“Why isn't Amity Anderson involved?” Lucas asked.
“I'm not saying it's impossible,” Frazier said. “But Amity Anderson is a mousy little girl who majored in art and couldn't get a job. She wound up being Donaldson's secretary, though really, she was more like a servant. She did a little of everything, and got paid not much. One reason we don't think her boyfriend did it is that there's no evidence that she had a boyfriend.”
“Ever?”
“Not when she lived here. Mrs. Donaldson had a live-in maid, and she told us that Amity never went anywhere,” Frazier said. “Couldn't afford it, apparently had no reason to. In any case, she had no social life-didn't even get personal phone calls.
Go talk to her. You'll see. You'll walk away with frost on your dick.”
On the way back to the Cities, Lucas got a call from Ruffe Ignace.
“I got a tip that you've been investigating Burt Kline for statutory rape,” Ignace said. “Can you tell me when you're gonna bust him?”
“Man, I don't know what you're talking about,” Lucas said, grinning into the phone.
“Ah, c'mon. I've talked to six people and they all say you're in it up to your hips,” Ignace said. “Are you going to testify for the Dakota County grand jury?”
“They've got themselves a grand jury?” Lucas eased the car window down, and held the phone next to the whistling slipstream. “Ruffe, you're breaking up. I can barely hear you.”
“I'll take that as a 'no comment,'“ Ignace said. “Davenport said, 'No comment, you worthless little newspaper prick,' but confirmed that he has sold all of his stock in Kline's boat-waxing business.”
“You get laid the other night?” Lucas asked.
“Yes. Now: will you deny that you're investigating Kline?” Lucas kept his mouth shut, and after ten seconds of silence, Ignace said, “All right, you're not denying it.”
“Not denying or confirming,” Lucas said. “You can quote me on that.”
“Good. Because that confirms. Is this chick…” Pause, paper riffling, “… Jesse Barth… Is she really hot?”
“Ah, fuck.”
“Thank you,” Ruffe said. “That'd be Jesse with two esses.”
“Listen, Ruffe, I don't know where you're getting this, but honest to God, you'll never get another word out of me if you stick me with the leak,” Lucas said. “Put it on Dakota County.”
“I'm not going to put it on anybody,” Ignace said. “It's gonna be like mystery meat-it's gonna come out of nowhere and wind up on the reader's breakfast plate.”
“That's not good enough, because people are going to draw conclusions,” Lucas argued.
“If they conclude that I leaked it, I'll be in trouble, and you won't get another word out of me or anybody else in the BCA. Let people think it's Dakota County. Whisper it in their ear. You don't have to say the words.”
“I'm going after the mother this afternoon,” Ignace said. “Let's see, it's… Kathy? Is she hot?”
“Ruffe, you're breaking up really bad. I'm hanging up now, Ruffe.”
Despite his weaseling, Lucas was pleased. Flowers had done the job, and Ignace would nail Kline to a wall. Further, Ignace wouldn't give up the source, and if the game was played just right, everybody would assume the source was Dakota County.
He called Rose Marie Roux. He didn't like to lie to her, but sometimes did, if only to protect her; necessity is a mother. “I just talked to Ruffe Ignace. He knows about Kline. He's got Jesse Barth's name, he's going to talk to Kathy Barth. I neither confirmed nor denied and I am not his source. But his source is a good one and it comes one day after we briefed Dakota County. We need to start leaking around that Dakota County was talking to Ignace.”
“We can do that,” she said, also pleased. “This is working out.” “Tell the governor. Maybe he could do an off-the-record joke with some of the reporters at the Capitol, about Dakota County leaks,” Lucas said. “Maybe get Mitford to put something together.
A quip. The governor likes quips. And metaphors.”
“A quip,” she said. “A quip would be good.”
Lucas called John Smith. Smith was at the Bucher mansion, and would be there for a while. “I'll stop by,” Lucas said.
The Widdlers were there, finishing the inventory. “There's a lot of good stuff here,” Leslie told Lucas. He was wearing a pink bow tie that looked like an exotic lepidopteran.
“There's two million, conservatively. I really want to be here when they have the auction.”
“Nothing missing?”
He shrugged and his wife picked up the question. “There didn't seem to be any obvious holes in the decor, when you started putting things back together-they trashed the place, but they didn't move things very far.”
“Did you know a woman named Claire Donaldson, over in Eau Claire?”
The Widdlers looked at each other, and then Jane said, “Oh my God. Do you think?”
Lucas said, “There's a possibility, but I'm having trouble figuring out a motive.
There doesn't seem to be anything missing from the Donaldson place, either.”
“We were at some of the Donaldson sales,” Leslie Widdler said. “She had some magnificent things, although I will say, her taste wasn't as extraordinary as everybody made out.” To his wife: “Do you remember that awful Italian neoclassical commode?”
Jane poked a finger at Lucas's chest. “It looked like somebody had been working on it with a wood rasp. And it obviously had been refinished. They sold it as the original finish, but there was no way…”
The Widdlers went back to work, and Lucas and John Smith stepped aside and watched them scribbling, and Lucas said, “John, I've got some serious shit coming down the road. I'll try to stick with you as much as I can, but this other thing is political, and it could be a distraction.”
“Big secret?”
“Not anymore. The goddamn Star Tribune got a sniff of it. I'll try to stay with you…”
Smith flapped his hands in frustration: “I got jack-shit, Lucas. You think this Donaldson woman might be tied in?”
“It feels that way. It feels like this one,” Lucas said. “We might want to talk to the FBI, see if they'd take a look.”
“I hate to do that, as long as we have a chance,” Smith said.
“So do I.”
Smith looked glumly at Leslie Widdler, who was peering at the bottom of a silver plant-watering pot. “It'd spread the blame, if we fall on our asses,” he said. “But I want to catch these motherfuckers. Me.”
On the way out the door, Lucas asked Leslie Widdler, “If we found that there were things missing, how easy would it be to locate them? I mean, in the antiques market?”
“If you had a good professional photograph and good documentation of any idiosyncrasies-you know, dents, or flaws, or repairs- then it's possible,” Widdler said. “Not likely, but possible. If you don't have that, then you're out of luck.”