Invisible Prey

pepper. Good-looking, but tough,” she said. “He had a scar that started up in his hair and came down across his eye. Not an ugly scar, a white line.”
    “He wasn’t as big as Leslie,” Jane Widdler suggested.
    “No…not as tall, and also…” Widdler’s sales assistant groped for a word.
    “Not so fat,” Jane Widdler said.
    “He looked like he was in really good shape,” the sales assistant said, staying away from the topic of Leslie’s heft. “He didn’t look like an antiques person.”
    “I might know who he is,” Jane Widdler said. She smiled, just a little, because of the Botox. “It might be better if you didn’t mention him to Leslie. I think this man is…an old friend of mine. There’s nothing going on, but I don’t want Leslie to get upset.”
    The sales assistant nodded. “Okay. I’ll let you deal with it.” She definitely didn’t like the idea of upsetting Leslie.
    “That would be best,” Jane Widdler said.
     
    J ANE THOUGHT about it for a long time, until a headache began creeping down her neck from the crown of her head. Finally, she got her BlackBerry from her purse, looked up a number, and punched it in.
    “Hello, Jane,” Amity Anderson said.
    “We’ve got to get together. Right now. Without Leslie,” Jane said.
    “Why?”
    “Because,” Jane Widdler said.
    “I just want out,” Amity said.
    “That’s all I want,” Jane Widdler said. “But things may be getting…difficult.”
     
    T HEY HOOKED UP in a coffee shop in the Skyway. Widdler arrived on the street level, before going up to the Skyway, walking right past Jenkins who sat behind a window in Starbucks, but he’d never seen her before. Anderson came down to the second floor to the Skyway, never going to the street, leaving Jenkins sitting in the Starbucks, with, at least metaphorically, his dick in his hand.
    The Skyway shop, a Caribou, had a selection of chairs and tables and Widdler and Anderson both got medium light-roasts and chocolate raspberry thumbprint cookies, and hunched over a table in the corner. Widdler said, “This state agent who talked to you, Davenport. He came to the shop and he asked about a white van. He knows.”
    “Knows what?” Amity Anderson took a bite of her thumbprint.
    “You know,” Widdler said irritably. They’d never talked about it, but Anderson knew.
    “The only thing I know is that we went to college together and you recommended that Mrs. Donaldson buy a rare Armstrong quilt, which was later donated to the Milwaukee, and that’s all I know,” Anderson said. She popped the last of the thumbprint in her mouth and made a dusting motion with her hands.
    “I really didn’t want to be unpleasant about this,” Widdler said, “but I’ve got no choice. So I will tell you that if they take me off to prison, you will go with me. I will make a deal to implicate the rest of the gang, in exchange for time off. Meaning you and Marilyn Coombs.”
    Anderson’s faced tightened like a fist: “You bitch. I did not …”
    “You knew. You certainly knew about the quilts, and if you knew about the quilts, then any jury is going to believe you knew about the rest of it,” Widdler said. “You worked for Donaldson, for Christ’s sake. You live five minutes from Bucher. Now, if Davenport knows, and he does, he will eventually be able to put together a fairly incriminating case. We dealt with all those people—Donaldson, Bucher, Toms. There are records, somewhere. Old checks.”
    “Where’s my money? You were going to get me the money.” Anderson hissed. “I’m going to Italy.”
    “I’ll get you the money and you can go to Italy,” Jane said. “But we’ve got to get out of this.”
    “If you’re talking about doing something to Davenport…”
    Widdler shook her head. “No, no. Too late for that. Maybe, right back at the beginning…” She turned away from Anderson, her eyes narrowing, reviewing the missed opportunity. Then back to Anderson: “The thing is, cops are bureaucrats. My stepfather was a cop, and I know how they work. Davenport’s already told somebody what he thinks. If we did something to him, there’d be eight more cops looking at us. They’d never give up.”
    “So who…” Anderson had the paper cup at her lips, looking into Widdler’s eyes, when the answer came to her. “Leslie?”
    Widdler said, “I never signed anything. He endorsed all the checks, wrote the estimates. He did the scouting while I watched the shop. They could make a