Secret Prey (39 page)

‘‘Um . . . your sister scratched me. Sort of blew up.’’

‘‘Why? Well . . . come in. Why were you talking to Audrey?’’

Connie Bell turned backward on an easy chair to listen to the conversation: Lucas, Sherrill, and Helen were standing in the entryway, and Lucas said, ‘‘I’ve got some fairly bad news, I think. Uh, maybe you’d rather get it in a more formal way . . .’’

‘‘No-no-no, tell me.’’

Lucas nodded. ‘‘We think it’s possible that, uh, your sister may have committed some of the murders you listed in your letter to me.’’

Helen took a step back, one hand going to her throat. ‘‘Audrey? Oh, no.’’

‘‘Could we, uh, could we sit down, I just have a couple of things,’’ Lucas said.

‘‘The couch.’’

They stepped into the front room, and Lucas and Sherrill sat on the couch while Helen leaned against the chair where Connie was sitting. Lucas said, ‘‘If you want Connie to go do homework or something . . .’’

‘‘No way,’’ Connie said. To her mother: ‘‘I’m old enough to stay.’’

Her mother looked at her for a moment, then nodded. ‘‘You can stay.’’

Lucas looked at Sherrill, and then asked, ‘‘When you were younger, was there ever anything . . . Did you think anything was odd about the way your father died? Or your mother?’’

Helen looked at them in stunned silence, then said, ‘‘My father was an evil man. We don’t talk about him.’’

‘‘We know about, uh . . . we know about Audrey,’’ Lucas said.

‘‘What about Audrey?’’ Connie asked.

Lucas looked at Helen, who blinked rapidly, shook her head, then turned to Connie and said, ‘‘My father molested us when we were children. Audrey mostly, but I got some
of it too. He never made me do anything with him, like he did with Audrey, but it was coming. He’d . . . handle me. But Audrey was four years older and that protected me.’’

‘‘Jeez,’’ Connie said.

‘‘Do you remember the night your father died?’’ Lucas asked.

Again, Helen seemed stunned. Then she nodded, slowly. ‘‘I didn’t know what was going on until the sheriff came— Mom wouldn’t let me get out of bed. But I knew my father was sick, that’s what they said up the stairs to me, Mom and Audrey.’’

‘‘Was he sick for a while, or was it a sudden attack?’’ Lucas asked.

‘‘He was sick for a long time, I think, more than a week . . . I don’t know, exactly, I was only ten . . . but for a long time. Then the night that he died . . . God, it was cold, it was already snowing up there, that’s one thing I remember about it. The wind used to whistle through that old farmhouse. It was a bad place. And I heard him having a terrible argument with Audrey, before I went to bed. We slept in the same bedroom, Audrey and I . . . Then, I don’t think anybody went to bed. I heard him groaning, and in the bathroom, that’s the last thing I remember about him— being in the bathroom. Then he was quiet, and then I think I went to sleep, and the next thing I knew, people were banging around and cars were coming, and he was dead.’’

‘‘Had Audrey ever come up to bed?’’

Helen looked down at her daughter, then at Lucas. ‘‘I don’t think so. I don’t think she ever came upstairs that night. She was downstairs, I think, taking care of him . . .’’

‘‘Huh. Okay. What about your mother?’’

‘‘Mother was . . . ruined . . . by my father. It was like there was no person left. I used to think, this is what a slave would be like, after they beat all the resistance out of him. ‘Do this,’ ‘Yes, master,’ ‘Do that,’ ‘Yes, master.’ She was like a rag.’’

‘‘And she died . . . Was Audrey there when she died?’’

‘‘Yes. We both were. I think she had the flu, she was
sick to her stomach, and sometimes she’d start vomiting, and Audrey would keep her in bed and spoon-feed her. And then one night she passed out, and Audrey called the hospital. She died on the way.’’

‘‘Your mother and father were both cremated,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘Was that Audrey’s idea?’’

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘You didn’t keep the ashes, by any chance.’’

‘‘No . . . Mom used to walk over to a park that was a mile or so from our house, down here in Lakeville, and we didn’t know any cemeteries, so Audrey just said it would be nice to sprinkle her around the trees in the park, she’d be there forever as part of the trees.’’

After a moment of silence, she said, ‘‘You think she killed them? Poisoned them, or something?’’

Lucas nodded. ‘‘I think it’s very possible. The insurance payments . . .’’

Helen shook her head: ‘‘There wasn’t any insurance, as far as I know.’’

Lucas said, ‘‘Huh.’’ Then, ‘‘What happened after your mother died?’’

‘‘Well, we couldn’t stay together. Audrey was barely eighteen, and so I went off to my aunt’s home until I was of age. She got a scholarship and went to college. I worked my way through a tech school, a business course . . . and then she married Wilson and everything.’’

Lucas said, ‘‘I know this probably comes as a shock. But, if it would be possible . . . and I honest to God think you should do this . . . if I come over with a stenographer and an assistant county attorney, could we sit here some night this week and go over the whole thing? Your whole history? In a really detailed way.’’

Helen said, ‘‘I can’t believe that Audrey . . .’’

‘‘Yes, you can,’’ said Connie. ‘‘I told you, she’s a mean old witch under all of that pretend stuff.’’

‘‘Connie . . .’’ Her mother looked a warning at her.

But Connie said to Lucas, ‘‘Why’d you want to know about Grandma’s ashes?’’

‘‘Well, just a thing,’’ Lucas said.

‘‘What thing?’’ Connie persisted.

‘‘If your grandmother was poisoned, a lab analysis of ashes might turn something up.’’

Connie looked up at her mother, and Helen frowned at her and said, ‘‘What?’’

‘‘How about that lock of hair on her picture? You said you cut it off the day she died.’’

Helen put her fingertips to her mouth. ‘‘Oh, that’s right. I’d forgotten; completely.’’ To Lucas: ‘‘Would a lock of hair help?’’

Lucas shrugged. ‘‘I don’t know.’’

Sherrill, who’d been sitting quietly, finally chipped in. ‘‘The doc up in Oxford thought George Lamb was killed with arsenic. If Amelia was killed the same way, and it sounds pretty similar, then it would show up in hair.’’ They all looked at her, and she said, ‘‘I read about it.’’

Lucas turned back to Helen.

‘‘Could we have the hair?’’

THIRTY

AT TEN MINUTES AFTER MIDNIGHT, AUDREY WAS STILL
packing. The cops had gone, taking a small box of miscellaneous junk with them. It wouldn’t amount to anything, she thought. Tape? Everybody had tape—though she wished she’d taken a minute to clean those doors after killing O’Dell. But she’d never even thought of it.

On the bright side, she
had
thrown away the glass cutter. It was lying somewhere on the shoulder of I-94, gone forever. On the down side, she hadn’t thrown it away after she bombed the Bairds. She’d thrown it away after she hit Karkinnen, but only because she hadn’t thought she’d need it again. She hadn’t
thought
about evidence.

She hadn’t thought about it since the cremation of her mother. With all the other killings, if she’d been caught, she would’ve been caught, and that would have been that. There hadn’t seemed any point in worrying about evidence, except in the most gross ways—don’t leave any fingerprints, don’t buy any guns.

She’d have to start thinking.

She’d gotten to Wilson’s sweaters. He’d spent a fortune on sweaters, though they made him look the size of an oil tanker. He thought they made him look like a football lineman; in fact, they made him look even fatter than he was.
‘‘Three hundred dollars for a sweater. I remember when you told me that, I couldn’t believe it. Three hundred dollars. And it’s not just the three hundred dollars; if we’d saved it, if we’d put it in Vanguard, it would have tripled by now.’’

Lights in the driveway. She froze. Cops again? She drifted for a few seconds: She hated the police: that Davenport, he was the devil in this deal. A year from now, if she could find a gun, she’d take care of him, all right. Give it a year or a little more, and then one night, maybe in January, when people’s doors were shut and windows were closed, she’d wait by his house. If she could find a gun like the one she’d used on Kresge: now that was a wonderful gun. Wonderful . . .

And snapped back. A car in the driveway. She hurried to the window, looked down, and saw Helen walking across the driveway toward the front door. Helen? She hadn’t called.

A thought stuck her. Helen had been talking to Davenport again. She turned and hurried toward the stairway, as the doorbell rang downstairs.

HELEN LOOKED STRANGE: ORDINARILY NEAT, HER
hair was in disarray, her face pinched, her mouth tight. She didn’t take off her coat, but simply stood in the entryway.

‘‘I don’t really know how to ask you this, Audrey. I’ll just tell you what Chief Davenport told me. He thinks you killed Mom and Dad. Poisoned them. I told him I didn’t think you did, and then I thought about it all evening and finally thought I better come over.’’

‘‘Mom and Dad? Mom and Dad? Do you think I killed Mom and Dad?’’ Audrey was horrified, even as the small kernel in the back of her brain hardened around her secret knowledge.

‘‘I . . . don’t think so,’’ Helen said, but her eyes drifted away. When they came back, she said, ‘‘Chief Davenport thinks that’s why they were cremated. To cover up.’’

‘‘That’s ludicrous,’’ Audrey snapped. ‘‘Davenport is all
tied up with Wilson’s father; they’re trying to keep me from the money. Wilson’s money will go to his father, you know, if they decide I’ve committed a crime. That’s all it is: it’s about money.’’

Helen looked at her for another moment, a little too coolly, Audrey thought, then said, ‘‘Okay. I just had to ask. Chief Davenport asked me not to talk to you, so please don’t mention it—but I had to come over and ask you.’’

Audrey turned away, and started wandering back toward the kitchen, as though disoriented, as though saddened by this sisterly betrayal. ‘‘You must talk to him all the time,’’ she said.

‘‘Only three times,’’ Helen said. ‘‘He doesn’t seem like a bad man.’’

Audrey spun: ‘‘Oh, snap out of it, Helen,’’ she snarled. ‘‘You never figured out how things work. You sit down there and sort your little auto parts and the world just goes by. You should ask yourself someday, ‘What happens when I get old? What happens when I’m trying to live on Social Security, when nobody wants me anymore?’ Helen, you just don’t have any idea.’’

Helen turned to the door. ‘‘Don’t worry about me; just worry about yourself, Audrey . . . By the way, after Mom died—did you know this? I think you did—I took a lock of her hair to put with her picture on the piano. Chief Davenport took it with him. He’s going to have it analyzed by the laboratory.’’

‘‘Well: I’m sorry to see you lose your precious lock, but at least it’ll show she wasn’t poisoned,’’ Audrey snapped.

‘‘I hope so,’’ Helen said. ‘‘Audrey, when all this is done, we’ve got to sit down and talk. So much stuff happened when I was a kid, I never got it straight.’’

‘‘I’ll set you straight,’’ Audrey said. ‘‘Come back when it’s done.’’

Helen left, the heavy door wheezing shut behind her: Wilson had insisted on the special door, three inches thick, saying, ‘‘It’s the first thing people will know about us.’’ Two thousand dollars for a door . . .

‘‘Fuck,’’ she said aloud, wrenching her mind away from Wilson. A lock of hair! Could it really be analyzed, or was it a game that Davenport was playing with her? Was there any way to find out?

Maybe the Internet, though it seemed far-fetched. She went to the library, waited impatiently to get on-line, brought up the Alta Vista search engine, and typed in: ‘‘ARSENIC HAIR.’’

Almost immediately, she got back a list of articles, and her heart sank. The first one was, improbably, on Napoleon. She opened it, and it referred to arsenic content in Napoleon’s hair. Shit. She went to the next one, something to do with analysis, and it also mentioned arsenic in hair. Hair.

She punched the off button on the computer, and the computer’s fan moaned as it closed down. The computer didn’t like that, she thought. Didn’t like to be up and running, and then cut off.

Fuck the computer.

Arsenic and hair. She had to do something, and do it quickly.