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.”
She was no fool; the keys were a problem, and there was fear in her eyes.
They went around the house and through the back door, Coombs showing Lucas where she'd found the keys, off the back steps, as if they'd been dropped or thrown. “Maybe she dropped them in the dark and couldn't find them,” Lucas suggested. “Did you look for her car?”
“No, I didn't think to. I wonder… sometimes she parked in the alley, behind the fence.” They walked out through the backyard, to a six-foot-high woven-board privacy fence that separated Marilyn Coombs's house from the alley. The gate was hanging open, and as soon as Lucas pushed through, he saw Gabriella's rusty Cavalier.
“Oh, God,” Lucy Coombs said. She hurried past Lucas and then almost tiptoed up to the car, as if she were afraid to look in the windows. But the car was empty, except for some empty herbal tea bottles on the floor of the backseat. The car wasn't locked; but then, Lucas thought, why would it be? There was nothing in it, and who would steal it? “Back to the house,” he said.
“What do you think happened?”
“I don't know,” Lucas said. “She's probably just off somewhere. Maybe I oughta go talk to her boyfriend.”
“I think you should,” Lucy Coombs said. “I know it wasn't going very well. I think Gabriella was about to break it off.”
“Let's check the house and then I'll go talk to the guy,” Lucas said. “Do you have any relatives or know any girlfriends or other boyfriends…?”
They walked through the house: nobody there. Lucas looked at the broken window. He'd never actually seen it done, but he'd read about it in detective novels-burglars making a small break in a window, usually by pushing the point of a screwdriver against the glass, to get a single pressure crack. Then they'd work the glass out, open the door with a wire, then put the pane back in place and Scotch-tape it. With any luck, the owners didn't notice the break for a while-sometimes a long while-and that would obscure the date and time of the break-in…