Mad as Helen (13 page)

But when Helen turned around and searched for the brown head with the sun-streaked highlights, she couldn’t find her. Where the devil had Nancy gone?

“Hello, Mrs. Evans,” a quiet voice said, and Helen found herself standing eye to eye with LaVyrle’s girl Friday.

“Mary,” she said. “I was surprised to see you here. Did you know Grace well?”

The breeze pushed at Mary’s hair despite her attempts to hold it back. “Mrs. Simpson was one of our regulars.” She shrugged and blinked her big brown eyes. “I did her nails at least once a month, and LaVyrle did her hair more often than that.” She shifted on her feet, which turned slightly in at the toes. “Since LaVyrle couldn’t make it, she thought I’d better come. And you know how LaVyrle always gets what she wants.” Mary shrugged. “So here I am.”

Helen nodded. “Yes, here you are. Is LaVyrle working on a Sunday? I thought the shop was closed.”

“Oh, she’s not at the shop, Mrs. Evans,” Mary told her. “She’s got another job she works part-time.”

“Another job?” Helen recalled LaVyrle telling her that the Cut ’n’ Curl had been on shaky ground until these past few days, when new customers had flocked in. Had she taken on more work to pay the bills?

“Please, don’t say I told you.” Mary pursed her lips. “She doesn’t like for people to know.”

“I won’t breathe a word,” Helen said, but she wasn’t looking at Mary anymore. She’d spotted Nancy on the other side of the bridge, talking to Max Simpson.

The man seemed to have Nancy’s arm in a death grip, and her granddaughter looked none too happy about it.

“Nancy! Hey, Nancy!” Helen began calling out, loud enough that a number of heads turned in her direction. Helen continued to holler until Max loosened his hold and the girl was able to squirm away.

When Nancy reached her, Helen drew her close and whispered, “What the devil did he want with you?”

“Please, let’s just go,” her granddaughter pleaded, more upset than Helen had seen her all morning.

As they walked across the graveled path toward the sidewalk, someone came running up the road.

“Sheriff Biddle! Sheriff Biddle!” a boy yelled as he raced for the chapel.

“There’s a fire!” the kid shouted, waving hands in the air. “It’s at Alma Gordon’s. Her garbage is up in smoke!”

Helen panicked hearing the news. Alma’s house was right behind her carport.

Without another thought, she started off, striding as fast as she could toward the corner of Jersey and Springfield.

By the time she arrived, she was out of breath, and so was the fire.

“Slow down, Helen, there’s no need to fret,” Alma said when she saw her. “I put the kibosh on it myself.”

Wearing a plaid duster and Crocs, Alma stood not six feet behind Helen’s carport in a patch of weeds, holding a dripping garden house. Beside her, a dented metal barrel belched malodorous gray smoke. Alma’s crab-apple face looked up as Sheriff Biddle arrived with a crowd from the chapel in tow.

“There’s nothing to see,” Alma announced, looking perplexed at the size of her audience. “It was probably just a cigarette got thrown into the garbage and set it to smoldering.”

Biddle hitched up his pants and stepped forward, picking up a stick from the ground en route. He coughed as he poked at the charred refuse. Then he wrinkled his broad forehead and reached into the bin, retrieving something from it.

“What’s going on?” Nancy asked Helen, coming to stand beside her.

“I haven’t a clue.” Helen shrugged.

“What have you got there, Sheriff?” Alma asked as she rolled the hose around her elbow. “It’s only trash, nothing to get worked up over.”

But Sheriff Biddle’s expression appeared worked up and then some. His gaze roamed the sea of faces and settled on Helen’s before shifting to Nancy’s. “I do believe,” he said, holding up a piece of paper curled and black around the edges, “that I’ve finally found the missing manuscript.”

Chapter 25

“
I
T DOESN’T LOOK
good for her, Mrs. Evans,” the sheriff said grimly. “The evidence seems to be stacking up against her.”

Helen couldn’t believe what she was hearing! “But why would Nancy take the manuscript from Grace’s house? And why burn it? She was looking forward to the publication of the book. She told me it could mean a lot to her career.”

“That was when she was still Grace Simpson’s assistant,” Biddle countered, staring at Helen from across his desk. “When Grace fired her, all bets were off.” He leaned forward in his chair, causing the hinges to squeal. “She didn’t have a thing to gain, only to lose, which probably made her even hotter about Grace giving her the boot. Taking the manuscript and burning it was the perfect act of revenge.”

“On top of murdering her, you mean,” Helen said with obvious sarcasm.

The sheriff shrugged. “Anger makes people irrational, and irrational folks do crazy things.”

“Come now, Sheriff!” Helen threw up her hands. She was thankful she’d left Nancy at home. The girl would have had a complete nervous breakdown if she’d heard Biddle’s latest insinuations. “Nancy’s too smart to have done something so stupid as to burn the pages in the trash right behind my house!”

“Smart people can do very stupid things,” he said.

Helen tried to control herself. She knotted her hands, pushing them against her thighs. I will not blow up, she told herself. I will not blow up.

Twice she inhaled deeply and let it out.

“Pray tell, Sheriff,” she finally asked and managed to keep her voice level enough. “When was Nancy supposed to have set that fire in Alma’s garbage bin? She was at the memorial service with me when it started. She couldn’t have run to Alma’s to take a match to the manuscript and run back without being noticed.”

Biddle cocked his head. “Ever heard of an incendiary device, ma’am?”

Helen balked. “You’re not serious?”

“Or else it was just a coincidence,” the sheriff suggested. “Nancy ditched the manuscript in the neighbor’s trash, only to have someone toss in a lit cigarette just like Alma said.”

Helen rolled her eyes. “Good grief.”

“Don’t look at me like that, ma’am. I’m only telling it like I see it.”

Fighting with him wasn’t working, Helen decided. What if she tried a different tack? “Really, Sheriff,” she said, “isn’t it all a bit too obvious?”

“Lots of crimes are that, Mrs. Evans.”

“But think about it a minute,” Helen told him, and he seemed to be listening. “If Nancy had wanted to sabotage the book, why wouldn’t she have just tossed away Grace’s notes? She was the one typing them up. Grace despised computers, so it was up to Nancy to get the book in shape for the publisher. She could have destroyed everything then.”

“Nancy didn’t get canned until Grace had the manuscript in hand,” Biddle said and picked up a pencil. He tapped it on his desk. “And I haven’t found the flash drive yet, so maybe Nancy destroyed it, too.”

“What about Max Simpson?” Helen asked, since logic wasn’t working. “He could easily have come to town unseen and used his key to get into Grace’s house. He’s smarmy,” she added, not trusting him a bit. “You saw him at the memorial service. Didn’t he seem like he was putting on an act, and a pretty bad one at that? Does he even have an alibi?”

The pencil Biddle had been tapping slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor. It rolled noisily across the planks before it stopped. Biddle cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah, I asked Mr. Simpson where he was at the time Grace was killed,” he said, fidgeting in his chair.

“And?” Helen prodded.

“Er, he was engaged in an affair,” the sheriff told her.

“With a woman?”

“Yes?”

Helen leaned toward his desk. “Who was it? Did you speak with her? Can she vouch for him?”

“I spoke to her all right.” Biddle scratched at his jaw. “She’s, um, the wife of a rather prominent St. Louis politician. She asked that I keep her name under wraps for propriety’s sake. Unless the evidence shifts toward Max, I’m going to do exactly that.”

“Max’s alibi is a married woman and she’s worried about propriety?” Helen harrumphed.

“Like you said, smarmy.” He ran a hand over his thinning crown. “Look, Mrs. Evans, I’m not arresting Nancy yet. The investigation’s still ongoing.”

“Does that include checking out Charlie Bryan’s whereabouts the night Grace was killed?” Helen got up from her chair and walked partway around his desk so she could better eye the heavy door she knew led to a pair of holding cells. “I heard you locked up that teenage hooligan for selling stolen merchandise.”

The sheriff narrowed his eyes. “Sarah,” he said without asking.

“She said he sold a cigarette case stolen from Mattie’s and that you’re wondering if he’s the one who burglarized the houses here in River Bend.” Helen kept going when he didn’t interrupt. “You must be wondering if he also broke into Grace’s house and found himself trapped inside when she returned home unexpectedly.”

Biddle cleared his throat. “Like I told you, ma’am, the investigation’s ongoing.”

“And Nancy’s still a suspect?”

“Yes.”

“Because Grace fired her?”

“That and the burned manuscript,” he said.

That was it. Helen gave up.

She started toward the door, then did an abrupt about-face when another thought hit her. “Have you considered that Grace’s murder had nothing to do with her work at all? That maybe the whole to-do over the manuscript was just a lot of smoke and mirrors?”

Rather than wait for him to reply, Helen stepped out of the sheriff’s office, onto the sidewalk, and into the sun.

Chapter 26

T
HE
R
IVER
R
OAD
Tavern sat wedged between a bait shop and a gas station on the main drag in Grafton. “Don’t blink or you’ll miss the place,” Max used to tell Grace whenever they drove north on the River Road to Pere Marquette State Park.

But unlike that speck on the map that was River Bend, Grafton at least had a couple of places to stop for a cold beer or a shot of Jack straight-up without being eyeballed by a gang of white-haired old ladies who figured you for an ax murderer and not just a guy out for a buzz. And after the memorial service for Grace this morning—after shaking the wrinkled hands of countless seniors who’d offered condolences and patted his shoulder—Max needed a drink, and a stiff one at that.

He waited outside, leaning against the rough brick of the tavern until noon, when its doors finally opened. The place was blissfully empty when he walked in: dark and quiet and smelling like sweat and the stench of the river. But Max would’ve settled for less at a time like this.

They served battered catfish along with the booze, and he found himself ordering a sandwich and a scotch on the rocks. A half hour after, the food lay untouched and the scotches kept coming.

When a fellow Max had met at the chapel—Grace’s publisher, Harold Faulkner—wandered in with a sudden burst of sunlight, Max had already made good headway toward sloppy drunk.

“Si’ down, si’ down,” he told the man and waved an arm toward the bartender. “Hey, I’d like a drink for my frien’ here. It’s on me. Anything he wan’s.”

Faulkner shook his head, but Max ordered a scotch for him anyway.

Clearly uncomfortable, the older man took the seat across the table and fiddled with the buttons on the jacket of his shiny suit. When the barkeep sent over the scotch, Faulkner pushed it away.

Max wondered why he was there. He squinted at the man’s face. Nice head of hair, he thought, and was that a Rolex he kept checking? “So you were Grace’s pub—” He stopped to belch. “Uh, publisher,” he finished.

“And you were her estranged husband?”

“So ya heard abou’ me?” Max grinned, sloshing around what was left of his most recent scotch. “Why’d ya track me down?”

The older man studied his manicure. “I wanted to speak with you about the book.”

“Ah, the mysterious book!” Max nodded. “So you’ve still got plans t’ publish it? Ya think it’ll sell a few copies?”

“I do.” Faulkner avoided his eyes.

“If the thing ever turns up, eh?” Max murmured. He set his scotch down and leaned over the table, hanging onto its sides. “You an’ Gracie . . . you get along? Or did ya end up wishin’ like hell you’d never met ’er?”

Faulkner fiddled with the knot of his paisley silk tie. “She was certainly single-minded.”

“Single-minded?” Max repeated, slurring the words. “Ya mean she was a bona fide bitch.” Max tossed down the rest of his drink. He raised a hand to snap at the bartender. “Hey! Hit me ’gain!”

The guy shook his head. “Sorry, buddy, you’re cut off.”

Max blew him a raspberry.

Faulkner looked uneasy. “Have you spoken with Grace’s attorney?”

“About her will?” Max stared into his empty glass. “I’ve been trying, but I jus’ keep getting his friggin’ secretary.”

“I’m sure they’ll contact you shortly if there’s cause.”

“If she lef’ a will at all.”

“Not leave a will?” Faulkner looked apoplectic. “Grace was so obsessive about details that I can’t imagine she wouldn’t leave instructions about everything.”

“Oh, she was obsessive all right,” Max agreed, eyeing the scotch Faulkner hadn’t touched. “But she didn’t like dealin’ with law sharks any more than she liked computers. That’s why the divorce was takin’ so damn long. She tol’ me once when she got rid of me for good, she wouldn’t need a will to make sure I got nothing.”

Faulkner ran a finger between his neck and collar. “But if you’re not divorced and you’re not arrested for her murder, then it would mean—”

“That I get it all,” Max finished and grinned in a lopsided fashion.

“What about the book?”

Max laughed, reaching across the scarred tabletop to pat the man’s hand. “Well, if that idiot sheriff ever finds it, looks like you’ll be dealin’ with me.”

“But I assumed—”

“That with her out of the picture you’d have free rein,” Max said. Through bleary eyes, he saw the man’s Adam’s apple jump. “Well, you were wrong.”

Faulkner hardly appeared thrilled. “I hadn’t counted on this.”

“You mean, you hadn’t counted on
me,
” Max said and laughed loudly.

“I’ll be in touch,” Faulkner told him and rose from his seat.

“Like hell,” Max called out. “
I’ll
be in touch!”

The older man nearly knocked the chair over in his haste to retreat. He scurried toward the door, practically tripping over his shiny loafers.

A burst of sunlight invaded the dim as the door opened. Max cringed at the brightness, raising a hand to shield his eyes. He cursed under his breath until the gray of the room settled in again.

Then he reached for Faulkner’s untouched scotch. He thought of Grace, and he lifted the glass. “To my dearly departed wife,” he said before he knocked the liquor back so fast it burned his throat and tears filled his eyes.