Lucas: “Could be interesting.”
Virgil: “Could be stupid.”
Mitford: “We got rich people, we got politicians, we got lawyers and cops. Probably gonna be both.”
—
The others werewaiting in an oversized, overdecorated living room, white plaster walls decorated with oil paintings of unidentifiable landscapes, most featuring a piece of an ocean with a sailing ship, or a field with horses; colorful red/blue oriental carpets that weren’t, but felt, ankle-deep; and mid-century furniture. Despite a plethora ofchairs and sofas, the others were all on their feet holding glasses—a mocktail party with cranberry or orange juice. A tray of cheese and crackers sat on a side table.
Lucas picked out a woman who might have been fifteen years younger than he was, and decided she was Lara Grandfelt, because she carried the same flavor as the house, and the party seemed to rotate around her.
She was a little hefty but comfortable with it, had an unlined face with sharp, watchful blue eyes. She wore a middle-blue woman’s business suit, almost a match for Lucas’s own, and diamonds the size of macadamia nuts, one on each earlobe. She was holding two glasses full of juice, and handed one back to Wise, her personal assistant, when Wise led Lucas and Virgil into the room.
Lucas wondered briefly if Wise was another slightly less affluent Grandfelt sister, and Wise was her married name. She and Grandfelt were the same size and shape, same hairdos and color, their dress was different in color but similar in style, and Wise had diamonds in her ears as Grandfelt did, but with smaller stones. Henderson, the senator, said, “There you are. Virgil: why don’t you come to work for me? I need somebody down south.”
“You’re looking summery, Senator,” Virgil said. A polite Minnesota evasion for “go fuck yourself.”
Henderson, a willowy blond known for his rapacious appetite for pretty women of all ages and races, as well as a cocaine habit that sometimes made him feel younger than he was, had been talking to a tall auburn-haired woman who Lucas didn’t know, but who gave off attorney vibes. She had a long thin nose, long thin lips, and what looked like long legs under her dress, which was an intensely figuredankle-length crimson and black number that looked, to Lucas’s fashion-trained eye, suspiciously like a Loro Piana. She wore a librarian’s wire-rimmed glasses.
They were joined by Mitford, who said to Henderson, “The vice president is calling again.”
“I’ll talk to her later. She wants money and a bigger turnout in Washington County.”
A BCA agent named Jon Duncan, who was Virgil’s nominal boss, raised a glass of cranberry juice to Lucas and Virgil. He called, “You guys are looking great!” and Virgil said, “Yeah, no,” a Wisconsin idiom he’d picked up while fishing in the Northwoods, for “go fuck yourself.”
Duncan had been talking to Edie Lamb, U.S. Marshal for the District of Minnesota. Lamb was technically, but not actually, Lucas’s boss. Lucas knew, and both Henderson and Lamb knew he knew, that Lamb was divorced because her husband had caught the senator and Mrs. Lamb, in Henderson’s phrase, “buttering the biscuit” during a Christmas party at Henderson’s mansion.
The shared knowledge may have brought Henderson, Lamb, and Lucas closer; or maybe not. Really, who knew?
Henderson was responsible for Lamb getting the U.S. Marshal’s appointment, and for Lucas getting a deputy marshal’s badge. Together they’d been involved in a number of tricky situations, some of which a non-cynical observer might have considered questionable, if not entirely reprehensible.
Two other women were talking in a corner: a young blonde in a dark blue suit who also gave off attorney vibes, and a short woman with flyaway brown hair, skeptical brown eyes, and a few extra wrinkles on her olive-complected face. She said, “Hey, Lucas.”
Lucas knew Carla Benucci as a reporter for the St. PaulPioneer Press. “You doing a story?” he asked.
“Not there anymore, I got bought out,” she said. “I’m doing PR for Mason, Tono, Whitehead and Boone.”
“I’m sorry,” Lucas said.
Benucci shrugged: “Shit happens.”
—
The auburn-haired womantalking to Henderson took a final sip of cranberry juice and tapped the empty glass with a spoon to make it ring. “Everybody? We’re all here. Time to work.”
She introduced herself and the blonde: “I’m Tricia Boone, of Mason, Tono, Whitehead and Boone, and Michelle Cornell is an associate with our firm. We represent Lara Grandfelt.” She reached out and touched the diamond-studded woman. “We’re here to help Lara launch a long-delayed quest. I will let Lara tell you about it and say only that our firm is firmly behind her, whenever our legal services may be needed.”
Grandfelt smiled, turned to look at everyone in the group, and said, “What we’re going to do, is we’re going to find the monster who killed my twin sister. That was more than twenty years ago now, and that’s long enough to know he’s roaming free.”
Lucas scratched his forehead, an unconscious gesture of skepticism, and Grandfelt caught it. “Marshal Davenport doesn’t think we’ll get anywhere, but he doesn’t know what we’re going to do,” she said.
Boone jumped back in: “Why don’t we all sit down. I believe there are enough chairs.”
They all did, and Grandfelt said to Boone, “You were going to fill in some background…”
Boone nodded. “Yes.” She opened a file folder on her lap, cleared her throat, and said:
“Lara Grandfelt and her sister, Doris, both graduated from Minnesota colleges—actually, Lara was at the university—just before the turn of the century. Lara studied finance and economics, and Doris studied accounting at Manifold College in Northfield.”
