To Helen Back: A River Road Mystery

by Susan McBride

  Despite the sheriff’s hands on her arms, Shotsie kept screaming as loud as she could, “You did it! YOU MURDERED MY HUSBAND!”

  Felicity swayed, and her fingers lost their grip on the shovel. It fell to the porch with a clang. Then her eyes rolled up into her head and down she went as well, crumpling up like a rag doll.

  Chapter 19

  HELEN WALKED BRISKLY away from Felicity’s after having finally gotten her friend to down a cup of chamomile tea along with some aspirin. Felicity was so disturbed by Shotsie’s accusations that she’d trembled and wept on and off for nearly an hour. Finally, Helen had calmed her down enough to convince her to lie down.

  When Felicity had eventually drifted off, Helen tucked an afghan around her, then slipped out of the house, careful not to slam the screen door.

  She paused now at the stone bridge that led to the chapel. She looked up at the steeple with its whitewashed clapboard, thinking of Milton’s funeral service and all who’d attended it. One among them, she realized, could be his killer.

  She shuddered, finding it impossible to believe that Milton was murdered in cold blood by someone who lived in quiet River Bend.

  You did it . . . you murdered my husband!

  Shotsie’s words to Felicity rattled through her brain, and Helen pressed her fingers to her temples, willing them to go away.

  Her friend had not done it, of that she felt absolutely sure. Yes, Felicity had lived in fear of Milton, but she could not have harmed the man, any more than she herself could have.

  But what of Felicity’s missing shovel? she suddenly wondered. Could Shotsie be right about one thing at least, that it was the murder weapon?

  Oh, dear.

  Helen sighed. Perhaps it was merely coincidence. Felicity’s shovel had likely been swiped by the bored adolescents who rode their bikes up and down the River Road on weekends and invaded River Bend in small packs like prepubescent Hell’s Angels.

  As she walked alongside the creek that ran through the chapel grounds, the squeal of a swing on the nearby playground caught her attention. She turned toward the sound and saw Madeline Fister on the swing, her dark hair limp in her face, her feet listlessly scraping the dirt. The girl vaguely moved to and fro, the motion slow, even mournful when coupled with the sporadic moan of the chains as they stretched back and forth.

  Helen raised a hand to wave, but Madeline didn’t look up. She continued to push at the ground with the tips of her toes.

  Was it wise for Maddy to be out of bed so soon after she’d miscarried? Helen was tempted to scold her and send her home. But the pastor’s daughter looked so sad and lonely, like she needed a hand to hold, not a chastising.

  Helen crossed the bridge over the creek and entered the playground. It seemed that Madeline must not have heard her approach. The girl didn’t look up, her head bowed even as Helen said, “Hello, Madeline.”

  But Maddy just continued her dispirited swaying.

  “My, that looks like fun,” Helen tried instead. “Why, I don’t think I’ve done this since . . . well, I can’t rightly remember.” She lowered herself onto the swing next to Madeline’s. As soon as she pressed her sneakers into the dirt to propel herself forward, the girl brought her own swing to a dead stop.

  Helen dragged her heels and came to a standstill beside her.

  “Madeline, honey,” she said, forcing herself to smile despite the girl’s frown. “Would you like to talk?”

  The girl snorted and stared off in the distance.

  “Are you all right? I’m concerned—”

  “Don’t be, ’cause I’m great, okay?” Madeline snapped, with so much anger that Helen was hardly fooled by her declaration. “Can’t you just leave me alone?” she muttered, and dropped her chin, avoiding Helen’s gaze.

  “Are you sure you should be up and about so soon?” Helen said softly. “Your body went through something awful.”

  “Whatever.” Madeline rolled her eyes.

  “I know you’re young and strong, but it might be best not to push it—” Helen stopped herself, biting off the lecture she’d been about to give the girl, deciding it wasn’t her place to do so. She wasn’t her mother or even her grandma. “Look, you can’t blame me for worrying, not after I saw you in such pain. And I know your father’s sick over what happened. I wouldn’t doubt that he’s wondering where you are right now.”

  “Right,” Madeline snapped, her chin jerking up. Her dark eyes crackled with emotion. “My father’s only concerned about himself and how other people see him. He should have minded his own business. He ruined everything for me.”

  “How do you mean he ruined everything?” Helen held onto the chains and leaned forward, watching Maddy. “Your father didn’t cause you to lose the baby. What happened to you was simply”—she shrugged—“God’s way.”

  “God’s way!” Madeline cursed under her breath. “You sound just like him. All I ever hear from his mouth is what God’s way should be. What about my way, huh? Don’t I have any say in how I live?”

  “I think you must,” Helen told her, speaking softly. though her tone was firm enough. “Or else you wouldn’t have found yourself pregnant.”

  Maddy stared at her, her mouth hanging open, as though she couldn’t believe Helen had just said what she did. Then she pressed her lips together and started to stand. Only her legs wobbled so much she sat back down again.

  “Have you told your young man?” Helen dared to ask.

  “My young man,” Maddy repeated, and laughed, shaking her head.

  “Your father said you were involved in a serious relationship, one with an older boy . . .”

  “Oh, my God!” The girl turned beet red. “He told you that? Can’t anything I do in this town be private?”

  Helen didn’t want Madeline to get the wrong impression, so she clarified, “Oh, sweetheart, no, your father didn’t spread gossip about you. He was so worried. What he said to me was in the strictest confidence. Besides,” she went on, “if anyone’s given River Bend something to gossip about, it’s not him, it’s you.”

  Didn’t teenagers realize that there were consequences for their actions? Helen couldn’t help wondering, especially when it was the seventeen-year-old preacher’s daughter who’d gotten herself in quite a pickle.

  Madeline said through gritted teeth, “Why don’t you lay off, okay? I have to take enough crap from my dad. I don’t need it from someone I’m not even related to.”

  “Fair enough,” Helen said, and let go of the chains. She wiped her hands on her pants and got up. “I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you want.” She took one last look at Maddy’s angry face and turned away.

  “No, wait!”

  Helen hesitated, surprised at the girl’s reaction.

  “You don’t have to go,” Maddy called out to her. “You can stay. I mean, it’s a free country. You can do what you want.”

  “Okay,” Helen said, and returned to the swing. But she didn’t say anything more to Maddy. She figured it was the girl’s turn to speak.

  “Look, Mrs. Evans, it’s not you I’m angry with, all right?” Madeline said with a sigh. “It’s my father.”

  Helen kept quiet, knowing how difficult it was for the girl to even say that much. She put her hands in her lap and waited.

  “I did have, um, something serious going on,” Maddy tried to explain, her voice shaky. “But it doesn’t matter anymore because it was over almost as fast as it started. Daddy saw to that when he found out. He told the guy that if he didn’t back off, he’d report him to the police.”

  The police? Yes, Helen recalled Fister saying that he should have called the sheriff about Maddy’s affair. But wasn’t that going to extremes? Was this “older” guy not an older teenager, as Helen had first suspected? Was he a full-grown man, living in River Bend? If that was the case, it was no wonder the pastor was beside himself
.

  Maddy blinked to fight back tears. Those that slipped past her lashes, she wiped away with her sleeve. “I thought I was in love, isn’t that stupid? Maybe I’m just messed up because I haven’t had a mom in so long. I don’t know.” She stared down at her lap. “He said sweet things to me, told me I was pretty and smart. No boys at school even give me the time of day.”

  “It’s nice to feel loved,” Helen told her, trying to keep the pity from her voice. Lack of self-esteem made young girls so vulnerable, so apt to do crazy things. “Did he know you were pregnant, Maddy?” she asked as kindly as she could. “Did he offer to take responsibility?”

  “How could he?” Madeline lifted her chin, and the tears started rolling again, splashing unheeded down her cheeks. “He was married, okay?”

  The girl’s lover was older and married?

  Heavens to Betsy!

  Helen grabbed the chains on her either side to keep from falling off her seat. She kept her shock to herself, and because Maddy hadn’t answered her question, asked again, “Did he know about the baby?”

  “Yes,” Maddy said, and nodded. Her voice sounded so small, lacking its earlier rebelliousness. “I thought he’d be glad, that it’d give him a reason to leave his wife. Only he didn’t. He wasn’t going to.”

  The girl paused for a moment, sniffling, and Helen reached for her hand. She half expected Madeline to pull away but she didn’t.

  “I thought he loved me,” the girl whispered, “that he wanted to take care of me. I told myself he’d change his mind if I gave him some space. But it doesn’t matter now anyway. It’s too late.”

  Helen sighed. What a mess! She wished she could get the fellow’s name and go wring his neck! Why would a grown man do this to such a fragile child? What could he have been thinking? But that was the problem, she realized. He hadn’t been thinking at all, at least not with his head.

  She squeezed Madeline’s hand. “I know this sounds ridiculous at the moment when everything’s so painful, but maybe it’s for the best. I truly believe things happen for a reason.”

  The girl stiffened. “That’s just what my father said.”

  “He loves you so much, you know,” Helen told her. “Maybe you should listen to him.”

  “Right.” Maddy tugged her hand free of Helen’s and stood so quickly the chains on the swing rattled. “What happened is my father’s fault, and I’ll blame him for it till the day I die, I swear I will!”

  Then she took off running.

  Helen could hear her sobs as she crossed the playground and raced over the bridge.

  Oh, boy.

  Helen sat on the swing, dumbfounded. What had just happened? Heck, what was happening to River Bend? First, Milton Grone’s death, which had turned into murder, and now Madeline Fister admitting to having had an affair with an older, married man.

  With a sigh, Helen rose from the swing and brushed off her pants, thinking that her cozy hometown was coming to resemble Peyton Place far too closely for anyone’s comfort.

  Chapter 20

  WHEN HELEN 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.

  FIVE MINUTES LATER 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?”