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agencies.”
    He frowned again and gave me a small quick nod. “That is, yes, our usual policy. The agent who wrote the coverage, however, chose to do otherwise. And the supervisor at the time accepted it.”
    Both of them hot, presumably, for the larger premiums to be had if Atco carried the necklace by itself. I wondered what’d happened to those two after the necklace had been stolen. They’d probably been assigned to the office in Minsk. “The necklace,” I said. “Where was it kept?”
    â€œNormally, as I understand it, in their safe-deposit box at the bank, with the rest of her jewelry.”
    â€œWhere was it that Friday night?”
    â€œIn the drawer of her dresser. In her bedroom.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œMrs. Leighton had worn it that week to some social function.”
    â€œWas anyone in the house at the time of the burglary?”
    â€œNo. They have two children, teenagers, but both were sleeping over with friends.”
    â€œAlarm system?”
    â€œYes. A Cartwright.”
    â€œInterior and perimeter?”
    â€œInterior only. And it wasn’t armed. Apparently their son forgot to turn it on before he left the house.”
    The Cartwright’s a decent system, infra-red, motion-sensitive. You punch a number code onto a keyboard before you leave the house. If anything moves in there before you disarm the system, an externally mounted siren goes off and a phone call is automatically made to the local Cartwright monitoring office in town. From there, someone telephones the police department. But, like any other system, it doesn’t work very well if it’s not turned on.
    â€œWere the phone lines cut?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThey have a leased line?”
    â€œNo. But it hardly matters in this instance, since, as I say, the alarm wasn’t activated.”
    When the alarm is set, a leased line, also called a balanced line, will automatically notify the monitoring service if it’s been cut or tampered with. But the phone company charges about thirty bucks a month for one, and some people can’t see their way to spending the extra money.
    I asked him, “What about the wires to the siren?”
    â€œThey were untouched.”
    â€œThe house is isolated,” I said.
    He nodded. “Yes.”
    Disabling the phone lines to an empty house is one of the first things a competent professional burglar would do. With an armed Cartwright, and with most other systems, cutting the lines will sound the siren, but a burglar’s not going to worry about that if the house is out in the boonies. And if the house is out in the boonies, even a leased line isn’t going to be much help. A good man can get in and out of the average private residence in less than twenty minutes, and he’ll be carrying a police scanner with him. By the time the cops arrive, if they ever do, he’ll be long gone.
    I said, “The son was there after they left?”
    â€œYes, with some friends. They all left shortly after nine o’clock.”
    â€œNo possibility that he or his friends were involved?”
    â€œNone.”
    â€œAnd the other kid?”
    â€œA daughter. She’d left earlier in the day.”
    I sat back in my chair, the leather whispering against me. “Sergeant Nolan felt that Biddle masterminded the burglary, using a friend named Killebrew to do the actual work. Did you agree with him?”
    â€œYes, I did. Unfortunately, as perhaps you know, we were never able to substantiate our belief.”
    I nodded. “I’ll have to talk to the Leightons.”
    He showed me his quick flicker of a smile once more. “I’ve anticipated you in that regard. I spoke with Mr. Leighton this morning. He’s willing to see you this afternoon at four.”
    T HE SUN was shining and the temperature back up into the sixties as I turned off Old Santa Fe Trail onto the rutted and muddy dirt road. For a moment,