Virgil told her about the help they’d gotten from the true-crimers, and Grandfelt said she understood, and that she was prepared to split the five-million-dollar reward, and the one-million-dollar add-on, between all the people who had helped.
28
Tuesday, the day everything turned.
The day began for Lucas when he got a call from Senator Henderson, who spoke in hushed tones. “Jesus, Lucas: I jacked up the DNA guy in Chicago. He took a look and said we got a match. The DNA in the shoes is a match for the DNA taken from Doris Grandfelt. We got him. Or her.”
“All right. This is good. We’ve got to keep it to ourselves for the time being. I’ll talk to Jon Duncan at the BCA and tell him to keep it to himself until we can meet with…the big dogs at the BCA and the Ramsey County Attorney. You might want to be there.”
“I do. What about Lara?”
“Are you in St. Paul?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you pick me up and we’ll both go talk to her. She knows we have a suspect. I’ll fill you in on the ride over.”
“I’ll see you in twenty minutes. I’ll have Neil drive us over.”
Lucas called Virgil, told him about the match.
“We’ve got to have the big meet,” Virgil said.
“Yeah. I’ll call Jon. I’ll tell him to go ahead and set up the meeting for late today. Henderson and I are going over to Grandfelt’s to talk to her.”
“Okay. I’m talking to all the true-crimers this morning to see if they got anything else…”
Lucas called Duncan and told him about the match. “That goddamned Henderson…it’s about time he got his nose out of this.”
“He won’t do that,” Lucas said. “Grandfelt is one of his big donors, and besides, this kind of thing gets him excited. Makes him feel like he might be a cop.”
“Right. Well, fuck it, water under the bridge. I’ll call Chicago and confirm it, the DNA, and I’ll set something up for late afternoon. You and Virgil better be on good behavior.”
—
A half hourafter Henderson called, a black Cadillac SUV pulled into the driveway; the sky was overcast, and the weather had turned cool, a hint of the oncoming autumn. Lucas got a rain jacket and carried it out to the car, got in the back.
Henderson was in the front passenger seat, his aide, Neil Mitford, behind the wheel. Mitford said, “Tell us everything.”
Lucas told them everything. They both had law degrees and took it in, until Henderson said, “I’m convinced. I’m not sure a jury would be.”
“I’m not, either,” Mitford said. “It’d be nice if we had a couple more sticks to throw in the fire.”
“Virgil’s out looking for sticks right now,” Lucas said.
—
Anne Cash hadbeen looking for records of a probate proceeding on Amanda Fisk’s mother, Alma. She found them in an hour, printed them, and called Virgil, who was in his hotel room, pacing, reading snatches of his new manuscript, watching a rainstorm coming in from the west.
“Yeah, Anne.”
“There was an informal probate, but we have a record. Alma had a much bigger estate than you’d think. We couldn’t figure that out so we went back and found another probate under the name Schmidt, which was Alma’s maiden name. Rhonda Schmidt, Alma’s mother, died seven months before Alma and left Alma a house in Stillwater, plus sixty-seven thousand dollars from investments with Vanguard and twenty-five thousand dollars from a life insurance policy. We looked on a real estate site and saw that the house was sold by Alma for three hundred and seventy thousand dollars two months after Rhonda died.”
“And that wouldn’t include any money Alma had on her own?” Virgil asked.
“No. It doesn’t look like she originally had much of her own, before her mom died. We can’t figure it directly, because by that time it had been absorbed by the money she got from her mother, but it looks like it was less than forty thousand dollars, total. But she owned her house outright, and Amanda Fisk, her only heir, sold it a month after Alma died for three hundred and nineteen thousand dollars. And Alma apparently bought a new car with the money from her mom, and we don’t know what happened with that, but it was valued at forty-six thousand when she bought it.”
Virgil was doing the numbers in his head, and he said, finally, “Jeez, Anne, you’re telling me that Fisk got eight hundred thousand dollars when her mother died?”
