Small Town Taxi (Honey Walker Adventures Book 1)

by Harriet Rogers

  Then she pulled out the five boxes of shoes that were clearly marked size 10.

  Chapter Nineteen

  We had finished admiring Belle’s shopping spree when the phone rang.

  “Ride up,” said Mona, as she practiced walking in her new boots. They had only two-inch heels but required practice for someone who habitually wore sneakers. Mona handed me the fare slip absently as she marveled at how her feet had been transformed.

  “It’s Mary Clarkson. She has her own travel chair but you’ll need to help her inside. She’ll call for a pick-up when she’s done,” Mona said distractedly. Now I knew what to do when Mona needed a mood change.

  Mary was sitting in her travel chair in the driveway. She was bubbling with excitement by the time I got her and the chair into the car.

  “I’m going to a ‘people in chairs’ convention. I get to see new products and talk to other people who are mobility challenged. It’s going to be so much fun.”

  We got to the hotel where the mini-convention was being held and there was a woman madly wheeling her chair around the parking lot pointing people in five different directions. She screeched to a stop at the passenger side of the taxi and handed Mary a sheet of instructions and a ribbon.

  “Get yourself seated and then they’ll park your chair in the room to the right of the door where you go in. Here’s a colored ribbon to help you identify it when you come out.”

  “Oh, nice, I get a purple ribbon.” Mary smiled.

  I got her situated and pushed her travel chair into the storage room. It was a parking lot for every color, shape, and size of wheelchair, travel chair, cane, crutches, and other devices to help the mobility challenged. I left her chair in the sea of equipment that helps people from point A to point B, its purple ribbon prominently displayed. I noticed, however, at least ten other purple ribbons. Not being a mobility-challenged person, I had never noticed the subtle differences in the modes of transport before. I was amazed at the variety. Mary’s was pretty standard. No embellishments other than the ribbon. Using regular chairs at the tables was the difference between four people at a table and six. Wheelchairs take up a lot of space, so those who could, occupied regular chairs.

  Traffic brought me to a standstill on the way back and when I got to the garage, Mary had just called. Sometimes it’s easier to stay put.

  When I got back to Cool Rides it was end of shift and Belle had already left. I knew Jon was working late so I decided to spend the night at my apartment. I read the first hundred pages of Fifty Shades of Grey and decided everyone was a little kinky but some people had lots of money and their kinky was more easily practiced. I fell asleep dreaming of thwacking Jon with a riding crop as I rode him like a pony. I always wanted a pony.

  The next morning, I arrived at work in time for coffee which Mona had made with a new coffee maker we had all chipped in for when we realized it was cheaper than the five dollars we were spending each morning on the way to work. I sat long enough to get comfortable with coffee and the newspaper. Just as I got to the most important part of the paper, the comics, Mona came out of her lair with a fare slip.

  “You need to go get Lucille. She’s at the hospital recovery unit.”

  “She okay?”

  “Oh yeah, it’s Arnie. He broke his leg. Fortunately, after they finished using the condoms you took her. He was walking down the sidewalk. My suspicion is his mind was filled with other wonders and walking wasn’t one of them.”

  “Do I need to take the wheelchair?”

  “Nope, Arnie is under house arrest for a few days before he can come home and Miss Lucille sure as hell doesn’t need a wheelchair. She’d probably pop a wheelie. She’s gonna want you to take her back and forth to visit Arnie for a while, so plan on that. Maybe take the car home or to Jon’s house, or wherever tonight.”

  When I got to the recovery unit, which was essentially a nursing home, Lucille was outside waiting for me. Arnie’s fall had taken place before Lucille had a chance to get fully dressed. She was in a pair of dark slacks and a long shirt. Her usual dress mode of old lady flower print dress had disappeared. And she was without her sensible shoes! She was wearing low-heeled slut shoes. Slut shoes don’t have to have six-inch spike heels. Hers were open toed, red satin with black beads. She dressed differently when Arnie was around and looked ten years younger. There was a hint of darkness on her eyelid and, oh Lord, was that mascara? I was trying to decide whether this was a good development in Lucille’s life when she yanked open the door and plopped herself onto the front passenger seat.

  “This is becoming a very long one-night stand and somewhat inconvenient. I told him I’d come back for a visit later tonight as I do feel a bit responsible for all this. I’ll expect you to pick me up at six and I’ll call when I need you to return for me.”

  Wow! I had never heard Lucille complain about a one-night stand before. I wasn’t really sure she had any...either one-night stands or complaints. If she did, she was very discreet about both.

  “I can do that.”

  “Very well. But the only way this will be worth the effort is if I get an after-dinner aperitif, if you understand me.”

  Uh, oh. I definitely understood Lucille. Public places suited her fine when it came to sex. I wondered if Arnie felt the same and if it might be difficult for him to perform adequately under such circumstances.

  “You might want to give him a few days to recover. Having a leg break must be traumatic. And the nursing home must have some rules. Like a lights-out time, no visitors after nine?”

  “If he has trouble getting it up, he can use other parts of his body. He may not be the smartest penis to pop but he does know how to use all of his attributes. Although, I must admit, conversation is a bit of a chore. He is willing to experiment and that’s a positive. I’ll expect you at six. We should be done before nine, but I’ll call, so keep the phone on. And you might want to stay at Jonny’s house tonight.”

  Lucille was a little flustered and her speech was sort of run-on. I kept quiet and let her ramble about Arnie on the way home. I found out he had fallen out of bed rather than walking down the sidewalk. Getting him respectably dressed had been almost impossible but they both thought it for the best that he be fully clothed when the ambulance arrived.

  “Arnie has a high pain threshold and that’s a point in his favor. We even got him as far as the living room before the medics saw him. Still, I think he isn’t long-term for me. But tonight would be a nice good-bye,” said Lucille.

  After I dropped her at home, presumably to recover from her long night and longer morning, I headed back to Cool Rides. It was an uneventful day unless you count the garbage truck blowing up and catching fire on the interstate. But it was behind me as I made my airport run so it didn’t impede my progress. It made lots of explosive noises which followed us down the road, but my customer made the flight no problem with some good stories about her narrow escape from being covered with flying debris.

  When I got back Mona had me haul a big screen TV from Walmart to a “single room occupancy” rooming house. The TV would take up the entire single room. The new owner of the TV said it was better than listening to anyone else who lived in the adjoining single rooms. I helped him carry the TV inside and it sounded like the war of the new technology. If his neighbor had a loud TV, he needed one louder.

  “If we’re watching the same show, I just turn off my sound. His fills in fine. But I need to override him sometimes.”

  I got back to Cool Rides at five o’clock and told Mona I would take Lucille to the nursing home and then leave the phone on in case she wanted a ride home. When I picked her up, it looked like she might spend the night since she was still dressed in her slacks, top and, most importantly, her fabulous shoes.

  I dropped her off, drove back to Jon’s house and fell asleep in front of Jon’s big screen TV. I woke up at seven the next morning in Jon’s bed. No sign of Jon. No calls from Lucille. I hoped she had enjoyed the evening without being arres
ted. I especially hoped the absence of both Jon and Lucille wasn’t related. Jon had been home because I was in his bed and I hadn’t put myself there. I showered, dressed. No word from Lucille, so I drove to Cool Rides to start my day.

  By the middle of the day, I had run two people to the big international airport and picked up two more from the mini local airport which was too small to land planes bigger than ten passengers. No Lear jets, which was unfortunate, as people using one might have yielded some large tips. But anyone flying in their own plane for convenience had the bucks to tip well. By five o’clock I was beginning to wonder what had happened to Lucille. Mona hadn’t heard from her.

  A few minutes later Belle drove in.

  “Hey, you want to go to a nursing home?” I asked as she extracted herself from the car.

  “I’ve had a rough day, but I don’t think I look that bad.”

  “To visit Arnie and see what’s happened to Lucille. You look fine. What’s been rough about your day?”

  “Whoa, slow down. Arnie is in a nursing home?”

  I realized Belle hadn’t been around yesterday when Mona sent me off to fetch Lucille from and then back to the nursing home.

  “He fell out of Lucille’s bed and broke his leg. He’s at the recovery home. But we haven’t heard from Lucille since I dropped her off there for dinner last night. I thought I’d check it out, see how Arnie is doing.”

  “Yeah, okay, I’m in. Might as well see where I’ll be in forty years, plus or minus.”

  We took Belle’s Mini Cooper since she always wanted to drive it. If Lucille needed a ride it had four seats, sort of. We could cram me in the back and Lucille, who was less flexible, would get shotgun.

  When we arrived at the nursing home the parking lot was almost full. Belle found a space between two large vans and pulled the Mini in. It instantly became invisible. We walked up the long and sloped sidewalk to the automatic doors. They slid silently open, triggered by some unseen infrared beam.

  I approached the reception desk. “We’re looking for Arnie Delisle. He broke his leg yesterday.”

  The woman behind the desk had poufy hair and a shirt that was a little too tight across a large chest. She pulled a pencil out of her hair and ran it down the list of new arrivals.

  “Room 104. Down the hallway on the left.” She went back to reading her soap opera magazine.

  We found room 104 and knocked softly.

  “About time! Get in here, where you been?” The voice was male and demanding.

  I poked my head around the corner. Arnie was in bed. The bed next to his was empty.

  “Oh, I thought you were Lucille. She left...let’s see...sometime last night, for Christ’s sake. I thought she’d run out on me. She was supposed to find a wheelchair to take me outside. Don’t know where the hell she went,” he whined.

  “Hi Arnie, I’m Honey, Lucille’s driver. We met before. This is Belle. She works for the cab company too.”

  “I know who you are. I just want to know where Lucille is. She walked out on me. I really need to see the sun just for a few minutes,” he continued to complain.

  “We could do that,” I said and looked questioningly at Belle.

  “Sure, why not? You go get the chair, I’ll keep Mr. Cheerful here company.”

  I walked to the reception desk and inquired where I might find a spare wheelchair.

  “There’s a whole room full of them.” She pointed. “Two doors after where you came out. Take any one. But be careful of the door. It locks from the outside. If it closes behind you, you’re in there until someone misses you. Which may be never.”

  I trotted down the hall, opened the door, being careful to brace it with my foot, and snagged the first chair from a sea of identical transports. I wrestled it clear of the door and into the hall when another wheelchair shot out behind me and down the hall.

  I caught a fleeting glimpse of spinning wheels, white hair and trailing duct tape as Lucille tore down the corridor toward the front door. She blasted by an orderly who had shoved an empty chair up the sidewalk and was heading back to storage. He yelled at her to stop, turned to pursue and decided he stood a better chance of catching her if he used the chair he was pushing. Wheelchairs can really travel, so unless you were a marathon runner, which this guy clearly wasn’t, it was faster by chair than by foot. I jumped into the one I was holding, and we formed a careening caravan barreling toward the entrance. Lucille approached the automatic door as someone was coming in. The door was open and she zinged through. It started to close just as the orderly screeched into it. It bounced against him once and slid back. I was right behind him. We both sailed outside. He stopped short in front of me and jumped out. I collided with his chair and got dumped on my butt. The empty chair crashed into the stone wall that lined the sidewalk and exploded into pieces of metal tubing.

  Lucille was nowhere to be seen.

  “What’s going on and why does that woman have duct tape on her wrists? Why was she in the storage room?” I was yelling at the orderly as I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. I pushed Jon’s number on speed contacts just as the guy dove for my phone.

  “Give me the fuckin’ phone, lady. You ain’t callin’ no one. You and your friend need to go somewhere far away!” And he grabbed my arm. We danced in a circle and I kicked him in the shins. I tried for a knee to the balls, but he was on top of that possibility and turned away too quickly for a good shot. I could hear Jon’s voice yelling, but I was too busy fending off the crazy orderly to do more than scream, “Lucille, nursing home!” I tried to yell more but one of his extra-large hands got caught in my mouth.

  The wild man almost had my phone pried out of my hand when I saw six feet of glittering red spandex flying down the sidewalk. Belle collided with my attacker and they landed hard on the cement. Belle was on top. I heard a whoosh of air as the orderly lost his breath to six feet and one hundred and seventy pounds of angry female.

  “Hunh! I can’t leave you alone for ten seconds without some asshole busting your butt. What the hell’s going on? And I saw Lucille in some big hurry heading out the door with duct tape on her mouth and hanging off her arms and legs and ankles. She may have to go shoe shopping ’cause duct tape doesn’t mix with fine footwear. And who is this guy I’m sitting on?”

  I looked around for Lucille and spotted the broken wheelchair scattered in front of the stone wall. There were plastic packets of white stuff scattered around next to the pieces of tube that made up the chair.

  Chapter Twenty

  Jon was at the head of the pack when he arrived surprisingly quickly with two patrol cars following. He stopped at the base of the sidewalk and the patrol cars pulled in behind. His backup jumped out with weapons drawn. Belle was still sitting on the slowly recovering orderly. I was holding my cell phone and looking down at the remains of the busted wheelchair. Jon came striding toward me, a grim expression on his face. At least I was his first concern.

  “Are you okay?” He grabbed my shoulders and studied my face.

  “I’m fine, but Lucille may need some help.”

  “What the fuck is going on here?” Then Jon saw the little white packets. “Holy shit!” He knelt down and examined the broken pieces and the plastic baggies. “So that’s how they’re doing it. I wonder if Scarpelli is involved at all. Maybe he really did retire.” Jon was mumbling to himself.

  He turned to one of his officers. “Cuff him,” he said, pointing to the orderly. “Mirandize him.”

  Belle had removed herself from the proximity of so many blue uniforms and was hanging out farther down in the parking area. I looked at her and realized Lucille had joined the party. She was standing behind the wheelchair she had used to escape in, and the chair was behind Belle. She still had the duct tape over her mouth. I could see removing it might be like pulling a super strength band-aid off an open wound on a pissed-off pussycat.

  “Umph!” said Lucille as loudly as the situation allowed.

  Belle opened her oversized b
ag, which she had held onto during the entire episode with the orderly. She rooted around inside and came up with a travel size bottle of baby oil. “Hold still,” she told Lucille. She put a drop of oil on the edge of the tape and slowly worked it off. When she had less than a quarter inch to go, she gave it a yank and Lucille squeaked.

  “Kill that man. Give me a gun. Someone give me a gun!” Lucille took a step toward the officers holding the cuffed orderly. Both of them stepped back. Belle grabbed Lucille’s arm.

  “Slow down lady. I need input. What the hell happened to you?”

  “I would like to know that also. Have you been missing?” Jon had figured out the transport of heroin up the interstate, but he didn’t understand what Lucille was doing here, why she had duct tape on her mouth, was in a wheelchair, or why Belle and I were rounding up the crooks for him. I wasn’t very clear on any of that myself.

  “And what the hell are you wearing?” He shook his head. I realized Lucille was wearing her bling shoes. Jon may never have seen her in them because they were for specialized use in Lucille’s seduction arsenal to which Jon might not be privy.

  Lucille raised her chin, pulled herself up straight and said, “I think we should all go home and take a little rest. I will explain as much as I know later.”

  “How about you talk to me now?” Jon scowled.

  “I’ve been up all night. That orderly locked me in a room and threatened me. That’s all I’m saying until I have regrouped. It’s enough to hold him.” And Lucille marched off in the direction of Belle’s car.

  Belle and I followed and I scrunched myself into the back seat while Lucille gracefully lowered herself in front. The patrol officers started stringing crime scene tape. One of them escorted the prisoner to a squad car and took off. I agreed to come to the station the next day with Lucille and Belle and explain what part of the apparent transport operation we had actually witnessed. Jon agreed Lucille needed a rest after her ordeal. Arnie was going to have to wait to see the sun.