Taken In (12 page)

Tori didn’t need to look at her hands to know what Beatrice shoved into them as the first of two cabs pulled up to the curb outside their hotel.

“I know you’ll be quite busy these next few hours, but just in case a moment arises, I thought, perhaps you could take a picture or two for me.” Beatrice stepped to the side to afford easier access to the backseat for Rose, then moved closer to the cab’s open door as Debbie slipped into the middle. “We’ll tell her you asked after her, and that you’ll visit just as soon as you can.” Then, with a nod to Margaret Louise and Leona, Beatrice got in the cab and waved. “We will see you at the zoo at two o’clock.”

Tori didn’t look at Margaret Louise and Leona as the cab pulled away. She didn’t need to. The silence between them said everything that needed to be said.

The three of them wanted to visit with Dixie every bit as much as Rose, Beatrice, and Debbie. In fact, watching the cab drive away and knowing that was where they were going was crushing.

But just as Dixie needed a few hours of face time with people who loved and cared about her, she also needed someone to track down John’s real killer so her spot in the downtown cell could be relinquished accordingly.

“We’re gonna get ’im, Victoria.”

“Or
her
,” Leona corrected.

“You can bet your sweet petunias we’re going to find the person who did this.” Charles waved at the driver of the second cab then led the way to the vehicle with a half walk, half skip. “Who wants to ride shotgun?”

Margaret Louise’s hands shook along with her head. “Not me. Why, I want as much paddin’ between me and everything outside this cab as possible when we’re zippin’ and dartin’ ’round all those cars and people.”

Charles glanced at Leona and Tori then back at the cab. “How about I take the front seat and I can pretend I’m your tour guide!”

As their cab pulled away from the curb less than a minute later, Charles made good on his plan, guiding their collective gaze first to the right and then the left as they wound their way around illegally parked cars, waiting cabs, and a host of other interferences that neither fazed nor slowed their driver from his mission.

Tori felt Leona tense once or twice as their driver sped toward pedestrian-clogged intersections, but it was Margaret Louise’s white knuckles—one set on the side door and the other poised to draw blood from Tori’s jean-clad thigh—that told the complete story.

“It’s going to be okay, Margaret Louise,” she whispered after one too many gasps of her own involving baby carriages and the Daytona 500 driver who was apparently moonlighting as their cabbie. “Seriously. Pretend it’s you driving.”

“I don’t drive nothin’ like this, Victoria!”

She resisted the urge to laugh and instead did her best to sound soothing. “We’re almost there.”

“Actually, Victoria, we’ve still got a ways to go,” Charles said, spinning around in his seat. “We’ve still got to get around Times Square and make our way past Columbus Circle before we’re at John’s old place.” Then, with his telltale snap of excitement, he let loose a hair-raising laugh. “My friends and I call this part coming up here the pedestrian slalom.”

The cab driver’s eyes met Victoria’s in the rearview mirror. “One point for old person, five points for crying kid, ten points for fast walkers. The cabbie with the highest points at the end of the night gets a free burger and fries.”

Tori howled in pain as Margaret Louise’s hand clenched down on her thigh even harder, drawing a laugh from the driver. “I am kidding. There is no free burger. Only fries. Big, thick fries . . . with lots of salt.”

Charles giggled. “You’re funny.”

“Thank you.” Then, stepping off the gas a hairbreadth, he met Tori’s eye once again. “You look familiar to me.”

“That’s because she was on
Taped with Melly and Kenneth
a few days ago. So was Margaret Louise and Leona.”

The driver nodded. “That’s it. The southern ladies. You guys were a stitch.”

Charles’s eyes widened tenfold. “I know! Weren’t they?”

Leona reached into her satchel and pulled out a nose-twitching Paris, positioning the bunny between her own body and the seat belt. “Are you a fan of the show”—Leona inquired, bobbing her head around Charles’s shoulders to afford a better view of the driver’s name and credentials listed on a placard strung around the rearview mirror—“Abram?”

“I’ve been trying to get on their rising talent segment for six months.”

“As a—as a race car driver?” Margaret Louise stuttered.

“Nah, as a comic.” He stopped at a light and tapped his fingers along the top of the steering wheel. “I’m going to make it one day. I know I am. But in the meantime, I do this.” The light turned green and they continued on, the bright lights and hustle and bustle of Times Square now behind them as they traveled north. “West Sixty-eighth and Central Park West, correct?”

“That’s right,” Tori said, nodding.

“Gorgeous street. You got friends that live there?”

“More like answers.” Charles guided their eyes to the left as the cab made its way around Columbus Circle and past the southwestern corner of Central Park.

Abram’s eyebrows rose but he said nothing, his concentration returning to their rapidly approaching destination. When they approached Sixty-eighth Street, he glanced at Charles. “You want me to actually pull onto the street or let you off alongside the park?”

“The park!” Margaret Louise answered, her breath coming in fits and starts as she finally let it go. “We can walk across the street.”

Again, Abram’s eyes moved to the rearview mirror. “Are you retired, ma’am?”

“Who? Me?” Margaret Louise asked before matching his nod with one of her own.

“Harry has been looking a little hungry lately. I suppose some fries would help fatten him up.”

Margaret Louise looked from Abram’s reflection in the rearview mirror to Tori and back again, her confusion evident in everything from her raised brows to the squinty eyes they topped. “Harry? Who’s Harry?”

“The cabbie behind me.” He pulled to the right, stopping at the curb as Leona, Tori, and Charles laughed away Margaret Louise’s horror. “It was a pleasure escorting you to your answers. May you find exactly what you’re looking for.”

Two minutes and twenty dollars later, they waved farewell to Abram and made their way across Central Park West, Margaret Louise leading the way. “Hurry your feet now. The little red hand is blinkin’.”

Leona slowly lifted her nose and sniffed. “Charles? Victoria? Do you smell French fries?”

Margaret Louise ran to the other side of the street then sank onto a set of wide stone church steps and pointed an accusing finger at her sister. “You ain’t funny, Leona.”

Leona made no pretense of trying to hold back her smugness. “Charles laughed. Victoria laughed.”

“Well, I reckon you’re the only ones.”

It felt good to laugh, it really did, and for just that moment, Tori could almost see the fun they’d all envisioned when news of their contest win had arrived. Oh, the plans they’d had, the crazy food they’d wanted to try, the tourist sites they’d wanted to visit.

Yet in the blink of an eye, all of that had changed.

For Dixie more than any of them.

“I want to laugh like this again tomorrow or the day after tomorrow . . . but only if Dixie can be laughing, too,” Tori said, peering down the street that, just three days earlier, had been closed off by crime scene tape on account of John having been pushed to his death from a third-floor balcony.

“We will, girlfriend, just you wait and see. Super Charles and the Sewing Six are on the case!” Charles extended his hand to Margaret Louise and helped hoist her back onto her Keds. “We will not give up, we will not fail. Dixie Dunn is too good for jail.”

“That she is,” Leona said, pointing the way down the picturesque city street with its flowering trees and welcoming brownstone stoops. “Now, if I remember correctly, that balcony right there was John’s.”

Tori, Margaret Louise, and Charles followed the path cut by Leona’s manicured finger to an empty balcony on the opposite side of the street, its wrought iron railing not much different from the ones on neighboring brownstones to its left and right. “What makes you think it’s that one?” Tori asked.

“Because a very handsome, very sweet police officer pointed it out to me when we were talking that day, and I remember, just as I’m quite sure he remembers me.” Leona straightened the hem of her spring blazer around her waist and then turned to Charles. “If he hadn’t had to keep the crowd from sneaking under the tape, I’m quite certain he’d have taken me to dinner that night.”

“Dinner?” Margaret Louise repeated.

“Yes, dinner. He was quite smitten with me. Everyone standing around us could see it.”

“Now, Twin, I’m thinkin’ them folks probably thought you were that officer’s mama.”

Leona stumbled back a step, then stopped, regrouped, and huffed her way across the street, mumbling something about jealous sisters under her breath.

“Oooh, drama!” Charles clapped a quick beat then leaned closer to Tori as Margaret Louise hightailed it after Leona. “I thought Rose was the one who gave Leona the business.”

“Rose is notorious for keeping Leona’s ego in check, but that doesn’t mean Margaret Louise, Dixie, and Georgina don’t poke at her as well.” She watched the sisters reunite on the sidewalk outside John’s brownstone and felt the smile making its way across her mouth. Life was never dull now that she had Margaret Louise and Leona as friends. “But really, it’s all in fun. The reality is that Rose and Leona care about each other very much. We all do.”

Charles placed his hand on his hip and looked pointedly at Tori’s arm. When she took his hint and allowed him to escort her to the waiting duo, he expressed his pleasure with a slight hop that ceased nearly as quickly as it started. “Uh-oh. It’s a buzzer building, ladies.”

“A buzzer buildin’? What’s that?”

“That means you can only get into the building if you’re buzzed in by one of the tenants,” Charles explained once they reached the brownstone’s front door and the six distinct buttons next to six placards listing the last names of five of the residents. “Hmmm, they’ve already removed his name, see?” He pointed to the top button and the blank strip of white paper beneath the directory’s Plexiglas coating.

Margaret Louise shrugged off Charles’s concern with her usual sunny disposition. “I reckon we can just stand here and wait for someone to come out. Maybe it will be the one we’re lookin’ for.”

“Or maybe we could take a guess on which apartment that neighbor lives in,” Tori suggested, looking down the list and stopping on 2A. “That woman said she lived just below John, so if John was in 3A”—she moved her finger back up to the empty slot—“then it stands to reason that she lived in 2A, yes?”

Margaret Louise jabbed a playful elbow into Charles’s side. “That’s why Victoria is so good at solvin’ things. She’s real smart, ain’t she?”

“It’s basic deduction, Margaret Louise,” Leona mused in boredom. “If I’d known she lived below John, I’d have come to the same conclusion.” Then, without any conversation or planning, Leona reached out and pushed the button for 2A.

“Yes?”

“My name is Leona Elkin, and I’m here to speak with you about the two-timing weasel that lived above you until someone pushed him to his death on Monday afternoon.”

Tori smacked the heel of her hand to her forehead and groaned inwardly. Subtlety was certainly not one of Leona’s strong suits.

“I’ve already given a statement to Officer Pollop. I have nothing else to say.”

The occasional happy yip-yip of a dog, intermingled with bursts of canned laughter in the background, ceased.

“Well, so much for that angle.” Leona turned toward the sidewalk, her stylish pumps making soft clicking sounds as she moved. “So where to now?”

Tori turned back to the buzzer. “No. We can’t give up that easily. Dixie’s freedom could be riding on this woman.” She pressed the button again.

“Yes?”

“My name is Victoria Sinclair. We spoke briefly the afternoon Mr. Dreyer’s body was found. We were standing side by side along the crime scene tape, and you said something that might be able to help a dear friend of mine out of a very bad place.” She took a deep breath, sending up a mental prayer as she did. “Please, I won’t take too much of your time. I promise.”

The woman said nothing, the television program and yipping dog the only indication Tori wasn’t talking to herself.

“Oh my goodness, that’s a corgi I’m hearing, isn’t it?” Charles gushed. “My grandmother had a corgi and she sounded just like that.”

“Who are
you
?” the woman asked.

“I’m Charles—Victoria and Leona’s friend. I work at McCormick’s Books and Café. But if I had my say, I’d be walking corgis all day long in the park. They’re just so very, very precious.”

Margaret Louise’s left eyebrow rose.

“Well . . . I suppose I can give you five minutes or so. But no more.
The Bold and the Beautiful
will be on shortly, and Ruffs and I don’t want to miss it.”

A loud buzzing sound granted them access to the brownstone, and Leona scurried back to the door just in time, a knowing smile creasing the edges of her eyes. “Charles, I’m impressed with your tactics.”