“Guess I’ll stop at Matilda’s garage,” Shep said.
As he pulled up, a large woman came to the door of the car. She was in her mid-thirties and wore a man’s coat much too big for her. I guessed, and correctly, that she was Matilda Mortimer, owner of the garage and filling station.
“How many will you have?” she asked Shep, briskly clearing the windshield of snow.
Shep replied that he did not require gasoline but wanted at least a quart of alcohol.
“Drive into the garage,” the woman instructed, opening a pair of double doors. “I’ll have Seth take care of you.”
As the car rolled into the building, Matilda shouted at a stoop-shouldered man who was busy in the rear office: “Hey, Seth! Look after this customer, will you?”
Seth Bates slouched over to the car and began to unscrew the radiator cap. I assumed that the man must be Matilda’s husband, but Shep told me otherwise.
“Seth is Matilda’s business partner,” he explained in an undertone. “It’s hard to tell which one of them is boss of the place. Matilda’s brother Bill runs the café next door.”
I was cold again. I told Shep I might go over to Bill’s Place for a cup of hot coffee.
“You girls go ahead,” Shep said. “I’ll stay here until this job is finished and join you.”
As Flo and I let ourselves out the garage door, a truck pulled up in front of Bill’s café. I would have given it no more than a casual glance had the driver climbing down not caught my attention. He was a short, ruddy-faced man with a missing front tooth, which made his facial expression rather grotesque. Without glancing at Flo and me, he entered the restaurant.
“That man!” exclaimed Florence. “Haven’t we seen him somewhere?”
“We have indeed,” I said. “He’s the dastardly driver who refused us a ride. Let’s march in there and give him a piece of our minds.”
This time I intended to confront him about wounding my beloved Betsy and leaving her for dead.
Chapter Three
From outside the lighted cafe, I could see the truck driver slouched on one of the stools.
“I’m willing to go inside,” said Florence, “but why cause a ruckus? After all, I suppose he had a right to refuse us a ride.”
“We might have frozen to death,” I pointed out. “It was an inhumane action violating all universal moral codes. I intend to suggest he recalibrate his moral compass and give more consideration to the health and welfare of his fellowman.”
“He probably didn’t realize we were lost,” Flo suggested.
“I wish I had your charitable disposition. He heard me shout, and he drove away just to be mean spirited.”
“Possibly you are right,” said Flo.” But what’s to be gained by getting into a yelling match with the man? Let’s forget it.”
I decided that Flo might be right. I’d take down the man’s license plate number and let the Greenville police department take it from there. Even so, I hadn’t much hope of proving the man sitting at the counter of the café was the driver of the truck who’d injured Betsy.
Florence took my elbow and steered me toward the café.
Flo and I have been friends since we were both in pinafores, and as many of our near and dear have—more than once—pointed out, Florence exerts a subduing effect upon my more impulsive nature. I have a talent for getting into trouble. Inactivity bores me, injustice infuriates me, and keeping silent is not my forte.
“Now remember,” Florence warned me, “not a word to that truck driver. We’ll just hand him the icy mitt if he happens to glance in our direction and leave his conscience to convict him.”
“I doubt he has one,” I protested.
“One what?” Flo asked
“A conscience.”
“Well, then,” said Flo, “we’ll turn the other cheek and heap coals of fire on his head.”
That was a new one to me, but Flo assured me that heaping coals of fire on the heads of one’s enemies was a widely regarded Biblical principle.
“My father preached an entire sermon on it, just the other week,” Flo insisted. “Left to its own devices, the heart of the evildoer is smited with—”
“I think smote is the past tense of smite,” I interrupted.
Flo gave me a look almost as icy as the one I intended to bestow on the dastardly driver, so I clammed up.
“Oh, all right,” I said. “I’ll try to behave myself.”
Near the doorway, we came to the parked truck.
“Do you have a pencil?” I asked Flo.
She searched around in her pockets and came up with a stub.
I hastily scribbled down the license number of the vehicle on a scrap of paper I rummaged from my coat pocket.
The truck was loaded with large wooden boxes similar to the one which we’d discovered near the wreckage of my beloved Betsy.
“Lyle Farms Fresh Pears.” I read aloud. “Doesn’t that strike you as a trifle odd?”
“This time of year?” said Flo. “Yes, it does, but perhaps they are just reusing the boxes, and that’s not really what’s inside.”
I opened the door, and we went into the warm, smoky café. As we seated ourselves at a table, the driver glanced toward us but seemingly without recognition.
“How about a date tonight, doll?” The driver spoke loudly as he leered at the waitress.
Without replying, the girl slapped a menu card on the counter in front of him.
“High toned, ain’t you?” The sound of his laughter made my skin crawl.
“What will it be?” The waitress asked without a hint of warmth.
I didn’t blame her.
“How about a nice smile, doll?”
I started to get up from my seat, but Flo kept an iron grip on my coat sleeve.
The waitress turned away without taking the driver’s order and started to serve another customer.
“Gimme a cup o’ coffee and two sinkers,” the driver hurled after her. “And make it snappy, too, I’m in a hurry.”
Once the coffee and doughnuts had been set before him, the driver seemed to forget all about being in a hurry. He sipped the coffee and left the donuts untouched as he read most of a newspaper, or at least turned the pages, while his glare followed the waitress around the room.
Flo and I ordered coffee. Shep was likely waiting for us, so we swallowed the brew scalding hot and arose to leave.
At the cashier’s desk, I paid the bill. Upon impulse, I quietly asked the man behind the cash register, whom I assumed to be the owner, Bill, if he knew the driver.
“Fellow by the name of Horace Franklin,” Bill told me.
Before I could ask any more questions, a police patrol car screeched to a standstill just outside the restaurant. Bill turned to stare, as did the driver.
“What are those cops comin’ here for?” Horace Franklin demanded loudly from his seat at the counter.
“How should I know?” Bill retorted. “Maybe they want to ask you a few questions about that cargo you carry.”
“What do you mean by that crack?”
Bill shrugged but did not reply. Horace allowed the matter to pass. Although he remained at the counter, he kept an eagle eye on the police car through the window.
The brief interchange between Bill and the driver intrigued me. To delay our departure, I bought a candy bar and began to unwrap it so slowly that Flo asked me if I intended to eat it or have it bronzed.
Only one policeman got out of the car. As he came inside, he pounded his hands together and headed for the warmth of a radiator.
“Mind if I have a little of your heat?” he asked Bill.
“Help yourself.”
When the police car had first pulled up, Horace Franklin had sat tense and nervous at the counter. Now he seemed completely relaxed and at ease as he sipped his coffee.
“Hello, Horace,” the policeman greeted him. “Didn’t see you at first. How’s the trucking business?”
“Okay,” the trucker growled. “Workin’ m
e night and day.”
This casual conversation disappointed me. My first thought had been that Horace Franklin feared a police investigation. Now it appeared I had indulged in wishful thinking.
When we stepped out of the café, it was into a storm.
“A pity that policeman wasn’t looking for Horace Franklin,” I muttered.
“I thought for a minute he was,” said Florence, stooping to fasten the buckle of her heavy overshoe. “At least Horace acted peculiar.”
“You heard what the cashier said to him?”
“About the cargo he carried?”
“Yes,” I said. “What do you suppose he meant?”
“Don’t you think it was intended as a joke?”
“It didn’t seem that way to me. Horace took offense at the remark. He was as nervous as a cat, too.”
I stared curiously at the big truck, which was parked not far from the police car.
“I wonder what can be in those big boxes, Flo?”
I paused beside the big truck. Pressing my face close to an opening between the slats, I counted ten large crates, all marked as Lyle Farms Fresh Pears.
“Flo, I seriously doubt these boxes contain pears, maybe it’s—"
Someone tapped me on the shoulder.
Whirling around, I faced the same policeman who had come into the café.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
“Just looking,” I said. “We were wondering what’s inside these boxes.”
“Pears,” replied the policeman. “Says so right there on the box.”
“Frozen pears,” I muttered under my breath.
“What?” said the policeman.
“Frozen pears,” I said.
The policeman grunted.
“Isn’t it odd weather to be moving fruit?” I persisted, as Flo tugged none too gently at my sleeve.
Chapter Four
“We’re very sorry,” Florence apologized to the policeman. “We didn’t suppose it would do any harm to look at the outside of the boxes.”
“Run along, run along,” the officer said impatiently.
I was tempted to make another rather pointed remark, but Florence pulled me away.
“Never argue with a policeman,” she whispered. “You always lose.”
“We weren’t doing any harm,” I insisted. “What does he think we are, a couple of female spies?”
When we entered the garage, I saw that the car had been serviced. Shep was sitting alone inside the little glass-enclosed office.
“I’m waiting for Seth Bates,” he explained as we joined him. “He took care of the radiator and then disappeared.”
Flo and I loitered inside the office, reading the evening newspaper. After a little delay, Matilda Mortimer appeared.
“Can you give me my bill?” Shep asked. “We’re in a hurry to get to Greenville.”
“I thought Seth was looking after you,” Matilda explained as she made out the slip.
Shep settled the bill and backed the car from the garage. I noticed that Horace Franklin’s truck no longer stood in front of the café. The police car was also gone.
I would have thought no more of it, had not Florence at that moment exclaimed: “Jane, that truck is parked at the rear of the garage now. They’re unloading the boxes.”
I twisted around to see for myself. It was true. The big truck had been backed up close to the rear entrance of the small warehouse built onto the back of the garage. Through the blinding snow, I could just make out Horace Franklin and Seth Bates carrying one of the boxes into the building.
“Those crates can’t contain pears, frozen or otherwise. Horace wouldn’t be delivering fruit to a garage in the middle of winter.”
“What crates?” Shep asked as he shifted gears.
I told him what had happened in the cafe, and how Flo and I had been scolded by the policeman. Shep, occupied with driving, did not consider the incident in any way significant.
“Oh, you know how some coppers are,” he commented carelessly. “Touchy.”
The car went into a wild skid, and Shep thereafter devoted his attention strictly to driving.
We arrived safely at Greenville without further mishap.
Only one light burned in the living room when I stomped in out of the cold. Mrs. Timms sat beside the hearth, darning one of my father’s socks.
Doris Timms has been my family’s housekeeper for as long as I can remember. After my mother died when I was ten, Mrs. Timms became like a second mother to me. It was only relatively recently that I discovered that she was far more than a housekeeper to my father, as well. Although, as Mrs. Timms took great pains to stress, she and my father hadn’t gotten hotsey-totsey until years after my mother had passed beyond the veil.
“I’m glad you’re home at last,” Mrs. Timms said, getting up quickly. “You’ve no idea how worried I’ve been.”
“But I telephoned.”
“I couldn’t hear you very well. I barely was able to make out that something had happened to your car.”
“A major catastrophe, Mrs. Timms. Betsy was brutally assaulted by a truck carrying bootleg liquor.”
While Mrs. Timms bombarded me with questions, I stripped off my overshoes and heavy outer clothing. Pools of water began to form on the rug.
“Take everything out to the kitchen before I have to run the carpet through the wringer,” Mrs. Timms said. “Have you had your supper?”
“Not even a nibble. All I’ve had since breakfast is a cup of coffee and a candy bar. I’m starving.”
As Mrs. Timms began to reheat a bowl of Madras Curry—our housekeeper has a penchant for Indian cuisine—I perched myself on the kitchen table, alternately talking and chewing on a sugared saffron bun.
“If you ever were lost in an Arctic blizzard you have a good idea of what Florence and I endured,” I told Mrs. Timms. “It was dreadful.”
“The damage to your car is a mere detail in comparison?”
“It’s nothing less than a tragedy. Where’s Dad?”
“He’s attending a meeting and won’t be home until eleven.”
Exhausted by my ordeal, I slept so late the next morning that by the time I sat down to breakfast, my father had already left for the office.
I was three chapters behind schedule on Fiona Finds a Way: A Tale of Love and Betrayal in Old New York, and I fully expected that if I did not deliver the expected manuscript on time, I was in for an earful from my editor, Mr. Litchfield.
Nevertheless, I could muster no enthusiasm for the vicissitudes of Fiona McPhee, chambermaid. I had left poor, downtrodden Fiona in the midst of being berated by the shallow and callous Miss Abigail Whitely, shipping heiress, but I lacked the will of purpose to make Fiona finally defy Miss Abigail and reveal the dastardly secret which would bring the Whitely family to its collective knees.
The problem, of course, was that I’d been hinting so broadly at this deep, dark secret for the last seventy-two pages that I’d obliged myself to come up with a doozy of a family skeleton in the closet when it finally came time for Fiona to dish the dirt on the Whitelys.
I shelved the airing of the Whitely family dirty laundry for the time being and took the bus down to the Examiner Office to fill Dad in on my misadventures of the previous day and the current shocking state of Bouncing Betsy.
“It wasn’t your fault some fool smashed up your car and left the scene,” my father said at the conclusion of my sad tale. “I’m not surprised to find out that someone’s been transporting spirits. I’ve known for several weeks that a professional gang of bootleggers has been operating in Greenville. The gang is getting bolder every day, but we’ll soon put a stop to their little game.”
“How, Dad?”
My father hesitated before he said: “I can trust you, can’t I, Jane? Jack told me not to breathe a word of it to you.”
“A word of what?” I wasn’t awfully thrilled to find out that Jack had been hiding things from me.
I sh
ouldn’t worry so much. The last time I’d been convinced that Jack was hiding something from me (he was), it had been because he was doing odd jobs in all his spare time so he could afford the very respectable diamond engagement ring which currently sparkled on my left hand.
“Jack didn’t want you to worry,” Dad insisted
“I promise not to worry,” I said, my fingers crossed behind my back.
I resisted Jack’s charm for years. I was determined to never again link my lot to a newspaperman. My first husband, Timothy, had also been a reporter. He’d died chasing after a story. If the same thing were to happen to Jack, I don’t think I could go on living.
“Since you’ve promised not to worry, I’ll tell you this in confidence,” Dad said. ”For weeks, I’ve been working on the case. I’ve rounded up a lot of evidence against the outfit. I’ve gathered enough hard proof to smash the entire gang of bootleggers. It will be as big a story as the Examiner has ever published.”
“Is that the reason you and Jack have been so busy? Was he in on the case, too?”
“Jack’s been occupied with other things. These types of stories come with inherent risks. No sense in putting Jack in danger unnecessarily.”
“Can’t have your daughter’s fiancé put in harm’s way?”
Dad just grunted.
“But having your daughter’s father risking life and limb is perfectly—”
Dad gave me a warning look, so I cheesed it.
“When are you breaking the story, Dad?”
“Possibly as early as tomorrow. Depends on the state prosecutor.”
“John Simmons? What does he have to do with it?”
“This story is loaded with dynamite, Jane. If we spread it over our front page before police have a chance to act, the guilty parties are apt to make a getaway.”
“That’s so,” I said.
“There’s another reason I want to consult the prosecutor before I use the story,” Dad said. “Some of the men involved—”
A tap sounded on the door. Without completing what he had started to say, Dad called, “Come in.”
Jack came in, winked at me, then slapped a paper down on my father’s desk.
“Here’s my story on the wharf fire, Chief,” he said. “How’s the ladies’ tea party story coming along?”
The Jane Carter Historical Cozies Box Set 2 Page 48
