The girl who walked into the garage of Gold Star Cab an hour and a half later had a mop of short, mahogany-brown curls and enormous round glasses. She was chewing gum as if she hadn’t eaten in a week, and the outfit she wore-an oversize top and baggy jeans-disguised her slender figure.
Even Bess and George wouldn’t recognize me, Nancy told herself, making her gum sound off in a series of firecracker pop-pop-pops. It was a part of her new character. She was about to do the acting job of her life.
Gold Star used half of the street-level space of a five-story parking garage, and a business called Fleet’s had the other half. The garage had been built with two entrances, one on McConnell Street and the other on the street behind, Bennett Avenue. The cab company and Fleet’s used the entrance on McConnell, so after Nancy left her Mustang on the third level of the public garage, she had to walk around the block to get to Gold Star.
Just inside the door was the dispatcher’s office. Nancy ambled into it, eyeing the stocky redheaded man who was bellowing at a cabbie over a two-way radio. The voice was the same one she had heard when she was on the floor of that car.
I’m definitely in the right place, she thought. While she waited for the dispatcher to finish, she examined the cabs parked along the walls on the side.
Four were old, dented, and rusty. The rest-she counted thirteen before the man finished-were late models, clean, bright, and shiny, and their gold paint glistened under the fluorescent lights. There were more cabs, but only the front half of the space was lit, so she couldn’t see the ones along the rear wall.
Here was another interesting mystery. According to the Hacks Bureau, Gold Star was a small business with only ten cars in its fleet.
“Need a cab?” the man asked, and Nancy turned around.
“Huh-uh,” she said with a saucy smile. “A job. I’ve worked as a dispatcher since I was sixteen. Want references?”
“No. Don’t want another dispatcher, either.”
Nancy arranged her face in an expression of deep disappointment. “Hey, you aren’t going to cry, are you?” He jammed a long, fat cigar into his mouth. “It won’t get you a job as a dispatcher, but smile and you may get a job as a cabbie. How old are you, anyway?”
“Eighteen.” Nancy looked hopeful-she hoped.
“Got a driver’s license?”
“Sure, but it takes time and money to get a hack license and I need the job now.”
The man winked. “We’ll take care of that for you.” Then he began testing her familiarity with River Heights and its surrounding areas. Nancy knew her hometown like the back of her hand. When he had finished questioning her, she knew he was impressed.
He ran a wooden match along the surface of his battered desk and lit the cigar. A cloud of foul yellow smoke drifted around his head. “What’s your name?”
“Nancy Nickerson. Here’s my ID.” She began rooting in her bag, made from a pair of old jeans. She removed a large yellow comb and put it on his desk. Then came a tube of lipstick, a paperback book, half a sandwich, a two-way mirror, and a candy bar. “It’s in here somewhere.”
“Never mind. Nancy Nickerson,” he mumbled, writing it down. “My name’s Brownley. I’m the boss.”
They were suddenly interrupted by a deep, male voice calling for him. “Mr. Brownley?”
“What is it, Dayton?” A good-looking, young blond cabbie appeared in the doorway-the same one who had picked up Nancy two days before.
“My lunch is over, and I’m going back out. Which car should I take?” Dayton looked over at Nancy. She could tell he was trying to decide if they’d ever met.
“Take the one you used earlier,” Brownley answered.
“Okay, see you later.”
Brownley grunted, “So long,” and then turned back to Nancy.
“We’ve got to get your picture taken. Follow me.”
Heaving himself from a swivel chair that creaked loudly, he led her into a storage closet behind the office and stood her against a white wall. Taking a Polaroid camera off a shelf, he said, “Smile.” Before she could do it, the flash went off in her eyes.
“Okay. You start tomorrow, eight to four.”
That was a problem. It would be harder to poke around in broad daylight. “Uh, couldn’t I work at night? I take a couple of classes during the day. I could even start this evening.”
“We don’t need night drivers.”
It took five minutes of haggling before Brownley agreed to let her work from four to midnight.
“Gee, thanks,” she said, popping her gum. She looked out the window of his office at the cabs. “Any of those have stick shifts? What kind ya got, anyway?” She was out into the garage, trotting past the lines of cars before Brownley could get through his office door.
He followed, panting. “Hey! You’ll be using one up front. I choose, you don’t.”
Nancy had already walked half the length of the space and from there could see all the cabs and the vehicles she had not been able to make out before.
“Oh. Okay,” she said and strolled back toward him. “See ya tonight. Thanks again.” And she ducked under the rollup door.
Nancy congratulated herself on an Oscar-winning performance, especially the last sixty seconds of it. It had been very difficult to hide how excited she was after she had seen the vehicles at the rear of the garage.
Parked in the left corner, almost invisible in the gloom, was a dirty white van, with strips of tape over the lettering on its sides-and a bent right fender.
Chapter Eleven
Judge Jonathan Renk’s memorial was well-attended. The church was filled with the most respected members of the community and a few nationally known political figures.
The media was barred from the service itself. Ann, feeling awkward about attending, had decided not to come. But it looked as if every other reporter in the Midwest was standing outside the church, waiting to pounce on key figures as they left. The Drews, Bess, and Ned avoided them by leaving through a rear door.
They all went back to the judge’s house with the housekeeper. “It was lovely, wasn’t it?” Mrs. O’Hara kept asking Nancy, her father, and Ned. Bess had gone into the living room.
“It went very well,” Nancy said, helping her remove her coat and hanging it in the closet off the kitchen. The house was filling up with people who had come to pay their respects. “I guess the guests are starting to arrive. Hannah and Bess will help you keep things running smoothly.”
Mrs. O’Hara dabbed at her eyes. “It’s so sad. But he hadn’t been the same since before Miss Martha died. You could tell that, couldn’t you, Mr. Drew?”
“Well, I hadn’t seen him that often, Katherine. Once he dropped out of our weekly card games, I-”
The housekeeper’s eyes widened, and she stared at Nancy’s father. “He dropped out? When?”
“It’s been almost a year. We assumed he’d just lost the heart for it.”
Mrs. O’Hara looked away, a bewildered expression on her face. “Then where was he going?”
“Pardon?”
“Mr. Drew, the judge left here every Wednesday night, the way he’s always done since I came to work here.”
“He wasn’t with us. Perhaps he found a new group. They never played here?”
“No, sir, always somewhere else. Sometimes he drove, sometimes someone came to pick him up. Last summer, it was, he was going two and three times a week.”
“Perhaps he was going somewhere else,” Nancy suggested. “I mean, to the theater or something.”
“No, lass. He had a routine. Whenever he was going to play cards, he’d sit at his desk and practice shuffling and dealing. That’s how I could tell.”
Carson Drew smiled sadly, “He always joked that if he hadn’t gone into law, he’d have been a dealer in Las Vegas.”