“So, you chewed Condom Man out when he came back?” Katie made a face, like she’d bit into a lemon. “I think that was a bad choice of words. But is that what you did?”

Bruce shook his head. “No.” He paused. “I took it.”

“What?” Katie looked over so suddenly the wheel shimmied in her hand. The car did a minor swerve.

“Careful,” Bruce said.

“You took the car? Like, to teach him a lesson? And then you returned it?”

Now Bruce was grinning. “Nope.”

Katie blinked. “You stole it?”

He nodded.

“This is a stolen car?”

“That it is,” he said. “Stole it on August 4, 1970. Been mine ever since.”

“No way.” Katie was incredulous. “I’m driving a hot car? I’m behind the wheel of a stolen automobile?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said casually. “Been more than fifty years. Don’t think anyone’s looking for it now.”

“How—where—”

“Had a barn on our property. Hid it there. Fixed it up. Needed some bodywork. Tuned up the engine. Got it back into perfect shape. Stole some plates for it, and after—if you can believe it—five years, took it out on the rode for the first time. Figured, by then, no one was looking for it anymore.”

Katie, still aghast, managed one shocked laugh. “You were an English teacher, and a car thief?”

“Not many of those around,” Bruce conceded. “So far as I know. It’s not like there’s a club of guys who are experts in Shakespeare and hot-wiring a car.”

A phone started ringing.

“That must be you,” Bruce said. “I don’t have a cell phone, and I’m pretty sure this car didn’t come with Bluetooth.”

Katie took one hand off the wheel and took the phone from her pocket. She handed it over to Bruce. “Who is it?” she asked.

Bruce looked at the screen. “Lisa Carver.”

“Who?”

Bruce repeated the name.

“I don’t know anyone with that name,” Katie said. “Must be a wrong number. Just decline it.”

“How do I do that?”

Katie told him to hit the red button on the screen. Bruce tapped it, and the phone stopped ringing.

“Okay,” said Katie, not yet ready to leave the stolen car story, “so, this can’t be the car you got pulled over in, when, you know. I’m trying to be delicate here.”

“When I was drunk? No, it wasn’t this car. If it had been, once they ran a check on the plate, well, I’d have been in even deeper shit.”

“What did your wife think about you keeping a stolen car?”

Bruce smiled sadly. “It was, as they say, a bone of contention. She’d never ride in it with me. She was too scared. Figured if I got stopped she’d be considered an accomplice.” He grinned. “I was Clyde without a Bonnie when I went for a joyride.”