Her house was two minutes away in the truck. He parked under a young maple tree, a half block out, watched the street for a moment, then slipped the rake in one pocket, the camera and gloves in the other, and walked down to her door. The door was right out in the open, but with tall ornamental cedars on each side. A dental office building was across the street, with not much looking at him.
He rang the doorbell, holding it for a long time, listening to the muffled buzz.
No reaction; no movement, no footfalls. He rang it again, then pulled open the storm door, as if talking to somebody inside, and pushed the lock-snake into the crappy 1950s Yale. The rake chattered for a moment, then the lock turned in his hand. He was in.
“Hello?” he called. “Hello? Amity? Amity?”
Nothing. A little sunlight through the front window, dappling the carpet and the back of the couch; little sparkles of dust in the light of the doorway to the kitchen.
“Amity?”
He stepped inside, shut the door, pulled on the latex gloves, did a quick search for a security system. Got a jolt when he found a keypad inside the closet next to the front door. And then noticed that the '80s-style liquid-crystal read-out was dead.
He pushed a couple of number-buttons: nothing.
He could risk it, he thought. If the cops came, maybe talk his way out of it. But still: move quick. He hurried through the house, looking for anything that might be construed as an antique. Found a music box-was she a music-box collector? That would be interesting. He took a picture of it. Up to the bedroom, taking shots of an oil painting, a rocking chair, a drawing, a chest of drawers that seemed too elegant for the bedroom.
Into the bathroom: big tub, marijuana and scented candle wax, bottles of alprazolam and Ambien in the medicine cabinet. Stress? Under the sink, a kit in a velvet bag.
He'd seen kits like that, from years ago, but what… He opened it: ah, sure. A diaphragm.
So she swung both ways. Or had, at one time.
His cell phone rang, and vibrated at the same time, in his pocket, nearly giving him a heart attack.
Carol: “Mrs. Coombs called. She wants to talk to you. She's really messed up.”
“I'll get back to her later,” Lucas said.
“She's pretty messed up,” Carol said.
Not a goddamn thing he could do about it, either. He snapped: 'Later. Okay?”
Quick through the bedroom closet, through the chest of drawers, under the bed; looked down the basement, called “Hello?” and got nothing but a muffled echo. Back up the stairs, into a ground-floor bedroom used as an office. He'd been inside a long time now- five, six minutes-and the pressure was growing.
The office had an ornate table used as a desk; everything expensive looked like mahogany to Lucas, and this looked like mahogany, with elaborately carved feet. He took a picture of it. The desk had one center drawer, full of junk: paper clips, envelopes, ticket stubs, a collection of old ballpoints, pencils, rubber bands. He had noticed with the upstairs closets that while the visible parts of the house were neatly kept, the out-of-sight areas were a mess.
The office had two file cabinets, both wooden. Neither looked expensive. He opened a drawer: papers, paid bills. Not enough time to check them. Another drawer: taxes, but only going back four years. He pulled them out, quickly, looked at the bottom numbers on the federal returns: all in the fifties. Two more drawers full of warranties, car-maintenance records-looked at the maintenance records, which covered three different cars, all small, no vans-employment stuff and medical records.
No time, no time, he thought.
He checked a series of personal photographs on the wall behind the desk. One showed a much younger Amity in a graduation gown with several other people, also in gowns, including a guy large enough to carry a $50,000 table. The guy looked familiar, somehow, but Lucas couldn't place him. He turned off the camera's flash, so that it wouldn't reflect off the protective glass, and took a picture of the photograph.
Inside too long.
Damn. If he could have half an hour with the desk drawers… But then, he had the sense that she was careful.
He took a last look around, and left, locking the door behind himself.
Back in the truck, he called Jenkins. “I drank about a gallon of coffee. If my heart quits, it's your fault,” Jenkins said. “I ain't seen her, but I called her office ten minutes ago, and she was in a conference. I told them I'd call back.”
“Don't want to make her curious,” Lucas said.
“I'll take care.”
Ten minutes to a Target store. He pulled the memory card out of the camera and at the Kodak kiosk, printed five-by-sevens of Amity Anderson's furniture. In the photos, it sure didn't look like much; but what'd he know? But he did know somebody who'd know what it was. He looked up John Smith's cell-phone number and called him: “I need to talk to the Widdlers about some furniture. Want to see if it's worth something.”
“On the case? Or personal?”
“Maybe semirelated to the case, but I don't know. I think they're done at Bucher's, right?”
“Yup. They're out in Edina. You need to see them right away?”
“I'm over on the airport strip, I can be there in ten minutes.”
“Let me get you the address…”
The Widdlers had a neat two-story building in old Edina, brown brick with one big display window in front. A transparent shade protected the window box from sunlight, and behind the window, a small oil painting in an elaborate wood frame sat on a desk something like Amity Anderson's, but this desk was smaller and better-looking. The desk, made from what Lucas guessed was mahogany, sat on a six-by-four-foot oriental carpet. The whole arrangement looked like a still-life painting.
Lucas pushed through the front door; a bell tinkled overhead. Inside, the place was jammed with artifacts. He couldn't think of another word for the stuff: bottles and pottery and bronze statues of naked girls with geese, lamps and chairs and tables and desks and busts. The walls were hung with paintings and rugs and quilts and framed maps.
He thought, quilts. Hum.
A stairway went up to the second floor, and looking up the stairwell, he could see even more stuff behind the second-floor railing. A severe-looking portrait of a woman, effective, though it was really nothing more than an arrangement in gray and black, hung on the first landing of the stairway. She was hatchet-faced, but broad through the shoulders, and as with the photograph he'd seen that morning, he had the feeling that he'd seen her before.
He was peering at it when a woman's voice said, “Can I help you?”
He jumped and turned. A motherly woman, white haired and six-tyish, had snuck up behind him from the back room, and was looking pleased with herself for having done it; or at least, amused that she'd startled him. He said, “Uh, jeez, is Leslie around? Or Jane?”
“No. They're in Minnetonka on an appraisal. They won't be back until after lunch, and they'll be in tomorrow… If there's anything I can help you with?”
“Oh, I had some questions about some furniture…” He looked back again at the painting. “That woman looks familiar, but I can't place her.”
“That's Leslie's mom,” the shop lady said. “Painted by quite a talented local artist, James Malone. Although I think he has since moved to New York City.”
A little click in the back of Lucas's mind.
Of course it was Leslie's mom. He could see Leslie's face in the woman's face, although the woman was much thinner than the Leslie that Lucas had met, who was running to fat.
But he hadn't always been fat, Lucas knew. Lucas knew that because Leslie wasn't fat in the picture in Amity Anderson's office. Amity Anderson and the Widdlers: and Leslie was easily big enough to carry a $50,000 table out of a house.
In fact, Leslie was a horse. You didn't see it, because of the bow ties and the fussy clothes and the fake antiquer-artsy accent he put on, but Leslie was a goddamn Minnesota farm boy, probably grew up humping heifers around the barn, or whatever you did with heifers.
The woman said, “So, uh…”
“I'll just come back tomorrow,” Lucas said. “If I have time. No big deal, I was passing by.”