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Chapter Seven

Nancy knew that hitting the brakes would do her no good at all. She turned the wheel hard to the right, taking the car in the direction it was already going, knowing that the only way to right her skid with three wheels was to use the Mustang's natural momentum.

Car brakes screeched all around her, horns sounded, and pedestrians ran for safety as Nancy's car careened across the intersection. Her maneuvering caused the car to swerve to the right of the telephone pole and jump up onto a broad, empty sidewalk. It hit a garbage can with a loud bang, spun around twice, and came to rest just inches short of three terrified passerby.

As soon as her heart was beating normally again, Nancy hopped out of the vehicle and rushed to see that the three pedestrians were all right. They seemed to be merely shaken up. They were a little angry until they saw that one of the car's wheels had come completely off. The lone wheel now lay on the other side of the wide avenue.

Traffic had come to a complete halt, and a police siren sounded nearby. People were talking excitedly about the accident, and Nancy was just glad to be alive. She knew very well how close she had come to dying ---- or to killing somebody else.

A squad car pulled up, and a young police officer she happened to know got out and came over to her. "What happened, Miss ---- why, Nancy ---- it's you !"

"Hi, Officer Kelly," Nancy said. "One of my wheels came right off the axle. Lucky thing nobody was hurt."

"I'll say," said the officer, scribbling in a notepad. Whipping out his walkie-talkie, he called headquarters, then put in a call for a tow truck.

Nancy bent down to look at her axle. It seemed to have survived the skid pretty much instant. She couldn't see anything wrong with it at first glance.

"You ought to keep that car in better shape, Nancy," Officer Kelly scolded her.

"But I do," Nancy protested. "I mean, I did. Just last month I had it tuned up and inspected."

"Hmmm," the officer said, bending down to examine the axle himself.

Glancing down the street, Nancy saw the tow truck coming. She crossed the avenue and rolled the wheel back across to her car.

"This is so weird," she said as a gangly young guy with long, greasy hair got out of the tow truck and came over to them. The sign of his truck read Bud's Auto Body and Towing.

"Hey, what's up, Kelly ?" He asked.

"Check this out, Skeeter," Officer Kelly said, pointing his flashlight at the axle. "Seems okay to me, but the wheel came right off it."

Skeeter bent down to look, then straightened up and scratched his head. "Hmmm ---- wait a sec," he said, then went over to his truck bed, returning with a screwdriver. Bending over, he pried the hubcap off the loose wheel. "Look here," he said. "Here's the problem. Four out of the five lug nuts are missing, and the fifth must have been loose. No wonder the wheel came off !"

Nancy blinked in astonishment, her mind racing.

"Whoa !" Officer Kelly exclaimed. "It's amazing you got this far," he said. "You sure you've been riding around okay ? I mean, no flat tires or anything ?"

"Nothing," Nancy said, shaking her head.

"Well, lug nuts don't just disappear," Skeeter said definitively. "Somebody took that wheel off, and when they put it back on, they just stuck the hubcap on without putting four of the nuts back." He shook his head disapprovingly. "I'll tell you, some guys just don't care what kind of work they do."

"All right, hook it up and take it in," Kelly said, and Skeeter pulled up the tow truck. "When was the last time anyone took off that wheel, Nancy ?"