'They did. What if she had a key to this house? She goes psycho, she comes here to confront you, she’s angry, she’s lost her job. She’s waiting in the kitchen, Frances comes in…”
“Martina has a flinty soul,” Austin said. “But she’s very controlled- I can’t see her murdering somebody.”
But Lucas was building it: “She could be a sociopath. They’re typically intelligent and well- controlled. She uses your husband to promote herself in the company, has a plan that nobody is allowed to interfere with. Then it all goes to hell and she winds up on the outside. She feels like Hunter owes her something, or the Austins, and convinces herself that she should come here to collect it.”
“Criminals think like that?'
'Exactly like that.'
'Huh. A sociopath. I think… she is a sociopath, of course, but, you know, I suspect that she’d find herself in this situation, and she’d run the numbers, and she’d see that the risk of murdering somebody wouldn’t pay off. So she wouldn’t do it. That’s what I think.”
Lucas’s eyebrows went up. “Of course? She’s a sociopath,
Austin nodded. “I have a personal theory that ‘mental illness’ is just an extreme version of a common tendency. I’m a little bipolar. Not too much, but a little. Everybody knows people who are a little paranoid- not enough to be crazy, but that way. A lot of creative people are a little schizophrenic, with other worlds that are very clear to them. Most successful businesspeople are sociopathic-they don’t let a lot get in their way. Anyone who’s built a business has hurt people. You should know that. You were Davenport Simulations.”
“I didn’t build it,” Lucas said. “I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. So I got a guy to do it for me, and when I started getting in his way, I took the money and got out.”
“Not sociopathic enough,” she said. “Maybe not,” Lucas said. “When you left, did you feel the other guy’s hands in your back, pushing?'
'A little.'
'See? He’s a sociopath,” Austin said. “Cutting you off from your baby. And probably felt good about it.'
'Okay,” Lucas said. It was all true. “So if you’re not a sociopath, what are you?” Austin asked
“Obsessive- compulsive?'
'Or like you, bipolar, maybe,” Lucas said. “Maybe a little obsessive.'
'And you’ll use it to get this guy.'
'I
Lucas said, “I gotta go see her. Like right now.'
'An epiphany?'
'A stupidity. Why haven’t I talked to her? Why is that?”
The meeting took an hour to organize- forty- five minutes to batter through the General Mills bureaucracy, fourteen minutes of phone calls to pin down her actual working location, one minute to set up the meeting: she was cool, efficient, and had been expecting the call. They met at a Caribou Coffee shop in the Minneapolis Skyway: she’d told him on the phone that she didn’t want him coming to her office at General Mills. “We could shut the door,” Lucas said.
“My office doesn’t have a door,” she said. She sounded, Lucas thought, like a wounded animal.
He picked her out as she walked along the skyway. Moving quickly, swerving through the crowd, carrying an expensive- looking black leather woman’s briefcase; a bit nerdy for a woman, in a slightly masculine navy blue suit, low practical shoes, and steel- rimmed glasses. She could be the fairy, Lucas thought, though nobody who’d seen the fairy mentioned glasses.
She walked into the shop, looked around, spotted him, came over and said, “Mr. Davenport.” Not a question.
He stood as she came up, and she put out her hand and he shook it, and she said, “Sit down while I get a coffee. Watch my case, please.”
He watched her in line, three back, then two, rocking on her feet, impatient, looking at her watch: a Rolex or a good copy. No; it wouldn’t be a copy.
The woman in 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 stepmother.”
“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.”
