“I think it would be perfectly all right for me to drink one beer in the house,” Letty said.
“If I gave it to you, I'd have to arrest myself,” Lucas said.
“And probably beat the shit out of himself, too,” Del said, winking at Letty.
Lucas briefed them on Amity Anderson. Jenkins, who'd worked the casual surveillance, suggested good spots to sit, “as long as we don't get rousted by St. Paul.”
“I talked to the watch commander, he'll pass it along to patrol, so you're okay on that,” Smith said.
With six people, they could track her in four-hour shifts, four on and eight off.
That would wear them down after a while, but Lucas planned to put pressure on Amity, to see if he could make her run, see what she took with her.
Lucas and Flowers would take the first shift, from eight to midnight. Shrake and Jenkins would take midnight to four, Del and Jerrold from four to eight, and then Lucas and Flowers would be back.
Tonight, after the meeting, Flowers would be set up, on the street and watching, and then Lucas and Smith would call on Anderson and rattle her cage.
Lucas and Smith drove to Anderson's house separately, and Lucas left his truck at the end of an alley that looked at the back of the house. Then he got into Smith's Ford, and they drove around the corner and pulled into Anderson's driveway. Smith said, “I oughta take a shift.”
“No need to,” Lucas said. “The rest of us have all worked together… no problem.”
“Yeah, but you know,” Smith said. He didn't want to, but it was only polite to offer.
“I know-but no problem.”
They went up the walk, saw the curtains move and a shape behind them, and then Lucas knocked on the door and a second later, Anderson opened it, looking at Lucas over a chain. She was holding a stick of wet celery smeared with orange cheese. “Lucas Davenport, I spoke to you once before,” Lucas said. “This is Detective John Smith from the St. Paul police. We need to speak to you.”
“What about?” Didn't move the chain.
Lucas got formal, putting some asshole in his voice: “A friend of yours, Leslie Widdler, was found dead in a car a few blocks from here this morning. Shot to death. We have questioned his wife, Jane, and she has hired an attorney. But our investigation, along with statements made by Jane Widdler, suggests that you could help us in the investigation. Please open the door.”
“Do you have a warrant?”
“No, but we could get one in a couple of minutes,” Lucas said, talking tougher, his voice dropping into a growl. “You can either talk to us here, or we'll get a warrant, come in and get you and take you downtown. It's your call.”
“Do I get an attorney?” Anderson asked.
“Anytime you want one,” Lucas said. “If you can't get one to come tonight, we'll take you downtown, put you in a cell, and we can wait until one gets here tomorrow.”
“But I haven't done anything,” Anderson said.
“That's what we need to talk about,” Lucas said.
In the end, she let them in, then called an attorney friend, who agreed to come over.
While they waited, they watched American Volcanoes for forty-five minutes, a TV story of how Yellowstone could blow up at any minute and turn the entire United States into a hellhole of ash and lava; Anderson drank two glasses of red wine, and then the attorney arrived.
Lucas knew her, as it happened, Annabelle Ramford, a woman who did a lot of pro bono work for the homeless, but not a lot of criminal law.
“We meet again,” she said, with a thin smile, shaking his hand.
“I hope you can help us,” Lucas said. “Miz Anderson needs some advice.”
Anderson admitted knowing the Widdlers. She looked shocked when Lucas suggested that she'd had a sexual relationship with Leslie Widdler, but admitted it. “You told me you're gay,” Lucas said.
“I am. When I had my relationship with Leslie, I didn't know it,” she said.
“But your relationship with Leslie continued, didn't it?”
She looked at Ramford, who said, “You don't have to say anything at all, if you don't wish to.”
They all looked at Anderson, who said, “What happens if I don't?”
“I'll make a note,” Lucas said. “But we will find out, either from you, with your cooperation, or from other people.”
“You don't have to take threats, either,” Ramford said to Anderson.
“That really wasn't a threat,” Lucas said, his voice going mild. “It's the real situation, Annabelle. If we're not happy when we leave here, we'll be taking Miz Anderson with us. You could then recommend a criminal attorney and we can all talk tomorrow, at the jail.”
“No-no-no,” Anderson said. “Look, my relationship with Leslie… continued… to some extent.”
“To some extent?” Smith asked. “What does that mean?”
“I was…” She bit her lip, looked away from them, then said, “I was actually more interested in Jane.”
“In Jane? Did you have a physical relationship with Jane?” Lucas asked.
“Well… yes. Why would I want to fuck a great big huge fat guy?”
Lucas had no answer for that; but he had more questions for Jane Widdler.
He turned to the quilts, taking notes as Anderson answered the questions. She believed the quilts were genuine. They'd been spotted by Marilyn Coombs, she said, who took them to the Widdlers for confirmation and evaluation.
The Widdlers, in turn, had sent them away for laboratory tests, and confirmed with the tests, and other biographical information about Armstrong, that the quilts were genuine. The Widdlers then put together an investment package in which the quilts would be sold to private investors who would donate them to museums, getting both a tax write-off and a reputation for generosity.
“We have reason to believe that the quilts are faked-that the curses were, in any case. That the primary buyers paid only a fraction of what they said they paid, and took an illegal tax write-off after the donations,” Lucas said.
“I don't know about any of that,” Anderson said. “I was the contact between the Widdlers and Mrs. Donaldson. I brought her attention to the quilts, but she made her own decisions and her own deals. I never handled money.”
“You told me that you didn't know Mrs. Bucher,” Lucas said.
She shrugged. “I didn't. I knew who she was, but I didn't know her.”
“And you still… maintain that position?”
“It's the truth,” she said.
“You didn't go there with Leslie Widdler and kill Mrs. Bucher and her maid?”
“Of course not! That's crazy!”
He asked her about Toms: never heard of him, she said. She'd never been to Des Moines in her life, not even passing through.
“Were you with Leslie Widdler last night?” Smith asked.
“No. I was out until about eight, then I was here,” she said.
“You didn't speak to him, didn't ride around with him…”
“No. No. I didn't speak to him or see him or anything.”
They pushed all the other points, but Anderson wouldn't budge. She hadn't dealt in antiques with either Leslie or Jane Widdler. She had no knowledge of what happened with the Armstrong quilts, after Donaldson, other than the usual art-world reports, gossip, and hearsay. She could prove, she thought, that on the Friday night that the Buchers were killed, she'd been out late with three other women friends, at a restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, where she'd not only drunk a little too much, but remembered that there'd been a birthday party in an upper loft area of the restaurant that had turned raucous, and that she was sure people would remember.
When they were done, Anderson said, “Now I have a question. I have the feeling that Jane Widdler has been telling you things that aren't true. I mean, if Jane and Leslie were killing these people, I don't know why Jane would try to drag me into it. Is she trying to do that?”
“Maybe,” Lucas said.