Phantom Prey

as astrology and tarot. On the functioning side of her brain, she had degrees in management and accounting.
    Lucas could see the swimmer in her, the athlete, as he followed her through the entry, down the high-ceiling hall to the living room. Her ass was like a rock, and interesting to look at. His taste in women was catholic, but she fit into a particularly interesting small-tough-blonde slot, the same slot occupied by Weather.
    “. . . couldn’t think of what else to do, so finally I talked to Weather. I know that makes you unhappy,” she was saying.
    “No, no, I’m happy to do it,” he lied. Great ass or not, she was goofy. The thought brought to mind the punch line of the old Mickey Mouse-Minnie Mouse joke—“I didn’t say you were crazy, I said you were fuckin’ Goofy.”
    He smiled to himself, then hid the smile.
    The living room was done as two partial-hemispheres of glass, looking out toward the lake, almost like the cups of a brassiere. A Steinway grand piano sat in one of the cups, while a circle of overstuffed furniture was arranged as a conversation group in the other. She took him there. “Coffee? Beer? Pepsi? I’ve got some great coffee.”
    “That’d be fine,” Lucas said.
    “Be right back.”
    She disappeared down another hall, and he could hear her speaking to someone, and a reply. A minute later she was back, trailed by a dark-haired young woman carrying a ceramic tray that held two cups of coffee, a ceramic pot, and a pile of butter cookies.
    “Thanks, Helen. Are you off now?”
    “Unless you need me,” the woman said.
    “Take off. Say hello to Ricky for me.”
    The housekeeper looked uncertainly at Lucas and then said, “I’d be happy to stay awhile longer. . . .” She had an Ole and Lena accent from Northern Minnesota, but had dark eyes and hair that seemed more Middle Eastern than Nordic.
    “Mr. Davenport is a policeman. We’re discussing Frances,” Austin said. “I’m safe—his wife would kill him if he attacked me.”
    The housekeeper rattled around in the kitchen for another minute or two, as Lucas and Austin chatted about the view over the lake, and about a six-foot-long oil painting that perfectly captured the bluffs over the Mississippi, south of St. Paul’s downtown, in a rainstorm.
    "It’s a Kidd landscape. We were lucky enough to buy it while they were still affordable,” Austin said. "Do you know his work?” 3
    “Actually, I know Kidd,” Lucas said. “He just got married a year or so ago—he’s got a new son.”
    “Mmm,” Austin said. “Too bad. If nothing romantic came along, I was thinking of looking him up.”
    “You might have gotten along,” Lucas said.
    “Why? Is he fuckin’ goofy, too?”
    Lucas’s mouth nearly dropped open: she’d snatched the words right out of his head. Instead, he laughed and said, “Actually, he’s a pretty nice guy. Used to be a wrestler in college, same time I was skating.”
    The housekeeper ducked her head into the living room to say that there were more cookies in the jar, and that she was leaving. A moment later, they heard the garage-access door close, and they were alone.
    Austin sat on an oversized leather easy chair, and pulled her feet up to sit cross-legged, yoga-style. “How do you want to do this? You want me to talk?”
    Lucas took a cup of coffee, leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, looking at her over the cup. “I’ve read the file on your case and I checked the Minneapolis homicide guys on Dick Ford. I looked at some of the crime-scene photos on Ford. I can see a superficial similarity in the . . .” He paused, groping for a better phrase, couldn’t find one: “. . . blood trail. I know about the Goth connection. That’s what I know.”
    She nodded, and took a cup of coffee, and a sip. “Okay. So you know the basics. Now, you should also know—I don’t know if this kind of thing would be in their reports—but your investigating agent, this James Benson, thinks I may have had something to do with whatever happened to Frances.”
    She paused, looking for a reaction, but Lucas just nodded: let her go on. “There are some reasons that they think that. By their lights. You know, statistics: that most murders like this involve friends or relatives. But Frances didn’t have a boyfriend at the moment, and her last two, going back five years, both had alibis. She was careful; she was quite aware of who she was, and how rich she was. Also, if she were murdered here, how did the