Fort Stockton is home to a great many mysteries.  I suppose most towns are.  We humans are a mysterious bunch, so wherever we may gather, mysteries most surely follow.

How Mayor Goodman continues to be reelected. Where the leftover funds went once the Pecos Pete statue was erected. Whether the carpet matches the drapes out at the Spartan Model 25 travel trailer Trixie keeps parked out at the Modern Manor Mobile Home Village. These are all mysteries frequently debated over coffee at the Grounds for Divorce, beer at the Lucky Lady Lounge, or packages at the post office. But perhaps one of the greatest mysteries still talked about involves a 1966 Ferrari 330 GTC.

It was hotter than Satan’s taint when the brand new royal blue coupe pulled into town, so it had to have been any month of the year except January. Some folks remember it being May, others think it was October. But there’s no forgetting the sound the 4.0 liter Columbo V12 motor made as the car pulled into town. “There’s only two things that purr like that,” Brother Bob said, “and the other one tempted Adam in the garden and doomed us all.”

The men in town were captivated by the car. The women in Fort Stockton stood up and took notice when the stranger driving it pulled into the Dairy Twin to relieve himself and get a burger basket, and then a coffee to go. The guy had Hollywood looks. Made sense, since the plates on the Ferrari made it clear he was from California. Several swore they’d seen the stranger somewhere, but nobody could put their finger on where, for sure.

Jolene, from the Dairy Twin, reported he had hair on his chest thicker than shag carpet.  “And the best set of teeth I’ve ever seen.  No telling’ what they cost him, but worth every penny.  When he smiled I went weak at the knees and I hadn’t done that since Grady and I broke up,” she told more people than she probably should have.  Black hair.  He looked like a cross between Sean Connery from his 007 days and Clark Gable from when Gone With The Wind was still in theaters.  He seemed to ooze more sex appeal than the Ferrari, and that was saying something.  Rugged like a cowboy, yet refined like a riverboat gambler, he had traits not normally seen around Fort Stockton.

From the Dairy Twin he drove over to the Naughty Pine Motel and checked in.  Said he was driving all the way to Acapulco, about 1200 miles.  He was going to stay the night and head out in the morning.  Wanted a room where he could keep his eye on the Ferrari, but room for another car to park unnoticed, so something at the back if possible.  Cliff understood.  You see a lot of things in the hospitality business, so it wasn’t his first rodeo.

Cliff gave him Room 7, on the back side of the motel that doesn’t face the highway.  Curiosity being what it is, Cliff couldn’t fight the urge, an hour later, to take a quick walk down to the Eskimo Ice machine and peek around the corner.  He saw what he was almost sure was Mrs. Goodman’s big ’61 Plymouth Fury parked next to the Ferrari in front of the stranger’s room.  “If that is the mayor’s wife, there’s probably as much fury going on inside that room as there is outside,” he thought to himself.

Next morning, there was a DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging on the doorknob of Room 7. Trixie’s ’59 Buick Electra 225 was parked next to the Ferrari. Disturbing, indeed. Cliff made a mental note to ask the stranger about the carpet and drapes mystery, but then figured it wouldn’t be proper.

About noon, Cliff saw the cobalt coupe throw rocks as the back tires spun on the gravel on the hotel exit and head towards town.  He wasn’t gone a half hour before the 330 GTC was parked out front of Room 7 again.  Not twenty minutes later, Hazel, Lucinda’s mother, was pulling in and towards the back of the motel in her red Pontiac Tempest convertible.  Cliff had been in the hospitality game for nearly two decades and couldn’t remember such a thing.  Three different moths drawn to the same flame, all in less than eighteen hours.  The man was as legendary as the machine he drove.

This is where the story takes a turn.

That afternoon, the stranger comes in to the office of the motel to settle his bill. Cliff sees a leather duffle bag on the passenger seat of the Ferrari, almost an exact match as the buckskin colored, glove soft seat it was on. The stranger heads back through town and towards the highway, pulling into the ESSO station to fill up before hitting the road to Mexico. Jimmy Jack, on duty at the ESSO that day, remembers it like it was yesterday. “First I-tal-i-an car I ever seen in person. Was so damn purdy. Stuck my head in the window just to get a whiff a them hides. Smelled like heaven. And Hazel.”

The stranger waves Jimmy Jack out of the way, turns on his blinker, indicating he’s about to turn left towards the highway, and starts to ease out into the street.  At that exact moment, Mrs. Goldstone, behind the wheel of her Imperial Ivory over Dusk Pearl ’57 Chevy sedan, remembers that she didn’t feed her cat before she left the house and does a one-eighty right in the middle of Alamo Avenue and right in the path of the stranger’s Ferrari.  What followed was a noise that should only be heard in the depths of Hell.  Metal scraping metal, followed by a 4.0 liter V-12 hitting the pavement and being drug nearly all the way to the Eggs and Ammo, a half block away.

Mrs. Goldstone was flustered, stuck in the driver’s seat and unable to pry open the driver’s side door.  Once she crawled to the passenger door and exited, the Stranger seemed more preoccupied with the delay than the damage.  “Just like someone from California,” they said at the Piggly Wiggly.

Someone agreed to take Mrs. Goldstone back home to feed her cat. The stranger walked a half block down to Frontier Ford, “Home of the Straight Shootin’ Deal”, and wrote a check for a white over red 1961 Ford Starliner, the first car he saw on the used car lot. “I need to get on the road, I’ve got 1,200 miles ahead of me,” he told Hank, his salesman. “I’ll pay you a hundred bucks cash to have the Ferrari towed over here. Put it behind the dealership somewhere, I’ll deal with it on my way back to California in a few weeks.” Hank was agreeable and the stranger was back on the highway after tossing the leather duffel bag into the back seat.

That alone would have made for a good mystery.  But that’s just half the story.

The stranger never came back to town, never made arrangements for the Ferrari. In fact, was never heard from again. After a year, Frontier Ford made arrangements with Earl’s Salvageyard and Formalwear to come get the Ferrari falling apart beside their body shop. And there it stayed. Still is, as far as I know. And, like most things, people slowly forgot about it. Weeds grew around the car. Even Earl forgot about it till one day he had his nephew mow the weeds at the back of the salvage yard and they found the old Ferrari, a family of possums living in the trunk, and God-knows-what taking place inside. Earl cleaned up everything, best he could, and dyed the interior black to cover up the sins that time had committed on the upholstery. He could never locate what was left of the V-12, but vaguely remembers Cornfield Dave coming in and getting a new motor for his John Deere a few back.

It was about that same time that Pastor Peterson’s wife read an article about the mysterious death of a minor Hollywood actor by the name of Steve Cochran.  He was apparently one of the most notorious ladies men in Tinsel Town.  A handsome devil, he was never as well know as the leading men of his day, not to the public, at least.  He reached his highest level of fame as a lothario rather than an actor.  

Mamie Van Doren wrote a tale in her tell-all book, Playing the Field, about Steve, explaining he had a ravenous appetite for exotic sports cars, boats, and WOMEN. “He’d do me in the morning, Mae West in the afternoon, and Merle Oberon at night,” All in one day, she explained in great detail in the book. When Cliff  heard that, he just shook his head up and down, with a knowing nod. 

That’s interesting, but even more so was his untimely demise.  Seems he went to Acapulco and boarded a boat with three young Mexican girls, at least one underage.  Out at sea, Cochran got sick and quickly died.  The three girls knew nothing of sailing and the boat drifted out to sea where they were stranded with the corpse of their departed host.  Nearly two weeks went by before they were discovered off the coast of Guatemala and towed back to land.

When Mrs. Peterson shared the article with the ladies of the Methodist Women’s Sewing Circle, folks quickly thought the mystery of the Ferrari was solved. In fact, when word got to Earl, he had his nephew run off the possums, load up the Ferrari, and bring it up to the office, right next to the display of Spring Formalwear he was putting together for prom season. The Lucky Lady got involved and started offering a drink special on Wednesday nights. Three girls could drink for free if they were brought in by one guy. (They all had to be of legal drinking age, of course.) The promotion made the local news, but never ended up having many takers. It was tough enough in The Fort for a guy to wrestle up one date for the Lucky Lady, much less three.

Then Mr. McDuffin, the math teacher over at Jim Bowie High School, “Home of the Fightin’ Knives” popped everybody’s bubble.  “You know,” he said, “the Ferrari over at Earl’s is a ’66 model.  It clearly says here that Steve Cochran died in 1965.  June 15, 1965, to be exact.  The 1966 Ferrari models weren’t even available till October of 1966.”  Those who did much better in English and History were once again thwarted by those who’d mastered Math.

“Could a been a prototype,” Rex said. “A prototype ’66 that he gotta hold of because of his Hollywood connections.”

“Sounds like his ‘Hollywood connections’ were more likely to give him the clap than a car,” Lucinda noted one morning while it was still being discussed.

“More likely,” Brother Bob said, “it was a mix-up on the title.  Mabel down at the DMV does it all time.  Could really be a ’65.”

“The receipt for the gas he bought at the ESSO before the wreck was still in the glove box,” Earl said. “It says 1966. He may have floated in the sea for two weeks after he died, but he didn’t come all the way back to Fort Stockton and buy gas again.” Probably true. But there were rumors, not long after, that a 1960 Ford Starliner was discovered parked at the dock where the boat had been launched. It had Texas plates and a Frontier Ford tag by the taillight. No one could ever prove that, but no one could ever disprove the connection, either.

And so the mystery continues. And that’s okay. Trixie says, “The world was a better place before they found the Titanic. Shoulda left it at the bottom of the sea.” But that’s just because she never liked Leo DiCaprio. However, there is a group forming to look into the old Lockheed Electra that’s been in Tooter Tomlinson’s barn since way before his grandpa inherited the place.

“They never found Amelia Earhart’s plane, did they?” Sister Thelma asked.