Silken Prey

and some people thought he was drinking . . . and I just . . . let it go. I really didn’t have anything to contribute, and I thought I might get in trouble.”
    “Did he ever ask you . . . or suggest to you . . . that he might want to pull some kind of dirty trick on Senator Smalls?”
    “Oh, no, he would never have done that,” Fey said. “I mean, he might have tried to pull a dirty trick, but he wouldn’t have spoken to me about it. I
like
Senator Smalls and Robert knew that. The senator and I have common interests. He likes classical piano and he likes Postimpressionist art. If Robert had asked me to do a dirty trick on Senator Smalls, I would have refused and I would have told Senator Smalls. Robert teased me about that. About me being loyal.”
    Lucas worked her for a while, but in the end, believed her. “Are you friends with Ramona Johnson?” Lucas asked.
    “Ramona? Well, yes, I guess. We don’t socialize or anything, but we’re friendly.”
    “What is her attitude toward Senator Smalls?”
    “Well . . .” Fey’s eyes flew off again. “Oh . . .”
    “Nobody will know who said what in here,” Lucas said. “Did Ramona have some kind of grudge against Senator Smalls?”
    “Oh, no, I wouldn’t think so,” Fey said. “Just the opposite. I had the impression, mmm . . .” She trailed away.
    “You think they had a relationship?”
    “I, mmm, I thought it . . . possible,” Fey said. “
Please
don’t tell her I said that.”
    •   •   •
    J OHNSON WAS THE LAST of the ten people he’d question that day. Before he called her in, he phoned Smalls and said, “I have a somewhat delicate personal question to ask you.”
    “Ask.”
    “Ramona Johnson?”
    “No. Though the thought has crossed my mind,” Smalls said.
    “Would she have felt . . . neglected, or spurned?”
    “I don’t believe so. . . . No. I don’t see it. You think she had something to do with the porn?”
    “I don’t think anything in particular. I’m just trying to get everybody straight, and to cross-check what I can. Looking for motives,” Lucas said. “If you wanted to talk to somebody on the committee staff about art or music, who would you have talked to?”
    “You’ve interviewed Sally Fey . . . and she’s the one I would have talked to. I didn’t sleep with her, either.”
    “Okay. That’s what I needed.”
    “Wait a minute,” Smalls said, “I’ve got a question for you, before you hang up. Have you heard any rumblings from the AG’s office?”
    “I haven’t heard a thing. Should I have?”
    “Mmm. I don’t know,” Smalls said. “He had that guy over at the St. Paul police when this ICE woman copied the hard drive. Now there’s a rumor around that he wants to know what we found that brought about Rose Marie’s announcement.”
    “I think she told him.”
    “I’ve heard that he wants it in detail,” Smalls said. “He wants to know how it all came about. But all I’ve got is a rumor.”
    “I haven’t heard a thing,” Lucas said.
    •   •   •
    R AMONA J OHNSON was a fleshy, dark-haired woman with intelligent eyes and a smoldering, resentful aggression that piqued Lucas’s curiosity. He began by asking about her career, first as a researcher and then as a senior staffer. She had three degrees, she said, both a B.A. and a master’s in political science, and an MBA in business. She’d spent most of her life bumping against various glass ceilings, she said, and was presently planning a number of political initiatives involving Republican women’s work issues—glass ceiling issues.
    She had nothing to do with Tubbs, she said, and resented the fact that she’d been asked to talk to a police officer investigating his disappearance. “I know you think you’re just doing your job, but there are more and more police-state aspects to the way our various security apparati are conducting themselves. Really, your questions are no more than a fishing expedition.”
    “That’s what most investigations
are
,” Lucas said. “So, you had nothing to do with Tubbs lately. Have you
ever
had anything to do with Tubbs?”
    “No,” she said. “I’ve always been Republican policy, he’s always been Democratic operations. We’ve worked on opposing political campaigns, of course, and we sometimes go to the same parties. I’ve known him for years, but we’ve never been . . . intimate. I don’t mean that just in a sexual way, either. I