Invisible Prey

that was after Frank was in the asylum, so there was no need for curses.”
    “Huh.” Lucas poked a finger at the quilt. “Can you tell by the fabric, you know, that they’re right? For the time? Or the style, or the cloth, or something?”
    “We could, if there was any doubt,” she said.
    Lucas looked at her. “What would I have to do,” he asked, “to get a little teeny snip of this red thread, right here?”
     
    A N A CT OF C ONGRESS, it turned out, or at least of a judge from the Hennepin County district court.
    Schirmer escorted him to the elevator that went down to the parking garage. “If it had been up to me, I’d let you have the snip. But Joe thinks there’s a principle involved.”
    “Yeah, I know. The principle is, ‘Don’t help the cops,’” Lucas said.
    He said it pleasantly and she smiled: “I’m sure it won’t be any trouble to get a piece of paper.”
    “If I weren’t looking for Gabriella Coombs…”
    “You think the snip of thread would make a difference?” she asked.
    “Maybe…hell, probably not,” Lucas admitted. “But I’d like a snip. I’ll talk to a judge, send the paper.”
    “Bring it yourself,” she said. “I’d be happy to show you around. I haven’t seen you here before…”
    “When I was in uniform, with the Minneapolis cops, I’d go over to the spoon-and-cherry…” He was talking about the Claes Oldenburg spoon bridge in the sculpture garden across the street. He smiled reflexively, and then said, “Never mind.”
    “You did not either! ” she said, catching his sleeve. What she meant was, You did not either fuck in the spoon.
    He shrugged, meaning to tell her that he’d chased people off the spoon a couple of times. Before he could, she leaned close and said, “So’d I.” She giggled in an uncuratorlike way. “If I’d been caught and fired, it still would have been worth it.”
    “Jeez, you crazy art people,” Lucas said.
    He said goodbye and went down to the car, rolled out of the ramp. A white van was just passing the exit; he cut after it, caught the Minnesota plates—wrong state—and then a sign on the side that said “DeWalt Tools.”
    Getting psycho , he thought.
     
    W ITH NOBODY behind him, he paused at the intersection, fished through his notebook, and found a number for Landford and Margaret Booth, the Donaldson brother-in-law and sister. He dialed and got Margaret: “I need to know the details of how your sister acquired one of the Armstrong quilts, which she donated to the Milwaukee Art Museum.”
    “Do you think it’s something?” she asked.
    “It could be.”
    “I bet Amity Anderson is involved,” she said.
    “No, no,” Lucas said. “This thing is branching off in an odd direction. If you could look through your sister’s tax records, though, and let me know how she acquired it, and when she donated it, I’d appreciate it.”
    “I will do that this evening; but we are going out, so could I call you back in the morning?”
    “That’d be fine,” Lucas said.
     
    H E LOOKED at his watch. Five o’clock. He called Lucy Coombs, and from the way the phone was snatched up after a partial ring, knew that Gabriella had not been found: “Any word at all?” he asked.
    “Nothing. We don’t have anybody else to call,” Lucy Coombs sobbed. “Where is she? Oh, my God, where is she?”
     
    S MITH COULDN’T tell him. He did say the St. Paul cops were going door-to-door around Marilyn Coombs’s neighborhood, looking for anything or anybody who could give them a hint. “And what about the van? Still no thoughts?”
    “Not a thing, John. Honest to God, it’s driving me nuts.”
     
    H E THOUGHT about going over to Bucher’s, and looking at her tax records. But he knew the valuation and the date of the donation, and couldn’t think of what else he might find there. With a sense of guilt, he went home. Home to dinner, wondering where Gabriella Coombs might be; or her body.
     
    A FTER DINNER, Weather said, “You’re really messed up.”
    “I know,” Lucas said. He was in the den, staring at a TV, but the TV was turned off. “Gabriella Coombs is out there. I’m sitting here doing nothing.”
    “That thread,” Weather said. Lucas had told her about the spool of thread at Marilyn Coombs’s house, and the thread in the quilt. “If that’s the same thread, you’re suggesting that something is wrong with the quilts?”
    “Yeah, but they all wound up in museums, and the woman who benefited is dead,”