The Big Dirt Nap (8 page)

Fourteen

“Believe me, there’s nothing on that computer except old contracts and my iTunes library. If someone broke in here for that, they’d better like Bruce Springsteen.”

That was the mantra I’d repeated five or six times in slightly differing versions until Mike O’Malley shepherded his two young fledglings out of my house and down to Springfield’s police headquarters to file their reports.

The task of putting my house back together was daunting, but like most unpleasant jobs, you just had to start and with any luck the process would take over. The entrance was easy—replace the rug and pad, pick up the overturned pots, sweep up the Spanish moss and pebble soil covers that had spilled onto the rough slate tiles. The young cop was right; it was a mess, but there was no permanent damage. It was just an illustration of something O’Malley had told me over a year ago: Springfield has everything the big city has. Including thieves.

Two hours into my cleanup Mike O’Malley returned bearing gifts—a two-liter bottle of Fresca and a pepperoni pizza.

“Looks better already,” he said, checking my progress. “Take a break.” In my office, he moved stacks of papers to put the pie down on a low wicker chest I normally used as a file cabinet. I went to the kitchen for glasses, plates, and napkins.

There was only one chair in the office and neither of us took it, opting to sit on the floor instead. With some difficulty, O’Malley sat cross-legged on the rug, then popped open the cardboard box and tore off a slice of pizza.

“Good food takes time,” he said, motioning for me to join him. I did, and he launched into his theory. The same one he’d been hammering away at before he left.

“You’re like a tick, once you get your teeth into something, you don’t let go, do you? I repeat, there’s no information on my computer that is of any value to anyone. It was of dubious value when it was current. Now it’s just a bunch of old files I’ve been too busy to delete and the music, which I haven’t had time to transfer to my laptop,” I said. I held my slice point down to let the excess oil drip onto the waxed paper in the pizza box.

“Maybe some documentary you worked on?” he pressed.

“Please. I was hardly an investigative reporter.” I’d been vague about my former job. Not that there was anything to hide, but when people hear television, they automatically have you immersed in some political intrigue or hobnobbing with George Clooney when in reality most media jobs are just as mundane as any others. “Let me think. There
was
that time I let myself be embedded at a designer knockoff shop. That might be it.”

“Paula, professional thieves don’t steal clunky machines. They take small high-ticket items that are easy to fence. That means sell.”

“I know what fence means. I watch television. So he was an amateur. He didn’t find anything, so he got pissed off, trashed my place, and took the only thing he thought had value.” I paraphrased what Babe had told me as if it came from my own vast experience. “Listen, someone broke into my apartment in Brooklyn once and didn’t find valuables. Know what he took? Aviator sunglasses and a jar of peanut butter. You think all crooks are smart?”

“Have you discovered anything else that’s missing?”

“I haven’t checked my canned goods, but to the naked eye, nothing major.” The wisecracking had escalated into snapping. This was another cycle we went through. We start out nice, he brings me food, and we end up fighting. It had happened before and I tried to avoid it this time.

“Tell me again what you think,” I said, stripping the pepperoni off a second slice and trying my best to strip the sarcasm from my voice.

“I think our man—or woman—planned this carefully. He made sure to come when neither you nor Anna was here.”

“Well,” I interrupted, “that’s a neat trick right there, because even
I’m
not sure when she’s going to be here . . . she shows up when she feels like it.”

“Be quiet and let me finish,” O’Malley said. “They knew when to come and they were looking for something. Information, from the looks of all these papers strewn about. On paper, or a disk, or a flash drive. So the question is, what do you know?”

“I don’t know jack. Why do people keep thinking I know something?”

O’Malley put his pizza down and wiped his hands carefully on a wad of paper napkins. He balled them up and tossed them onto his plate. He tented his fingers. “Who else thinks you know something?”

I told O’Malley what had happened at Titans.

“When were you planning to share this information?”

“There are actually two or three things that have happened to me in the past year that I haven’t disclosed to the authorities.
It didn’t come up,
” I said, exasperated. “Besides, what does that . . . Oh, you’re crazy. I talked to that guy for ten, fifteen minutes tops in a hotel bar. What happened to him has nothing to do with me.”

“What happened to him was that he got his brains blown out. Maybe you and your girlfriend should be more careful the next time you decide to cruise bars.” O’Malley unfolded his legs and stood up. He helped himself to a sheet of paper from my now disconnected printer and took a pen from the flowerpot on my desk. “What did you say his name was?”

“I didn’t, but it was Vigoriti. I’m not sure how to spell it. First name, Nick. And we weren’t cruising bars, not that it’s any business of yours.”

“And the cop’s name?” he continued, ignoring my protestations of purity.

“Winters.” I couldn’t tell if he was mad because I’d withheld information, or because he imagined me picking up guys at a hotel bar. Either way, he wasn’t happy.

“Local or state?”

“How would I know?”

“What was he wearing?”

“
She
was wearing an ugly blue suit.”

“Sounds local.”

“Why? The state guys get to wear Armani?”

“Do me a favor,” he said, writing down this new info and folding the sheet of paper into quarters. “Set your security alarm tonight. Chances are, whoever it was won’t be back, but do it. Promise me, okay?”

We exchanged stiff, formal good nights for two people who’d just been sitting on the floor eating pizza together like a couple of teenagers in a messy dorm, and I gave the door that little extra push it always needed, to make sure the lock caught. In New York, it would have taken two full minutes to throw all the deadbolts and connect all the chains I needed in my old apartment, and you still couldn’t keep the bad guys out if they really wanted in. Here it was different. Or so I thought.

From somewhere, I heard the muffled sound of another text message coming in. I worried that I’d created a monster and Caroline Sturgis would be texting me every time she got another bright idea about how to change her garden, her marriage, or her life. I fished around in my bag but couldn’t find the phone, then I remembered I’d left it in my pocket after calling the cops. I ran back to my office to get my jacket, but was too late. I entered my code and retrieved the message.
Two brothers. Duct tape. Don’t tell anyone
.

Fifteen

Two brothers. The last time Lucy hung out with two brothers, she told me about it at great length over outrageously priced vodka at a bar in NYC’s meatpacking district. As I recall, they were named Jesse and Frank. No duct tape was involved and a good time was had by all. But this message felt different.

I don’t know how long I stood there trying to figure out what to do. Once, when I was a bookstore manager, we received a telephoned bomb threat. For an instant I froze, then I flashed the lights in the store and tried frantically to get the customers to leave. But it was in New York, pre-9/11, so of course they ignored me. Nothing happened, and I always wondered where the bastards were, watching me run around like a lunatic and laughing their asses off. I had that same feeling as I stared at my phone.

If Lucy had sent her message fifteen minutes earlier, O’Malley would still have been here. He would have seen the deer-in-the-headlights expression that was undoubtedly on my face, and would have known what to do. I didn’t.

I called up the saved message on the phone and stared at it again, finally thinking to hit reply.
Where are you?
I keyed in, and waited for an answer. I paced back and forth, jiggling the phone as if to shake out an answer. The phone beeped; another message was coming in.
Don’t know not more than forty minutes from hotel two brothers DON’T TEXT UNLESS I DO FIRST L

Holy shit. Could she be a little more cryptic? Was she in trouble or was she bragging?

Forty minutes from the hotel wasn’t helpful. I’d only been there once. It was on the outskirts of a small town about two blocks long. What was I supposed to do, go to the post office and put up her picture? Shit. I wouldn’t tell the cops for now, it could still be an assignation, but I had to tell someone and get a second opinion. I stepped over the piles of papers in my office, grabbed my keys, and went to see my closest adviser, the one person in Springfield I did consider the
F
word, a friend.

“And for my money, that’s the best way to contest a speeding ticket. I’ve done it three or four times,” she said, hands on hips and arching her back the tiniest bit. “What are they gonna
say
?”

“We don’t all look like you, Babe,” said a doughy, blond guy with a baby face. “I’m not sure it would have the same effect coming from someone like me.” Most of Babe’s audience nodded their heads in agreement. A few customers in the diner seemed dubious, but I was willing to bet they’d resurrect whatever advice she was dispensing if the situation arose.

I closed the door behind me and looked for a booth near the window. “Hey, Paula. Have a seat over here. Earl’s just leaving. He’s going to traffic court tomorrow. I was giving him some pointers.”

Earl struck me as the kind of guy who didn’t normally get this much attention from a beautiful woman and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d made up the traffic-court story just to have an opening gambit with Babe.

I climbed onto the counter stool recently vacated and left uncomfortably warm by the pudgy Earl; I slid over to the next seat. Babe poured me a coffee and gave me a long look as if she once again knew there was something on my mind. “Take a number,” she whispered, leaning in. “Look at these guys. I’ve already found one a new mechanic and told another how to cure his wife’s imaginary migraines.”

The rest of Earl’s erstwhile legal team hung around for another fifteen minutes debating the merits of Babe’s advice despite the fact that she’d given them all bills, her tacit signal that the conversation was over. I nursed my coffee and waited for them to leave. When they didn’t, Babe piled a few homemade sugar donuts onto a plate and led me by the arm to a booth at the back of the diner.

“Alba, take over the counter, okay?” Alba did as she was told, happy to play understudy for her idol.

“They take much?” she asked, pulling off a piece of donut. “Do you need any dough? We were hit once, years ago. I’ve got protection now.” She jerked her head in the direction of the counter, or maybe it was outside, across the street where the police substation was.

I shook my head. “It’s not about the robbery.” I wasn’t sure how much to tell her. I was lousy at asking for help and I didn’t want to involve her if this turned out to be something serious.

“A friend of mine is in trouble,” I started.

“First off, that’s good. Not good, but at least it’s not you. Who is it? The one with the philandering husband? No, don’t tell me. Let’s keep this abstract.”

Babe lived for this—she genuinely loved solving other people’s problems. In another lifetime she might have been a radio shrink.

“Most problems are either money or men. Okay, your friend’s a woman and she’s having man trouble,” she said, waiting for confirmation.

“Sort of.” I started to think this was a bad idea. What if I didn’t like what Babe had to say? What if she said
Call the cops now, you idiot!
? “She may be in a place where she doesn’t want to be,” I said, dragging my feet.

Babe looked puzzled. “Literally or figuratively?”

“Could be both.”

“I hate it when the answer is
both,
” she said, shaking her head and frowning.

Over Babe’s shoulder I saw the door open and three of Springfield’s finest come in, including Mike O’Malley. Babe turned around to see who I was staring at. “Stay right here,” she said. “I give out better advice than a bartender. I’ll be right back, I’m just going to go seat those guys. Alba’s got her hands full.”

Babe led the cops to a booth just ten feet away and it made me realize the Paradise was not the best place for a private conversation. O’Malley excused himself and came over to where I was sitting.

“Ms. Holliday, I thought it was Chinese food that had you hungry an hour later, not pizza. Have you thought of something else that might help us with your break-in?”

It took me five full seconds to answer. I looked from O’Malley to Babe and back to O’Malley. “No,” I lied.

Sixteen

Within an hour, I’d gone home and packed, sticking a pair of black leather pants, dressy shoes, and a sleeveless top in my bag, in case I needed to pass myself off as a regular guest at the Titans Hotel. Then I hit the road, stopping only to fill the tank.

Babe and Pete were just closing up as I sped by the Paradise. For the briefest of moments I considered pulling in to get a reality check, but I left my foot on the gas and kept on going.

I was feeling half tired and half wired. There was no way I’d have gotten any sleep after Lucy’s message—especially in a house recently pillaged by someone who was likely a thief, a psycho, or at best, a garden-variety creep. Two weird things I could pass off as coincidence, but three was pushing it. I wouldn’t have connected Nick’s death with the break-in at my house if O’Malley hadn’t planted the seed. And now, Lucy’s obscure message. What the hell was it that people seemed to think I knew?

When you’re consciously looking for links you can find them anywhere, like Nostradamus theories. That side of my brain was now connecting so many dots it wouldn’t be long before I convinced myself that this trail would lead me to the remains of Amelia Earhart.

I slid onto the on-ramp and entered the sparse highway traffic with a full tank of gas and a four-pack of diet Red Bull to help me stay awake on the drive to Titans.

My phone was on my lap, plugged into the cigarette lighter and turned to speakerphone on the outside chance that Lucy would call or text-message again. The part about the duct tape was worrying me, but Lucy had a more adventurous sex life than I did. If she was partying, I was going to give her hell. But if she wasn’t . . .

Classical music would have put me to sleep so I settled on a college radio station in the middle of its weekly Irish hour. That, the Red Bull, and four open windows were the only things keeping me from pulling over into a deserted weigh station, curling up into a fetal position, and having a snooze. I’m a good sleeper. That’s been the consensus with everyone from my mother to my last sweetheart. I know it’s supposed to be a compliment, but it’s hard to take it as praise when someone tells you they love it when you’re unconscious.

Twenty minutes into the drive, I was buzzing on the caffeine and Riverdancing with my shoulders, affecting that haughty head toss that always makes the female dancers look like prancing ponies. The prancing stopped when I passed the gas station/ minimarket where I’d had my encounter with the Michelin Man. A cold wave rippled through my body. Was that incident connected, too, or was I just reaching a new level of paranoia? I checked the rearview mirror as if the MM had been camped out on the highway for the past twenty-four hours waiting for me to reappear. I raised the windows and told myself it was just the early spring weather that had given me the chills.

I was chuckling to myself about what an idiot I was being when the phone rang. I jumped a little in my seat, just enough to knock the phone to the floor of the car and make me have to stretch and feel around blindly through old Mapquest directions, loose change, and empty Red Bull cans until I found it.

I wedged the phone between the gearbox and the driver’s seat, squinting until I could make out the sender’s name. Jon Chappell. I hit answer.

“Hey, what are you doing up at this hour?” I asked.

“I’m no kid, I made it all the way to midnight once.”

After all I’d been through, it felt as if it should have been 4:00 A.M., but it was only 11:30.

“Where’s my story?” he asked.

“What story?”

“That’s what I get for hiring friends. You’re fired. The corpse flower story. The one you harangued me to let you cover? The feature that no one is waiting for? I bumped the Hawley family quilt story for you and Hawley Real Estate is a big advertiser.”

I’d completely forgotten.

“I may have a bigger story for you,” I said, trying to tempt him with something more journalistically challenging than either a plant or the Hawleys’ moldy old blanket.

“I heard; we get alerts on that stuff. Sorry for your loss but break-ins are strictly page-fourteen stuff. At the risk of sounding callous, only home invasions make the front page. You gotta be there or it’s no story.”

“There’s a slim chance that the break-in at my place was connected to the murder I told you about at Titans.” I dangled a few details of O’Malley’s visit and just enough of Lucy’s message to pique his interest, but not so much that he’d freak out and get the local cops, the state troopers, and the FBI out looking for her.

“It’s also possible Lucy made it up to Titans after all. I’m going back to see.”

“Why don’t you just call her?” he said.

Because she might be duct-taped to a chair courtesy of Connecticut’s answer to the Krays?
“I think she’s having signal problems.” That was one excuse every cell phone user in the state would buy. “I’m driving now, I can’t talk anymore.”

“Keep me in the loop,” he said. “I want the exclusive if this really is a story. And worst case, you better come back with pictures of that damn flower.” Just as I hung up, I heard him say that the paper was only going to pay for my mileage once. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was glad Jon had called. In the back of my mind, I wanted someone to know where I was going. Just in case.

When I arrived at Titans, the parking attendant was propped up on a plastic storage crate, leaning against a flaking pillar. His legs were stretched out in front of him and he was snoring loudly. One other car, an electric-blue Isuzu festooned with dream catchers and bumper stickers, was parked diagonally in the fifteen-minute registration parking area.

I yanked my bag out of the backseat and the straps caught on the tines of one of the pitchforks I’d bought only that morning. It seemed like days ago. In plain sight with a truckload of other garden tools, a pitchfork is a perfectly reasonable item. On its own, it’s faintly creepy, like something from a date-night horror flick. I untangled the straps and tossed one of the small tarps I carried for plant material over the pitchfork.

The parking attendant made no attempt to move, so I tapped him on the shoulder, and handed over my keys and a couple of dollars. The kid said nothing, and I guessed that meant the tip was too small to warrant a thank-you or even an acknowledgment.

You’re welcome
. Next time I park it myself.

The weight of the revolving door reminded me just how tired I was. I promised myself a solid six hours of sleep before embarking on what I hoped was a foolish wild-goose chase. I imagined Lucy and me laughing about this over drinks on my deck.

If the outside of the hotel was dead, the inside wasn’t much livelier—Titans at two A.M. was not exactly filled with the sound of champagne corks popping, fingers snapping, and high rollers squealing with delight. A few stragglers were holding up the end of the bar I could see from the entrance, and a couple who couldn’t keep their hands off each other stumbled over to the elevators.

Bernie Mishkin was also there, head down, locked in a serious conversation with a pretty woman in a puffy fur-trimmed vest. She had sunglasses on top of her head despite the fact that it was nighttime and she was indoors. A deep tan and smoker’s lines probably added ten years to someone who probably wasn’t that much older than me, but she had a nice, wide smile, and Mishkin seemed charmed.

If Mishkin noticed me, he didn’t show it, but it would have been hard for him to let his attention drift from his companion, who had her hand on his knee and was leaning in to either make a point or show him her cleavage. A widower for just a few months, Mishkin looked like he’d already found a replacement for his beloved Fran. Something told me she wasn’t the marketing genius that Fran had been, but I had a feeling she was pretty good at something else. The woman flicked a key ring with a blue rubber pompom on it, and periodically pointed with it for effect.

There was one waitress on the floor and a plump brunette with thick, shiny hair and Buddy Holly glasses was manning the bar; I didn’t see Oksana. Since bartenders generally knew the locals, and two brothers might have stuck in someone’s memory, I decided to summon up enough energy to ask the bartender a few questions before crashing in my room.

I took the long way to the lounge, avoiding Mishkin and circling the corpse flower, which hadn’t changed much since my last visit. From the corner of my eye I saw Mishkin’s female companion storm out of the lounge area, nearly knocking over three frat boys who’d just come in. Mishkin mopped his brow and straightened his tie, emitting a fake laugh to suggest that nothing major had happened, but the look on his face said otherwise. Mishkin scoped out the room for witnesses to the embarrassing scene, but the few people who’d seen anything were involved in their own dramas and it barely registered. I hid behind the corpse flower, thinking,
Ain’t love grand?

After he left, I settled in at the bar, ordering a drink and a bowl of Goldfish and engaging the bartender in a round of girl talk. Despite what Detective Stacy Winters thought, I hadn’t interviewed anyone in a long time. What I remembered about it was that a successful interviewer made the subject feel comfortable, as if you were having a conversation, not grilling him or her under a spotlight. So that’s what I did. I nursed a white ginger cosmo and gently complained about my (nonexistent) boss, my (nonexistent) boyfriend, and the paucity of good-looking men at the bar at Titans. By the time she’d topped off her last few customers, it was as if she and I were old friends.

She told me it was Oksana’s night off, and Hector Ruiz, the only other person I knew to ask about, had left about an hour earlier.

“Hector and his wife and baby girl live in a mobile park,” she volunteered without much prodding. “Near the reservation. A lot of Titans workers do. There’s not much affordable housing around here since the casino went up.”

“Is that where you live?” I asked, trying to read her name through her long hair. She brushed it back over one shoulder. “Helayne?”

She shook her head, and the hair fell back against her round face. “I moved back in with my family, but I’m going for my aesthetician’s license, so I may be out again soon.” She made it sound like she’d be crashing out of prison.

“What about Oksana?” I asked.

“She shares with a girl named Nadia. In the same park as Hector. Nadia has a double-wide.” Helayne was impressed.

Nadia worked at the big casino. She’d kicked her boyfriend out of their trailer a few months ago and Oksana had moved in to help out with the monthly payments. It was supposed to be temporary.

“O. thought she’d move in with Nick, but he was a big talker. A terrible flirt. He came on to me once, but I told him I was engaged. ‘You see that ring?’ I said. ‘That means something.’ You heard what happened to him, right?” she said, under her breath.

I nodded, and spared a moment for the late Nick Vigoriti, who might have been a little less successful with the ladies than I’d originally thought. This was mildly interesting but it wasn’t getting me any closer to the two brothers.

“A friend of mine was here last weekend. She said she met some really cute guys. They’re a little young for me,” I said, tilting my head toward the table of college kids who got rowdier with each round of Guinness and were taking turns trying to get the widget out of the can. “A couple of brothers, I think she said.”

Helayne gave it some thought. I couldn’t see her in a ménage, but you never knew about people. For all I knew, there was a trapeze over her bed.

“Some brothers, but not single. And no one I’d call cute.” She made eye contact with the security guard and motioned toward the kids so that he would keep an eye on them.

“Well, my friend has eclectic taste. You or I might not think they were good-looking.”
That’s right, we’re women of the world
.

“The Laheys are cute, but I think the younger one is gay.”

“I don’t think that’s her thing.” I played with the dregs of my drink as long as I could before she brought me a second, stronger than the first.

“The Crawfords are good-looking,” she said, setting the drink down. “Billy and Claude. There was a third one but he died. But they’re not allowed in here anymore. Something happened, before I was hired. Oksana told me about it. Security has instructions to keep them out. Maybe they drank too much. You should ask her. Oksana knows more male customers than I do.”

I bet she did. Oksana’s vulnerability and pouty good looks probably got her as much attention as she wanted. Maybe more.

Two Asian guys entered the lounge, ignoring the No Smoking sign and feigning ignorance when the security guard told them to put the cigarettes out. The waitress came back with their orders and Helayne got busy mixing their drinks. “They stare as if they’ve never seen boobs before, but they’re good tippers,” the waitress said.

I toyed with the idea of waiting for Helayne to finish, but the drinks and the hour were conspiring to get me in the sack. Tomorrow I’d face Oksana and ask her about the Crawford brothers.

The phone rang at around 3:30 A.M. I must have just fallen asleep because I woke up with a start, the way you do when you’re afraid you’ve nodded off in an inappropriate place like the theater or a meeting. I looked around trying to remember where I was and where the hell that obnoxious noise was coming from. I knocked over the lamp and a water bottle reaching for the phone and caught it on its sixth ring.

“Hello,” I mumbled into the dead air. “Lucy, is that you?” I turned on the light and saw the last drops of a two-liter bottle of water trickling into my Nikes.

“Do you know a woman named Lucy?” someone asked, surprised.

“Who is this?” I raised myself up on my elbows, waiting for an answer.

“It’s me. Oksana. The bartender?”

“Oksana, it’s . . .” The numbers on the digital clock were magnified and distorted by the overturned bottle; I shoved it aside. “It’s three-thirty. What is it?”

“I need you to help me find out what happened to Nick,” she said.

“I have no idea what happened to Nick.” I sat on the edge of the bed and shook the water out of my shoes. “Do
you
know a woman named Lucy?” I asked.