“Virgil is coming up here today to brief some people on the details,” Lucas said.
“Yeah. I'll be going. I've been hearing some odd things about Flowers,” Mitford said.
“Somebody said he once whistled at a guy in an interrogation cell until the guy cracked and confessed.”
“Well, yeah, you have to understand the circumstances, the guy belonged to a cult…”
Mitford didn't care about Flowers and whistling. “Goddamn! Lucas! A Republican county attorney! You my daddy!”
Lucas was feeling okay when he took the hill down into the St. Paul loop. He zigzagged southeast until he got to a chunky red-brick building that had once been a warehouse, then a loft association, and was now a recently trendy condominium.
One of the good things about the Bucher and Kline cases was that the major crime sites were so close to his house-maybe ten minutes on residential streets; and they were even closer to his office. He knew all the top cops in both cases, and even most of the uniformed guys. In the past couple of years he'd covered cases all over the southern half of Minnesota, on the Iron Range in the north, and in the Red River Valley, which was even farther north and west. Minnesota is a tall state, and driving it can wear a guy out.
Not these two cases. These were practically on his lawn.
He was whistling as he walked into the condo. An elderly lady was coming through the inner doors with a shopping bag full of old clothes. He held it for her, she twinkled at him, and he went on inside, skipping past the apartment buzzers.
Kidd came to the door looking tired and slightly dazed. He had a wrinkled red baby, about the size of a loaf of Healthy Choice bread, draped over one shoulder, on a towel. He was patting the baby's back.
“Hey…” He seemed slightly taken aback. Every time Lucas had seen him, he'd seemed slightly taken aback.
“Didn't know you had children,” Lucas said.
“First one,” Kidd said. “Trying to get a burp. You want to take him?”
“No, thanks,” Lucas said hastily. “I've got a two-year-old, I just got done with that.”
“Uh… come on in,” Kidd said, stepping back from the door. Over his shoulder he called, “Lauren? Put on some pants. We've got company. It's the cops.”
Kidd led the way into the living room. He was a couple inches shorter than Lucas, but broader through the shoulders, and going gray. He'd been a scholarship wrestler at the university when Lucas played hockey. He still looked like he could pull your arms off.
He also had, Lucas thought, the best apartment in St. Paul, a huge sprawling place put together from two condos, bought when condos were cheap. Now the place was worth a million, if you could get it for that. The balcony looked out over the Mississippi, and windows were open and the faint smell of riverbank carp mixed with the closer odor of spoiled milk, the odor that hangs around babies; and maybe a touch of oil paint, or turpentine.
“Ah, God,” Kidd called. “Lauren, we're gonna need a change here. He's really wet.
Ah… shit.”
“Just a minute…” Lauren was a slender, dark-haired, small-hipped woman with a wide mouth and shower-wet hair down to her shoulders. She was barefoot, wearing a black blouse and faded boot-cut jeans. She came out of the back, buttoning the jeans.
“You could do it, you ain't crippled,” she said to Kidd.
Kidd said, “Yeah, yeah. This is Detective Davenport… He's probably got an art problem?”
This last was phrased as a question, and they both looked at Lucas as Lauren took the baby.
Lucas nodded. “You heard about the killings up on Summit?”
“Yeah. Fuckin' maniacs,” Kidd said.
“We're wondering if it might not be a cover for a crime…” Lucas explained about the murders, about the china cabinet swept of pots, and his theory that real art experts wouldn't have broken the good stuff, and about getting restorers and antique experts. “But there's this kid, the nephew of one of the dead women, who said he thinks a couple of old paintings are missing from the attic. All he knows is that they're old, and one of them had the word 'reckless' written on the back. Actually, he said it was painted on the back. I wonder if that might mean something to you? You know of any paintings called Recklesst Or databases that might list it? Or anything?”
Kidd's eyes narrowed, then he said, “Capital r in 'reckless'?”
“I don't know,” Lucas said. “Should there be?”
“There was an American painter, first half of the twentieth century named Reckless.
I might have something on him…”
Lucas followed him through a studio, into a library, a narrow, darker space, four walls jammed with art books, Lauren and the baby trailing behind. Kidd took down a huge book, flipped through it… “Alphabetical,” he muttered to himself, and he turned more pages, and finally, “Here we go. Stanley Reckless. Sort of funky impressionism.
Not bad, but not quite the best.”
He showed Lucas a color illustration, a riverside scene. Next to them, the baby made a bad smell and seemed pleased. Lucas asked, “How much would a painting like that be worth?”
Kidd shook his head: “We'll have to go to the computer for that… I subscribe to an auction survey service.”
“I want to hear this,” Lauren said. “Bring the laptop into the baby's room while I change the diaper.” To the baby: “Did you just poop? Did you just poop, you little man? Did you just…”
Kidd had a black Lenovo laptop in the living room, and they followed Lauren to the baby's room, a bright little cube with its own view of the river. Kidd had painted cheerful, dancing children all around the lemon-colored walls.
“Really nice,” Lucas said, looking around.
“Uh.” Kidd brought up the laptop and Lauren began wiping the baby's butt with high-end baby-butt cleaner that Lucas recognized from his own changing table. Then Kidd started typing, and a moment later he said, “Says his paintings are rare. Auction record is four hundred fifteen thousand dollars, that was two years ago, and prices are up since then. He had a relatively small oeuvre. The range is down to thirty-two thousand dollars… but that was for a watercolor.”
“Four hundred fifteen thousand dollars,” Lucas repeated.
“Yup.”
“That seems like a lot for one painting, but then, my wife tells me that I'm out of touch,” Lucas said.
“Shoot, Kidd makes that much,” Lauren said. “He's not even dead.”
“Not for one painting,” Kidd said.
“Not yet…”
“Jeez, I was gonna ask you how much you'd charge to paint my kid's bedroom,” Lucas said, waving at the walls of the room. “Sorta be out of my range, huh?”
“Maybe,” Kidd said. “From what I've read, your range is pretty big.”
Lucas wrote Stanley Reckless and $415,00in his notebook as they drifted out toward the door. “You know,” Lauren said, squinting at him. “I think I met you once, a long time ago, out at the track. You gave me a tip on a horse. This must have been… what? Seven or eight years ago?”
Lucas studied her face for a minute, then said, “You were wearing cowboy boots?”
“Yes! I went off to place the bet, and when I got back, you were gone,” Lauren said.
She touched his arm. “I never got to thank you.”
“Well…”
“Enough of that,” Kidd said, and they all laughed.
“You know, these killings… they might be art pros, but they aren't professional thieves,” Lauren said. “A pro would have gone in there, taken what he wanted, maybe trashed the place to cover up. But he wouldn't have killed anybody. You guys would have sent some new detective over there to write everything down, and he would have come back with a notebook that said, 'Maybe pots stolen,' and nobody would care.”
Lucas shrugged.
“Come on. Tell the truth. Would they care? Would anybody really care if some old bat got her pots stolen, and nobody got hurt? Especially if she didn't even know which pots they were?”