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can go.” Simmons edged away. “I didn’t wanna come in the first place.”
    “No, no. We can’t give up yet.” She knocked.
    “What’re you doing?” Simmons hissed, tugging her away from the door.
    “Finding Mr. Hunter.”
    “We should get outta here.” Simmons glanced each way down the alley.
    “Please stay, Hendrick. I need you. You’re the ace mechanic who can fix Mr. Hunter’s motor.”
    “If you say so.” He drew a circle in the dirt with the toe of his shoe.
    “Don’t worry. Remember your dream. Hendrick Simmons, aeroplane mechanic. You’ll have your own shop.”
    “Garage.”
    “Garage. Your name in big letters on the sign over the door. You can go places, Hendrick.”
    “I don’t want my name up in big letters, and I don’t wanna go nowhere else. Them kind of dreams are fine for you, Darcy, but I’m a simple kinda guy. I like Pearlman, and I like my life fine just the way it is.”
    Darcy sighed. Squeezing ambition out of Hendrick Simmons was tougher than getting Cora to stop listening in on telephone conversations. “Pearlman is fine, but maybe yourchildren will want more. You could leave them an inheritance. You could be the Henry Ford of aeroplanes.”
    Simmons rubbed his brow against his shoulder, somehow managing to smear black grease across his forehead in a faint echo of his sparse mustache. “Aw, Darcy, I don’t even have a girl. There’s no sense talking about children.”
    “You’ll find someone.” It might be true, if he ever got up the nerve to ask a girl out. “She’ll appear one day, and you’ll know she’s the one. Who knows, maybe she’ll fly in on an aeroplane. But if a plane’s to come here, there needs to be a mechanic. You could be that mechanic. Imagine, she’d step out of that aeroplane and sweep you off your feet.”
    “Aw, Darcy,” he mumbled, burying his hands in his trouser pockets. “I don’t think…”
    Mrs. Lawrence—though to Darcy’s recollection there’d never been a Mr. Lawrence—threw open the door. Music and laughter emanated from inside, but Vanesia Lawrence’s orange silk gown filled the doorway. Even on tiptoes, Darcy couldn’t see past her.
    “What do you want?” the proprietress said.
    Darcy squared her shoulders. “Mr. Jack Hunter. Is he here?”
    Mrs. Lawrence hesitated long enough that Darcy knew he was. “Now why would he be here, sugar? I don’t even know the man.”
    “I saw him come here this afternoon.”
    Mrs. Lawrence smiled lazily. “You must be mistaken. Now run along home to your papa.”
    Darcy fumed at being treated like a child, but she couldn’t think up a deserving retort.
    “Let’s go,” Simmons whispered. “He’s not here.”
    “Yes he is.” Darcy faced off against Mrs. Lawrence. “I know what I saw, and I know what your business is, so youcan stop pretending. Either you fetch Mr. Hunter now, or I write an editorial about your little establishment.”
    Mrs. Lawrence’s artificial smile curved slightly, the blood red of her lips garish against the orange gown. “A threat, Miss Darcy, needs teeth to be effective. Our newspaper would never print such a piece.”
    Which meant Devlin frequented the place, too. Darcy set her jaw. Vanesia Lawrence might block her now, but Darcy would not give up. “Then I’ll find him myself.” She darted past Mrs. Lawrence, but got only three steps into the dark, smoky hallway when she ran into something very solid and very alive.
    “Back you go, Miss Shea,” said that all-too familiar voice.
    A second later, Jack Hunter deposited her in the alley beside a wide-eyed Simmons, who looked ready to bolt. Mrs. Lawrence calmly closed the door, leaving Darcy alone with both her bait and her quarry.
    “What do you want?” Hunter sounded almost bored.
    “A moment of your time.” Darcy gave him her broadest smile.
    “Couldn’t it wait until morning? This is no place for respectable ladies.”
    “I know that, but—” she began, but he’d already turned on