"Oksana around?" I asked.
"No, and she's in trouble. She didn't show up today and she didn't even call."
Twenty-five
"Oksana's very responsible. She doesn't want to lose this job." That's what the dark-haired bartender said and she was probably right, especially if her only alternative was going back to Sergei Russianoff. So were there now two girls missing—or gone poof, to quote Stacy Winters?
I ordered a cranberry juice and club soda to make the girl stick around. Bartenders were great sources in the afternoon when there were few patrons and they had time to chat.
"Who would she have had to call," I asked, "if she was going to be out sick?"
"Mrs. Page."
Rachel Page was in charge of all of the employees at Titans. She hired, fired, and generally made life miserable for the entire staff. As Bernie's sister she was half-owner of the property—he was the face of the hotel, but she wielded considerable influence over him, especially since his wife had died.
"How did Mrs. Mishkin die?"
"Car accident. Her brakes gave out." She leaned in to elaborate. "She went over the edge on Route 293. Ugly."
I doubted there were many pretty fatal car crashes but kept that observation to myself.
"That was about six months ago, before the whole casino thing came about. She would have been so happy. She loved this place. I think she and her parents used to vacation here when she was little. She was the one who ordered that thing." The bartender chucked her chin in the direction of the corpse flower.
"Rachel wanted to cancel it, but Bernie wouldn't let her."
The corpse flower was dangerously close to the top of the enclosure. If it grew another six inches they'd have to remove the top of the enclosure and the strong smell of death would permeate the lobby.
Maybe it was time to talk to a Mishkin. I called Bernie's office. With a grunt of annoyance, his sister informed me that he was in meetings all day. When she realized I wasn't going away, she made the halfhearted suggestion that I call back in two hours—I guessed that Sveta was fully booked. I had the feeling Rachel was lying about Bernie's schedule but there was nothing I could do, so I said I'd wait. I hung up and heard the first few notes to "Für Elise," which told me I had a call coming in on my cell from someone I didn't know.
Caller ID read Shaftsbury Police Department.
"Miss Holliday?"
"Yes?"
"This is Officer Bennett of the Shaftsbury Police Department." I held my breath, waiting for him to tell me that Lucy's rental car had been found in a ditch somewhere. "Did you by any chance have too much to drink last night?"
I hadn't. Okay, maybe a small bottle of red wine from the minibar after the two drinks at the bar, but who was this guy, the party police?
"No. Why?"
"Because the car you reported stolen is currently sitting in the Titans parking lot where you said you last saw it."
I didn't have time to make up a good story—maybe I wasn't as accomplished a liar as I thought I was. "Well, it wasn't there when I called. Maybe some kids took it for a joyride and then returned it."
"Uh-huh." He didn't sound like he believed me, and I wouldn't have believed me either. We went back and forth like that for another five minutes, him chastising me for being too drunk to remember where I parked my own car and wasting the police department's time. And me, finally, meekly agreeing. I ran outside to check.
The white Subaru was the lone vehicle at the farthest end of the lot, near employee parking. That was typical of Lucy. No valet parking for her. She counted steps and took every opportunity to walk, even if she was walking toward copious amounts of high-calorie drinks.
"It makes perfect sense to me," she'd say, sucking down a guavatini. "Like diet groups have food exchanges?"
I peered inside the car and tried all the doors. There was no doubt in my mind that it was Lucy's car. We shared a fondness for chocolate mint Zone bars and Dunkin' Donuts coffee and detritus from both was in evidence. So she got here, but never made it to the front door.
Now I was officially worried and actively rooting for the Vermont ski resort scenario.
Twenty-six
Something in Stacy Winters's demeanor prepared me for a tongue-lashing. Perhaps it was the dismissive little head shake. She joined me in the Titans lobby not long after I left her another message telling her that Lucy's white Subaru had been parked in the Titans lot apparently for days. She eased into the chair opposite me and peeled the top off a well-gummed coffee cup. The look on her face told me how awful it tasted.
"I appreciate your concern for your friend, but we're a small force here and we are working on a murder investigation." She said it the way people say I don't disagree with you, which of course means that they do. She didn't appreciate my concern one bit.
"Yeah, how's that going?" I asked, prepared to match her barb for barb.
"We've narrowed it down to some woman or her husband." Clearly Winters wasn't going to share any information with me.
"The stolen car thing was good. Very clever." She rubbed her forehead but it did little to smooth away the deep furrows. "Show me where the car is." She took a catlike stretch getting up and she looked as tired as I felt. I'd read somewhere that with every day that passes, crimes, particularly murders, get more difficult to solve. Maybe she was feeling the pressure.
When we reached the rental car Winters produced a long metal strip and with one quick move the door popped open.
"Now I know how the bad guys do it."
"This is retro. Bad guys have master keys."
I started to lean over to go through the papers on the passenger seat and she snapped at me, "Don't touch anything."
She realized she'd scared me and held her hands out wide as if to calm me down. "And don't throw up on anything. In the unlikely event that there really is a problem here, those papers may be evidence." For the first time I was afraid that Lucy may have been in real trouble. My chest tightened, then I burst into tears.
"Pull yourself together, you're supposed to be the tough city girl, aren't you?" She almost sounded sympathetic. She called in for a team to check the car for any evidence or fingerprints, and she and I went back into the hotel. My phone rang and I scrambled to get it out, hoping once again that it would be Lucy. It was Caroline Sturgis and I let her go to voice mail.
"I take it that wasn't her." Winters flipped through her notebook. "The Russian bartender may know something about the Crawford brothers. Let's go talk to her," Winters said.
"She's not here. She didn't come in today and didn't call. I didn't want to say it before, but there have been times when Lucy hasn't called . . . when she was chasing a story or had a deadline." Winters seemed more interested now.
"Your friend is a journalist?"
"Yeah, sort of. Reality television, true crime, that sort of thing. Why?"
"Forget it. Do you have a picture of her?"
My eyes started welling up again, but I refused to let them spill over. I took a deep breath. I told her I had a few pictures of Lucy on the computer and I'd send them via e-mail.
"Don't e-mail, fax. My computer is on the blink."
Winters took off and I promised to send pictures of Lucy as soon as I could. That meant getting into Bernie Mishkin's office to use his fax machine whether he was there or not.
Twenty-seven
My plan was to e-mail a picture of Lucy to the Titans office and then have Rachel or Bernie print it out for me and fax it to the police station. It was a good plan as far as it went.
"I told you before, my brother is in meetings all day. He's not even on the premises and I'm certainly not going to let you sit at his computer and go through his e-mails." She gave a brittle laugh as if the very idea was insane.
Rachel Page would not be charmed. Or threatened. Or appealed to. Her better angels had flown off to help more responsive humans. She stood there looking as warm and fuzzy as Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca.
"I totally under
stand," I said, smiling and using my best saleswoman's voice. "I don't want to go through my own e-mails, much less someone else's. You do it. It's an e-mail from me—if I sent it, I already know what's in it, right?" I delivered this piece of logic with a jaunty smile, fully expecting a sheepish "Oh, why not." For a moment I thought she was considering, but it was just a tease.
"Out of the question," she said. Then she threw me a bone. "If you can print out your picture somewhere else I'll let you fax it from here."
Thanks. Chances are, if I could print it out somewhere else I wouldn't need to come back here to fax it. I was running out of ideas. "How about if I just hook my computer up to your printer? That way I wouldn't even accidentally see anything sensitive." Sensitive, my foot, she was probably guarding her brother's porn collection.
"You'd have to disconnect something and I couldn't allow that. I'm sorry."
Rachel Page wasn't sorry at all. She wasn't even giving a good imitation of sorry. She stood there with her arms folded, totally shut down, waiting for me to leave.
The town of Shaftsbury was about three blocks long. I'd driven past its one highway exit on my way to Titans. Shaftsbury was my best shot at an Internet café, otherwise I'd have to drive farther to Storrs and the UConn campus. I took a chance.
Shaftsbury should have been doing better. As close as it was to the casino, they'd probably expected an influx of jobs and tax dollars when the casino opened, but Shaftsbury fell just outside of the county line and there was no public transportation. If you didn't own a car it was impossible to get to the casino from there. And any tax revenues went to the state with just a pittance trickling down to the town. So Shaftsbury got the extra traffic and the guy who owned the gas station might have made a few extra bucks, but other than that, Shaftsbury got the shaft.
One-third of the stores were dotted with For Sale or For Rent signs. A large Goodwill store was there but closed for the day. In the doorway I saw a Big Y shopping cart. A bundle of rags seemed to be moving and I realized it was the homeless guy going through a paper bag filled with recent donations. For a moment I thought of stopping, but what would I have said? Remember that time we saw the dead guy? I moved on, crawling down the street looking for a computer store in a depressed area, with little chance of finding one.
Just a handful of shops were open—a laundry, a liquor store, a coffee shop, and a convenience store. Only the last showed any signs of life so I pulled into a spot right in front and went in.
The store was crammed with magazines, hair accessories, processed snack foods, cigarettes, and lottery tickets. The sales counter was fringed with them—all over the top and sides, making it look like a red and blue grass shack.
"Powerball?" the clerk asked.
I was probably the only person in the state who'd never bought a Powerball ticket, and decided to keep it that way.
"No thanks. I was looking for an Internet café." Even as I said it, it sounded ridiculous in this downtrodden town, as if I'd asked for the Jaguar dealership.
"Nothing like that here. Gotta go to Storrs, where the students are." He checked me out and must have decided I was reasonably trustworthy. "Betty's got a computer though."
"Who's that?"
According to the stack of business cards on the counter, Betty Smallwood was an attorney-at-law and a notary public. And she had an office on top of the convenience store.
"She's in. She might let you use it for a dollar or two." He pointed toward the back of the store, on the left, where a glass door was labeled with black and gold stick-on letters, B. Smallwood, Esq., Notary, Tribal Genealogist.
I climbed the too-shallow stairs up to Smallwood's third-floor office and knocked.
"Come on in."
My first view of her was of her butt, pushed in the air while she was kneeling on the floor watering her plants. She stuck a finger in the potted palm to check its moisture level before giving it any more water.
"Good idea." I said hello and she scrambled to her feet.
"I thought it was Georgie." She laughed. "From downstairs." She brushed her hands on her pants and we shook. Against the far wall were file cabinets of various colors and heights, giving it the appearance of a fake skyline, like something you'd see in an off-Broadway show. Above and on top of the cabinets were Native American memorabilia. There weren't many office machines but she had a small combo printer/scanner/fax machine similar to the one I had at home. Bingo.
I told her why I'd come and without needing a moment to think about it she cleared off a space on her desk for me to set up my laptop. My battery was running low so I needed to plug the computer in and that meant she had to find one of the overworked extension cords in the office and swap something out.
"So, you're a tribal genealogist?" I said, making small talk while she looked for something noncritical to unplug.
"Yeah. I know, everyone expects braids and lots of turquoise jewelry. I only wear it on special occasions, to please my family. Most of the time we just look like everyone else."
She might not have looked like Pocahontas that day, but she certainly didn't look like everyone else. She had thick dark hair that fell in sheets around her face and would have cost seven to eight hundred dollars for Japanese straightening if she hadn't come by it naturally. Her skin was a perfect even caramel color and it made her teeth and the whites of her eyes seem even whiter than they were.
She plugged in my computer and we sat opposite each other at her desk waiting for my computer to power up; I sent her the e-mail attachment with Lucy's photo. As it printed out she said, "So may I ask you what this is about?"
I told her about Lucy and debated whether or not to mention the Crawford brothers. As soon as I did the atmosphere in the room changed.
"Have I said something?"
"You know you did. That's why you're here, isn't it?" She was upset, thinking I'd somehow tricked her.
"I'm here because I needed a fax machine and I didn't think the Laundromat had one." Then I got it. She was the attorney the Crawford brothers had kidnapped.
Twenty-eight
"I've told this story a hundred times. My clients didn't kidnap me. I was never in any danger. My father just overreacted because he couldn't reach me for a day or two." Betty leaned back in her chair, a bemused look on her face.
"It was all a misunderstanding," she said, "but people in this area have long memories. My father in particular." She handed me Lucy's picture and the printed confirmation that the fax had been sent to the police station. Then she sat there for a while with a strange smile on her face, rolling down the sleeves of her soft plaid shirt.
Was that what I was doing? Overreacting because I couldn't reach Lucy?
"Stacy Winters is going to have a laugh when she sees where that fax came from," she said. I didn't get the joke.
Betty Smallwood represented the two surviving Crawford brothers in a number of legal matters, most significantly their dispute with the rival faction of the Quepochas tribe. I told Betty that Lucy was working on a story about Native Americans in Connecticut and gambling. I wanted her on my side so I let her think Winters was the one who'd planted the seed that the Crawford brothers might have had something to do with Lucy's disappearance.
"That woman needs to get out and find some new suspects. Every time anything goes wrong within a fifty-mile radius she wants to blame Billy and Claude. She's even tried to implicate them in Nick Vigoriti's death, which is preposterous."
"People are lining up and taking sides," she said, shaking her head. "It's as if they can smell recognition coming and they've all got their hands out. Waiting to cash in. Bobby, the oldest brother, wasn't like that."
Bobby Crawford might not have been like that, but it was understandable how some people were when individual members from recognized tribes with casinos were pulling down at least $100,000 a year and tribal leaders as much as $1.5 million a year. Just for being a member.
"It's complicated. State recognition is a start, but only federal
recognition opens the door for gaming. And it's based on specific federal criteria," she said. "Membership in a tribe is simply determined by the members of that tribe."
"So if the leader enrolls you as a member, you're a member?"
"No one wants to think it happens like that, but yes, it can. Bobby used to call them the Wantabees and the Ihopesos."
Most people who claimed Native American heritage were only one-eighth or one-sixteenth. Betty herself was only one-quarter Quepochas. The Crawfords were going head-to-head with a faction of the tribe who wanted to admit hundreds of new members to get their numbers up in the hopes of solidifying their case before Congress.
"That's why they got in touch with me. Bobby Crawford was the tribal leader at the time."
"So why snatch you?" I asked. "Wasn't there a lawyer they could simply call?" I waited for her to refute my use of the word snatch, but she didn't.
"I was on my way back to New Haven. I hadn't spent more than four weeks on tribal lands since I'd left for college seven years earlier. I was an apple—red on the outside, white on the inside. Maybe they wanted to make a statement."
She swung around in her chair and pointed to a picture hanging on the wall behind her desk. "That's my father, Daniel Smallwood. He's the only other lawyer in Shaftsbury. He's also the leader of the rival faction."
Then again, maybe that was it.
"At the time I felt no more Quepochas than you probably feel . . ." She looked me up and down. "Scotch-Irish?"
"Close. Italian-Irish."
"Don't get me wrong. There weren't a lot of squaws at Yale, and if a professor wanted to give me extra points for it, I let him. My way of helping to assuage his white Anglo guilt. But I didn't play it up with a lot of fringed leather and beaded jewelry."
I believed her. She wasn't denying her heritage, it was just that she didn't think about it that much. Until the Crawfords came back into her life.
"My father was disappointed when Bobby married someone outside of the tribe. I guess he had hopes Bobby and I would one day bring the tribe together." Betty said this so unemotionally I had a hard time believing her.
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