John Sandford - Secret Prey

"I… don’t think so," Helen said, but her eyes drifted away. When they came back, she said, "Chief Davenport thinks that’s why they were cremated. To cover up."

"That’s ludicrous," Audrey snapped. "Davenport is all tied up with Wilson’s father; they’re trying to keep me from the money. Wilson’s money will go to his father, you know, if they decide I’ve committed a crime. That’s all it is: it’s about money."

Helen looked at her for another moment, a little too coolly, Audrey thought, then said, "Okay. I just had to ask. Chief Davenport asked me not to talk to you, so please don’t mention it-but I had to come over and ask you."

Audrey turned away, and started wandering back toward the kitchen, as though disoriented, as though saddened by this sisterly betrayal. "You must talk to him all the time," she said.

"Only three times," Helen said. "He doesn’t seem like a bad man."

Audrey spun: "Oh, snap out of it, Helen," she snarled. "You never figured out how things work. You sit down there and sort your little auto parts and the world just goes by. You should ask yourself someday, ‘What happens when I get old? What happens when I’m trying to live on Social Security, when nobody wants me anymore?’ Helen, you just don’t have any idea."

Helen turned to the door. "Don’t worry about me; just worry about yourself, Audrey… By the way, after Mom died-did you know this? I think you did-I took a lock of her hair to put with her picture on the piano. Chief Davenport took it with him. He’s going to have it analyzed by the laboratory."

"Well: I’m sorry to see you lose your precious lock, but at least it’ll show she wasn’t poisoned," Audrey snapped.

"I hope so," Helen said. "Audrey, when all this is done, we’ve got to sit down and talk. So much stuff happened when I was a kid, I never got it straight."

"I’ll set you straight," Audrey said. "Come back when it’s done."

Helen left, the heavy door wheezing shut behind her: Wilson had insisted on the special door, three inches thick, saying, "It’s the first thing people will know about us." Two thousand dollars for a door…

"Fuck," she said aloud, wrenching her mind away from Wilson. A lock of hair! Could it really be analyzed, or was it a game that Davenport was playing with her? Was there any way to find out?

Maybe the Internet, though it seemed far-fetched. She went to the library, waited impatiently to get on-line, brought up the Alta Vista search engine, and typed in: "ARSENIC HAIR."

Almost immediately, she got back a list of articles, and her heart sank. The first one was, improbably, on Napoleon. She opened it, and it referred to arsenic content in Napoleon’s hair. Shit. She went to the next one, something to do with analysis, and it also mentioned arsenic in hair. Hair.

She punched the off button on the computer, and the computer’s fan moaned as it closed down. The computer didn’t like that, she thought. Didn’t like to be up and running, and then cut off.

Fuck the computer.

Arsenic and hair. She had to do something, and do it quickly.

Lucas went to lunch with Del, who said, "I can’t shake free of this opium thing. A couple of the old ladies have been calling every day, wanting to know what we’re gonna do."

"That’s your problem, thank God," Lucas said. "Go over and talk to Towson or one of his guys, see what they want to do."

"They want it to go away," Del said. "So does Rose Marie. Nobody wants to deal with it. I don’t want to deal with it anymore. Hell, I’m going on vacation in two weeks. I’m finally getting my shot at Cancun. But now these oldladies, they want something done."

"Why? Tell them to keep their mouths shut, and everybody’ll forget it," Lucas said.

"They’re not thinking that way. They’ve all been getting together in these fuckin’… covens. They think they’ve got to pay their debt to society," Del said morosely.

"Jesus. Well, you asked for it," Lucas said brightly. "I feel for you, pal. But when that doc told you about it, you coulda walked away."

"Ah, man, you gotta find a way to help."

"Not me." Lucas laughed, and thought, My God, I think I just chortled . "I’m not Narcotics. Go talk to the guys down there."

"They treat me like I got the plague…"

"That’s ’cause you got the plague," Lucas said. "I don’t want to hear about it."

"Fuck me," Del said, moodily. "I wasn’t cut out for this."

Lucas laughed again, said, "Nobody is. Sixty old ladies? Is that what it is? You poor fuck. You’re dead meat."

Del looked at his watch. "That lab report is about due."

"Let’s get back," Lucas said.

"You think you got her?"

"It’s almost too much to hope for," Lucas said. "When Helen said she had a hair sample, my teeth almost fell out."

Lucas had a message when he got back: "Call Davis." Davis Ericson worked in the state crime lab. He punched in the number, and Ericson picked up.

"What’d you get?"

"Lucas. Tell you what, I’ve never seen this before. Not in real life."

"What? You got arsenic?"

"The hair is stiff with it," Ericson said. "She must’ve been eating it for a month before she croaked."

"Goddamnit, Davis."

Lucaspunched in the County attorney’s number, waited for three minutes, and Kirk, the chief of the criminal division, picked up. Lucas explained about the lock of hair.

"If Helen can swear that it came from her mother, then that might do it," Kirk said.

"That’s where Helen says it comes from."

"Give me her name and address. We’ll set up an appointment for a deposition."

"What about Audrey?"

"Easiest way to do it is, we’ll talk to the judge, and have bail revoked on the killing of her husband. And then before tomorrow’s bail hearing, we’d get an arrest affidavit put together on her mother, and arrest her on that. Maybe boost the charge on her husband to first degree."

"So how long is that gonna take? The bail revocation?"

"Mmm… we’ll have to get some stuff in writing. If you’ll set out the circumstances of obtaining the hair sample, and describe the lab test-just in general terms-and walk it over here, I’ll have a secretary put together an affidavit and we’ll have the judge sign it this afternoon. If you can get your memo over here in an hour, we’ll have it done by the end of the day."

"And then we pick her up."

"Yup. We could have her inside for supper."

"Excellent," Lucas said.

Audrey had been up most of the night, packing. She wanted to have it done in case she was rearrested, so that Wilson’s clothing wouldn’t still be hanging in the closets when she got back. She was eradicating the sight of him.

And she would probably be rearrested, she thought. If Davenport really had that hair, he would probably be coming for her in the next day or two. How long would a lab take? She had no idea. But she was certain it couldn’t 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 boutique on 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.