To Helen Back (15 page)

Chapter 29

“S
HERIFF
B
IDDLE!”

His window rolled down, Frank heard the voice and slowed his black-and-white to a stop alongside the stretch of blooming flowers better known as Serenity Garden.

It was half past seven on Tuesday morning. Frank had figured that if he drove down early to the truck stop to talk to Velma Simms, he’d be back at his office well before noon. And he could get himself a breakfast of sausage and eggs while he was there, without Sarah to henpeck him about his cholesterol.

“Good morning, Sheriff.”

“ ’Morning, ma’am,” he said, tipping his hat as Helen Evans approached the window. “You up and walking this early?” he asked, noting her blue sweatsuit and sneakers.

“Best time to do it.” She tipped up her nose and inhaled. “The air smells freshest right after dawn.”

“Really?” Frank took in a big gulp of the stuff himself, scrunching up his face as he caught a whiff of fish and muck from off the river. He coughed to clear the taste from his mouth, a part of him understanding then why Ida Bell was so militant about the environment hereabouts.

“You going somewhere?” she inquired.

“I am,” he said, and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, eager to be off but hardly anxious to confide his destination. He knew Helen well enough to realize she’d probably invite herself along, and he didn’t need a nosy grandmother—as nice as she was— playing his sidekick when he questioned Velma Simms. “I’m, uh, just heading over to the office,” he told her, and smiled.

“You are not,” she insisted, frowning at him like a disapproving schoolmarm. “You’re driving in the opposite direction. Why, you’re nearly to the highway already.”

“All right, you got me.” He pushed up his cap and scratched his head. He’d bet she’d been the kind of mother who, from two floors up, could hear the cookie jar lid being removed ever so gently; the kind who, years later, could recall who’d sent her thank-you notes after every Christmas; who could read a lie on someone’s face. “As a matter of fact,” he said, giving in, “I’m on my way to a truck stop south of Alton. I need to talk to a waitress who worked the shift last Thursday night with Delilah Grone.”

“So you spoke to Delilah?”

“Not yet, but I did get her note,” he said. “I already talked to her manager, and I want to get my timeline straight before she comes in.”

“Delilah told me she arrived in River Bend just before eight and found her ex-husband dead,” Helen prattled on, seeming to know as much as he did if not more. “If she was telling the truth and didn’t leave work until seven, then took the time to change out of her uniform, she couldn’t have been in town long before the group of us from town hall saw him lying on the ground.”

Frank was tempted to say,
Oh, yeah? You know so much, maybe you should run for sheriff next term,
but he bit the inside of his cheek. “So you and the first Mrs. Grone have gotten cozy?” he tried instead.

Helen looked at him strangely. “Hardly that. I did chat with her on Saturday morning after the funeral and then I bumped into her yesterday. I encouraged her to see you—”

“Yes, that’s what her note said, and I appreciate it, ma’am.” Biddle cleared his throat. “Now if you’ll excuse me,” he said, glancing at his wristwatch.

“Oh, yes, you were leaving for the truck stop.”

“I need to talk with—”

“The waitress who shares Delilah’s shifts,” Helen finished for him, a secretive smile on her lips, one that made Biddle nervous.

Surely she hadn’t already had a “chat” with Velma Simms? If Helen Evans was that good at sniffing out information, he thought, she really should run for sheriff. “You haven’t met up with Ms. Simms, have you, Mrs. Evans?” he dared to ask.

“No, I haven’t,” she said, “but I should.” She drew away from the window and walked around the hood, ending up on the passenger’s side of the squad car. The handle clicked and she had the door open so quickly that Frank could only stare dumbly as she slid in beside him and buckled up.

What the heck was she doing?

“I’m on official business, Mrs. Evans,” he croaked.

“Don’t worry, Sheriff, I have no intention of interfering,” she assured him, laying her hands demurely in her lap. “But I could use a cup of coffee, and I’ll bet the truck stop makes it good and strong.”

Biddle wanted to order her out of the car. He wanted to be angry with her for butting in, but he couldn’t. Instead, he smiled. “Do you read Agatha Christie, ma’am?”

“I do,” she said, “now and again.”

“Well, I’m beginning to think you’ve got a Miss Marple complex. You know, the old lady snoop—”

“Yes, I know good and well.” She arched her thick gray eyebrows, but he could see the twinkle in her eyes. Then she busied herself rolling down the window enough to allow the breeze in. “Some around here might call me a busybody,” she said, “but I’m just a people person with a curious soul.”

Frank didn’t touch that one. He figured it might get him into trouble to speak his mind. If his twenty-year marriage to Sarah had taught him one thing, it was this: the key to getting along well with women was in knowing when to shut the heck up.

So without another word, he took his foot off the brake and hit the gas, guiding the car out of town and onto the River Road.

T
WENTY MINUTES LATER,
they entered Alton’s city limits, and that was with Sheriff Biddle driving somewhere between fifty-five and sixty—Helen had kept an eye on the speedometer. It took at least twenty minutes more before Helen saw the checkerboard sign for the truck stop looming over the interstate.

The sheriff pulled the black-and-white into the lot filled with big rigs, garnering stares from several patrons exiting the restaurant. As she got out of the car, Helen noticed, beyond the plate glass, a good-sized crowd gathered within.

“Looks like it’s a popular place,” she said.

Biddle hurried ahead and pulled open the door before Helen could lift a hand. As soon as she entered, her nose filled with the welcoming odors of frying bacon and coffee, half a dozen pots of which merrily percolated atop a line of burners beneath a stainless-steel shelf that opened into the kitchen.

She followed Biddle up to the counter, where a long row of men in plaid shirts were perched atop red vinyl stools. A few had their noses stuck inside newspapers. The rest bent over steaming plates of food, greedily shoveling in hash browns and pancakes.

Biddle waved a hand in the air, trying to catch the attention of the waitress who buzzed back and forth behind the length of Formica. She breezed past them once, uttering cheerily, “Be with ya in a minute,” before she took off again.

Helen took the time to peruse a plastic-coated menu.

“Sorry t’ keep you folks waiting,” the waitress said, reappearing in a bustle of pink polyester, her netted brown hair pulled away from her face. In a blink, she had her order pad out of her apron and poised in her hand, pencil at the ready. “What’ll it be?”

“Coffee, please,” Helen said, before Biddle had the chance to speak.

“And you, Sheriff?” the waitress asked, eyeing his badge as she flipped over a cup for Helen, snatched a pot from the burner, and had it filled in a wink. “You want a shot of joe, too?”

“Actually, I’m looking for Velma Simms,” he said, tugging off his hat. “I’m Sheriff Frank Biddle from River Bend. I phoned yesterday and spoke with the boss.”

“Ah, yeah, so I heard.” She put away the pot and wedged the pencil above her ear. “Hank said a cop called asking some questions about Delilah’s shift last Thursday. So does it have to do with her ex-husband’s murder?”

Biddle flushed. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Are you Miss Simms, by chance?” Helen asked, peeling off the foil skin from a thimble of cream and adding it to her coffee.

“In the flesh,” she said, only to be drowned out by the ding of a bell from the kitchen.

“Velma! Pick up!” someone yelled, and with a shrug she slipped away, only to scurry past with her skinny arms agilely balancing—Helen counted—six steaming plates.

Helen followed her pink form as she unloaded at one table then scurried over to an empty booth to pick up a tip and wipe the cluttered surface clean. She took an order here, another there, until again the bell dinged again madly.

Helen felt tired just watching.

Biddle got himself a doughnut from a nearby cake stand and devoured it in record time. He was just licking off the sugary tips of his fingers when Velma reemerged behind the counter.

“So here I am,” she said, tucking a food-spotted towel into the waist of her apron. She wasn’t even breathing hard, Helen noticed with admiration, thinking there was much that motherhood and waitressing had in common. Only mothers never got tips. “I can only give ya about a minute. Is Delilah in trouble?”

“Not yet,” Biddle replied, wiping his hands on a napkin. “I just need to check on her whereabouts last Thursday night. She worked the eleven-to-seven shift with you, right?”

“Uh-huh,” Velma said, sticking her elbows on the counter and leaning over them. “Just like every Thursday.”

Biddle nodded. He took a spiral notebook from his pocket and flipped it open to a clean sheet. He touched the tip of the tiny pencil to his tongue before asking, “So Delilah didn’t take off early?”

“No, sir,” Velma said, almost too quickly, then bit her lip. “At least, I don’t think so, but one shift starts to blur into the next.” Her eyes drifted up toward the ceiling, and Helen found herself looking up as well. All she saw were several cracks in the plaster and what looked like a grease stain or three. “No, wait a sec, I take that back,” Velma remarked with a snap of her fingers. “She did scoot a bit early. She told me there was something she had to do, that it was important. I told her I’d cover for her. No problem.” She leaned in closer. “Hank was out that day with the runs, so I figured what the hell? Things were pretty slow.”

Biddle scribbled in his book.

Helen took a sip of her coffee then asked Velma, “Are you and Delilah close?”

“We like each other well enough,” the waitress said, bobbing her head. “Not that we have much time to chew the fat, because this place gets crazy-busy. But when the old dogs are barking, we take a break outside and share a cigarette.”

“So you know Delilah’s history?” Helen went on.

Velma tipped her head. “Like where she’s from?”

“More like, about her family,” Helen said.

The woman’s eyes brightened. “Yeah, sure, Delilah tells me about her kids, how they’re doing at school”—she leaned in with a wink—“all the messes they get into. She says the boys are like their daddy, always lookin’ for trouble with the opposite sex.” She shook her head. “I told her she had to put her foot down but I don’t think she ever listened to me. I have a couple of young’uns myself, and if you don’t keep a close eye on them these days with all that sexting and bullying—”

Ding
went the bell.

“Velma! Pick up!”

The waitress sighed and wiped her hands on her apron. “Be back in a sec,” she said, and took off.

Helen looked sideways at Biddle. He rolled his eyes, and she chuckled.

In another minute or two Velma returned.

“So, where’d I leave off?”

“We were talking about Delilah and her ex-husband,” Helen said, steering Velma away from the subject of raising wayward children.

“Oh, yeah, Delilah and Milton.” Velma pushed the pencil into her hair. “Sometimes you’d have thought from the way Dee talked that she was still half in love with him. Mostly, though, she just hated his guts. She said he’d screwed her out of what he owed her after they’d split. And when she got wind of him selling that riverfront land to the water park for all that bread—” Velma blew out a breath. “—look out.”

“She knew about the land deal from the get-go?” Biddle asked.

“Who didn’t?” Velma shrugged. “I mean, it was big news in the paper. Everytime there was a protest, the
Telegraph
had a front-page story. Delilah couldn’t miss the headlines, not with folks readin’ with their eggs and bacon every morning at the counter. It made her furious, knowing the old man was getting a fortune when she’d had to raise those boys alone on next t’ nothing.”

“She threatened to get a lawyer,” Helen said, remembering what Delilah had told her after the funeral service. “Maybe she figured with the land deal, she could finally get him to pay up.”

“Oh, she had her dreams all right.” Velma sighed. “When she learned Milton sealed the deal with Wet ’n’ Woolly, it lit a fire under her like nothing else. She was married to him when his pop died and left him those acres. She thought half of it should be hers, or the kids’ anyway. She was on the phone a lot these last few weeks. It had Hank pretty pissed off. He told her t’ take care of her personal crap after work, not during.”

Helen glanced at Biddle, but he was busy scribbling in his notepad.

“Did Delilah ever hire that lawyer?” she asked.

“She mouthed off a lot about it mostly and then something happened,” Velma said, but interrupted herself with a chirpy, “More coffee?” At Helen’s nod, she perfunctorily refilled the cup then continued. “She suddenly got real quiet about Milton. When I asked if everything was okay, she told me that she was finally taking care of things with him. So I assumed she’d found someone to take her on, maybe one of those fellows from those late night TV ads.”

“Ambulance chasers,” Biddle mumbled as he tore into a second doughnut.

Helen thought of a line from Shakespeare at that moment, one from the second act of Henry VI:
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers. . .

She stifled her smile and asked Velma, “Did she meet with anyone here in the restaurant last week before her husband’s death?”

“I wouldn’t say she met up with anyone.” Velma paused, hands on hips. She scratched at her hairnet. “But Delilah turned white as a sheet during lunch the week before last. I thought she’d seen a ghost sitting at one of her tables. I heard her say, ‘Aw, hell, what’d I do to deserve this?’ But then she tossed that red hair of hers and glued a smile on her face like nothing happened.”