To Helen Back (13 page)

Now, he was oddly silent.

“Pastor,” Frank said, standing awkwardly there in the doorway. “Is there something I can do for you? I was on my way out . . .”

“I’ve a confession of sorts.”

Biddle smiled. “Isn’t that your department, not mine?”

But Fister’s frown remained. “Can we do this inside, Sheriff? I’d rather keep it private.”

“Of course,” Frank said reluctantly, trying hard to ignore the thunderous protest of his stomach. “Come on in,” he instructed, and gestured for Fister to enter.

“It’s about my daughter,” the pastor began even before Biddle had settled back into his chair. “She was having an affair, you see, with Milton Grone.”

Chapter 25

H
ELEN EMERGED FROM
the grocer’s with a full brown bag in her arms. She’d picked up all the bare necessities, which in her case meant two dozen cans of cat food, a bag of dry food for Amber as well, skim milk, bananas, and toilet paper. She paused at the curb as a car rolled past then she crossed the street, passing the one-pump gas station.

She glanced over to see if the owner, Dexter Bigby, was around, as he’d suggested last week that she bring her Chevy in for a tune-up.

She didn’t spot Dex but did see a familiar lime green VW bug. A moment later a voluptuous redhead exited the tiny station, her hands fumbling inside her enormous pocketbook.

“Mrs. Grone?” Helen called out, shifting the bag in her arms so she could wiggle her fingers. “Yoo-hoo, Delilah!”

The woman hesitated beside the Volkswagen, squinting as she drew a cigarette into her mouth. “That you, Mrs. Evans?” she shouted, then clomped across the concrete toward Helen in her high-heeled pumps. “Well, hey there,” she said, and plucked the unlit cigarette from between her lips. “The last time I saw you, the Black Widow chased me out of Milt’s funeral service.” She shook her head and repeated, “Just days ago, though it seems more like a week.” She fiddled with her cigarette, her eyes staring down at it with obvious longing. She glanced up at Helen. “You mind if I smoke?”

Actually, Helen did. But something inbred in her made her say, “No, not at all.”

Delilah lit up, inhaling deeply several times before breathing the smoke out through her nose.

Funny, Helen thought, how awful the smoke smelled to her now, when she herself had puffed up a storm all through college until she married Joe and got pregnant.

“So,” she said, trying not to cough, “what brings you to town so soon again?”

“I, uh, ran out of gas, would you believe.” She jerked her chin toward the car parked by the lone pump. “I’d been at a winery in Grafton, then I got on the River Road to leave and realized the gas tank was empty.” She puffed again, then shook her head. “No, that’s not true. I wasn’t in Grafton.” She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth before adding, “I guess it can’t hurt to tell you the reason I’m back in River Bend is to see about Milt’s will.” Her thickly powdered skin wrinkled. “I thought I’d better find out if he left it all to that bimbo of his or if he put aside a few dollars at least for the kids. It wouldn’t make up for all those years he ignored them, of course, but it couldn’t hurt a bit.”

“Did you talk to the lawyer?” Helen asked, peering over the top of her grocery sack. “What did you learn?”

Delilah sucked on her cig and then blew out a stream of smoke. “What I learned from that bow-tied bozo of Milt’s is that he thinks he’s Perry Mason.” She rolled her eyes. “Stanley Horn might be a small-town attorney,” she grumbled, “but he can spout legal mumbo-jumbo with the best of ’em. When he opens his mouth and starts talking, I feel like I’m from another planet.”

Helen liked Stanley Horn. The fellow was always on the up and up. He’d handled Joe’s will and the family trusts, and Helen knew he was a stickler for attorney-client privilege. If Delilah and her kids weren’t in Milt’s will, Stanley wouldn’t talk to her about it.

“Was he helpful?” she asked.

Delilah snorted. “All he said was I wasn’t in it. I wasn’t related to Milt by blood or marriage so I don’t have the right to know what’s in it. Blah blah blah.”

Helen shifted the bag to her right hip. “Will the children inherit?”

“If they’re in the will, Mr. Stanley Horn, Esquire, didn’t breathe a word. He told me that we’d be notified about the reading if there was cause to do that. Then he pushed me out the door,” she said, frowning, “which is no way to treat a dead man’s wife.”

“You’re his ex-wife,” Helen gently reminded her.

“Like that blond ditz would ever let me forget.” Delilah took a long drag off the cigarette, exhaled a gray cloud, and dropped what remained, grinding it under her heel.

Helen winced. She was tempted to quip,
The world is not your ashtray,
but bit her tongue. She didn’t want to tick off Delilah and scare her away while she was still yakking.

“I can’t believe that piece of trash is gonna end up with all that bread,” she moaned, and pushed at her hairdo with crimson-tipped fingers. “What’d she ever do for him, after all?” she asked. “She didn’t even give him one baby, much less two. It hardly seems fair that I should get left out in the cold when I’m the one stuck raising his sons.”

“On the bright side,” Helen remarked, as if there was one, “I think it might be a while before the court divides up Milton’s estate.”

“Oh?” Delilah’s gaze locked on Helen. “And why’s that?”

“Well, what with his being murdered—” Helen said, then stopped at Delilah’s quick intake of breath. “You
had
heard?”

“My God,” Delilah sputtered. She had her hand on her heart as if about to spout the Pledge of Allegiance. “I’d almost forgotten about that. It still doesn’t seem real, even though I read that piece in this morning’s
Telegraph
.”

“It was a shock.”

“It’s freaking unbelievable,” Delilah said. “He was hit on the head, right? The paper said the weapon was a shovel that belonged to that stuck-up English lady next door.”

“Um-hmm,” Helen said, making a noncommittal sound. She did not want to drag poor Felicity into the conversation.

“Does the sheriff know who did it?” Delilah tipped her head.

Helen shifted the grocery sack to her left hip. “He’s investigating.”

“No arrests?”

“Not yet.”

“Christ.” Delilah laughed. “With all the people that hated Milton around here, I’d figure the sheriff would have suspects lined up a block long.”

“Since we’re on the subject,” Helen said, and glanced up Main Street, “perhaps you should stop by the station and talk to Frank Biddle yourself.”

“Me?” Her penciled eyebrows lifted.

“Well, you did say you came into town on Thursday night to see your ex-husband,” Helen said, reminding Delilah of her remarks after the funeral. “You told me you found him there on the ground when you arrived.”

“What are you saying, Mrs. Evans?” She plunged her hand inside her purse, no doubt in another search for her cigarettes. “You’re not implying that I had anything to do with Milt breathing his last?”

The grocery sack felt suddenly heavy. “Of course not,” Helen said. “But you might know more than you think.”

“Maybe you’re right.” Delilah pulled a compact from her bag and popped it open. She checked out her face in the tiny mirror, then began rubbing lipstick from her teeth. “The killer could have still been hanging around when I was there.” She snapped her compact shut and shuddered. “It gives me the creeps to think about it.”

Helen dared to ask, “Why didn’t you call for help when you found him?”

Delilah’s face tightened. “Like I told you before, Mrs. Evans, I heard all those voices coming up toward the house, and I didn’t want to be standing there kneeling over him. I know running off wasn’t the smartest thing to do but I was scared. Besides, what good could my asking for help have done? Even Doc Melville couldn’t have revived a dead man.”

That much was true, Helen thought. “So no one saw you that night?”

“I don’t think so. Milt didn’t even realize I was driving in after my shift. Everytime I called, he hung up on me, remember?” Delilah’s eyes welled suddenly. “I just wanted what was rightfully mine.”

Helen nodded, feeling sorry for Delilah and women like her who had marriages that failed and, even worse, husbands who abandoned their children.

Delilah sucked in a deep breath. “So you figure I should talk to the sheriff, huh?”

“I do,” Helen said. “Just tell him exactly what you told me. That you arrived in River Bend before eight.”

“I couldn’t get here any sooner,” Delilah told her, “ ’cause I had to change my clothes first. I didn’t want to have to face old Milt in my pink polyester number with grease and coffee splattered all over my apron.”

So Delilah had likely arrived just before the mob from town hall marched up the street toward the Grones’ house. Helen wondered if perhaps the killer had still been around when Delilah saw Milt on the ground.

Before Helen knew it, the other woman was shaking another cigarette out of the pack. She involuntarily made a face, and Delilah picked up on it.

“I know,” Milton’s ex-wife said. “It’s a nasty habit.”

And expensive, Helen silently added.

“I was tryin’ to quit, but this whole business has shot my nerves to hell.” She shrugged and pulled out her lighter.

Sure that she’d inhaled her quota of secondhand smoke for one afternoon, Helen hugged her bag to her chest—the sack felt as if it had doubled in weight over the past ten minutes—and told Delilah, “I should get home. Amber will shred the place if I don’t fix him some lunch soon.”

The redhead squinted. “Amber?”

“My cat.”

“Ah.” The cigarette bouncing on her lips, Delilah commented, “I like pets well enough. It was Milton who despised ’em.”

“So I heard,” Helen said, hardly able to remember the number of times she’d listened to Felicity complaining about Grone taking potshots at poor Kitty.

“Well, it was nice seeing you again, Mrs. Evans,” Delilah said, waving her cigarette as she walked to her car.

Helen headed up the sidewalk and had gotten but a few yards ahead when several riotous bangs stopped her dead in her tracks.

For heaven’s sake!

She turned see the green VW noisily pulling out of the gas station, rattling and rumbling as it chugged onto Main Street.

She watched the car go and frowned. She would bet all two dozen cans of cat food in her sack that it wasn’t the last the town would see of Delilah Grone, at least not until things were settled with Milt’s estate. And if Delilah didn’t get what she wanted? Helen didn’t doubt that the first Mrs. Grone would fight the second Mrs. Grone tooth and nail for every penny, kind of like Godzilla vs. Mothra on the late-late movie.

Helen shook her head and continued walking.

Chapter 26

O
NCE
A
MBER HAD
devoured his can of Catch o’ the Day and Helen had gobbled down some chicken salad, she settled down on the porch and propped her bifocals on her nose. She picked up her purple pen and Sunday’s edition of the
Telegraph,
folded to expose the crossword puzzle. Its squares were only half filled, as she hadn’t had the chance to finish without interruption since starting it the day before.

Four down: a three-letter word for male swan.

She scrunched her brow, tapping the pen against her chin until a slow smile curved her lips.

She put the purple tip to the squares and scratched out
cob
.

Five down: a nine-letter word for Alexander Graham Bell’s invention.

The telephone rang.

Helen slapped down her pen and slipped off her glasses.

She marched into the house from the porch to stop the intrusive chirping. A nine-letter word for Bell’s invention. Phooey! That was too easy. She didn’t need such an obvious hint.

She snatched up the receiver from her old-fangled wall phone. “Hello?” she said briskly.

“Helen!” The agitated voice was Felicity’s. “Can you get here and fast? The sheriff’s on his way up. I can see his auto on the road! I’ve a dreadful feeling he’s coming to arrest me!”

With only a terse, “I’m on my way,” Helen hung up and grabbed her keys. Not two minutes later, she pulled up with a screech in front of Felicity’s.

Biddle’s car sat on the shoulder of the road, nearer to the Grones’ house.

As Helen parked and exited her Chevy, Felicity flew out through the screen door and scuttled down the steps. One hand clutched at her hat, the other at her heart.

“Are you all right?” Helen asked, confused. “Where’s Biddle?”

“He wasn’t coming after me,” her friend answered breathlessly. She tipped her head toward her neighbor’s. “He’s in the yard next door, poking through the weeds.”

Helen glanced past the wood fence. Sure enough, there was Frank Biddle, clad in his uniform of dusty tan, prodding an overgrown rhododendron with a stick.

“What’s he looking for?” she asked.

“Something to do with the murder, I’m sure.” Felicity wiped her palms down the sides of her housedress. “I can’t imagine what it might be.”

Helen started off across the lawn, only to have Felicity call her back.

“What, in God’s name are you doing?”

“I want to see what he’s up to,” she answered, squinting through the afternoon sun at Felicity watching her from beneath the cock-eyed hat brim, looking worried. “Maybe I’ll learn something new.”

“Such as?”

“I’ll let you know,” Helen said over her shoulder as she continued walking, her sneakered feet squishing in the grass.

She waved as Biddle glanced up. Then she ducked between the rails of the fence rather than go around it, though it took a good deal of wiggling to get through. Before she had a chance to join him and ask a single question, the Grones’ screen door slapped open and shut.

Shotsie came outside, her hands on her hips and eyes narrowed. The frown on her lips only underscored her disapproval. “What do ya think you’re doing, snooping around here like that?” she snapped at them, stomping forward. “Don’t you need some kind of permit before you can traipse around my place like you own it?”

“It’s called a warrant, ma’am,” Biddle said after clearing his throat.

“What?”

“A warrant, Mrs. Grone,” he repeated, “not a permit. And, no, I don’t need one to search a crime scene. All I need is this.” He patted the star-shaped badge at his breast with a dirt smudged finger. “I’m looking for evidence.”

“Will it take long?” Shotsie asked, pushing at the limp curls on her brow. “ ’Cause it gives me the creeps having you sneak around like a burglar. My nerves aren’t too good as it is, you understand.”

“I do,” Biddle assured her. The sideways look he cast at Helen indicated he was anxious to get on with it himself. “Just give me an hour.”

“A whole hour? What else do ya expect to find?” Shotsie cocked her head, befuddled. “You’ve got the shovel that did it. All you’ve got to do now is put that snooty Miss Timmons in the slammer.”

Helen stepped out of Biddle’s shadow. “Just because the murder weapon belongs to Felicity doesn’t mean she killed your husband with it. Anyone could have taken it from her yard and used it.”

“But her fingerprints were on it, weren’t they?” Shotsie remarked. “Everyone’s talkin’ about that.”

Helen opened her mouth, then Biddle coughed. She shut her trap and let him speak.

“Yes, Miss Timmons’s prints were on her shovel. They were the only prints, and there were few enough of them.” He absently beat at the knee-high weeds with the stick in his hands. “It almost seems as though someone tried to wipe the handle clean.”

It was the first Helen had heard of that. “Isn’t that suspicious?” she asked.

Biddle nodded. “It is to me.”

Shotsie scowled. “What it proves is that the nutcase killed Milt! She hit him with her old shovel and then tried to ditch it in the bushes behind her house. Even I can see it as plain as the big ol’ nose on your face!”

“Maybe you should go back inside,” Helen said, fuming, “and let the sheriff investigate.”

“Oh, yeah?” Shotsie curled her hands to fists. “So now you’re the Queen of River Bend, bossin’ me around?”

“Well, someone has to.”

“Ladies, please! Stop bickering.” Biddle slapped the stick against his open palm like a potbellied Patton. “Now if both of you would please leave me in peace. I’ve got things to do.” He walked away, his head bent as he continued his search for clues, nudging uprooted rocks and pushing at clusters of weeds with his stick.

Helen looked hard at Shotsie, finding it difficult to sympathize with her after all her efforts to blame Felicity.

Though she knew she should go as the sheriff had suggested, Helen found herself marching toward Shotsie. When she was close enough, she told her in a low voice, “I realize you’re angry, my dear, but you must stop accusing Felicity of murder. You might as well point your finger at the minister.”

Helen half expected Shotsie to blow up again, shaking her tiny fists and screaming. But Shotsie didn’t. Instead, she laughed.

“You’re right,” the blonde said, tucking her arms beneath her breasts. “I
should
point a finger at Fister. He had as much reason as anyone to want Miltie dead, considering how his slutty daughter tried to trap my husband.”

Helen stood there, stunned. So Milton Grone
was
the older married man who’d fooled around with Maddy Fister. She’d had her suspicions, particularly after her strange conversation with Earnest Fister just that morning. But how long, she wondered, had Shotsie known?

“The wife is always the last to learn, right, Mrs. Evans?” Shotsie said. But rather than rant and rave, she seemed to deflate. Shotsie shrugged and cast her gaze down to the steps. When she finally looked up again, her face was drawn, the lines around her mouth and her eyes deeper. She seemed to have aged a decade in minutes. “It was ugly,” she said softly, tugging on the cuffs of her cardigan. “Milt threw it right in my face after we’d had another fight before bed. He said he was tired of my nagging, that if I didn’t like how he lived his life, I should just leave like Delilah had and it’d be no skin off his back.”

Helen murmured, “I’m sorry,” and she was. There was so much about Milton Grone she hadn’t known, so many ways he’d hurt the people around him again and again. It was a wonder he’d stayed alive as long as he had.

“He told me he had a young thing falling all over him, but he didn’t say he’d knocked her up,” she added, blinking back tears. “I found that nugget out on my own. People tell secrets in awful loud voices sometimes.”

She’d overhead? But how? Helen wondered. The day that Madeline miscarried, only Fanny and Amos Melville were around, besides Madeline’s father, and Earnest Fister certainly wouldn’t have gossiped about such a thing, nor would Doc. And since she hadn’t mentioned it to a soul, that left one other person.

Damn you, Fanny, she thought.

“Why did he do it?” Shotsie asked, speaking to herself as much as to Helen. “I tried to sort that out, too. I thought he loved me, and maybe he did once. But this deal with Wet ’n’ Woolly changed him. He started acting funny, like he was tired of me, tired of us. I guess he liked having a teenager lusting after him.”

“Why didn’t you—” Helen started to ask.

“Kick him out?” Shotsie finished, taking the words right out of her mouth. She shrugged. “He was my husband. He was all I had. I wasn’t gonna lose him to a child who wasn’t even out of high school.” She jerked her chin up, eyes glistening. “He never would’ve left me for her, no matter what he said. I think he mostly did it just to get Fister’s goat.”

“Oh, my dear, I’m so—”

“Don’t do that, okay?” Shotsie waved Helen away. “Don’t look at me that way. Don’t feel sorry for me. If you do, I’ll throw up.” She pulled the cuffs of her sweater down her hands and glanced up at the sky. The pale ringlets of her hair swirled across her round cheeks.

The woman looked more a waif than a widow, and Helen almost forgave her for accusing Felicity of being a killer.

“I think I’ll go in now and try t’ get some rest,” Shotsie whispered. “I haven’t gotten much sleep lately.”

“I’ll bet you haven’t eaten much either. Would you like me to come in and fix you something?” Helen offered.

Shotsie shook her head. “I’d rather be alone, if you don’t mind.”

“My dear, are you sure?”

Shotsie didn’t answer. She turned away, trudged up the porch steps and slipped inside the house.

Helen stared at the screen door for a while, feeling a bit guilty at being so hard on the widow. The poor thing had a lot more on her mind than she could have imagined, as if Milton Grone’s unnatural death wasn’t enough.

She shook her head and walked over to where Frank Biddle was stooped over a tangle of tall grass. “Have you found something?” she asked, putting her hands on her knees and leaning over. All she could see were a few rusted beer cans, some candy wrappers and cigarette butts.

The sheriff closed his hand over whatever he’d found and smiled a Cheshire cat grin. “A brass casing,” he said. “It’s probably from Grone’s shotgun, the one Art Beaner found in the bushes.”

“Just one shell?” Helen asked.

“Only one.”

Helen followed him as he picked his way to a craggy rock in the center of the yard, set in a bald spot of dirt between patches of crabgrass, its rough surface splotched rusty-brown. Realizing it was the rock Milton’s head had been resting on, she felt her stomach lurch.

“So here’s what I figure,” Biddle said, gesticulating as he spoke. “Grone came out of the house with his shotgun loaded. Maybe he heard a noise like Miss Timmons’s cat prowling around. The perp took him by surprise, smacking him in the head with the shovel. The shotgun goes off when it hits the ground.” He flipped over the brass casing in his hand. “I’ll wager the shot went straight in the air.”

Helen followed his gaze up to where the trees arched above. She hoped the bullet hadn’t hit an unsuspecting bird in its nest.

Biddle slipped the shell into his pocket. “I don’t imagine Grone even saw it coming. If he had . . . well, he had the shotgun ready, didn’t he? He could’ve picked off someone lunging at him with a shovel and blown a hole in ’em as big as my fist.”

“So?” Helen wasn’t sure what it all meant.

He met her gaze, head-on. “So, unless there’s someone walking around town with a belly you can see clear through, then the killer’s still in River Bend, whoever he is.”

Or
she
, Helen mused.