“Not that I remember. She had friends I didn’t know, but he wasn’t one of the long- term ones. What’d he look like?”
“Tall, pale, red hair, thin-bony, almost,” Lucas said. “That doesn’t sound familiar… Does he have a family?"
"Yeah, his parents are postal workers, I guess. Out in the country-side, somewhere."
"That’s awful for them. That’s awful,” Austin said. “So I can get that stuff?"
"Yes. I’ll put it all out for you. I’ve got a board meeting today, but Helen will be here. I’ll stack it up in the front room. You’re welcome to stay as long you want. Helen can get you Cokes and coffee and sandwiches.”
“One more thing. Have you heard of a couple…” He looked in his notebook again. "… named Denise Robinson and Mark McGuire?”
“Sure. They were friends of Francie’s. I should have given you their names, but I didn’t think of them,” she said. “They came by with her a couple of times after Hunter was killed, last fall sometime.”
“What does Robinson look like?"
"Mmm, tall, gawky, blondish hair-sandy, maybe-wears big plastic- rimmed glasses. She’s a marathoner. Bony shoulders, drinking straw arms. She told me that she ran it under three, which means she’s pretty serious about it. Why?"
"Just a couple names I picked up,” he said. “I’m pushing all of Frances’s friends for names.”
And Robinson didn’t sound like a fairy, he thought after he’d rung off.
HE CALLED ANSON, the Minneapolis detective, from the car, on the way to Austin’s house. Anson was sleepy: he’d gotten six hours the night before. “And I gotta have eight, or I’m just not worth shit.” They both yawned together, into their phones, and Anson added, “We got the ID last night, it’s confirmed. I got our guys to make up a mug shot of the fairy-I’m going to run it around this morning, talk to all those people on your list.”
“Let me know what you get,” Lucas said. “I’m on the way over to Alyssa Austin’s to look at her daughter’s financial records.”
If nothing came up sooner, they agreed to talk at noon, to compare notes.
LUCAS FOUND four boxes of records waiting for him at Austin’s. The housekeeper met him at the door, took him into the living room, said, “Mrs. Austin said to try to keep all the folders together, because there’s really a lot of paper and if it gets confused, they might not ever get it straight again.”
Austin had been right about the paper. There were two intersecting sets of records: Hunter Austin’s estate, two million of which went to Frances, while the rest went to Alyssa; and then Frances’s estate, which included not only the two million from Hunter Austin’s estate, but another half- million that she had apparently accumulated earlier, presumably through gifts and investments made on her behalf.
Hunter Austin’s estate was still mostly intact, because the estate return had only recently been accepted by the IRS; and all of his investment, banking, and retirement accounts and trusts were still operating. That produced dozens of checks coming and going each year, on top of money coming in from his investments.
Frances Austin had had two major accounts of her own, one with Wells Fargo investment services, and one with Fidelity Investments. As money came in from one or the other-about a quarter of her accounts were in bonds that produced regular income that she apparently used for living expenses-it was deposited in her checking account, which was also at Wells Fargo.
The totality was confusing. At eleven o’clock, though, his neck and back muscles starting to cramp, he had what could be a breakthrough. In December, Fidelity had issued a check for fifty thousand dollars to Frances. There was no check form where the other check forms were, and there was no record of the fifty thousand going into her checking account.
Where had the money gone? Had she simply endorsed it to somebody? Had she walked it into a bank and gotten cash-not all that easy to do, in these days of drug awareness and terrorism alerts. What had she spent it on?
Del had been right, the night before, when he said that people had been killed for a lot less than two million dollars; and a lot less than fifty thousand dollars, too.
He stood up, stretched, went into the kitchen for another diet Coke, found the housekeeper unstacking the dishwasher. “Do you have a cell phone number for Mrs. Austin?”
“There’s a list,” she said. She went to a cupboard near the wall phone and opened the door: on the back of it was a list of fifteen or twenty phone numbers: plumber, appliance repairmen, lawn and pool services, Mercedes and Jaguar dealerships, and three different numbers for Alyssa Austin: Office, 1Cell, and 2Cell.
“Her personal phone is 2Cell; 1Cell is the business cell,” the housekeeper said.
Lucas called her on the personal phone: she answered on the third ring. “Sorry to bother you,” Lucas said. “I have a question. Frances took fifty thousand dollars out of Fidelity in December, but there’s no record of it going into her checking account. Do you remember anything like that? Did she sign it over to somebody for a car or something, or put a down payment on a condo?”
There was a long pause, and then Austin said, “Fifty thousand? I don’t know anything about that, at all. I would have known-if she was thinking about spending fifty thousand dollars on something, she would have mentioned it.”
“She didn’t say anything?"
"Nothing at all,” Austin said. “I’m going to leave some documentation in a folder on your dining table,” Lucas said. “Could you take a look at it, and the other expenses she had at the time? See if anything rings a bell.”
“I’ll look as soon as I get home- I’ll come back as soon as this meeting is done.”
“Good. Let me give you my cell number. Call me anytime.” When he got off the line, he took out his book and found Anson’s number. “Get anything?” he asked, when Anson came up. “I took that photo kit of the fairy woman around to the people who saw her,” Anson said. “And to Frances’s friends. One of her friends said the fairy looked like… guess who?”
“I don’t know. Lana Turner?"
"Close, but no cigar. They said it looked like Frances Austin.”
8
A SLAP in the face. “Frances Austin’s dead,” Lucas said. “You know that and I know that,” Anson said. “The question is, does Frances Austin know that?"
"Man… the blood at Austin’s. You’ve seen the lab reports?"
"I’m just telling you what I was told. We really don’t know how much blood there was at Austin’s place, whether it was a little that got smeared around or a lot that got mopped up. But here’s a question for you. What if the fairy is Alyssa Austin? She looks a little like Frances.”
Lucas had to think it over. Why not? “You’re thinking outside the box,” he said finally.
“She gets a wig, she gets some black clothes…"
"She’s forty- five, or something like that. Everybody says the fairy is in her early twenties,” Lucas said. “Yeah, that’s a question,” Anson said. “Still, I wouldn’t mind getting a peek in her wig drawer.” Lucas thought, I’m right there. He glanced sideways. The house-keeper was twenty feet away, poking a coat- hanger wire down the drain on the left side of the two- basin kitchen sink, her lips moving, as though she were trying to talk it into the garbage disposal. Paying no attention. But how was he going to get into the bedroom? The housekeeper wouldn’t be leaving for hours. And if he found anything, could he tell Anson? It’d be an illegal search and he didn’t know Anson that well. “We’d need something,” he said. “To get a warrant.”
“Think of something,” Anson said. Disappointed? “Did you get anything?”