Secret Prey

be done before nine o’clock in the morning.
    By seven-thirty, with four hours out for sleep, she was done with the packing. After a last quick check around, she hauled the boxes down to the front entry, and stacked them. After a quick shower and a change of clothes, she went to the library, fired up the computer, brought up Word, and wrote for half an hour, editing and reediting as she worked. Satisfied, she dumped the document to a floppy disk, put it in her purse.
    At nine o’clock, she was out of the house.
    THE GOLD BUG WAS A CUSTOM JEWELRY BOUTIQUEON the south side of Minneapolis. A half-dozen craftsmen worked out of a small common smelting area, with actual fabrication of jewelry done in separate shops on a wing off the smelting area. She’d been there once before, with a ladies’ tour group from the country club, to look at gold jewelry and how it was made.
    She hadn’t bought any gold, but she’d found the tour interesting.
    A tall, bony redheaded woman was working at the desk, looked up and said a cheery ‘‘Hello’’ as Audrey tentatively poked her nose through the door.
    ‘‘Hello. Are the shops open?’’
    ‘‘Sure. Go on down. Do you know . . . ?’’
    ‘‘Yes. I’ve been here before.’’
    Audrey scuttled away down the wing, walked past the open fire door that led to the smelting area, slowed, looked inside. A sign beside the door said, ‘‘Please come in and watch; but please be quiet.’’
    One man was working at an exhaust hood; three other hoods were vacant. He looked up, focused on her.
    ‘‘I’m sorry,’’ she said. ‘‘Is it . . . okay?’’
    ‘‘Sure. Come on in. I’m just smelting a little gold, here.’’ She walked in with her purse clutched in front of her, an old lady. She’d have to work on this image, a little, she thought. If she got in the newspapers, perhaps she should look younger . . .
    The goldsmith had gone back to his work, a small crucible that he worked with a torch; she couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, but didn’t particularly care. She wasn’t interested in goldwork. With her eyes fixed on the torch, she drifted to another one of the exhaust hoods. The table beside it was empty. Goddamnit. She passed behind him, now looking around at the equipment, then turned so she could watch him from the other side. He was vaguely aware of her, she thought, but he was used to being watched, and paid no real attention.
    She moved up to the next exhaust hood, and saw the bottle.
    That was it. She stood next to the table, and when he momentarily turned away, his back more toward her, she reached carefully out, picked it up, and slipped it into her coat pocket. It was small, no bigger than a shotgun shell or an old iodine bottle. With the bottle in her hand, she moved closer to him.
    ‘‘Very interesting,’’ she said finally, as he finished a small pour into what looked like a lump of plaster.
    ‘‘Simple enough, after you’ve done it awhile,’’ he said.
    She had no idea of what was going on, said, ‘‘Thank you,’’ and still looking carefully around the smelting room, drifted out the door. She stopped at two of the shops, looking at their small display cases. Then, glancing at her watch—it was already past ten o’clock—she headed for the door.
    ‘‘Have a nice day,’’ the redhead said, as she left.
    You betcha .
    TWENTY MINUTES LATER, AFTER A QUICK STOP AT A drugstore to buy a pack of razor blades, she fixed the pill in the parking lot of a Burger King. First, she took one of the Prozac capsules she’d gotten from Helen, carefully pulled the cap apart, spilled the drug into the palm of her hand and flicked it out the car window. Then she took out the bottle she’d stolen from the Gold Bug and looked at it. The simple label said, CAUTION , and below that, in small letters, Sodium Cyanide . And below that, Poison: If ingested, get physician’s help immediately. For industrial use only .
    When the club ladies had visited the gold workshop, one of the goldsmiths had joked about using the cyanide to purify recycled gold. The same stuff Hitler’s boys had used to kill themselves, he’d said. She hadn’t known exactly what he was talking about—purifying the gold—but she remembered what he’d said about Hitler’s boys.
    The cyanide was an off-white powder, innocent enough. She poured a little on the sandwich box, cut it up with the razor blade, then carefully refilled the Prozac cap with the cyanide. Then she