Jane got in the car: “Thank God,” she moaned.
“You did it.”
“We have to go to your house,” Jane said. “For one minute. I'm so scared. I'm going to wet my pants. I just… God, I can't hold it in.”
“Hold it, hold it, we'll be there in two minutes,” Amity said. Down Cretin, left on Ford, up the street past the shopping centers, up the hill, into the driveway.
In thr bathroom, Jane pulled down her pants, listened, then stood up and opened the medicine cabinet. Two prescription bottles. She took the one in the back. Sat down, peed, waddled to the sink with her pants down around her ankles, looked in, then turned around and carefully and silently pried open the shower door. Hair near the drain. She got a piece of toilet paper, and cleaned up some hair, put it in her pocket.
Almost panting now. The cops might be on their way at any moment: a passerby happens to glance into the car, sees a shoe… and she had a lot to get done. She sat back on the toilet, flushed, stood up, pulled up her pants. Lot to get done.
Amity was shaky. “When do you think, ah, what…?” “Let's go,” Jane said. “Now, we're in a hurry.”
In the car, headed west across the bridge, Jane said, “I mailed you the map. You should get it tomorrow. Don't wait too long before you go. Leslie owned the land through a trust, and they'll find it pretty quick. Make sure you're not being followed.
Davenport's talked to you, if he knows anything else, if he's investigating the quilts… then you might be followed.”
Amity looked in the rearview mirror. “How do you know we're not being followed now?”
Jane made a smile. “We can't be,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because if we are, we're finished.”
Amity looked at her, white-faced. “That's it? We can't be because we can't be?”
“Actually they'd be much more likely to be following Leslie and me,” Jane said. “If they were, they probably would have picked me up back at Davenport's house, don't you think?”
Amity nodded. That made sense. “Maybe I should drop you off around the block from your place. Just in case.”
“You could do that,” Jane said. “Just to be perfectly clear about this, you're now an accomplice in whatever it is that happened to Leslie. I happen to think it was a suicide, and you should think that, too. Because if you ever even hint that I know something about it, well, then, you're in it, too.”
“All I want to do is go to Italy,” Amity said.
Amity dropped her off around the block, and Jane strolled home in the soft night light, listening to the insects, to the frogs, to the rustlings in the hedges: cats on their nightly missions, a possum here, a fox there, all unseen.
Nobody waiting. And she thought, No Les, no more.
She made a smile-look, reflecting at her own courage, her own ability to operate under pressure. It was like being a spy, almost…
With one more mission that night. She backed the car out of the garage, took the narrow streets out to I-494, watching the mirror, took 494 to I-35, and headed south.
The country place wasn't that far out, down past the Northfield turnoff to County 1, and east with a few jogs to the south, into the Cannon River Valley.
The country place comprised forty acres of senile maple and box elder along the west or north bank of the Cannon, depending on how you looked at it, with a dirt track leading back to it. Her lights bored a hole through the cornfields on either side of the track, the wheels dropping into washouts and pots, until she punched through to the shack.
When they first bought it, they talked of putting up a little cabin that didn't smell like mold-the shack smelled like it had been built from mold-with a porch that looked out over the river, and Leslie could fish for catfish and Jane could quilt.
In the end, they put up a metal building with good locks, and let the shack slide into ruin. The cabin was never built because, in fact, Leslie was never much interested in catfish, and Jane never got the quilt-making thing going. There was too much to do in the Cities, too much to see, too much to buy. Couldn't even get the Internet at the shack. It was like a hillbilly patch, or something.
But a good place to stash stolen antiques.
She let herself into the shed, fumbling in her headlights with the key. Inside, she turned on the interior lights and then went back and turned off the car lights. She took the amber prescription bottle from her pocket, and rolled it under the front seat of the van.
From her purse, she got a lint roller, peeled it to get fresh tape, and rolled it over the driver's seat. They were always fastidious about the van, wearing hairnets and gloves and jumpsuits, in case they had to ditch it. There shouldn't be a problem, but she was playing with her life.
She rolled it, and then rolled it again, and a third time.
Then she took the wad of hair from her pocket.
Looked at it, and thought, soap. Nibbled at her lip, sighed, thought, do it right, and walked over to the shack and went inside. They kept the pump turned off, so she had to wait for it to cycle and prime, and then to pump out some crappy, shitty water, waiting until it cleared. When it was, she rinsed the wad of hair-nasty-and then patted it dry on a paper towel.
When it was dry, she pulled out a few strands, pinched them in the paper towel, and carried them back to the van. Two here, curled over the back of the seat, not too obvious, and another one here, on the back edge of the seat. She took the rest of the hair and wiped it roughly across the back of the seat, hoping to get some breaks and split ends…
Good as she could do, she thought. That was all she had.
Jane Widdler was home in bed at two a.m. There were no calls on her phone, and the neighborhood was dark when she pulled into the garage. Upstairs, she lit some scented candles and sank into the bathtub, letting the heat carry away her worries.
Didn't work.
She lay awake in the night like a frightened bat, waiting for the day to come, for the police, for disgrace, for humiliation, for lawyers.
Lucas, on the other hand, slept like a log until five-thirty, when his cop sense woke him up. The cop sense had been pricked by a flashing red light on the curtains at the side of the house, the pulsing red light sneaking in under the bottom of the blackout shades.
He cracked his eyes, thought, the cops. What the hell was it? Then he heard a siren, and another one.
He slipped out of bed-Weather had no cop sense, and would sleep soundly until six, unless Sam cried out-and walked to the window, pulled back one side of the shade.
Two cop cars, just up the street, then a third arriving, all gathered around a dark sedan.
What the hell? It looked and smelled like a crime scene.
He got into his jeans and golf shirt, and slipped sockless feet into loafers, and let himself out the front door. As he came across the lawn, his ankles wet with dew, one of the St. Paul cops recognized him. “Where're you coming from?” the cop asked.
“I live right there,” Lucas said. “What've you got?”
“Guy ate his gun,” the cop said. “But he was up to something… You live right there?”
But Lucas was looking in the back window of what he now knew was a Lexus, a Lexus with a bullet hole in the roof above the back window, and at the dead fat face of Leslie Widdler.
“Ah, no,” he said. “Ah, Jesus…”
“What? You know him?” the cop asked.
Rose Marie Roux came steaming through the front door, high heels, nylons, political-red skirt and jacket, white blouse, big hair. She spotted Lucas and demanded, “Are you all right?”