Halfway back to his office, Lucas realized where he’d heard the name Frank. He was so startled by the realization that he pulled the car over and dug out the notebook, to check. Yes: Martina Trenoff made him write the name down. Frank Willett was a trainer at one of Alyssa’s clubs and, she’d said, one of Alyssa’s lovers. Karate, she’d said. Model, bicycle racer, rock climber, surfer, one of those guys who you can’t figure out how they made a living.
The rest of the way back to the office was a fantasy, a story that Lucas made up as he drove: a guy with no money, fucking both an heiress and the heiress’s daughter, who was, come to think of it, also an heiress.
But the mother, in addition to being a little goofy and believing in astrology and probably tea leaves, also had a tougher, business side. In addition, she’d had a number of lovers, and might not have been interested in a long- term relationship with somebody like a bicycle racer/ model/surfer guy.
She might like fucking him, okay, but long- term, she’d want somebody with status in the community, somebody with… good shoes. She’d mentioned the artist, Kidd-a perfect match for her. As an artist, he’d certainly be goofy enough, and hell, he was in
The daughter, on the other hand, young, inexperienced, not all that great- looking, might be a bit more influenced by a guy with big muscles and a surfer’s outlook.
And if the guy were looking for money… From there, that one thing, that relationship, all kinds of other things might have fallen out. She tells him she’s going to break it off: they argue in the kitchen, there’s some pushing, she reaches for a knife, he takes it away from her and sticks her. Wonder what kind of truck he’d have, whether there’d be transmission fluid in the truck bed? No doubt in Lucas’s mind that the guy would have a truck, if he was a surfer, a bike- racer, a rock climber, all that.
Or, how about this: the daughter finds out that he’s fucking both her and her mother: goes to Mom with the story, there’s an argument that turns violent, one of them yanks out the knife in a fit of passion, or jealousy, or even self- defense and… zut.
“Finally,” he said aloud. The whole Frank thing made everything clear: this was no big cosmic mystery, it was just some of the same old bullshit. An argument about sex and love, some hysteria, and a murder.
Why were the others killed? Because they knew about the relationship? Was Frank there the night of the chicken dance?
He thought about Austin for a moment. Not Austin, he decided. She was tough, but unless she was totally nuts, there was no way that she could have produced all the tears that came with Frances’s death-and he’d seen her face when they told her that the body had been found. Until that moment, Lucas thought, she’d had some hope that Frances might still be alive.
Not Austin. At the BCA office, he ran halfway up the stairs, until his bad leg bit back at him, and he nearly fell. Limping into the office, he nodded at Carol, who asked, “What’s happening?” and came to stand in the door while he punched up the computer.
“Got a break, maybe,” he said. “Found Frances Austin’s purse, got a breakup note out of it. Breaking up with a guy named Frank.”
“ Old- fashioned name, Frank,” Carol said. “Don’t see many Franks anymore. If they’d gotten married, it would have been Mr. Francis and Mrs. Frances Austin.”
Lucas was listening to her prattle and he pulled up the e- mail, then frowned and looked up and asked, “What’d you say?”She shrugged. “Nothing. I was just going on.'
'You said Frances and Francis-are they spelled the same?'
'No, but I don’t know which is which.'
'I bet no one else does, either,” Lucas said. He ran his hands through his hair, said, “Holy shit. Holy shit. Go get me Dan Jackson, on the run, and tell him to bring that big fuckin’ camera. Holy shit, the Frances Austin who went to the bank could have been a
He took a moment to explain, walking around his desk, then, as Carol went to call the photographer, went back and pulled up the photo of the breakup note. As Pratt had said, the note was badly smeared, but the salutation was clear enough:
From there, it was a black stain; maybe the feds could make something out of it, but felt- tips don’t make much of a physical indentation on paper, her handwriting was small, and the stains were dark. Still, it was possible that a lab could recover the original.
Not that he needed it to push the investigation. What they had was, for now, good enough.
Lucas frowned: but where would the fairy fit in this scenario? He thought about it for a moment, and then let it go. If they nailed down Willett, he thought, the fairy would come clear. She was probably another of his lovers- maybe the one who put Willett up to stealing the fifty thousand.
“Carol!” She popped back in the office: “Dan’s on his way.'
'We need to get everything on paper that we can about Willett
Run everything you can think of. If we come up with previous addresses, out- of- state, we’re gonna want to get their stuff…”
Jackson, the photographer, came in a moment later, and Carol called, “We’ve only got one Frank Willett locally-it’s Frank, not Francis, on his driver’s license.”
“Where’s that Willett work? We need an address,” Lucas said. “I’ll get into the employment security, hang on…” Jackson, stepping around Carol, asked, “Another rush job?'
'I think we’ve got something this time,” Lucas said. Carol called, “It’s him, he works for A. Austin LLC in Minnetonka
He lives in St. Louis Park.” And she pulled up his driver’ s- license photo: Willett had long black hair, carefully arranged on his shoulders, an oval face, square white teeth. He looked good, and he knew it, even in a license photograph.
“Ooo,” Carol said. Lucas squinted at the picture, trying to make him as the man in the alley. Couldn’t do it; the long hair was distracting. The guy in the alley seemed to have short curly hair, he thought. But if Willett had cut it… or maybe even if he’d been wearing a ponytail on the night of the shooting… it wasn’t impossible, but he couldn’t ID him from the photo.
Lucas had Carol call Minnetonka and ask for Willett. When the receptionist transferred the call, Carol hung up.
“I’m going out there,” Lucas said. “Want to ride along in the van?” Jackson asked. “I’ll meet you over there,” Lucas said. “I don’t want to get stuck if you have to wait awhile; but I’ll come and sit for an hour or two.”
Minnetonka was on the far western edge of the metro area, and from the BCA office, took a solid forty- five minutes, west on I- 94 and I- 394, winding around in the maze of streets at the end of it. Lucas had Jackson on the cell phone, and they cruised the spa, Waterwood, from opposite directions, then hooked up at a strip mall and Lucas transferred into the back of the van.
The GMC had been taken away from a dope dealer. It had nice captain’s chairs in the back, tinted windows, a dresser with a mirror, and, if the chairs were moved, space for a narrow memory- foam mattress, which had been stripped out.
Jackson took it back to Waterwood, parked across the street, eased into the back of the van and took the other captain’s chair. “Magazines in the chiffonier, diet Coke and raspberry- flavored water in the fridge,” he said. “I got the rest of the subscription to Sirius, long as you don’t play any country and western.”
Lucas settled for a bottle of water and a classic rock channel, checked the magazines:
“You think she’s the sexiest woman?” Jackson asked, about Charlize Theron.
“There is no such thing,” Lucas said. “That’d be like the best baseball game. You can argue about it a long
