Secret Prey

found out that both her father and mother died young . . .’’
    ‘‘I know the woman,’’ the sheriff said. ‘‘Audrey. McDonald. Used to be Lamb. Been reading about the case in the Star-Tribune. What the heck is a chief of police doing way up here on a case like that?’’
    ‘‘Actually, uh, Marcy and I are friends,’’ Lucas said, tipping his head toward Sherrill. ‘‘We were both working the case, and we sorta wanted to get away for a weekend . . . and we were sorta curious about Lamb.’’
    The sheriff glanced at Marcy and then back at Lucas, nodded as if everything was suddenly clear. ‘‘I didn’t take the first call on Lamb, but when we got word that somebody out there was dead, I came in,’’ the sheriff said. He spun in his office chair, looking out of the office window toward the back of a line of Main Street stores. ‘‘This was early in the morning. I mean real early, like four o’clock. He was dressed in gray long johns, and he was laying on the kitchen floor. One of the girls had called us—Audrey I think, the other one was still pretty young—and the two little girls had their mom out in the living room, and she was sitting on the couch all wailing away. And Lamb was deader’n a mackerel. It was his practice to wake up in the morning by breaking a raw egg in a double-shot glass, then pouring the glass full with rye, and drinking it down. We found him laying on the floor in a puddle of rye, with the egg all over his face. Took him off quick.’’
    ‘‘Egg and rye. That’d open your eyes, all right,’’ Sherrill said.
    ‘‘ ’Spose,’’ said the sheriff. Another man, tall, lean as a fence post, ten years older than the sheriff but with a full head of hair, propped himself in the office doorway.
    ‘‘You wanted me?’’
    ‘‘Yeah, Jimmy, come on in . . .’’ The sheriff introduced Lucas and Sherrill and said, ‘‘They’re checking around about the time George Lamb died down there on A. You remember that?’’
    ‘‘Yeah. Long time ago. Don’t quite see what you’d be checking on. Dropped dead of a heart attack.’’
    ‘‘Was there anything unusual about the circumstances?’’ Lucas asked. ‘‘Something to make you wonder if it was more’n a heart attack?’’
    The sheriff shook his head, and Jimmy scratched his head and said, ‘‘Well, no. Not really. The population up here is older’n average—not much to hold the younger people anymore—so we see a lot of heart attacks. Probably once or twice a week we get a call, and a fair number of times, the victim is dead before the ambulance gets there. I probably seen a few hundred of them in my time, and . . .’’ He shrugged. ‘‘Soon as I saw him, I thought, Heart.’’
    ‘‘Shoot,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘How about the mother? Amelia?’’
    The sheriff shook his head. ‘‘They left here after George died—sold the place off and moved down to your territory, I think.’’
    ‘‘Really?’’ Lucas shook his head ruefully. ‘‘You know, I never asked. I just assumed . . .’’ Lucas glanced at Marcy, then said to the sheriff, ‘‘I didn’t see a motel coming in. Is there a place we can stay?’’
    The sheriff seemed to relax a half-inch. ‘‘North out of town a half-mile, there’s the Sugar Beet Inn. Real clean place.’’
    ‘‘Good enough,’’ Lucas said. They all stood up and Lucas shook with the sheriff and Marcy said, ‘‘Thanks for the coffee.’’
    And then they were outside and Lucas looked up at the building and said, ‘‘That’s the goddamnedest thing, huh?’’
    ‘‘He seemed a little tense,’’ Marcy said.
    ‘‘They oughta be a little tense,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘They’re covering something up.’’
    They were at the car, and Marcy looked at him over the roof: ‘‘All right, you got me. How do you know they’re covering something up?’’
    ‘‘Because they both remembered the details of a heart attack twenty-four years ago. What he looked like lying on the floor. Gray long johns. The egg-and-rye thing . . .’’
    ‘‘I might have remembered that, the egg and rye. ’Cause it’s unusual.’’
    ‘‘Audrey’s name . . .’’
    ‘‘They could have remembered that from reading the paper.’’
    Lucas shook his head: ‘‘Why? She didn’t change it until she married McDonald, eight years after her father died. You think they were tracking her?’’
    Marcy nodded. ‘‘All right. They remembered too much. What do we do