"Wouldn't that pretty well clear Lucinda? Grabbing him from behind hard enough to hold him and stab him?" Lucinda had been questioned as a matter of routine because she'd been in the area and had reported the body, but also because Chambers was on board the Green Lady when Shamas drowned.

"I'd think it would clear her. Though she's tall, almost as tall as Chambers; and the miles she walks every day, she has to be in good shape for…"

"For an old lady?" Wilma grinned. "But what would be her motive?" She glanced again at her watch. "Didn't know it was so late-Sheril will pitch a fit, want to know if I've been shopping on her time." She rose, picked up her sack lunch from his desk, looked hard at Harper. "She's such a bitch to work for. You don't know, Max, the bad luck I've wished on you."

Harper smiled, and rose, and walked with her to the front. The squad room was silent now, and half deserted, only a few officers at their desks. Wilma wondered, as she pushed out the door, how long the Greenlaw women would stay in jail before someone approached the Birtds with enough cash so they would drop the charges and Harper would be forced to release them. She stopped in a little park to eat her lunch, enjoying ten minutes of solitude, then headed for work. And it was not until the next afternoon that she learned, with amazement, that Clyde, too, had been arrested, that same afternoon. That her good friend had, uncharacteristically, also run afoul of Molena Point law enforcement-that about the time the Greenlaw women were set free, and Sam Fulman was picked up for questioning then released, Clyde, too, was cooling his heels behind bars.

16

THE TIME was past midnight. Rain beat against Wilma's shuttered bedroom windows; a fire burned in the red-enameled woodstove, its light flickering across the flowered quilt and the white-wicker furniture. Wilma sat in bed reading, Dulcie curled up beside her.

She had spent the evening at her desk, poring over a map of the U.S., tracking the locations of auto-loan scams across the country, using an NCIC list that Max Harper had printed out for her from the police computer. The report covered the last six months, but the operations that interested her specifically had occurred within the last few weeks.

Her map bristled with pins, but the work had gone slowly, as she had not only to locate the scams, but then to find routes according to dates, marking each route with different colored pins. Some of the trails were circuitous, moving back and forth among half a dozen cities or to several adjoining metropolitan areas.

But one, a line of red pins, delineated a well-defined series of auto-loan scams over the last three weeks- beginning in Greenville, North Carolina, half a day's drive west of Donegal, the home of the Greenlaw clan, and leading directly across the U.S.-scams that would not have been reported so early on, if not for one fortuitous accident.

When one of the small car dealers, driving a newly purchased BMW home for the weekend, was hit by a delivery truck, the officer who answered the call ran a routine check and came up with the fake registration.

This dealer had bought four cars within a twenty-four hour period; the fake registration made him so uneasy that he asked the police to check on the other three vehicles.

All four cars had come to him with fake paper.

The subsequent investigation spread from one small town to the next; dozens of false registrations were uncovered and reported to NCIC, long before any of the dealers would have been alerted by overdue car payments.

The trail ended at Bakersfield. Police had no record of any suspicious car purchases beyond that point. The perpetrators could have traveled north up the coast or south, or turned back east again.

Wilma's next step was to phone the car agencies that had been ripped off, compare the MOs with those she'd been dealing with at Beckwhite's: all had very professional IDs, excellent credit records that checked out with the credit bureaus. These people had to have, within their sophisticated operation, at least one very skilled hacker.

"Presume," she told Dulcie, laying down her book, "that the Greenlaws were notified of Shamas's death the morning after the accident, that most of them started out within a few hours, driving across country for Shamas's funeral. They make their first stop at Greenville, to pick up a little cash. They buy two new BMWs, two Cadillacs and a Buick convertible, all listed by NCIC as sold in Greenville within hours of one another, at three separate dealerships, and all purchased with the maximum loans.

"Half a day's drive down the road, then, they sell the cars for cash to small, out-of-the-way dealers, or through quickly placed ads in the local paper, give the buyer a forged registration certificate that wouldn't come to light until they were long gone.

"Maybe thirty thousand apiece," she told Dulcie. "They pick up maybe a hundred and fifty thousand for walking-around money, for their little jaunt out here to the coast."

"Not too bad for a few hours' work," Dulcie said. "Do you think NCIC could link pigeon drops the same way? Store diversions and shoplifting?"

"No," Wilma said. "They couldn't. Only the big stuff is reported, things that might be interstate. Like stolen cars moved from one state to another. The little crimes, if they were reported to anyone beyond a local PD, would go to that state's crime bureau. You'd have to contact each state, see what might have been logged. The Greenlaws could have worked the local stores all across the country, picking up their groceries and a little loose change-now doing the same here while they wait for the last of the relatives to arrive for the funeral."

"Very nice," Dulcie said, "traveling along in their homes on wheels, stealing as they go. Just like Gypsies."

Wilma sat looking at the little cat, taking that in.

"Have you ever heard of Travelers?" Dulcie said. "Irish Travelers?"

Wilma's eyes widened.

"In the library books on Gypsies," Dulcie said, "the Irish Travelers are almost exactly the same. The whole family steals; it's how they make their living."

"But all Gypsies aren't…" Wilma began.

"Not all Gypsies steal, just some clans. I was reading about them late last night-the library is so peaceful at night," Dulcie said. "Well, not all Irish are Travelers. But the Travelers' ancestors centuries ago in Ireland- they were tinkers just like the Gypsies. Tinsmiths and peddlers traveling across Ireland in their pony carts, stopping at little farms, trading and doing repairs. According to the books, some of the Travelers would steal anything left lying loose."

"You're not turning into a racist?" Wilma said, raising an eyebrow.

"What? Against the Irish?" Dulcie laid her ears back. "Why would I do that? I'm telling you what I read. It's supposed to be fact. Besides, you're part Irish. So is Clyde."

"And how come," Wilma said, teasing her, "how come you, of all cats, are talking about other folks stealing?"

Dulcie ducked her head. "That was… mostly… before I knew any better." She looked up at Wilma. "It was never for self-gain. It's just that… Such lovely little sweaters and scarves and silky things, so pretty and soft…" She looked pleadingly at Wilma, deeply chastened. Wilma grinned at her and stroked her ears, and at last the little cat began to purr.

"But it is a touchy subject," Wilma told her. "Many people in the East are still bitter about prejudice against the Irish. It started when Irish families came over here during the potato famine-the 1800s-They left Ireland to survive, to make a new start, their whole country was starving, people were starving by the thousands. But when they arrived in this country, there was so much bad feeling about them."