The evening air was like a kiss, after the refrigerated air of the gallery. Night was coming on. The patio looked over a maple-studded lawn toward the evening lights of downtown Minneapolis, a pretty sight, lights like diamonds on a tic-tac-toe grid.
She fumbled the Winstons out of her purse, lit one, blew smoke, trying to keep it away from her hair, and thought about Davenport and Claire Donaldson and Constance Bucher and Marilyn Coombs.
Goddamn money. It all came down to money. The wrong people had it-heirs, car dealers, insurance men, corporate suits who went through life without a single aesthetic impulse, who thought a duck on a pond at sunset was art.
Or these people, who bought a coffee-table book on minimalism, because they thought it put them out on the cutting edge.
Made them mini-Applers. But they were still the same bunch of parvenu buck-lickers, the men with their washing-machine-sized Rolexes and the women with the “forever” solitaire hanging between their tits, not yet figuring out that “forever” meant until something fifteen years younger, with bigger tits, came along.
Damn, she was tired of this.
The door popped open and she flinched. A red-haired woman, about Anderson's age, stepped outside, and said, “I thought I saw you disappear.” She took a pack of Salems out of her purse. “I was just about to start screaming.”
“I saw you talking to the Redmonds,” Anderson said. “Do any good?”
“Not much. I'm working on the wife,” the redhead said. A match flared, the woman inhaled, and exhaling, said, “I'll get five thousand a year if I'm lucky.”
“I'd take that,” Anderson said. “We could get a new TV for the employee lounge.”
“Well, I'll take it. It's just that…” She waved her hand, a gesture of futility.
“I know,” Anderson said. “I was pitching Carrie Sue Thorson. She had her DNA analyzed.
She's ninety percent pure Nazi. The other ten percent is some Russian who must've snuck in the back door. I was over there going, It's so fascinating to know that our ancestors reach back to the European Ice Age.' Like, 'Thank Christ they didn't come from Africa in the last hundred generations or so.' “ “Get anything?” the redhead asked.
“Not unless you count a pat on the ass from her husband,” Anderson said.
“You might work that into something.”
“Yeah. A whole-life policy,” Anderson said.
The redhead laughed, blew smoke and screeched, “Run away, run away.”
Anderson wound up staying for almost two hours and failed to raise a single penny-but she scored in one way. An hour and forty-five minutes into the reception, she took a cell-phone call from her supervisor, who “just wanted to check how things were going.”
“I've eaten too much cheese,” Anderson said, sweetly. She understood her dedication was being tested and she'd aced the test. “But the art's okay. Carrie Sue is right over here, isn't she a friend of yours?”
“No, no, not really,” her supervisor said hastily. “I'd hate to bother her. Good going, Amity. I'll talk to you tomorrow.”
Five minutes later, she was out of there. She drove a Mazda, cut southwest across town, down toward Edina. Time for a gutsy move. She knew the truth, and now was the time to use it.
And she didn't want much.
A couple of years in France, or maybe a year in France and another Italy. She could rent her own house, bank the money, come back in a couple of years with the right languages, she could talk about Florence and Venice and Aix and Aries. With a little polish, with the background, she could move up in the foundation world. She could get an executive spot, she could take a shortcut up the ladder, she wouldn't have to go to any more Arctic Circle Red receptions.
Worth the risk. Of course, she needed to be prepared. As she turned the corner at the top of the last block, she reached under the car seat, found the switchblade, and slipped it into the pocket of her velvet pants.
The Widdler house was an older two-story, with cedar shingles and casement windows, built on a grassy lot, with the creek behind. She glanced at her watch: ten-fifteen.
There was a light in an upstairs bedroom and another in the back of the house. An early night for the Widdlers, she thought.
She parked in the drive, went to the front door, and rang the bell. Nothing. She rang it again, and then felt the inaudible vibrations of a heavy man coming down a flight of steps. Leslie Widdler turned on a light in the hallway, then the porch light, squinted at her through the triple-paned, armed-response-alarmed front door.
Widdler was wearing a paisley-patterned silk robe. As fucked up and crazy as the Widdlers might be, there was nothing inhibited about their sex life, Anderson thought.
Widdler opened the inner door, unlocked and pushed open the screen door, and said, “Well, well. Look what washed up on our doorstep. Nice to see you.”
Anderson walked past him and Widdler looked outside, as though he might see somebody else sneaking along behind. Nobody. He shut the door and locked it, turned to Anderson, pushed her against the wall, slipped one big hand up under her blouse, pulled her brassiere down, and squeezed her breast until the pain flared through her chest.
“How have you been?” he asked, his face so close that she could smell the cinnamon toothpaste.
Her own hand was inside his robe, clutching at him. “Ah, Leslie. Where's Jane?”
“Upstairs,” Leslie said.
“Let's go up and fuck her.”
“What a good idea,” Widdler said.
And that's what they did, the three of them, on the Widdlers' king-sized bed, with scented candles burning all around.
Then, when the sweat had dried, Anderson rolled off the bed, found her purse, dug out a cigarette.
“Please don't smoke,” Jane said.
“I'll go out on the back porch, but I need one,” she said. She groped for her pants, said, “Where's that lighter?” She got both the lighter and the switchblade. “We need to talk.”
They didn't bother with robes; they weren't done with the sex yet. Anderson led the way down the stairs in the semidarkness, Leslie poured more wine for himself and Jane, and got a fresh glass from the cupboard and gave a glass to Anderson. They moved out to the porch, and Jane and Anderson settled on the glider, the soft summer air flowing around them, while Leslie pulled a chair over.
“Well,” Jane said. She took a hit of the wine, then dipped a finger in it, and dragged a wet finger-pad over one of Anderson's nipples. “You were such a pleasant surprise.”
“I want a cut,” Anderson said. “Of the Connie Bucher money. Not much. Enough to take me to Europe for a couple of years. Let's say… a hundred and fifty thousand. You can put it down to consulting fees, seventy-five thousand a year.”
“Amity…” Leslie said, and there was a cold thread in the soft sound of her name.
“Don't start, Leslie. I know how mean and cruel you are, and you know I like it, but I just don't want to deal with it tonight. I spotted the Bucher thing as soon as it happened. It had your names written all over it. But I wouldn't have said a thing, I wouldn't have asked for a nickel, except that you managed to drag me into it.”
After a moment of silence, Jane said, “What?”
“I got a visit from a cop named Lucas Davenport. This afternoon. He's an agent with the state police…”
“We know who he is. We're police consultants on the Bucher murder,” Leslie said.
Anderson was astonished; and then she laughed. “Oh, God, you might know it.”
But Jane cut through the astonishment: “How did he get to you?”
“He hooked the Bucher murder to the Donaldson case. He's looking at the Coombs murder.
He knows.”
“Oh, shit.” Anderson couldn't see it, but she could feel Jane turn to her husband.
“He's a danger. I told you, we've got to do something.”
Leslie was on his feet and he moved over in front of Anderson and put a hand on her head and said, “Why shouldn't we just break Amity's little neck? That would close off that particular threat.”