Free Grand Theft Retro (Style & Error Mystery Series Book 5) by Diane Vallere Page B

I told him. “I was visiting a friend.” Oddly, it felt like it was almost true. “I’ll walk to the sandwich shop at the end of the strip mall. Can you pick me up there?”
    “Yes. I will be there in one minute,” he said.
    True to his word, he pulled the yellow sedan into the parking lot outside of the sandwich shop about sixty seconds later.
    “Thank you, Mohammed,” I said.
    “You may call me Mo,” he said. “Please sit and buckle in your body. I cannot drive until you are secure.”
    It was after eleven. I paid an extra couple of dollars to have Mo keep the meter running while I ordered a hoagie. My favorite sandwich shop, B&S, had opened a second location and I felt it was my duty to support them in their endeavors. Their primary location was a few doors down from Nick’s showroom, which, considering my current plan to distance myself from everybody I knew, seemed a little risky.
    “Do you want me to take you to your address, Miss Kidd?” Mo asked.
    “If I’m going to call you Mo, you need to call me Samantha,” I said. “We’re not going to my house today. I left my car at a—a friend’s house.” I gave him the address to Jennie Mae’s residence.
    When we arrived, he drove his taxi down the long gravel driveway. “That is your car?” he asked. “It is funny looking. What is it?”
    “It’s a Honda del Sol. I bought it in the nineties, but it spent most of the time parked in a lot in New York City.”
    “I have not seen a car like that. It is very shiny. And it is very nice. No.” He paused and appeared to concentrate for a moment. “It is very shiny and very nice. Like my new taxi. Yes.”
    “I thought this taxi looked different. What happened to your old taxi? The one you drove yesterday?”
    “I have worked hard. I now afford new taxi. My old taxi is in graveyard.”
    I stifled a giggle. Mo had been making great effort to use the correct words, and I didn’t want him to think I was laughing at him. “I think you used the wrong word. ‘Graveyard’ is a place where they bury dead people.”
    “Taxi graveyard, that is what the other drivers call it.”
    “Taxi graveyard. That’s a new one,” I said. I suspected the other cab drivers were having fun at Mo’s expense.
    “No, it is a place for old taxis. When a driver can buy new taxi, an old taxi is retired. It is parked into the lot behind the Ribbon High School until it is auctioned off or demolished. That is taxi graveyard. Lots and lots of old yellow taxis. It is sad to see them except that they have done their jobs well. I applaud them.”
    “That’s a nice thought,” I said. I leaned back against the gray fabric interior and relaxed my head against the head rest. “They have done their jobs well. You’re unique, Mohammed. You’ll be successful because people will remember you.”
    “You are also unique, Samantha. I think people will remember you too.”
    I met his smile. “I’m only unique because of the way I dress. If I put on regular clothes like everybody else, I’d blend into the crowd.”
    “But your car would not blend in, so you would still be unique.”
    I barely heard what he said, because another, more important thought had hijacked my attention. He was right. If I dressed like I dressed and drove what I drove, I would be easy to track. But if I didn’t, if I changed my appearance, my vehicle, my residence—drastically—I would blend in. I could come and go and Pritchard Smith wouldn’t be the wiser.
    “Mo, if I wanted to not stand out and be unique and maybe borrow a taxi from the graveyard, do you know who I should talk to to make that happen?”
    Mo beamed at me from the rear view mirror. “I do. My brother owns the taxi graveyard.” His face turned sad. “But if you drive a dead taxi, I can no longer drive you as a client.”
    I smiled. “I think we can work something out.”
    It didn’t take much for me to convince Mo that I would still need a driver from time to time. It took even less