The Big Dirt Nap

I'll let you fax it from here.'

Thanks. Chances are, if I could print it out somewhere else I wouldn't need to come back here to fax it. I was running out of ideas. 'How about if I just hook my computer up to your printer? That way I wouldn't even accidentally see anything sensitive.' Sensitive, my foot, she was probably guarding her brother's porn collection.

'You'd have to disconnect something and I couldn't allow that. I'm sorry.'

Rachel Page wasn't sorry at all. She wasn't even giving a good imitation of sorry. She stood there with her arms folded, totally shut down, waiting for me to leave.

The town of Shaftsbury was about three blocks long. I'd driven past its one highway exit on my way to Titans. Shaftsbury was my best shot at an Internet cafe, otherwise I'd have to drive farther to Storrs and the UConn campus. I took a chance.

Shaftsbury should have been doing better. As close as it was to the casino, they'd probably expected an influx of jobs and tax dollars when the casino opened, but Shaftsbury fell just outside of the county line and there was no public transportation. If you didn't own a car it was impossible to get to the casino from there. And any tax revenues went to the state with just a pittance trickling down to the town. So Shaftsbury got the extra traffic and the guy who owned the gas station might have made a few extra bucks, but other than that, Shaftsbury got the shaft.

One-third of the stores were dotted with For Sale or For Rent signs. A large Goodwill store was there but closed for the day. In the doorway I saw a Big Y shopping cart. A bundle of rags seemed to be moving and I realized it was the homeless guy going through a paper bag filled with recent donations. For a moment I thought of stopping, but what would I have said? Remember that time we saw the dead guy? I moved on, crawling down the street looking for a computer store in a depressed area, with little chance of finding one.

Just a handful of shops were open—a laundry, a liquor store, a coffee shop, and a convenience store. Only the last showed any signs of life so I pulled into a spot right in front and went in.

The store was crammed with magazines, hair accessories, processed snack foods, cigarettes, and lottery tickets. The sales counter was fringed with them—all over the top and sides, making it look like a red and blue grass shack.

'Powerball?' the clerk asked.

I was probably the only person in the state who'd never bought a Powerball ticket, and decided to keep it that way.

'No thanks. I was looking for an Internet cafe.' Even as I said it, it sounded ridiculous in this downtrodden town, as if I'd asked for the Jaguar dealership.

'Nothing like that here. Gotta go to Storrs, where the students are.' He checked me out and must have decided I was reasonably trustworthy. 'Betty's got a computer though.'

'Who's that?'

According to the stack of business cards on the counter, Betty Smallwood was an attorney-at-law and a notary public. And she had an office on top of the convenience store.

'She's in. She might let you use it for a dollar or two.' He pointed toward the back of the store, on the left, where a glass door was labeled with black and gold stick-on letters, B. Smallwood, Esq., Notary, Tribal Genealogist.

I climbed the too-shallow stairs up to Smallwood's third-floor office and knocked.

'Come on in.'

My first view of her was of her butt, pushed in the air while she was kneeling on the floor watering her plants. She stuck a finger in the potted palm to check its moisture level before giving it any more water.

'Good idea.' I said hello and she scrambled to her feet.

'I thought it was Georgie.' She laughed. 'From downstairs.' She brushed her hands on her pants and we shook. Against the far wall were file cabinets of various colors and heights, giving it the appearance of a fake skyline, like something you'd see in an off-Broadway show. Above and on top of the cabinets were Native American memorabilia. There weren't many office machines but she had a small combo printer/scanner/fax machine similar to the one I had at home. Bingo.

I told her why I'd come and without needing a moment to think about it she cleared off a space on her desk for me to set up my laptop. My battery was running low so I needed to plug the computer in and that meant she had to find one of the overworked extension cords in the office and swap something out.

'So, you're a tribal genealogist?' I said, making small talk while she looked for something noncritical to unplug.

'Yeah. I know, everyone expects braids and lots of turquoise jewelry. I only wear it on special occasions, to please my family. Most of the time we just look like everyone else.'

She might not have looked like Pocahontas that day, but she certainly didn't look like everyone else. She had thick dark hair that fell in sheets around her face and would have cost seven to eight hundred dollars for Japanese straightening if she hadn't come by it naturally. Her skin was a perfect even caramel color and it made her teeth and the whites of her eyes seem even whiter than they were.

She plugged in my computer and we sat opposite each other at her desk waiting for my computer to power up; I sent her the e-mail attachment with Lucy's photo. As it printed out she said, 'So may I ask you what this is about?'

I told her about Lucy and debated whether or not to mention the Crawford brothers. As soon as I did the atmosphere in the room changed.

'Have I said something?'

'You know you did. That's why you're here, isn't it?' She was upset, thinking I'd somehow tricked her.

'I'm here because I needed a fax machine and I didn't think the Laundromat had one.' Then I got it. She was the attorney the Crawford brothers had kidnapped.

Twenty-eight

'I've told this story a hundred times. My clients didn't kidnap me. I was never in any danger. My father just overreacted because he couldn't reach me for a day or two.' Betty leaned back in her chair, a bemused look on her face.

'It was all a misunderstanding,' she said, 'but people in this area have long memories. My father in particular.' She handed me Lucy's picture and the printed confirmation that the fax had been sent to the police station. Then she sat there for a while with a strange smile on her face, rolling down the sleeves of her soft plaid shirt.

Was that what I was doing? Overreacting because I couldn't reach Lucy?

'Stacy Winters is going to have a laugh when she sees where that fax came from,' she said. I didn't get the joke.

Betty Smallwood represented the two surviving Crawford brothers in a number of legal matters, most significantly their dispute with the rival faction of the Quepochas tribe. I told Betty that Lucy was working on a story about Native Americans in Connecticut and gambling. I wanted her on my side so I let her think Winters was the one who'd planted the seed that the Crawford brothers might have had something to do with Lucy's disappearance.

'That woman needs to get out and find some new suspects. Every time anything goes wrong within a fifty- mile radius she wants to blame Billy and Claude. She's even tried to implicate them in Nick Vigoriti's death, which is preposterous.'

'People are lining up and taking sides,' she said, shaking her head. 'It's as if they can smell recognition coming and they've all got their hands out. Waiting to cash in. Bobby, the oldest brother, wasn't like that.'

Bobby Crawford might not have been like that, but it was understandable how some people were when individual members from recognized tribes with casinos were pulling down at least $100,000 a year and tribal leaders as much as $1.5 million a year. Just for being a member.

'It's complicated. State recognition is a start, but only federal recognition opens the door for gaming. And it's