Phantom Prey

and that if no legal charges came from it, there’d never be an official reference to it. “I’m looking for background. If we need a formal record, I’ll bring a subpoena.”
    Once the walls were broken down, the two women relaxed and brought out the knives. “Hunter gave her a lot of jewelry. I saw some of it—she was quite open about their relationship—and I’d have to say that this was not mistress jewelry. This was serious stuff,” Coates said. She had a habit of pushing her glasses up her nose with her middle finger; Lucas suppressed a smile.
    “How serious?” he asked. “Five thousand, ten thousand . . . ?”
    “More than that,” Coates said. She was talking to Laughlin now: “I saw one of those singleton diamonds, you know, like the Forever diamonds, that must have been six or seven carats.” Back to Lucas: “It looked like an acorn. And she had quite a bit of it. She would go on business trips with him, but Hunter always got a suite and she always got the cheapest room available, and she wasn’t the kind to stay in a cheap room.”
    “So they were staying together,” Lucas said.
    “Of course,” Coates said.
    “And it was a sexual relationship.”
    Laughlin nodded. “It was more or less explicit. We had a deal in San Francisco, a contract meeting, and we got together in Austin’s suite the morning of the meeting. I happened to glance in the back bathroom and the Viagra was right there—like the quart-jar size.”
    “Do you think any promises had been made?” Lucas asked. “About a permanent relationship? Marriage?”
    “I think she expected it,” Laughlin said. She pulled her lips back and showed a well-developed set of eyeteeth. “She behaved that way, as though she were the spouse, an owner. She became quite preemptory. ”
    “Did you see any signs of conflict between Mrs. Trenoff and Mrs. Austin?”
    “You wouldn’t see them together very often, and when I did, they didn’t talk—they didn’t really acknowledge each other,” Laughlin said.
    Coates added, “Mrs. Austin didn’t come around much in the last few years. She had her own business interests. We’d see her on business-social occasions, and then Marty would stay in the background.”
    Laughlin leaned forward, one elbow on the table, and dropped her voice: “I saw her watching Alyssa once. It was like a fox watching a chicken. Alyssa seemed unaware of her, though I’m sure she wasn’t.”
    “Of course she wasn’t,” Coates agreed.
    “Sounds like it’d be a good mud-wrestling match,” Lucas volunteered.
    The two women looked at each other, and then at Lucas. Neither smiled.
    He said, “So. When did you get rid of her?”
    “It wasn’t quite like that,” Coates said. “When Hunter died, well, she was his private assistant. The job no longer existed. She finished up her work here, transferring files over to the new leadership, and then she . . . moved on.”
    “To General Mills?”
    Coates nodded. “Yes.”
    “With a good recommendation?”
    “The best,” Coates said.
    “A good severance?”
    “Very good,” Coates said. Now she showed some teeth in a tight smile. They were the wolves, and they’d run the other woman down like a sheep. “We were very generous. Considering.”
    “Considering what?”
    "Considering what a mammoth pain in the ass she’d been,” Laughlin said.
    “When are you going to interview her?” Coates asked.
    “Probably Monday,” Lucas said. “I haven’t called her yet—I wanted to talk to you guys first.”
    “Off the record,” Laughlin said.
    “Yeah, except for the microphone down my pant leg,” Lucas said.
    “You had me fooled,” Laughlin said. Her lips may have twitched, a smile? “I thought it was a Chapstick.”
    "Hey . . .”
    Coates said, “When you see her, say ‘Hi,’ for us.”
    Then on sunday, as Lucas and Weather and the kids were about to sit down to dinner with his old friend Elle, he took a call from the Dakota County sheriff’s office.
    “We got your bulletin about Frances Austin. We’ve got a dead female, appears to have been stabbed, though we haven’t moved her yet,” the deputy said. He was standing in a ditch, talking on his cell phone. “Body’s in a ditch, about ten miles south of Sunfish Lake. She’s got a charm bracelet on her wrist and one charm says, ‘Frances.’”
    “Don’t move,” Lucas said. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
    Weather looked at him in dismay, the roast and the potatoes and the