Mind Prey

and short heels and they took the Porsche five minutes north to Lake of the Isles.
    “Your husband said perp ,” Lucas said in the car.
    “I love him anyway,” she said.
    Manette’s house was a Prairie-style landmark posed on the west rim of the lake, above a serpentine driveway. The drive was edged with a flagstone wall, and Lucas caught the color of a late-summer perennial garden in the flash of the headlights. The house, of the same brown brick used in Roux’s, was built in three offset levels, and every level was brilliantly lit; peals of light sliced across the evergreens under the windows and dappled the driveway. “Everybody’s up,” Lucas said.
    “She’s his only child,” Roux said.
    “How old is he now?”
    “Seventy, I guess,” Roux said. “He’s not been well.”
    “Heart?”
    “He had an aneurysm, mmm, last spring, I think. A couple of days after they fixed it, he had a mild stroke. He supposedly made a complete recovery, but he’s not been the same. He got…frail, or something.”
    “You know him pretty well,” Lucas said.
    “I’ve known him for years. He and Humphrey ran the Party in the sixties and seventies.”
    Lucas parked next to a green Mazda Miata; Roux struggled out of the passenger seat, found her purse, slammed the door, and said, “I need a larger car.”
    “Porsches are a bad habit,” Lucas agreed as they crossed the porch.
    A man in a gray business suit, with the professionally concerned face of an undertaker, was standing behind the glass in the front door. He opened it when he saw Roux reach for the doorbell. “Ralph Enright, chief,” he said, in a hushed voice. “We talked at the Sponsor’s Ball.”
    “Sure, how are you?” Roux said. “I didn’t know you and Tower were friends.”
    “Um, he asked me to take a consultive role,” Enright said. He looked as though he were waxed in the morning.
    “Good,” said Roux, nodding dismissively. “Is Tower around?”
    “In here,” Enright said. He looked at Lucas. “And you’re…”
    “Lucas Davenport.”
    “Of course. This way.”
    “Lawyer,” Roux muttered, as Enright started into the depths of the house. Lucas could see the light glittering from his hair. “Gofer.”
     
    T HE HOUSE WAS high-style Prairie, with deep Oriental carpets setting off the arts-and-crafts furniture. A touch of deco added glamour, and a definite deco taste was reflected in the thirties art prints. Lucas knew nothing of decoration or art, but the smell of money seeped from the walls. That he recognized.
    Enright led them to a sprawling center room, with two interlocking groups of couches and chairs. Three men in suits were standing, talking. Two well-dressed women sat on chairs facing each other. They all had the expectant air of a group waiting for their picture to be taken.
    “Rose Marie…” Tower Manette walked toward them. He was a tall man with fine, high cheekbones and a trademark shock of white hair falling over wooly-bear white eyebrows. Another man, tanned, solid, tight-jawed, Lucas knew as a senior agent with the Minneapolis office of the FBI. He nodded and Lucas nodded back. The third man was Danny Kupicek, an intelligence cop who had worked for Lucas on special investigations. He raised a hand and said, “Chiefs.”
    The two women were unfamiliar.
    “Thanks for coming,” Manette said. He was thinner than Lucas remembered from seeing him on television, and paler, but there was a quick aggressive flash in his eyes. His suit was French-cut but conservative, showing his narrow waist, and his tie might have been chosen by a French president: the look of a ladies’ man.
    But the corner of his mouth trembled when he reached out to Roux, and when he shook hands with Lucas, his hand felt cool and delicate; the skin was loose and heavily veined. “And Lucas Davenport, I’ve heard about you for years. Is there any more news? Why don’t we step into the library; I’ll be right back, folks.”
    The library was a small rectangular room stuffed with leather-bound books, tan, oxblood, green covers stamped with gold. They all came in sets: great works, great thoughts, great ideas, great battles, great men.
    “Great library,” Lucas said.
    “Thank you,” Tower said. “Is there anything new?”
    “There have been some further…disturbing developments,” Roux said.
    Tower turned his head away, as though his face were about to be slapped. “That is…?”
    Roux nodded at Lucas, and Lucas said, “I just got back