The Big Dirt Nap

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.

Lucy had drifted; she wasn't really listening to Amanda and at that point neither was I.

'What's up?' I asked.

'I got it,' Lucy said. 'We shoot this for the piece on the murder. Listen, we were going to be here today anyway. Why don't we stay another night? I'll get a cameraman up here to shoot the party and I'll treat you to something from Fendi on the way home. Deal?'

If the sign of an enlightened mind is the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time, at that moment Lucy was enlightened. She hated herself for exploiting Nick's murder, but couldn't resist the attraction of a good story.

'We might be on television?' Amanda said. She grew red with excitement. 'Are you serious? Omigod, I have to call people. Everyone will come.'

'Don't get too excited. It might not even make the final edit; I really want the plant.' Lucy took out her business card and gave it to Amanda. 'Can you give me some notice before this baby blooms?' Amanda was apoplectic with joy and nodded so furiously I thought she was going to do herself an injury.

At the front desk we told them we were extending for another day, and asked the bellman to bring our bags back to the room we'd just checked out of. Then we headed out for the county courthouse, where Claude was being held.

Driving back through Shaftsbury, we passed Georgie's convenience store. The Powerball jackpot was up to one hundred and eight million dollars; a few cars with New York and Massachusetts plates were parked outside, the owners loading up on tickets. The shades were down in Betty Smallwood's third-floor office.

In the absence of a metal detector, the desk sergeant at the courthouse simply asked if we had any guns, knives, pepper sprays, or sharp objects and he believed us when we said no. The prisoner was only allowed one visitor at a time, so I stayed outside in the waiting room while Lucy met with Claude.

I'd already seen the paper and the only other reading material was a two-year-old copy of US magazine; I was embarrassed that I knew the happy celebrity couple on the cover had, to use the magazine's terminology, already gone splitsville.

I walked around the small building reading the wanted notices: deadbeat dads and runaways mostly, a few foreclosure auctions, and the freshly minted poster of Billy Crawford, fugitive.

Behind me, someone else was subjected to the same gentle line of questioning as Lucy and I had been. Who are you here to see? What are you bringing?

'What about you, little guy? Are you smuggling anything in in that diaper?' The cop chuckled and playfully patted the baby's bottom. Then Chantel and Sean Crawford sat down on the bench next to me.

Thirty-nine

Chantel's face was clear, unlined, and unmade-up except for a thin blue stripe of eyeliner, which made her small eyes look even smaller. She wore skinny jeans tucked into fake Timberland boots and a fringed jacket that I'd seen for sale at my local Wal-Mart months ago while I'd been buying seeds. Her long curly perm was growing out and had reached the stage I remembered thinking of as 'Tut head.' That aside, she was pretty. And the kid was adorable—wide face, dark eyes, and straight dark hair, the kind of face you'd see in a baby food commercial.

I didn't know how many other prisoners there were in the county courthouse that day, but I thought I knew who she was there to see.

'Sweet little boy,' I said.

'Thanks.' After an awkward minute or two she asked me if I was there to see Claude.

'Yes and no. My friend is in with him. She's a journalist,' I added, instantly feeling elitist for saying journalist and not reporter, even though strictly speaking Lucy was neither. 'They're friends, sort of.'

She nodded. 'Claude's got a lot of women friends,' she said, rolling her eyes. 'He's my brother-in-law. Was, I guess. Is he still my brother-in-law if my husband is dead?'

Damned if I knew. Did it matter? She bounced the baby on her knee, alternately staring at the kid and then off into space. Even though I knew, I asked her name.

'Chantel.'

'Pretty name.'

'My mother was reading a romance novel when she was pregnant with me—one of the characters was named Chantel.' She'd obviously told the story a hundred times before and delivered it with an equal measure of embarrassment and pride until she knew how the story would be received. I smiled.

'She doesn't even remember the name of the book. I guess I should be glad she wasn't reading Harry Potter. I coulda been called Frodo or something.' So Mom was the reader in the family, not her.

'And who's this strapping fellow?' I asked, tugging on a tiny denim sleeve.

'This is my little Sean-ny.'

His real name was Sean, after her favorite actor, Sean Penn. But Chantel thought Seanny sounded Indian, even though we were in the wrong part of the country for Shawnee. Chantel's husband, Bobby Crawford, had been killed in a house fire just before Seanny was born.

'They said he was drinking but I don't know. He promised he wouldn't . . . after we found out about Seanny. I think he just fell asleep with a cigarette, that's all. He was gonna try to stop that, too.

'Everything burned up in the fire. My mom let us move in for a while, got Seanny new baby things. She even got a lawyer to look into Bobby's insurance. I didn't care but she looked after us. She was thinking about Seanny. She said we had to make sure everyone knew Sean was Bobby's little boy. You know how some people talk when