Marshall grunted, maybe in amusement, then pushed the paper at Lucas. "I wanted to know which women named Mrs. Qatar as an acquaintance, so Harmon wrote them down for me. He has a chart on his wall that shows when the women got the drawings, and when he wrote down the ones who knew Mrs. Qatar, I couldn't help noticing that they were all listed next to each other on the chart. They all got their drawings over a two-month period, a year and a half ago."

Lucas said, "Huh. So what…?"

"They say they don't know each other, but they seem to be connected somehow with Mrs. Qatar. I started to wonder, could they have been at the same place, at the same time-like just before the first drawing came in? Some kind of public event? These four drawings were just about two weeks apart, so if it takes two weeks to do one, is it possible that they were at an event two weeks before the first one came in?"

Lucas leaned back in his chair, thinking about it. Then he looked at Lane, who said, "Could be something."

"I wonder if Helen Qatar's secretary keeps a calendar," Lucas said. "Let me check." He stepped into his office, rummaged through his collection of business cards, found the card he'd collected from Qatar's desk, went back to the main bay, and used Marcy's phone to make the call.

Qatar's secretary picked up and said, "Wells Museum, Helen Qatar's office."

"This is Lucas Davenport, the Minneapolis police officer who was there the other day…" He explained what he needed.

"Let me check with Mrs. Qatar," she said.

Qatar picked up a moment later and said, "We're looking. You think this could be significant?"

"It would explain a lot," Lucas said. "We can't figure how you hook into it, but if you were all at the same place, especially if you were one of the main people…"

"A year and a half ago? In August?"

"August, early September… couldn't be any later than September fourteenth," Lucas said. He heard the secretary talking in the background, and then Qatar came back.

"I think…" Then she was gone again, talking to the secretary. A moment later: "We had a preterm gala for alumni and friends of the museum, to try to raise a little money for our museum fellowships." She was gone again, then back. "August twenty-ninth. We invited six hundred people. We don't know how many came, but all the food was eaten, and the party was crashed by a number of students coming back to school."

"These other women who identified you as an acquaintance. Would they have been invited?" Lucas asked. Marcy whispered: "Guest list." "Do you have a guest list?"

"We wouldn't have a guest list anymore," Qatar said, a tingle of excitement in her voice. "But we invited everybody on our contacts lists, and I think all four of them are on it. When officer Black gave me the four names, I knew three of them as acquaintances, but the fourth one didn't ring a bell. When I looked in our files, though, there she was."

"If you could find a guest list, that would be a mammoth help to us," Lucas said.

"We'll look. I don't think we'll find one, but I bet we could reconstruct it."

"That would be terrific, Mrs. Qatar."

"We'll try to get something for you tomorrow," she said. "I never did get a chance to look at that film. Maybe I'll do that tonight."

"Anything you can do, we'd appreciate," Lucas said.

"Just like Miss Marple," she said, with relish.

17

WEATHER SLEPT OVER -not for the sex, she said, but because she missed him. "I think we're settling in," she said, as she lay on the bed with a book on her chest. "Are we going to talk about the house?"

"What about the house?"

"Do we want a bigger one?" she asked.

He looked around: He'd been in the place for better than ten years, and it fit him reasonably well-but if there were children and a wife, things might be a little tight.

"Maybe."

The talk kept him up even after Weather was sleeping: night thoughts about big changes. The idea of a change didn't worry him much, he realized, somewhat surprised at himself. When he really thought about it, he didn't think as much about this house as he did of the house he might have.

More space; a media room and a workshop. A real study, instead of a converted bedroom. A nice master suite, extra bedrooms for the kids. Kids. What all would they need? With Weather committed to surgery, maybe they ought to think about a full-time housekeeper…

He liked the neighborhood, and the neighbors. He would miss it, and them, if they moved. How about this: Maybe live in Weather's place for a while, and remodel this place, or even take it out and design and build something new?

There was plenty of room to expand into the backyard. He'd need a bigger garage, for sure, maybe with four places. A bigger basement workshop would be nice, and maybe they could build a completely dry basement this time.

When he went to sleep, he was thinking about table saws. He didn't have much use for one, but he'd been looking at them in hardware stores. Interesting tools. Lots of parts. You could sit in the basement and fool around with a table saw for hours. Big table saw, and maybe a planer/jointer. He could make furniture… Zzz.

WHEN THE PHONE rang, it was still dark. Weather moaned, "I'd forgotten about this part. The calls in the middle of the night."

"Five-thirty," he said; the clock's green numerals glowed at him through the dark. He found the phone, picked it up, groggy. "Yeah?"

"Chief Davenport?" He could hear traffic in the background.

"Speaking."

"This is John Davis, I'm a St. Paul patrol sergeant. Lieutenant Allport said I ought to give you a call."

Lucas sat up. "Yeah, John, what's going on?"

"I'm with a garbage crew out on East Seventh, out at the Kanpur Indian restaurant? They pulled a body out of the dumpster an hour or so ago. We don't have an ID, but she's young, small, blond, naked, and she's been strangled with a rope. It might not have anything to do with your case, but Allport says to tell you that she fits the profile of all them women you been digging up…"

"Ah, jeez."

"… and she fits the description of a woman who was supposed to be living with Randy Whitcomb. We don't know for sure yet, but we're taking some blood samples and oughta know pretty quick. We're trying to find a neighbor of Whitcomb's who saw her a few times. One of our guys supposedly talked to this neighbor, but we don't have her name yet."

"All right." Lucas thought for a minute, felt the power of the bed pulling him down. "If I came down, would there be anything for me to see?"

"Well, just the body, like they found it. We're giving it the full routine, so it's gonna be here for a while. You could look at the tapes later. Maybe if we get the neighbor down here…"

"Ah… Listen, keep working. I'm gonna try to make it over."

"You know where it is?"

"Yeah. And listen, let me give you a number…" He gave the cop Del's number and said, "He was looking for some other women who worked for Randy, and they might have seen this chick, too, if you can't find the neighbor."

"All right to call him in the middle of the night?"

"Oh, hell, yes. Del's an early riser-I wouldn't be surprised if he was up already," Lucas said.

HE TOOK THE Tahoe for its cup holders, stopped at a Super America and got two big cups of coffee and a box of powdered doughnuts, and pulled into the Kanpur's parking lot a half hour after the call from the St. Paul cop. The back of the store was dimly lit by two distant orange sodium-vapor security lights, a variety of lights from the cop cars, and the light from a video camera. Several cops turned to look when Lucas pulled into the lot, and when he got out, a sergeant broke away from the group and walked over.

"John Davis," he said, and they shook hands. "She looks pretty bad." The dumpster was against the back wall of the store, and they walked over together. "She might have gone right into the truck, except that the dumpster was overfilled and the driver got out to toss a couple of bags before he hooked it up."