Chosen Prey

truth?”
    “Yup.”
    “Hard to believe that somebody knocked her on the head for her groceries,” Lucas said.
    “Stranger things have happened. You get some bums around that bridge—”
    “Who knocked her on the head, threw her off the bridge, stole her groceries, but left her empty car in the street with the doors locked and two dollars in quarters in the parking-meter change holder.”
    “Probably not,” Allport said glumly.
    “Maybe the groceries depressed her and she took them with her,” Lucas suggested. “You find any dead Tampax floating down the river?”
    “Goddamnit.”
     
    W HEN L UCAS GOT back to City Hall, Marcy Sherrill told him that the task force would meet the next day to get organized. “McGrady called. They think the hill’s clean. They think they got all of them.”
    “So we’re all done.”
    “Not quite. The feds want to resurvey the whole hill. They’re bringing in a team from Washington.”
    “Lake is pretty good, I think. If he can’t find any more, then there probably aren’t any.”
    “Eight’s enough. Nine would be excessive.”
    “Yeah. . . . All right, I got two things.” He told her about the wall at St. Pat’s and the professor found in the river. “What I want you to do is get a couple of guys working on St. Pat’s connections. Get the names of everybody in the St. Pat’s art department and run them. If you can’t do it personally, get Sloan to do it. Black can be a little sloppy with that kind of thing. And do a background on this professor, the one who went over the dam.”
    “I’ll do that. Are you off again?”
    “Nope. I’ve got to make a couple of phone calls. Something just popped into my head.”
    He began by calling St. Paul Homicide and getting contact numbers for Charlotte Neumann, the art professor. She had no local relatives, so he started with the department secretary. After identifying himself, he asked, “Did Miz Neumann have any expensive jewelry?”
    “Uh, a few pieces, I guess. She was a widow, you know.”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    “Oh, yes, her husband was quite a bit older, a very well-known architect in Rochester. She had a nice diamond engagement ring—beautiful rose-cut diamond, a carat and a half, I think—and her wedding ring was gold, of course.”
    “Did she wear it?”
    “Oh, yes. Not the diamond very often, but she wore the wedding ring, on her right hand. She also had an older woman’s gold Rolex watch, which she liked because she worked in clay as her . . . artistic expression, I suppose you’d say. She said the dust didn’t get in the Rolex like it did other watches. She also had a ring with a small green stone which might have been an emerald, but I’m not sure. Oh, and sapphire-and-diamond earrings. The earrings were very modest, but the sapphires were huge. A carat each. So blue they almost looked black. And, hmm . . . I think that was about it.”
    “No pearls?”
    “Oh, sure, she had a string of pearls with matching earrings. I don’t know how expensive they were. She wore them for routine cocktails sessions and so on. Social gatherings at the president’s house.”
    “Listen: Thank you. You’ve really helped a lot.” Lucas hung up and redialed St. Paul Homicide. “When you guys went through Neumann’s house, did you inventory the valuables?”
    “Sure. Want me to shoot you the list? There’s not much on it.”
    Lucas felt the tingle. “You have it? The list?”
    “Yeah, just a minute.” The phone clunked on Allport’s desk, and he went away. He was back in a minute, and he said, “She didn’t accumulate a lot.”
    “She wore an older gold Rolex watch, had a diamond engagement ring, with a big diamond, maybe a carat and a half, pearls, a greenstone ring that might have been an emerald, and diamond-and-sapphire earrings. Big sapphires. Very expensive.”
    Long silence. Then: “You’re really busting my balls, man.”
    “None of it’s on the list?”
    “No. I’ll check with the guys,” Allport said.
    “She also wore a gold wedding band on her right hand,” Lucas said.
    “No wedding band. Nothing like that.”
    “What do you think?”
    “I think I’m gonna wind up working overtime.”
    Lucas leaned toward his door and yelled, “MARCY.”
    She yelled back: “WHAT?”
    “Do you have the number for Aronson’s folks?”
    She dug it out and brought it in. “What’s going on?”
    “Tell you in a minute,” he said. She sat down, and Lucas dialed the number.