Unti Susan McBride #2

by Susan McBride

  THE MORE HELEN thought about Grace Simpson’s murder and everything she’d learned so far, the less it all made sense.

  After the manuscript had been discovered burning in Alma’s trash, she felt more sure than ever that Grace’s unpublished tell-­all book was not at the heart of the crime but merely a red herring. And it had worked remarkably well, seeing as how Frank Biddle seemed convinced that all clues led to Nancy.

  If the perpetrator’s goal had been to destroy the manuscript, why wouldn’t destruction have been enough? Why kill Grace?

  Helen sighed, ignoring the crossword that lay on her lap. She stared out the porch screens, not seeing the green of tree-­covered bluffs beyond, concentrating instead on the tangle of ideas running through her head.

  Who had known Grace would be meeting with Harold Faulkner in St. Louis that particular night? Nancy had, of course, and Helen figured everyone at LaVyrle’s had found out, since Grace had gone to get her hair done beforehand and had been confronted by the angry mob before she’d left.

  But who stood to profit most from her death?

  Was it Max? Unless Grace had a long-­lost relative, he appeared to be the likely—­and only—­beneficiary, especially if the rumor was true about Grace not having a will.

  What about Harold Faulkner, Grace’s publisher? Had there been problems between them that would’ve made publication of her book simpler with Grace gone?

  Then there was that troublemaker, Charlie Bryan, whom Biddle had locked up for allegedly selling stolen goods. Had Charlie gone to Grace’s house to rob her, assuming she’d be out for the evening, and been surprised by her return? If so, did that mean the other burglaries might be Charlie’s doing as well? It seemed to fit the pattern, Helen thought, noting that Mavis White, Violet Farley, and Mattie Oldbridge had all been away when their homes had been violated. If one of them had come home unexpectedly, would they have been killed?

  Helen had known all three were going away, as had the rest of the regulars at LaVyrle’s. Mavis had been in the salon to have her hair colored before her daughter’s wedding. Violet had come in for a cut and blow-­dry before a bridge tournament in Kansas City. Mattie had had her nails done before spending the weekend with her nephew in St. Louis. All three were widows who lived alone. Grace, too, was a single woman on her own. Was that the connection? Was the real motive robbery, only in Grace’s case a bungled one?

  Why were there no telltale signs of who did it? Helen recalled Sarah Biddle telling her that the sheriff had found no fingerprints at Mattie’s house and no signs of forced entry. How had the thief or thieves broken in without actually breaking and entering? Had they somehow gotten keys? Did they know enough to wear gloves?

  Helen pressed her fingers to her temples.

  She felt as confused as ever.

  Something about the crimes nagged at the back of her brain, but she couldn’t single out what it was. She only seemed to shove the thought further away the harder she tried to retrieve it.

  Pushing her puzzle aside, she rose to her sneakered feet and tugged down her pink warm-­up jacket. She snatched up her purse and headed out to her gray Chevy, quickly slipping behind the wheel. She drove the few blocks to the beauty shop, pulling against the curb and noticing the CLOSED sign in the window.

  Rats, she thought, knowing the salon would stay closed until Tuesday. LaVyrle always took Sunday and Monday off. And what was it Mary had told her after the ser­vice? Hadn’t she mentioned LaVyrle was working another job on her days off?

  Helen had only been listening with half an ear, too busy watching Max Simpson holding onto Nancy’s arm. Had Mary mentioned where LaVyrle was working part-­time?

  Just as she was about to pull away from the curb, she looked up to see a familiar brown-­haired girl emerging from the diner.

  “Mary!” she called, forgetting her windows were closed.

  She pressed a hand on the horn.

  The girl looked up, pushing aside the brown curtain of overgrown bangs from her eyes. She waved and smiled.

  Helen finally got her windows down and motioned the young woman over. Mary stooped down to peer through the passenger side.

  “Hey, Mrs. Evans,” she said in her feather-­soft voice. “I just finished up lunch. Erma had a special on meat loaf sandwiches, and they’re my favorite.”

  “Yes, they’re very good,” Helen agreed, leaning over the console. “I had some questions I wanted to ask LaVyrle about Grace Simpson.”

  “About Grace?” The girl rubbed at her elbows. “Why?”

  “You told me Grace was a regular of LaVyrle’s.”

  “Uh-­huh.”

  “Maybe she mentioned something to LaVyrle the day she was killed and LaVyrle forgot because it seemed unimportant at the time,” Helen said, throwing out, “perhaps she was meeting with someone that night other than her publisher.”

  “Oh, I see.” Mary nodded her head. The motion knocked her hair into her eyes again. She tried to tuck the strands behind her ears, but they didn’t seem to want to stay.

  “You said she was working somewhere else on Sundays and Mondays?” Helen prodded. “Can you tell me where?”

  Mary looked around her. “I wish I hadn’t told you that, Mrs. Evans. LaVyrle doesn’t want folks to know. She doesn’t want them feeling sorry for her.”

  “It’s important, Mary, please.”

  Mary’s eyes fell to her feet. “She’s working at a hardware store in Alton. It’s called Ernie’s, and it’s across from the casino boat downtown.”

  “Thank you, dear.”

  The girl’s chin lifted. Her eyes blinked. “But don’t let on that I told you.”

  “I won’t.”

  With a wave, Helen was off.

  It took her twenty minutes to reach Alton and find the hardware store Mary had described. The place was indeed just across the highway from the Alton Belle, and Helen was afraid at first that she might have to use the casino’s lot when she could find no parking close by. But then a car rolled out of Ernie’s side lot, and she quickly took its place.

  Helen told herself to proceed carefully. She didn’t want to get Mary in trouble, and she didn’t want to put LaVyrle on the spot. Helen had been a client of the Cut ’n’ Curl for long enough to know that LaVyrle’s customers were the ones who spilled their guts, not the other way around. When it came to her own life, LaVyrle was as tight-­lipped as they came.

  Helen locked her car door as she left the Chevy, wondering how a mom-­and-­pop store like Ernie’s could stay in business with the monstrous chains and discount places that were its competition nowadays. But she was glad of it, regardless.

  Outside the front doors, stacks of wooden planters filled with annuals greeted her. A sticker on the glass door said PUSH and Helen did just that, pausing as she stepped inside.

  Several checkout counters sat vacant at the front. A row of carpet cleaners for rent lined a wall, and a station where keys were made occupied a near corner. A static-­plagued radio station drifted over her head, though Helen couldn’t tell whether the song it played was Sinatra or Patsy Cline.

  “Hello?” she called out, hugging her purse to her side. When no one came, she started wandering the product-­filled aisles. She finally found a white-­haired man in stained gray slacks and matching gray shirt with a nametag. He was poking through a shelf filled with marked-­down nuts, bolts, and screws.

  “Do you work here?” she asked, only to have him shake his head.

  So she moved on.

  In the garden section with the rubber hoses and plastic thermometers, she spotted a silver-­haired woman carefully inspecting several brands of birdfeeders and a man in the power tool aisle talking with a salesclerk in a baseball cap and a bright red apron. Helen almost walked right past until she heard LaVyrle’s voice.

  “Look at this model, all right? If it’s not the most durable dr
ill kit you ever saw, then I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”

  Helen rounded the corner.

  “LaVyrle?”

  The familiar voice shut up. The customer didn’t look away from the red kit in his hands, but the clerk’s shoulders stiffened.

  “I’ll be back in a minute, hon,” she told the man, giving him a pat. “Don’t you go anywhere now, ya hear?”

  Helen gawked as LaVyrle approached in jeans and sneakers beneath the red apron. Helen had never seen the beautician in anything but skirts and high heels. Even LaVyrle’s face wasn’t dolled up, and she was minus her telltale blond bouffant. Without her accoutrements, she looked plain and nearly unrecognizable. It was an amazing transformation.

  But the scowl on her lips was pure LaVyrle Hunnecker.

  Helen smiled awkwardly. “I’m sorry to bother you at work, LaVyrle, but we need to talk.”

  LaVyrle latched hold of her elbow, dragging her out of the aisle and around the corner with such force that Helen felt strong-­armed. She caught her breath as LaVyrle propelled her into an empty aisle between shelves of light fixtures and finally released her.

  “What in blazes are ya doin’ here, Mrs. E?” she ground out. “How on earth did ya find where I was working, anyway? Did Mary blab? I should wring that girl’s neck.”

  “For heaven’s sake,” Helen murmured and rubbed her sore arm. “I hope you don’t treat all your customers like this, or you won’t get much repeat business.”

  “I’m sorry,” LaVyrle apologized, exhaling slowly. “I didn’t mean t’ hurt you. I was just surprised t’ see you here.”

  “It’s okay.” Helen bent her elbow then straightened it. “I’ll survive.”

  LaVyrle glanced behind her. “You know, the Walmart in Jerseyville’s a lot more convenient—­”

  “Which is why you’re not working there, eh?” Helen remarked. “Though I don’t see why you felt the need to hide the fact you’ve gotten yourself a second job. It’s not a crime. A lot of ­people have to do it to pay the bills.”

  “I’m not hiding,” LaVyrle insisted and crossed her arms. “I just like t’ keep my personal life to myself. Is that a crime?”

  “No.” Helen shook her head, feeling like a Nosy Nellie once again.

  “You know how the ladies in town are,” LaVyrle said. “If they’d have known I was here at Ernie’s these past three months, I’d have been the hot topic at the shop instead of who’s throwing what party or who’s goin’ on a vacation.” Her pale cheeks blushed. “Gossip’s good for business, but I don’t wanna be the main event.”

  “I understand.” Helen fiddled with her purse strap. “I know I said this before, but if things are really so bad, you can ask for assistance. It’s okay to accept a helping hand.”

  LaVyrle lifted her eyes. “So you’re determined t’ make me the church’s next charity case, is that it? Think you can sell enough quilts to pay Mary’s salary and the rest of the shop’s expenses? How about taking care of my rent, too, and making sure my mom’s got enough in the bank for her and Justin. . . .”

  She caught herself, not saying more. Beneath the red apron, her chest rapidly rose and fell. “Never mind,” she said, waving Helen off. “I can take care of what’s mine. I’ll do whatever I have to t’ hold my own.”

  “Who is Justin?” Helen couldn’t stop herself from asking. “Was that the boy in the picture that fell out of your drawer?”

  LaVyrle gave her a hard look. “Excuse me if I don’t want my family t’ be the subject of conversation at your next bridge game.”

  Helen was taken aback. “Do I seem as callous as that?”

  “I don’t need my laundry aired out for all of River Bend t’ see, you got that?”

  Helen couldn’t speak.

  “It’s not just you.” LaVyrle sniffed. “I know how folks talk. I know their bad habits and whatever good ones they’ve got, what their husbands eat for dinner, whose kids have diaper rash, what they got for Christmas.”

  “I guess we do tend to talk when someone’s willing to listen,” Helen remarked with a frown. She dared to touch LaVyrle’s arm and felt it tremble. “I don’t want you to be afraid to come to me if you feel desperate or if your son needs anything—­”

  “Justin’s fine.” LaVyrle shrugged off her touch. “My mom’s been takin’ care of him for me ever since his daddy took off when he was born. He stays with her in Godfrey.” She lifted her chin, and her unmade-­up face looked so vulnerable that it nearly broke Helen’s heart. “I got things under control like I always do. So you can leave Ernie’s knowing you did your good deed for the day, all right? I got work to do, besides.”

  “Wait! I didn’t even ask you about Grace,” Helen tried to say, but LaVyrle walked away before she finished.

  Helen didn’t have the guts to chase LaVyrle down. Besides, her mind twisted and turned with all the things LaVyrle had told her, pieces of a woman’s life that had remained hidden in shadow. How could she have felt like she’d known the beautician so well when she’d hardly known her at all?

  Helen left Ernie’s Hardware with a sad knot in her chest. She drove back to River Bend in silence, no more sure of anything or anyone than when she’d left.

  Chapter 29

  HELEN TURNED OFF the highway and rolled into River Bend. Preoccupied with her thoughts, she barely gave the old lighthouse with its bright red roof a cursory glance as she passed it by. As she entered the town proper, she hardly noticed Serenity Garden, with its newly planted zinnias, snapdragons, and daisies. A woman with a watering can straightened up from the flowerbeds and lifted a hand to wave, but Helen caught the motion too late from the corner of her eye, so she tucked her chin down and drove on.

  What am I missing? Helen kept asking herself as she headed down Main Street toward home. Why did it seem that the more she dug for answers, the more questions she turned up?

  She sensed that everything she needed was there, stored away in her head. If only she could dip in her hand and snatch out that one piece tying the odds and ends together.

  Like an elusive word in a crossword, it would come to her in time. Helen only hoped that she could wait.

  When she reached the downtown, Helen slowed to a snail’s pace, noticing a small commotion in front of the sheriff’s office. Several ­people stood on the sidewalk, and there were more across the street outside the diner, watching as Biddle helped a passenger out of his squad car. Helen recognized the woman—­Hilary Dell, who owned the stationery store and who was a substitute for Helen’s bridge group. The two quickly disappeared into the sheriff’s office, and the rubberneckers began to disperse.

  She saw Agnes March looking on from in front of her antiques store, and Helen rolled down a window, calling out, “What’s going on?”

  “Hey, there, Helen,” Agnes said, fingering the pearls at her throat as she leaned into the window. “You’re just getting back to town, are you?”

  “I’ve been in Alton.”

  “Then you’ve missed all the excitement.” Agnes’s weathered face grew animated. “There’s been another burglary.”

  “What?”

  “This time it was at Hilary Dell’s,” Agnes told her and wrinkled her nose. “She’d been away for one night and returned this morning to find her place ransacked. She’d put up a camera over her back door after Mattie’s place was broken into, so they know who did it.”

  “They do?”

  Agnes nodded. “It was Charlie Bryan. Hilary said the image was kind of iffy, but there was no doubt in her mind.”

  “Charlie Bryan,” Helen repeated, wondering how that was possible. Hadn’t the sheriff put him in lockup overnight? How on earth could he be two places at once?

  “Been nice chatting, Helen,” Agnes said and smiled. “But I’d better get back to the store.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  A horn honked behin
d her, and Helen moved forward enough to slip into a vacant parking spot on the street.

  She grabbed her bag and hurried to the door of Biddle’s office. With a gulp of air, she squared her shoulders and marched inside.

  “Let me get the image on the screen so we can get a good look at it,” Biddle was saying as he fiddled with a computer on his desk, swiveling it around so Hilary Dell could see the monitor from the chair in which she sat.

  When Helen shut the door behind her with a click, the sheriff glanced up. Hilary’s head swiveled. Her face looked puffy and very upset.

  “Helen!” Hilary cried out, seeming happy to see her.

  “Mrs. Evans,” the sheriff said, far less pleased by the intrusion. “What are you doing here?”

  “I need to talk to you about the murder,” Helen said as she approached his desk.

  “Well, can it wait?” Biddle asked. “I’m in the middle of something here.”

  “My dear friend,” Helen cooed and went over to Hilary. She settled on the chair beside her. “Are you all right?”

  The other woman nodded. “I’m okay, Helen, just shaken up a bit.”

  The sheriff cleared his throat. “Like I was saying, ma’am, Mrs. Dell and I are in the middle of something.”

  Helen gestured at the computer screen. “Please, go on,” she told him. “I’ll sit here quiet as a mouse. You don’t mind, Hilary, do you?”

  Her friend shook her head. “Not a bit.”

  Biddle grumbled as he fed a DVD into the system. Pretty soon, black-­and-­white images filled the monitor.

  The picture looked crisp enough to Helen. She could see the back door and stoop of Hilary’s house, as well as part of the driveway.

  “My goodness,” she remarked, “wherever did you get such a thing? Did you have to call a security company?”

  “Would you believe I ordered it online?” Hilary replied. “It’s rather like the monitor my daughter used for her kids, only it’s meant for outdoors and has night vision and records on a DVR. My son-­in-­law set it up the day after Mattie got robbed. I wouldn’t have felt safe otherwise.”