Invisible Prey

Des Moines and the case was cleared. Another woman probably fell, according to the medical examiner, with all respect to Miss Coombs here. We’ve got nothing to work with. It’s been a while since you worked at the city level, but I’ll tell you what, it has gotten worse. I’m up to my ass in open investigations, and until we get more to go on…”
    “That’s not right,” Coombs said. “My grandmother was murdered and her house was robbed.”
    “That’s not what…” Smith shook his head.
    Leslie Widdler came in, carrying a white paper bag. He said, “We’ve got a bunch of sticky buns from Frenchy’s. Who wants one?”
    Lucas held up his hand and Leslie handed him the sack. Lucas took out a sticky bun and passed the bag to Smith, who took one and passed it to Coombs, who took one, and then they all sat chewing and swallowing and Lucas said, “Thanks, Les…John tells me you haven’t found a single goddamn stick of furniture missing. Is that right?”
    “We’ve gone through the photographs one at a time, and we’ve found two pieces that are not actually here,” Widdler said. “We’ve accounted for both of them. Both were given away.”
    “What about the swoopy chairs that the Lash kid was talking about?”
    Widdler shrugged. “Can’t put our finger on them. ‘Swoopy’ isn’t a good enough description. He can’t even tell us the color of the upholstery, or whether the seats were leather or fabric. All he ever looked at were the legs.”
    “Well…if he’s right, how much would they be worth?”
    “I can’t tell you that, either,” Widdler said. “Everything depends on what they were, and condition. A pristine swoopy chair, of a certain kind, might be worth a thousand dollars. The same chair, in bad shape, might be worth fifty. Or, it might be a knockoff, which is very common, and be worth zero. So—I don’t know. What I do know is, there’s a lot of furniture here that’s worth good money, and they didn’t take it. There are some old, old oriental carpets, especially one up in Mrs. Bucher’s bedroom, that would pull fifty thousand dollars on the open market. There are some other carpets rolled up on the third floor. If these people were really sophisticated, they could have brought one of those carpets down and unrolled it in Mrs. Bucher’s bedroom, taken the good one, and who would have known? Really?”
    They chewed some more, and Smith said, “One more bun. Who wants it? I’m all done…”
    Widdler said, “Me.” Smith passed him the sack and Widdler retrieved the bun, took a bite, and said, “The other thing is, we know for sure that Mrs. Bucher gave things away from time to time. There may have been some swoopy chairs and a Reckless painting. Has anybody talked to her accountants about deductions the last couple of years?”
    “Yeah, we did,” Smith said. “No swoopy chairs or Reckless anything.”
    “Well…” Widdler said. And he pressed the rest of the bun into his face as though he were starving.
    “Not right,” Coombs said again, turning away from Widdler and the sticky bun.
    Lucas sighed, and said, “I’ll tell you what. I want you to go over every piece of paper you can find in your grandma’s house. Anything that could tie her to Bucher or Donaldson or Toms. I’ll do the same thing here, and I’ll get Donaldson’s sister working on it from her end.”
    “The St. Paul cops won’t let me into the house yet,” Coombs said. “They let me clean up the open food, but that’s it.”
    “I’ll call them,” Lucas said. “You could get in tomorrow.”
    “Okay,” Coombs said.
    “Hope you come up with something, because from my point of view, this thing is drifting away to never-never land,” Smith said. “We need a major break.”
    “Yeah,” Lucas said. “I hear you.”
    “How much time can you put into it?” Smith asked.
    “Not much,” Lucas said. “I’ve got some time in the next two weeks, but with this election coming up, any sheriff with a problem case is gonna try to shift it onto us—make it look like something is getting done. The closer we get to the election, the busier we’ll be.”
    “Not right,” said Coombs. “I want Grandma’s killer found.”
    “We’re giving it what we can,” Lucas said. “I’ll keep it active, but John and I know…we’ve been cops a long time…it’s gonna be tough.”
    “Bucher’s gonna be tough,” Smith said. “With your grandma and the others…hell, we don’t even know that