Secret Prey

kitchen floor, and just beyond them, his wool shooting jacket and then boots and trousers in a pile and halfway up the stairs, the long blue polypro underwear.
    ‘‘Oh, shit,’’ she said to herself. She dropped her purse on a hallway chair and hurried up the stairs, found a pair of jockey shorts in the hallway and heard him splashing in the oversized tub.
    When Wilson McDonald got tense, excited, or frightened, he drank; and when he drank, he got hot and started to sweat. He’d pull his clothing off and head for water. He’d been drunk, naked, in the lake down the hill. He’d been drunk, naked, in the pool in the backyard, frightening the neighbor’s daughter half to death. He’d been in the tub more times than she could remember, drunk, wallowing like a great white whale. He wasn’t screaming yet, but he would be. The killing of Dan Kresge, all the talk at the club, had pushed him over the edge.
    At the bathroom door, she stopped, braced herself, and then pushed it open. Wilson was on his hands and knees. As she opened the door, he dropped onto his stomach, and a wave of water washed over the edge, onto the floor, and around a nearly empty bottle of scotch.
    ‘‘Wilson!’’ she shouted. ‘‘Goddamnit, Wilson.’’
    He floundered, rolled, sat up. He was too fat, with fine curly hair on his chest and stomach, going gray. His tits, she thought, were bigger than hers. ‘‘Shut up,’’ he bellowed back.
    She took three quick steps into the room and picked up the bottle and started away.
    ‘‘Wait a minute, goddamnit . . .’’ He was on his feet and out of the tub faster than she’d anticipated, and he caught her in the hallway. ‘‘Give me the fucking bottle.’’
    ‘‘You’re dripping all over the carpet.’’
    ‘‘Give me the fucking bottle . . .’’ he shouted.
    ‘‘No. You’ll—’’
    He was swinging the moment the ‘‘no’’ came out of her mouth, and caught her on the side of the head with an open hand. She went down like a popped balloon, her head cracking against the molding on a closet door.
    ‘‘Fuckin’ bottle,’’ he said. She’d hung on to it when she went down, but he wrenched it free, and held it to his chest.
    She was stunned, but pushed herself up. ‘‘You fuck,’’ she shouted.
    ‘‘You don’t . . .’’ He kicked at her, sent her sprawling. ‘‘Throw you down the fuckin’ stairs,’’ he screamed. ‘‘Get out of here.’’
    He went back into the bathroom, and she heard the lock click.
    ‘‘Wilson . . .’’
    ‘‘Go away.’’ And she heard the splash as he hit the water in the tub.
    • • •
    DOWNSTAIRS, SHE GOT AN ICE COMPRESS FROM THE freezer and put it against her head: she’d have a bruise. Goddamn him. They had to talk about Kresge: this was their big move, their main chance. This was what they’d worked for. And he was drunk.
    The thought of the bottle sent her to the cupboard under the sink, to a built-in lazy Susan. She turned it halfway around, got the vodka bottle, poured four inches of vodka over two ice cubes, and drank it down.
    Poured another two ounces to sip.
    Audrey McDonald wasn’t a big woman, and alcohol hit quickly. The two martinis she’d had at lunch, plus the pitcher of Bloody Marys at the club, had laid a base for the vodka. Her rage at Wilson began to shift. Not to disappear, but to shift in the maze of calculations that were spinning through her head.
    Bone and O’Dell would try to steal this from them.
    She sipped vodka, pressed the ice compress against her head, thought about Bone and O’Dell. Bone was Harvard and Chicago; O’Dell was Smith and Wharton. O’Dell had a degree in history and finance; Bone had two degrees in economics.
    Wilson had a B.A. from the University of Minnesota in business administration and a law degree from the same place. Okay, but not in the same class with O’Dell or Bone. On the other hand, his grandfather had been one of the founders of Polaris. And Wilson knew everyone in town and was a member of the Woodland Golf and Cricket Club. The vice chairman of Polaris, a jumped-up German sausage-maker who never in a million years could have gotten into the club on his own, was now at Woodland, courtesy of Wilson McDonald. So Wilson wasn’t weaponless . . .
    SHE HEARD HIM THUMPINGDOWNTHE STAIRS AMINUTE later. He stalked into the kitchen, still nude, jiggling, dripping wet. ‘‘What ya drinking?’’ he asked.
    ‘‘Soda water,’’ she said.
    ‘‘Soda water my