The next night:
Marcia Wise went into the kitchen and chose a set of car keys—she loved the Jaguar, top down, summer breeze blowing through her hair, but she knew that Lara really didn’t like her driving it. Subtle, she thought, but a status thing. Lara was the boss; she was the help.
She hesitated, then picked the BMW keys out of the wooden bowl on the countertop. The BMW was a stuffy five-year-old SUV that they mostly used for winter driving and for Wise’s errands.
She hesitated again, then called, “Would you mind if I took the Jag? It’s a nice night.”
She got no response for five seconds, then Grandfelt called back, “No, go ahead. Be careful.”
“I will.” Wise could tell Grandfelt was put out, but she’d recoverquickly enough. Grandfelt was in the library, reading a book on The Eight, a group of early-twentieth-century painters.
Wise walked into the library, kissed Grandfelt on the forehead, and added, “If you want anything else, text me.”
“I will, but I don’t think I’ll want anything,” Grandfelt said. “I’ll be in the TV room, I’m going to look for a movie. Don’t scratch my car.”
“Don’t start the movie until I get back. Half an hour. I’ll add some kettle corn to the shopping list…”
“You really shouldn’t,” Grandfelt said, which meant that Wise really should, while acknowledging that they both could stand to lose a few pounds. Like fifteen. Or twenty.
—
Wise went outto the garage, pushed the door lift button, got in the sparkling black Jaguar two-seater, backed it out and dropped the top. Marcia Wise lived a rich life, but she wasn’t wealthy, not on her own. Grandfelt gave her a salary barely large enough to max out the Social Security contribution, though she also picked up every other expense in their joint lives. On her own, Wise had a hundred and seventeen thousand dollars in an investment account, and that was it.
No house, no car, no nothing. She was a year younger than Grandfelt, and they were aging into their forties. If Grandfelt should fall for a younger woman…Wise didn’t want to think about the possibility.
So she didn’t. She focused instead on the light, snaky feeling of the F-Type R75 as it bumped down the alley to the street, and then the sense of freedom, and wealth, that the convertible brought to her.
She took a left at the end of the alley and drove a mazelike route to Whole Foods, less than ten minutes away. The supermarketparking lot served several other franchises, a Chipotle, a Caribou Coffee, a Noodles & Company, like that. She parked near the end of the lot, and on the far side, facing a concrete wall probably eight feet high. She did that because she wanted the empty spaces on both sides of the Jag. She brought the convertible top back up, and walked into the store, carrying a reusable grocery bag, jingling the car fob and house keys.
—
Ten minutes tonine with still some light in the sky, looking west down the street toward Lake of the Isles. Fisk was parked three cars closer to the alley than she had been the night before, in Timothy’s Range Rover. She was feeling restless, ready to quit again, go back home. Then the black Jag appeared at the mouth of the alley, paused, and turned toward her, away from the lake, and accelerated past.
Fisk sank down in the car seat, eyes barely above the level of the driver’s-side window. This was the opportunity she’d been hoping for, but she hesitated to do a lights-on U-turn right behind Grandfelt. This would be risky, depending on where the other woman was going, but had to be done. Her mind was clear on that.
When Grandfelt was a block away, Fisk made the U-turn and fell in behind as Grandfelt rolled up to a stop sign. Grandfelt took a right, and Fisk waited a beat or two, before following. The Jag would be a hard car to lose, at least while there was a bit of light.
Fisk had never followed anyone before, not in a car, but her frequent contacts with police witnesses gave her some ideas about how to do it. When cops followed someone, and that resulted in an arrest, the defense attorneys were always insisting that the cops swear that they never lost constructive sight of the car they were following. Thatthey couldn’t have inadvertently and accidentally lost the person they were following, and might have understandably followed the very similar car of their innocent defendant, while the real criminal took a side street.
Fisk would then lead the cop through their surveillance routine, and exactly how the defendant had been tracked.
So she had that going for her.
—
Even if shehadn’t had that, she’d have had no trouble following the Jaguar. Grandfelt stayed on main streets, paying no attention to anything coming up from behind. She drove into the Whole Foods parking lot and parked out on the edge, well back from the store.
Fisk said aloud, “Perfect,” while feeling a tickle of apprehension. She was going to do it. But there were other considerations before she did that.
She went to the next shopping lot, parked, got out of her car, and walked back to the corner of the Chipotle and looked for cameras. She spotted them right away and her heart sank: she couldn’t be on video, in the Whole Foods parking lot, at the same time that Grandfelt was murdered. Not after Timothy’s freak accident.
But wait…
The cameras—she thought there might be four of them, aimed in different directions—were housed atop a twenty-foot-high pole with a battery box at the bottom, mounted on wheels so it could be moved to different locations. But there were trees scattered across the parking lot. Not extremely tall, but, she thought, tall enough. She looked at the alignment and thought it possible, thought it likely, that the cameras couldn’t see the area where Grandfelt had parked.
Finding out for sure wouldnotbe risky. If she parked next to Grandfelt, as she had planned, she could get out of the car and look back toward the cameras. If she could see them—and they could see her—she’d simply leave. If Grandfelt returned home uninjured, there’d be no reason for anyone to look at the video.
She considered it, chewing on her lip, walked slowly back to her car, and drove back to the Whole Foods lot, turned in, drove to Grandfelt’s car, and parked on the driver’s side of the Jag.
