Chapter 44

44

Barr pops her head in Reyes’s office door, slightly breathless.

“What is it?” Reyes asks.

“I just got a call from the hospital. Audrey Stancik was admitted yesterday, and they think she was poisoned.”

Reyes and Barr get to the hospital as fast as they can. They finally track down Audrey Stancik’s doctor, Dr. Wang. “She was poisoned?” Reyes asks. “Are you sure?”

The doctor nods briskly and says, “No doubt about it. Ethylene glycol. If she hadn’t called us as quickly as she did, she might well be in a coma by now. We’ve treated her with fomepizole—it reverses the effects of the poison and prevents organ damage.” He turns as if to be on his way. “She’s going to be fine. She’ll be released later today.”

“Wait,” Reyes says. The doctor stops for a moment. “Where would ethylene glycol come from?” Reyes asks.

“Antifreeze, probably. That’s your department, not mine. You can see her. She’s eager to talk to you. Room 712.”

They locate Audrey’s room, and Reyes knocks gently on the partly opened door and they enter. It’s a semiprivate room; there’s another woman in the bed across from her. Reyes pulls the curtain around Audrey’s bed for privacy, and he and Barr stand by her bedside. “How are you feeling?” he begins.

She frowns weakly at them both. “I’ve felt better,” she admits, “but they tell me I’m going to be fine. No lasting damage.”

“What happened?” Reyes asks.

“It was the iced tea,” Audrey says firmly, “I’m sure of it. I keep a plastic jug of iced tea in my refrigerator. When I got home from a walk on Sunday morning, I had a glass of it. It was after that I started to feel sick.”

Reyes glances at Barr.

“Someone tried to kill me,” Audrey insists. “Someone broke into my house and tried to poison me.” She adds, “It has to be one of those kids.”

“Why would any of them want to kill you?” Reyes asks.

“Because I know one of them is a murderer. And whoever it is probably knows that I’m talking to you—and to the press. I was the anonymous source in the newspaper yesterday.”

---

•   •   •once inside the house, Catherine tells Ted she’s going upstairs to lie down. She has a pounding headache, tight across her sinuses, probably from the stress of everything—the police interview this morning, the will, the news about Rose this afternoon.

Catherine needs to think about Rose, what to do about her. She doesn’t feel like she’s gained a sister, but that she’s lost a friend.

Catherine gets underneath the covers and pulls them up to her chin. She tries to empty her mind so that she can sleep and get rid of her headache. Summoning happy thoughts, she thinks about the money she will get, and about the baby she’s going to have, and how she will tell Ted. She’s hoping for a girl. She imagines decorating the nursery in her parents’ house—it and everything in it will be hers now. Dan and Jenna don’t care. They will have the house and contents valued and that will come out of her share of the inheritance. When she said that’s what she wanted, in the parking lot after the meeting with Walter, Dan and Jenna were not surprised, but Ted had been. When she mentioned that it was her intention to move into the house, he had been taken aback. She wasn’t immediately sure why—he knew she’d always wanted that house.

“But—” Ted protested.

“But what?” Catherine replied.

Ted swallowed and said, “Your parents were murdered in that house—do you still want to live in it?”

She didn’t want him to think her cold. “It’s where I grew up,” she said stubbornly, plaintively, letting her eyes fill up. She wanted to say, I can live with it, can you? But she wasn’t sure she was going to like his answer. This is something else she will have to deal with, her husband’s squeamishness.

And the earrings—her mind races on. Why don’t the detectives believe she borrowed those earrings? And now there is no way she will fall asleep because she’s thinking about Audrey. Had she already spoken to the detectives? She remembers catching sight of Audrey in her car in the parking lot of the police station, watching as she came out, how she threatened Catherine and her siblings when she found out she wasn’t going to be rich.

Audrey knows her history. When Catherine was young, she wasn’t always the perfect daughter. When she was twelve, she stole a necklace. She was over at a friend’s house, and the girl’s parents weren’t home. Catherine went upstairs to the bathroom, and, curious, slipped into the parents’ bedroom. She didn’t want to snoop in general, she only wanted to look in Mrs. Gibson’s jewelry box. She had lots of lovely things. There was a sweet little necklace at the bottom that Catherine picked up and held up to the light. A delicate gold chain with a single small diamond. Catherine slipped it into the pocket of her jeans. She thought Mrs. Gibson wouldn’t notice it missing right away, and she wouldn’t be able to connect its disappearance to Catherine’s visit.

But it was her own mother who found out about the necklace, after Irena discovered it hidden under Catherine’s mattress when she was changing the bed. Irena told her mother, who confronted her about it and forced the truth out of her. Then she marched her over to the Gibsons’ and made her return the necklace and apologize, her face flushed with shame. She was full of resentment at her mother, because Catherine was right—Mrs. Gibson hadn’t noticed the necklace was missing at all. It had ended her friendship with the Gibsons’ daughter. Catherine’s mother was mortified. She told Catherine’s father when he got home and he berated her and made her feel so ashamed and angry that she wanted to run away from home.

Of course her father told Audrey. He told her everything, as if he liked to display his children’s failings. And there was the time after that, when she’d tried to shoplift a diamond bracelet from a jewelry shop when she was sixteen. Police had been called, but her father got her out of it. She really had a hard time staying away from sparkly things.

---

•   •   •reyes and barr are met at Audrey’s house by technicians from the forensic team. A study of her home shows no evidence of a recent break-in. But a large window has been left open at the back of the house, and someone could have entered that way. Audrey will be coming home from the hospital later that day. Reyes carefully closes and locks all the windows.

They take away the jug of iced tea for analysis, and the glass left on the coffee table. Reyes wrinkles his nose at the vomit streaking the sofa and pooled on the living-room floor.

Barr comes up beside him. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asks.

“You think she might have poisoned herself?”

Barr shrugs. “She strikes me as the histrionic type. It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“No sign of a break-in,” Reyes says, “but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

Barr nods. “The window was open.”

“And she called 911 just in time,” Reyes says. The technicians begin dusting for the possible intruder’s fingerprints, but Reyes already suspects that they won’t find any. The detectives have to get back to the station to deal with Rose Cutter, so they leave the technicians to it.