LITMIR.BIZ

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padded up to the house after them, probably hoping pretty much the same.

      Indoors, they sat around coffee and cookies on the table in a breakfast nook big enough for zoning and bright enough for the Fourth of July, looking into a kitchen where every square centimeter that could be stone was marble or highly polished granite, and the rest was stainless steel rubbed down to a soft gleam. Probably kept up by housecleaners coming in at least every other day. Like Clayton had said, big tridols at work here. And Lestrade guessed more of those tridols came from inheritance or shrewd investments or both than from body art, no matter how exclusive and expensive.

      Pango lay under the table obviously waiting for crumbs. Very biblical. What was that passage Christians liked to quote? Something about the dogs eating the scraps that fell beneath the table… “All right, Detective Clayton,” she said, “we might as well start with our missing person.”

      M. Dupont-Strudelmeyer gave the photos a polite scrutiny and shook her head, more in helplessness than negation. “I think I’ve seen someone who might have been him, going into one of the houses where gamers meet. Mostly rolegamers, though the Cartiers host weekly bridge parties and the Orlovskies hold a chess tournament every couple of months. This boy…looks more like one of the rolegamers. One we’ve seen from time to time during the summer. They have a big rolegaming party at M. Imani’s every Sunday, very orderly and well-behaved young people, some oldsters as well. The Langs, and the Forester-Joneses, over on the other side of Vadnais Park, also hold rolegame parties sometimes. But this boy…he just looks like so many other young men his age, doesn’t he? You say he’s missing? How long?”

      “Not long at all, M. Dupont,” said Lestrade. “Just long enough to make us ask everyone. Routine. How about clearing our lost and found item out of the way next, Detective Clayton?”

      He put the catalog down on the table. The body artist examined it and shook her head. “Not ours. Very neatly done, though. I’d guess M. Hammer’s, though it could be M. Naismith’s. I’m afraid I don’t make as thorough a study of our fellow artists’ styles as I probably should. Or it could belong to somebody from out of town.”

      “Thank you, M. Dupont.” Lestrade kept her voice carefully neutral. “Detective Clayton, our last item?”

      Again he got out the tracing, unfolded it, and slid it across the marble tabletop to M. Dupont-Strudelmeyer. She picked it up and studied it for several seconds. “My professional opinion on this, Officers?”

      “If you’d be so good, M.,” Lestrade replied.

      “Well…it’s pretty enough, but is it Art?”

      Lestrade pressed on, “Any thoughts whose style it might be?”

      “Any competent tattoo artist could… Some of them might not want to, but almost any of us could… I take it this is a— Oh, dear Lord in Heaven!” Dupont exclaimed. “This wasn’t—could this be connected to that—that horrible murder just this past wraparound?”

      Seeing Clayton open his mouth, Lestrade beat him to the punch. “We’re always investigating several cases at a time, M. Dupont. Even in a town this size. So. Can you rule out any of your fellow body artists who wouldn’t soil their hands with something like this?”

      “Well, we wouldn’t, Ly and I. Fortunately, we have enough money as it is. Unless…” Her hand trembling slightly, she laid the tracing flat on the table and studied it again. “As one element of a larger picture…or even by itself, with a few individualizing touches… Yes, it could have some possibilities, after all.”

      “Could it be a stamped tattoo?” Clayton asked.

      “Certainly. In that case, we couldn’t legally use it if we wanted to. Not unless the client already had it and asked us to incorporate it into a larger picture. All stamp designs are registered.”

      “How do you check?” Clayton said curiously.

      The body artist sighed. “With great difficulty, Officers, with great difficulty. The literature speculates that someday we may have electronic brains to file and sort through things like this automatically, but for here and now I’m afraid it’s still pretty much the old honor system. Resting mainly on what the client tells us. And since these stamps became so popular, the annual IABA directory has gotten as thick as the New York phone books.”

      Lestrade asked, “Anything to stop an individual artist from turning out two identical stamps of his or her own design?”

      Dupont-Strudelmeyer took a minute to answer that one. “Not legally, I don’t think. No, the design would be the individual artist’s, to re-use at will. It’d be more a matter of commercial ethics. You wouldn’t want to annoy any client who bought a stamp from you by selling one with the identical design to another client.”

      “Not even two officers of the same club?” asked Clayton.

      “Well…a case like that could be an exception…but I still don’t think it’d be very wise. Any kind of a club or association can break up, and then you could see rival organizations wearing the same design. No…it might work for something like a graduating class, where the membership never changes no matter what internal politics may develop. Then you might see two or three identical stamps—say, one for the class president and one for the faculty advisor. But otherwise…you’ve got to understand, Officers, you’ve caught me more or less in a blind spot here. Ly and I don’t design stamps, don’t even have the right equipment.”

      “But you do have those annual directories?” Lestrade wanted to know.

      Dupont sighed. “Yes, we’ve got the directories. IABA guide­rules. Every year adds more designs, and once they’re there, they’re there forever.”

      “How do you keep updated on the designs being made between editions?” Clayton rubbed Pango behind the ears.

      “Honor system,” Dupont repeated.

      “You might get a ‘Friendly Dog’ sign for your gate,” Lestrade observed.

      “We have one. We decided to take it down after somebody was murdered here in Forest Green. We’ve even talked about getting a watchdog that isn’t so friendly.”

      “Let’s not panic, M. And we’d like to borrow your latest directory.” Lestrade didn’t make it a question.

      She noticed Clayton smothering a sigh, probably thinking he was going to end up checking the thing page by page. Well, maybe she’d help him out there. She didn’t have anything more important in her plans for this evening, and he was hoping to snag a quick date. Talking about this nurse he’d just met, the one who gave flu shots so smoothly a floater didn’t even feel it.

      CHAPTER 4

      Still Monday, September 18

      Julie Whitcomb lived alone in a moderately priced four-room apartment in Pankhurst Heights, one of Forest Green’s most respectable upper middle-class neighborhoods. The Pankhurst Arms—lodge-style lounge, changing rooms, and bar downstairs, four tidy apartments upstairs—was a piece of pleasantly retro-style architecture only two degrees removed from imitation Frank Lloyd Wright, set down with an artificial pond pretending to be a lake on one side and a small but rolling park on the other three. “Pankhurst Lake” really could accommodate rafting and oar-boating, though neither full-sized sailboats nor anything motorized. They even kept it stocked with pan fish. Both pond and park were free and open to the entire Pankhurst Heights subdivision: four blocks of duplexes and single-family residences on each side of the park.

      Thirty years ago, Pankhurst Heights had been both posh and somewhat less respectable than it was today, with—local legend whispered—a high-class courtesan house in the building that had been “saved,” like any other poor sinner, into a nondenominational community church with angels in stained glass windows and a real organ. Thirty years ago, Julie Whitcomb could never have afforded an apartment in the Pankhurst Arms. The big reason she could afford it now was because activities in the lodge lounge and bar just below the apartments,

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