“I couldn’t get here any sooner,” Delilah told her, “ ’cause I had to change my clothes first. I didn’t want to have to face old Milt in my pink polyester number with grease and coffee splattered all over my apron.”
So Delilah had likely arrived just before the mob from town hall marched up the street toward the Grones’ house. Helen wondered if perhaps the killer had still been around when Delilah saw Milt on the ground.
Before Helen knew it, the other woman was shaking another cigarette out of the pack. She involuntarily made a face, and Delilah picked up on it.
“I know,” Milton’s ex-wife said. “It’s a nasty habit.”
And expensive, Helen silently added.
“I was tryin’ to quit, but this whole business has shot my nerves to hell.” She shrugged and pulled out her lighter.
Sure that she’d inhaled her quota of secondhand smoke for one afternoon, Helen hugged her bag to her chest—the sack felt as if it had doubled in weight over the past ten minutes—and told Delilah, “I should get home. Amber will shred the place if I don’t fix him some lunch soon.”
The redhead squinted. “Amber?”
“My cat.”
“Ah.” The cigarette bouncing on her lips, Delilah commented, “I like pets well enough. It was Milton who despised ’em.”
“So I heard,” Helen said, hardly able to remember the number of times she’d listened to Felicity complaining about Grone taking potshots at poor Kitty.
“Well, it was nice seeing you again, Mrs. Evans,” Delilah said, waving her cigarette as she walked to her car.
Helen headed up the sidewalk and had gotten but a few yards ahead when several riotous bangs stopped her dead in her tracks.
For heaven’s sake!
She turned see the green VW noisily pulling out of the gas station, rattling and rumbling as it chugged onto Main Street.
She watched the car go and frowned. She would bet all two dozen cans of cat food in her sack that it wasn’t the last the town would see of Delilah Grone, at least not until things were settled with Milt’s estate. And if Delilah didn’t get what she wanted? Helen didn’t doubt that the first Mrs. Grone would fight the second Mrs. Grone tooth and nail for every penny, kind of like Godzilla vs. Mothra on the late-late movie.
Helen shook her head and continued walking.
Chapter 26
ONCE AMBER HAD devoured his can of Catch o’ the Day and Helen had gobbled down some chicken salad, she settled down on the porch and propped her bifocals on her nose. She picked up her purple pen and Sunday’s edition of the Telegraph, folded to expose the crossword puzzle. Its squares were only half filled, as she hadn’t had the chance to finish without interruption since starting it the day before.
Four down: a three-letter word for male swan.
She scrunched her brow, tapping the pen against her chin until a slow smile curved her lips.
She put the purple tip to the squares and scratched out cob.
Five down: a nine-letter word for Alexander Graham Bell’s invention.
The telephone rang.
Helen slapped down her pen and slipped off her glasses.
She marched into the house from the porch to stop the intrusive chirping. A nine-letter word for Bell’s invention. Phooey! That was too easy. She didn’t need such an obvious hint.
She snatched up the receiver from her old-fangled wall phone. “Hello?” she said briskly.
“Helen!” The agitated voice was Felicity’s. “Can you get here and fast? The sheriff’s on his way up. I can see his auto on the road! I’ve a dreadful feeling he’s coming to arrest me!”
With only a terse, “I’m on my way,” Helen hung up and grabbed her keys. Not two minutes later, she pulled up with a screech in front of Felicity’s.
Biddle’s car sat on the shoulder of the road, nearer to the Grones’ house.
As Helen parked and exited her Chevy, Felicity flew out through the screen door and scuttled down the steps. One hand clutched at her hat, the other at her heart.
“Are you all right?” Helen asked, confused. “Where’s Biddle?”
“He wasn’t coming after me,” her friend answered breathlessly. She tipped her head toward her neighbor’s. “He’s in the yard next door, poking through the weeds.”
Helen glanced past the wood fence. Sure enough, there was Frank Biddle, clad in his uniform of dusty tan, prodding an overgrown rhododendron with a stick.
“What’s he looking for?” she asked.
“Something to do with the murder, I’m sure.” Felicity wiped her palms down the sides of her housedress. “I can’t imagine what it might be.”
Helen started off across the lawn, only to have Felicity call her back.
“What, in God’s name are you doing?”
“I want to see what he’s up to,” she answered, squinting through the afternoon sun at Felicity watching her from beneath the cock-eyed hat brim, looking worried. “Maybe I’ll learn something new.”
“Such as?”
“I’ll let you know,” Helen said over her shoulder as she continued walking, her sneakered feet squishing in the grass.
She waved as Biddle glanced up. Then she ducked between the rails of the fence rather than go around it, though it took a good deal of wiggling to get through. Before she had a chance to join him and ask a single question, the Grones’ screen door slapped open and shut.
Shotsie came outside, her hands on her hips and eyes narrowed. The frown on her lips only underscored her disapproval. “What do ya think you’re doing, snooping around here like that?” she snapped at them, stomping forward. “Don’t you need some kind of permit before you can traipse around my place like you own it?”
“It’s called a warrant, ma’am,” Biddle said after clearing his throat.
“What?”
“A warrant, Mrs. Grone,” he repeated, “not a permit. And, no, I don’t need one to search a crime scene. All I need is this.” He patted the star-shaped badge at his breast with a dirt smudged finger. “I’m looking for evidence.”
“Will it take long?” Shotsie asked, pushing at the limp curls on her brow. “ ’Cause it gives me the creeps having you sneak around like a burglar. My nerves aren’t too good as it is, you understand.”
“I do,” Biddle assured her. The sideways look he cast at Helen indicated he was anxious to get on with it himself. “Just give me an hour.”
“A whole hour? What else do ya expect to find?” Shotsie cocked her head, befuddled. “You’ve got the shovel that did it. All you’ve got to do now is put that snooty Miss Timmons in the slammer.”
Helen stepped out of Biddle’s shadow. “Just because the murder weapon belongs to Felicity doesn’t mean she killed your husband with it. Anyone could have taken it from her yard and used it.”
“But her fingerprints were on it, weren’t they?” Shotsie remarked. “Everyone’s talkin’ about that.”
Helen opened her mouth, then Biddle coughed. She shut her trap and let him speak.
“Yes, Miss Timmons’s prints were on her shovel. They were the only prints, and there were few enough of them.” He absently beat at the knee-high weeds with the stick in his hands. “It almost seems as though someone tried to wipe the handle clean.”
It was the first Helen had heard of that. “Isn’t that suspicious?” she asked.
Biddle nodded. “It is to me.”
Shotsie scowled. “What it proves is that the nutcase killed Milt! She hit him with her old shovel and then tried to ditch it in the bushes behind her house. Even I can see it as plain as the big ol’ nose on your face!”
“Maybe you should go back inside,” Helen said, fuming, “and let the sheriff investigate.”
“Oh, yeah?” Shotsie curled her hands to fists. “So now you’re the Queen of River Bend, bossin’ me around?”
&n
bsp; “Well, someone has to.”
“Ladies, please! Stop bickering.” Biddle slapped the stick against his open palm like a potbellied Patton. “Now if both of you would please leave me in peace. I’ve got things to do.” He walked away, his head bent as he continued his search for clues, nudging uprooted rocks and pushing at clusters of weeds with his stick.
Helen looked hard at Shotsie, finding it difficult to sympathize with her after all her efforts to blame Felicity.
Though she knew she should go as the sheriff had suggested, Helen found herself marching toward Shotsie. When she was close enough, she told her in a low voice, “I realize you’re angry, my dear, but you must stop accusing Felicity of murder. You might as well point your finger at the minister.”
Helen half expected Shotsie to blow up again, shaking her tiny fists and screaming. But Shotsie didn’t. Instead, she laughed.
“You’re right,” the blonde said, tucking her arms beneath her breasts. “I should point a finger at Fister. He had as much reason as anyone to want Miltie dead, considering how his slutty daughter tried to trap my husband.”
Helen stood there, stunned. So Milton Grone was the older married man who’d fooled around with Maddy Fister. She’d had her suspicions, particularly after her strange conversation with Earnest Fister just that morning. But how long, she wondered, had Shotsie known?
“The wife is always the last to learn, right, Mrs. Evans?” Shotsie said. But rather than rant and rave, she seemed to deflate. Shotsie shrugged and cast her gaze down to the steps. When she finally looked up again, her face was drawn, the lines around her mouth and her eyes deeper. She seemed to have aged a decade in minutes. “It was ugly,” she said softly, tugging on the cuffs of her cardigan. “Milt threw it right in my face after we’d had another fight before bed. He said he was tired of my nagging, that if I didn’t like how he lived his life, I should just leave like Delilah had and it’d be no skin off his back.”
Helen murmured, “I’m sorry,” and she was. There was so much about Milton Grone she hadn’t known, so many ways he’d hurt the people around him again and again. It was a wonder he’d stayed alive as long as he had.
“He told me he had a young thing falling all over him, but he didn’t say he’d knocked her up,” she added, blinking back tears. “I found that nugget out on my own. People tell secrets in awful loud voices sometimes.”
She’d overhead? But how? Helen wondered. The day that Madeline miscarried, only Fanny and Amos Melville were around, besides Madeline’s father, and Earnest Fister certainly wouldn’t have gossiped about such a thing, nor would Doc. And since she hadn’t mentioned it to a soul, that left one other person.
Damn you, Fanny, she thought.
“Why did he do it?” Shotsie asked, speaking to herself as much as to Helen. “I tried to sort that out, too. I thought he loved me, and maybe he did once. But this deal with Wet ’n’ Woolly changed him. He started acting funny, like he was tired of me, tired of us. I guess he liked having a teenager lusting after him.”
“Why didn’t you—” Helen started to ask.
“Kick him out?” Shotsie finished, taking the words right out of her mouth. She shrugged. “He was my husband. He was all I had. I wasn’t gonna lose him to a child who wasn’t even out of high school.” She jerked her chin up, eyes glistening. “He never would’ve left me for her, no matter what he said. I think he mostly did it just to get Fister’s goat.”
“Oh, my dear, I’m so—”
“Don’t do that, okay?” Shotsie waved Helen away. “Don’t look at me that way. Don’t feel sorry for me. If you do, I’ll throw up.” She pulled the cuffs of her sweater down her hands and glanced up at the sky. The pale ringlets of her hair swirled across her round cheeks.
The woman looked more a waif than a widow, and Helen almost forgave her for accusing Felicity of being a killer.
“I think I’ll go in now and try t’ get some rest,” Shotsie whispered. “I haven’t gotten much sleep lately.”
“I’ll bet you haven’t eaten much either. Would you like me to come in and fix you something?” Helen offered.
Shotsie shook her head. “I’d rather be alone, if you don’t mind.”
“My dear, are you sure?”
Shotsie didn’t answer. She turned away, trudged up the porch steps and slipped inside the house.
Helen stared at the screen door for a while, feeling a bit guilty at being so hard on the widow. The poor thing had a lot more on her mind than she could have imagined, as if Milton Grone’s unnatural death wasn’t enough.
She shook her head and walked over to where Frank Biddle was stooped over a tangle of tall grass. “Have you found something?” she asked, putting her hands on her knees and leaning over. All she could see were a few rusted beer cans, some candy wrappers and cigarette butts.
The sheriff closed his hand over whatever he’d found and smiled a Cheshire cat grin. “A brass casing,” he said. “It’s probably from Grone’s shotgun, the one Art Beaner found in the bushes.”
“Just one shell?” Helen asked.
“Only one.”
Helen followed him as he picked his way to a craggy rock in the center of the yard, set in a bald spot of dirt between patches of crabgrass, its rough surface splotched rusty-brown. Realizing it was the rock Milton’s head had been resting on, she felt her stomach lurch.
“So here’s what I figure,” Biddle said, gesticulating as he spoke. “Grone came out of the house with his shotgun loaded. Maybe he heard a noise like Miss Timmons’s cat prowling around. The perp took him by surprise, smacking him in the head with the shovel. The shotgun goes off when it hits the ground.” He flipped over the brass casing in his hand. “I’ll wager the shot went straight in the air.”
Helen followed his gaze up to where the trees arched above. She hoped the bullet hadn’t hit an unsuspecting bird in its nest.
Biddle slipped the shell into his pocket. “I don’t imagine Grone even saw it coming. If he had . . . well, he had the shotgun ready, didn’t he? He could’ve picked off someone lunging at him with a shovel and blown a hole in ’em as big as my fist.”
“So?” Helen wasn’t sure what it all meant.
He met her gaze, head-on. “So, unless there’s someone walking around town with a belly you can see clear through, then the killer’s still in River Bend, whoever he is.”
Or she, Helen mused.
Chapter 27
FRANK BIDDLE PICKED up the telephone and dialed, tapping his pen against the papers on his desk while he waited for the ringing to start.
He reread a note left by Delilah Grone. She’d apparently come by his office when he’d been out to lunch. Mrs. Evans told me to get in touch, said the loopy cursive. I was in River Bend the night Milt was killed. She’d left a phone number scrawled at the bottom of the page.
“Roadside Rest Stop,” a weary voice answered after half a dozen rings. Frank could hear the noise of chatter and the clatter of dishes in the background. When he asked for Delilah, he was informed in an impatient shout, “Delilah don’t come in on Mondays. Try again tomorrow afternoon.”
The line clicked in his ear.
He stared at the receiver in his hand, wondering why the first Mrs. Grone hadn’t left her cell or home phone number. He turned the note over, hoping to find a second number on the back, but it was blank. If Delilah was in River Bend last Thursday night, Frank figured he’d check a few facts in the meantime. So he punched in her work number again.
It took a full dozen rings this time before anyone picked up.
When he asked for the manager, he initially got resistance. But when he said, “Would your boss rather that the sheriff of River Bend, Illinois, show up at the Roadside Rest Stop in full uniform with the light bar rolling on the squad car?” he quickly got action.
Soon enough, a gruff voice that claimed to be in charge asked, “W
hat can I do you for, officer? But whatever it is, can you make it snappy? Time’s short, and so am I.”
Frank asked if Delilah Grone had been at work last Thursday evening. The manager put him on hold to look up the schedule; “on hold” in this case meant the phone was apparently dropped with a clatter and he found himself listening to the cacophony of the rest stop restaurant until the growl reappeared.
“Hey, Sheriff, you still there?”
“I’m here!” Frank felt like he had to shout so the fellow could hear his reply above the racket.
“Delilah’s shift was from eleven to seven that night, and as far as I know, she didn’t skip out. If she did and I’d heard about it, she’d be standin’ in the unemployment line right about now.”
As far as he knew, Biddle thought, not liking that phrase in the least. “Weren’t you around to keep an eye on the place?”
“Not that day,” the manager replied. “I had one of those twenty-four-hour bugs that kept me on the john half the day.”
Frank didn’t want him to expound so he followed up quickly with, “Can I talk to anyone else who was on the same shift, someone who could verify whether Delilah stayed and worked until seven?”
The man grumbled, not sounding thrilled at giving out the information. “Velma Simms,” he said with a grunt. “You can catch her here tomorrow in the a.m. if you want. She’s off today, too.”
Frank was about to thank the man for his trouble but the line clicked off.
He hung up and began to scratch a few notes on his legal pad regarding Delilah Grone, in particular that she worked until seven on the night Milton died. He’d looked up the address of the truck stop, which was twenty miles due south of Alton. If Delilah had driven to River Bend straight from there, it would have taken her a good forty-five minutes to an hour. If she’d stopped anywhere in between, she wouldn’t have made it to River Bend until Milt was already dead.
A few minutes here and there made a pretty big difference, he knew, and he decided to go see Velma Simms at the road stop personally the next morning. It was too easy for people to lie on the phone. Biddle wanted to see her eyes. The eyes always told the truth.
To Helen Back: A River Road Mystery Page 14
