Chapter 2

When she was a little girl ... her mother died. A very rich, very important, very drunk man snuffed her like a wax candle. Arrested for driving under the influence more than a dozen times, the tests and paperwork were lost before each and every trial. Her mothers' death was the first time he was arrested for vehicular homicide.

Daddy was the newly elected Republican County Prosecutor when the man had stumbled out of the bar, staggered over to his pristine XK140 Jaguar, backed up with absolutely no thought for on coming traffic, clipped the right rear fender of the last car to dodge the Jag and fled the scene.

Mom was crossing with the light ... downtown two blocks from home doing just a simple bit of wistful window-shopping when the right front fender of the OTS XK140MC American Roadster struck her in the left hip.

She was tossed onto the three sided four cornered second story bank clock that the banker was so proud of. The brass spire on the top pierced her abdomen, spraying intestines and blood over the white marble fronted four story bank building. She was not dead ... yet. Men, women and children for a city block in all four directions were horrified by the carnage.

The 210 brake horsepower 3.4 liter DOHC straight 6 with dual SU H6 carburetors tied to the synchromesh four-speed/overdrive manual transmission and positive traction live axle rear-end was at full song and left twin rubber tracks from the original collision, through the fatal intersection and half-way down the block where the man had shifted into third and left the dual rubber stripe to the next intersection ... fourth gear did not produce so much as a chirp.

However, mother did ... produce a chirp. A chirp so loud that the men at the fire station a block away had nightmares for five years after the fact.

She was still alive as the firemen attempted to lift her shattered bloody body off the brass clock spire that had added insult to injury. She bled out before they could remove her.

Warrants were immediately issued. The battered Jaguar, covered by fresh canvas, was discovered in the carriage house of the exceptionally rich man. The speedometer was frozen on impact... 50 miles an hour in a 15 mph zone.

The search of his home yielded up passwords and numbers of accounts all over the world. His accounts at the two banks in town were frozen and no amount of bribery, threats or cajoling could save him this time.

A great deal of the huge non taxable monetary award was put into an educational and support trust fund for young Wendy ... now a half orphan. Wisely managed, the fund grew as expected and Wendy was a very rich little girl.

She missed her mom.

When ... later in life ... she heard that the vastly important man had died in the third day of his incarceration from a ruptured large intestine, she smiled. She hoped his durance, as short as it had been, was vile.

Life ... as life does ... continued. Kindergarten was a revelation. There were four classrooms of same aged rug rats ... about a hundred. And there were three schools. Her universe expanded. She learned much more from her peers than she did from her teachers.

Snips and snails, and puppy dogs tails, That's what little boys are made of.