“Pioneer Press reporter,” Smith said. “He was on his way out to Dakota County. Politicians don't do good in Stillwater.”
“Shouldn't fuck children,” Lucas said.
He checked out of the office and headed over to Bucher's, took a cell-phone call from Flowers on the way Flowers wanted the details on Jesse Barth: “Yeah, it happened, and no, it wasn't the Kline kid,” Lucas said. He explained, and then asked about the girl's body on the riverbank. Flowers was pushing it. “Keep in touch,” Lucas said.
In his mind's eye, Lucas could see the attack of the night before. A big man with a pipe-or maybe a cane-in a white van, going after Jesse. A man with a pipe, or a cane, killed Bucher. But as far as he knew, there hadn't been a van.
A van had figured into the Toms case, but Toms had been strangled.
Coombs's head had hit a wooden ball, which St. Paul actually had locked up in the lab-and it had a dent, and hair, and blood, and even smudged handprints, but the handprints were probably from people coming down the stairs. But then, Coombs probably had nothing to do with it anyway… except for all those damn quilts. And the missing music box. He hadn't heard from Gabriella Coombs, and made a mental note to call her.
There was a good possibility that the van was a coincidence. He remembered that years before, during a long series of sniper attacks in Washington, D.C., everybody had been looking for a white van, and after every attack, somebody remembered seeing one. But the shooters hadn't been in a white van. They'd been shooting through a hole in the trunk of a sedan, if he remembered correctly. The fact is, there were millions of white vans out there, half the plumbers and electricians and carpenters and roofers and lawn services were working out of white vans.
Barker and the accountant and the real estate appraiser had set up in the main dining room. Lucas said hello, and Barker showed him some restored pots, roughly glued together by the wife of a St. Paul cop who'd taken pottery lessons: “Just pots,” she said.
“Nothing great.”
“Huh.”
“Does that mean something?” she asked.
“I don't know,” he said.
In the office, he started flipping through paper, his heart not in it. He really didn't feel like reading more, because he hadn't yet found anything, and he'd looked through most of the high-probability stuff. Weather had said that he needed to pile up more data; but he was running out of data to pile up.
The pots. No high-value pots had been smashed, but the cabinet had been full of them.
Maybe not super-high value, but anything from fifty to a couple of hundred bucks each.
The pots on the floor were worth nothing, as if only the cheaper pots had been broken.
If a knowledgeable pot enthusiast had robbed the place, is that what he'd do? Take the most valuable, put the somewhat valuable back-perhaps out of some aesthetic impulse-and then break only the cheap ones as a cover- up? Or was he, as Kathy Barth suggested the night before, simply having a stroke? The Widdlers came in, Leslie cheerful in his blue seersucker suit and, this time, with a blue bow tie with white stars; Jane was dressed in shades of gold.
“Bringing the lists to Mrs. Barker,” Jane called, and they went on through. Five minutes later, they went by the office on the way out. Lucas watched them down the front walk, toward their Lexus. Ronnie Lash rode up on a bike as they got to the street, and they looked each other over, and then Lash turned up the driveway toward the portico.
Lash walked in, stuck his head in the office door, and said, “Hi, Officer Davenport.”
“Hey, Ronnie.”
Lash stepped in the door. “Figured anything out yet?”
“Not yet. How about you?” Lucas asked.
“You know when we discovered that whoever did it, had to have a car?”
“Yeah?”
“Detective Smith said they'd check the security camera at the Hill House to see what cars were on it. Did he do it?” Lash asked.
“Yup. But the cameras operate on a motion detector that cover the grounds,” Lucas said. “They didn't have anything in the time frame we needed.”
“Huh. How about that halfway house?”
Lucas said, “They're mostly drunks. We've been looking at their histories…”
“I mean the camera,” Lash said. “They've got a camera on their porch roof pointing out at the street.” Lucas scratched his chin: “Really?” “Yeah. I just came by there,” Lash said.
“I'll call John Smith. Ask him to look into it. Thanks, Ronnie.” “You're welcome.”
Lucas called Smith. Smith said he would check it right away. “If it's there, what I'm interested in would be a van,” Lucas said. “Probably won't be anything,” Smith said. “Nothing goes longer than about forty-eight hours, you know, those tapes. But I'll give them a call.”
Ronnie came back through, carrying a shopping bag full of video games. “I talked to Mrs. Barker, and she showed me those vases.
Those pots, the ones that got glued back together.”
“You recognize them?” Lucas asked.
“Yeah. Last time I saw them, they were upstairs. On a table upstairs. They were never in that glass cabinet.”
“You sure?”
“I'm sure,” Lash said. “They were in a corner, in a jog of the hallway, on a little table. I dusted them off myself, when I was helping Aunt Sugar.”
Lucas paced around the office, impatient with himself for not getting anywhere. He watched Lash go down the walk, get on his bike, and wobble off, the games bag dangling from one hand. There had been a robbery. He didn't give a shit what the Widdlers said.
His cell phone rang, and he glanced at the screen: Smith.
“Yeah?”
“We got a break-they archive the tapes for a month, in case they've got to see who was with who. I'm gonna run over there and take a look.”
“Van,” Lucas said.
His shut the phone, but before he could put it in his pocket, it rang again: Carol, from the office. He flipped it open. “Yeah?”
“You need to make a phone call. A Mrs. Coombs…”
“Gabriella. I've been meaning to call her.”
“This is Lucy Coombs. The mother. She's calling about Gabriella. Lucy says Gabriella's disappeared, and she's afraid something happened to her.”
Lucy Coombs was at her mother's house. She was tall, thin, and blond, like her daughter, with the same clear oval face, but threaded with fine wrinkles; a good-looking woman, probably now in her late fifties, Lucas thought. She met him on the front lawn, twisting a key ring in her hands.
“I called you because Gabriella said she was working with you,” she said. “I can't find her. I've been looking all over, I called the man she was dating, and he said he dropped her off at her apartment last night and that she planned to come over here to look at papers and so I came over here and I…”
She paused to take a breath and Lucas said, “Slow down, slow down. Have you been inside?”
“Yes, there's no sign of anything. But there's a broken window on the back door, right by the latch. And I found these by the back porch.” She held up the key ring.
“They're her keys.”
Lucas thought, Oh, shit. Out loud, he said, “Let's go look around. Does she have a cell phone?”
“No, we don't believe in cell phones,” Coombs said. “Because of EMI.”
“Okay… Has she done this before? Wandered off?”
“Not lately. I mean she did when she was younger, but she's been settling down,” Coombs said. “She's been in touch every day since my mom died. I mean, I found her keys.”
