To Helen Back (10 page)

Chapter 20

W
HEN
H
ELEN ARRIVED
back at her own doorstep, she found the screen door ajar, just enough space between it and the jamb for a twenty-pound cat to slip through.

Her yellow tom had left another sign of his comings and goings as well: smack in the center of the porch lay a lifeless gray bird. Helen prayed he was a bachelor and not a mama with a nest full of babies waiting for her return.

“Oh, Amber,” she said with a shake of her head.

She stepped carefully around the feathered corpse and went to the kitchen to fetch a paper sack and a piece of cardboard. Then she returned to the porch to dispose of the little “gift” her fur-child had left her.

Afterward, she sought out Amber and found him in her bedroom, curled atop her flowered spread. He was sleeping so peacefully—belly up, paws in the air, a pink-gummed smile on his mouth—that she didn’t have the heart to disturb him in order to give him another lecture.

Back in the kitchen, she scrubbed her hands at the sink before fixing a glass of iced tea. She took it with her to the porch and settled in her wicker rocker, picking up the crossword she hadn’t quite finished earlier in the day.

She’d barely gotten her purple pen uncapped when a voice called to her from outside.

“Yoo hoo!” someone chirped. “Helen, are you there?”

Grudgingly, she set aside the paper and stood. At the screen door stood Clara Foley in a blinding orange muumuu.

“Oh, good, you’re home,” Clara said, doing a happy little wiggle.

“I only just got back,” Helen told her, making no move yet to open the door. If she did, Clara would surely take that as an invitation to come inside, plunk down on the sofa, and gossip. But Helen was in no mood to chat about the latest scuttlebutt.

“So have you heard the latest?” Clara asked, her nose pressed to the screen.

“That depends,” Helen said. There was too much going on in River Bend these days to have heard everything.

“If I don’t share, I swear I’ll burst,” Clara said, snatching open the door before Helen could do it herself. Once inside, Clara grabbed her arm. “It’s about Milton Grone,” she leaned nearer to whisper. “It was no heart attack that killed him.”

“No,” Helen said, feigning surprise.

“Get this.” Clara cupped a hand to the side of her mouth and hissed, “Someone bashed in his head.”

“I can’t believe it,” Helen replied, which wasn’t a lie. She hadn’t yet had the chance to fully digest that bit of news.

Clara’s chin wobbled as she nodded. “Even worse is that Shotsie Grone practically announced to the world that she thinks Felicity Timmons is guilty.”

Helen’s face warmed and she felt every bit as angry as she had when she’d heard Mrs. Grone hurl the accusation. “That’s absurd,” she scoffed. “Felicity wouldn’t hurt a fly, and you know it.”

“Oh, honey, I’m with you,” Clara agreed. “But try to convince the Widow Grone of it. She’s been ranting and raving that Felicity’s the culprit ever since she found out that her husband was murdered.”

“Well, she’s wrong,” Helen said, not wanting to hear any more. She nudged Clara toward the door. “If you wouldn’t mind, I have things to do.”

“But don’t you want to know the rest?” Clara said, grabbing the door frame before Helen could shove her out.

There was more?

“They found it!” Clara squealed, her eyes twin pins of light.

Helen sighed. “Found what?”

“The murder weapon!” Clara clapped her hands together like an excited child. “The sheriff searched the woods behind Felicity’s place and nearly tripped over an old shovel lying in the brush. I heard there was blood all over it.”

Helen lost her breath for a moment.

“Are you all right, Hel? You look pale.”

Dear God. Helen’s heart pumped frantically. She had a bad feeling about this, a horrible feeling.

“I’ve got to go,” she announced, pushing past her friend.

She only made it as far as her stoop.

“Now hold on!” Clara caught her arm from behind. “If you’re headed to Felicity’s, she isn’t there.”

Helen froze.

“Sheriff Biddle took her down to his office for questioning.”

“What?”

“He drove her there himself in the squad car.”

Helen groaned, wondering how things could possibly get any worse.

F
IVE MINUTES L
ATER
Helen stood at the door of the one-man sheriff’s department in the heart of Main Street. The tiny station house sat between LaVryle’s Cut ’n’ Curl and a dusty antiques store. Helen went inside to find herself in a room whose walls were papered with the faces of Illinois’s Most Wanted as well as hand-printed cards inquiring about lost pets and advertising garage sales.

“What’s going on here?” she said as Biddle rose from behind his desk.

Sitting in the chair opposite him, Felicity spun around. “Oh, Helen!” she said, looking fit to cry. She didn’t even have a hat on, which was a rare sight indeed. Her sparse gray hair appeared matted, as though Biddle had snatched her up from a nap.

Helen marched over to her dear friend straightaway, glaring at the sheriff. “Frank Biddle, have you lost your mind?”

“Just a danged minute, Mrs. Evans,” Biddle replied, puffing out his chest and hooking his thumbs in his belt. “I’m not booking Miss Timmons, I’m only asking her some questions. You probably don’t know as yet, but I found a shovel in the woods behind her house. It was covered with—”

“Blood,” Helen finished for him. “Yes, I heard.” She glanced down at Felicity, who’d sunk back into the chair. “That doesn’t mean Felicity hid the shovel, much less used it to kill Milton Grone.”

“Like I was saying,” Biddle went on, sounding huffy, “Miss Timmons is not being arrested for murder. But I had to bring her in, what with Mrs. Grone hollering her head off about it. How would it have looked if I hadn’t brought Miss Timmons in at all?”

“Of course,” Helen said dryly.

Biddle cleared his throat. “Doc Melville thinks it might well be the murder weapon. There was dirt and rust on it, plus plant fertilizer, like in the M.E.’s report. Doc’s getting it checked out as we speak. We’ll know the truth before long.”

The truth, Helen thought, seemed more and more elusive all the time.

“So are you finished here, then? Is Felicity free to go?” Helen asked. “I hardly think you can hold her here without any solid evidence.”

“Just a few more questions, please, ma’am,” Biddle said. He gazed across the desk at Felicity, looking for confirmation.

Helen opened her mouth to protest, but Felicity gave a weak nod, and the sheriff plopped down into his chair.

He clicked the ballpoint of his pen, which he held poised to write. “As I was saying before we were interrupted”—he narrowed his eyes on Helen—“is it true that you had a heated argument with Milton Grone the morning of his death?”

Felicity’s answer was a meekly uttered, “Yes.”

“Can you tell me what the fight was about?”

Helen saw the knobby hands nervously smooth her wrinkled housedress. “It was about his fence,” Felicity said, her voice soft but sure. “He built it six inches onto my property, which he knew bloody well.” She glanced up at the sheriff. “It was a sore spot, but certainly not worth killing him over. I’d already had Art Beaner come take a look, and he promised he’d take up the matter at the town meeting.”

The meeting last Thursday, Helen thought, when the whole town hall had emptied and lit out for Milton’s house.

Biddle finished jotting down notes on his legal pad, then tapped the pen against his jaw. “Did you have your shovel with you that morning, ma’am?”

“I did, yes,” Felicity told him, leaning forward, hands on her knees. “But that’s only because I’d just planted new raspberry bushes. I left the shovel outside near the fence, and I didn’t remember to fetch it until much later, well after dark.” She turned to glance up at Helen. There was raw fear in her eyes. “After they’d already found Mr. Grone lying dead in his yard.”

“She’s telling the truth, Sheriff,” Helen said, jumping in. “I saw Felicity pick up her shovel and move it. Why would she have left it out if she’d been the one to kill Grone with it? That would have been really stupid.”

“Thanks for your input, Mrs. Evans.” Biddle gave her a look but didn’t write anything down. He turned his attention back to Felicity. “What happened to the shovel after you moved it, Miss Timmons?”

Felicity’s shoulders sagged. “My heavens, Sheriff, I didn’t bother with the shovel again until this afternoon. I’d been so gobsmacked by the turn of events that I realized I hadn’t cleaned my gardening tools properly. So I gathered them up to wash. I did the trowels first. But the shovel”—she put her hands to her cheeks and shook her head—“it had simply disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” Biddle wrinkled his brow.

“It was just gone,” Felicity said. “I couldn’t find it anywhere.”

“And you didn’t see it again until I recovered it from the brush behind your house half an hour ago?”

“I didn’t hide my shovel in the woods.” Felicity sounded on the verge of tears. “I didn’t know it was there, Sheriff, I swear.”

“Enough,” Helen said, and stepped in front of Felicity, turning her back to the sheriff at his desk. “She’s told you all there is to tell,” she added, taking hold of Felicity’s hands and helping her up.

Biddle jumped up on his boots and waved his pen at Helen. “Whoa there, Mrs. Evans, this isn’t up to you—”

“Good day, Sheriff,” Helen interrupted, guiding Felicity toward the door.

She ignored Frank Biddle’s sputtered cries of indignation, thinking he was in over his head. How in God’s name did he imagine he was going to track down Milton’s murderer if he spent all his time interviewing the likes of Felicity Timmons?

Or had he already made up his mind that poor Felicity was the killer?

Chapter 21

B
Y DINNERTIME THAT
Sunday night all of River Bend had heard the news that Milton Grone had been clubbed to death with a bloody shovel belonging to Felicity Timmons.

The ninety-one-year-old mayor of River Bend—whose chronic gout mostly kept him homebound—even shuffled over to Main Street to pay Biddle a visit. He’d popped in both his hearing aids before asking the sheriff if he’d “collared the varmint whodunit.”

Since the scene of the crime had been pretty well trampled by half the town last Thursday evening, Biddle didn’t have much to go on except Doc’s lab tests and the accusations of Milton’s widow.

Since Shotsie had seen Milt before leaving for the town meeting at seven, and his lifeless body was found a few minutes before eight o’clock, Biddle estimated the time of death somewhere in between.

That was the easy part.

As Milton’s most vocal enemies had been present at town hall and could testify to each other’s whereabouts, the sheriff faced an almost impossible task. He was tempted to use the eenie-meenie-miney-mo method and randomly pick someone to arrest.

“You’re a smart man, Frank,” Sarah told him when she dropped off fried chicken and biscuits. “You’ll figure it out.”

So Frank forged ahead, drawing up a list of those who’d had the biggest beef with Milton. One by one he’d haul them in for questioning, starting bright and early the next morning.

The first name that he wrote was Felicity Timmons. He put a checkmark beside it, since he’d already grilled her.

The next two on his list were Ida Bell and Dorothy Feeny. They’d hardly kept their feelings for Grone a secret. Ida had even gone so far as to call Milton “a murderer” in the newspaper, saying he didn’t deserve to live if he let the water park drive countless critters out of their homes.

Biddle paused for a moment, gnawing the inside of his cheek while he pondered who should follow. How about Art Beaner and the whole darned board of directors? All of them had been fighting with Grone ever since the man had moved into his father’s house. Frank recalled an instance when Beaner showed up at the station red-faced and out of breath. He’d gone to see Grone about association fees past due, and Milton greeted him with a badly aimed pop from his shotgun.

Then there was Delilah Grone, Milton’s first wife. Biddle had heard the rumors about the woman going after Grone for unpaid alimony and child support. Maybe she figured it’d be easier to get her claws on Milton’s water park windfall if he were dead rather than alive.

Last but not least, Biddle jotted down the name Shotsie Grone. She’d been acting her part of the grieving widow well enough, and he wasn’t sure anyone could put on a show like that without really feeling it inside. But Frank knew from his years in law enforcement that it was more often the spouse who did it than the butler.

Besides, he mused, women were more than a little unpredictable, especially when that time of the month rolled around.

Finished with his list, Biddle slipped it into a folder and set it aside. Then he snatched up his hat and stepped out of the office just as the chapel’s prized carillon began to chime “Sweet Adelaide.”

He got in his car and drove the three blocks to Doc Melville’s. Within minutes he was parked at the curb in front of the A-frame painted red as a barn. He avoided the front door, going around to the side entrance that led into Doc’s office. He stood on the welcome mat beneath the old-fashioned shingle that neatly proclaimed,
DR. AMOS MELVILLE,
M.D
., and doffed his hat. Then he turned the knob and went inside.

“Hey, Doc, it’s me, Frank Biddle,” he called out as he walked into the empty waiting area. The front desk, usually manned by Fanny, was deserted.

“Amos?” he said again, heading up the hallway past an empty exam room.

Yellow light streamed from an open door toward the rear. Biddle knew it was where Amos kept his lab.

He tucked his hat atop his head and hiked up his pants before knocking on the door frame. “Yo, Doc,” he said, seeing Amos hunched over a table. “Am I interrupting?”

“Ah, hello, Sheriff.” Amos briefly glanced up from the item sprawled across the stainless steel surface. It was the shovel Frank had found behind Miss Timmons’s house. “I was just finishing up,” Doc said, and Frank nodded, hanging back in the doorway.

“What’d you find?” he asked.

“I typed the blood on the shovel, and it’s O-positive,” Doc told him. “That’s the same type as Milton Grone. I’ll have Ed Drake’s office run a DNA test, of course. I don’t have the means to do that here.” The doctor sighed and scratched his chin with a latex-gloved hand. “My gut tells me that’ll show a match to Grone as well.”

Biddle got tired of standing and pulled up an empty stool. “Did you find anything else, something that would point to who hit him?”

In response, Amos turned the tool upside down so the back of the spade could seen. He stooped over it, his spectacled eyes hovering above a spot inches away, and poked at something with a metal stick that looked like a dental pick. “You see that?” he asked.

Biddle leaned forward. “It looks like little flecks of rock and . . . I dunno, dirt and stuff.”

Amos pointed the metal stick at Frank’s “flecks of rock,” explaining, “that’s bone from Milton’s shattered temporal lobe. Someone whacked him awfully hard. In a fit of rage, I’d wager.”

Frank felt his stomach lurch and tasted the fried chicken he’d eaten not a half hour earlier. He swallowed before finding his voice again. “Do you figure Felicity Timmons had the strength to clobber Grone with enough force to kill him? She’s, what, seventy-five if she’s a day.”

Amos met the sheriff’s gaze. “If you’re asking me if I believe Felicity could’ve murdered a man, the answer is no.”

Biddle shifted on his feet. “That’s your personal opinion, Doc,” he said. “What’s your professional opinion?”

“She didn’t do it, Frank,” Amos said, shaking his head. “You’re fishing in the wrong barrel.”

“Her prints are on the handle.”

The doctor harrumphed. “Why wouldn’t her prints be on the handle? It’s her shovel. She’s not denying it. Will you put her in jail for that?”

Biddle slid off the stool and headed for the door. There, he paused. “You’re not making this any easier on me, Doc.”

“Nothing about this situation is easy,” Amos said, and began to peel off his gloves. “Isn’t there a part of you that wants to just let this one go?”

Even if there was—even if he wanted to—Biddle knew he couldn’t do that.

He shook his head.

“That’s what I thought,” Amos replied, and patted Frank’s shoulder before he flipped off the light and left the room.

The sheriff stood in the dark for a while after, trying to think of when he’d last had to deal with a crime as serious as this. He’d come to River Bend from a city police force when the tiny town had advertised for a new sheriff. He’d run for the office unopposed and kept the gig for nearly fifteen years. Not once in all that time had there been a murder.

Though there had been one other dead body.

A corpse was found floating in the harbor two summers ago. But it wasn’t the victim of a crime. Heck, it wasn’t even human. The floater had been Homer Brown’s geriatric German shepherd. As best he could surmise, the dog had been chasing a muskrat, plunged into the muddy water, and was unable to get out.

If only this case were as simple to put away.

In the lab room’s dim light, Biddle glanced at the shovel and wondered what skeletons it would unearth if only it could talk.