By most accounts, opening night of photographer Michael Garlington's exhibit at the Kimball-Jenkins Estate went off without a hitch. It's what happened after the gallery closed Thursday night that baffles staff members.

Sometime between 9:30 p.m. and 9 a.m. yesterday, someone broke into the Jill Coldren Wilson Gallery on North Main Street and stole 14 of the 20 works from Garlington's Portraits From The Belly of the Whale collection, the police said. The San Francisco-based artist said yesterday the black-and-white silver gelatin photographs - all originals - were worth $1,200 each.

"I don't know how I'm doing," Garlington said yesterday from an airport in Dallas. He was unable to attend the show due to a flight delay. "I'm flattered in a sense, I guess. It's very odd."

Wearing gloves and cloth over their shoes, a handful of investigators from the Concord Police Department scoured the mansion yesterday morning for evidence. One officer stood on a ladder, brushing a cracked, second-story window where the culprit is believed to have entered.

Ryan Linehan, director of education and operations, said he was the last person to leave the gallery and first to discover its stripped walls.

"I was terrified to tell (Garlington), but he took it surprisingly well. I think it helps that we're insured," Linehan said. "I just have a hard time believing someone would do this."

According to Linehan, the heist happened like this: The perpetrator shimmied up a banister over the porch and broke a small hole in the window, unlocked it, and climbed in to an upstairs bathroom. Whoever did it knew the building, he said, and was likely among the 150 people who attended Thursday night's reception.

"Whoever did it was here last night. They knew how to get in," Linehan said yesterday, declining to comment on whether he noticed any suspicious guests Thursday. "It was a fantastic showing. A lot of people came."

Though the gallery has an alarm system, it wasn't triggered by the break-in and may have been cut, Linehan said. The phone company planned to investigate last night, he said.

The doors, he said, were locked from the inside, and there weren't other signs of forced entry, indicating the thief or thieves left through the same window over the balcony - about 15 feet from the ground. Other valuables in the building, such as computers and artwork, were left untouched, he said.

The Kimball-Jenkins Estate, which offers art education programs, has recently been targeted by thieves, though no thefts were of this magnitude, Linehan said. Twice this month, people have stolen art equipment and a snow blower from the property, though he doesn't believe those incidents are related.

Linehan plans to reopen the exhibit today with the six remaining photographs - "Blind Girl," "The Virgins," "Jabberwocky," "The Romance at Hotel 6," "Gopel Sisters" and "Eric In His Room" - though he hasn't decided whether to consolidate them to one area or leave the vacant spots bare, save the silver wiring strewn across the walls and floor.

"It's too bad because people really need to see this," he said. "It's not pretty, but it's real artwork."

Garlington's work captures society's darker images, with characters placed in moments and scenes meant to provoke discomfort. His brow-raising portraits are often described as unsettling, eerie and weird. Providing the police with descriptions of the stolen work was interesting, Linehan said. "I had to use terms like, 'nude woman with a bloody nose,' and 'princess with fetus calf in field.' "

Garlington, 32, was intrigued to find out which of his works were left behind and especially surprised to hear "Blind Girl" was still there. While he has negatives to make more of the others, "these prints take a lot of effort to make," he said.

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