Henry's Lady

Jim Ragan's priorities are the girls in his life -- his wife and two daughters. He works hard as a small-town journalist in Indiana to give them everything they need.He also has an eye, though, for Henry's Lady -- the Model A Ford. She gets him into trouble. She lures him to a place where a man lies shot to death. She gets him suspected of a crime by the local police. And she plays a role in convincing the real culprits that Ragan knows too much -- which results in threats against him and his family. Ragan, fortunately, has a few friends on whom he can depend. There's Les Branigan, local pediatrician, historian and descendant of Quakers and slaves. Another is the formerly hard-living Darrell Atterholt, who has a heart as good as gold despite his uncouth manner. A mysterious stranger, too, drops into Ragan's life at some less-than-opportune times to help guide his amateur sleuthing.Ragan needs all the help he can get to figure out who killed 80-year-old Clyde Fleenor -- whom he found dead when he arrived to pick up the 1931 Ford sedan that Fleenor sold him.While being drawn into a murder case, Ragan must not neglect his role as family man. His occasionally strained marriage needs his attention. His two girls -- one of whom is a third grader and the other a college freshman -- need a good dad. (One rough-talking 20-something male learns the hard way it's a foolish thing to mess with one of Ragan's daughters.)Ultimately, Ragan gets his hands dirtier than he ever intended as he struggles to protect his family, clear his own name and help find out who killed one of his town's good citizens.And to think it all started with the love of a Lady.