Phantom Prey

work—Lucas had breakfast with the kids, talked to Letty about hip-hop music, stuffed creamed corn and whipped ham into Sam’s mouth, and argued with the housekeeper about the lawn service, which wanted, too early in the year, in Lucas’s opinion, to schedule a winter cleanup. At eight o’clock, he was on the phone to Alyssa Austin.
    “I was wondering—have you begun organizing the financial records for Frances’s estate?”
    “Not yet, really—there’s an accountant and a lawyer, but they’re not pushing too hard,” Austin said. “Not yet, anyway.”
    “Would it be possible for me to look at her financial records? Checkbook and investment records? All that?”
    “Of course, if you think there might be something in there.”
    He hesitated for a moment, then said, “There was another Goth killing last night.”
    “Oh, no!” Her voice was a groan. “Who was it?”
    “A kid named Roy Carter,” Lucas said. “Middle twenties, I guess, worked in a liquor store and hung out at the A1 and November, at least some of the time. Did Frances ever mention the name?”
    “Not that I remember. She had friends I didn’t know, but he wasn’t one of the long-term ones. What’d he look like?”
    “Tall, pale, red hair, thin—bony, almost,” Lucas said.
    “That doesn’t sound familiar. . . . Does he have a family?”
    “Yeah, his parents are postal workers, I guess. Out in the countryside, somewhere.”
    “That’s awful for them. That’s awful,” Austin said.
    “So I can get that stuff?”
    “Yes. I’ll put it all out for you. I’ve got a board meeting today, but Helen will be here. I’ll stack it up in the front room. You’re welcome to stay as long you want. Helen can get you Cokes and coffee and sandwiches. ”
    “One more thing. Have you heard of a couple . . .” He looked in his notebook again. ‘. . . named Denise Robinson and Mark McGuire? ”
    “Sure. They were friends of Francie’s. I should have given you their names, but I didn’t think of them,” she said. “They came by with her a couple of times after Hunter was killed, last fall sometime.”
    “What does Robinson look like?”
    “Mmm, tall, gawky, blondish hair—sandy, maybe—wears big plastic-rimmed glasses. She’s a marathoner. Bony shoulders, drinking-straw arms. She told me that she ran it under three, which means she’s pretty serious about it. Why?”
    “Just a couple names I picked up,” he said. “I’m pushing all of Frances’s friends for names.”
    And Robinson didn’t sound like a fairy, he thought after he’d rung off.
    He called anson, the Minneapolis detective, from the car, on the way to Austin’s house. Anson was sleepy: he’d gotten six hours the night before. “And I gotta have eight, or I’m just not worth shit.” They both yawned together, into their phones, and Anson added, “We got the ID last night, it’s confirmed. I got our guys to make up a mug shot of the fairy—I’m going to run it around this morning, talk to all those people on your list.”
    “Let me know what you get,” Lucas said. “I’m on the way over to Alyssa Austin’s to look at her daughter’s financial records.”
    If nothing came up sooner, they agreed to talk at noon, to compare notes.
    Lucas found four boxes of records waiting for him at Austin’s. The housekeeper met him at the door, took him into the living room, said, “Mrs. Austin said to try to keep all the folders together, because there’s really a lot of paper and if it gets confused, they might not ever get it straight again.”
    Austin had been right about the paper. There were two intersecting sets of records: Hunter Austin’s estate, two million of which went to Frances, while the rest went to Alyssa; and then Frances’s estate, which included not only the two million from Hunter Austin’s estate, but another half-million that she had apparently accumulated earlier, presumably through gifts and investments made on her behalf.
    Hunter Austin’s estate was still mostly intact, because the estate return had only recently been accepted by the IRS; and all of his investment, banking, and retirement accounts and trusts were still operating. That produced dozens of checks coming and going each year, on top of money coming in from his investments.
    Frances Austin had had two major accounts of her own, one with Wells Fargo investment services, and one with Fidelity Investments. As money came in from one or the other—about a quarter of her