Mad as Helen (2 page)

Chapter 2

S
HERIFF
F
RANK
B
IDD
LE
headed over to the Bryan house in his dusty cruiser and parked as close to the place as he could get, which wasn’t all that near.

Tucked against the bluff to one side of River Bend’s tiny harbor, the Bryans’ address had no such convenience as a driveway. Frank left the car in the harbor lot, which consisted of gravel ringed by railroad ties. He walked across grass and mud, past the docks, where a dozen small boats bobbed against the ropes binding them. The opaque brown of the Mississippi water that flowed into the inlet gently slapped the muddy banks.

The fishy odor of the river invaded his nostrils, and Frank found himself holding his breath. He got across the wooden bridge that led onto the Bryans’ property before he exhaled again. He should have been used to the smell of it by now. He’d been working in this cozy town on the Mississippi for more years than he cared to count. But then, Frank had seen even longtime River Bend residents pinch their noses when they got too near the water.

The grass grew high on the other side of the bridge. When he stepped into it, the blades came up past his trouser cuffs. Weeds poked their way through a cracked concrete path snaking up to the house. For all its neglect, the place looked peaceful enough sitting in the shade of the trees. Its foundation was notched into the side of the bluff so it almost seemed a part of the rocks behind it.

As he approached the door, Frank realized the whitewashed exterior looked about as ragged as the craggy bluffs themselves. The paint peeled in long strips; the yellow of the trim had flaked away almost entirely in spots.

He shook his head.

Ray Bryan, at eighty-some-odd, was simply not fit enough anymore to keep up the house, and he had no spare funds to hire someone else to do it. He did have Charlie, his grandson, living with him, but the kid was no help. All he seemed to do was make trouble for the old man.

In fact, Charlie was the reason Biddle had come.

He knocked on the door, trying to peer through the gritty panes of glass.

“Ray? Charlie? Hey, anyone home?”

The door came open slowly. A suspicious brown eye peered out. “Sheriff Biddle? Yeesh.” The door cracked wider, and the disgruntled face of a boy stared at him. “Can you keep it down? My grandpop’s sleeping.”

“I need to talk to you, Charlie. So either you step outside, or I’ll have to ask you to let me in.”

“All right already.” The boy slipped out and quietly shut the door behind him. He plunked down on the front porch step. He had the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his head, and his dark jeans had about as many holes as his sneakers. “What’s it this time, huh? And can you make it quick? I got a lot of things to do.”

Frank descended the stoop and stood on the broken walk, facing Charlie. “You got anything you want to confess?”

“Confess? What are you now, a priest?” The boy pushed his hoodie off and ran a hand over his stubble of hair.

Biddle wondered if Charlie had done the crew cut himself. The close-clip added further menace to the boy’s permanently scowling features. “I’m only trying to cut you some slack.”

“Yeah, right.” Charlie rolled his eyes.

“You remember what I came ’round to see you about last month and the month before that?”

“Like I could forget.” Charlie started picking at the dirt beneath his fingernails. “A few rich old biddies had stuff stolen from their houses, and you thought I had something to do with it.” Charlie glared at Biddle from beneath the thick slant of his eyebrows.

Biddle sighed. “I didn’t accuse you, son. I merely asked if you might’ve been involved or if you knew who pulled it off.”

“I’m always the first one you blame, aren’t I?” Charlie scuffed the heel of his sneaker against the ground.

“Well, you have gotten yourself in enough messes before.”

“Hey, I’m sixteen. I’m supposed to rebel.”

Biddle lifted a hand and began counting off on his fingers. “Twice you’ve been caught skinny-dipping in the community pool drunk as a skunk—”

“So maybe I was hot and thirsty.”

“You broke into the mayor’s car—”

Charlie grunted. “That piece of junk? I was just seeing if it would actually run.”

Biddle put a foot up on the first step and leaned forward, looking Charlie right in the eye, but the kid just turned his head. “I asked you before if you were the one who broke into Mavis White’s and Violet Farley’s—”

“And I told you I didn’t!” Charlie’s nostrils flared.

“I’m asking you now if you hit Mattie Oldbridge’s house while she was out of town.”

“And I’m telling you again that I didn’t do it!” Charlie jumped to his feet, face flushed and hands balled into fists.

“You have an alibi?” Biddle stared at the small, wiry kid poised to fight. Why did short guys always seem to have such big chips on their shoulders?

“Why do I need an alibi?” Charlie scoffed. “I know I’m no Goody Two-shoes, but I didn’t bust into any of those old ladies’ houses, okay? So get off my back!”

He glowered at Biddle before he stomped up the steps and disappeared inside.

Biddle didn’t move for a moment. He stood and stared ahead at the paint-peeled façade and then up at the gray spiderwebs that crisscrossed the eaves. “Well, okay then,” he said to himself before he turned around and walked away.

Charlie might have denied committing the burglaries, but Frank wasn’t sure whether or not to believe him. The kid could lie with the best of them. He’d done it before, and the sheriff didn’t doubt he’d do it again at every chance.

Chapter 3

“
P
ERFECT
,”
G
RACE
S
IMPSON
said, her head bobbing as she finished reading through the final chapter of her freshly printed manuscript. She tapped the bottom edge neatly against her desk to straighten all the pages.

“Absolutely perfect,” she murmured as she slipped the unpublished tome into an expandable file and secured the elastic band around it. She picked up the black flash drive from her blotter and palmed it for a moment. It held the only electronic file of the document, so far as Grace was aware. She didn’t trust technology any more than she trusted people. Both seemed destined to betray her, which is why she’d written her opus in longhand on a series of legal pads and had had her assistant transcribe it. She’d forbidden Nancy to save the file to a hard drive, and she’d refused to email the book to the university press that was set to publish it. Grace was too afraid of getting hacked.

Call her paranoid, but in this day and age, she figured paranoid meant safe. With a satisfied sigh, she deposited the flash drive in her top desk drawer and locked it up. Then she picked up a pencil and tapped it against her chin, a smile working its way onto her thin lips.

“Just wait till they get their grubby little mitts on this!” she said out loud. “It’s more than they bargained for, that’s for sure. My God, but that stuffed-shirt Harold Faulkner and his staff of spiritual do-gooders at the university press are going to see dollar signs through their pompous-colored glasses. They thought this was just going to be another boring study of therapy in a small town. Ha! It’ll make all those studies by Masters and Johnson look like kid stuff.”

Grace leaned back against her leather chair, shifting comfortably within its oiled folds. She closed her eyes and imagined the impact her book was going to have on the field of psychotherapy. Forget psychotherapy! This thing would be an out-and-out best seller.

Relationships were hot. Sex was a surefire draw. Pain was icing on the cake, and perversion, even better.

Grace felt a chill race up her spine and ran the pencil’s eraser across her bottom lip, thinking that right there— right in that brown cardboard file—she had the precise amount of each ingredient, enough to put her where she wanted to be: not only on top of her profession but on top of the world, where she belonged.

“On our program today, we have the renowned therapist and author Grace Simpson, here to talk about her book
Small Town Secrets: Therapy Outside the Big City
. . . .”

She could already hear Oprah announcing her, and she pictured herself seated upon one of those cushy chairs on set, the bright lights shining down and the live audience clapping. Grace blushed as she envisioned the applause growing increasingly loud. No doubt she’d shine so brightly that Oprah would give her a show of her own, like that scrub-wearing Dr. Oz.

“Grace, can we talk?”

Yes, Oprah?
she nearly said. But then she opened her eyes to see the figure standing tentatively inside the door to her office, and her grin quickly turned upside-down.

“Nancy?” A wave of cold washed out Grace’s momentary flush of imagined glory. She wrinkled her brow and stared at her assistant. “I thought you’d already gone.”

The young woman nervously pushed mousy brown hair behind her ears. “You said you wanted that report for the Psychotherapy Society typed up and ready by morning, and you didn’t give it to me until after lunch. Plus, I had to go over to your place to meet with the dishwasher repairman at three o’clock, and then I had to print a copy of your book—”

“Stop,” Grace said, cutting off Nancy’s long-winded excuse for lurking about the office after six. “Whining doesn’t become you. If the job’s too much for you, then maybe you’re not the person I thought you were.”

“No.” Nancy’s porcelain features whitened further. “That’s not what I was getting at.” She gestured helplessly, seeming unable to find the words. “You said I could talk to you any time, and I think that time is now.”

“What’s the problem?” Grace asked and tossed the pencil down. “Don’t tell me you want overtime because you can’t get everything done during normal business hours.”

“You do give me an awful lot to type,” the girl groused.

“You know I hate computers, Nancy. As I explained when I hired you, I write all my notes by hand. It’s imperative that my assistant transcribe everything from session notes to this”—she set a hand possessively atop the pleated folder that held her manuscript.

“Of course, I knew that.” Nancy looked like she was about to cry. “It’s not just about my workload. It’s about how you treat me.”

“You feel unappreciated, is that it? I don’t pat you on the head enough? Would you like me to stick gold stars on your task list?”

Nancy lifted her chin, but it trembled nonetheless. “Please, Grace, don’t do this. I’m not a child.”

“Well, right now you’re acting like a child who doesn’t know when it’s time to go home. So, please, leave.” Grace stood up but kept her hand on her manuscript. “And don’t forget that you’re not to say a word about anything you read while you were typing my book. If you do”—Grace paused, her chest tightening—“I will make sure you regret it.”

“Of course I won’t.”

“You did destroy my notes?” Grace interrupted. “You put all handwritten pages through the cross-shredder?”

“That’s what you asked me to do, wasn’t it?” Nancy replied, sounding affronted.

“So I have the only hard copy right here?” Grace nodded at the item centered on her desk. “And there are no other e-files but the one on the flash drive?”

Nancy’s eyes flashed. “Don’t you trust me?”

No,
Grace wanted to respond. She didn’t trust a soul, and with good reason.

“Just go home,” Grace snapped. “I have a lot on my mind, and I need to be alone.”

Nancy uttered a final, reluctant, “But, Grace, we need to—”

“Goodnight, Nancy,” Grace cut her off again.

With a look of resignation, the slender figure retreated. Grace held her breath for a moment after, straining to hear the telltale noise of the door onto Main Street open and shut. She breathed out again.

Good. The girl was gone.

Grace shook her head. Fresh out of college, armed with an undergrad degree in psychology, and they thought they should be allowed to do more than just push papers and answer the phone.

Hah!

It had taken Grace nearly thirty-three years to get where she was, years of research and study, of attending innumerable boring lectures and symposiums, of slaving away pro bono doing social work and playing second fiddle to half a dozen more renowned therapists in St. Louis and thereabouts, finally going off on her own, only to find her practice full of the low-pay or no-pay cases her colleagues rejected, her peers snubbing her all the while. Max had been the one to suggest getting out of the city entirely. Yes, it had been her dear husband’s idea to try her luck in a town outside St. Louis that wasn’t already overflowing with enough psychs to populate a small country. It was only after she’d taken the plunge and set up her practice in picturesque River Bend that she’d understood darling Max’s reasons for wanting her out of the city: he’d been sleeping with one of the salesgirls at his sporting goods store. Grace had confronted him about the affair, and Max hadn’t even denied it. She’d kicked him out pronto, she recalled, though the memory of it was less than fond.

She shifted in her chair and sniffled.

Max had popped into River Bend once or twice since their separation, acting forlorn and trying to woo her back, but Grace had fought the stubborn feelings that remained. Grace Simpson was nobody’s patsy. She had no intentions of delaying the divorce any longer. God knows, she’d never take him back, especially not now, when she had her future by the balls. Max would just have to keep banging his salesgirls and muddling along without her.

Grace sighed and fixed her eyes on the manuscript again.

Well, she did have one reason to be grateful to her almost-ex-hubby. River Bend had turned out to be more of a gold mine than she’d ever imagined. The tiny town was chockfull of well-heeled widows and retirees, their plump nest eggs ripe for the picking. And that didn’t include the towns around it, like Jerseyville, big enough to have a country club, a main drag lined with fast-food joints, and the ever-present Walmart; Alton, far more populated still, with enough car dealerships to make Detroit proud; and cozy Grafton up the road, with its adorable winery, restaurants, and bluff homes with river views. Grace had handed her cards out right and left, at hospitals and nursing homes, at bingo games and bridge tournaments, until she’d reeled in enough messed-up lives to fill her practice to the hilt.

Even still, she wasn’t taken seriously by her big-city colleagues. River Bend might be picturesque, but it was in the boonies, nonetheless. Her clients were practically Hoosiers, for want of a better description.

Grace let out a loud snort.

The very first thing she’d do when her book was published and the recognition started pouring in was set up an office somewhere else, like Chicago or, better still, New York.

Ah, yes, Manhattan, Grace mused with a self-satisfied smile. Now, that was a place full of bona fide loony tunes, enough to provide juicy revelations for not just one measly book but a flipping encyclopedia!

Then everyone would know what Grace Simpson was made of. The professional journals that kept turning down her articles, the leaders of the conferences that kept declining her offers to speak, the snooty members of the Psychotherapy Society who considered her a failure: she’d show them all, wouldn’t she?

Grace picked up the expandable envelope containing her manuscript and hugged it as if it were a life raft, which, in a way, it was.