"Wrecked" by Therese Greenwood, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2012.
Some stories are about plot. Some are about suspense, or language. This one is all about character.
The narrator is Rosie, who runs a small-town auto wrecker. She's interesting in her own way, with her fatalism about her business and her pride in her nephew the cop who was "the grade-two knock-knock joke champion of St. Paul's school." And there is her mechanic Gary, who can't stop being snotty to that same cop, no matter how ill-advised his attitude is, or how bad his jokes are.
But the star of the show is Floyd the Buddhist, a senior citizen Vietnam vet, who makes his living delivering Vietnamese food and constantly babbles karma-speak. Why is he always scrounging used car parts? "My vehicle strives for rebirth."
When a murdered man is found in the car crushing machinery Rosie will need help from all these characters to catch the bad guy.
Fun story.
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