When Hank’s texts came in, I added those names and numbers to my contacts list, but I was a little leery about making phone calls. If I’m meeting someone for the first time, I like to take measure of them face-to-face. That’s especially true if I’m going to be asking for a favor. So I got up, went over to the window, and looked out again.
The snowplows had now worked their magic. Traffic was moving slowly on the street below. The traffic lanes were relatively clear, and the pavement had probably been treated with some kind of deicing material. I checked the map on my iPad. The route from the hotel to the university was fairly straightforward and seemed to feature mostly main thoroughfares. If the street outside the hotel had been cleared, most likely the ones leading to the university had been as well. Since my rental came with all-wheel drive and those top-rated winter tires, I figured I was good to go. Donning my new coat and stuffing my even newer mittens into the pockets, I grabbed my iPad and phone and headed out.
Once in the Explorer, however, I didn’t make it far. At the garage exit, I was stopped cold—and I mean that in every sense of the word. The snowplow might have cleared the traffic lanes out on the street, but it had left a six-foot-tall mound of plowed ice and snow blocking the garage exit. Stymied, I went back up to the lobby to ask when they expected to have the exit cleared.
“There’s a crew coming,” the young woman at the desk explained, glancing at her watch, “but they’re a little backed up right now and probably won’t get here for another hour or so.”
That’s when I remembered Mel’s sage advice about my hiring a driver. “Any taxis or Ubers working today?” I asked. “In fact, since I need to make several stops, I’d probably be better off if I could hire someone to drive me around for most of the day.”
There were two people at the desk—the woman I was speaking to and a somewhat younger guy at the far end of the counter who was handling checkouts. “TW maybe?” the guy suggested helpfully.
The clerk working with me sent her partner a disparaging look along with a small grimace of disapproval.
“Who’s TW?” I asked.
“That’s TW Transportation,” the man supplied. “It’s a one-woman operation. Believe me, it’s nothing fancy, but she’ll get you wherever you need to go, regardless of weather or road conditions. Would you like her number?”
“Since I can’t get my car out of the garage, I guess I’d better have it,” I said.
Frowning, the female clerk typed something into her keyboard and then wrote a number on a slip of paper, which she handed to me. I took a seat in the lobby and dialed away. The call was answered on the second ring.
“TW,” a female voice said.
“My name’s J. P. Beaumont,” I told her. “I’m a guest at the Captain Cook. I need to see several people here in Anchorage today, but a snowplow just buried the garage entrance, and I can’t get my car out. I was wondering if you have a vehicle available.”
“Where all do you need to go?”
“The University of Alaska here in Anchorage for starters,” I told her.
Over breakfast I had looked up the addresses on what I still called the “unaffiliated boys” from Homer High School now living in Anchorage. Both appeared to live out in the hinterlands, one on Mount McKinley View Drive and the other in what looked like a subdivision off Potter Creek Road. The squiggles and curves I’d seen on the map had made me rethink the idea of doing face-to-face interviews, but hopefully TW Transportation had the capability to get through any snowbound streets that might stand in my way.
I read off the addresses.
“Sure,” the woman on the phone said. “No problem. I can get you there and back. How long do you think you’ll be?”
“That’s the thing,” I said, “I’m not really sure. Could I just hire you on an hourly basis so you could hang around and wait until I’m finished?”
“Five hundred bucks with a four-hour minimum, nine-fifty for eight hours, paid in advance, cash or credit card.”
If I had been billing a client, I might have had second thoughts, but seeing as how the only person I might have to answer to was Mel and since getting a driver had been her bright idea in the first place, that sounded like a fair deal.
“How soon can you be here?” I asked.
“Fifteen minutes work for you?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Wait inside,” she said. “I’ll pull up out front.”
“How will I know it’s you?”
“Oh, you’ll know me all right,” she said with a short laugh followed by a surprisingly serious cough. “By the way,” she added once the cough subsided, “if you’ve got sunglasses, you’d better bring them along.”
“Sunglasses?” I echoed, thinking she was pulling my leg. When I’d been packing to leave dreary Bellingham for wintertime Anchorage, the idea of bringing along sunglasses hadn’t occurred to me. And since it was still mostly dark outside, the idea of wearing sunglasses seemed laughable.
“Sun’ll be out later,” the woman warned. “Believe me, if you don’t have sunglasses on you, you’ll wish you did. And be sure to dress warmly. The heater core’s toast. I’ve got the part on order, but it’s coming from someplace in Pennsylvania and taking forever.”
That sounded ominous. The desk clerk had said TW’s services were “nothing fancy,” but it seemed to me that having a functioning heater inside a vehicle for hire in wintertime Anchorage should be mandatory rather than optional. I took her advice to heart, however. Because I’d been on my way out, I was already wearing my boots and had my coat and mittens with me. During my fifteen-minute wait, I went into the gift shop and invested in a knit cap and a scarf along with the suggested pair of sunglasses.
The garage exit might still be an issue, but someone had shoveled the front driveway. I was standing next to the sliding doors at the entrance a few minutes later when a brown-and-yellow seventies-something vintage International Harvester Travelall pulled up outside. A snowplow attachment of some kind, also painted bright yellow, occupied the spot where the front bumper should have been. A blue tarp lashed to a luggage rack on top covered what appeared to be an extensive collection of various-size boxes. Snowplow aside, it was the kind of vehicle I might have expected to encounter either when setting off on a desert safari or else lined up on display at an antique car show.
The woman who hopped down from the driver’s side and came around to greet me was a tall, ruddy-cheeked, salt-and-pepper brunette, probably somewhere in her early sixties. Her burly build would have made her a respectable lineman on any college football team, and I suspected that any overly enthusiastic male who attempted to get out of line with her would end up on the floor and wishing he hadn’t in short order.
She was dressed like a lumberjack, complete with a plaid flannel shirt and a voluminous Carhartt jacket that appeared to be several decades older than my puffy blue parka. My pull-on boots had been brand-new and fresh-out-of-the box that morning. Hers were well-worn metal-toed lace-up work boots, and the only perfume in the air surrounding her was the thick scent of cigarette smoke that permeated her hair and clothing.