Mad as Helen (12 page)

Chapter 23

H
ELEN WAS DIGGING
into a third issue of the
Ladies’ Home Journal
when the tippy-tap of LaVyrle’s stilettos on the floor caused her to look up from the pages.

“How’s it going?” she asked, hoping the “perk me up” pampering had actually done its job.

“Ah, we’re just about done,” LaVyrle told her. “Mary did up her nails real nice, and I gave her a cut. I added some highlights so she’s got that sun-streaked look without havin’ to spend all day outside pouring lemon juice on her noggin.” LaVyrle went behind the counter and scribbled out the bill. “I even got her smilin’ once or twice.”

“Ah, you’re a magician, LaVyrle. I tell you what.” Helen set aside the magazine and stood. She walked over to the reception desk and leaned against it. “I don’t know how the town would get along without you.”

LaVyrle glanced at her sideways with blue-lidded eyes. “Well, until this mess with Grace dyin’, it seemed like some folks did just fine. Half my old clients were doin’ their own hair to save a few bucks, and it cut into my bottom line something fierce.”

Helen sighed. “It’s the economy. A lot of people have fallen on hard times.”

LaVyrle sniffed. “Tell me about it.”

“You’re doing all right, aren’t you?” Helen asked.

LaVyrle tossed her blond head and pressed her painted mouth into a smile. “And what if I wasn’t, Mrs. E? Are you and your rich widow friends gonna throw me a fund-raiser?”

Helen slapped a hand against the reception desk. “You’re darned right we would. All you’d have to do is ask. We could always raffle off one of Erma’s handmade quilts.” At LaVyrle’s cocked eyebrow, Helen added, “Now don’t scoff. We raised a pretty penny on the last one. It bought a new organ for the chapel, as a matter of fact.”

“An organ, huh?” LaVyrle said and chuckled. “If you ladies got me one of them, I’d have your whole bridge club in here singin’ ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ while I cut and colored the lot of you. I’d end up in the loony bin for sure.”

“And we’d scare Mary to death,” Helen said, joining in.

“It don’t take much to do that.”

Helen laughed.

LaVyrle gave the crowded waiting room a long look. “If things keep goin’ like they are, I won’t need one of Erma’s quilts to get the Cut ’n’ Curl back in the black.”

“Silver linings,” Helen told her, patting her hand. “What would we do without them?”

LaVyrle nodded.

Helen stepped around her and peered up the hallway. She could see a pair of heads tucked beneath the helmet dryers, but she couldn’t see LaVyrle’s private station from where she stood. “Could I check on Nancy?”

“Sure, go on back.” LaVyrle looked up as a woman brushed past Helen to approach the desk. The lady raised her hands in the air, as if a victim in a holdup, though from the whiff of nail polish, Helen realized she was just fresh from one of Mary’s manicures. “Tell Nancy I’ll be there in a sec t’ comb her out,” LaVyrle said to Helen before she turned to take care of her customer.

Helen’s sneakered feet squished softly on the vinyl floor as she made her way toward LaVyrle’s boxed-in station. She reached the opened doorway and peeked around it. Nancy’s back was to her. A lavender cape covered her from her neck to her bent knees. Fat hot rollers wound their way up and down her scalp.

Nancy’s reflection stared blankly into the mirror. Helen summoned up a smile and swept in. “Hey!” she said and squeezed Nancy’s shoulders, eliciting little more than a sigh from the girl’s lips. “LaVyrle take good care of you?”

“I guess so.”

“You like the cut, then?”

“It’s fine, Grandma.”

“And the highlights?”

“They’re okay, too.”

Helen brushed at wisps of hair curled upon Nancy’s temples. “We’ll go home in a minute,” she promised. “LaVyrle just needs to comb you out. Can you hold on till then?”

Tears slipped from Nancy’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “Yeah, I guess.” The girl bit at her lip and nodded.

Oh, dear.

Helen dug into the pockets of her jacket but felt only the folded-up twenties she’d brought to cover Nancy’s makeover. How could she have forgotten to fill up with tissues?

Nancy sniffled and wiped at her nose with the back of her hand.

Helen turned around to face LaVyrle’s countertop. A box of Kleenex sat atop it, but the darned thing was empty. Helen tugged open a drawer below. “There’s got to be a tissue here somewhere,” she murmured, staring down at the mess of butterfly clips, hairbrushes, and combs.

She poked around with a finger. She found an unopened box of disposable gloves, the printed pad upon which LaVyrle wrote her clients’ tickets, and half a dozen pale chunks of paraffin wax. One bore the perfect impression of a bobby pin, reminding Helen of a fossil. And then she struck gold.

“Ah-ha!” she said, locating a sleeved pack of purse-sized tissues stuffed near the back. She pulled it out, dislodging several plastic hair clips, which fell to the floor and clattered about her feet. A small photograph fluttered to the floor not far behind.

Helen dropped the pack of tissues into Nancy’s lap, then bent to pick everything up, muttering all the while. She had the clips put away and the picture of a brown-haired boy in her grasp when she heard LaVyrle’s angry voice.

“What’s goin’ on here, Mrs. E?”

LaVyrle stood at the mouth of the cubicle, hands on hips.

Nancy sniffled and wiped at her tears.

Helen tried to explain. “Nancy needed a tissue, and the big box is empty, so I just . . .”

“You decided t’ go through my things,” LaVyrle finished.

“I didn’t think you’d mind,” Helen said.

LaVyrle took a quick step toward her and snatched the photo from her hand. “I’ll take that,” she snapped.

“Who is he?” Helen asked as LaVyrle pushed the picture into the pocket of her purple skirt. But LaVyrle acted like she didn’t hear and went about removing the rollers from Nancy’s hair, her motions brisk enough to make Nancy wince once or twice.

“Is he your son?” Helen asked.

“I didn’t say,” LaVyrle replied, using her fingers to manipulate the brown waves so that they softly framed Nancy’s pale face.

“I’m sorry,” Helen told her. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

LaVyrle grabbed a tall can of hairspray from her counter and let it loose on Nancy’s hair. Helen coughed as she breathed in the cloud.

“Look, Mrs. E,” the beautician said when she finally put the can down, “all everyone who comes in here does is yap, yap, yap, telling me who’s sleepin’ with who, who’s split up, who’s headin’ to Florida when the first snow falls. No one pays t’ listen to me gab about my life or my troubles. And that’s just the way I like it.”

Helen’s cheeks warmed. “I understand, LaVyrle. Your life is certainly your own.”

LaVyrle popped open the snaps on Nancy’s lavender cape. “You can pay up front, Mrs. E. I already got your bill written out. Mary’ll take care of it.”

“LaVyrle, I—”

But the beautician didn’t even glance up. She busied herself with a broom, sweeping hanks of fallen hair across the floor.

Helen took Nancy’s arm and headed out, all the while silently chastising herself for being so nosy. If LaVyrle wanted to keep her private life to herself, it certainly wasn’t her business to pry.

Chapter 24

N
O MATTER HOW
many times Helen assured Nancy it wasn’t necessary, her granddaughter insisted she was attending the memorial service for Grace Simpson the next morning.

Indeed, when Helen awoke just after dawn—with the weight of a very hungry Amber standing on her chest—she found Nancy already seated at the kitchen table, sipping a cup of coffee. The watch on Helen’s wrist told her it was five minutes past seven, yet Nancy was dressed in black jeans and a crisp white blouse.

The girl glanced down at her outfit as Helen stared. “I know, it’s not exactly a little black dress, but these are the nicest clothes I packed, and I don’t want to have to go back to my apartment.”

“No,” Helen said.

Nancy wrinkled her brow. “You think I should change?”

“No, I mean, you can’t go,” Helen said and sat down at the table beside her. “Grace treated you terribly!”

“But I need to, Grandma, can’t you see?”

No, Helen didn’t see at all.

“The sheriff thinks you killed her. If you show up at the service, people will talk, and it’ll only shake you up even more.”

Nancy ran a finger around the rim of the coffee mug. “I’m not worried about what people say.”

Helen shook her head. “You’d be better off going back to bed.”

But Nancy stood firm. “This isn’t for Grace, Grandma. It’s something I have to do for myself. I need some closure, don’t you understand?”

Helen didn’t. When the sheriff found the real killer and put him in handcuffs, now
that
would be closure.

Why on earth would the girl want to go pay tribute to a woman who’d treated her like a minion, not a valued employee?

“Whatever’s best for you, sweetheart,” she told her granddaughter and smiled, though she wished she could find a rope and tie Nancy to the chair so she couldn’t go anywhere all morning.

“Thanks, Grandma,” Nancy said and got up. She went to the sink and rinsed out her mug before she headed up the creaking attic stairs.

Helen started to get up but tripped over the giant lump of fur that had silently come to sit by her feet.

“Amber,” she scolded, her heart thumping, relieved she hadn’t fallen and broken a hip. The oversized tomcat dogged her heels until she opened a can of Seafood Surprise and arranged the food on a saucer.

As she set it on the floor, she gave the cat’s head a pat, thinking she had as much luck getting Amber to do what she wanted as Nancy.

“Why doesn’t anyone ever listen to me?” she asked.

Amber sniffed the smelly blob of Seafood Surprise that was his breakfast. Then he tipped his head up and stared at her with marble-sized yellow eyes.

“No,” she told him and wagged a finger. “I am
not
opening another can. You gobbled up this kind last week, so I bought a case of the stuff. How was I to know you’d change your mind so fast?”

Amber looked down at his saucer then up at Helen again. With an unhappy swish of his tail, he padded out of the room.

Helen threw up her hands

R
IVER
B
END’S NONDENOMINATIONAL
chapel sat atop a mound of grass across a stone bridge that spanned a running creek. Whitewashed, with black trim, its pointed spire seemed to rise into the treetops that climbed the bluffs around it.

The gentle noise of an organ thumped the air as Helen approached. Nancy gripped her arm so tightly that Helen felt as though she’d lost all blood flow.

Helen determined from the persistent—though sometimes awkward—progress of the chords that the hymn was “Nearer My God to Thee,” the tune played on the
Titanic
as it sank, one that Emma MacGregor seemed to play at every funeral service Helen had ever attended in the chapel.

The chords coughed from opened windows and hung upon the morning breeze in wheezing gasps, causing Helen to wince as she stood there, listening. But then Emma was nearly ninety if she was a day, and her arthritic fingers swelled enough to challenge her skills at organ playing. Still, Helen couldn’t imagine not having Emma at the keyboard, trudging through each piece, feet pumping the pedals madly.

The wind tugged at Helen’s hair as she crossed the bridge with Nancy and advanced toward the brief stone steps leading up to the chapel’s double doors.

The newly hired minister, clad in white robes, greeted comers with a damp handshake. “Good morning, Mrs. Evans, Nancy. We’ve quite a crowd this morning,” he said, sounding thrilled.

Helen murmured a good morning as well before she entered the church with Nancy beside her.

A red carpet ran up the aisle between the rows of carved pews and led directly to an oversized—and not very becoming—photo of Grace Simpson. It looked rather like a driver’s license picture blown up. To the right of the easel that held Grace’s frowning countenance was the pulpit; behind it hung a large wooden cross with a crucified Jesus.

Helen thought it was no wonder Jesus appeared so sad and disappointed. She felt like a hypocrite attending the memorial service for a woman who had caused Nancy such pain. Helen knew she’d be a better person if she could forgive Grace, particularly now that Grace was dead, but she wasn’t quite ready to let go. Joe used to say she had Irish Alzheimer’s: she forgot everything except a grudge.

“C’mon, Grandma, let’s grab a seat,” Nancy whispered.

Helen wondered where they’d sit. The pews seemed ready to overflow.

She picked out the heads of Bertha and Art Beaner, Sheriff Biddle and Sarah, Clara Foley, and even Mary from LaVyrle’s Cut ’n’ Curl. Helen didn’t see any sign of LaVyrle as she searched for her bouffant blond head.

There were many more faces she didn’t recognize. Perhaps, she mused, they were Grace’s colleagues or from her publishing house in St. Louis? She recalled Nancy telling her once that Grace had few friends and no family outside of Max.

Helen wondered what it must feel like to live so alone and then to die alone, too, and she managed to summon up a smidgeon of sympathy.

She squinted at a man who suddenly appeared through the door that led into the pastor’s office. He was handsome, with a full head of dark hair touched gray at the temples. His dark suit fit him nicely, emphasizing broad shoulders. He spoke with a few people in the foremost pew and then looked up, and Helen’s cheeks warmed as his eyes met her stare, catching her in the act. He smiled, the grin in sharp contrast to his suit of mourning.

“Is that Max?” Helen whispered to Nancy, who kept looking around, trying to find them a seat. “
He
was Grace’s husband?”

Nancy shushed her and took her hand, drawing her toward the far side of a pew nearly hidden by a stone pillar.

The turnout was amazing for such an impromptu service, Helen thought as she squeezed her fanny into a tiny spot beside Mary, with Nancy scooting in after. As Helen murmured a “hello” to LaVyrle’s assistant, she wondered how many of those present had gotten word of the service via the Cut ’n’ Curl. The place was River Bend’s own town crier.

Mary smiled shyly in greeting. The lank brown hair that didn’t fit into her ponytail fell into her eyes. The rest she tucked behind her ears.

“Where’s LaVyrle?” Helen leaned over to whisper as Emma MacGregor kicked the organ into a gasping rendition of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” the music so loud that Mary seemed not to hear. She merely smiled a vague smile.

The minister walked up the aisle and turned around. Then, with a sweep of arms, he urged everyone up. Helen stood along with the rest of the congregation.

She glanced sideways at Nancy, but the girl was staring ahead at the big photo of her dead boss. Helen felt her heart stutter, wondering when things would get back to normal again. When would Nancy stop being a zombie and start to smile?

If only Frank Biddle would catch the killer and set everything to rights. Nothing would change until he did.

“What a friend we have in Jesus, all our grief and sins to bear . . .”

Voices rose around her, and Helen shoved away her thoughts to join the chorus.

“What a privilege to carry, take it to the Lord in prayer.”

As the hymn came to a close and the pews of people sat down, Helen tried hard to focus as the pastor led them through the memorial service, speaking of Grace and her strength, her desire to help free others from their troubled lives. Even as she listened, she found herself thinking of the night of the murder. What if the killer was in the chapel right now, pretending to mourn the very soul whose life had ended with one whack of a Louisville Slugger?

Her arms filled with goose bumps, and she rubbed them up and down. Still the idea left her cold.

She thought again of the fact that Biddle had found no signs of a break-in. Had Grace let her killer in? Or did the murderer have his own key? Nancy had one. What about Max? If Grace had bought the house before their separation, he’d probably come and gone at will.

Helen’s heart thumped, feeling like she was on to something. What was it Nancy had told the sheriff about Grace’s saying that Max had “gotten all from her he was going to get”? Yes, that was it. Had she been giving him money? Helen heard he owned a sporting goods store in the city. Maybe he was deeply in debt. What if he gambled and blew his money on craps and liquor and women, the usual things that seemed to pull most men down? Could Grace have been providing him with a means to support his lifestyle, only to pull the plug when she’d found out he’d cheated? Had Max been on the verge of losing it all if she had divorced him for real?

Helen kept on riding that train of thought. What if Grace hadn’t made up a new will following the separation? Wouldn’t Max, as her surviving spouse, get whatever had been hers, lock, stock, and barrel? What if he’d seen murder as his only choice?

“Grandma,” Nancy whispered, touching her hand. “Are you all right?”

Helen blinked.

“Your hands are freezing.”

“I’m fine,” Helen said, though her heart pounded.

“You looked freaked out for a moment there,” Nancy whispered as the pastor’s voice rose and fell. Someone coughed. Another sneezed. “You’re not thinking that maybe I actually—”

“Heavens, no,” Helen cut her off, knowing right where she was going. She’d spoken loudly enough that Mary fixed her with a curious glance, as did several folks in the pew before them. Helen lowered her voice. “I’ve never doubted you for an instant, and I never will.”

Nancy laced her fingers through Helen’s and squeezed hard. “I love you,” she whispered, and Helen smiled. For an instant, it felt like everything was all right again.

Then the minister ceased his oration and introduced Max Simpson, who took his place at the pulpit. “What can I say about Grace?” he said and gazed up at the ceiling, lips pursed. “I’m sure everyone here knew how stubborn she was and how she could be like a bulldog with a bone, snarling if you tried to take that bone away.”

Nervous twitters erupted, and Max grinned.

As quickly, he turned solemn again. “She could also be incredibly softhearted. She really did like helping others. When I met her, she was working pro bono cases in the city, and she’d come home crying, telling me how unfair life could be and how she wished she could fix all the broken people at once.”

“Yeah, so she could send out a big ol’ bill,” Helen heard a woman in front of her mutter.

Max went on, “I’m sure most of you were aware that Grace and I were one of the broken things she couldn’t fix. I made a mistake that she considered unforgivable. I just wish”—he stopped, brushing at his eyes—“well, I wish we’d had more time to try to work things out. I believe we could have. Rest in peace, Gracie,” he said with a sob. “Rest in peace.”

This time the woman in front of Helen murmured, “Good Lord, give the man an Oscar.”

The minister resumed his place at the pulpit and brought the service to an end with an eloquent reading from the Book of Common Prayer. “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life. . . .”

When he was through, his “Amen” was punctuated by a chorus of such. Then Emma MacGregor began pumping at the organ again, her fingers poking stiffly at the keys in a dusty rendition of “Rock of Ages.”

The pastor led Max Simpson up the aisle to the church doors, ahead of those who rose from the pews and followed after.

Helen slipped out after Nancy with Mary in her wake. As short as she was—Helen liked to say she was five foot five if she stood up very straight—she couldn’t see much above the heads moving in a single surge toward the open doors. But she could hear the voices.

“So sorry about Grace . . .”

“What a terrible thing . . .”

“Such a shock . . .”

Helen wondered how many of Grace’s clients were offering Max their condolences, all the while feeling relieved that Grace was gone and probably hoping that her missing book would never surface.

She wasn’t sure what she’d say herself. So when she reached Max Simpson, Helen nodded and dryly uttered, “Poor man, you must be heartbroken.”

Max didn’t seem to read her sarcasm. His handsome features beamed down at her, and he took her hand, holding it up as if he meant to kiss it.

“So sweet of you to come, dear lady,” he said so that Helen wondered if he’d really heard her at all. He seemed to be going through the motions, like an actor in a play. Which was what he looked like, she thought as she studied him carefully before slowly moving away. She saw a dash of Cary Grant in his height and his hair, in the way he carried himself, but his eyes were a bit too close set. And there was too much humor sparkling in them for such a solemn occasion.

When Max saw Nancy, those close-set eyes widened. “Ah,” he said, “Grace’s lovely assistant.” He picked up the young woman’s hand as he had Helen’s, only something in his eyes looked different. “Maybe I could take you for coffee so we can commiserate?”

“No, thanks.” Nancy turned a shade of green and jerked away her hand.

Helen felt vaguely nauseous herself.

“Let’s go, sweetheart,” she said, catching her granddaughter by the elbow and pulling her away.

As they crossed the bridge with a swarm of others, Helen lost Nancy’s arm, but she didn’t worry. She figured they’d catch up across the bridge. Most folks paused in the grassy area beyond to chat as they always did after an average Sunday service.