could look through your sister’s tax records, though, and let me know how she acquired it, and when she donated it, I’d appreciate it.”

“I will do that this evening; but we are going out, so could I call you back in the morning?”

“That’d be fine,” Lucas said.

HE LOOKED at his watch. Five o’clock. He called Lucy Coombs, and from the way the phone was snatched up after a partial ring, knew that Gabriella had not been found: “Any word at all?” he asked.

“Nothing. We don’t have anybody else to call,” Lucy Coombs sobbed. “Where is she? Oh, my God, where is she?”

SMITH COULDN’T tell him. He did say the St. Paul cops were going door-to-door around Marilyn Coombs’s neighborhood, looking for anything or anybody who could give them a hint. “And what about the van? Still no thoughts?”

“Not a thing, John. Honest to God, it’s driving me nuts.”

HE THOUGHT about going over to Bucher’s, and looking at her tax records. But he knew the valuation and the date of the donation, and couldn’t think of what else he might find there. With a sense of guilt, he went home. Home to dinner, wondering where Gabriella Coombs might be; or her body.

AFTER DINNER, Weather said, “You’re really messed up.”

“I know,” Lucas said. He was in the den, staring at a TV, but the TV was turned off. “Gabriella Coombs is out there. I’m sitting here doing nothing.”

“That thread,” Weather said. Lucas had told her about the spool of thread at Marilyn Coombs’s house, and the thread in the quilt. “If that’s the same thread, you’re suggesting that something is wrong with the quilts?”

“Yeah, but they all wound up in museums, and the woman who benefited is dead,” Lucas said. “It seems like some of the money is missing. She didn’t get enough money. Maybe. It’s all so long ago. Maybe the Sotheby’s guy could tell me about it tomorrow, but Gabriella’s out there now…And what about the van?”

“You’re going crazy sitting here,” Weather said. “Why don’t you go over to Bucher’s place, and see if she has anything on the quilt she donated to the Walker? You’ll need to look sooner or later. Why not now? You’d be doing something…”

“Because it feels like the wrong thing to do. I feel like I ought to be out driving down alleys, looking for Gabriella.”

“You’re not going to find her driving up and down alleys, Lucas.”

He stood up. “I’m going to eat some cheese and crackers.”

“Why don’t you take them with you?”

HE DID, a bowl of sliced cheese and water crackers on the passenger seat of the Porsche, munching through them as he wheeled down to Bucher’s house. The mansion was brightly lit. Inside, he found the Bucher heirs, six people, four women and two men, dividing up the goodies.

Carol Ann Barker, the woman with the tiny nose, came to greet him. “The St. Paul people said we could begin some preliminary marking of the property,” she explained. “People are getting ready to go back home, and we wanted to take this moment with the larger pieces.”

Lucas said, “Okay—I’ll be in the office, looking at paper. Have you seen check registers anywhere? Stuff going back a few years? Or tax returns…? Anything to do with the buying and donation of the Armstrong quilt?”

“The Armstrong quilt?”

She didn’t know what it was, and when Lucas explained, pursed her lips, and said, “She had an annual giving program. There are some records in her office, we looked to see if we could find anything about the Reckless painting. We didn’t find anything, but there are documents on donations. Check registers are filed on the third floor, there’s a room with several old wooden file cabinets…I don’t know what years.”

Barker showed him the file: it was an inch thick, and while Barker went back to marking furniture, he thumbed through it, looking for the quilt donation. Not there. Looked through it again. Still found nothing.

He had the date of the quilt donation, and found donations of smaller items on dates on either side of it. Scratched his head. Rummaged through the files, looking for more on art, or donations. Finally, gave up and climbed the stairs to the third floor.

The file room was small and narrow and smelled of crumbling plaster; dust and small bits of plaster littered the tops of the eight file cabinets. The room was lit by a row of bare bulbs on the ceiling. Lucas began opening drawers, and in the end cabinets, the