"Hey, that's my Burberry." She unzipped the bag and saw that her usually carefully packed clothing had been rummaged and thoughtlessly restuffed in the bag, her expensive scarf stuck in the zipper.
"You know, I'm used to this when I fly," she said, pissed off and checking to see if anything was missing. "Generally there's a slip of paper explaining why it's critical to national security for some lonely TSA guy to sniff my undies, but here, for crying out loud?"
"It was probably the cops," I said. "I reported you as missing." I'd call Winters in the morning to tell her everything was all right.
"You did? That was so sweet," she said, refolding her things.
"Don't get too mushy," I said. "No one paid any attention until I reported your car as stolen."
"Nevertheless," she said, "you're a real friend."
So was Babe. If it hadn't been for her, Lucy and I would still be on the mountain with two angry Ukrainians trudging up to meet us. Maybe I wasn't quite as alone in the world as I sometimes felt. And maybe I shouldn't keep quite so tight a grip on that F word.
A handful of stragglers were hanging out in the Titans lobby when we entered. Hector chatted with a young Hispanic couple near the corpse flower and gave me a nod as I came in, then a longer look when he saw Babe and Lucy trailing behind me. On our way to the elevator, Helayne, the bartender, waved. I knew she wanted me to go over, but I pretended it was just a hello wave; I'd had as much excitement and new information as I could handle for one night.
"What, is this your new hangout?" Lucy asked. "Does everyone here know you?"
"It's your fault. I've spent so much time in this lobby waiting for you, I was beginning to feel like an employee . . . or a hooker."
In the room we dumped our things and I put on the television for white noise. Lucy took the love seat, Babe and I the double beds. Before long we'd spread out and had Hoovered the contents of the minibar; we sat in our underwear drinking little nips as if it was a pajama party.
"How did you ever get mixed up with these guys?" Babe asked.
"The Titans casino is never going to happen," Lucy said, popping peanut M&M's into the air and catching them in her mouth. "At least that's my story. The Crawford brothers don't want the casino," she said, searching for the last nut in the bag. They'd seen what had happened on other reservations when the casino operators came in. A handful of tribal leaders got fabulously wealthy, and the majority of the members—if they really were members—got stipends, which turned the young people into drug addicts and wastrels—chronically unemployed, undereducated, and more interested in flashy cars and electronics than in preserving their culture.
"That may be honorable, but is it really up to them if that's what most of the tribe wants?" I asked.
"According to them, they are most of the tribe, one of the seven original families of record in the 1910 census, at least legitimate ones—although Daniel Smallwood has been quietly recruiting members for the last few years with the promise of a big casino payoff," Lucy said. "The newest legitimate member of the tribe is their nephew, the famous baby Sean."
When Lucy agreed to meet with the Crawfords, they had suggested she also get in touch with their old friend Nick Vigoriti. They knew the tribal side of the story and Nick knew the hotel side.
"What did he have against the casino?" Babe asked.
Lucy shook her head. "I never found out," she said, crumpling the M&M bag.
Just then, in the same way that your eyes eventually get used to the dark and you can make out things you couldn't moments earlier, the white noise of the television turned into real words, "Breaking News."
Detective Stacy Winters spoke. Claude Crawford had been apprehended near the old Yankee Shoe factory. William James Crawford is a fugitive but we have good information and feel that he will be in custody soon. The two brothers are believed to have been responsible for the recent murder of Nicholas Anthony Vigoriti. Anyone with information on the whereabouts of William Crawford is urged to dial the number on your screen.
The reporter went on to chronicle the brothers' past offenses, including the covered wagon fire. File footage showed the blaze and two staggeringly handsome men being led away. "Now I know why you stayed," Babe said.
"And now you know why he didn't come back," I said.
"How can they say this stuff without being sure?" Babe said. She knew how; we all did. And being even a small part of the system, Lucy felt rotten about it.
"You met him," Babe said. "Did he seem like a killer to you?"
Lucy didn't think so, but she had been so taken with Claude that she hadn't paid much attention to Billy.
"He was younger than Claude. He had a Michael's shopping bag with him."
"Does that make him a nice guy?"
"No! But it made him look . . . I don't know, craft-y . . . safe, normal," she said.
Unless there was a gun in the bag, I thought. I could tell Babe was thinking the same thing.
Four loud knocks on the door jolted us. Lucy yelped; Babe jumped up and ran for her handbag.
"Do criminals knock?" Lucy whispered.
Sometimes. If they don't want you to think they're criminals. "Who is it?" I asked, trying to sound tough.
"It's Hector, ma'am. And the police."
Thirty-five
Lucy and I asked for a few minutes to dress.
"Hector, we have to stop meeting like this," I said, opening the door. The roly-poly security guard was flanked by the same two cops who'd found Lucy's car in the parking lot.
"One of you ladies Lucinda Cavanaugh?"
Lucy raised her hand shyly as if she was in school; that was probably the last time anyone had called her Lucinda.
The two cops were following up on an anonymous report of a woman stranded in a cabin on the Quepochas reservation. We all looked at Lucy to see what she'd say; it took her all of thirty seconds to get her story together.
"I was stranded, briefly, but my friends came and gave me a lift home." That was one way to put it—I was a novice liar compared to Lucy.
"Ms. Cavanaugh, you do know that that domicile has been used as a hiding place for William and Claude Crawford, who are wanted for questioning in the murder of Nick Vigoriti?"
"I don't know anything about that. No one was there when I arrived." Which was technically true at the time. "I was hiking and I ran out of trail mix so I got tired. The cabin seemed like a good place to wait it out until my friends could come to get me." Now she was pushing it. I wished I could tell her to keep it simple.
"You were hiking on the Quepochas reservation? Ms. Cavanaugh, we have information that suggests you were brought to that cabin against your will."
"Absolutely not. Who knew you weren't supposed to hike there? I thought it was part of the Appalachian Trail." Even Hector snorted at that one. "My friends will tell you what a health nut I am. I'd had a long drive from New York City and simply wanted to stretch my legs." If Lucy didn't watch it, she'd tick these guys off and finish telling her story at the police station. Strangely enough, they seemed to believe her.
"It's true," I said. "She's a walker. She even counts steps." The exchange was surreal.
Babe said nothing. She stood in her underwear and a Rush T-shirt, with her arms folded, looking tough. The cops seemed to know they weren't going to get anything out of her, but they tried anyway. She gave one-word answers that were vague enough to be useless. And Lucy and I had branded ourselves as flakes—first, me by reporting Lucy's car as stolen when it was right there in the Titans parking lot, and now Lucy for having gone walkabout on a strange trail with only a bag of gorp in her back pocket.
If Lucy didn't tell the cops that Claude took her to the cabin, he couldn't be charged with abducting her; that would solve at least one of his legal problems. Like Betty had, Lucy helped Claude dodge a big bullet.
Just then, the elevator bell rang and I heard voices in the hall. One of them I recognized as Stacy Winters's. She was yakking on a cell phone and hung up just as she go
t to my room.
"What do we have here? Have you girls been grilling cheese sandwiches on the hotel radiator? No, it's something else, isn't it?"
We all waited for her routine to finish, then one of the uniformed cops spoke up.
"This is Ms. Cavanaugh," he said, pointing to Lucy. "She has assured us that she's all right and in fact went to the Crawfords' cabin alone and of her own volition."
"So, you weren't abducted, not missing, just out." She resisted the urge to use the word poof.
"That's correct," Lucy said. Babe's example and her own successful exchange with the two less experienced cops gave her the confidence to stand up to Winters. "I'm quite all right. Although I'm a little put out that your men felt the need to go through the bag in the trunk of my car."
"Yeah, yeah," Winters said. "If you want to make a claim for damages it's form C104. You can download it from the town's Web site. Ms. Holliday, I think the sooner you and your friends leave our little town, the happier we'll all be. You ladies have a good night."
When she was a safe distance away, Babe mouthed the word bitch. I agreed.
Thirty-six
After a full two hours of sleep, I woke up at 6 A.M. Through half-open eyes I saw Babe fully dressed and holding a cup of coffee.
"You didn't make that in the room, did you?" I'd heard horror stories that they used the same brush to clean the coffeepot as they used to clean the toilet.
"Not a chance. Got it downstairs. There's a very chatty waitress named Laurie in the coffee shop. She thinks both brothers were in on it and were trying to use Lucy as their alibi." We looked at Lucy, curled up, still asleep on the love seat. "The bellboy disagrees. I haven't had a chance to poll the rest of the staff."
"¿Quién sabe?" I said.
Now that Claude was in jail, I knew Lucy would want to see him, at least to say goodbye, so I suggested Babe take the Jeep back to Springfield. Lucy and I would drive back later in the day and I'd pick up my car at the diner.
"You sure?"
"Are you kidding? You saved our asses last night."
I got up, found my bag, and fished around for my car keys. Babe rooted around in her bag, too.
"What are you looking for, a cell?"
"I'll give you a cell phone, too. Here, take mine. I have Neil's cell at home—if you need to reach me just speed-dial number 1." She gave me her phone and I shoved it in my pocket.
"This may come in handier." She handed me something in a leopard-print case. It was Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle, better known as a Taser, model number C2.
"Take it. You never know."
Thirty-seven
The idea of zapping someone with a Taser made me so nervous, I didn't even want to hold the damn thing. But I thought back to the previous night, planning to defend myself with a pitchfork and a tarp like some horticultural gladiator, and I relented. I let Babe show me how to use it.
The Taser Babe owned was a non–law enforcement, consumer model and fired two small electrodes that would work as far as fifteen feet away from the intended target. After firing its one charge, it could also be used as a direct contact stun gun that could penetrate up to two inches of clothing.
"You couldn't kill someone with this, could you?"
"Oh, you mean like a pitchfork?" She had a point. You could kill someone with virtually anything, but under normal circumstances the Taser wasn't lethal. It sent a charge to the target's central nervous system, temporarily incapacitating him. She handed me two cartridges.
"Just in case," she said. "But once should be enough. Don't get crazy. And then run like hell. Don't hang around admiring your handiwork." I didn't ask how she'd developed this strategy and whether she'd ever had occasion to use it, but now I knew why she wasn't afraid to be alone in the diner at night.
I left a note for the still sleeping Lucy and walked Babe out to the Jeep, which was practically hidden by a deluxe coach parked diagonally in four spaces. Maybe business was picking up at Titans.
"If you're not back by tonight," Babe said, "I'm calling the cops, do you read me?" I promised to check in in a few hours if Lucy and I weren't going to make it home by the time Babe closed the diner.
Babe drove off and I headed back into the hotel for my first caffeine fix of the day. Laurie in the Titans coffee shop was alone, reading the paper at the counter.
"Looks like they caught those boys."
"Looks like," I said. I glanced at the paper over her shoulder for a while, then she shoved it my way and moved behind the counter.
"Counterman's late. Coffee?"
"Please."
Claude Crawford was in custody until Betty Smallwood could raise two hundred fifty thousand dollars for bail. Even at ten dollars a pop, that would take a lot of notarizing. I didn't see it happening.
According to the paper, the physical evidence found at the scene of the murder linked both of the Crawfords to the crime, but Billy's lack of an alibi at the time of Nick's death made him the prime suspect. Billy had escaped by disappearing into the hills behind the abandoned factory on Route 123, where he'd been hiding. The media took that as an admission of guilt.
"You never know about people," the waitress said, bringing my coffee.
Apart from the occasional abduction they had committed, nothing I'd heard about the Crawfords suggested they were psychopaths. Why would they tell Lucy to talk to Nick and then kill him right before she did? Was it, as the waitress thought, just to get her as a reliable, non–Native American alibi? Or to get Nick's defenses down by having him think he was going to meet a good-looking woman instead of a man with a gun? And why do it at the hotel? There must have been a dozen less public places for the murder to happen.
Laurie sat down again and I offered her the paper back; she shook her head. "I'm finished. Too much sad news. You just never know. Billy always seemed like the nice one. We had a homeless guy freeze to death near the Dumpster two winters ago." She looked at me as if I should remember, so I nodded politely.
"Next week Billy shows up with a couple of cheap sleeping bags. Gave them to the old guys who scrounge around back there."
A woman hurried by the coffee shop. Laurie said hello but the woman didn't seem to hear and kept walking, her cowboy boots clacking on the tile floor as she rushed by.
"Now there goes one of the nice ones. Jackie Connelly. She and I went to high school together. A beautiful girl. Athlete. She could have gone to the Olympics. Got in a little trouble, but, you know, righted the ship. Kept her baby girl, finished school. She worked two, three jobs for years. Even cleaned houses so that child would never want for anything. Now she's got her own little one." It took me awhile before I realized the the baby that Laurie was talking about was Chantel Crawford.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two figures loitering by the elevator—one slim and one very large, in a leather jacket.
"Okay, that's it." The waitress didn't know what I meant.
I folded the paper and scribbled my room number on the check. Alone, on the highway, at night, it was one thing. But in a hotel lobby in broad daylight I felt safe enough to confront them. The big one had the nerve to smile at me. He had on sunglasses and a tweed bucket hat as a half-assed disguise but he wore an enormous black leather jacket like the one I remembered from our first encounter in the mini-mart.
"Can I help you two?" I said.
The men looked at each other stupidly as if they didn't know what I meant.
"You're not very good at keeping yourselves hidden. If you're going to sneak around following people you should try to be a little less obvious. The hat and the glasses? That's like we're not supposed to know Clark Kent is Superman because of his eyeglasses." More simpleminded looks.
"Forget it. The liquor store should be opening soon. Go get some more vodka, drink some courage, and then tell Sergei you saw me," I said, shaking my head in disgust. "But I want you to know I'm not scared of you. And if I ever see you again, I'll be armed," I said, thinking of the Taser and glad that I'
d taken it from Babe.
By this time, my hands were shaking as I pushed the button for the elevator. Still, I felt good about standing up for myself and when the car came I swaggered inside and stood there glaring at them until the doors closed. Just as they did I heard one of the men say to the other, "Bella ragazza, ma lei deve essere matta."
Thirty-eight
"No, no, you don't understand. I've lost it. I verbally abused two Italians who are here to buy discount Fendi at the outlets."
Like a true friend, Lucy was sympathetic. "At least they thought you were beautiful." She stored the shopping info for later.
And crazy, if my Pimsleur Italian course served me well. I needed to get back to Springfield to my little garden business, where the only one chasing me was Caroline Sturgis, who'd left two more messages I hadn't had a chance to play.
Lucy called her producer to tell her the casino story had changed. Now that it was murder and not just racketeering they were even more interested. Her plan was to return with a cameraman in three days. In the meantime we'd visit Claude in jail and then get the hell out of Dodge.
"When did you wear the leather pants?" she asked as she watched me pack. In all the drama of Lucy's return, I'd forgotten about Oksana. I told Lucy about our meeting at the casino.
"You think she was in love with Vigoriti?" she asked.
"Crush, maybe. She's such a kid. And a little naive for someone who's seen as much as she has."
In the lobby I searched for Hector and Oksana. I didn't see them, but the ever-cheerful Amanda was there, measuring her corpse flower. I dragged Lucy over to say hello.
"So this is the famous corpse flower," she said, feigning interest. Amanda gave her the two-minute description of the titan arum. The girl was convinced the plant would bloom in the next twenty-four hours and be in flower for two days before it faded.
"Then it's really gonna smell like a dead body," Amanda said. "Not just like meat that's gone a little funky." She smiled as if she couldn't wait. "I've invited some of the kids from school for a Goth party in the bar when it does." I didn't know if selling a few extra beers to coeds with heavy eye makeup was Bernie's original plan when he agreed to host the corpse flower, but any extra business was not a bad thing.
The Big Dirt Nap db-2 Page 15