Helens-of-Troy (29 page)

“Are they gay?” Helena
asked.

“No, they’re not gay,” Roy
sighed.

“Then they need to meet some good
women,” Helena announced. “I would have thought they’d have settled
down by now. I can’t be the only single woman in this town insane
enough to carry on with a man on the force.”

“They’ll get around to it some day,”
Roy said. “They just like to blow off some steam by getting out of
Troy and heading down to the casino off the highway. The head of
security down there tries to keep an eye on them for me, so I won’t
have to read about them in the local paper. He tells me they do
quite well at the ladies, and roulette. So there goes your gay
theory.”

“Well, then maybe Helen...”

“Oh-ho-no,” Roy stammered. “I know
there are two of them, but they wouldn’t stand a chance against
her. Speaking of chances, is Hurricane Helen normally a late
sleeper? Because if she is, is there any chance I could get another
piece of that excellent toast before I have to head
out?”

“Ouch,” Helena sighed. “How is your
head?”

“Sore as hell. I’ve got a bump the size
of an egg right at the back,” he replied, rubbing it gingerly. He
stopped sipping his coffee as he heard the sound of footsteps
coming down the stairs. “Tell you what,” he said, finishing the
rest of it in one long gulp and quickly getting up from the chair.
“Hold the toast.”

“Relax,” Helena laughed. “That is only
one hundred and ten pounds of energy coming down the stairs. It’s
Tropical Storm Ellie. You’re safe.”

“Should I leave?” Roy asked.

“No. Sit down,” Helena commanded. “You
have every right to be here. Besides, I’ve already started your
toast.”

Ellie entered the kitchen wearing her
standard T-shirt and pajama bottoms. If she was surprised by Roy’s
presence, she didn’t let on. She walked over to the fridge, poured
herself some juice and headed towards the table. Noticing that
Roy’s gun holster was hanging on the right side of his body, she
made a sudden swerve and sat down in the chair on his left. Guns,
she concluded, were not a part of a healthy breakfast.

“Ellie, I want you to know that Roy...”
Helena began, but Ellie raised her hand, signaling for her
grandmother to stop talking.

“I figured it all out last night,” she
said between sips of her juice. “It was kind of hard not to. The
moaning, the doors banging...”

Roy became flustered. “Well, Helena and
I have been friends for quite some time, and um, uh...”

Helena looked at him with amusement and
handed him his second plate of toast.

“Save it,” Ellie pleaded. “As long as
you keep the toilet seat down so I don’t fall in if I sleepwalk,
I’m a happy camper. Just don’t make me call you
‘uncle’.”

“You’ve got a deal. Call me Roy,” he
said, feeling like he had dodged a bullet. “So,” he said between
bites of bread, “you’re a sleepwalker?” He tried to make the
question sound casual, but he did find it unusual that someone
Ellie’s age was having an issue like that.

Helena walked behind Ellie and lovingly
pulled her granddaughter’s hair behind her shoulders. “She’s just
going through a phase,” Helena assured him.

“We hope so,” Ellie sighed. “Just keep
your pants on, okay Roy?”

“Another deal. Do you have any idea
when your mother will be through her phase?” Roy asked.

Ellie unexpectedly laughed so hard that
the juice she was drinking started to come out of her nose. She
quickly grabbed a napkin from the table. “You’re hilarious. And
your powers of observation are bang-on.” She noticed a bruise on
the side of Roy’s face. “Whoa, looks like Mom gave you a knockdown
punch last night! It’s good to know your screams were real and I
wasn’t having another creepy nightmare.”

Helena shook her head at Ellie and
motioned for her to zip it, but it was too late. Her granddaughter
had just opened the door for Roy to attempt to validate a piece of
Ryan’s story, and Helena knew he wasn’t going to let it
go.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about a
dream you had, Ellie.” Roy touched the injured area on his face
gingerly. Sometime between now and the time he got to work, he was
going to have to come up with a cover story about how he got that
bruise or he’d never hear the end of it.

“Roy, let’s not bring up the nightmare
thing again,” Helena interrupted. “We’re all under a lot of stress
right now with the murders going on. Why don’t we just talk about
something normal, like the weather?”

“Murder...s?” Ellie questioned. “Forget
the weather. What’s up with the murders?”

“I’m under the impression you had a
dream about Brooke Quinlan,” Roy stated, continuing his line of
questioning.

“Roy, stop interrogating my
granddaughter. This is our home, and I don’t seem to recall you
reading her the Miranda rights.”

“I did dream about her,” Ellie
acknowledged. She saw Helena looking at her as if she was going to
reach over and physically gag her. “What, Nan? Don’t look at me
like that. I’m not Sylvia Browne or anything. It was just one big
co-incidence.”

“Sylvia Browne?” Roy
questioned.

“Psychic and frequent guest of Montel
Williams,” Helena explained.

“But you dreamt about a little girl
being carried off, correct? Supposedly to an area with water
running under a bridge? You told Ryan about it, didn’t you?” the
Chief challenged.

“Roy, do you want me to pour the rest
of the hot coffee over your head? I told you to leave Ellie alone,”
Helena said angrily.

Ellie looked at Roy and shrugged. She
hadn’t done anything wrong. It was just a dream. So what was the
big deal?

“Well yeah, I did have this weird dream
the first night we got here. There was a girl in it that looked
just like the girl that everyone is looking for. I mean, I didn’t
know at the time that was who she was. She was just a girl in my
dream, wearing a Dorothy costume.” She glanced at Helena. “Okay, I
guess it’s turned out to be a little bit like an episode of
Paranormal State, but it’s not like I wanted her in my dream.” She
twitched uncomfortably in her chair. “Maybe we should talk about
the weather. Do you think it’s going to snow today?”

“Now you want to listen to your Nan?”
Helena said indignantly. “It’s a bit late for that. You might as
well go on with your story.”

“In my dream, she was by some old
bridge,” Ellie continued. “Then the next day, when the little girl
really had gone missing, I began to wonder where it was, if it even
existed. I told Tom and Ryan about it on the way home from the
search party and they laughed at me. They thought I was crazy and
made fun of me. Tom came over later to apologize but he turned out
to be the ultimate jerk. I hate him,” Ellie insisted,
subconsciously kicking the bottom of Roy’s chair with her
foot.

Helena looked at Roy and shook her
head. “She doesn’t hate him,” she whispered.

“You knew about this, Helena?” Roy
asked. “Didn’t you think that perhaps I would find it
interesting?”

Helena threw her arms in the air.
“What? Teenagers come up with the craziest dreams. One minute
they’re dreaming about a where to find a great pair of boots and
the next thing you know...”

“Helena, this is no joke.”

“As if a judge would accept a dream as
evidence,” Helena retorted. “Really, Roy. You’re going too
far.”

“Why? What happened?” Ellie asked. “How
come you’re so interested in my stupid dream?”

“You might as well tell her,” Roy said,
looking at Helena for some direction. “She’ll hear about it
anyway.”

“You tell her. You’re the one who was
there,” Helena said, still annoyed. “But be careful you don’t lead
your witness.” She took his plate and cup away from him before he
had a chance to ask for more.

Roy looked at Ellie. He wanted to study
her reaction carefully. “Brooke’s body was found out at Stillman’s
Creek last night. Out by the old covered bridge.”

“Nan!” Ellie gasped. “Get out! Does Mom
know?”

“I don’t know,” Helena answered. “I
don’t think so. It didn’t come up in our conversation last
night.”

“She’s going to freak, you know that,”
Ellie said. “She goes mental when stuff like that
happens.”

“Never mind your mother. How are you?”
Helena asked. “This news must come as bit of a shock.”

“A shock of a co-incidence,” Ellie said
defensively.

Their conversation abruptly ended as
the sound of a loud set of footsteps was heard coming down the old
wooden staircase in the hall.

“Okay,” Roy said, knowing there was
only one person left in the house that it could be, and he wasn’t
in the mood to face her right now. “That’s my cue. I’m out of
here.”

“I’ll deal with her,” Helena sighed.
“You don’t have to rush off.”

“Ellie, we’ll continue our chat later,”
he said as he hurriedly grabbed his jacket from the back of his
chair. “Nice try, Helena. But I really think it’s time for me to
get going. She might want a re-match.”

He rubbed the goose bump on the back of
his head, gave Helena a quick kiss and left quickly out the back
door.

“Sweet,” Ellie said, rising from the
table. “But if the man with the gun is afraid of Mom, I’m out of
here too.”

“Where do you think you’re going, Ellie
LaRose?” Helena said sternly, placing her hands on her hips. “You
sit back down. I’ll get you some frozen waffles. I picked them up
at the grocery store on Thursday. You’re eating them in one of the
few pictures I have of you. You were a toddler, so I’m hoping you
still like them.”

“I’m really not that hungry,” Ellie
lied. “And I really don’t want to be in the room with you and Mom
right now. I think you need some alone time. And I know I need some
time to shake off the heebie-jeebies I’m getting from this whole
dream thing.”

“Do I have to remind you I saved you
from a rabid dog?” Helena asked.

“Why is there always a payback time?”
Ellie sighed, sitting back down into the chair just in time to get
the full effect of Helen storming through the dining room door into
the kitchen.

Ellie and Helena stared at her in
disbelief. The normally precision-groomed Helen hadn’t so much as
ran her fingers through her hair. It was squished against her head
on one side and full of static on the other, making her look like a
werewolf having a really bad hair day.

Ellie figured that wasn’t a good sign.
“I’ll owe you one, Nan,” she said, as she started to stand back
up.

Helena grabbed her by her shoulder and
pushed her back down in her chair.

“
Tell me about the man. Tell
me about the boy,” Helen yelled at them without stopping to say
good morning.

“Mom?” Ellie asked.

“Hellsbelles, Helen. Do you need some
meds?” Helena asked sarcastically.

Helen snarled in anger. It was an
air-through-the-nose, wide-awake snore of a snarl, that surprised
her almost as much as it did Ellie and Helena when it
happened.

Ellie started to laugh.

Helen raised her hand threateningly and
moved towards her daughter.

Helena reached across and grabbed
Helen’s arm.

“What do you think you’re doing? So
help me, Helen, I’ll take a knife from the butcher block if I have
to,” she warned her daughter. “Step away from Ellie. What the hell
is wrong with you?”

“I want to know all about the man of
your dreams,” Helen said to her mother sarcastically. “And I want
to know all about the boy in yours,” she said to Ellie.

“Seriously, Helen. Have you been
drinking?” Helena asked. She had seen her daughter angry before,
but this was borderline psychotic. “It’s a little early in the
morning for mad cow cocktails.”

“I asked you a question, Mother,” Helen
said, ignoring the sarcasm.

“Helen, you have no right to ask me
anything of the sort. I’m a grown woman. This is my house. Your
daughter is not five. She’s old enough to know that from time to
time we all need a little push in the bush.”

“Do you have to be so vulgar?” Helen
screamed. “That’s what I am talking about. I am trying to teach
Ellie that sex does not equal love, so that she doesn’t get hurt
and you’re having a boudoir party a floor beneath her. What kind of
an example is that?”

“It was hardly a party, Helen. You
didn’t have to crash it.”

“Do you love this guy...Roy? Do you?”
Helen stammered.

Helena thought for a moment. “Well, not
that it’s any of your business, but yes, I do happen to love Roy
Cohen. I have for quite some time. And I think you owe me an
apology for beating him to a pulp last night. You can make up for
it by hopping in that bug van of yours and going to get me a new
bedroom door from the renovation store in the city. A metal one if
you’re feeling inclined to break it down again.” She picked up
Roy’s coffee cup and threw it against the wall. “And pick up a new
mug set for me while you’re at it. You want crazy? I’ll show you
crazy.”