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…

It did suggest a certain experience with burglary. Or perhaps, with detective novels.

“I’m going to make a call, get the St. Paul cops to go over the place,” Lucas said. “If you could give me the boyfriend’s name…”

They were talking in the kitchen, next to the phone, and the color caught his eye: a flash of red. He thought it might be blood, but then instantly knew that it wasn’t. Blood was purple or black. This was scarlet, in the slot between the stove and refrigerator. He hadn’t seen it when he and Gabriella Coombs were in the kitchen, and he’d looked—he’d been doing his typical crime-scene check, casually peering into cracks and under tables and chairs.

“Excuse me,” he said. He went over to the stove and looked down.

“What?”

“Looks like…Just a minute.” He opened a kitchen cabinet, took out a broom, and used the handle to poke out the red thing.

A spool of thread.

The spool popped out of the stove space, rolled crookedly in a half circle, and bumped into his shoe. He used a paper towel to pick it up, by the spool edge on one end, and put it on the stove. They both looked at it for a moment.

“How’d it get there?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t know,” Lucas said. “Wasn’t there before. There was a closetful of quilting stuff upstairs. Maybe Gabriella came and took it?”

Lucy frowned. “She doesn’t quilt. I’ve been trying to get her interested, but she’s more interested in a social life. Besides, if she took it, where’d she put it? It’s not in her car.”

“Neither is she. Maybe she came over with a girlfriend, who quilts…” Lucas was bullshitting, and he knew it. Making up fairy stories.

“That’s from the old basket,” Lucy said. “It’s old thread, see? I don’t think they even make it anymore. This says Arkansas on it. Now, most of it comes from China or Vietnam.”

“Let’s go look at the basket,” Lucas said.

They climbed the stairs together, to the big linen closet, and Lucas used the paper towel to open the door.

“Ah, fuck me,” he said.

No wicker sewing basket.

But there, under a neat stack of fabric clippings, where the basket had been, was a black lacquer box with mother-of-pearl inlay.

The music box.

15

LUCAS CALLED JERRY WILSON, the St. Paul cop who’d caught the investigation of Marilyn Coombs’s death, and told him about the disappearance of Gabriella Coombs, about the keys and the car, about the broken window with the Scotch tape, about the spool of thread and the music box.

Wilson said, “That sounds like an Agatha Christie book.”

“I know what it sounds like,” Lucas said. “But you need to cover this, Jerry—we need to find Gabriella. I’ll talk to her boyfriend, but I could use some cops spread out behind me, talking to her other friends.”

“Okay. You got names? And I’ll tell you what—that window wasn’t broken day before yesterday.”

“I’ll get you names and phone numbers,” Lucas said. “If you find her, God bless you, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Lucas was on his cell phone, looked back to the house, where Lucy Coombs was locking the front door. “I’ve got a feeling she’s gone.”

LUCY COOMBS wanted to come along when Lucas confronted Ron Stack, the artist boyfriend. Lucas told her to go home and get on the phone, and he lied to her: “There’s an eighty percent chance that she’s at a friend’s house or out for coffee. We’ve just got to run her down, and anything you can do to help…”

On the way to Stack’s place, Lucas called Carol: “Have you seen Shrake?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure he saw me. He’s getting coffee, and he needs it. His eyes are the color of a watermelon daiquiri.”

“Fuck him. Tell him to meet me at the Parkside Lofts in Lowertown. Ten minutes.”

WHEN LUCAS got back downtown, Shrake was sitting on a park bench across the street from Stack’s apartment building. He got shakily to his feet when Lucas pulled into the curb. He was a tall man in a British-cut gray suit and white shirt, open at the collar. His eyes, as Carol said, were Belgian-hare pink, and he was