Invisible Prey

got tests to do, but I took a look at it with a ’scope: it’s identical. I mean, identical. I’d be ninety-seven percent surprised if it didn’t come off the same spool. We’re gonna do some tests on the dye, and so on, just to nail it down.”
    “The curator said you really butchered the quilt.”
    “Yeah. We took a half-inch of loose thread off an overturned corner. You couldn’t find the same spot without a searchlight and a bloodhound.”
     
    L UCAS HUNG UP. Flowers again asked, “What?”
    “There was a major fraud, probably turned over a half-million dollars or so, involving all these people. Think that’s enough to kill for?”
    “You can go across the river in the wintertime and get killed for a ham sandwich,” Flowers said. “But you told me it was a theft, not a fraud.”
    “Here’s what I think now,” Lucas said. “I think they all got to know each other through this fraud. That may have seemed like a little game. Or maybe, the rich people didn’t even know the quilts were fake. But that opened the door to these guys, who looked around, and cooked up another idea—get to know these people a little, figure out what they had, and how much it was worth, and then, kill them to get it.”
    “Kind of crude, for arty people.”
    “Not crude,” Lucas said. “Very selective. You had to know exactly what you were doing. You take a few high-value things, but it has to be the obscure stuff. Maybe the stuff kept in an attic, and forgotten about. An old painting that was worth five hundred dollars, when you bought it fifty years ago, but now it’s worth half a million. They looked for people who were isolated by time: old, widows and widowers, with heirlooms going back a hundred or a hundred and fifty years. So a few pieces are missing, a pot here, a table there, a painting from the attic, who’s going to know? Some distant nephew? Who’s going to know?”
    Flowers stood up, stuffed his hands in his pockets, wandered over and looked at a five-foot-tall wall map of Minnesota. “It’s the kind of thing that could piss you off,” he said. “If you’re civilized at all.”
    “Yeah. You can’t get crazier than that, except that, for money…you can kind of understand it, in its own insane way. But now they’re starting to swat people who just get in the way.” He peered past Flowers at the wall map. “Where the fuck is Gabriella Coombs? Where are you, honey?”

19
    L UCAS WAS SITTING in the den with a drawing pad and pen, trying to figure how to get at Amity Anderson, when his cell phone rang. He slipped it out of his pocket and looked at the caller ID: Shrake. He glanced at his watch: ten minutes after midnight. Shrake had taken over the surveillance of Amity Anderson, and was due to go home. He flipped open the phone: “Yeah?”
    “What, you put me and Jenkins on the gay patrol, right? We pissed you off, so you sent Jenkins to watch Boy Kline, and now…”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Amity Anderson went on a date, lot of kissy-face, had dinner, spent three hours at her date’s town house, and now we’re headed back to Anderson’s house. Soon as I get her in bed, I’m going back to her date’s place and see if I can get a date,” Shrake said.
    “She is gay?”
    “Either that or she’s dating the swellest looking guy I’ve ever seen,” Shrake said. “World-class ass, and red hair right down to it.”
    “Goddamnit. Anderson’s supposed to have a boyfriend,” Lucas said.
    “I can’t help you there, Lucas. Her date tonight definitely wasn’t a boy,” Shrake said. “What do you want me to do?”
    “Go home.”
    “You don’t want an overnight?”
    “Nah. We’re looking for her friends,” Lucas said. “Give it half an hour after lights-out…Hell, give it an hour…then go on home. Jenkins’ll pick her up in the morning.”
     
    I N THE MORNING, after Weather and Letty had gone, and the housekeeper had settled in with Sam, Lucas went out to the garage, and walked around the nose of the Porsche to a door in the side wall. The door opened to the flight of steps that went up to what the builders called a “bonus room”—a semi-finished warm-storage loft above the garage.
    Lucas had supervised the construction of the house from top to bottom, had driven the builders crazy with questions and unwanted advice, had issued six dozen change orders, and, in the end, had gotten it right; and when the builders had walked away, satisfied, he’d added a couple