Invisible Prey

checking out Bucher’s stuff.”
    “Barker?” Lucas didn’t remember the name.
    “The niece, from L.A.,” Smith said. “She’s the executor of the will. She’s, uh, an actress.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Character actress, I think. She’s got a funny nose.” He glanced at the Widdlers. “I didn’t actually mean that…”
    “That’s all right,” Jane Widdler said, with a wooden smile. “Her nose is quite small.”
     
    L UCAS WANTED to talk to Barker. On the way up the stairs, he thumbed through the insurance papers, which, in addition to the standard boilerplate, included a ten-page inventory of household items. Ten pages weren’t enough. He noticed that none of the furniture or paintings was valued at less than $10,000, which meant that a lot of stuff had been left off.
    He counted paintings: ten, twelve, sixteen. There were at least thirty or forty in the house. Of course, if Widdler was right, many of them had only sentimental value. Lucas would have bet that none of the sentimental-value paintings were missing…
     
    L UCAS FOUND Barker sitting on the floor of Bucher’s bedroom, sorting through family photo albums. She was a little too heavy, her hair was a little too big, and she had glasses that were three fashions ahead of anything seen in the Twin Cities.
    The glasses were perched on one of the smallest noses Lucas had ever seen on an adult; its carefully sculpted edges suggested a major nose job. Weather would have been interested. She had a whole rap on rhinoplasties, their value, and the problems that come up. Barker had been ill served by her surgeon, Lucas thought.
    She looked up when Lucas loomed over her. The glasses slipped a quarter inch, and she peered at him over the black plastic frames. “There are way too many pictures, but this should give us a start.”
    “On what?” Lucas asked.
    She pushed the glasses back up her tiny nose. “Oh, I’m sorry—you’re not with the police?”
    “I’m with the state police, not St. Paul,” Lucas said. “Give us a start on what?”
    She waved her hand at three stacks of leather-bound photo albums. “Aunt Connie used to have big Christmas and birthday parties. There were Easter-egg hunts both inside and outside, and a lot of pictures were taken,” Barker said. “We can probably get most of the furniture in one picture or another.”
    “Great idea,” Lucas said, squatting next to her, picking up one of the photos. Connie Bucher, much younger, with a half-dozen people and a drinks cabinet in the background. “What about her jewelry?” Lucas asked. “One of her friends said even the bedside jewelry was worth a lot.”
    “She’s right. Unfortunately, most of it was old, so there aren’t any microphotographs. All we have is descriptions in the insurance rider and those are essentially meaningless. If the thieves are sophisticated, the loose stones might already be in Amsterdam.”
    “But we could probably find out weights and so on?” Lucas asked.
    “I’m sure.”
    “Have you ever heard of a painter called Stanley Reckless?”
    She shook her head. “No.”
    “Huh. There supposedly was a painting up in the storage rooms that had ‘reckless’ written on the back,” Lucas said. “There’s an artist named Stanley Reckless, his paintings are worth a bundle.”
    Barker shook her head: “It’s possible. But I don’t know of it. I could ask around the other kids.”
    “If you would.”
    A cop came in with a handful of photographs. “We’re missing one,” he said. “The photograph was taken in the music room, but I can’t find it anywhere.”
    Lucas and Barker stood up, Barker took the photo and Lucas looked at it over her shoulder. The photo showed a diminutive brown table, just about square on top. The top was divided in half, either by an inlaid line or an actual division. Below the tabletop, they could make out a small drawer with a brass handle.
    After looking at it for a moment, Barker said, “You know, I remember that. This was years and years ago, when I was a child. If you folded the top back, there was a checkerboard inside. I think it was a checkerboard. The kids thought it was a secret hiding place, but there was never anything hidden in it. The checkers were kept in the drawer.”
    “Is it on the insurance list?” Lucas asked. “Any idea what it’s worth?” He thumbed his papers.
    The cop shook his head: “I checked John’s list. Doesn’t look like there’s anything like it. Checkers isn’t