'We're still working on it, but we're kind of stuck,' Lucas said.
A week had gone by since Lucas had spoken to Carmel Loan. All the crime-scene evidence had been exhaustively reviewed, but nothing was coming out. In the meantime, a Ferris wheel at a neighborhood carnival had collapsed, two children had been killed and seven more badly hurt. The execution killings had disappeared from the media, as reporters and state safety inspectors chased down every carnival in the state. The lack of both progress and outside attention had taken pressure off the investigation. Lucas had the feeling that the whole thing was headed for the dead-letter file.
'You heard about Barbara's parents?' Allen asked. 'Just rumors.. .'
'They were going to sue me – for wrongful death, claiming I was involved in killing Barbara, like that O.J. lawsuit,' Allen said indignantly. 'They were gonna try to keep me from inheriting, so they'd get her money. Then it turned out that ninety percent of the money goes to the foundation, not to me. If they sued me, and won, a hundred percent would go to the foundation. They wouldn't get a dime.' 'Ho,' Lucas said.
'Yeah. They said screw that, we aren't suing if there isn't any payoff. They dropped the whole thing.' 'Hum,' said Lucas. 'Exactly…'
Allen was indignant, but his eyes kept wandering away from Lucas. Lucas had seen it before in somebody who felt guilty about something, and was about to confess.
Allen, Lucas thought, wasn't here to talk about his in-laws.
'So what else is going on?' Lucas asked, leaning back, trying to sound kindly.
He wished Sloan were back. Sloan was a master at this. 'How are you doing? Are you okay? We were pretty rough on you for a while.'
'Well…' Allen smiled, and Lucas thought, here it comes. 'I came to see you because you know about the case, and you seemed like a pretty good guy, and everybody says you're pretty smart and you've been around…'
'Okay…' Keep him rolling.
'I've been feeling kind of weird about something. About the case.'
'You mean, psychologically troubled? I…"
'Not exactly/ Allen said. He leaned forward, intent now. 'You know, I really did love Barbara. She was fun, in a quiet way. But we were different, and this affair – you know that I had an affair?'
'Yes,' Lucas said. He gestured with one hand, as to say, So what? Haven't we all?
The tentative smile flickered over Allen's face again. 'When Barbara got killed,
I felt terrible about it. Your guys found out about the affair, and I hadn't told Carmel. When she found out, she hit the roof. She went and talked to
Louise, and now everybody's in an uproar…'
Lucas nodded: 'I can see why Carmel would be unhappy. Facing the possibility of defending you in court.'
'Yeah, yeah,' Allen said, brushing the comment away. So that wasn't where he was going, Lucas thought. 'The day you told her that you weren't so interested in me any more…'
Lucas glanced at a wall calendar, 'A week ago today…"
'Exactly a week ago,' Allen said, 'Carmel came over to my house to give me the news. And we had a drink, yadayadayada, and then she comes on to me.'
'Yeah?' Lucas' eyebrows went up.
'Yeah. Really hard. Really hard. And you know
Carmel. She gets what she wants.'
Lucas allowed a faint man-to-man smile to slip onto his face: 'The next thing you knew, you were working closely with your attorney.'
'What she did was fuck my brains loose. And she's been back three more times since then. Does that sound bad? Does that sound crazy? I can't sleep thinking about it, but I really can't talk to any of my friends, either. They'd go batshit if I told them. Most of them are Barbara's friends, too, out at the club.'
Lucas shook his head: 'I wouldn't worry about it too much. I've seen all kinds of reactions to spousal deaths, and believe me, you're not the first guy to fall in bed with another woman after his wife's been killed. Maybe there's a drive for intimacy.'
'You think so?' Allen said. He seemed to brighten, momentarily. Relief? Lucas wasn't sure.
'It's something like that,' Lucas said. 'Listen, as long as you've told me all this… why Carmel? She doesn't seem like your type. Detective Sherrill told me that you were a pretty relaxed guy. Carmel, on the other hand…"
'Detective Sherrill, she's the one…' He made a figure with his hands.
'Yeah.'
'She seemed nice.' His eyes wandered away again, and he hunched forward in his chair: 'Carmel… pillow talks. She told me that she's been in love with me for two years, and hid it, because she thought it was hopeless, because I was married to a rich woman.
She told me that Louise – that's the woman I was having an affair with – was a miserable gold-digger and a loser. She gets really violent about it.'
'Really?' Keep him rolling.
'I'm serious, once she grabbed me by the dick and said she'd cut it off if I ever put it back in Louise.'
'Whoa… And she said she was in love with you for two years?'
'Yeah, ever since a little thing in a restaurant. I couldn't even remember it.'
'Do you believe her? That she's been in love?'
'I know it sounds vain, but I do. You'd have to hear her talk. She remembered me saying things, doing things, places she'd bumped into me, times we'd just had a word or two.'
Lucas thought for a moment, and then said, 'Are you seeing her tonight?'
'Of course. Every night. She says we're gonna get married in a couple of years. ..'
'Huh.' Lucas turned in his chair to face his window, his fingers steepled at his mouth, and looked out at the street. He hoped he looked like Sherlock Holmes.
Then he swivelled back to face Allen. 'Do you think if you suggested that you go out to Penelope's, that she'd go?'
'Penelope's? Oh, heck yes, she loves that kind of scene, Minnetonka, the lake, all that. Trendy, expensive…'
'Call her. She lives downtown, right? She's got some kind of fabulous apartment that was in the Star Tribune?' Lucas knew exactly where she lived. He'd joked about it with a banker friend who lived in the same building.
'Right. And it is fabulous,' Allen said. 'Call her, suggest Penelope's, and when she gets to your place, suggest that she drive. Make up some kind of excuse.
Sprained your gas pedal ankle or something. Nothing serious, so you have to limp. Just get her to drive.'
'She drives most of the time anyway,' Allen said. 'She doesn't like my car. I gotta brown-and-creme Lexus, she calls it a Jap car. She's got this red Jag.'
'Good. Don't tell her any of this, by the way,' Lucas said. 'Don't tell her you talked to me. Just get her out there and have a nice long meal.' 'I will. What are you going to do?' 'Observe,' Lucas said. 'Not me, another guy.' 'Observe what?' Allen asked. 'This whole thing sounds a little bit off to me. Remember, whether you think like this or not: you are a rich guy. And you're good-looking.
Women are going to come after you, and it's hard to tell who's sincere and who isn't. So I got a guy on the staff who specializes in… mmm.. . what would you call it? Emotional readings, I guess. I'll have him take a look at the two of you, and tell me what he thinks. He'll look at her body language, stuff like that. I'll pass it along to you.'
'He's gonna eat with us?' Allen asked dimly. 'No, no. He'll just be there,'
Lucas said. 'Don't go looking around for him or anything – just enjoy yourself and make sure that you stay long enough that my guy can get a reading.'
'An emotional reading?'
Lucas spread his hands: 'Hey, it's what I got.'
When Allen had gone, Lucas leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a few moments, thinking about Carmel Loan. He ran through everything she'd said to him since the Allen killing, and in running through the various conversations they'd had, he stumbled over one small gemstone.
When he'd last talked to her, she'd made a deliberately crude comment about three dead spies and an upper class woman. Anyway, he remembered it that way; and he remembered that they'd had difficulty finding anyone to claim the bodies, or anyone who would even admit to knowing who they were.