When he returned home, there was no sign of Captain Wully, only a few paper candy wrappers on the floor. He started to pick them up, but remembered he wanted to imprison a highlight on Heather Higgins's nose and forgot the papers.
Someone had been into his paints. A tube of Payne's gray had been pressed dry. The cap was off the gamboge, and a new tube of bice green had been squeezed in the middle. Nor had the intruder bothered to scrape the palette, which gleamed with puddles of color.
A dab of ivory, the hint of rose madder and a suspicion of cadmium yellow fused under his brush tip. Creative fury struck him, and he failed to notice a figure that paused at the outside front gate. The figure stooped, picked up something, then carefully scanned the inside walkway. Here, too, she picked up something. She stooped momentarily on the front porch, and again in the hallway.
Then Heather Higgins stood in the studio. Her gaze swept the floor, and she bent over to pick up a candy wrapper.
"You don't have to do that," Jerry said. "I was getting around to it—eventually."
She whirled to face him. Her eyes turned from azure to ultramarine. "You might tell me what's going on around here!"
"Suppose you tell me. I'm still trying to catch up with it myself."
"Thief!"
"Thief?"