The Big Dirt Nap (19 page)
Authors: Rosemary Harris
It made sense. Sergei and Jackie were both looking to hit the jackpot, and they had something in common: ice.
“The waitress at the coffee shop told me that as a single mom Jackie frequently held two or three jobs just to keep a roof over their heads. She even worked as a maid. Shaftsbury’s a small town in a small county—how many cleaning services can there be around here? Jackie probably met Sergei at work. The skating rink must have seemed like a way to get back to the life she thought she’d have when she was a kid.” I downed my drink.
“Until the cannoli broke down,” Lucy said, she was more than a little tipsy.
“
Zamboni
. No more drinks for you. When that didn’t work out Jackie jettisoned Sergei and aimed higher,” I said. “What if Jackie tried to involve her son-in-law in some scheme and he said no?”
“The guy who died in the fire?”
I nodded. “Bobby Crawford. He and Nick were friends. Maybe Nick found out about the scam and that’s what he was going to tell you the night he got killed. Maybe Bobby’s death wasn’t an accident.”
“So what do we do now?”
“We call the cops, like normal people. But only when we get the hell out of this hotel,” I said. “I don’t know who to trust anymore except for you.” I looked around as suspiciously as Oksana had that night in the casino.
Back on the Merritt, we stopped for diet Red Bulls. They didn’t really go with martinis, but Lucy had had three drinks and I’d had one, and I wanted to stay awake and not drive us into a ditch. At the service station’s minimart, I’d call Winters and tell her what we’d learned.
Lucy entered the market and I was just about to dial Stacy’s number when I saw what looked like my own Jeep, blue tarp flapping in the wind, speeding in the opposite direction. I tried to flag it down. It didn’t take me long to figure out what was happening. So I ran into the market to tell Lucy.
“I never called Babe; I think I saw her driving back to Titans.”
The clerk’s eyes were wide and his mouth hung open. Two agitated women in Goth makeup were loading up on highly caffeinated drinks and appeared to be on the lam. Were we dangerous? Were we the ghosts of Thelma and Louise ready to knock over his Plexiglas cubicle? I tried to reassure him.
“It’s okay, Ravi. We just need a couple of drinks,” I said.
“How do you know my name?” he shrieked. “Take whatever you want!”
“Chill. Your name’s on your shirt.” I peeled off a few dollars, then hurried Lucy out of the store, but not before sticking my head back in and telling the frightened clerk to have a nice day.
“What did Stacy say?” Lucy asked, straightening up and popping open a can.
Damn. I still hadn’t called. I tried her number but it was busy. Then I speed-dialed Babe’s other number from the phone she’d given me.
“Where the hell are you?” she said.
“On the Merritt. Did you just pass the Mobil station?”
She had. I told her to turn around and meet us back there.
“All right, but it may take a while, the next exit isn’t for miles.”
We still hadn’t called Winters so I told her we’d wait. And we would have if a blue Isuzu hadn’t pulled into the service station’s lot inches away from Lucy’s rental car, effectively blocking the driver’s-side door.
Jackie Connelly wasn’t as afraid to use the gun as I’d been to use the Taser. Of course, she’d had more practice. She forced us into the wooded area past the place where families on long car trips stopped to picnic or walk their dogs. But not at this hour of the night.
“I wouldn’t let Nick screw this up,” she said, “and I’m certainly not going to let you two. Keep walking.”
Between the martinis and the uneven surface, Lucy stumbled and I held on to her to keep her on her feet. Every once in a while, Jackie prodded me in the back to make me speed up. I tried blaming the shoes again, but she was smarter than Marat and made me kick them off.
“I’ve been waiting a long time for a break like this. I wasted five years with Sergei. Helping him start those two-bit companies. I wasn’t going to waste another five waiting for him to fix his Zamboni.”
Jackie thought she’d gotten her break when Chantel married Bobby Crawford. She went to him with a plan to wring money out of the casino backers. They’d be playing to the investors’ greed. People like that deserved what they got, she’d said. And chances are the casinos would never even be built. But Bobby didn’t go for it. Neither did Bernie Mishkin.
“All my life I’ve been surrounded by underachieving men,” Jackie said. “That’s why I finally went to Rachel.”
I knew the more she told us, the more she’d feel she had to kill us, but she just kept talking. I fingered the phone in my pocket, wondering if I could hit redial or 911 so at least someone could hear our last words, but the phone was Babe’s and had an unfamiliar keypad.
“What are you doing?” she asked, poking me in the back again.
“It’s my rosary.”
“Bullshit. It’s a phone. Hand it over.”
“My phone’s in my handbag. You can have it.” I took my time and walked toward her barefoot, sidestepping the petrified dog poop. I fumbled in my bag for the Taser, found it, and slid back the safety cover.
“That’s close enough. Don’t forget I’ve got your drunken friend here.” She pointed the gun directly at Lucy.
In the dark, the way I held it, the leopard-print Taser even looked like a phone. I pretended to hand it to her but pressed it to her arm instead. She dropped in an instant.
I grabbed Lucy and we ran back to the car. Then we heard the sirens. In the Jeep, Babe jumped the curb and screeched to a halt right near us, having seen some of the action in the headlights. A state trooper’s car followed because Babe had hopped a divider to get to us faster. And Ravi hadn’t been fooled by my
have a nice day
; he’d called the cops like any normal person would.
_________
Jackie Connelly was
in the back of the trooper’s car and the weapon she’d pulled on Lucy and me had been retrieved by the time Stacy Winters arrived. Rachel Page had broken down and confessed to fraud but vehemently denied any involvement in Nick’s murder.
“She couldn’t watch baby brother go to jail for something she’d done. She gave us plenty on Jackie though. And Sergei. Although the elusive Mr. Russianoff seems to have disappeared. No one’s seen him for the last four days.”
“And the Smallwoods and the Crawfords?” I asked.
“In the clear,” she said. “Jackie orchestrated this beautifully. Manipulating Sergei, getting him and Rachel to do her dirty work, and throwing suspicion on anyone who got in her way.”
“As long as you’ve got her in custody, you might want to ask her about the fire at Bobby Crawford’s,” I said.
Stacy was impressed. “All right, maybe you’re not the pain in the ass I thought you were.”
Once I found my shoes, I’d take the Jeep and Babe would drive Lucy’s rental car back to Springfield. I poked around in the dog run.
“Come here,” Babe said, calling me over to the side of the car, “I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Only if it’s good news or funny,” I said. “I’ve about had all the excitement I can handle for one night.”
“You know Caroline Sturgis has been trying to reach you. She’s got an idea she wants to talk to you about.”
“I’ve got an idea too,” I said. “I know a great diner about twenty minutes from here, and I’m pretty sure it’s still open.”
The gun found on
Jackie Connelly
was identified as the same gun used to kill
Nick Vigoriti
. She is awaiting trial for his murder.
Rachel Page
confessed to falsifying documents related to the sale of the Titans Hotel to the Quepochas tribe for the purposes of defrauding foreign investors. The state is currently determining what charges will be brought against her.
Bernie Mishkin
was cleared of all charges, but his Chinese investor was scared off and pulled his money off the table. In Fran’s honor he kept the corpse flower.
Amanda Bornhurst
was hired part-time as an event planner for the hotel, and has since run three successful parties, contributing to Titans’s first profitable quarter since 1986.
Hector Ruiz
was promoted to director of publicity and marketing, chiefly on the strength of his assertion that he could get Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony to agree to appear at the hotel. They have yet to perform but the attendant publicity has raised the profile of the hotel and increased business by 12 percent.
Sam Dillon
used some of the twenty dollars I gave him to buy a handful of lottery tickets. He won one of the state’s single biggest Powerball payouts and is planning to reopen the shoe factory and rehire some of the old workers. He’s been sober for fourteen months.
I got a postcard from
Oksana Smolova
and
Billy Crawford
from the Four Corners area. They have opened a motel and have no plans to come back to Connecticut.
Sergei Russianoff’s
decomposing body was found six months later in an abandoned skating rink in Simsbury, Connecticut. Jackie Connelly claims she knows nothing about it but she is considered a prime suspect.
Lucy Cavanaugh
and
Claude Crawford
are working on a screenplay covering the events at the Titans Hotel. They have interest from a VP at Paramount providing
Chantel Crawford
agrees to let baby
Sean
appear in the film. She’s agreed.
Betty Smallwood
brokered the deal.
The
Springfield Bulletin
ran the feature on the Hawley family quilt. I never volunteered to write another article for the paper, for which
Jon Chappell
is very grateful.
Grant Sturgis
was not cheating on his wife. The white Maltese named
April
really was the pet of a colleague who had to join Grant on a last-minute business trip. The colleague’s name was Bob and he occasionally wears a red wig and women’s clothing.
Caroline Sturgis
is still looking for her big idea and it comes in book three of the Dirty Business mystery series.
This is a work of fiction. There really is a state of Connecticut, a University of Connecticut, a Merritt Parkway, and a corpse flower. The corpse flower, by the way, is a magnificent plant, and if there’s one blooming anywhere near you, you should check it out. Most everything else just exists between my two ears; any similarity to actual people, places, laws, tribes, etc., is purely accidental.