Phantom Prey

front of her wanted to know about available flavors and Lucas could see Trenoff’s jaw working impatiently; high stress, a pusher. She got a large cup of coffee, spilled in some cream, got several napkins, and carried it quickly to the table and sat down.
    “You said you were expecting the call,” Lucas said, and he took a hit on his diet Coke.
    “I couldn’t imagine why you hadn’t called sooner—or somebody,” she said. “Everybody knew about my relationship with Hunter, and that I’d been fired, and sooner or later, it had to occur to somebody that I might have cracked and decided to take my revenge on Alyssa.” She took a tentative sip of coffee and her eyes came up to Lucas, over the rim of the cup. “Mistaken identity . . . says something for the state’s lack of efficiency that it took this long.”
    “What can I tell you?” Lucas asked. “We should have talked to you sooner.”
    “Of course, limping around like you’ve been, I’m surprised it’s you at all,” she said.
    “You knew I was shot?” Lucas asked.
    "Saw it on TV,” she said. “I’m very interested in the Austin case. Very interested. Another year, I would have been Frances’s step-mother. ”
    “Did you have a key to the house?” Lucas asked.
    She shook her head. “No. Hunter had a key to mine. People knew about us, but it’s not like we were down in the next bedroom.”
    “Had Hunter asked you to marry him?” Lucas asked.
    “No. But he would have,” she said. “We’d talked, and I think he went up to Canada to think about it. He would have decided that it was the thing to do. A matter of time.”
    “You’re sure,” Lucas said.
    “I’m sure. I don’t think Alyssa would believe that—but the fact is, Hunter really did need an emotional relationship with somebody, some warmth,” she said. “He didn’t get it from her. They’d signed off on that. They slept in separate bedrooms, led separate lives.”
    “Excuse the expression,” Lucas said. “But uh, why should he buy the calf if he’s already getting the milk?”
    The question made her laugh, sputtering in her coffee. “God, if that weren’t so offensive, it’d really be offensive.”
    “Sorry.”
    “No, you’re not. You’re trying to provoke me. Give me a moment.” She stared down at her coffee cup for a moment, as if saying grace over it, then looked up again. “See, many men and women need more than sex. They like to sit at dinner and talk about what happened that day— all the inane moments in daily life, who said what to whom, why so-and -so always wears blue suits, what happened to the Beaver’s aileron. It’s called ‘having a life.’ Hunter and Alyssa didn’t have one. We did.”
    Lucas said, “Huh.” They looked at each other for a moment, over their drinks, and then Lucas asked, “I don’t want to sound too much like a TV show, but where were you the night Frances was killed?”
    “Working,” she said. “I’d been one week at General Mills and I needed to get up to speed.”
    “Witnesses?”
    She cocked her head: “People came in and out . . . I work in a big bay, with cubicles. If you pressed, you might find people who saw me that night, but couldn’t vouch for the fact that I’d been there the whole time. If anybody remembered at all. The story didn’t get out until the next day, so it was just another working night. Or, come to think of it, there are cameras around, so there might be videotapes, if you asked GM security.”
    “So the short answer would be, ‘No—probably no witnesses,’” Lucas said.
    “Something like that, but not that short,” she said. “Maybe, no witnesses, but videotapes.”
    “How often were you at the Austin house?”
    She had to think, her lips moving, her eyes up toward the ceiling: “Three times. Or, let me see. I’ve got a feeling there might have been another time, a fourth, but I can’t remember what for. All business-social. ”
    “Did you help with the food?” Lucas asked.
    “I don’t help with food,” she said. “I don’t know where they kept the knives.”
    “In a drawer in the kitchen.”
    “There’s a surprise,” she said.
    “What kind of name is Trenoff?”
    Her forehead wrinkled: “What kind do you think?”
    “Russian?”
    She exhaled and said, “Your mind is a steel trap.”
    That made Lucas smile: “Not first generation.”
    “About fifth. What difference would it make?”
    “Just making conversation, to prove that I’m human and to loosen