Phantom Prey

millionaire, got a preapproved credit card form, or several forms, in the mail.”
    “She’d have to be dead not to,” Del said. “Even then, she’d get a few.”
    “Right. So somebody who’s right there—a close friend at her apartment, or the housekeeper at the Sunfish Lake house, or somebody we don’t know yet, but who had to be close—fills out one of these forms, applies for the card. Has all the information. The card comes back, it’s activated, Frances never knows, because it’s never used. There’s your preferred two forms: driver’s license and credit card.”
    “That’d work,” Del said.
    Lucas picked up the glasses and looked for Toms, but she wasn’t in front of a window and he put them back down. “Damn right it would work. A minor variation on a really old hustle.”
    “Then they kill her to cover it up.”
    Lucas said, “I’m not that far, yet. The killing could be spontaneous. Looks spontaneous. Let’s say it’s the housekeeper. She’s just getting ready to leave for the day when Frances shows up, and Frances knows. She’s actually been tracking her Fidelity account, figures out what happened, and there’s an accusation, a confrontation, an argument . . . the knife is there.”
    “Go pick her up,” Del said.
    “There’s one teeny-weeny little problem,” Lucas said. “The housekeeper has a pretty good alibi. And there’s this car thing I can’t figure out. . . . Plus, would somebody really take the chance of identifying herself as Frances Austin, in a St. Paul bank, a few months after Austin’s name and photos had been all over the place because of her old man getting killed?”
    “Maybe,” Del said. “It’d take some balls.”
    “Lots of balls,” Lucas said. And, he added, “Whoa-whoa-whoa . . .”
    Del turned and looked across the street; Lucas was using the glasses. Heather Toms had just gone to the front door, opened it, and led a man back inside. He was a tall man, thin, with curly black hair and a saturnine face. When the apartment door was closed, the man pushed Heather against the wall and with one hand on her slightly protrudent baby belly, kissed her hard.
    “Sonofabitch,” Del said.
    Lucas handed him the glasses, and Del watched for two seconds. “If it’s Siggy, he’s grown six inches . . .”
    “. . . could be lifts in his shoes . . .” Lucas said.
    “. . . lost thirty pounds . . .”
    “. . . that could happen . . .” Lucas said.
    ". . . got plastic surgery . . .”
    “You can do that in Mexico,” Lucas said.
    “If that’s Siggy, I’ll kiss your ass,” Del said, and handed the glasses back.
    Lucas looked: they moved slowly from the hallway through a blind spot and then into the kitchen, where the guy got Heather’s butt against the kitchen table and kissed her again, tipping her back, and Lucas said, “Holy shit, he’s gonna do her on the kitchen table.”
    “No way,” Del said.
    Across the street, Heather righted herself and pushed him off, but she was laughing, and this wasn’t the end of it.
    “Where did this guy come from?” Lucas asked.
    “Who knows,” Del said. Sounding pleased, Del added, “Treacherous little minx, isn’t she?”
    “Siggy is gonna kill her.”
    “Especially if that little knob on her tummy isn’t Siggy’s work,” Del said.
    Lucas handed him the glasses. “If it’s not Siggy’s, then we’re probably wasting our time sitting here. Siggy’s never coming back. She’s way too smart to do that to him. He’d kill her with a goddamn chain saw.”
    “Not a complete waste of time,” Del said. “I’ve never seen anybody get laid on a kitchen table, except in that baseball movie. I don’t think it really happens—but if it does, I’d like to see it.”
    “I meant, waste of time in terms of life, liberty, and the Minnesota way,” Lucas said.
    “Fuck that,” Del said. Talking to the guy across the street: “Go for it, guy.”
    Lucas asked, “How’s your old lady?”
    “Better. Must’ve eaten something that made her sick,” Del said. He took the glasses from Lucas and put them up to his eyes. “You can’t guilt-trip me outa watching this. This is purely professional.”
    At home that night, Lucas told Weather about the break.
    “It’ll lead to something, for sure?” she asked.
    “It feels that way in my gut—it’ll lead to something,” Lucas said. “I need to take a really close look at this housekeeper, and maybe Austin herself, and maybe these two friends of hers,