Dead Hunt

two years ago. She said she was going to travel. Go to some of the places she and Glenn went to. She called several times and asked how the boys were doing. Unfortunately, I could never give her good news.’’
‘‘Thank you for speaking with us,’’ said Kingsley. ‘‘We may be calling to speak with you again.’’
‘‘I hope I’ve been helpful,’’ he said. ‘‘As I said, I cannot believe that she is the same woman you are inquiring about . . . but I thought that I should call.’’
‘‘You have been very helpful,’’ said Diane. ‘‘You did the right thing. Thank you.’’
Diane hung up the phone, sat back, and looked at Kingsley.
‘‘What do you think?’’ asked Kingsley.
‘‘I think she’s a clever girl. I believe she maneuvered her husband ahead of time in the decision about the will. It’s like the card trick where I keep asking you to pick a card out of several that I show you. When I finally reveal the card you chose, you are surprised and wonder how I knew, when all the time I was guiding you to the card I wanted you to pick.’’
‘‘I agree,’’ said Kingsley. ‘‘That’s exactly what she did. She had Redding primed before he went into the attorney’s office. She made herself so reasonable and trustworthy, talked about all the different ways he could handle the will. By the time he got to the lawyer’s office, he probably thought the whole idea was his. What about the gifts to the daughter and the mother?’’
Diane shrugged. ‘‘Cooling the mark. Showing how generous she really is, to take attention off the fact that the boys weren’t getting anything and she was getting so much. And it could be that she identifies with the daughter and maybe the mother.’’
‘‘You’re good at this,’’ said Kingsley.
‘‘I’m becoming cynical, is what I am,’’ said Diane. ‘‘We were right; she had killed before. This deadly staph infection of Redding’s sounds very much like the tetanus method she used with Archer O’Riley.’’
‘‘I noticed that too,’’ said Kingsley.
‘‘You said you have some news,’’ said Diane.
‘‘I do. I showed a linguist the written entries in Clymene’s scrapbooks. There isn’t much, but he identified some wording in the archaeology-theme scrapbook that is pretty specific to a place. In one of the photographs the archaeology crew are receiving mail. The text says, ‘The mail was just called over.’ ’’
‘‘I’ve never heard that expression,’’ said Diane.
‘‘It’s unique to the Outer Banks of North Carolina,’’ he said. ‘‘I think we may know where she is from.’’
Diane looked up as the door opened. Jin’s head peeked in.
‘‘Hi. I found a relative of the triplets. Interested?’’

Chapter 44
    ‘‘So,’’ said Frank, sitting down on the couch and pulling Diane into his arms, ‘‘you’re going on a road trip tomorrow.’’
    ‘‘Plane trip. New Bern, North Carolina. About five hundred miles from here,’’ said Diane. ‘‘Kingsley wants to interview her as soon as possible and not give her any advance notice. He doesn’t want to give her the chance to back out of seeing us, or possibly even notify Clymene.’’
    ‘‘And she is?’’ he asked.
‘‘Carley Volker. She had her complete DNA profile posted on one of those ancestry Web sites. Jin did a good job finding her. It’s not as easy as simply matching charts. There’s a lot of mathematical probability that goes into finding common alleles among relatives.’’
‘‘So tell me what you know,’’ he said.
Diane liked to talk cases out with Frank. He had a way of asking questions that made her think.
‘‘Not a lot that we know. A lot we have some good guesses about. One of the problems is that they are identical triplets. Some of the photographs we’re finding may not be Clymene, but one of her sisters. Hell, for all I know they may all be in this together—three little black widows all raking in the money.’’
‘‘So, what do you think you know?’’ said Frank.
‘‘For the sake of argument, I’ve decided Clymene must be about thirty-five years old, so that’s my base.’’
Diane sat up and took a sip of wine. She had made one of her famous three-cheese-and-meat lasagnas for dinner and Frank had opened a bottle of wine. She took another sip before she spoke again.
‘‘In 1987, Clymene was with a man named Simon Greene, aka Jurgen Heinrich, possibly somewhere in Europe. He was using her in porno