The Big Dirt Nap db-2

by Rosemary Harris

  He still hadn't moved, and now I was grateful that the clerk was taking so long, double-bagging my purchases for the mad dash to my car. I redid the key arrangement in my pocket and planted my feet in case I had to land a punch and make a run for it.

  Just then, the cavalry arrived. We heard them first. It sounded as if a helicopter was landing outside, then the sputtering died down. The doormat shrieked again and five guys who could have been the defensive line for the Hell's Angels' football team came in. The Michelin Man's face dropped; so did poor Ravi's. I was the only one grinning like a happy idiot.

  One guy camped out in the doorway oblivious to the fact that standing there kept the doormat buzzer going. The other four scoped out the dining options. The biggest walked over to the shelves near the coffee machine. He picked up a cellophane-wrapped Danish and dropped it as if it was radioactive.

  "Hey, man. I can't eat this crap. This stuff'll kill you."

  Ravi looked hurt. "I have the PowerBars," he offered weakly.

  "I know a great diner!" I said, a little too loudly. "I do." I quieted down and tried to sound seductive instead of like a basket case. What the hell, three other guys thought I looked hot that day, even if they didn't have the most discriminating taste. "It's only ten minutes from here," I lied. "My girlfriend owns it. I'll take you." I flirted with the big one closest to my nemesis, who looked a lot less threatening now.

  That was how I got my Harley escort out of the service station, away from the Michelin Man, and all the way to Babe's Paradise Diner.

  Ten

  I was channeling Cher and mumbling the words to "Believe" under my breath. Five beefy guys on four bikes followed me to my car. Whatever it was the Michelin Man had in mind, he was no match for my new best friends, and we left him and Ravi, and whoever was in that second car, scratching their heads in the service station minimarket.

  Charlie seemed to be the big dog. The biggest physically, he had the biggest bike, two-thirds as wide as the Jeep and encrusted with pipes and grilles that did who-the-hell-knew-what but made the bike look like a small spaceship. He stayed on my left, tossing me the occasional smile or thumbs-up, and the others trailed us, playing leapfrog until we got to the diner.

  By the time we'd pulled into the Paradise parking lot, I'd convinced myself that Charlie and his friends had saved me from worse than death, and as they dismounted, I gave them bear hugs and back slaps as if we'd just ridden cross-country together instead of twenty minutes on a tree-lined suburban road.

  "Party of two . . . three . . . six?" Babe asked, as we tumbled into the near-empty diner. Charlie's arm was still around my shoulders. "Any more coming?" She craned her neck to look into the parking lot.

  Wanda "Babe" Chinnery owned the Paradise. Although she is one, I hesitate to call her a retired rocker because she still rocks, she just doesn't do it onstage anymore alongside a metal band and in front of thousands of screaming kids. She waved the guys over to the corner booth in the back and pointed to some menus stacked by the window.

  "How old is that decaf?" I asked, joining her at the counter.

  "Not that old," she said, pouring me a cup. "You know, I'm the last to throw stones, but when I said you should get out more," she whispered, "this wasn't exactly what I had in mind." Babe had been playing matchmaker for me for the last year, with zero results, so she was surprised to see me come to the diner with five guys in tow.

  "So who are your friends, and why are you sitting over here? This isn't some weird initiation rite, is it?"

  "I couldn't decide between them. I brought them all here so you could help me choose." She squinted at the unlikely assortment of suitors. For a minute I think she believed me.

  "I'm joking. They got me out of a sticky situation on the Merritt," I said.

  "Did they?"

  I told her what had happened, or nearly happened, at the gas station.

  "So you thought two guys were following you and decided it was better to have five guys following you? That makes sense."

  Put that way, I wondered if I'd made a huge mistake and whether tomorrow's Bulletin headline would read "Local Business-woman and Customer Found Raped and Murdered."

  I looked back at my escorts. Charlie was well over six feet tall, with one earring, no weird insignia on his leathers. I wasn't up on my bandanna symbolism but his was black and partly covered thick snowy hair. He smiled at us through his close-cropped beard and revealed a puckish gap between his front teeth. Santa, or his evil twin? The others were all permutations of the same guy . . . a little thinner, a little taller, two mustaches, one soul patch. They all wore black leather chaps, like hundreds of helmetless bikers you can find on the Merritt any day of the week, but especially on Sundays, when they all seemed to converge on Norwalk, just south of the service station where I'd met these guys.

  "Safety in numbers?" I wondered aloud. The bikers called Babe over.

  Watching Babe walk, when she's working it, is a thing of beauty. I can only imagine what she was like twenty years ago, shaking her tambourine and just about everything else for the Jimmy Collins Band. They'd traveled all over the United States and Europe and Babe had the stories and the scars to prove it.

  She wore sleeveless tops twelve months out of the year to show off her well-defined arms and sported a collection of tats that would have impressed an NBA player. Her black apron was tied low and tight around her narrow hips, and she employed her no-fail Yeah, I'm sexy, and I know where to kick you if you mess with me walk. It had its usual intended effect. Two were in love, two were in lust, all were in awe. Including me.

  She took their orders and I tried not to stare. Instead I sucked up my coffee and absentmindedly gazed out the window, looking for the two clowns we'd left at the service station and profoundly happy they were nowhere in sight.

  The Paradise was across the road from a typical suburban retail strip—liquor store, karate school, nail salon, Dunkin' Donuts—and somewhat less typically a police substation. A few years back these outposts were common in suburban Connecticut and may have even helped keep the petty crime rate down, but budget cuts and benign neglect had forced many of the substations to close, and the rest, like this one, to be virtually abandoned for most of the day. A faint light shone from behind the blinds, but there were no other signs of life.

  Babe came back and handed the bikers' orders to Pete, the diner's cook. There was always a chance that a cigarette ash might make its way into the food, but that aside, dining at the Paradise had gotten a whole lot better since Pete discovered the Food Network, and the captivating trio of Sara, Rachael, and Giada. Pete routinely threatened to leave this Babe to go chop vegetables for one of those babes, but smart money says he won't.

  "Grilled chicken Caesar, two spinach salads, and two turkey clubs, I think we're okay," Babe whispered to me.

  I'd heard of people being able to predict criminal behavior by computing a person's gender, age, youthful exposure to violence, even head shape, but never by what they ordered in a diner. I wanted to believe she was right but what did she expect them to order—Twinkies with chocolate sauce? But, Babe wasn't finished. She had more anecdotal evidence.

  "And furthermore," she said, "they're riding Harleys. It's the rice-burners you have to watch out for. They ride for speed not comfort. I prefer a man who doesn't go too fast." According to Babe, men on Japanese bikes were nine times out of ten more likely to be thugs than men riding Harleys. I don't know where she got her statistics but since I had zero information on the subject, I believed her.

  My biker friends considered dessert, but decided against it after a lengthy debate on how much further they'd ride that night, and whether or not the sugar overload of one of Pete's four-story desserts would cause them to crash, nutritionally speaking. Despite Babe's confidence in her culinary assessment of my escorts, I wasn't comfortable leaving her alone with them so I stuck around after finishing my coffee.

  "You boys have a good ride?" Babe asked.

  "Coming back fro
m Marcus Dairy. Just went for the day," one of them said.

  Marcus Dairy was actually a working dairy but better known as a hangout for bikers all over the East Coast. One of the guys had had a breakdown and had to leave his bike there for a couple of days. As Charlie and the boys left, they promised to stop in again on their return trip. From the way Charlie was looking at Babe, it was a sure thing.

  "I don't think I've ever been here this late," I said, helping Babe pull the shades down. She opened the register, counted out some cash, and put it in a zippered bank bag. She put a hundred dollars back in the drawer and left it open. "So the robbers don't feel like they've wasted their time and trash the place."

  "Are you ever nervous," I asked, "all by yourself?" I followed Babe out and she yanked the front door shut.

  "I don't scare easy. Besides . . ." She seemed on the verge of telling me something, then pulled back. "It doesn't happen that often. I close when I feel like it, and Neil usually picks me up after work. He's just away for a few weeks. His mother's sick."

  "That's a drag."

  Neil MacLeod was Babe's . . . what? Hookup? Lover? Boyfriend? Can you have a boyfriend after the age of thirty? Whatever she called him, he was handsome, young, Scottish, and visiting home, where his parents owned a small pub and inn in Cardhu, on the Malt Whisky Trail.

  "Is it serious?" I asked.

  "Don't know. But it was time he went back. He hasn't been home for ten years. Listen, if you're planning to meet up with those guys, go for Charlie," she said, putting the receipt tape in her bag. "That gap between the teeth presents possibilities," she added, always looking on the bright side.

  "Please. They served a purpose and are now, conveniently, out of the picture."

  Babe climbed into her car and I climbed into mine. How long had it been since I'd been home? And where was home anyway? New York City, where all my friends were? Brooklyn, where my eighty-five-year-old aunt still lived in the house where she and my father were born? Boca Raton, where my mother inexplicably moved after my father died? Or was it finally Springfield? The small house and big garden that the bank and I owned, but only I lived in?

  In A.D. 93, the Roman poet Horace wrote: This is what I prayed for! A piece of land not so very large, with a garden, and near the house a spring of ever-flowing water, and up above these a bit of woodland. That's exactly what I had. And that's where I was going.

  Eleven

  I hauled myself up the stairs, dumped my things in the living room, and dropped the mail on the kitchen table. Despite the decaf, I was wired. Maybe I shouldn't have cleaned out the mailbox at the foot of the driveway. It was mostly junk anyway—catalogs, campaign literature, and flyers from cleaning services and house painters. I always wondered if they targeted my house. Good grief, that hovel needs a coat of paint.

  My house is the most modest in the neighborhood. Wetlands restrictions and the nearby bird sanctuary saved my little bungalow from spec contractors who'd cock it up with fake dormers and stone facing and then try to flip it to some middle manager who'd sweat the mortgage until he thought he could palm it off on someone else. I told myself the neighbors silently thanked me for maintaining the character of the place, but couldn't be sure since I didn't know any of the neighbors, so I never had the opportunity to ask.

  On my left was a formerly noisy guy who'd either grown up, gotten married, or died; I hadn't seen or heard him all winter. That's the way it was in the suburbs if you had no PTA or country-club connections. You could be almost as anonymous as you were in a big city.

  I trashed the solicitations and the mailings from grinning office seekers with jackets not so casually thrown over their shoulders. Problem was, I couldn't toss the bills. Dirty Business was doing okay, but I was still getting used to the challenge of being flush for half the year and rolling change the other half. I wasn't eating cat food, but it had been a long time since I'd treated myself to a splurge. That was the real reason for my trip to Titans. But that plan had backfired when Lucy didn't show and a dead guy did instead.

  I checked my cell messages again. Nothing from Lucy. I wasn't worried about her, just curious. And maybe a little jealous. I hadn't been in a relationship for over a year, and if anyone had asked I would have said that was okay, I had my hands full running a business. But I hadn't had an adventure for even longer—and I was due.

  There was just one call from Anna, my sometime assistant. I left Lucy another message, then checked my home phone just to make sure she hadn't tried to reach me on that number. Zip.

  It was midnight. Fatigue was setting in; bills were staring me in the face. I thought of opening them, but . . . Screw it, they'd be here tomorrow. The article for the Bulletin would bring in a few bucks, and more important, maybe a client or two. Hector and Bernie were right about that, publicity was key. And first thing in the morning I'd call on Caroline Sturgis, my rich suburban matron.

  I meant to wake up at six and get a run in before driving to Caroline's. Instead, I slept in until after eight when I heard a key in the front door and Anna Jurado sang out my name, "Meez Pohlah!"

  March through October is garden season in my part of Connecticut. For those eight months the newlywed team of Anna and Hugo Jurado worked for Dirty Business. I couldn't afford to pay them the rest of the year, and they generally returned to Mexico anyway, but for those months we were a real company, not just a woman with stationery and business cards who still felt a little like a fake. Hugo was a master in the garden and helped me hire temporary workers when I was lucky enough to need them. Anna made appointments and kept the books.

  I ran my fingers through my hair, pulled on a sweatshirt over my pajamas, and went into the kitchen to greet Anna. She was resplendent in a tomato-red track suit with white jeweled stripes down the sides puckering and threatening to give in to fabric fatigue.

  "¿Qué tal?" I asked, starting to make coffee.

  "I am very well, thank you very much. And how are you today?" Anna and I played this little game practicing our language skills on each other. If we'd been keeping score, she'd have been killing me.

  She and Hugo were married less than a year ago in a ceremony that made the local paper, not because they were members of Springfield's elite, but because they, and I, had been players in the biggest news story to hit the town since the hurricane of 1938.

  I willed the coffeemaker to speed up. My appointment with Caroline was for nine o'clock and I had a twenty-minute drive to the Sturgis home. I didn't want to be late. Anna saw me eyeing the clock and shooed me out of the kitchen.

  "Get dressed. And fix your hair. I will bring you the coffee when it's ready."

  It says something about my current grooming habits when the cleaning lady is giving me beauty tips. I hadn't totally gone to seed. I still worked out religiously—that part hadn't changed since my move from New York—but I had to admit my hair was getting a little shaggy. It was just easier to pull it into a ponytail and put on a baseball hat. And like most gardeners I had perennially grubby hands.

  I took a quick shower and pulled on jeans, a boy's thermal T-shirt, and the hoodie I wore the previous night. Back in the kitchen I twisted my wet hair into a knot and fastened it with a big clip. Then I took a fistful of bangs and distributed them evenly across my forehead.

  "That's a very attractive look," Anna said, handing me a mug. "You look like you are going to deliver newspapers on your bicycle."

  "Gracias."

  It was the kind of crack I expected from a woman in full war paint and rhinestones at breakfast. And Anna wore her plus size regally; where I neurotically counted every calorie that passed my lips, Anna happily indulged in whatever culinary delicacy struck her fancy, with no shameful morning-after guilt, no slavish adherence to slimming black. More to love, she'd say. I was trying hard to adopt her philosophy.

  "Kids don't do that anymore," I said, shaking some cereal into my coffee, "deliver newspapers. Nowadays, they have Internet consulting gigs. I met a ten-year-old last week who had classi
er business cards than I do. Ivory laid stock—looked like Crane's, for crying out loud. She was leaving a stack of them at the Paradise Diner in a little metal holder near the real estate booklets. Eerie." I poured more coffee over my cereal.

  "That's disgusting. You should eat something more substantial than that."

  "I'm multitasking." I spooned the concoction into my mouth. "I had a big breakfast yesterday; I have to be in Greenwich by nine," I said, checking my watch. I took a last spoonful of cereal, grabbed my backpack, and bolted down the stairs. "I'm outta here."

  "Are you going to see Mrs. Sturgis? Make sure you get one-third upfront," she said as I flew out the door. Always looking out for me. "Usted nunca . . ." she started to yell, "you never remember."

  I'd try. But Caroline Sturgis was one of those women who didn't think much about money because apparently she'd always had it. She always paid, but she always paid late. Last year Anna had suggested we start charging her one percent interest; we did, and she still paid late. Bills were minor annoyances to her.

  Caroline lived one town over, where the house numbers were harder to see because the front doors were so far from the road, and the mailman could listen to an entire pop song in between deliveries because the mailboxes were that far apart.

  The Sturgis home had been designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright—poor guy, he was probably ninety years old and still referred to as a student. Caroline's place was magnificent—lots of levels, built-ins, and fireplaces—and all natural materials: stone, wood, and slate.

  The long, wooded driveway led to the side of her house and the deck, which faced a private pond. To the right of the house was a small garden and a shallow reflecting pool. Beyond that were Caroline's tennis court and a large barn renovated to serve as a guesthouse. On the fringes of the property was the town's arboretum.