Invisible Prey

messed up,” Carol said.
    Not a goddamn thing he could do about it, either. He snapped: “Later. Okay?”
     
    Q UICK THROUGH the bedroom closet, through the chest of drawers, under the bed; looked down the basement, called “Hello?” and got nothing but a muffled echo. Back up the stairs, into a ground-floor bedroom used as an office. He’d been inside a long time now—five, six minutes—and the pressure was growing.
    The office had an ornate table used as a desk; everything expensive looked like mahogany to Lucas, and this looked like mahogany, with elaborately carved feet. He took a picture of it. The desk had one center drawer, full of junk: paper clips, envelopes, ticket stubs, a collection of old ballpoints, pencils, rubber bands. He had noticed with the upstairs closets that while the visible parts of the house were neatly kept, the out-of-sight areas were a mess.
    The office had two file cabinets, both wooden. Neither looked expensive. He opened a drawer: papers, paid bills. Not enough time to check them. Another drawer: taxes, but only going back four years. He pulled them out, quickly, looked at the bottom numbers on the federal returns: all in the fifties. Two more drawers full of warranties, car-maintenance records—looked at the maintenance records, which covered three different cars, all small, no vans—employment stuff and medical records.
    No time, no time, he thought.
    He checked a series of personal photographs on the wall behind the desk. One showed a much younger Amity in a graduation gown with several other people, also in gowns, including a guy large enough to carry a $50,000 table. The guy looked familiar, somehow, but Lucas couldn’t place him. He turned off the camera’s flash, so that it wouldn’t reflect off the protective glass, and took a picture of the photograph.
    Inside too long.
    Damn. If he could have half an hour with the desk drawers…But then, he had the sense that she was careful.
    He took a last look around, and left, locking the door behind himself.
     
    B ACK IN THE TRUCK, he called Jenkins. “I drank about a gallon of coffee. If my heart quits, it’s your fault,” Jenkins said. “I ain’t seen her, but I called her office ten minutes ago, and she was in a conference. I told them I’d call back.”
    “Don’t want to make her curious,” Lucas said.
    “I’ll take care.”
     
    T EN MINUTES to a Target store. He pulled the memory card out of the camera and at the Kodak kiosk, printed five-by-sevens of Amity Anderson’s furniture. In the photos, it sure didn’t look like much; but what’d he know?
    But he did know somebody who’d know what it was. He looked up John Smith’s cell-phone number and called him: “I need to talk to the Widdlers about some furniture. Want to see if it’s worth something.”
    “On the case? Or personal?”
    “Maybe semirelated to the case, but I don’t know. I think they’re done at Bucher’s, right?”
    “Yup. They’re out in Edina. You need to see them right away?”
    “I’m over on the airport strip, I can be there in ten minutes.”
    “Let me get you the address…”
     
    T HE W IDDLERS HAD a neat two-story building in old Edina, brown brick with one big display window in front. A transparent shade protected the window box from sunlight, and behind the window, a small oil painting in an elaborate wood frame sat on a desk something like Amity Anderson’s, but this desk was smaller and better-looking. The desk, made from what Lucas guessed was mahogany, sat on a six-by-four-foot oriental carpet. The whole arrangement looked like a still-life painting.
    Lucas pushed through the front door; a bell tinkled over head. Inside, the place was jammed with artifacts. He couldn’t think of another word for the stuff: bottles and pottery and bronze statues of naked girls with geese, lamps and chairs and tables and desks and busts. The walls were hung with paintings and rugs and quilts and framed maps.
    He thought, quilts . Hum.
    A stairway went up to the second floor, and looking up the stairwell, he could see even more stuff behind the second-floor railing. A severe-looking portrait of a woman, effective, though it was really nothing more than an arrangement in gray and black, hung on the first landing of the stairway. She was hatchet-faced, but broad through the shoulders, and as with the photograph he’d seen that morning, he had the feeling that he’d seen her before.
    He was peering at it when a woman’s voice