The Big Dirt Nap

two-bit companies. I wasn't going to waste another five waiting for him to fix his Zamboni.'

Jackie thought she'd gotten her break when Chantel married Bobby Crawford. She went to him with a plan to wring money out of the casino backers. They'd be playing to the investors' greed. People like that deserved what they got, she'd said. And chances are the casinos would never even be built. But Bobby didn't go for it. Neither did Bernie Mishkin.

'All my life I've been surrounded by underachieving men,' Jackie said. 'That's why I finally went to Rachel.'

I knew the more she told us, the more she'd feel she had to kill us, but she just kept talking. I fingered the phone in my pocket, wondering if I could hit redial or 911 so at least someone could hear our last words, but the phone was Babe's and had an unfamiliar keypad.

'What are you doing?' she asked, poking me in the back again.

'It's my rosary.'

'Bullshit. It's a phone. Hand it over.'

'My phone's in my handbag. You can have it.' I took my time and walked toward her barefoot, sidestepping the petrified dog poop. I fumbled in my bag for the Taser, found it, and slid back the safety cover.

'That's close enough. Don't forget I've got your drunken friend here.' She pointed the gun directly at Lucy.

In the dark, the way I held it, the leopard-print Taser even looked like a phone. I pretended to hand it to her but pressed it to her arm instead. She dropped in an instant.

I grabbed Lucy and we ran back to the car. Then we heard the sirens. In the Jeep, Babe jumped the curb and screeched to a halt right near us, having seen some of the action in the headlights. A state trooper's car followed because Babe had hopped a divider to get to us faster. And Ravi hadn't been fooled by my have a nice day; he'd called the cops like any normal person would.

_________

Jackie Connelly was in the back of the trooper's car and the weapon she'd pulled on Lucy and me had been retrieved by the time Stacy Winters arrived. Rachel Page had broken down and confessed to fraud but vehemently denied any involvement in Nick's murder.

'She couldn't watch baby brother go to jail for something she'd done. She gave us plenty on Jackie though. And Sergei. Although the elusive Mr. Russianoff seems to have disappeared. No one's seen him for the last four days.'

'And the Smallwoods and the Crawfords?' I asked.

'In the clear,' she said. 'Jackie orchestrated this beautifully. Manipulating Sergei, getting him and Rachel to do her dirty work, and throwing suspicion on anyone who got in her way.'

'As long as you've got her in custody, you might want to ask her about the fire at Bobby Crawford's,' I said.

Stacy was impressed. 'All right, maybe you're not the pain in the ass I thought you were.'

Once I found my shoes, I'd take the Jeep and Babe would drive Lucy's rental car back to Springfield. I poked around in the dog run.

'Come here,' Babe said, calling me over to the side of the car, 'I've got something to tell you.'

'Only if it's good news or funny,' I said. 'I've about had all the excitement I can handle for one night.'

'You know Caroline Sturgis has been trying to reach you. She's got an idea she wants to talk to you about.'

'I've got an idea too,' I said. 'I know a great diner about twenty minutes from here, and I'm pretty sure it's still open.'

Epilogue

The gun found on Jackie Connelly was identified as the same gun used to kill Nick Vigoriti. She is awaiting trial for his murder.

Rachel Page confessed to falsifying documents related to the sale of the Titans Hotel to the Quepochas tribe for the purposes of defrauding foreign investors. The state is currently determining what charges will be brought against her.

Bernie Mishkin was cleared of all charges, but his Chinese investor was scared off and pulled his money off the table. In Fran's honor he kept the corpse flower.

Amanda Bornhurst was hired part-time as an event planner for the hotel, and has since run three successful parties, contributing to Titans's first profitable quarter since 1986.

Hector Ruiz was promoted to director of publicity and marketing, chiefly on the strength of his assertion that he could get Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony to agree to appear at the hotel. They have yet to perform but the attendant publicity has raised the profile of the hotel and increased business by 12 percent.

Sam Dillon used some of the twenty dollars I gave him to buy a handful of lottery tickets. He won one of the state's single biggest Powerball payouts and is planning to reopen the shoe factory and rehire some of the old workers. He's been sober for fourteen months.

I got a postcard from Oksana Smolova and Billy Crawford from the Four Corners area. They have opened a motel and have no plans to come back to Connecticut.

Sergei Russianoff's decomposing body was found six months later in an abandoned skating rink in Simsbury, Connecticut. Jackie Connelly claims she knows nothing about it but she is considered a prime suspect.

Lucy Cavanaugh and Claude Crawford are working on a screenplay covering the events at the Titans Hotel. They have interest from a VP at Paramount providing Chantel Crawford agrees to let baby Sean appear in the film. She's agreed. Betty Smallwood brokered the deal.

The Springfield Bulletin ran the feature on the Hawley family quilt. I never volunteered to write another article for the paper, for which Jon Chappell is very grateful.

Grant Sturgis was not cheating on his wife. The white Maltese named April really was the pet of a colleague who had to join Grant on a last-minute business trip. The colleague's name was Bob and he occasionally wears a red wig and women's clothing.

Caroline Sturgis is still looking for her big idea and it comes in book three of the Dirty Business mystery series.

Author's Note

This is a work of fiction. There really is a state of Connecticut, a University of Connecticut, a Merritt Parkway, and a corpse flower. The corpse flower, by the way, is a magnificent plant, and if there's one blooming anywhere near you, you should check it out. Most everything else just exists between my two ears; any similarity to actual people, places, laws, tribes, etc., is purely accidental.