One Grave Less

what happened to her?”
    “I don’t know. I would say yes, just because of the South American connection, but I haven’t any idea what this is about.”
    “It doesn’t make sense to me either,” said Liam. “If someone were trying to mess you up, why didn’t they pick someone in Atlanta to frame you with? I mean . . . Brazil?”
    “How reliable is the story of the deathbed statement?” asked Diane.
    Liam shrugged. “I don’t know. The whole story sounds like it’s gone through a couple rounds of exaggeration. But she did know your name. She said it first, not me.”
    “This just makes no sense,” said Diane.
    Garnett focused his attention on Liam. “My people couldn’t even reach Río de Sangue. I’m impressed with what you’ve done.”
    “It helps having recently been in the military and knowing people who know people who know people. The six-degrees thing works pretty well. You can get to just about anyone anyplace in the world. I found a guy who pilots one of the boats that drops off supplies and mail at Río de Sangue. He’s the cousin of a guy who knows a guy I served with. I had to make a few calls in the process, however, before I located him.”
    “Six-degree thing?” said Garnett.
    “You know, six degrees of Kevin Bacon,” said Liam.
    “The actor?” said Garnett. “What does he have to do with this?”
    “It’s kind of a game. You don’t have to go more than six degrees away to connect any actor living or dead to Kevin Bacon. Usually it’s less than six.”
    “Why Kevin Bacon?” asked Garnett.
    Liam shrugged.
    Garnett stuck his chin toward Liam as if making a dare. “Rudolph Valentino,” said Garnett. “He died well over eighty years ago. Maybe even ninety.”
    “Too easy,” said Liam after sitting silently for a few seconds, thinking. “Valentino was in The Son of the Sheik with an actor named Montagu Love. Love was in All This, and Heaven Too with June Lockhart—Lassie and Timmy’s mom. She was in The Big Picture with Kevin Bacon. Three degrees.”
    Garnett stared at him.
    “I spend a lot of time on the Internet Movie Database,” Liam said.
    Garnett looked like he was about to try to think of an even older or more remote actor. Liam shook his head.
    “Don’t even try. It’s all been done.” Liam grinned at him.
    “It’s based on the six degrees of separation idea,” said Diane. “That the world is so small and interconnected that each of us is no more than six steps by direct line of association away from every other person on earth.”
    “Well, that’s ridiculous,” said Garnett.
    Liam and Diane exchanged glances, smiled, and looked at Garnett.
    “If you wanted to write a letter and get it directly into the hands of the Queen of England, how would you do it?” said Diane.
    Garnett shrugged. “Mail it to the palace.”
    “It might get into the hands of her secretary,” she said. “Wouldn’t guarantee the queen would get her hands on it.”
    Garnett shrugged again. “Then I have no idea. I have no connection to the Queen of England.”
    Diane smiled. “You would give it to me and I would give it to Gregory and he would give it to the queen at the next royal social event he went to. Gregory was knighted recently and his brother is a duke. He’s one of those second sons you hear about. And he’s been involved in charity work that the queen is also interested in. He knows her. He couldn’t walk up to the palace and knock on the door and ask to see her, but he could talk to her at some social event and hand the letter over to her.”
    Garnett looked taken aback. “I’m two degrees of separation away from the Queen of England.”
    “Not so strange,” said Diane. “She knows a great many people and those people know people and it increases exponentially. Nice little network analysis canon.”
    “Okay,” said Garnett. “I get it about the famous. They know a lot of people. How about someone from a remote tribe in Africa or South America? They don’t know anyone.”
    “Not exactly true. Even the most remote tribes have been visited by missionaries, Doctors Without Borders, or studied by anthropologists. I could probably make a connection in six or fewer steps—given enough information.”
    “Am I the only one who didn’t know about this rule?” Garnett said.
    “I believe so, yes,” said Diane. She and Liam smiled with expressions of amusement.
    Gregory’s notebook, thought Diane. All those names and connections he’d been drawing.