The Big Dirt Nap

Twenty-seven

My plan was to e-mail a picture of Lucy to the Titans office and then have Rachel or Bernie print it out for me and fax it to the police station. It was a good plan as far as it went.

"I told you before, my brother is in meetings all day. He's not even on the premises and I'm certainly not going to let you sit at his computer and go through his e-mails." She gave a brittle laugh as if the very idea was insane.

Rachel Page would not be charmed. Or threatened. Or appealed to. Her better angels had flown off to help more responsive humans. She stood there looking as warm and fuzzy as Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca.

"I totally understand," I said, smiling and using my best saleswoman's voice. "I don't want to go through my own e-mails, much less someone else's. You do it. It's an e-mail from me—if I sent it, I already know what's in it, right?" I delivered this piece of logic with a jaunty smile, fully expecting a sheepish "Oh, why not." For a moment I thought she was considering, but it was just a tease.

"Out of the question," she said. Then she threw me a bone. "If you can print out your picture somewhere else 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 café, 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 café." 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.