Phantom Prey

you up for the killer questions,” Lucas said.
    “Well, here I am, all loose,” she said. “Wheel those bitches out.”
    He laughed again and confessed, “I don’t have any, I’m afraid. Do you like your new job?”
    “I hate it,” she said. “I’m at the bottom of the heap again. I took it because I needed to bring my marketing skills up to par. I went from a junior position at AUS to the top of the company, and now I need to sharpen up and get back into it. I’ve got a job interview, I won’t say who with, but a company bigger than General Mills, in two weeks. I will get the job. And my office will have a door on it.”
    “So you’re a little bitter,” Lucas suggested.
    “Oh, no. I couldn’t stay at AUS. I knew that—I couldn’t have stayed if Hunter and I had married. I was on my way out one way or another. ” Now her chin trembled and a tear popped out; she took off her glasses to wipe it away. “We were going to have kids. He wanted a son. Alyssa didn’t like stretch marks, she didn’t like being pregnant, I don’t think she liked Frances that much. Maybe I’m not being fair.”
    “I think she loved Frances,” Lucas said. “Maybe in a WASP way. As opposed to the Russian.”
    “That’s about right,” she agreed.
    They chatted about smaller matters, but she was getting impatient. She had nice teeth, and a nice smile, and if he dropped his eyelids a bit, blurred her out, he could see her as the fairy. Some lipstick, some makeup, some clothes . . .
    “What do you know about Goth?” he asked.
    “Goth? What do you mean, Goth?” she asked. “Gothic? Like the cathedral at Chartres?”
    “Where?” Now he was confused. “Cathedral?”
    “Chartres. France,” she said. “Like, the country.”
    He shook his head. “No—I mean, like the people who walk around in black clothes.”
    The forehead wrinkle again: “Oh. Well. Nothing.”
    “I got nothing else,” he said, at the end of it.
    “Hmm,” she said. “I’d expected one more thing.”
    “About what?”
    “About Alyssa’s affairs,” she said.
    “She had affairs?”
    “Several. Maybe not several, but two or three. Dancer kind of guys. Hunter was really straight—you know, navy flier, hard work, even church, sometimes. He carried a little too much weight. He looked like a man . Alyssa was one of those women who . . . she thought she was Madonna. She always had the taste for the well-turned male butt.”
    “Dancer kind of guys,” Lucas said.
    “Yes.”
    “So what are you telling me?” Lucas asked.
    “I don’t think she had anything to do with Frances,” Trenoff said. “But what if there was a mistaken identity, but it was one of these guys?”
    “Do you know any of them?”
    "Frank Willett. W-i-l-l-e-t-t. Write it down,” she said.
    Lucas wrote it down. “Who is he?”
    “He worked as a trainer at one of her clubs. Karate guy, you know. Model. Bicycle racer, rock climber, surfer, ski-racer. One of those guys you can’t figure out how they make a living.”
    “When was this? The affair?”
    “Well, they were going at it a year ago,” she said. “Hunter told me about it.”
    “So he knew.”
    “She didn’t tell him, but he knew. And they did do it at her house.”
    They sat in silence for a moment, and then she said, “Awful, isn’t it? People selling each other out?”
    “Trying to catch a killer,” Lucas said.
    “Well, if your online biography is right, you’re pretty good at it.”
    “Not bad,” he said. He stood up, and she stood up, and they shook hands again.
    “Good luck with the new job.”
    She clutched the briefcase to her breast, looked out over it and said, “Luck is not a factor. I’ll get the job and then I’ll work harder than anyone they’ve ever hired.”
    He watched her going off down the skyway, weaving through the crowd, looking at her Rolex.
    She would always be in a hurry, he thought, right up until she dropped dead.
    Could be the fairy. Physically, anyway.
    But if she was the fairy, what was she doing with the guy who shot at Lucas? She seemed to have nothing but disdain for Austin’s lover. And, if Lucas could judge by a one-second look, and he thought he could, the guy who shot at him would be one much like Frank Willett.
    One of those guys who you can’t figure out how they make a living.
    He looked at his notebook: Maybe get a look at Willett, huh?

13
    Fairy was in the kitchen when he called to her; out the window over the sink, the moon was rising behind the