Phantom Prey (30 page)

"You think she's the sexiest woman?" Jackson asked, about Charlize Theron.

"There is no such thing," Lucas said. "That'd be like the best baseball game. You can argue about it a long time, but you'll never agree."

"I think she's the sexiest," Jackson said.

"Angelina Jolie?"

"She's good, she's good," Jackson admitted.

"Michelle Pfeiffer?"

"Ah, Jesus, now you've got me confused," Jackson said. "I like the blondies. . . ."

So they talked about sex and tried not to drink too much water, because they'd have to pee, and Jackson had a sack of black-corn chips and some nacho sauce in a plastic cup, and they ate some of that, but not too much, because then one of them might develop gas, and then they talked about the truck for a while, and whether there was any
real
difference between a GMC and a Chevrolet, and they watched women coming and going, and Jackson said, "I wouldn't mind seeing her with her clothes off," and Lucas asked him if he'd ever shot any nudes. Jackson said he dreamed about it, but his wife would kill him, so he didn't.

"You got any nude pictures of your wife?" Lucas asked.

Jackson bit on the oldest baits in history: "No, uh, you know, I . . ."

"Want to buy some?"

They were still laughing about that when Frank Willett came out the door with an old lady. Willett was six feet tall, Lucas thought, narrow shoulders, no hips at all, probably weighed a hundred and sixty pounds, and all of it was muscle: like a snake. He was wearing sweats with a hood folded back on his shoulders, gym shoes, and a black ball cap; round, steel-rimmed glasses; and he dangled a gear bag from his left hand.

Jackson started whaling on the camera the moment they came out the door. The outside walks were made of flagstone, and Willett and the old lady chattered along as they ambled toward the street, and the
n t
ook a right toward the parking lot. Lucas said to Jackson, "Short hair," but when they turned, he spotted a short ponytail sticking out the back of Willett's ball cap. "Shit. Ponytail."

"Hair's black, though, like you wanted," Jackson grunted. "Suck-ass license photo, it could have been any color."

In the parking lot, Willett patted the old lady on the shoulder and walked across to his car, a gray Land Rover LR3. "Get the plates," Lucas said to Jackson.

Jackson did, but said, "Just as easy to look them up."

"The guy's a personal trainer," Lucas said. "Where does he get money for a Land Rover? It might not be his."

Jackson was shooting: "Well, there's ways . . ."

"And I know one of them," Lucas said. "You take fifty thousand dollars off Frances Austin."

When they were gone,
Lucas said, "Let's get these back and get some prints. Need them quick."

"You can have them in two minutes, if you want," Jackson said.

"Yeah?"

Jackson pulled open the bottom drawer of the chiffonier, took out a Canon photo printer about the size of a carton of milk, and plugged in his memory card. Lucas picked out four photos on the small LCD screen, and Jackson printed them as 5x7 glossies.

"Christ, this place is like a photographer's dream," Lucas said, as the photos pooped out of the tiny printer.

"And when some asshole tries to take it away from me, I'm counting on you to back me up," Jackson said.

"Absolutely," Lucas said.

The run
across town was delayed by construction, and Lucas, pissing on his own shoes for choosing the wrong route, took an hour to get to the Riverside State Bank in Maplewood. As he was pulling into the parking lot, he took a call from Carol:

"Not only does our man have a history, there's an outstanding warrant from San Francisco," she said. "He never showed up for a court date on a sale-sized pot bust, so he is fair game. We can bag his tight little ass anytime we want."

"How much did he have?" Lucas asked. "How do you know he has a tight ass?"

"Six ounces. And Dan got back and showed me some of his shots."

"Well, shit, that's not much of a sale."

"The information out there claims he was providing it to meditation clients to smooth them out," she said. "He was teaching in a program called Action Zen, where you'd jump out of an airplane or climb a cliff, and then smooth out on dope."

"Sounds weird," Lucas said.

"Sounds fun," Carol said. "But the important thing, like I said, is that he's fair game."

Emily Wau,
the banker, looked at the photographs for three minutes, shuffled them around on her desk in different configurations, then said, "No."

"No?"

"I think I would have remembered this one, for sure," she said. "Is he married?"

"Jeez, Emily, give me a break. I'm not a dating service," Lucas said.

"Maybe you should be--you're not doing that well as a cop," she said, but she smiled when she said it.

Lucas thought
about it for a few minutes, as he drove away from the bank, then put in a call to Alyssa Austin. "I need to talk to you about Frank Willett."

There was a moment of silence, then, "Uh-oh."

"Where are you at?"

"In St. Paul. I can be home in fifteen minutes. If we have to talk about him, I'd rather do it at home, than here."

Somebody was sitting across her desk, Lucas thought. "Half hour," he said.

On the way down, he called the number he had for McGuire and Robinson, the couple who were setting up the website. Robinson answered, and he identified himself and said, "Did you ever meet a friend of Frances named Frank Willett?"

"Uh . . . maybe."

"Maybe?"

"Yeah. We went out to a place in Stillwater, last summer, a restaurant down on the water."

"The Dock," Lucas said.

"Yes, that's it," Robinson said. "Anyway, she was there with a guy, and she might have said his name was Frank. I don't know what their relationship was--they seemed kind of standoffy, but you know, funnylike. Like maybe they were unhappy about us seeing them together."

"Denise, you didn't mention this when we talked."

"I didn't even remember it until you asked me about Frank," sh
e s
aid. "And I'm not sure the guy was named Frank--we didn't eat with them; they were at a table for two, we just said hi, and we moved along."

"You remember what the guy looked like?" Lucas asked.

"Pretty good-1 ooking. Like a ballet dancer, or something. Thin, big hands."

"Hair color?" Lucas asked.

"Black; with a ponytail. Two-day stubble. And he had a diamond earring."

"Of course he did," Lucas said.

"Yes; of course he did," she said. "What's this all about?"

"We're taking a look at him," Lucas said. "Now, I'm very serious about this. And you tell McGuire, too. If you see this guy again, you get away from him. Especially if you see him on the street, and he comes over to you."

"You think?"

"We can't take the chance," Lucas said. "So if you see him . . ."

He could hear the shiver in her voice: "Get away."

Austin was
wearing a black velour sweat suit and pink dance shoes. She held the door open, closed it behind him, and said, "So somewhere along the line, you ran into Frank. I've been thinking about it, who you could have talked to, and I'm worried that one of my employees tipped you off."

"Why should that worry you?" Lucas asked.

"Because I wouldn't take that kind of disloyalty," she snapped. "If you heard it from one of my people, I'm going to have to root her out."

Lucas was shaking his head. "Relax. It's not one of your employees."

She nodded: "Then it was Martina, that bitch. I thought Hunter might have figured something out. We were at an event at the Walker, and who should come wandering by, but Frank. I told him to get away from me, but I saw Hunter notice, you know, looking at me and then at Frank, and I was afraid he'd figured it out. And
he
told
her."

"You
should have told me," Lucas said. "For Christ's sakes, your daughter was
murdered."

"The relationship was over for six months before Frances was killed," she said, and she started to tear up. "There was no connection. Frank is not a bad guy."

"California wants him on a dope warrant," Lucas said.

"What?"

"Not that big a deal, really--but he does have a warrant out," Lucas said. "If he gets stopped on a traffic ticket, and they run him, that could pop up."

"Oh, shit," she said. They had trailed into the living room, and she plopped on a couch. And she shouted, "Helen!"

The housekeeper scurried out of the kitchen.

"Squeeze a couple of oranges for me, will you? Maybe an orange smoothie. Lucas? You want a smoothie?"

"That sounds fine," Lucas said.

When the housekeeper was gone, he said, "I gotta tell you about something, and the way you're talking, I'm not sure you knew about it."

"About what?"

"About Frank and Frances."

"What about Frank and Frances?" Her hand went to her throat, and she half-l aughed, but with shock in her eyes, denying it, and said, "You've got to be kidding."

"We think there was something going on there. The Dakota County cops came up with her purse--a guy found it and turned it in. There was a letter . . ." He took the folded print out of his pocket and handed it to her.

She looked at it for a long time, more than a minute, then shook her head and said, "Well. Not much here."

"But it looks to me--"

"Me, too. It's her handwriting, no doubt about it," Austin said.

"Do you have any idea when the relationship might have started?"

"It would have to be after he and I broke it off."

"Why? Why afterwards."

She looked at him, blankly, for a moment, then half-smiled: "Because he would not have had the energy to be sleeping with her, too. I, uh, needed a lot of attention."

"Okay. So when did you break off?"

"April, the middle of April, right around tax time," Austin said. "I had a lot to do, he started getting a little testy when I put him off . . . and finally I told him that we should end it. And I did. We did. Agreed to."

"Sounds like
you
did," Lucas said.

"Maybe," she conceded.

"And he would have gotten to know Frances through you?" Lucas asked.

"Well, through the spa in Minneapolis, Riverwood. It's right over in St. Anthony Main."

"By the A1," Lucas suggested.

"Oh, God! I never thought of that. I mean, it's several blocks, but it's an easy walk." She turned her face away from him for a moment
,
thinking, and then back: "But so what? I mean, what would that mean?"

"I don't know. But tell me about how they probably met," Lucas said.

"Well. She was going to the university, off and on, had an apartment over there, and the Riverwood location was the closest one, so she took a locker and would work out over there," Austin said. "Frank works at several of the sites, usually one morning or one afternoon a week, doing tai chi, yoga, Pilates, meditation, whatever the members want."

"Did she know that you were seeing Frank?"

"Not as far as I know. But I'm sure a couple of members could have figured it out and let her know. I wouldn't be surprised if something like that precipitated this letter."

"She apparently hadn't sent it," Lucas said. "It was still in her purse. So they were going on at the time."

"You think that he might have come here?"

"What if she thought you were still sleeping with him? When she was? He denies it, she comes here to confront you, they argue . . . I mean, his job is at stake," Lucas said. "Another thing--that fifty thousand dollars? You may not have noticed it, but your employee is driving a Land Rover. Do you pay him that well?"

Now she blushed, the pale pink tint creeping up her neck to her cheeks. "Actually . . . Look, I wasn't paying him to sleep with me. But I have lots of money, and he was driving around in this old Jeep Cherokee with holes in the floor. I was afraid he was going to gas himself."

"You
bought him the Land Rover?"

"I helped him with it, yes," she said.

"Shit. I thought it could be the fifty thousand. That would have tied things up just perfectly," Lucas said.

She looked out at the lake, her eyes narrowing, her lips tightening, and she said, "I cannot believe that
asshole."

"And he was gone, your affair was done, before Hunter was killed?"

Her face jerked back toward him. "You don't think . . . ?"

"There's nothing to suggest it. But there are a lot of dead people."

She shook her head. "I'll tell you something: Frank knows nothing about mechanical things. I don't see him sabotaging an airplane in such a complicated way that Hunter could fly it all over the place, and then up to Canada, and then have it fail at that one moment when it couldn't, without crashing."