Secret Prey

resembled each other, in the sense of a total package, for two women who looked so much alike. Audrey at thirty-eight was a beetle, hunched, fussy, dressed all in earth colors, her movements small and nervous. Bell at thirty-four was not exactly a butterfly, but seemed even in the restrictive circumstances of a legal hearing to be much more outgoing, much more like a woman in her thirties. Her hair was touched with color, she wore a bit of makeup, and at the arraignment, she’d worn a pretty red silk scarf with a conservative blue business suit; and she smiled.
    Helen Bell lived in a small white house with green shutters, backed onto an alley, a shaky-looking garage standing behind the house. Lucas left his car in the street and walked up the narrow seventy-year-old sidewalk to the front door and knocked. Bell was there in a minute, smiling nervously when she opened her door and said, ‘‘Chief Davenport? Come in.’’
    The living room had a just vacuumed look, and magazines, mostly about homemaking, were stacked carefully on a coffee table. ‘‘Coffee?’’ she asked. ‘‘It’s only microwave instant.’’
    ‘‘Yes, that’d be nice.’’ The voice again: this was the tipster, all right. Lucas mentally kicked himself: he’d known that Audrey McDonald had a sister.
    ‘‘Decaf or regular?’’ She was bustling around, making sure he was comfortable; he felt as though he were on a first date.
    ‘‘Whatever you have . . . Regular is fine.’’ She went to get it, and he looked around the small living room, checked a shelf of paperbacks: self-help, mostly. How to succeed in business. ‘‘Where do you work?’’ he called.
    He heard the door slam on the microwave: ‘‘Fisher Specialties down in Bloomington. You know—truck accessories. I’m in charge of the orders department.’’ She came out of the kitchen carrying two mugs of coffee. ‘‘Sit on the couch—I’ll take the easy chair.’’
    ‘‘Any children?’’
    ‘‘A daughter. Connie. She should be home from school any minute.’’
    ‘‘I wanted to talk to you about some background involving the death of Dan Kresge and then later, of Wilson McDonald . . .’’
    ‘‘Are they going to drop the charges against Audrey?’’
    ‘‘I don’t know, I don’t work in that area,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘Mrs. Bell . . . did you write to us about your brother-inlaw? Call me on the phone?’’
    She looked too surprised by the question; she wasn’t surprised, but she acted as though she were, her eyebrows going up, her head cocking to one side. ‘‘Why . . .’’
    ‘‘I can get phone records, if I want to,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘And there’s nothing at all illegal about what you did. You were simply recommending an investigation.’’
    She took a sip of coffee, then ran the index finger of her free hand around the rim of the cup. After a second, she said, ‘‘Yes, that was me. You’d already figured it out, I guess. But it couldn’t be from the phone—I called from Rainbow.’’
    Rainbow was a supermarket. Lucas shook his head: ‘‘It’s just your voice. You sound a little, I don’t know— Canadian.’’
    ‘‘Aboot,’’ she said.
    He nodded. ‘‘The first time I talked to your sister, I thought she was the one who called. So: How long ago did you decide Wilson McDonald was killing people?’’
    ‘‘I . . . thought there’d been a lot of deaths, to get him where he’d gotten. But it was only when Mr. Kresge was shot that I was really sure. You know that Mr. Kresge was going to merge the bank . . .’’
    ‘‘Yes.’’
    ‘‘And Wilson’s job was gone. I mean, gone . Then Mr. Kresge gets killed, and Wilson’s job was saved. And maybe he’s even in line for Mr. Kresge’s job. That was too much. There’d been too many of these things.’’
    ‘‘How long had he been beating your sister?’’
    ‘‘He beat her up before they got married,’’ Helen said. ‘‘She told me that later.’’
    ‘‘Then why’d she marry him?’’
    ‘‘Because she loved him,’’ Bell said simply. ‘‘She still loves him.’’
    ‘‘That’s a very odd relationship.’’
    ‘‘A kind of codependency,’’ Bell said. ‘‘You know . . . Never mind.’’
    ‘‘No. Say it.’’
    ‘‘My father, before he died, used to beat up my mother. And Audrey. And he would’ve started on me, if I’d been old enough. And somehow, I think that did something to Audrey’s brain—she thinks women deserve to get