Free Phantom Prey by John Sandford Page A

graduate studies, but there weren't any jobs in her area and she was thinking about changing direction into something more practical. I'm working, I have to get going early, so I don't hang out at night."
    "What do you do?"
    "Commercial real estate," Shockley said. "Probably start law school in a year or two. My dad says he'll supply the bucks."
    Price said, "I'm a chemical engineer. I work at 3M in medical products."
    Neither of the women had seen Austin in the two weeks before she'd died. Shockley thought she'd seen her on a Monday afternoon or a Tuesday afternoon, two weeks before, but it had been an accidental encounter in a Macy's store, and they'd gone and gotten cinnamon pretzels and chatted for a while.
    "She wasn't worried about anything, except about what she was going to do," Shockley said.
    "Did she say anything about her mother?" Lucas asked.
    "She was always talking about her mom. She really admired her-- her mom's sort of a free spirit, but she also runs a good business, and she's smart, and she's on boards and stuff."
    "Her mother thinks that there was a little stress between them, since her father died," Lucas said.
    "She was broken up about her father," Shockley agreed. "She said a couple of things about her mom being hard on him, but . . . she wasn't really mad at her mom. It was just a hard time. She was one of the executors of his estate, and she took it really seriously."
    "Okay." Lucas looked at his notebook: "Do either of you know a couple, uh, Denise Robinson and Mark McGuire?"
    The two women looked at each other and Price said, "Well, sure. Denise and Mark."
    "What do they do?"
    "They're Web people--they're trying to set up a commercial website. Something to do with video advertisements . . . I'm not too clear about it. Mark has a day job at, uh, some truck thing. Computers and trucks, I don't know what it is."
    "I've been told that they were really tight with Frances before she was killed," Lucas said.
    "I don't know what that'd be about," Shockley said, and Price shook her head.
    "Okay," Lucas said. "I need names . . . I need to run along a rosary of names until I find something."
    Shockley suggested three people that he might contact, and had numbers for two of them, and said each of the two would have a phone number for the third. He took the names down, recognized two of them from Alyssa Austin's list.
    "Are any of the three fairies?" Lucas asked.
    "You know, we don't really call ourselves that," Price said. "I mean, it's not like people go around pointing them out and saying fairy-fairy - fairy."
    "Yes, they do. You even dress like that. The waif look," Shockley said. She added, "They call them Lolis, too. Loli is short for Lolita."
    "Also lollipop," Price said.
    "I'm looking for a woman; and I've been told that she is one," Lucas said.
    "Like me," Price said.
    "That's what I've been told," Lucas said.
    Shockley jumped in. "Karen Slade could be. She's thin enough."
    "She's kind of tall," Price said.
    Lucas put a check next to Slade's name. "Thanks. I'll call if I think of anything else."
    "Do that," Price said.
    Outside, he looked at his watch. It had been a half hour since he'd left Roy Carter's; might be worth checking back. Or, he could go home.
    Got in the car, thought about it; what the hell, he could swing by. Five minutes, found a good parking space, only two houses down from Carter's place. Up the stairs, knock on the door, still no response. But when he was turning away from the door, another door, sideways down the hall, popped open, and a woman stuck her head out.
    "Looking for Roy?"
    "Yup." He took her in: a round-faced woman, unnaturally pale, with lipstick that looked almost black in the dim light of the hallway. She was dressed in a loose, black, ankle-l ength dress. Another one; he'd tapped into Goth Central.
    "He won't be back until late," she said. "He's out."
    "I'm a cop," Lucas said. "I'm going to stick a card under the door. If you hear him come in, could you ask him to call