John Sandford - Silken Prey

“Any lonely middle-aged women in there?” Lucas asked.

“Yes. You’re thinking, what?”

“Tubbs wasn’t crazy, he was calculating. Somebody had to set the booby trap the morning that the volunteer tripped it—and that wasn’t Tubbs, because Tubbs has been backtracked by a pretty good cop: he wasn’t at the campaign office that morning. The question is, did he have a lover? Or a very close friend? Somebody he could trust with this?”

After a moment of silence, Kidd said, “Ramona Johnson. She would be your best bet. Divorced four years ago . . . let me see here . . . until about five months ago, she was complaining on Facebook about the lack of eligible men and the problems of middle-aged women. Then she shut up.”

“Ramona Johnson.”

“Yes. There’s one more possibility. A Sally Fey. She’s younger, she’s thirty-one, and she has a new beau, but she’s not talking about it. From what I’ve seen of her and her e-mails . . .”

“You’ve got her e-mails?”

“Forget I said that. From what I’ve seen of her, she’s a very shy, quiet type, and she’s a little mousy. Doesn’t do much with her hair,” Kidd said. “But you can see the hope in her eyes.”

“You can see her eyes?”

“Try to stay on track,” Kidd said. “If the right guy said the right things to her . . .”

“Tubbs could do that. He had a reputation as a ladies’ man,” Lucas said.

“So put Fey on the list.” He spelled her name, and Lucas wrote it down.

• • •

WHEN HE GOT OFF the phone with Kidd, Lucas used his cell phone to check his e-mail, looked at the list that Kidd had shipped him. Twelve names, half men, half women. Would it be an ideologue or a lover?

He’d track down as many of the people on the list as he could, and ask them the hard question. Did you set the booby trap? If the answer was no, Lucas would say, “You realize that Tubbs was killed for what he knew. If you’re lying, you could be next.”

If the answer was still no, the next question would be, “If you didn’t set it, who did?”

It could work.

CHAPTER 8

Taryn Grant’s phone buzzed, a call, not an alarm. She was lying on her bed, waking up from a much-needed afternoon nap. She stretched, yawned, picked up the phone, and said, “Hello?”

“What are you doing?” Her campaign manager, Connie Schiffer.

“Took a nap. I just woke up.”

“Good. We need you sharp. You’re ready for tonight?” A fund-raiser at the Wayzata Country Club. Taryn didn’t actually need the funds, but if people gave you money, they tended to support you, to feel a connection.

“Absolutely.”

“You’re bringing the gorgeous David?” David Wein, a commodities broker who would someday inherit his father’s firm. A small firm. David was a corn expert, but was also thoroughly grounded in soybeans, and sometimes dabbled in sugar beets. He looked good, though he was always called David, and never Dave.

“Tonight, anyway,” Taryn said.

There was a tone in her voice and Connie instantly picked it up: “Ooo, if you’re done with him, could I have him for a week or so?”

“Then, when you were done with him, he’d go around comparing our . . . attributes . . . with the boys in the locker room,” Taryn said.

After a few seconds of silence, Connie said, “Wait—you’re saying that would be a bad thing?”

Taryn laughed and said, “You’re such a slut. I like that.”

“Yeah, well, I’m now walking out to the turbo after spending the last two hours at KeeKee’s. I spent four thousand, three hundred and sixty dollars on ridiculously overpriced clothing sewn by poverty-stricken foreigners. I’m all shopped out and we need to talk.”

“I have to run through the shower and gel up,” Taryn said.

“Fifteen minutes,” Connie said.

“If I’m not quite ready, I’ll tell Dannon to let you in.”

“Mmm . . . Dannon . . .”

Taryn laughed again, pushed End . She switched to the walkie-talkie function and was instantly answered by Dannon. She said, “Connie will be here in a few minutes. We’ve got Push at four o’clock and Borders at five, that’ll take another hour. Then back here to dress for the party tonight. David will pick me up.”

He said, “I’ve got the schedule,” and “Alice is in the house. Carver will be here at five.”

• • •

TARYN WENT INTO THE bathroom and examined her eyes for circles, jumped in and out of the shower, then went to work on her face. She used only minimal makeup during the day; her natural Scandinavian complexion was good enough, most of the time.

The problem with politics was that it went on well into the night. The night before, she’d gone to a reception in Sunfish Lake with fifty of the faithful, and it had gone late. When the party ended, a dozen of them had gathered in the homeowner’s recreation room and had gotten down to the nut-cutting.

Her lead over Smalls was holding, and the numbers of leaners—people who were not fully committed yet, but who were inclined to vote for her—was increasing. She was going to win, and if she won, if she took off Porter Smalls, she wanted to hit Washington with a bang.

The people in the rec room had had some ideas about how she could do that; two of them were former U.S. senators themselves.

• • •

THEN, THAT MORNING, SHE’D been up at five o’clock, and had hit a series of assembly plants at the morning shift changes, and quickly returned to the Twin Cities for the local morning talk shows. She’d done two of them, but one was way the hell out west, and the other was almost downtown. It’d been hectic.

After the talk shows, she spoke to the Optimist Club in Forest Lake, another short out-of-town trip. She could feel a tickle in the back of her throat, and worried that she might be losing her voice. Schiffer had given her some kind of double-secret lozenge used, supposedly, by the president, to keep the voice going. She’d pop one as soon as she was done with her face.

Taryn looked at herself in the mirror: maybe a shadow there in the eyes, from too many twenty-hour days. Maybe from Tubbs? No: that was dwindling in the rearview mirror. She had more important things to worry about.

And nobody had heard a thing from the cops.

She’d been a little surprised by the campaign. She’d known politics was harsh, but had no idea exactly how harsh it was. There seemed to be one polestar, one overriding objective, one singular focus: to win. Nothing else really counted. Just winning.

She liked that. It fit her.

She went back to work on her face.

• • •

DANNON HAD JUST FINISHED his backyard checks when Schiffer arrived in her plum-colored Porsche Panamera. He let her in, and she went to the living room, carrying a legal briefcase full of paper, which she began digging through. Dannon asked her if she wanted a drink, and she took a lime-water, which he got for her.

Schiffer was a short, sturdy, dark-eyed woman, twice-divorced, with no regrets about either the marriages or the divorces. She had a degree in mechanical engineering from Duke, but after a month working for a lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., she’d never again looked with desire on an open-channel crimper. One thing led to another, and at forty, she was one of the country’s best professional campaign managers.

She was sitting on the soft-as-wool leather couch, looking at a miniature legal pad, when Taryn came down from the bathroom, wearing black slacks and a white angora sweater, with gold earrings and a modest gold necklace.

“Dannon said he’d be in the monitoring room. Alice is outside,” Schiffer said.

Taryn nodded and dropped into a chair opposite Schiffer. “So what’s up?”