Not a Chance in Helen

by Susan McBride

  For once, Biddle appeared at a loss for words. He met her eyes, shaking his head. “No, ma’am,” he said, “it doesn’t.”

  Oh, Eleanora! Helen couldn’t help thinking. How could you have done this to Zelma, and her so devoted? Helen could only imagine how devastated Zelma must be, how crushed to find that her Miss Nora placed a cat in higher esteem than a whole life of ser­vice.

  The teakettle whistled, the shrill noise cutting through Helen’s thoughts. She quickly pushed them aside, fixing up three cups of Earl Grey.

  She added a sugar bowl and spoons to a tray and carried it over to the table, handing one cup to Biddle and setting the others out for herself and for Zelma, though the housekeeper had still not reappeared.

  Helen sighed, settling into a chair across from the sheriff and warming her hands on the teacup. “So where does that leave you?” she asked, looking up. “As far as the investigation goes, I mean?”

  Biddle toyed with his tea, stirring in a heaping spoonful of sugar, the steam rising like a veil before his face. “I think it leaves me where I started. So far as I’m aware, no one but the lawyers knew about the terms of Eleanor’s will. So money’s still a motive and, of course, good old-­fashioned hate.” He looked Helen straight in the eye. “Both seem to support a case against Jean Duncan.”

  She stared at him. “You can’t mean it?”

  “I do.”

  Helen squared her shoulders and glared at him. “I don’t believe it,” she told him, “and neither will a jury of her peers.”

  He raised a hand to quiet her. “Consider the facts,” he said.

  “The facts as you see them,” Helen murmured and pushed aside her tea, feeling the strain of this morning—­and of the days before it—­wearing her patience paper-­thin.

  “Think about the evidence,” Biddle went on, rising to his feet. He stepped away from the table and paced around it, slapping one hand on the other for emphasis. “It pointed to her from the beginning. My gut told me she did it. If you think about it, everything fits.” He paused across from her and planted his palms on the table, the resolution plain in his face. “Her fingerprints were on the container of pâté.”

  “As were Zelma’s prints,” Helen reminded him, “and Eleanora’s.”

  “Jean admitted to putting the containers in the refrigerator. She had Splat in her kitchen at home. No one would’ve been the wiser if things had gone according to plan, if Zelma hadn’t panicked when Eleanora was having spasms and come after me.”

  She had certainly panicked, Helen thought, remembering how agitated Eleanora’s housekeeper had been the night she’d shown up at the diner. She’d been positively broken up. It was such a stark contrast to her subdued reaction when the sheriff had divulged that Lady Godiva was the beneficiary of Eleanora’s assets.

  Zelma had acted like a zombie, not saying a word during the drive from town hall in Biddle’s car. Compared to her histrionics at Eleanora’s “goodbye party”—­for want of a better description—­Zelma had taken the news about the will stoically. It was almost as if she’d already known.

  “Ma’am?”

  She glanced up to find the sheriff watching her. He’d tugged his hat on his head and looked ready to go.

  “I asked if you’d like a ride home.”

  Helen couldn’t leave Zelma just yet. “No, I’ll stay a bit,” she told him.

  He seemed relieved when she turned him down.

  “I am sorry how things turned out,” he apologized, “but I’m just doing my job.”

  Helen imagined that was what Judas told himself, but she bit her tongue. She sat at the table with the teacup in her hands, feeling completely ineffectual as Biddle shrugged and headed out of the house. He was probably on his way to arrest Jean.

  Good heavens.

  She grabbed her phone out of her purse and dialed Jean’s number, cursing under her breath when she only got voice mail.

  Where was Jean? Surely she couldn’t still be at town hall?

  Helen left a message—­“The sheriff’s not budging, I’m afraid, so you might want to get a lawyer on the horn”—­then she hung up, realizing there was little Jean could do beyond that except to stay out of Biddle’s reach for a while. It wasn’t as if she could run off to Brazil.

  Helen tried to convince herself that everything would work out, that it would be all right. She had always been so convincing when she’d said it to her kids and grandkids. So why didn’t she believe it now?

  She thought of going home and reading a book or doing a crossword puzzle, anything to take her mind off this befuddling case.

  But first she needed to find Zelma, who seemed to have disappeared since their arrival back at the Duncan house. Had she decided to lie down?

  She went left from the hallway out of the kitchen, passing a laundry room and finding the door to the housekeeper’s room half opened. The bed was neatly made, the bureau top devoid of objects, and the floor perfectly swept. The attached bathroom was small but tidy.

  It was as though no one really lived there.

  On a whim, Helen tugged at the top dresser drawer, pulling it toward her.

  It was empty.

  She pushed it closed and opened the second drawer, then the third after that. All were bare save for the faded floral liner at the bottom.

  Her heart thudding, she checked the small closet. A dozen wire hangers littered the floor. There were no shoes, no suitcase stored above. Nothing.

  Had Zelma cleared her things out even before the party? Had she been planning to take off before Biddle even found whoever had killed Eleanora?

  Helen stared at her own puzzled reflection in the mirror, and something hit her.

  Oh, no. No, that couldn’t be right.

  Thoughts began to race through her brain, connecting bits and pieces that she hadn’t been able to string together until that very moment.

  Jean’s fingerprints were the only ones found on the container besides Eleanora’s and Zelma’s. But Zelma had told the sheriff Jean had put away the food herself.

  The housekeeper had taken the news about Eleanora’s will without expression, as though it had come as no great shock. Had she known about Eleanora’s plans to leave her estate to the cat?

  “Oh, Zelma,” Helen whispered to the mirror, frowning at herself. Was it possible? Had she been so intent on rooting out Eleanora’s enemies that she’d overlooked someone very, very close?

  There was only one way to find out.

  Helen stepped out into the hallway and began to walk. “Zelma?” she called out as she hurried through each of the rooms downstairs, not finding the housekeeper in any one of them.

  Despite feeling worn down by the past few days, Helen made herself trudge up the stairs and peered into each of the bedrooms. But still there was no sign of the missing housekeeper. Up to the third floor she went, doing the same as before, having no luck there either.By the time she’d explored all the rooms, her clothes felt sticky against her skin. She wiped a sleeve against her damp brow, wondering where on earth Zelma could be.

  Helen hadn’t heard a car start. Even still, she headed downstairs to check the garage. Beside an older-­model Mercedes that had once belonged to Marvin, there was a brown four-­door sedan that Helen realized must belong to Zelma.

  She went up to the car and peered through the windows.

  Lo and behold, a small suitcase lay on the backseat with a smaller tote bag set in the well. Helen leaned her head against the glass, feeling defeated.

  Could Zelma truly have killed her mistress? Why else would she be packed and ready to run?

  Helen backed away from the dark brown Ford but stopped at the sight of the grill. Before her eyes flashed an image of the car that nearly ran Eleanora down.

  Could it have been Zelma?

  Miss Nora hired me when I was just sixteen.


  Zelma had never married, had never had a life of her own apart from the one Eleanora Duncan had given her. She’d devoted herself to Eleanora’s family. Had she grown to resent her mistress after so much time? Especially when she’d learned that Eleanora had left her nothing but her regular salary so long as she cared for Lady Godiva? Zelma had given up everything for Eleanora, and Eleanora had given her so little in return.

  So money’s still a motive and, of course, good old-­fashioned hate.

  Biddle’s words returned to haunt her.

  And Helen realized that he might just be right after all.

  “Zelma!” Helen tried again once she was back inside the house. Finally she opened the door to the basement, the one place she hadn’t looked.

  Helen detected a dim light filtering from a basement room below the sharp descent of wooden steps. She stood at the top of the stairs for a moment, listening, certain that she’d heard movement.

  “Zelma! It’s Helen Evans,” she called out and started down. “I just want to know that you’re okay.”

  The steps creaked relentlessly beneath her feet as she went down into the unfinished space. Heavy beams and ductwork passed over her head as she made her way toward the glow of light, ending up in a big room with a bare bulb dangling from above. Metal shelves piled high with tools and boxes filled the walls. Sheet-­draped furniture had been pushed into the nooks and crannies.

  “Zelma, is that you?” she asked, warily approaching another doorway. She was sure she heard shuffling feet and someone grunting. And it sounded like liquid being sloshed around. Helen’s first thought was that Zelma was mopping.

  Until she inhaled the pungent odor of gasoline.

  When she peered into the room, her eyes widened.

  “Good God, what’s going on?”

  For an instant, the face turned toward her. Light glinted off the thick, round glasses. Tufts of hair in disarray framed anguished features. The blue polyester dress Zelma had worn to town hall was smeared with dirt and dust.

  “You shouldn’t be down here,” Zelma said. “You shouldn’t have come.”

  Helen stood where she was, too surprised to do much of anything except watch, suddenly understanding what Zelma was up to.

  Wooden shelves lining the walls were filled with old cans of paint and thinners. Stacks of twine-­bound newspapers littered the concrete floor, along with old blankets and rags, everything damp from the gasoline Zelma had emptied atop them from the nozzle of a rusty-­looking container.

  “Zelma, don’t do this,” Helen found her voice to plead. “You’ll make everything worse.”

  “It can’t get any worse!” the housekeeper shouted and tossed the empty gas can at Helen. It clattered on the concrete floor, landing inches from her feet. “Go away and leave me be,” Zelma cried, fumbling in the pockets of her dress. “This is my mess, not yours.”

  “You killed her, didn’t you?” Helen said, and the smell of the gasoline filled her nose, making her head hurt. “You put the poison in Jean’s pâté, knowing she’d be blamed if it came down to it. Everyone in River Bend knew of the feud between them. No one in their right mind would’ve suspected you, not the woman who’d cared for Eleanora all these years, who’d given her life to the Duncans.”

  “You couldn’t begin to understand,” Zelma shouted back. “You have no idea how I felt. How I feel.”

  “You saw her will, didn’t you? Had she changed it recently?”

  Zelma hesitated, hands crammed in her pockets. Her shoulders shook as she said, “Miss Nora kept the papers lying around on her desk for a week, long enough for me to read every last word. She even had me deliver them to her lawyers.” Her voice quivered unmercifully. “I nearly tore them up and threw them out.”

  Helen wondered how it had come down to this. How could Eleanora have placed so little value on the one person who’d never left her side? “No, you didn’t destroy Eleanora’s will. You poisoned her instead.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it! It’s over and done, and I can’t change what happened!” With trembling fingers, Zelma drew a pack of matches from her pocket, nearly dropping them before she got them open.

  Helen couldn’t believe the woman really meant to burn the house down. Her blood pounded in her head so that she could hardly hear her own voice. “Miss Nora let you down, I know, but I can’t honestly believe you hate her so much to burn this house—­”

  “Hate her?” Zelma’s red-­splotched face turned toward Helen. The light danced off her glasses so that she looked like a woman gone mad. “I never hated Miss Nora! I loved her with all my heart. It was that stupid cat I hated. I meant to put the Splat in the cat food, but I put it in the wrong container.” Tears swam down her cheeks. “If only the cat had died, Miss Nora would have needed me again. But my eyes are so bad I mixed things up!”

  “You made a mistake,” Helen said, and something bubbled up in her chest; relief, perhaps, at not having been so wrong about Zelma after all. She could well understand Zelma mixing up the gourmet cat food for the pâté in the container marked The Catery.

  “Now the cat’s going to have what should be mine?” Zelma struck a match and held it up. “No,” she said, “I don’t think so. It isn’t right. It’s just not right.”

  A lump of fear filled Helen’s throat as she watched Zelma lower her arm. “No!” she cried out, about to lunge forward.

  But Zelma dropped the burning stick to the gas-­soaked heap at her feet. With a pop, the combustible pile exploded.

  Helen fell backward.

  Flames rose into a solid wall of fire, crackling and snapping as they leapt higher and wider. Smoke quickly filled the room, choking off Helen’s breath.

  “Zelma!” Helen found enough air in her lungs to scream, her heart racing as the smoke and flames spread between them. The heat pushed Helen back toward the stairs and away from the fire and Zelma.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  HELEN COUGHED CONVULSIVELY, drawing her hand to her face, her breaths choked off as the fire sucked the oxygen from the air.

  She backed up until she bumped into the wall. Then she felt her way through the smoky haze. Her eyes burned, and her throat felt hot and raw. Adrenaline coursed through her veins. She had to get out of there and fast. She couldn’t risk trying to help Zelma. She only prayed there was some other way out and Zelma could escape. The flames were everywhere, feeding on the paint cans and storage boxes that filled Eleanora’s basement.

  Helen blindly made her way up the stairwell, holding onto the railing. Her lungs aching, she hacked with every breath.

  She dashed up the steps and burst free of the basement, closing the door behind her as she gasped for fresh air. Even still the smoke followed her, seeping beneath the door and swirling about her feet like the fog in an old movie.

  Without another thought, she snatched Eleanora’s phone from the wall and dialed 911. The moment the voice asked, “What’s your emergency,” Helen blurted out, “There’s a fire in the basement of the Duncan house on Harbor Drive in River Bend! The woman who set it might be trapped down there. Please, hurry!”

  As smoke began to fill the kitchen, Helen ran to the back door and pushed her way out to the driveway. As she made her way free of the house, coughing and sputtering, she felt thankful that Lady Godiva wasn’t inside.

  She fell to her knees on the grass, shrieking as an explosion shattered the glass in the front windows. Helen buried her head in her arms, afraid to look up until she heard the sound of a fire engine approach.

  As she pulled herself up from the lawn, she saw that curious neighbors had begun to gather on the driveway. Helen walked toward them, glancing back at the house to see blue-­tinged flames licking at the broken windows.

  The noise of sirens grew loud in her ears, and she spotted the engine from Grafton turning from the street onto the drive. It honked its horn as it drew clo
ser to the Duncan house. Men in protective gear hopped off as soon as the vehicle stopped. Calling out to each other, they unleashed a never-­ending hose from the top of the truck and hooked it to a nearby fire hydrant.

  The hundred-­year-­old house crackled and groaned as the fire bloomed. The flames reached as high as the gingerbread-­latticework atop the porch. Helen winced every time another window popped and shattered.

  “Oh, Zelma,” Helen murmured, as the crowd around her thickened and the cacophony of voices and noises from man and machine nearly deafened her.

  Someone reached for her then, calling her name, and she found Sheriff Biddle holding onto her arm, his face so near her own that his nose touched the tip of her nose.

  “What the hell happened?” he yelled.

  “Zelma,” she cried in return. “She killed Eleanora, but it was a mistake!”

  “What?” He pointed to his ear. He couldn’t hear her.

  Helen shook her head in frustration, leaning in closer and shouting, “Zelma lit a fire in the basement. She didn’t come out with me!”

  His frown deepened, and she knew he’d understood her every word.

  A fireman came their way, gesturing at them and the other onlookers, warning them to back off, urging them away until they stood on the sidewalk.

  From there Helen watched as the men fought the flames. The way the firefighters held the hose looked like a tug-­of-­war. Helen couldn’t tell at first who was winning: them or the fire. Her eyes filled with tears at the thought of Zelma inside, and she clasped her hands at her breasts, praying silently, knowing she’d just have to wait it out.

  It was two hours before the fire was brought under control, though it was another hour still before the crowd of spectators disbanded, along with a van from the Alton Telegraph.

  As the firemen hosed down the still-­hot embers, Helen repeated her story to the fire captain and then again to the sheriff.

  “She admitted she killed old Mrs. Duncan?” Biddle asked as though he didn’t believe her.