Invisible Prey

Marilyn,” Jane said. “This newspaper clipping.”
    “Yes, yes, it’s right here.” Coombs was wearing a housecoat. She fumbled in the pocket, extracted a wad of Kleenex, a bottle of Aleve, and finally, a clipping. She passed it to Jane, her hand shaking a bit. Leslie took another cookie.
    A noted Chippewa Falls art collector and heir to the Thune brewing fortune was found shot to death in her home Wednesday morning by relatives…
    “They never caught anybody. They didn’t have any leads,” Coombs said. She ticked off the points on her fingers: “She came from a rich family, just like Connie. She was involved in quilting, just like Connie. She collected antiques, just like Connie. She lived with a maid, like Connie, but Claire’s maid wasn’t there that night, thank goodness for her.”
    “She was shot,” Jane said. “Connie was killed with a pipe or a baseball bat or something.”
    “I know, I know, but maybe they had to be quieter,” Coombs said. “Or maybe they wanted to change it, so nobody would suspect.”
    “We really worry about getting involved with the police,” Jane said. “If they talk to you, and then to us, because of the quilt connection, and they say, ‘Look, here’s some people who know all of the murdered people…then they’ll begin to suspect. Even though we’re innocent. And then they might take a closer look at the Armstrong quilts. We really don’t want that.”
    Coombs’s eyes flicked away. “I’d feel so guilty if somebody else got hurt. Or if these people got away scot-free because of me,” she said.
    “So would I,” Jane said. “But…”
    And Coombs said, “But…”
    They talked about it for a while, trying to work the old woman around, and while she was deferential, she was also stubborn. Finally, Jane looked at Leslie and touched her nose. Leslie nodded, rubbed the side of his nose, and said to Coombs, “I have to say, you’ve talked me around. We’ve got to be really, really careful, though. They’ve got some smart police officers working on this.”
    He stopped and stuffed another oatmeal cookie in his mouth, mumbling around the crumbs. “We need to keep the quilts out of it. Maybe I could send an anonymous note mentioning the antique connection, and leave the quilts out of it.”
    Coombs brightened. She liked that idea. Jane smiled and shook her head and said, “Leslie’s always liked you too much. I think we should stay away from the police, but if you’re both for it…”
     
    C OOMBS SHUFFLED OUT to the front door as they left, leading the way. In the rear, Leslie pulled on the cotton gloves, and at the door, Jane stepped past Coombs as Leslie pulled the finial out of the banister post. He said, “Hey, Marilyn?”
    When she turned, he hit her on the forehead with the finial ball. Hit her hard. She bounced off Jane and landed at the foot of the stairs. They both looked at her for a moment. Her feet made a quivering run, almost as though dog-paddling, then stopped.
    “She dead?” Jane asked.
    Leslie said, “Gotta be. I swatted her like a fuckin’ fly with a fuckin’ bowling ball.”
    “Elegance!” Jane snapped.
    “Fuck that…” Leslie was breathing hard. He squatted, watching the old lady, watching her, seeing never a breath. After a long two minutes, he looked up and said, “She’s gone.”
    “Pretty good. Never made a sound,” Jane said. She noticed that Leslie’s bald spot was spreading.
    “Yeah.” Leslie could see hair, a bit of skin and possibly a speck of blood on the wood of the finial ball. He stood up, turned it just so, and slipped it back on the mounting down in the banister post, and tapped it down tight. The hair and skin were on the inside of the ball, where Coombs might have struck her head if she’d fallen. “Fingers?” he asked. “Break the fingers?”
    “I don’t think we should touch her,” Jane said. “She fell perfectly…What we could do…” She pulled off one of Coombs’s slippers and tossed it on the bottom stair. “Like she tripped on the toe.”
    “I’ll buy that,” Leslie said.
    “So…”
    “Give me a minute to look around,” Jane said. “Just a minute.”
    “Lord, Jane…”
    “She was an old lady,” Jane said. “She might have had something good.”
     
    O UT IN THE CAR, they drove fifty yards, turned onto Lexington, went half a mile, then Leslie pulled into a side street, continued to a dark spot, killed the engine.
    “What?” Jane asked, though she suspected. They