Come Helen High Water

by Susan McBride

  “What in God’s name is going on here?”

  The voice wasn’t Bernie’s.

  Jackson swiveled about, dropping the desk lid with a clatter.

  Bernie dropped the pen, as well. It hit the floor and rolled under the couch.

  “Well, howdy do, ma’am,” Jackson said, a little rattled. He hadn’t heard anyone come in, but sure enough, there she stood, glowering in the doorway. She had cotton-white hair, a sharp nose, a pointed chin, and deep grooves around her eyes and mouth. Not a woman he’d choose to cozy up to even if he were on his last dime.

  “Who are you?” she snapped as Jackson took a few quick steps and snatched the papers from the coffee table.

  “Well, hey, ma’am, I’m Jackson Lee, a friend of Bernie’s from the country club,” he drawled, acting as unaffected as he could while quickly stuffing the pages in his coat pocket. “And just who are you?”

  As if he didn’t know.

  “I’m Bernie’s wife,” she told him, her cheeks a vivid red. “And if I hadn’t forgotten my grocery list and come home to find the front door open, you would have probably gotten away with whatever you’re trying to get away with!”

  “I’m getting a raise,” Bernie piped up, grinning crookedly. “Is that great, Betts? I have to sign some papers before it’s a done deal. Then maybe we can buy that Bel Air convertible I’ve had my eye on.”

  “He’s not here to give you a raise,” the wife said. “He’s here to steal from a senile old man.” She had her cell phone in hand, and she threatened, “If you’re not out of here in five seconds flat, I’m calling the sheriff . . .”

  Hell and damnation! He’d have to come back to get that check.

  “Must go. I’m late for a meeting,” Jackson said then took off like a shot.

  He was out the door and inside his Caddy in record time. As soon as the engine caught, he peeled out of there and didn’t look back.

  Chapter 6

  It seemed like the water had risen even in the few hours that Helen had helped Clara at the Historical Society. They had managed to sort through a whole white banker’s box full of photographs, although that was merely the tip of the iceberg.

  “It’ll take months, if not years, to check all of them,” she’d groaned, and Clara hadn’t disagreed. But her friend had hardly acted discouraged. Clara had seemed very intent while looking through her batch, almost as if she was searching for something in particular or, perhaps, for someone? Clara had grown up in River Bend, as had generations before her. So it stood to reason that some of those photographs pictured her and her family.

  Well, she was glad if Clara was getting something personal out of the volunteer gig. All Helen had gotten was a vague headache from squinting through her specs.

  At the diner, where she and Clara had gone after their shift was done, Helen noticed tall and lanky Art Beaner, husband to Bertha and head of the town council, busy spreading word that boats needed moving from the harbor.

  “Get ’em out now while you can or you’re risking damage,” she overheard him telling table after table. “The harbor’s already so high it’s a foot shy of spilling onto the parking lot.”

  Helen was glad that she didn’t have a boat to fret about, not since Joe had been alive. She only had to worry about herself and Amber.

  “Hello, Mrs. Evans, Mrs. Foley,” Beaner said when he stopped by the booth where Helen sat with Clara.

  “So things are looking bleak?” Helen dared to ask.

  He doffed his ball cap and rubbed a hand over thinning hair. “The softball field’s swamped. We’ve had to cancel the opening games and delay filling up the community pool. It’s still drained from winter, thank heavens, but it already has a foot of muck at the bottom. Word is the river hasn’t crested yet, so we’re gearing up for the worst. It’s only a matter of time before the harbor covers the lot and the street, threatening the homes on Harbor Drive. When that happens, we’ll have to shut down the ramp into town from the River Road . . . Well, the flood will close it even if we don’t.”

  “I’ll hope for the best,” Helen said, though it didn’t sound good.

  Art tugged back on his ball cap, squinting past them out the plateglass window. “Looks like Biddle’s getting a bagging crew together. I’d better go offer my services.”

  “Of course.”

  “Afternoon, ladies.”

  Helen turned toward the window as Art left them, glimpsing the sheriff closing the tailgate on a pickup truck piled high with a mountain of sand, and she wished she weren’t seventy-five with arthritis and bad knees. She would have left the diner right then with Mr. Beaner, eager to lend a hand.

  “I guess we can’t do anything now but sit tight,” she said as she faced Clara again, only to find her friend dabbing at tears in her eyes. “Oh, no, did I say something wrong? Is it the flood?”

  “No, it’s not. And don’t look at me like that,” Clara scolded. “It’s the pollen count, nothing more.”

  “You didn’t sneeze or rub your eyes at the Historical Society, and those photographs reek of must,” Helen said. “Can’t you tell me what’s bothering you? It’s Bernie, yes? Or is there something else going on?”

  “It’s nothing,” Clara murmured. “It’s my allergies.”

  But Helen knew that was a lie.

  “We’ve been friends for too long for you to keep secrets from me.”

  Clara stopped sniffling. “Secrets,” she said, “are poison.”

  “I’m listening.”

  That seemed to do the trick, as the floodgates quickly opened.

  “Oh, Lord, I don’t even know what to do at this point. It’s just more of the same,” Clara said with a sob. “Betty’s at her wit’s end. Caring for Bernie is really taking its toll. She’s got to watch him like a baby, and he isn’t letting her sleep. He wakes up at night and wanders. The other night he started swinging around a candelabra, hollering about keeping a car away that was trying to hit him. If that’s not enough, she’s finding misfiled paperwork dealing with their taxes, and even canceled checks for various business investments that were nothing more than scams. Sometimes I think it’d be better if he were—” She cut herself off, shaking her head. “It’s just hard, you know.”

  “What can I do?” she asked, feeling as helpless about the situation as she did about the rising floodwaters.

  Clara sighed. “I don’t know what to do myself. I sit with him sometimes when she needs a break. I want her to spend time with Ellen and Sawyer without having to worry. But I can’t be there every minute.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “She’s finding more things that he screwed up in the past few years, paperwork for loans, checks he’d written to people she doesn’t know, missed insurance payments.” Clara paused and bit her lip. “It’s a good thing she took away his car keys, or he might have killed someone by now. She’s scared, Helen, though I don’t know what she’s more afraid of, the mess he’s leaving her or being without him.”

  Helen took her hand and squeezed, all the while thinking she had to do something more. She would talk to the girls at bridge tonight and sign them up to bake casseroles and cakes so Betty wouldn’t have to worry about dinner for a few nights at least.

  She remembered when Joe had his first heart attack, and the emotional and physical toll it had taken on her while she’d nursed him back to health. But that wasn’t the same as caring for someone with Alzheimer’s. It wasn’t like those folks ever got better, only worse.

  “I wish I could attend bridge tonight, but I can’t,” Clara said, and Helen made a noise of distress. “I told Betty I’d come over and sit with Bernie so she can go out for ice cream with Ellen and Sawyer.”

  “I understand.”

  Clara picked at her Cobb salad, the light in her blue eyes gone, and Helen did the same with her tuna sandwich. She didn’t have much of an appetite herself, between talk of Bernie’s condition and the Mississippi River creeping into town like an unwanted guest.

 
When Erma approached to elaborate on the fresh pies for dessert, Clara shook her head. Helen declined, as well, and—despite Clara’s protests—asked for the check.

  “Know that I’m always around if you need me,” she told her friend, though she wished she could offer more than words.

  “What would I do without you?” Clara said, and they shared a brief hug on the sidewalk before they parted ways.

  Her heart heavy, Helen turned to look across the street at the sheriff’s office.

  The truck full of sand had disappeared, as had the half-dozen folks who’d been standing around it. She figured they were busy sandbagging behind the homes and businesses closer to the harbor, where the water always seemed to do the most damage. When the softball field went under and the harbor waters rose, the main path into town from the River Road disappeared beneath the murky brown. As Agnes had remarked earlier, once that happened, the only way in or out was through the back roads, or else by canoe.

  After the River Road closed, it was just a matter of time before the overflowing creeks that wound through River Bend began to reach the houses perched along their borders, like Agnes’s residence on Springfield. Maybe the forecasters would be wrong and the water would subside before it caused too much damage.

  But, Helen knew, for that to happen, they’d have to get lucky.

  She waited for a car to pass then crossed Main Street and headed for the sheriff’s office. He wouldn’t be there, of course, but Helen could surely drop off the keys to the Historical Society and leave them on his desk with a note.

  But when she entered and closed the door behind her, she saw that the chair behind the sheriff’s desk was occupied. Though it wasn’t Biddle who sat there; it was his wife.

  “Why, hello, Sarah,” she said and walked toward her. “Are you filling in for Frank while he leads the sandbag brigade?” she asked in jest. But the sheriff’s wife didn’t look amused.

  “Just doing a bit of research,” she said, glancing up nervously from the computer. She tried to cover up something on her right—a little blue “book”—but Helen saw it and knew what it was immediately.

  “Is that Luann’s passport?”

  Sarah Biddle opened her mouth—to lie, Helen thought—then ended up sighing. “I know you probably think I’m going overboard, like Clara does. But I can’t help it. I’ve tried calling Lu half a dozen times. It all goes to voice mail. Instead I get text messages in response, telling me she’s fine, to let her enjoy herself. But why won’t she call me back so I can hear her voice?”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you,” Helen said, hoping she didn’t hurt Sarah’s feelings. “Maybe she’s afraid you’ll tell her she’s being stupid and she’ll feel like a fool.”

  “Well, she is being stupid!” Sarah blushed. “Oh, I see what you mean.”

  “Have you asked Frank to help? I always see them pinging someone’s phone on TV cop shows. At least then you’d know where she was.”

  Sarah pulled a face. “I already asked about that. He’d have to get a warrant, only he said no judge would give him that when he doesn’t have a shred of evidence that anything is wrong.”

  “That does make sense.”

  “He claims he can’t even put out a be-on-the-lookout for her car, that it would divert attention from known criminal activity.”

  “That makes sense, too.”

  “He assured me there’s nothing he can do, at least not until Luann asks for help or there’s evidence that she’s really in danger,” Sarah said and appeared so distraught that Helen felt the need to say something more.

  She leaned her hands on the heavy desk, looking Sarah in the eye. “I met my husband at Washington University in St. Louis back when it was a trolley-car school,” she said. “He was a devil, but there was something about him I couldn’t dismiss. He was charming and funny, though I’d heard rumors about his wild behavior. He drank bathtub gin in his fraternity and was temporarily blinded.”

  “But Joe was a teetotaler,” Sarah said in disbelief, and Helen nodded.

  “He became one.” She laughed. “He was a dickens, all right. My girlfriends warned me about him. They said he’d been kicked out of six schools before college, and I later found out it was true.” She smiled despite herself. “I had known him exactly three months when he asked me to marry him. We decided to elope and got in the car, heading for New York City, which we thought would be romantic.”

  “I didn’t realize you and Joe eloped,” Sarah remarked.

  Helen laughed. “We didn’t. I chickened out, so he turned the car around and came home. It would have killed my mother if I hadn’t let her plan my wedding.”

  “You’re trying to say Lu might come to her senses.”

  “I’m saying that she has to make her own choices. It’s her life.”

  Sarah didn’t look reassured. “I’m not convinced she went freely. What if he took her? He could have used that date-rape drug, or pulled a gun on her. It happens, you know, even to middle-aged women.”

  “Do you want my advice?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Follow your gut and do what you need to do until you’re convinced she’s all right. I’m a firm believer in intuition.”

  “I will.” Sarah gave her a half-hearted smile.

  Helen turned to leave then stopped. She’d almost forgotten what she’d gone to the sheriff’s office for.

  Reaching into her jacket pocket, she withdrew the silver key ring Sheriff Biddle had given her earlier. “For the Historical Society,” she said and returned to set them on the desk.

  Sarah palmed the keys. “I’ll make sure he gets them,” she said before she opened the top desk drawer and dropped them in.

  Helen nodded.

  “Oh, by the way,” Sarah called out when Helen opened the door to leave, “I can’t make bridge tonight. I promised Frank I’d take dinner to the sandbaggers so they can keep working. Hope I don’t leave you in a bind.”

  Helen waved and told her, “No worries. It’s only cards.”

  Although walking back to her cottage, she was worrying plenty. Even since morning, the creek had swollen further, its banks no longer even pretending to contain it. Water spilled onto lawns and even into the street in spots.

  Everyone she passed wore an anxious expression.

  She found three messages on her voice mail from Bebe Horn, Lola Mueller, and Bertha Beaner, all canceling out on bridge that evening.

  All told, that made five who’d be no-shows. So Helen called the rest and postponed indefinitely, to resume “whenever the river retreats.”

  To calm her nerves, she decided to sit down with the Sunday crossword, which she hadn’t had time to complete yesterday, so it was only half-done.

  She settled in the wicker settee on the porch, setting the folded newsprint in her lap. Amber jumped up on its arm and padded across the newspaper, finally perching on the top of the cushion beside her.

  “Are you comfy?” she asked him, waiting for his yellow eyes to blink before smoothing the crossword puzzle and picking up her purple pen. “All right, let’s begin. It’s known as the Dza Chu in Tibet,” she said, reading aloud the first clue. “It’s six letters, if that helps,” she added and looked at Amber.

  He yawned then lifted a paw and started licking.

  Helen tapped the pen to her chin, thinking she knew it. Her granddaughter Melissa had spent a year in Asia teaching English to children and had plastered her Facebook page with countless photos and descriptions of all the places she’d seen when she’d been traveling.

  “A-ha! It’s Mekong,” Helen announced abruptly, causing Amber to jerk.

  She filled that one in and proceeded to another.

  “He isn’t what he seems,” she said, “eight letters.”

  Amber tucked his head atop his paws and closed his eyes.

  “How about swindler,” she tried, but it didn’t quite work. “Imitator?” she suggested. Only that wasn’t right either. She tapped the purple ink to
the page before another answer formed in her mind. “Impostor,” she said, smiling as she printed the missing letters into the tiny squares.

  “God help me if my brain ever starts to rot,” she remarked, giving Amber a pat.

  Once she’d finished the rest of the crossword, she moved on to the jigsaw puzzle that Fanny Melville had given her as a birthday gift last month: a five-hundred-piece mosaic of colorful birds and a snowy birdhouse. She began with the border, of course, and clustered like-colored pieces together within the frame. She worked for hours with nary a break, stopping only to get up and turn on the overhead lamp as the daylight faded to dusk.

  Amber took that opportunity to mew at her.

  Was it dinnertime already?

  She hadn’t eaten since the tuna sandwich and pickles at lunch.

  She thought of Clara, sitting with Bernie this evening so Betty could spend time with her daughter and granddaughter, and her heart felt heavy.

  “I think I’ll go keep her company,” Helen said aloud, as much to herself as to Amber. “I’ll take that tray of cheese and fruit I’d planned to set out for the bridge game tonight. What do you think? Good idea? Or will I be butting in?”

  Amber mewed at her again, cocking his head.

  “You’re right.” She laughed. “When have I ever cared about butting in?”

  She reached for the cat, and he nipped at her fingers.

  “Sorry,” she told him. “Of course, I’ll feed you first.”

  He gave her a slow blink, looking at least partially appeased, and Helen scratched him between his ears.

  “How dreadful it must be to watch the person you love most deteriorate until there’s not much left but the shell of them. At least I got to have my Joe until the very end. I still miss him every single day.”

  Amber seemed to agree. He began to purr very softly.

  She sat quietly for a long moment, listening to the cat’s warm rumble and hearing the loud whoosh of the creek through the screens of the porch.

  The streetlamps flickered on, glistening off the wet road.