Oksana played with a pack of cigarettes but didn’t open it. She fiddled with her flat, dirty blond hair, the scarf that was wrapped around her neck three or four times, and the hem of her skirt.
“Hector told me your name and I Googled you. The newspaper article said you helped solve a crime once. Is that why you’re here?”
“The police solve crimes. I’m a gardener. I have to be honest with you. I’m not here because of Nick, I’m only here because you mentioned someone named Lucy. She’s the person I was waiting for the night I met Nick in the bar.”
Oksana shook her head back and forth like a petulant child.
“What do you mean, no? I know what I was doing there.”
“The other woman met Nick… and now he’s dead.”
Nick had gotten two phone calls after I left and Oksana had heard him speak to someone he called Lucy. He said he’d meet her.
“He made a joke about older women and then he left. That was the last time I ever saw him.” Older women? Lucy was thirty-five. I guess if you were Oksana’s age, that was old.
She looked around again, as if she expected someone to be listening over her shoulder. I dropped my voice just in case.
“Why are you doing that? Who else would care what we’re talking about?”
“There are people.”
Now she was weirding me out. “Do you by any chance know a couple of guys, the Crawford brothers?” I asked.
Oksana nodded. “They’re natives. They were friends with Nick.”
Maybe Lucy met all three of them. But why wouldn’t she have text messaged that, instead of… two brothers?
“Did you see them last night at the hotel?” I asked.
“No, they can’t come in. They picketed some cheesy Indian display the Mishkins put up outside the hotel. Worse than this one,” she said, pointing to the marginally distasteful one right near us. “Rachel got the cops to kick them out and a judge to say that they couldn’t come back. I don’t think Nick liked it either. He told me that’s what he and the Mishkins argued about.”
“Are you sure?”
“Nick said they were greedy.”
“Do you know what he meant?”
She shook her head and looked around again.
“Who are you expecting to see?” I asked, exasperated.
Wide-eyed, she leaned in and whispered the name.
“Sergei.”