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 there’s money involved.”
“I think I may have seen your mother at Titans. Is her name Jackie?”
“That’s her. She’s real young. People sometimes take us for sisters.” I was working on the math when Chantel told me her mother had only been sixteen years old when she gave birth.
“Mom was away from home, at a competition. My biological father was an athlete from another school. She never even told him. I mean what for? Was he supposed to drop out of high school and come marry some girl who lived two thousand miles away?”
It sounded like the mantra that Jackie Connelly must have repeated to herself and her little girl when they were both growing up.
“Anyway,” Chantel said, “she had a good weekend. She just missed one double axel, otherwise she would have medaled.”
Lucy finally came out and the sheriff’s assistant ushered Chantel and baby Sean into the visitor’s room.
“Was that…?” Lucy asked, turning around to check Chantel out. “God, she looks so young.”
“She is,” I said. “How’s Claude doing?”
Claude Crawford was doing well, considering he’d lost two brothers in six months. “He’s got a warrior’s attitude,” Lucy said. If she was no longer in love, she was still infatuated. We walked out to the car and sat in silence for a few minutes. I gave her some time. She drove zombielike through the town until I made her pull over.
“I’m not getting on the highway with you like this, even for one exit,” I said. “Let me drive and you tell me what happened in there.”
There were no tissues in the rental car, just a stack of rough, coffee-stained Dunkin’ Donuts napkins; they would have to do for the tears I knew were coming. She blotted her eyes to push the tears back, and then held up her bangs briefly, keeping the napkins there as if her head were about to explode.
“They wouldn’t have even been at the hotel except for me. Neither would Nick. Nick might be alive if it wasn’t for this stupid story. And who cares anyway if there’s another casino in Connecticut? If people want to gamble they’ll figure out a way to do it. Remember the Te-Adoros in Brooklyn?”
The waterworks started again and I flattened out more of the crumpled napkins for her to use.
I did remember the Te-Adoros. They were cheap cigars. Like Coca-Cola, the company gave large red and white signs to anyone who promised to carry their product. Seemingly overnight, dozens of independent stores with the same Te-Adoro signs opened up in Brooklyn and in addition to selling cigars, newspapers, and cigarettes, they did a nice business with illegal video poker machines discreetly tucked away behind the cases of soda and bottled water.
“It’s all my fault,” she sobbed.
“It’s not.” I didn’t add that she, too, could have been killed by whatever lunatic had shot Nick, but presumably she knew that. At least in her more lucid moments. She took a deep breath. “Billy didn’t kill Nick.”
“And you know this because his brother told you? What possible motivation could he have for lying?”
“He’s not lying. Billy and some homeless guy saw it happen. Now that Billy’s disappeared they’ll say he did it. And the real killer will come after Claude because he thinks Claude knows.”
“Does he know who the killer is?”
Lucy shook her head. Trying to keep his brother safe, Billy hadn’t told him who he’d seen put a hole in Nick Vigoriti’s head. I had my doubts as to whether Billy’s strategy would work. Whoever killed Nick would want to make sure neither of the Crawford brothers talked, and you can’t talk if you’re dead. He’d also want to make sure Lucy didn’t talk. And me. I opened the passenger-side door and walked around to the driver’s side.
“Well, somebody knows. Slide over,” I said. She looked at me through puffy, veiny eyes.
“Who?” she asked.
“Let’s go find that homeless guy.”