who had a toy bulldozer that he was using as a hammer, pounding a stick down into the turf. “He’s got great hand-eye coordination,” Weather said, admiring her son’s technique. She was wearing gardening gloves, and had what looked like a dead plant in her hand.

“Great,” Lucas said. “By the way, you’re a genius. That tip last night could turn out to be something.”

Sam said, “Whack! Whack!”

Lucas told him, “Go get the football.”

Sam looked around, spotted the Nerf football, dropped the bulldozer, and headed for the ball.

“What tip?” Weather asked.

“That I was the common denominator in these cases,” Lucas said.

She looked puzzled. “I said that?”

“Yeah. Just before you went to sleep.”

“I have no memory of it,” she said.

Sam ran up with the ball, stopped three feet from Lucas, and threw it at Lucas’s head. Lucas snatched it out of the air and said, “Okay, wide receiver, down, juke, and out.”

Sam ran ten feet, juked, and turned in. He realized his mistake, continued in a full circle, went out, and Lucas threw the ball, which hit the kid in the face and knocked him down. Sam frowned for a moment, uncertain whether to laugh or cry, then decided to laugh, and got up and went after the ball.

“Medical school,” Lucas said. “On a football scholarship.”

“Oh, no. He can play soccer if he’s interested in sports,” Weather said.

“Soccer? That’s not a sport, that’s a pastime,” Lucas said. “Like whittling or checkers.”

“We’ll talk about it some other year.”

DOWN AT HIS OFFICE, Lucas began a list:

Call Archie Carton at Sotheby’s.

Call the Booths about the quilt donation to the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Get a court order for a snip of red thread from the Walker Gallery quilt.

Call Jenkins and Shrake, and find out where Flowers is.

Find out exactly when Amity Anderson worked for Donaldson, and how she would have known Bucher, Coombs—through the quilts, probably—and Toms, the dead man in Des Moines.

Start a biography on Amity Anderson.

“Carol!”

Carol popped her head in the door. “Yup?”

“Is that Sandy kid still around?”

“Yeah.”

“Get her ass in here.”

BOTH SHRAKE’S and Flowers’s cell phones were off. Jenkins answered his and said, “Lucas, Jesus, Kline is gonna get a court order to keep us away from him.”

“What happened? Where are you?”

“I’m up in Brainerd. Kline Jr. was four-wheeling yesterday up by the family cabin,” Jenkins said. “He and his pals went around drinking in the local bars in the evening.”

“What about his old man?” Lucas asked.

“Shrake looked him up last night. He says he was home the whole time, talked to a neighbor late, about the Twins game when they were taking out the garbage, the game was just over. Shrake checked, and that was about the time of the fire.”

“So they’re alibied up.”

“Yeah. And they’re not smug about it. They’re not like, ‘Fuck you, figure this out.’ They’re pissed that we’re still coming around. Junior, by the way, is gonna run for his old man’s Senate seat, and says they’re gonna beat the sex charge by putting Jesse on the stand and making the jurors figure out about how innocent she was.”

“That could work,” Lucas admitted. “You know where Flowers is?”

“I talked to him last night,” Jenkins said. “He was on his way to see the Barths. He’d be getting in really late, he might still be asleep somewhere.”

“Okay. That’s what I needed. Go home,” Lucas said.

“One more thing.”

“Yeah?”

Jenkins said, “I don’t know if this means anything to you. Probably not.”

“What?”

“I was talking to Junior Kline. He and his buddies were all wrapped up in Carhartt jackets and boots and concho belts and CAT hats, and they all had Leathermans on their belts and dirt and all that, and somehow…I got the feeling that they might be singin’ on the other side of the choir. A bunch of butt-bandits.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And you know what? I don’t think I’m wrong,” Jenkins said. “I don’t know how that might reflect on the attacks on the Barths…I mean, I just don’t know.”

“Neither do I,” Lucas said.

HE GOT CAROL started on getting a court order for a snip of thread from the quilt.

SANDY HURRIED IN. “You called?”

Lucas said, “There’s a woman named Amity Anderson. I’ve got her address, phone number, and I can get her Social Security number and age and all that. I need the most complete biography you can get me. I need it pretty quick. She can’t know about it.”

Sandy shrugged: “No problem. I can rip most of it off the Net. Be nice if I could see her federal tax returns.”

“I can’t get