Invisible Prey

by John Sandford

  “YEAH. She just got in the elevator. So what do I do now, sit on my ass?”

  “Ah…yeah,” Lucas said. “Go on over and sit in the Starbucks.”

  “Listen, if she wants to get out, there’s a back stairs that comes out on the other side of the building,” Jenkins said. “Or she can walk down into the Skyways off the elevators on the second floor, or she could come all the way down and walk out the front door. There’s too much I can’t see, and if I guess wrong, I’ll be standing here with my dick in my hand.”

  “She shouldn’t have any idea that we’re watching her, so she’s not gonna be sneaking around,” Lucas said.

  “I’m just saying,” Jenkins warned. “We either get three or four guys over here, or she could walk on us.”

  “I know what you’re saying. Just…sit. Call me if you see her moving.”

  HER HOUSE WAS two minutes away in the truck. He parked under a young maple tree, a half block out, watched the street for a moment, then slipped the rake in one pocket, the camera and gloves in the other, and walked down to her door. The door was right out in the open, but with tall ornamental cedars on each side. A dental office building was across the street, with not much looking at him.

  He rang the doorbell, holding it for a long time, listening to the muffled buzz. No reaction; no movement, no footfalls. He rang it again, then pulled open the storm door, as if talking to somebody inside, and pushed the lock-snake into the crappy 1950s Yale. The rake chattered for a moment, then the lock turned in his hand. He was in.

  “Hello?” he called. “Hello? Amity? Amity?”

  Nothing. A little sunlight through the front window, dappling the carpet and the back of the couch; little sparkles of dust in the light of the doorway to the kitchen. “Amity?”

  He stepped inside, shut the door, pulled on the latex gloves, did a quick search for a security system. Got a jolt when he found a keypad inside the closet next to the front door. And then noticed that the ’80s-style liquid-crystal read-out was dead.

  He pushed a couple of number-buttons: nothing.

  He could risk it, he thought. If the cops came, maybe talk his way out of it. But still: move quick. He hurried through the house, looking for anything that might be construed as an antique. Found a music box—was she a music-box collector? That would be interesting. He took a picture of it. Up to the bedroom, taking shots of an oil painting, a rocking chair, a drawing, a chest of drawers that seemed too elegant for the bedroom.

  Into the bathroom: big tub, marijuana and scented candle wax, bottles of alprazolam and Ambien in the medicine cabinet. Stress? Under the sink, a kit in a velvet bag. He’d seen kits like that, from years ago, but what…He opened it: ah, sure. A diaphragm. So she swung both ways. Or had, at one time.

  His cell phone rang, and vibrated at the same time, in his pocket, nearly giving him a heart attack.

  Carol: “Mrs. Coombs called. She wants to talk to you. She’s really messed up.”

  “I’ll get back to her later,” Lucas said.

  “She’s pretty messed up,” Carol said.

  Not a goddamn thing he could do about it, either. He snapped: “Later. Okay?”

  QUICK THROUGH the bedroom closet, through the chest of drawers, under the bed; looked down the basement, called “Hello?” and got nothing but a muffled echo. Back up the stairs, into a ground-floor bedroom used as an office. He’d been inside a long time now—five, six minutes—and the pressure was growing.

  The office had an ornate table used as a desk; everything expensive looked like mahogany to Lucas, and this looked like mahogany, with elaborately carved feet. He took a picture of it. The desk had one center drawer, full of junk: paper clips, envelopes, ticket stubs, a collection of old ballpoints, pencils, rubber bands. He had noticed with the upstairs closets that while the visible parts of the house were neatly kept, the out-of-sight areas were a mess.

  The office had two file cabinets, both wooden. Neither looked expensive. He opened a drawer: papers, paid bills. Not enough time to check them. Another drawer: taxes, but only going back four years. He pulled them out, quickly, looked at the bottom numbers on the federal returns: all in the fifties. Two more drawers full of warranties, car-maintenance records—looked at the maintenance records, which covered three different cars, all small, no vans—employment stuff and medical records.

  No time, no time, he thought.

  He checked a series of personal photographs on the wall behind the desk. One showed a much younger Amity in a graduation gown with several other people, also in gowns, including a guy large enough to carry a $50,000 table. The guy looked familiar, somehow, but Lucas couldn’t place him. He turned off the camera’s flash, so that it wouldn’t reflect off the protective glass, and took a picture of the photograph.

  Inside too long.

  Damn. If he could have half an hour with the desk drawers…But then, he had the sense that she was careful.

  He took a last look around, and left, locking the door behind himself.

  BACK IN THE TRUCK, he called Jenkins. “I drank about a gallon of coffee. If my heart quits, it’s your fault,” Jenkins said. “I ain’t seen her, but I called her office ten minutes ago, and she was in a conference. I told them I’d call back.”

  “Don’t want to make her curious,” Lucas said.

  “I’ll take care.”

  TEN MINUTES to a Target store. He pulled the memory card out of the camera and at the Kodak kiosk, printed five-by-sevens of Amity Anderson’s furniture. In the photos, it sure didn’t look like much; but what’d he know?

  But he did know somebody who’d know what it was. He looked up John Smith’s cell-phone number and called him: “I need to talk to the Widdlers about some furniture. Want to see if it’s worth something.”

  “On the case? Or personal?”

  “Maybe semirelated to the case, but I don’t know. I think they’re done at Bucher’s, right?”

  “Yup. They’re out in Edina. You need to see them right away?”

  “I’m over on the airport strip, I can be there in ten minutes.”

  “Let me get you the address…”

  THE WIDDLERS HAD a neat two-story building in old Edina, brown brick with one big display window in front. A transparent shade protected the window box from sunlight, and behind the window, a small oil painting in an elaborate wood frame sat on a desk something like Amity Anderson’s, but this desk was smaller and better-looking. The desk, made from what Lucas guessed was mahogany, sat on a six-by-four-foot oriental carpet. The whole arrangement looked like a still-life painting.

  Lucas pushed through the front door; a bell tinkled over head. Inside, the place was jammed with artifacts. He couldn’t think of another word for the stuff: bottles and pottery and bronze statues of naked girls with geese, lamps and chairs and tables and desks and busts. The walls were hung with paintings and rugs and quilts and framed maps.

  He thought, quilts. Hum.

  A stairway went up to the second floor, and looking up the stairwell, he could see even more stuff behind the second-floor railing. A severe-looking portrait of a woman, effective, though it was really nothing more than an arrangement in gray and black, hung on the first landing of the stairway. She was hatchet-faced, but broad through the shoulders, and as with the photograph he’d seen that morning, he had the feeling that he’d seen her before.

  He was peering at it when a woman’s voice said, “Can I help you?”

  He jumped and turned. A motherly woman, white haired and sixtyish, had snuck up behind him from the back room, and was looking pleased with herself for having done it; or at least, amused that she’d startled him. He said, “Uh, jeez, is Leslie around? Or Jane?”

  “No. They’re in Minnetonka on an appraisal. They won’t be back until after lunch, and they’ll be in tomorrow…If there’s anything I can help you with?”

  “Oh, I had some questions about some furniture…” He looked back again at the painting. “That woman looks familiar, but I can’t p
lace her.”

  “That’s Leslie’s mom,” the shop lady said. “Painted by quite a talented local artist, James Malone. Although I think he has since moved to New York City.”

  A LITTLE CLICK in the back of Lucas’s mind.

  Of course it was Leslie’s mom. He could see Leslie’s face in the woman’s face, although the woman was much thinner than the Leslie that Lucas had met, who was running to fat.

  But he hadn’t always been fat, Lucas knew. Lucas knew that because Leslie wasn’t fat in the picture in Amity Anderson’s office. Amity Anderson and the Widdlers: and Leslie was easily big enough to carry a $50,000 table out of a house.

  In fact, Leslie was a horse. You didn’t see it, because of the bow ties and the fussy clothes and the fake antiquer-artsy accent he put on, but Leslie was a goddamn Minnesota farm boy, probably grew up humping heifers around the barn, or whatever you did with heifers.

  The woman said, “So, uh…”

  “I’ll just come back tomorrow,” Lucas said. “If I have time. No big deal, I was passing by.”

  “They should be in right at nine, because I’m off tomorrow,” the woman said.

  “I’ll talk to them then,” Lucas said. On the way out the door, he stopped, as with an afterthought: “Do you know, did they take the van?”

  The woman was puzzled: “They don’t have a van.”

  “Oh.” Now Lucas put a look of puzzlement on his face. “Maybe I’m just remembering wrong, but I saw them at an auction and they were driving a van. A white van. I thought.”

  “Just a rental. They rent when they need one, it’s a lot cheaper than actually owning,” the woman said. “That’s what I do, when I’m auctioning.”

  Lucas nodded: “Hey. Thanks for the help.”

  OUTSIDE IN the parking lot, he sat in the truck for a moment, then got on the phone to John Smith:

  “If you happen to see them, don’t tell the Widdlers I was going out to their place,” Lucas said.

  After a moment of silence, Smith said, “You gotta be shittin’ me.”

  “Probably nothing, but I need to look them up,” Lucas said. “How did they get involved in assessing the Bucher place?”

  “I called them,” Smith said. “I asked around, they were recommended. I called them and they took it on.”

  “But you didn’t call them because somebody suggested them specifically?” Lucas asked. “Somebody at Bucher’s?”

  “Nope. I called a guy at the Minneapolis museum who knows about antiques, and he gave me two names. I looked them up in the Yellow Pages and picked the Widdlers because they were closer.”

  “All right,” Lucas said. “So: if you talk to them, don’t mention me.”

  NEXT, he got Carol at the office:

  “Get somebody—not Sandy—and have him go out to all the local car-rental agencies and see if there’s a record of a Leslie or Jane Widdler—W-I-D-D-L-E-R—renting a white van. Or any van.

  “Then, Sandy is doing research on a woman named Amity Anderson. I want her to keep doing that, but put it on the back burner for today. Right now, I need to know everything about Leslie and Jane Widdler. They’re married, they own an antique store in Edina. I think they went to college at Carleton. I want a bunch of stuff figured out by the time I get back there.”

  “When are you getting back?”

  “Half hour,” Lucas said.

  “Not much time,” Carol said.

  “Sandy’s gotta hurry,” Lucas said. “I’m in a really big fuckin’ hurry. And get that rental check going. Going right now.”

  Carol got in the last word: “Lucy Coombs called again.”

  20

  “HE WAS A BIG GUY, dark complexion, blue eyes. Asking about a white van.”

  “A van? We haven’t had a van in years,” Jane Widdler said. “I’m not getting a clear picture of him. You say, a big guy?”

  The sales assistant nodded. “He looked…sort of French. Big shoulders, black hair with a little salt and pepper. Good-looking, but tough,” she said. “He had a scar that started up in his hair and came down across his eye. Not an ugly scar, a white line.”

  “He wasn’t as big as Leslie,” Jane Widdler suggested.

  “No…not as tall, and also…” Widdler’s sales assistant groped for a word.

  “Not so fat,” Jane Widdler said.

  “He looked like he was in really good shape,” the sales assistant said, staying away from the topic of Leslie’s heft. “He didn’t look like an antiques person.”

  “I might know who he is,” Jane Widdler said. She smiled, just a little, because of the Botox. “It might be better if you didn’t mention him to Leslie. I think this man is…an old friend of mine. There’s nothing going on, but I don’t want Leslie to get upset.”

  The sales assistant nodded. “Okay. I’ll let you deal with it.” She definitely didn’t like the idea of upsetting Leslie.

  “That would be best,” Jane Widdler said.

  JANE THOUGHT about it for a long time, until a headache began creeping down her neck from the crown of her head. Finally, she got her BlackBerry from her purse, looked up a number, and punched it in.

  “Hello, Jane,” Amity Anderson said.

  “We’ve got to get together. Right now. Without Leslie,” Jane said.

  “Why?”

  “Because,” Jane Widdler said.

  “I just want out,” Amity said.

  “That’s all I want,” Jane Widdler said. “But things may be getting…difficult.”

  THEY HOOKED UP in a coffee shop in the Skyway. Widdler arrived on the street level, before going up to the Skyway, walking right past Jenkins who sat behind a window in Starbucks, but he’d never seen her before. Anderson came down to the second floor to the Skyway, never going to the street, leaving Jenkins sitting in the Starbucks, with, at least metaphorically, his dick in his hand.

  The Skyway shop, a Caribou, had a selection of chairs and tables and Widdler and Anderson both got medium light-roasts and chocolate raspberry thumbprint cookies, and hunched over a table in the corner. Widdler said, “This state agent who talked to you, Davenport. He came to the shop and he asked about a white van. He knows.”

  “Knows what?” Amity Anderson took a bite of her thumbprint.

  “You know,” Widdler said irritably. They’d never talked about it, but Anderson knew.

  “The only thing I know is that we went to college together and you recommended that Mrs. Donaldson buy a rare Armstrong quilt, which was later donated to the Milwaukee, and that’s all I know,” Anderson said. She popped the last of the thumbprint in her mouth and made a dusting motion with her hands.

  “I really didn’t want to be unpleasant about this,” Widdler said, “but I’ve got no choice. So I will tell you that if they take me off to prison, you will go with me. I will make a deal to implicate the rest of the gang, in exchange for time off. Meaning you and Marilyn Coombs.”

  Anderson’s faced tightened like a fist: “You bitch. I did not…”

  “You knew. You certainly knew about the quilts, and if you knew about the quilts, then any jury is going to believe you knew about the rest of it,” Widdler said. “You worked for Donaldson, for Christ’s sake. You live five minutes from Bucher. Now, if Davenport knows, and he does, he will eventually be able to put together a fairly incriminating case. We dealt with all those people—Donaldson, Bucher, Toms. There are records, somewhere. Old checks.”

  “Where’s my money? You were going to get me the money.” Anderson hissed. “I’m going to Italy.”

  “I’ll get you the money and you can go to Italy,” Jane said. “But we’ve got to get out of this.”

  “If you’re talking about doing something to Davenport…”

  Widdler shook her head. “No, no. Too late for that. Maybe, right back at the beginning…” She turned away from Anderson, her eyes narrowing, reviewing the missed opportunity. Then back to Anderson: “The thing is, cops are bureaucrats. My stepfather was a cop, and I know how they work. Dave
nport’s already told somebody what he thinks. If we did something to him, there’d be eight more cops looking at us. They’d never give up.”

  “So who…” Anderson had the paper cup at her lips, looking into Widdler’s eyes, when the answer came to her. “Leslie?”

  Widdler said, “I never signed anything. He endorsed all the checks, wrote the estimates. He did the scouting while I watched the shop. They could make a better case against him than they could against me.”

  “So what are you thinking?”

  Widdler glanced around. A dozen other patrons were sitting in chairs or standing at the counter, but none were close enough to hear them over the chatter and dish-and-silverware clank of the shop. Still, she leaned closer to Anderson. “I’m thinking Leslie could become despondent. He could talk to me about it, hint that he’d done some things he shouldn’t have. I could get the feeling that he’s worried about something.”

  “Suicide?”

  “I have some small guns…a house gun, and car guns, for self-protection. Leslie showed me how they work,” Widdler said.

  “So…”

  “I need a ride. I don’t just want him to shoot himself, I want him to…do it on a stage, so to speak. I want people looking in a different direction.”

  “And you need a ride?” Anderson was astonished. They were talking about a murder, and the killer needed a ride.

  “I can’t think of any other way to do it—to get him where I need him, to get back home. I need to move quickly to establish an alibi…I need to be home if somebody calls. I can’t take a taxi, it’s just…it’s just all too hard to work out, if you don’t help.”

  “All I have to do is give you a ride?”

  “That’s all,” Widdler said. “It’s very convenient. Only a few minutes from your house.”

  THEY ARGUED for another five minutes, in hushed tones, and finally Anderson said, “I couldn’t stand it in prison. I couldn’t stand it.”