The Big Dirt Nap db-2

by Rosemary Harris

  Lucy had drifted; she wasn't really listening to Amanda and at that point neither was I.

  "What's up?" I asked.

  "I got it," Lucy said. "We shoot this for the piece on the murder. Listen, we were going to be here today anyway. Why don't we stay another night? I'll get a cameraman up here to shoot the party and I'll treat you to something from Fendi on the way home. Deal?"

  If the sign of an enlightened mind is the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time, at that moment Lucy was enlightened. She hated herself for exploiting Nick's murder, but couldn't resist the attraction of a good story.

  "We might be on television?" Amanda said. She grew red with excitement. "Are you serious? Omigod, I have to call people. Everyone will come."

  "Don't get too excited. It might not even make the final edit; I really want the plant." Lucy took out her business card and gave it to Amanda. "Can you give me some notice before this baby blooms?" Amanda was apoplectic with joy and nodded so furiously I thought she was going to do herself an injury.

  At the front desk we told them we were extending for another day, and asked the bellman to bring our bags back to the room we'd just checked out of. Then we headed out for the county courthouse, where Claude was being held.

  Driving back through Shaftsbury, we passed Georgie's convenience store. The Powerball jackpot was up to one hundred and eight million dollars; a few cars with New York and Massachusetts plates were parked outside, the owners loading up on tickets. The shades were down in Betty Smallwood's third-floor office.

  In the absence of a metal detector, the desk sergeant at the courthouse simply asked if we had any guns, knives, pepper sprays, or sharp objects and he believed us when we said no. The prisoner was only allowed one visitor at a time, so I stayed outside in the waiting room while Lucy met with Claude.

  I'd already seen the paper and the only other reading material was a two-year-old copy of US magazine; I was embarrassed that I knew the happy celebrity couple on the cover had, to use the magazine's terminology, already gone splitsville.

  I walked around the small building reading the wanted notices: deadbeat dads and runaways mostly, a few foreclosure auctions, and the freshly minted poster of Billy Crawford, fugitive.

  Behind me, someone else was subjected to the same gentle line of questioning as Lucy and I had been. Who are you here to see? What are you bringing?

  "What about you, little guy? Are you smuggling anything in in that diaper?" The cop chuckled and playfully patted the baby's bottom. Then Chantel and Sean Crawford sat down on the bench next to me.

  Thirty-nine

  Chantel's face was clear, unlined, and unmade-up except for a thin blue stripe of eyeliner, which made her small eyes look even smaller. She wore skinny jeans tucked into fake Timberland boots and a fringed jacket that I'd seen for sale at my local Wal-Mart months ago while I'd been buying seeds. Her long curly perm was growing out and had reached the stage I remembered thinking of as "Tut head." That aside, she was pretty. And the kid was adorable—wide face, dark eyes, and straight dark hair, the kind of face you'd see in a baby food commercial.

  I didn't know how many other prisoners there were in the county courthouse that day, but I thought I knew who she was there to see.

  "Sweet little boy," I said.

  "Thanks." After an awkward minute or two she asked me if I was there to see Claude.

  "Yes and no. My friend is in with him. She's a journalist," I added, instantly feeling elitist for saying journalist and not reporter, even though strictly speaking Lucy was neither. "They're friends, sort of."

  She nodded. "Claude's got a lot of women friends," she said, rolling her eyes. "He's my brother-in-law. Was, I guess. Is he still my brother-in-law if my husband is dead?"

  Damned if I knew. Did it matter? She bounced the baby on her knee, alternately staring at the kid and then off into space. Even though I knew, I asked her name.

  "Chantel."

  "Pretty name."

  "My mother was reading a romance novel when she was pregnant with me—one of the characters was named Chantel." She'd obviously told the story a hundred times before and delivered it with an equal measure of embarrassment and pride until she knew how the story would be received. I smiled.

  "She doesn't even remember the name of the book. I guess I should be glad she wasn't reading Harry Potter. I coulda been called Frodo or something." So Mom was the reader in the family, not her.

  "And who's this strapping fellow?" I asked, tugging on a tiny denim sleeve.

  "This is my little Sean-ny."

  His real name was Sean, after her favorite actor, Sean Penn. But Chantel thought Seanny sounded Indian, even though we were in the wrong part of the country for Shawnee. Chantel's husband, Bobby Crawford, had been killed in a house fire just before Seanny was born.

  "They said he was drinking but I don't know. He promised he wouldn't . . . after we found out about Seanny. I think he just fell asleep with a cigarette, that's all. He was gonna try to stop that, too.

  "Everything burned up in the fire. My mom let us move in for a while, got Seanny new baby things. She even got a lawyer to look into Bobby's insurance. I didn't care but she looked after us. She was thinking about Seanny. She said we had to make sure everyone knew Sean was Bobby's little boy. You know how some people talk when there's money involved."

  "I think I may have seen your mother at Titans. Is her name Jackie?"

  "That's her. She's real young. People sometimes take us for sisters." I was working on the math when Chantel told me her mother had only been sixteen years old when she gave birth.

  "Mom was away from home, at a competition. My biological father was an athlete from another school. She never even told him. I mean what for? Was he supposed to drop out of high school and come marry some girl who lived two thousand miles away?"

  It sounded like the mantra that Jackie Connelly must have repeated to herself and her little girl when they were both growing up.

  "Anyway," Chantel said, "she had a good weekend. She just missed one double axel, otherwise she would have medaled."

  Lucy finally came out and the sheriff's assistant ushered Chantel and baby Sean into the visitor's room.

  "Was that . . . ?" Lucy asked, turning around to check Chantel out. "God, she looks so young."

  "She is," I said. "How's Claude doing?"

  Claude Crawford was doing well, considering he'd lost two brothers in six months. "He's got a warrior's attitude," Lucy said. If she was no longer in love, she was still infatuated. We walked out to the car and sat in silence for a few minutes. I gave her some time. She drove zombielike through the town until I made her pull over.

  "I'm not getting on the highway with you like this, even for one exit," I said. "Let me drive and you tell me what happened in there."

  There were no tissues in the rental car, just a stack of rough, coffee-stained Dunkin' Donuts napkins; they would have to do for the tears I knew were coming. She blotted her eyes to push the tears back, and then held up her bangs briefly, keeping the napkins there as if her head were about to explode.

  "They wouldn't have even been at the hotel except for me. Neither would Nick. Nick might be alive if it wasn't for this stupid story. And who cares anyway if there's another casino in Connecticut? If people want to gamble they'll figure out a way to do it. Remember the Te-Adoros in Brooklyn?"

  The waterworks started again and I flattened out more of the crumpled napkins for her to use.

  I did remember the Te-Adoros. They were cheap cigars. Like Coca-Cola, the company gave large red and white signs to anyone who promised to carry their product. Seemingly overnight, dozens of independent stores with the same Te-Adoro signs opened up in Brooklyn and in addition to selling cigars, newspapers, and cigarettes, they did a nice business with illegal video poker machines discreetly tucked away behind the cases of soda and bottled water.

  "It's all my fault," she sobbed.

  "It's not." I didn't add that she, too, c
ould have been killed by whatever lunatic had shot Nick, but presumably she knew that. At least in her more lucid moments. She took a deep breath. "Billy didn't kill Nick."

  "And you know this because his brother told you? What possible motivation could he have for lying?"

  "He's not lying. Billy and some homeless guy saw it happen. Now that Billy's disappeared they'll say he did it. And the real killer will come after Claude because he thinks Claude knows."

  "Does he know who the killer is?"

  Lucy shook her head. Trying to keep his brother safe, Billy hadn't told him who he'd seen put a hole in Nick Vigoriti's head. I had my doubts as to whether Billy's strategy would work. Whoever killed Nick would want to make sure neither of the Crawford brothers talked, and you can't talk if you're dead. He'd also want to make sure Lucy didn't talk. And me. I opened the passenger-side door and walked around to the driver's side.

  "Well, somebody knows. Slide over," I said. She looked at me through puffy, veiny eyes.

  "Who?" she asked.

  "Let's go find that homeless guy."

  Forty

  "We're going to Georgie's."

  "It's starting to freak me out that you know everyone in this town after less than a week," Lucy said, checking herself out in the mirror and fixing her hair.

  "I don't know everyone," I said. "It's a small town. People tell you their names and you remember them; it's not as if there are eight million of them."

  I hadn't really expected the homeless guy to still be standing where I'd seen him yesterday, but Georgie's was as good a place to start looking as any.

  "You mean Sam?" Georgie asked. Were there many homeless guys pushing Big Y shopping carts with American flags on them in this town? I said yes.

  "That was a wonderful thing you did for him. I been telling everybody how you gave Sam a whole new start."

  I don't usually give money to people on the street. In New York, conventional wisdom says they'd only go straight to the liquor store with it and buy another bottle; here, it seemed different. But twenty bucks hardly qualified as a whole new start. "It was only a few dollars. Have you seen him?"

  "Not since yesterday." He clammed up as if he thought I might be looking for change from the twenty.

  "He might be in trouble," Lucy said.

  "Scout's honor, I haven't seen him," Georgie said. "I kidded him, maybe he was going to Florida with all that dough."

  And who would have blamed him if he did leave town. Especially if Sam suspected what we did: that Billy Crawford was being set up and hunted for what he'd seen that night, and thought he might be next.

  I scribbled a note on the back of a business card and left it with Georgie. "If you see him, please ask him to call me. We're only trying to help.

  "Is Betty Smallwood around?" I asked.

  Georgie shook his head.

  Betty had been running around trying to raise Claude's bail. He looked from me to Lucy and back again. "Were you the girl in here with Claude the other night?" he asked.

  "That was me," Lucy said.

  "Yeah, that Claude always had an eye for the ladies. You be careful now."

  We left Georgie's and headed back to Titans, to see if anyone there had seen Sam/Big Y, the homeless guy who now had a real name.

  Taylor, the clerk in the oversize jacket who was on duty the night I first arrived, was at the front desk. He was grinning and pleased with himself that he remembered my name.

  "Hello, Ms. Cavanaugh. Welcome back to Titans."

  Lucy answered him and the kid looked confused. Then she did.

  "Never mind," I told her, "it's too complicated."

  I asked if he'd seen Hector and he told me Hector and Rachel had been in the bar when he came on duty.

  "I don't know if they're still there. I only noticed because I like to keep an eye on Amanda when she's in the hotel." So he was the boyfriend.

  I was in no hurry to see Rachel Page again and knew she wouldn't be helpful if we did see her. "Taylor, will you do us a favor?" He looked nervous, but Lucy picked up her cue and turned on the charm. "Will you call Mrs. Page's number and see if she's in her office? We don't want to disturb her if she's discussing important business with Hector." I felt sorry for deceiving the guy, but what harm would it do? He thought about it for a minute, then Lucy flashed her baby blues at him and he couldn't pick up the phone fast enough. Sometimes I hated her.

  He put the phone on speaker and dialed. "Mrs. Page? Oh, there you are."

  "You just called me, you halfwit. Who did you think would be here? What is it?" she asked. Taylor paused; he hadn't thought that far ahead and since the phone was on speaker we couldn't help him out. "Young man, are you trying to get fired?" She slammed the phone down.

  Once we knew Hector wasn't with Rachel, we went into the lounge looking for him. He was at the far end of the bar, nursing what looked like an iced tea.

  "You ladies just can't get enough of this place, can you? Or is it me?"

  "Hey, Hector." We slid onto bar stools on either side of him.

  "I like this. A Hector sandwich."

  "Dream on. Do you remember the homeless guy who was behind the hotel, near the Dumpster, the night Nick was killed?"

  "Why?"

  "C'mon. It's a simple question," I said, trying to sound tougher than I felt.

  "Y. Big Y. We call him that because of the shopping cart."

  Clever.

  "I haven't seen him since that night. Some of Nick's friends were asking, too. They think he rolled the body before he reported finding it. Seems Nick had an expensive watch or something." Hector took a sip of his drink and I revised my first guess about what was in the glass. "Don't look at me like that, mamí, I'm off duty."

  Having seen Sam recently—and not looking flush—I didn't buy it, but I said nothing to Hector.

  "Is there anything else I can do for you ladies? Private tour of the grounds? The hot tub?" He knew the answer was no, so he finished his drink and left us sitting at the bar.

  Lucy looked at me. "Now what?" she said.

  I wasn't sure. I only knew two other places in town, the trailer park and the Crawfords' cabin on the mountain.

  "You can forget about that cabin," Lucy said. "I've spent enough time there, thank you very much."

  The bartender came over to see if we needed anything. I felt like a drink but didn't order one so we sat there with club sodas, as I had a few nights earlier when Nick Vigoriti was alive and Billy Crawford wasn't on the run. The bartender came back with a bowl of Goldfish.

  "Did I hear you guys are looking for old Sam?" she whispered.

  Forty-one

  When you walk confidently and with purpose, people generally think you know where you're going and that you have every right to be there. So even though neither was true, that's how we strode through the first set of doors labeled Authorized Persons Only. Eventually we wound up in the same corridor that I'd been in with Hector and the cops when they brought me to identify Nick's body. Past two or three unmarked doors and a laundry room, where one of the busboys was folding tablecloths.

  "Kitchen?" I asked.

  "Around the corner."

  By that time we could smell it. The kitchen was immaculate. Two men were busy chopping vegetables on gleaming stainless-steel surfaces when Lucy and I breezed through the Employees Only door, announcing to whoever might have cared that Helayne the bartender had said it was okay for us to enter.

  My only experience with the kitchen at Titans had been a decent club sandwich, but the head chef and his staff looked like they knew what they were doing, at least to a woman whose idea of cooking was nuking a can of soup.

  "Helayne doesn't run my kitchen. You two don't even have hairnets on. What the hell was she thinking?"

  "We're not health inspectors and we don't want to get in your way, we just want to know if you've seen Sam," I said, talking fast before he had the time to kick us out.

  At the mention of Sam's name, he softened, and walked us over to th
e sinks, where our long hair wouldn't get in any of the food. "Sam hasn't been here since the night of the murder and I'm worried sick. He was hunkered down, waiting by my van, the night Nick died. He looked terrible. I had two containers of food with me that I was taking to my mother. I gave them to Sam instead to tide him over until the police had cleared out. If I'd known he was going to be in the parking lot I would have brought more."

  "Did Sam ever mention a hiding place, or someplace he went when it was too cold to stay outside?"

  The chef shook his head. "He might have gone to Billy's cabin—if the police weren't looking for Billy." He was genuinely concerned. As the bartender had been.

  "Sam must be a pretty nice guy for all of you to have tried so hard to help him."

  "Years ago every kid in this town that wanted a summer job went to Sam," the chef said, smiling. "Sam would ask for a résumé and give them a formal interview and then always announce that they'd gotten the job. That's how we met. He was the foreman at a shoe factory, but it closed down eight or nine years ago."

  That's when I knew what our next move was.

  ___________

  "You expect me to go to a deserted factory with you?" Lucy asked, out in the parking lot. She plucked a bite-size dinner muffin out of a doggie bag the chef had given her, and popped it into her mouth. "Are you nuts?"

  "You went to a deserted cabin with a man you barely knew."

  "That was different. Besides, I wouldn't have gone if I'd known there was a killer on the loose."

  "I'm strapped." It was an expression I'd heard in a movie.

  "I'm sorry, what did you just say?" Lucy said, wincing, and poking through the bag for more food.

  "I have a weapon."

  "I know what it means, I took you to that screening. When did you turn into Sarah freaking Connor?"