“Well?” George asked.
“We’re going to the Sears Tower,” Nancy said. “Let’s catch a cab.”
“Couldn’t we take a bus?” Bess asked. “It’s just as fast.”
“No, it isn’t,” Nancy said as the three girls took the elevator down to the lobby. “You’re just afraid to get back in a cab again after what happened the other day.”
“You’re right. I am afraid,” Bess said. She smiled weakly.
The elevator doors opened, and they crossed the lobby to the front door. Outside, Nancy waved down a cab as it pulled up to the entrance.
“Don’t make me go in there,” Bess begged.
George got in the taxi. Nancy followed, but Bess planted herself on the sidewalk.
“Come on,” George said. “Don’t be a chicken.”
Bess stubbornly shook her head.
“C’mon, lady,” growled the cab driver. “I haven’t got all day.”
“You know what they say,” Nancy said. “When you fall off a horse, you have to get right back on.”
“Good idea,” Bess said. “I’ll take a horse and meet you there.”
Nancy got out of the cab, pulled Bess inside, and slammed the door. “The Sears Tower,” she told the driver.
Bess curled up in a ball and kept her hands over her eyes.
“What’s wrong with her?” the driver asked.
“Nothing,” replied George. “But could you keep your speed to around twenty miles per hour?”
The cab crept over the Chicago River and slowly rounded the western edge of the Loop. The girls could clearly see the Sears Tower. One hundred ten stories tall, made of jet black steel, it rose in solitary glory above all the other buildings surrounding it. It looked like a sky-high telescope, broader on the bottom, and getting narrower and narrower near the top.
“Wow!” George breathed. “That’s big!”
“Open your eyes, Bess,” Nancy said. “This is really spectacular.”
“I trust your judgment,” Bess said, still covering her eyes.
The cab pulled up to the entrance. The Sears Tower rose so high they had to crane their necks to see the top. In the lobby, a clerk directed them to the lower level where they saw the camera, barricades, and the frenetic crew. Behind the barricades, two young actresses played out a scene in front of a store window.
Nancy, Bess, and George stepped off the escalator and headed for the barricades. The director approached them. He had a beard, aviator glasses, and a safari jacket.
“Girls!” he cried, opening his arms to hug them all. “Matt told me you’d be coming. I’m so happy you’re all right.”
“We’re fine,” Nancy said, looking past him. “But where’s Dan Redding? Isn’t the star supposed to be on the set?”
“He almost always is,” the director said, “but this is one of the few scenes he isn’t in.”
“Oh,” Nancy said, disappointed. “There was a question I wanted to ask him.”
“Tell you what,” the director said, leading the girls toward three empty director’s chairs. “You make yourselves comfortable, and as soon as Dan gets here, I’ll bring him right over.”
“Where is he?” George asked as they sat down.
“That’s a good question,” the director said. “He actually is supposed to be here by now to prepare for the next sequence we’ll be shooting.”
A young man in a T-shirt and jeans, carrying a clipboard, overheard them and walked over. “Dan just called. He said he’d be a little late—something about preparing for tonight’s ceremony.”
The director rolled his eyes. “That’s all we need. We’re already a half-day behind with this episode. Do you know how much money that’s going to cost us? We can’t afford to lose any more time.”
The young man shrugged and walked away. “What’s the next scene you’re doing?” Nancy asked.
The director said, “It’s one in which Dan jumps off the balcony and lands on the crooks.”
“Don’t you use stuntmen for that?” Nancy asked.
“No way,” the director said. “Dan always does all his stunts. He used to be a stuntman.”
Nancy stared at a button the director had pinned to his jacket. It was oversized, with the words “He’s a one-man police force. . . . he’s . . . ‘Cop’ ” and a picture of Dan Redding’s face. Dan Redding’s steely blue eyes seemed to stare right back at Nancy.
Suddenly it hit her: those eyes. On the button and in the show, Dan’s eyes were blue. But in the lobby, when he’d been wearing his glasses, his eyes were brown—which meant he wore blue contact lenses. Which meant the blue lens she’d found in Sally’s bathroom could have been his!
Nancy thought about how tall Dan Redding was and how broad his shoulders were. Hadn’t George said the cabdriver’s back seemed familiar? Maybe it was familiar from having seen him on TV!
And if Dan Redding used to be a stuntman, he’d be able to jump out of a moving cab without getting hurt.
