Invisible Prey

he knows is that they’re old, and one of them had the word ‘reckless’ written on the back. Actually, he said it was painted on the back. I wonder if that might mean something to you? You know of any paintings called Reckless ? Or databases that might list it? Or anything?”
    Kidd’s eyes narrowed, then he said, “Capital r in ‘reckless’?”
    “I don’t know,” Lucas said. “Should there be?”
    “There was an American painter, first half of the twentieth century named Reckless. I might have something on him…”
    Lucas followed him through a studio, into a library, a narrow, darker space, four walls jammed with art books, Lauren and the baby trailing behind. Kidd took down a huge book, flipped through it…“Alphabetical,” he muttered to himself, and he turned more pages, and finally, “Here we go. Stanley Reckless. Sort of funky impressionism. Not bad, but not quite the best.”
    He showed Lucas a color illustration, a riverside scene. Next to them, the baby made a bad smell and seemed pleased. Lucas asked, “How much would a painting like that be worth?”
    Kidd shook his head: “We’ll have to go to the computer for that…I subscribe to an auction survey service.”
    “I want to hear this,” Lauren said. “Bring the laptop into the baby’s room while I change the diaper.” To the baby: “Did you just poop? Did you just poop, you little man? Did you just…”
    Kidd had a black Lenovo laptop in the living room, and they followed Lauren to the baby’s room, a bright little cube with its own view of the river. Kidd had painted cheerful, dancing children all around the lemon-colored walls.
    “Really nice,” Lucas said, looking around.
    “Uh.” Kidd brought up the laptop and Lauren began wiping the baby’s butt with high-end baby-butt cleaner that Lucas recognized from his own changing table. Then Kidd started typing, and a moment later he said, “Says his paintings are rare. Auction record is four hundred fifteen thousand dollars, that was two years ago, and prices are up since then. He had a relatively small oeuvre. The range is down to thirty-two thousand dollars…but that was for a watercolor.”
    “Four hundred fifteen thousand dollars,” Lucas repeated.
    “Yup.”
    “That seems like a lot for one painting, but then, my wife tells me that I’m out of touch,” Lucas said.
    “Shoot, Kidd makes that much,” Lauren said. “He’s not even dead.”
    “Not for one painting,” Kidd said.
    “Not yet…”
    “Jeez, I was gonna ask you how much you’d charge to paint my kid’s bedroom,” Lucas said, waving at the walls of the room. “Sorta be out of my range, huh?”
    “Maybe,” Kidd said. “From what I’ve read, your range is pretty big.”
     
    L UCAS WROTE Stanley Reckless and $415,000 in his notebook as they drifted out toward the door. “You know,” Lauren said, squinting at him. “I think I met you once, a long time ago, out at the track. You gave me a tip on a horse. This must have been…what? Seven or eight years ago?”
    Lucas studied her face for a minute, then said, “You were wearing cowboy boots?”
    “Yes! I went off to place the bet, and when I got back, you were gone,” Lauren said. She touched his arm. “I never got to thank you.”
    “Well…”
    “Enough of that,” Kidd said, and they all laughed.
    “You know, these killings…they might be art pros, but they aren’t professional thieves,” Lauren said. “A pro would have gone in there, taken what he wanted, maybe trashed the place to cover up. But he wouldn’t have killed anybody. You guys would have sent some new detective over there to write everything down, and he would have come back with a notebook that said, ‘Maybe pots stolen,’ and nobody would care.”
    Lucas shrugged.
    “Come on. Tell the truth. Would they care? Would anybody really care if some old bat got her pots stolen, and nobody got hurt? Especially if she didn’t even know which pots they were?”
    “Probably not,” Lucas said.
    “So they might be art pros, but they weren’t professional burglars,” Lauren said. “If you kill an old lady, everybody gets excited. Though, I suppose, it could be a couple of goofy little amateur crackheads. Or maybe acquaintances or relatives, who had to kill them.”
    Lucas’s forehead wrinkled. “What do you do, Lauren? You weren’t a cop?”
    “No, no,” she said. “I’m trying to be a writer.”
    “Novels?”
    “No. I don’t have a fictive imagination. Is