"Sugar beets?"
"No, we never really farmed. We lived just outside Oxford-we could walk to school-and my dad was a mail carrier. Both of my grandfathers were farmers, though. Dad grew up on a farm, and so did Mom, but he just wasn’t interested."
"Your folks still live up there?"
"No, they both died. My father died when I was little, when I was ten, that was… twenty-four years ago, now. Just about this time of year. Mom died four years later. In the spring. After Mom died, I went to live with my aunt Judy in Lakeville and Audrey went to college. She went to St. Anne’s."
"I know… Listen, I assume that you didn’t talk to us directly because you didn’t want to offend your sister. Or alienate her. Is that right?"
Bell nodded. "You know, she kept talking about how she loved him and what a great provider he was, but I really thought he was an animal and that sooner or later, he’d kill her. He was a killer. You said on the phone that the Kresge thing wasn’t finished yet, but you know, it really is. Wilson killed him. Maybe I should have come forward earlier, but… I wasn’t sure. And he was my sister’s husband."
"The good provider."
"Easy to laugh off if you’re a police officer, down here in Minneapolis," Bell said. "But if you were poor in Oxford, Minnesota, and we pretty much were, then ‘good provider’ isn’t something you laugh at."
Lucas glanced around: "Are you married? Or…"
"Divorced," she said. "Four years now." She shook her head at the unstated question. "Larry never laid a hand on me. We just found out that we weren’t very much interested in each other. We were dating when I got pregnant, and we got married because we were supposed to."
"All right," he said.
They talked for a few more minutes, then Lucas stood up. "Thanks."
"What about Dan Kresge? Are you all done now?"
Lucas shrugged. "I don’t know. There doesn’t seem much more to look at. We’ll keep picking at little corners, but there’s not much left."
"I’m glad that man’s gone-Wilson, not Mr. Kresge. I know it’s a sin, but I’m glad he’s gone."
Lucas had just taken a step toward the front door when the door opened and a slender teenager stepped in, dressed head to foot in black, carrying a black bookbag. Her hair was blond, no more than an inch long, and a tiny gold ring pierced one eyebrow. She looked quickly at her mother, then to Lucas, gave him an assessing smile and said, "My. This is a studly one."
"Connie!"
"He is…" Slightly seductive, intended to tease her mother.
"Please! This is Chief Davenport from the Minneapolis Police Department."
"A cop? You can’t be asking if Aunt Audrey really killed him-she admits it," the teenager said. She dropped her bookbag in the entry. "I don’t think she killed anyone else."
"We’re just making routine calls," Lucas said.
"The chief of police makes routine calls?"
"I’m not the chief, I’m a deputy chief," Lucas said. "And sometimes I make routine calls, if the case is important enough."
"We were just finishing here," Bell said.
"Well, good luck with Aunt Audrey," the girl said. "The meanest woman alive."
"Connie!" And Bell looked quickly at Lucas: "Connie and Audrey don’t get along as well as they should."
"She is such a tiresome little bourgeois," Connie said, rolling her eyes. "The only interesting thing she ever did was kill Wilson."
"Which was, when you think about it, pretty interesting," Lucas said.
Connie nodded: "Yup. I gotta admit it."
Lucas smiled at her, deciding he liked her. The girl picked it up, and smiled back, a touch of shyness this time. Lucas said to Bell, "If anything else comes up, I’d like to give you a call."
As Lucas passed Connie, he picked up just the slightest whiff of weed; he glanced at her, and she pickedthatup too. Smart kid, he thought, as he walked down the sidewalk.
Thinking: More dead people. Audrey’s parents, dead and buried.
From his car phone, he called Sherrilclass="underline" "I’m gonna run up to the Red River Valley tomorrow, up by Grand Forks. Can you go?"
"Yup: this is my weekend. Can we stay overnight in one of those sleazy little hotels with the thin walls and fuck all night so the people can hear us on the other sides of the walls?"
"I don’t know about all night… maybe, you know, once."
"I’ll start practicing my moaning. Call me tonight."
The phone rang a minute later, and he thought it was Sherrill calling back. It was Lucas’s secretary. Rose Marie wanted to see him.
Rose Marie Roux was working on the budget when Lucas stepped in. "Sit down," she said, without looking up. She worked for another moment, humming to herself without apparently realizing it: she was happy doing budgets.
"So," she said eventually, dropping her yellow pencil and linking her fingers. "Are you sleeping with Marcy Sherrill?"
Lucas got frosty: "We’re seeing each other. I don’t think it’s much of anyone’s business what happens-"
"Lucas, for Christ’s sake-are you living in a goddamn cave?" she asked in exasperation. "A deputy chief of police can get away with sleeping with one of his detectives only if-"
"She’s not one of my detectives," Lucas said. "I don’t have any regular supervisory control…"
"Oh, bullshit-she works for you when you need her. And besides, the media won’t give a shit about technicalities. You’re a deputy chief, she’s a sergeant. I don’t care- I really don’t. What I was about to say is, a deputy chief can get away with sleeping with one of his detectives only if he’s very, very careful. Not secretive, but careful. Now:
You left a message that you were going off to this place…" She looked at a notepad. "Oxford. Tomorrow. Up in the Red River Valley? Were you planning to take Sherrill?"
"I thought-"
"If you take her, she’s gonna have to take vacation time. Or she puts in her regular hours, and you go up on her days off and she doesn’t get paid at all."
"Look…"
"No, you look: I’m not trying to save her ass. I’m not trying to save my ass. I’m trying to save your ass. I can guarantee you that if you go up there with her, and she’s paid for it, and the press finds out, you’ll wind up being fired. I’d back you up, but it wouldn’t do any good-you’d get it in the neck anyway."
"Maybe we just oughta forget the whole thing," he said. "Me ’n’ Marcy."
She softened a quarter-inch: "I didn’t say you gotta do that. But you’ve got to be discreet, and you’ve got to be politically careful. She can’t be on the payroll when you’re off together."
"All right," he said. "That’s it?"
"Elle Kruger seems to be doing okay."
"I was just talking to her, and her doctor. She’s gonna have a lot of pain for a long time," Lucas said. "But her brain wasn’t affected. At least, not as far as they can tell. Motor is all right, memory, language."
"Nothing on it?"
"Nothing yet. But that’s why I’m going up to the Red River. There’s a question about whether Audrey McDonald might be involved."
Roux’s genetically enabled left eyebrow went up: " Seriously?"
"Seriously. We might have the edge of something pretty interesting," Lucas said.
"Okay. But remember what I said about Sherrill."
"She’s off the next couple of days. We should be all right.""No expense accounts, no meals, no nothin’…"
"Nothing," he said. "Not a nickel. For either of us."
"All right," she said. "Good luck."
"With Marcy? Or the case?"
"Whatever," she said.
Lucas, back in his office, called the County attorney’s office and asked for Richard Kirk, the head of the criminal division. He waited for a moment, and Kirk came on: "What’s up?"
"How long can you hold off on a decision about Audrey McDonald?"