Tommy asked for permission to look more closely at the old parts laid out on a clean towel. His work on the motorcycle had been thorough by ordinary standards, but he had trusted what the supplied diagrams told him to expect. Now he checked the components against Arthur's notes, one by one, and discovered subtle signs of damage he had previously dismissed as harmless wear. When he rolled a long metal pushrod across the flat surface of the bench, it moved unevenly instead of staying straight.
"Rusty," he said quietly, "come here a second."
Dave glanced up from his tools. "What?"
"Look at this."
Rusty watched the rod wobble, then inspected a second. The damage was not dramatic enough to have drawn attention at first glance, but it mattered on an engine with unusual clearances and custom geometry. Two pieces showed enough distortion that reusing them would be unwise, and nobody could claim that they had checked the complete assembly properly until the measurements were repeated. What had looked like a mysterious refusal to start was becoming a chain of smaller problems, some old, some introduced during the desperate attempts to make the machine run.
"We missed it," Tommy said. He sounded more upset by the oversight than he would have admitted in front of anyone else. "We looked at them, but we didn't check them the way this build required."
Rusty stood with both hands on the bench. Part of him wanted to argue that he had been working under pressure and that any shop could have overlooked a hidden modification. Another part, the one that had loved engines before customers started paying him to solve problems quickly, knew that excuses would not help. "Then we document what we found," he said. "And we don't put anything questionable back."
"Where are we getting replacements?" Dave asked. "We can't order those out of a catalog."
The question hung in the air. The shop had suppliers in California and contacts across the country, but none of them stocked custom parts built decades earlier for an engine that existed in only one garage. Finding somebody to machine replacements would take measurements, drawings, and time they did not have before the memorial ride. Tommy checked the calendar on the wall as though Friday might have moved farther away while they worked.
Leo opened his folder to the drawing marked WIDOWMAKER SPARES. "Dad made extra ones," he said. "He told me Dutch would break something again, and the only way to keep him from calling at midnight was to have the pieces ready before he needed them." He looked at Rusty. "That's why we need locker forty-two."
Dave folded his arms. "If the locker hasn't been emptied."
"It might have been," Nora said, speaking from the doorway after returning from a phone call. "But we can ask before deciding it's gone."
Rusty checked the time. Nora had arranged to leave work later than usual, but she still needed to be at the hotel before noon. He promised that Leo would remain in the office with Pete while the adults searched the records, and that he would call her immediately if anything important turned up. Nora kissed her son on the top of the head, touched the old photograph he had placed beside his notebook, and thanked the mechanics for treating him with care.