Invisible Prey by John Sandford Read Free Book Online Page A

trips to South America.”
    Ronnie’s face was dead serious. “No sir.”
     
    O UT IN the hallway, Mrs. Lash was standing with her back to the wall, staring at the door. As soon as Lucas stepped through, she asked, “What?”
    Lucas shrugged. “Ronnie’s offered to show me around the house.”
    She asked Ronnie, “They say anything to you?”
    “No. They don’t think I did it,” Lash said.
    To Lucas: “Is that right?”
    Lucas said, “We never really did. But we have to check. Is it all right if he shows me around?”
    She eyed him for a moment, an always present skepticism that Lucas saw when he dealt with blacks, as a white cop. Her eyes shifted to her son, and she said, “I’ve got to talk to the police about Sugar. About the funeral arrangements. You help this man, and if he starts putting anything on you, you shut up and we’ll get a lawyer.”
     
    “W HAT I WANT to know, is what these people took,” Lucas told Lash. “We know they took some electronics…a game machine, probably a DVD. What else?”
    They started with the TV room. “Took a DVD and an Xbox and a CD player—Mrs. B liked to sit in here and listen to her albums and she figured out how to run the CD player with the remote, and also, it was off here, to the side, so she didn’t have to bend over to put a CD in. The DVD was on the shelf below the TV and she couldn’t get up if she bent over that far, Aunt Sugar had to do that,” Lash said. He looked in the closet: “Huh. Didn’t take the games.” He seemed to look inward, to some other Ronnie Lash, who knew about the streets, and muttered to himself, “Games is same as cash.”
    “Your games?” Lucas asked.
    “Yes. But why didn’t they take them?”
    Lucas scratched his nose. “What else?”
    “There was a money jar in the butler’s pantry.” Lash led the way to the small kitchen where Lucas had run into Rose Marie and the weeping politician.
    “This is a butler’s pantry?” Lucas asked, looking around. “What the hell is that?”
    “The real kitchen is down the basement. When you had a big dinner, the food would get done down there, and then it’d come on this little elevator—it’s called a dumbwaiter.” Lash opened a panel to show off an open shaft going down. “The servants would get it here and take it to the table. But for just every day, Mrs. B had the pantry remodeled into a kitchen.”
    “Okay.”
    An orange ceramic jar, molded to look like a pumpkin, with the word “Cookies” on the side, sat against a wall on the kitchen counter. Lash reached for it but Lucas caught his arm. “Don’t touch,” he said. He got a paper towel from a rack, put his hand behind the jar, and pushed it toward the edge of the countertop. When it was close enough to look into, he took the lid off, gripping the lid by its edges. “Fingerprints.”
    Lash peered inside. “Nope. Cleaned it out. There was usually a couple of hundred bucks in here. Sometimes more and sometimes less.”
    “Slush fund.”
    “Yes. For errands and when deliverymen came,” Lash said. “Mostly twenties, and some smaller bills and change. Though…I wonder what happened to the change barrel?”
    “What’s that?” Lucas asked.
    “It’s upstairs. I’ll show you.”
    Lucas called a crime-scene tech, who’d stretch warning tape around the kitchen counter. Then they walked through the house, and Lash mentioned a half-dozen items: a laptop computer was missing, mostly used by the housekeeping couple, but also by Lash for his schoolwork. A Dell, Lash said, and he pointed to a file drawer with the warranty papers.
    Lucas copied down the relevant information and the serial number. Also missing: a computer printer, binoculars, an old Nikon spotting scope that Bucher had once used for birding, two older film cameras, a compact stereo. “Stamps,” Lash said. “There was a big roll of stamps in the desk drawer…”
    The drawer had been dumped.
    “How big was the printer?” Lucas asked.
    “An HP