This story, written for het-bigbang 2013, is set near the beginning of the Great Depression, when Prohibition had been in place for a while, around 1931; that makes it technically slightly before canon. It's a noir AU. Story contains mild language, some violence, and mild adult situations. Please read responsibly. Thanks to my beta, littlemsmessy, for reading this over for me.
As soon as she slid out of the driver's side seat of her roadster, Nancy Drew raised her hand to keep her smart low-brimmed hat on her head. Spring had definitely arrived, she thought with a smile. The stiff breeze swirled the skirt of her cornflower-blue cotton shirtdress about her legs, and, redoubling her grip on the small paper bag, Nancy crossed the street to her father's office building. It was lunchtime, and many of the day workers who occupied his building and those around it were heading out in their shirtsleeves to enjoy the mild weather as they ate their midday meals. A few blocks down, Nancy could see a line of local residents lined up to receive assistance at the soup kitchen.
Nancy shook her head, then lowered her hand and gave her skirt a little flip as she came in out of the wind. The Drews' housekeeper, Hannah Gruen, had asked Nancy to help with a church donation drive of old clothes and baked goods the next day, and Nancy had already drafted her closest chums, Bess Marvin and George Fayne, to help out as well. Bess had asked if they could volunteer some sort of entertainment, while George was eager to lend a strong arm for shifting boxes and bags. George was sure to stay out of the kitchen and off the stage if she could possibly help it, that was for sure.
As she made her way through the lobby to the bank of elevators, Nancy smiled at the lobby receptionist and the elevator operator. She was eager to find a new mystery to solve, and any visit to her father's office at least increased her chances. Nancy was a pretty girl of eighteen, golden-haired and blue-eyed, who had inherited the logical prowess of her father, a former prosecutor turned criminal defense lawyer who was well-respected in the entire state. Nancy did love puzzling over legal minutiae with her father, but he spent so much time in the courtroom that she didn't think she could ever be a lawyer. She craved a life of action and intrigue, and so far she had been blessed in that regard. She was always coming across tales of stolen inheritances, missing heirlooms, crooks, and frauds, and her father always turned a benevolent eye on such investigations.
Now that she was eighteen, though, in the course of a single month four adults had asked when she would be settling down with a beau and running a household of her own. Nancy had handily run her father's household for the eight years since her mother's death, but they clearly weren't referring to that. To them, the investigations she made and mysteries she solved were just a diversion, and now that she was an adult, she was to put such childish things aside and set her attention on the real work of being an adult woman of her social standing, which meant pairing up with someone equally suitable.
But Nancy hadn't met a man yet who could keep up with her, either mentally or physically. Oh, they had been diverting enough to escort her to country club dances or campfire roasts on the beach when she was vacationing, and sometimes to extract Nancy and her chums from a close shave or two, but actually settling down with any of them seemed like a step down, in Nancy's opinion. Her father had cheerfully told her several times that she was an absolute marvel at keeping his household well-arranged and running like a top while he was in the office, and as far as he was concerned, her application to keep that position forever would be accepted with sighs of relief all around.
But, she often wondered, would her life truly continue this way? She hoped it would, with every fiber of her being. She had proved of some assistance to police before, and maybe she could find a way to keep up her affiliation with them. She could just imagine how her father would take any announcement in that regard, that they would waste her intelligence and enthusiasm at a typewriter doing secretarial work instead of allowing her the free reign he did.
Nancy was startled from her reverie by the sound of a hard object hitting the marble lobby floor. She looked up to see a woman bending over a purse she had obviously just dropped, but when she sniffled, Nancy realized she was upset and bent to help her collect the handful of change and small makeup compact that had fallen a few feet away from her bag. When Nancy picked up the compact, she realized she had mistaken it; it was a fine silver cigarette case, a stylized L in script engraved on its face.
"Here," Nancy said, not unkindly, and rose as the young woman did. She raised her head, and Nancy took a good look at her. She wasn't that much older than Nancy herself, her skin a shade darker than the iced tea Hannah made by the pitcher during the summer, and her drop-waist cotton dress was a few years old, but had been carefully mended and maintained. Nancy smiled at her as the woman took the case and change with her own weaker smile.
"I'm sorry," Nancy said, her blue eyes studying the woman's face. She appeared distraught over something, and Nancy had never been able to walk away from such a sight. "Pardon me, but are you all right?"
The woman sniffled again, then found the handkerchief she had apparently been trying to locate and patted gently under her nose with it. "Thank you," she said, without truly answering Nancy's question, and then set off with such haste, glancing about her, that Nancy was left gazing after her, her brow furrowed. A moment later she was out on the street again. Nancy's immediate impulse was to follow her, but her father's lunch was in the bag and she knew he was waiting for it.
But, she thought to herself, I know that she has a cigarette case with a letter L on it, and that's somewhere to start.
Cheered by the thought, Nancy ascended in the elevator to her father's floor and greeted his receptionist and secretary with a smile. Thanks to the sensitive and highly publicized case Carson Drew's firm was working on, many of the secretaries and legal assistants had been ordering their lunch from the sandwich shop at the corner. Carson, joking that he had been spoiled by Hannah's cooking, had requested one of her homemade meals; he had told Nancy that after the last greasy hamburger sandwich and limp French fries from the corner stand, his stomach had been upset all night, and so Nancy had been more than happy to grant his request with a personal delivery.
"Nancy! And just in time, too." Carson Drew stood from the chair behind his large, impressive desk, pulling on his jacket. Nancy's father was tall, handsome, and very distinguished looking, with his keen blue eyes and salt-and-pepper hair. He was dressed to go to the courthouse, and he accepted the paper bag Nancy handed him with a smile. "I had an unexpected appointment."
"Not the young woman I just saw in the lobby."
"Possibly." Carson frowned. "I wish I had been able to give her better news. Well, thank you, dear, and with any luck I will be home for dinner on time."
Knowing how important her father's case was to him, Nancy let him rush out of his office, but she set her mouth in a moue that her father would have recognized if he had seen it. Nancy sensed a mystery, and when it came to mysteries, she had never backed down.
Nancy had her chance to ask about it that night. Her father was only ten minutes late for dinner, although Hannah Gruen treated his tardiness as a nearly unforgivable offense, reminding both Carson and Nancy that potatoes au gratin were nowhere near as delicious at room temperature.
As soon as she politely could, Nancy put down her knife and fork and looked expectantly at her father. Without even looking at her, he chuckled. "Yes, Nancy?"
"The woman who visited your office at lunch today," Nancy began. "Was there anything—"
At that, Carson's usually open, jovial expression, or at least the one he generally used with his daughter, became a frown. "Nancy," he said, shaking his head. "The answer to your question is no. No, there's nothing you can do for her. Please just leave it at that."
"And please at least try the bouillon," Hannah urged her.
A small frown between her eyebrows, Nancy dipped her spoon into the broth, but her mind was racing. Her father had urged her to use her utmost caution and be very careful before, but he had never outright forbid her from doing anything. She considered her best plan of attack before speaking again.
"So she had some insurmountable problem, Dad?"
Carson glanced up from his perusal of the evening paper, which drove Hannah absolutely crazy, but he was reading the journalist's sensational account of the day's courtroom activities, and had promised he would put it away as soon as he was finished. "Not insurmountable," he said slowly, "but quite difficult, and while I would love to help her, I am afraid that her problem requires a more involved and comprehensive solution than I can readily give right now."
"So it's some matter of law? Maybe a contested inheritance?" Nancy tried to keep the eagerness out of her voice.
Carson gave her a small smile and gave up on reading the newspaper; he folded it and sighed. "A matter of law," he agreed, "but a rather large one. And part of the same reason that I left the prosecutor's office."
Nancy's blue eyes grew round. When her father described those days, Nancy hadn't exactly seen it as the Wild West—her father riding in on a white horse and imposing justice on a band of lawless good-for-nothings—but it had felt almost close. He had seen corruption on both sides of the law: officers willing to take bribes to look the other way, but all too happy to punish those who couldn't pay to defend themselves; prosecutors and defense attorneys who manipulated evidence and testimony to their own ends; honest, innocent people who were hounded or badgered into terrible circumstances. He was able to do more good as a defense attorney, he had told her. He charged what people were able to pay, and his affluent clients who trusted him with minor matters of inheritance and real estate law made up for the working-class men and women who needed his expertise on navigating the corrupt system.
Carson Drew's zeal for good had made him a target a few times before, and Nancy hadn't missed the black-and-white patrol car that had been parked outside her father's office that afternoon. When he was working particularly controversial cases, a few officers who were above the bribes and bullying often kept an eye on him, and sometimes Nancy, just in case.
"But you aren't going to take her case?"
"Let's talk about this after dinner, Nancy." Carson paused. "As long as you understand that I'm only doing this to satisfy your curiosity, not whet it. I've given her the best advice I can, which is to get out of town until I can launch an investigation and see what she's up against."
At that, Nancy bit back a frustrated cry. An investigation. What did he think she had been doing for the past few years?
After their talk, Nancy did give her father a solemn promise that she would leave the investigating to him, but she was very careful in how she worded it. She would leave the investigation to him. But the young woman, whom her father had identified as Addie Carew, definitely looked like she needed a friend.
And Nancy wanted to be that friend.