Nancy Clue Mysteries 1 - The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse (11 page)

Cherry blushed some more. Golly, Midge was bold!

"Don't you think Velma's a dish?" Midge wanted to know.

"I don't know if I should say, since we look so much alike," Cherry smiled sheepishly. "She certainly seems like a lovely person."

Cherry found the idea of Midge and Velma as a couple strangely stimulating. "Tell me how you met," she urged.

"Velma." Midge sighed, lit another cigarette, and settled in to tell the story of their romance. "I had been single for a couple of years. Oh, I had a couple of dates here and there, but nothing to write home about. Then one day I was at the library looking up books about hypnosis. I had an idea, well, never mind. It's not important."

"Oh, tell me," Cherry insisted. "Don't leave out a thing."

"I was working on a book about a girl who hypnotizes her parents. I'm a writer." Midge grimaced. "Well, I would be if I could ever finish anything. But that's another story. Anyway, I knocked some books off the stacks, and this really cute girl came over to help me. When I looked up I found myself staring into the greenest eyes I had ever seen. I was completely smitten."

Cherry was transfixed. "A chance encounter-how romantic!" she swooned. "You fell madly in love with each other, and you've lived happily ever after."

Midge laughed. "Not so fast. You've read too many romance novels, Cherry. Our path to love was a little rocky."

"How come?" Cherry asked. "What happened?"

Midge shrugged. "Stuff got in our way. It took us a while, but when we finally did get together, it was well worth the wait." She sighed and rubbed her eyes. "Jeez, I'm tired," she yawned.

"Midge, you look awful. Let's stop at the next diner," Cherry suggested. "A cup of coffee and a snack will invigorate you."

Midge checked her watch and groaned. "There's no time! It's already two a.m. As it is, we're not going to get there until dawn."

"If we have an accident because you're too tired to drive, we won't get there at all. Either stop and get a cup of coffee, or let me drive," Cherry commanded.

Midge pulled off the road and into the parking lot of a small diner. "Let's get it to go," she suggested. While they waited for their order of cheeseburgers and French fries, Midge gulped several cups of coffee. Cherry tried unsuccessfully to contact her aunt.

"Let's go," Midge said, grabbing the sack of food and heading outside. To Cherry's consternation, Midge was halfway through her sandwich by the time they got to the car.

Midge slid behind the wheel and gunned the engine. Cherry hopped inside, spread a handkerchief over her lap and nibbled at her sandwich.

"You're going to get sick," she warned, watching Midge wolf her food as they pulled out of the parking lot and back onto the highway. "You should chew every mouthful thirty times to aid digestion."

"Yes, Nurse Bossy," Midge said, gulping down the last bite of her food.

"I bet you were a real handful as a kid," Cherry teased.

Midge snorted. "Yeah, and I bet you were the real quiet type who always did as you were told," she shot back.

Cherry nodded. "I tried always to obey my elders," she admitted. "I was the kind your type liked to pick on."

"I was a real wiseacre, as my grandmother liked to say, but I was never mean," Midge assured her. "I don't pick on people. Unless it's an ex-girlfriend. Then it's okay."

Cherry laughed. She was really beginning to like Midge, although sometimes she couldn't tell when she was teasing.

"I shouldn't be enjoying myself," Cherry frowned. "Especially not now."

"Everything will be fine," Midge said.

Cherry shook her head. "How can you be so steady at a time like this?" she asked.

Midge just shrugged. "Years of practice," she said vaguely. Cherry waited, but Midge said nothing more. She seemed lost in thought. Cherry wished she knew Midge better. She was dying to know why Midge seemed so upset when Betty told them about the missing nuns. "Is Midge Catholic?" she wondered. Cherry searched for something to say that would bring Midge back to the present.

"You never finished your story," Cherry prompted. "About how you and Velma finally got together."

Midge leaned back in the seat and lit a cigarette. "Where was I? Oh, yeah. One night we made a late date to meet at the library," she said.

Cherry screwed up her nose. "The library doesn't sound very romantic!" she cried.

"Where I'm from it is."

"Where's that?" Cherry asked.

"South," Midge said. "But that's not important."

Cherry was becoming very curious about Midge. Was it her imagination, or was Midge a little vague about her background? She put her questions aside as Midge continued her story.

"So one night Velma and I ended up getting locked in the library. I guess the guard, er, the custodian, didn't see us when she locked up for the night. We, ah, talked all night and by dawn we knew we belonged together."

Cherry raised an eyebrow. "You, ah, talked?" Now it was Midge's turn to blush.

"That's all the detail and description I get from Miss Smart Mouth Midge?" Cherry teased.

"C-h-e-r-r-y! Some things are private!"

Cherry laughed. "You're as big a prude as I am!"

"Wel-l-l... " Midge said.

"I have an idea, Midge. Why don't you write about you and Velma?"

"Maybe someday I will, kid," was all Midge would say, but Cherry could tell she was pleased by the suggestion.

Cherry noticed that, despite the stimulants she had consumed, Midge was looking pretty tired. Midge didn't want to stop driving, but Cherry was firm. As a nurse she knew the importance of being fully alert while operating a motor vehicle.

Midge grudgingly pulled off the road and gave up the wheel to Cherry. As soon as she had settled in the passenger seat, she fell fast asleep. Cherry rolled down the window a bit to clear the smoky car and dumped the ashtray full of butts into a little paper bag from the glove box. She was no litter bug!

She covered Midge with the plaid stadium blanket she always kept in the back seat and got ready for the next few lonely hours. For company she turned on the radio, keeping it low so as not to wake Midge.

Cherry pulled out of the parking lot and expertly steered the blue Buick onto the highway.

She fixed her eyes on the road ahead. Little did she know of the adventure in store for her at the end of this long journey!

The Golden Gate Bridge glowed magnificently in the pink early-morning light. Cherry nudged Midge awake. "We're here!" she squealed.

Midge sighed and covered her face with her hands. "It's too early to get up, Mom," she groaned sleepily. "Are you always so cheerful first thing in the morning?" she grumbled, squinting at Cherry. "Gosh, I feel awful. Where are we?"

"We're exactly two hundred twenty feet above the Pacific Ocean, Midge, on the Golden Gate Bridge," Cherry answered.

Midge looked troubled. "How far up did you say we were?" She gulped as she peered out her window at the blue expanse of ocean below.

"Don't worry, Midge. There's enough steel wire supporting this bridge to circle the earth three times."

"If you ever give up nursing, you can become a tour guide," Midge laughed. She peered out the window at the giant steel structure, painted burnt orange. "So where's the gold?" she asked.

"You ask a lot of questions, young lady," Cherry said sternly, doing her best Nurse Marstad imitation.

Midge shook her head. "I've heard that before. I've always been like that. Drove my mom crazy." She fumbled through her jacket pockets for a cigarette, but found only empty packages. "Great. First Velma disappears. Now I run out of cigarettes. Could things get any worse?" she joked sourly.

Cherry had some news she hoped would cheer up Midge. "Guess what?" she chirped. "I have some exciting news. I heard on the radio that Nancy Clue is believed to be somewhere in San Francisco, and if the authorities can find her, they're going to call on her to solve the case of the missing nuns! Maybe she could help us, too!"

Midge made a face. "You mean that little rich goody-two shoes who's always doing some good deed? The one who works with her famous attorney father, Carson Clue? Who solves every mystery without mussing her hair?"

"Haven't you heard, Midge? Don't you know what happened?" Cherry cried.

Cherry related everything she knew about the murder of Carson Clue. "The Clue's loyal housekeeper Hannah Gruel, who had been like a mother to Nancy since the death of her real mother twenty-one years ago, went berserk a few days ago while making a pie and shot Mr. Clue dead!"

Midge didn't seem too upset by the news. "If I had to clean somebody's house and cook his meals for twenty-one years, I'd kill him, too," she said gruffly.

"But Nancy and her father were very close," Cherry explained, a little put off by Midge's flip remark.

"Well that's too bad, then," Midge said, a softer tone creeping into her voice. "I guess I'm not much for family life, outside of me and Velma," she said. "Besides, even if we could find this Nancy Clue girl, we couldn't possibly afford her. Why, she's a rich society dame."

Cherry shook her head. Obviously, Midge wasn't much of a Nancy Clue fan! "She works for free, out of the goodness of her heart. I'm sure she'll help us, she's just got to!"

But Midge wasn't won over. "We'll just have to see about this girl dick," was all she would say.

Cherry smiled. She just knew that despite the tragedy of her own circumstances, Nancy Clue would help them. Her heart raced at the thought of meeting her beloved heroine.

"How about some breakfast," Cherry suggested. She was secretly hoping that if Midge got some food in her stomach, she'd be more agreeable to the idea of contacting Nancy Clue.

"Okay, but first I need to get to a phone and check in with Betty," Midge said anxiously. "I wonder if she's made any progress on the case? I wish they could put telephones in cars. That would sure save us a lot of time."

"I don't know, Midge. I can't see how it would be safe for people to drive and talk on the telephone at the same time," Cherry said. "Midge must be awfully tired to have such a strange idea," Cherry thought. By this time they were in a part of the city with hills so steep it felt like they were on a carnival ride.

"This area is called Russian Hill. Look, Midge, a cable car! Did you know that by the turn of the century San Francisco had six hundred cable cars traveling over one hundred miles of track?"

Cherry's command of details astonished her passenger. "How on earth did you know that?" Midge asked.

"After I decided to visit my Aunt Gertrude, I wrote to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and got pertinent information," Cherry replied. "In my glove box, I've got a notebook containing all kinds of information, like temperatures, average price of a meal, and things to see. And I know the safest parts of the city, just in case there's an earthquake."

If such an emergency did occur, Cherry was fully prepared, with fresh uniforms and a medical kit securely stowed in her trunk.

"Cherry, you're beginning to remind me of my favorite Girl Scout leader, Miss Mary Metz, a woman who could pull just about anything out of her purse," Midge chuckled.

That was high praise indeed, coming from Midge!

"In another few blocks, we'll be in the Castro area," Cherry said happily. "I stopped at a service station a few hours ago, filled the tank and purchased a map. You slept through the whole thing. Rather, you snored through the whole thing."

"No one's ever complained before," Midge said.

"Have a lot of girls had the opportunity to hear you snore?" Cherry teased.

Midge blushed, and changed the subject. "I think we're in the Castro," she announced. "Hey, look, there's the police station!"

They were lucky enough to find a parking spot right in front. "How convenient!" Cherry cried. "Maybe our luck is changing."

Midge slunk down in her seat and pulled her jacket collar high above her ears. "Cherry, why don't you go in and ask for Officer Jones? I'll stay out here with the car."

Cherry was frankly puzzled by Midge's strange behavior. She was just about to tease Midge about being shy, when she remembered her earlier reluctance to call the police. "There's something she's not telling me," Cherry decided. "I wonder what it is?"