Secret Prey

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