to have big Christmas and birthday parties. There were Easter-egg hunts both inside and outside, and a lot of pictures were taken,” Barker said. “We can probably get most of the furniture in one picture or another.”
“Great idea,” Lucas said, squatting next to her, picking up one of the photos. Connie Bucher, much younger, with a half-dozen people and a drinks cabinet in the background. “What about her jewelry?” Lucas asked. “One of her friends said even the bedside jewelry was worth a lot.”
“She’s right. Unfortunately, most of it was old, so there aren’t any microphotographs. All we have is descriptions in the insurance rider and those are essentially meaningless. If the thieves are sophisticated, the loose stones might already be in Amsterdam.”
“But we could probably find out weights and so on?” Lucas asked.
“I’m sure.”
“Have you ever heard of a painter called Stanley Reckless?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Huh. There supposedly was a painting up in the storage rooms that had ‘reckless’ written on the back,” Lucas said. “There’s an artist named Stanley Reckless, his paintings are worth a bundle.”
Barker shook her head: “It’s possible. But I don’t know of it. I could ask around the other kids.”
“If you would.”
A cop came in with a handful of photographs. “We’re missing one,” he said. “The photograph was taken in the music room, but I can’t find it anywhere.”
Lucas and Barker stood up, Barker took the photo and Lucas looked at it over her shoulder. The photo showed a diminutive brown table, just about square on top. The top was divided in half, either by an inlaid line or an actual division. Below the tabletop, they could make out a small drawer with a brass handle.
After looking at it for a moment, Barker said, “You know, I remember that. This was years and years ago, when I was a child. If you folded the top back, there was a checkerboard inside. I think it was a checkerboard. The kids thought it was a secret hiding place, but there was never anything hidden in it. The checkers were kept in the drawer.”
“Is it on the insurance list?” Lucas asked. “Any idea what it’s worth?” He thumbed his papers.
The cop shook his head: “I checked John’s list. Doesn’t look like there’s anything like it. Checkers isn’t mentioned, that’s for sure.”
“There are some antique experts downstairs,” Lucas said. “Maybe they’ll know.”
HE AND BARKER took the photos down to the Widdlers. Barker coughed when they were introduced, and pressed her knuckles against her teeth for a moment, and said, “Oh, my. I think I swallowed a bug.”
“Protein,” Jane Widdler said. She added, still speaking to Barker, “That’s a lovely necklace…Tiffany?”
“I hope so,” Barker said, smiling.
Lucas said to the dealers, “We’ve got a missing table. Think it might be a folding checkerboard.” He handed the photograph of the table to Leslie Widdler, and asked, “Any idea what it’s worth?”
The two dealers looked at it for a moment, then at each other, then at the photograph again. Leslie Widdler said to his wife, “Fifty-one thousand, five hundred dollars?”
She ticked an index finger at him: “Exactly.”
“You can tell that closely?” Lucas asked.
Leslie Widdler handed the photograph back to Lucas. “Mrs. Bucher donated the table—it’s a China-trade backgammon table, not a checkerboard, late eighteenth century—to the Minnesota Orchestra Guild for a fund-raising auction, let’s see, must’ve been two Decembers ago. It was purchased by Mrs. Leon Cobler, of Cobler Candies, and she donated it to the Minneapolis Institute.” He stopped to take a breath, then finished, “Where it is today.”
“Shoot,” Lucas said.
THE GOVERNOR CALLED and Lucas drifted down a hallway to take it. “Good job. Your man Flowers was here and gave an interesting presentation,” the governor said. His name was Elmer Henderson. He was two years into his first term, popular, and trying to put together a Democratic majority in both houses in the upcoming elections. “We pushed the Dakota County proposal and Flowers agreed that it might be feasible. We—you—could take the evidence to Dakota County and get them to convene a grand jury. Nice and tidy.”
“If it works.”
“Has to,” the governor said. “This girl…mmm…the evidentiary photos would suggest that she is not, uh, entirely undeveloped. I mean, as a woman.”
“Governor…sir…”
“Oh, come on, loosen up, Lucas. I’m not going to call her up,” Henderson said. “But that, ‘Oh God, lick my balls’—that does tend to attract one’s attention.”
“I’ll talk to Dakota County,” Lucas said.
“Do so. By the way, why does everybody call your man ‘that fuckin’ Flowers’?”