Instead she seemed eager. “Great! Do you have his number?”

“Not on me, but I should be seeing him this morning. I can give him your name and have him call the Pearson.”

“That would be terrific. My name’s Hannah Robertson. I don’t have any business cards, but I could write it down for you.” She rummaged in her purse.

“That’s okay. I’ll remember.” As a cop, Mario had been famous for his recall. He still prided himself on that.

“All right, then. I’ll look forward to hearing from Zach Evans.”

They rode in silence for a while. Mario could have asked a bunch more questions, but he’d learned that too many questions could make a passenger suspicious of his motives. So he waited for her to make the next conversational move.

Finally she spoke again. “You know, it’s nice that you have pictures of your family taped on your dash. It makes the cab look homey and cheerful.”

“They’re not exactly my family.” So she’d been studying his pictures. Ordinarily Mario was happy to talk about his matchmaking hobby, but not when he was in the process of trying to hook people up. People got hinky if they thought he was doing that. “Just a bunch of good friends.”

“Well, that’s still nice. Everybody looks so happy in those pictures. You must have a lot of good-natured friends.”

“Life’s too short to have bad-natured ones.” Mario only matched up people who were pleasant. Maybe that was why he had such an astounding success ratio, ninety percent.

“Is Zach Evans in one of those pictures?”

“No, I don’t happen to have a picture of him yet.” But if everything works out the way I’m hoping, I will soon.

IRIS DIDN’T USUALLY GIVE Zach a hard sell, so he wondered why she was suddenly pushing the pastelitos and urging him to buy a second cup of espresso. He hoped she didn’t have money troubles. A woman as fiercely independent as Iris would die before admitting that she had problems in that area, but she might increase the sales pressure to generate better cash flow.