle from starting. Apparently your truck decided somebody was trying to steal it and activated its own alarm.”
    She scowled. “Is this a joke?”
    “Truck’s running, isn’t it?”
    She transferred her scowl to the Ford. “Is it fixed for good?”
    “No. I bypassed the alarm for now, but it should be disconnected.”
    “Can you do that?”
    “It depends.”
    “On what?”
    “On whether I have the photographer’s job.”
    McGuire sighed. “You have the job, Mr. Crowe.”
    A difficult woman, Carly McGuire. Puzzling and contradictory, too. But Matt couldn’t afford to dwell on her. After he spent half an hour disconnecting the Ford’s alarm, he had more immediate matters to attend to.
    First the call to Sam, who was so eager to help him that she hadn’t asked why he needed to use her address and phone number, and so happy to be invited to dinner that she offered to cook for