A moment later, sunlight stung her eyes as the tarp flew back.
Brock’s black-and-white tweed flat cap sat cockeyed on his head. One edge of the little brim was right above one dark eyebrow, while the other sat near the side parting of his slicked-back hair. He always looked dapper in that hat. However, right now, his eyes had the menacing glare of a copper on the beat.
Ginger swallowed the lump in her throat. “Good morning.”
“Good mor—what the—” Brock grabbed her arms and pulled her forward, forcing her to sit upright. “What are you doing here?”
His fingers dug into her upper arms and, for the life of her, Ginger couldn’t quite remember what she was doing. All the girls thought Brock was the bee’s knees. Mitsy Kemper claimed to have necked with him once, said kissing him was the cat’s meow. Ginger had wanted to push Mitsy right out of Twyla’s car when she’d been talking about necking with Brock. She might have done if she’d been in the backseat beside her.
Mitsy was forgotten when Brock yanked her up and over the side of the truck.
“What are you doing here?” he all but shouted.
She’d lost a shoe and batted his hands away as soon as he set her on the ground. After checking to make sure her skirt hadn’t been torn, she snatched her shoe out of the truck and slid it on her foot. “I’m going to Chicago,” she said. “You best be glad you didn’t tear my skirt.”
“A torn skirt is the least of your worries, Ginger,” he said, waggling a finger before her face. He paced down the road a short distance before spinning back around. “Chicago? Oh, no you’re not!”
“Yes, I am,” she said, smoothing her bobbed hair so the ends curled near her chin.
His brown eyes, so dark they looked black, narrowed. “Does your father know about this?”
“Of course not,” she said. “He’d never have let me go.” He never let her do anything. Except work. Keep the resort spick-and-span for all his friends. He wouldn’t let her date, either. Said he’d find a man for each of his daughters when the time was right. One with money. Lots of it. Which is why none of them were married. The time would never be right in his eyes. Besides, she didn’t need a man with money. She had saved almost every dime she’d made working at the resort over the years.
Brock growled and slapped the side of the truck. “Are you trying to get me killed?”
A shiver raced up Ginger’s spine. “No.”
“Your father will have me pinched, or filled with lead.” He marched to the front of the truck. “Damn it, Ginger. Of all the stupid, idiotic things…”
Maybe she hadn’t considered all aspects of her actions.
A rumble had her looking down the road, where a cloud of dust was growing. Grabbing her purse out of the truck, she opened the passenger door. “A truck’s coming.”
Brock cursed aloud, but climbed in the driver’s door and started the engine. They’d barely made it onto the short grass next to the road when a larger truck swerved around them, honking as its speed threw rocks against their windshield.
Ginger released a sigh of relief. “Next time you stop to put gas in,” she said, shooing the dust out of the window with one hand, “I’d suggest pulling all the way off the road.”
“Next time—” Brock stopped midsentence. There wouldn’t be a next time. Roger Nightingale was going to kill him. He’d be shot. Stabbed. Poisoned. It didn’t matter which. He was a dead man. Which would leave his family with no hope. None. Zilch.
“What were you thinking?” he growled at Ginger.
She’d opened her purse and was gliding red lipstick over her bow-shaped lips. Once done, she smacked them together, replaced the lid on the tube and dropped it in her beaded bag. “Right now I’m thinking you should start driving or you’re going to be late getting to Chicago.”
Another surge of anger overcame Brock. There wasn’t time to take her home and still make it to Chicago. The steady rumble of the idling truck fed his fury, making reasonable thinking difficult. He closed his eyes for a moment, just to concentrate. There had to be a town between here and Chicago. He’d drop Ginger off and send a telegram to Roger, explaining he’d had nothing to do with her running away.
There wasn’t another choice. If he wasn’t in Chicago this evening, the gig would go to someone else. He’d never get this chance again. Never have the life he wanted.
Brock grabbed the shifter.
“Wait!” Ginger shouted.
Chapter Three
Clenching his jaw, Brock growled, “What?”
“The tarp,” she said. “You’d better tie it down.”
Wishing he could ignore her, and the tarp, Brock killed the engine, and then pulled the key out of its slot. Ginger was known for getting her way and just might take off while he was tying down the tarp. He climbed out and slammed the door, making the old jalopy rattle like a tin can. Once the tarp was secure, he climbed in the driver’s seat and, without a word, started the truck and dropped the clutch, not caring how Ginger jerked on the seat beside him.
“Not too good a driver, are you?”
He didn’t respond.
“I’m an excellent driver,” she said. “I can drive if you’re tired.”
Even if he was on his deathbed—which he practically was—he wouldn’t let her drive.
“Honest,” she said. “I’m a good driver. Norma Rose lets me take her Cadillac out whenever I want.”
Brock ignored her and started calculating how far it might be to the next town. He hadn’t ever driven to Chicago. Scooter Wilson had told him which road to get on and said not to stop until he came to Chicago. Said he couldn’t miss it.
Ginger, like most dames, was never quiet, and kept talking. About driving. About Norma Rose’s Cadillac. About Twyla’s and Josie’s cars. About just about everything. When she took a breath—several miles down the road—he glanced her way. “Do you ever shut up?”
Pinching those little red lips together, she glared at him. “Of course.”
Turning back to the road, he suggested, “Then try it now.”
She sputtered like a two-cylinder running out of gas, but kept her lips shut. Brock appreciated the silence. It gave him time to rehash his plan. Roger Nightingale was closely associated with mobsters, but he wasn’t one himself, and he’d always been fair. Surely he’d understand the jam Ginger had created. And that he’d had nothing to do with it. And that he couldn’t just turn around and take her home.
Everything inside Brock slumped. He squeezed the wheel harder, pushing the old truck to give all it had. A town with a train station was what he needed. Dropping her off on the road would just get him shot, too.
The milk truck had eaten up a large portion of the desolate Wisconsin road when Ginger asked, “Are we going to stop soon?”
Brock glanced her way. He’d soon need more fuel, but the way she squirmed made him grin. She’d consumed almost the full mason jar of water on the seat between them.
“Well, are we?” she asked.
He huffed out a long breath. “In a while.”
“How long’s a while?”
He shrugged.
To her credit, she didn’t hem and haw and Brock wasn’t sure why that pleased him. She didn’t please him, that was for sure. At least not showing up like this. He’d admired her from afar for years, but dames like Ginger didn’t date men like him. They went for the high hats, not men who had to work to put dough in their pockets. The money he would make playing on the radio wouldn’t just take care of his family, it would put him in the upper class. He might never have the dough Roger Nightingale had, but he’d have enough that people would look up to him, invite him into the back room of their joints where dames like Ginger would be proud to sit on his lap.
He’d tried it the other way, delivering milk like his father, but squabbling over twenty cents with people who couldn’t afford to give him another twenty cents wasn’t for him. His mother had been the one to urge him to try music. She’d given him his grandfather’s ho
rn on his tenth birthday and bought him a guitar at a hock shop on his fifteenth. Between those years, he’d borrowed and learned to play most every instrument, including the piano that Nightingale liked to hear him set his fingers to.
After delivering milk all day, he would spruce up his tattered clothes and go play anywhere they’d let him through the door. Four years ago, when he’d turned eighteen, Roger had let him play at the resort. That had caught people’s attention. The number of gigs and the money he made had grown steadily since, but he still needed a break. A big one. And Chicago was his chance.
The road grew wider, making way for vehicles to pull over next to a hash house that also sold fuel. He eased off the gas pedal and grinned when Ginger let out a little whoop.
Brock saw to the fuel while she visited the little house out back. He also questioned the attendant about the closest train station.
“Unless you wanna go north about fifty miles, Chicago’s the closest,” the boy said.
“How far’s that?” Brock asked.
“Close to a hundred miles. You want the jugs filled, too?”
“Yeah, go ahead,” Brock answered, catching sight of Ginger coming around the corner. The fringe of her skirt flapped, showing a good portion of her knees, and his stomach tightened. Horsefeathers, but that dame got under his skin.
“My ma’s got the best food in these parts,” the attendant said. “If you and the missus are hungry. It’s cheap, too.”
Brock’s nerves twanged at the kid’s assumption, but he gestured toward the café as Ginger stepped closer. “Go in and find a seat,” he told her. “I’ll park the truck.”
The smile that formed on her face made Brock flinch. Her expression was on the sly side. Cunning.
She stepped closer, giving him a good whiff of her fruity perfume. “You won’t get far,” she whispered.
He opened his mouth, but clamped his lips together when she dangled the rabbit’s foot tied to the truck’s key before his eyes.
“Didn’t want you driving away without me,” she said.
“Why you little…” He reached for the key, but she was too quick in pulling it away.
Giggling, she skirted around him. “You did the same thing to me, back there on the road.”
He caught her by the waist to wrestle the key from her hand. All her wiggling, giggles and squeals had him laughing, too. When he finally had the rabbit’s foot in one hand, he lightly swatted her backside with the other, which shot a thrill right through him and out the soles of his boots. “Get in the truck,” he said. “I’ll park it and then we’ll both go inside to eat.”
The food was tasty, but it wasn’t the good meal that made Brock feel ten feet tall. It was the admiration of the other diners, mainly men, as they glanced at the doll sitting across the table from him. Her short hair bobbed as she talked and the little gold headband she wore across her forehead like a miniature crown shone as brightly as her sky-blue eyes in the sunlight gleaming through the big windows.
Those men were jealous, and they had a right to be. They’d probably never seen a dame as pretty as Ginger, or one as cheerful. He’d always liked that about her. The way he could make her laugh. It filled him with something akin to sunshine.
When they finished eating, he had to remove the key from his pocket to dig deeper for his cash.
“I don’t know why people think these are lucky,” she said, running a painted fingertip over the rabbit’s foot key ring he’d laid on the table. “It sure wasn’t a lucky day for the rabbit.”
The mixture of mirth and sincerity in her eyes made him laugh. “No, I guess it wasn’t.”
“Where’d you get it?” she asked.
“It’s my father’s. I don’t know where he got it.”
She leaned back in her chair, growing a bit more serious. “I know I told you before, but I’m sorry about your father’s accident.” Her cheeks took on a pink hue. “I offered to pay for your mother’s groceries one time, when I saw her at Gabby’s store, but she wouldn’t let me.”
The food he’d just eaten turned into cold oatmeal in his stomach. “My mother’s a proud woman. She won’t take handouts.”
“I wasn’t trying to give her a handout.” Ginger shrugged. “I was just trying to be neighborly.”
Her sincerity softened that dark spot inside him. He laid a hand on top of hers. “I’m sure you were.”
“You folks want anything else?”
* * *
Ginger wished the waitress hadn’t appeared right then, for it made Brock lift his hand off hers. Though most people thought she’d been wealthy her entire life, it wasn’t true. She could remember ten years ago, even six, before Prohibition had given her father the means to make more money than most others. Back then, her father might have let her date Brock.
Ginger shook her head when the waitress glanced at her and Brock asked for the check. A lot like his mother, Brock wouldn’t take handouts either, which meant he wouldn’t let her pay for the meal. Yet his funds had to be limited.
After the woman walked away, Ginger reached into her beaded purse, under the table so no one would see, and separated a five-dollar bill from the roll she’d saved up over the years. She then aimed the bill to fall near his boot.
“Brock,” she whispered, leaning across the table. “Look on the floor. Someone must have dropped some money.”
He scooted his chair back and picked up the bill. “Is it yours?”
Keeping her face expressionless, she shook her head.
“Excuse me, miss?” he said to the waitress. “Do you have a lost and found?”
The woman returned to their table. “Why? You lose something?”
“No,” he said. “But someone did.” He held out the bill. “This. Maybe you know who sat here before we did. It might be theirs.”
Ginger forced a growl back down her throat.
Brock then laid a one-dollar bill on the table, for their meals. “Maybe you can see they get it back?”
“Sure,” the waitress said, taking both the five from his hand and the one off the table.
Ginger waited until they’d climbed in the truck before saying, “She’ll keep that money.”
“Probably,” Brock said, pushing the key in the slot and stepping on the starter pedal. “Maybe it’ll teach you not to drop money on the floor.”
Her cheeks grew warm.
He steered the truck toward the road. “A man notices when a five-dollar bill lands on his boot.”
“It didn’t land on—”
“Did your father put you up to this? Give you money to throw around like leaves off a tree?”
His tone had changed. He was clearly unhappy at what she’d done. “No, I—”
“You what? Don’t think I have enough money to even get to Chicago?”
“No, I—”
“I don’t take handouts, Ginger. Not from you or your father.”
“I was just trying to pay my own way,” she snapped, furious he thought she saw him as someone who needed a handout. Her father might, but she didn’t. Brock was going places, and she wanted to go places, too.
“You’re going to pay your way, all right,” he said. “Your way back home.”
“I’m not going home,” she insisted.
He shot a glare her way, and she turned away. She’d show him, and her father. By the way her stomach soured, it clearly didn’t quite agree with her. The money she had wouldn’t last forever. For the first time in her life, she’d have to think of a way she could earn more.
Chapter Four
It was late afternoon when they entered Chicago. Ginger had been to downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul on numerous occasions, but the thrill she felt here was different. She was entering the unknown, a great adventure. It had taken a few hours, but Brock was no longer mad at her. He’d even let her read his letter from the station manager, and that had excitement bubbling in her veins. “Where’s the radio station?” she asked, scanning buildings on both sides of the road.
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“I don’t know,” Brock answered, maneuvering around cars and trucks parked right in the middle of the roadway. “I’ll have to ask someone.”
Spying a man on the side of the road, Ginger yelled out of her open window, “Do you know where the radio station is?”
“Which one?” the man replied. “Chicago’s the radio hub of the world.”
Brock braked. “KYX.”
The man walked close enough to set a hand on the side of the truck. “KYX. That’s one of the big guys.”
Ginger’s heart skipped several beats. Brock was going to hit it big. She’d see to it he would, along with a few other things. “Where’s the station?” she asked, growing giddy. “KYX.”
“Stay on this here road,” the man said, pointing straight ahead, “until you come to Pershing Street. Turn left, cross the river and follow that road for about four miles. It’ll be on the left, a big brick building. You can’t miss it. If you end up at the railroad station, you’ve gone too far. Turn around and go back a few blocks.”
Brock was leaning across her, listening as the man spoke. He always smelled so good. Spicy and clean. Mitsy had called it sexy. Ginger had wanted to scratch the girl’s eyes out that time. But she hadn’t. She’d kept the torch she carried for Brock her own little secret, knowing her father wouldn’t allow anything to happen. Things had changed now, her father was nowhere around and she’d show Brock he needed her as much as she needed him.
“Thank you,” Brock said to the man.
In high spirits, Ginger grabbed his arm as he settled behind the wheel again. “Isn’t this rate? Beyond rate!”
He grinned and winked an eye. “Yeah, doll, it is.”
Thrilled beyond explanation, she gave him a playful little shove. “Get this jalopy moving!”
Traffic made for slow progress. Ginger wanted to shout out of the window, tell everyone to get out of the way, that the next world-famous radio performer was right here in this old milk truck. Oh but she was excited. She grabbed Brock’s arm again. Squeezing the hardness of it, she leaned over and pressed a cheek against his shoulder. “They’re going to love you. Those folks at KYX are going to love you. I just know it.”
The Runaway Daughter Page 2
