The Big Dirt Nap

'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 menage, 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