“He was a horror,” Betty admitted, finally looking away from the creek and at Helen. “He was a drunk and he was cruel, but he wasn’t responsible, not entirely. He made Clara’s home life intolerable, but he didn’t touch her, not that way. It was a boy at Clara’s school, someone who took advantage of her confusion. She just gave up caring, and she let things get out of control.”
The picture became so much more vivid then, mental brushstrokes filling in the missing colors in Helen’s mind. What she had only suspected before seemed so logical now. “She was pregnant already when she moved in with you.”
“Yes.”
“Did your mother know?”
Betty’s fingers tightened, clawlike, over the arms of the chair. “Clara didn’t tell anyone but me. She was too afraid. She was heavy then, too, so no one guessed. Her troubles with our stepfather were enough of an excuse to get her out. Our mother didn’t even try to stop her.”
“Ellen is Clara’s daughter, isn’t she? She had the baby, and you and Bernie raised her as your own. It was all very hush-hush, I’m sure.”
“Yes, very hush-hush.” The words emerged as a whisper.
“Everything was fine and dandy,” Helen continued, “until Bernie got Alzheimer’s and started saying things, wild things, like Ellen wasn’t his child. It sounded like the ravings of a madman, except to you and Clara.”
“Bernie and I . . . we could never get pregnant, not in any way that lasted,” Betty said, looking down. “He blamed himself, but I was sure it was me.”
“I’m sorry.”
Betty put her hands in her lap but said nothing.
“Ellen doesn’t know, does she?”
“No.”
“You were afraid she would be hurt if she realized the truth, that she’d be confused and angry that you and Clara kept it a secret.”
“Yes,” Betty said, choking on the word. “We had to do something. She couldn’t know. It would ruin everything, and Bernie was as good as gone already.”
As good as gone.
Not dead, but not the same man, more a burden than a companion, afflicted with an illness from which he could never recover, one that battered and bruised the caregiver, as well.
Helen gazed at the woman, her eyes exhausted and pain filled, her shoulders stooped. She might be strong of will, but not of body. She could not have done it alone, Helen knew. She may have pressed the pillow to Bernie’s face, the one with the embroidered butterflies that left their shapes upon Bernie’s skin; but she could not have gotten his lifeless form out the door without help.
Clara must have abetted her sister in hauling the rail-thin body to the creek and dumping him in. There was no other scenario that made sense.
Grandpa’s in heaven now. I woke up last night, and I saw him with the angels . . . It was very dark, but I could see them. They looked all flowy, kind of like ghosts.
Sawyer had seen them: two women in their nightgowns, outside in the dark, engaged in an act of desperation. Only she hadn’t known what was going on.
Her young mind—her innocent mind—had imagined she saw angels.
That was a good thing, Helen realized, far better than having the girl recognize that her great-aunt and her grandmother were doing a terrible thing.
“Are you going to tell the sheriff?” Betty asked.
Helen saw the distress in her face, could read it in her trembling hands. She didn’t condone what the women had done, but she couldn’t sic the sheriff on them either. What good would it do to lock them up? They weren’t a threat to anyone.
God help me, Helen thought, but she couldn’t make something bad even worse. Wouldn’t living with what they had done be punishment enough?
“I won’t turn you in.”
Betty gulped, and tears streamed down her cheeks. “I love Ellen with all my heart,” she sobbed, “and Sawyer, too. They are my all. They are my life now. It’s true. It’s really true.”
Helen closed her eyes for a moment, not hearing Betty’s voice or the rush of the creek beyond the porch screens, hearing instead Sawyer’s high-pitched laughter. She thought of the girl and her mother, neither knowing the truth of Ellen’s birth, neither realizing the secret that had been safeguarded with Bernie’s death, and she hoped to God that she’d done the right thing.
Chapter 31
Monday, Two Weeks Later
Helen walked briskly toward River Bend’s downtown, thankful for the sidewalks that the maintenance crew had hosed down and swept clean once the flood had receded. Barely an inch of murky water remained on the street, though there was plenty of mud to go around. Plenty of litter remained, as well: brush and twigs, dead fish, and rubbish from foam cups to fenders, all waiting to be cleared away.
Piles of rotted wood and ruined carpeting accumulated on the curbs in front of the homes nearest the creek. An e-mail from the town council had gone out just that morning with the schedule for trash trucks hired to haul away the mounds of debris. The air hummed with the noise of pressure washers, and Helen spotted plenty of folks spraying sludge from siding and rinsing off their driveways.
It wouldn’t be long before this latest flood was a distant memory, although Helen would surely never forget it, even though it hardly rivaled the Great Flood of ’93. She doubted that Clara Foley or Betty Winston would forget it either, or Luann Dupree, though each desperately wanted to put it behind her.
The world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming it.
She thought of the Helen Keller quote printed on the calendar her granddaughter Nancy had given her for Christmas. It struck a chord in Helen and stayed with her. She reminded herself of it on days like this and realized the truth in the words.
If there wasn’t hope of something more, something better, how could a person put one foot in front of the other and continue?
Helen had faith, and Luann Dupree seemed ready to embrace hope, too.
She had called Helen just the day before, inviting her to the Historical Society for “a little celebration.”
“What’s the occasion?” Helen had asked, though she had her suspicions. Luann had (mostly) recovered from her ordeal and had been newly restored to the position of Historical Society director. “Isn’t it your first official day back at the helm?”
“That’s part of it,” Luann had told her. “The rest is a surprise.”
“Should I bring a dish?” she asked, because that was what folks did in River Bend.
“No, don’t bring a thing besides yourself,” Lu had replied, which was the reason Helen headed toward the Historical Society empty-handed.
As she passed Agnes’s antiques shop, the door flew open.
“Yoo-hoo!” her friend called out. “Are you heading to the Historical Society, by chance?”
“I am,” Helen said, wondering how Agnes knew.
“What a coincidence. So am I,” her friend said, answering the unspoken question. She asked Helen to wait while she closed up her shop; then Agnes joined her.
Helen noticed the rather large paper bag that Agnes carried. “Are you bringing a treat? Luann told me not to.”
“A treat?” Agnes repeated, like the idea was too precious. “Well, I guess I am.” She grinned, baring teeth not quite as shiny as the pearls at her collar.
Something funny was going on. Helen didn’t need Poirot’s mustache or Sherlock Holmes’s deerstalker hat to figure out that much.
When they arrived at the front door of the three-story brick building, there was a sandwich-board sign that announced: Private Event. Anchored to it were colorful balloons that bobbed in the wind.
Helen held the door for Agnes, and they both went inside.
Light flooded the interior, illuminating the display cases and reflecting off the glass that gleamed as though freshly polished. A spotlight shone down on one case in particular, a smaller one that stood front and center in the main room of the Historical Society’s museum space. It stood out for another reason, as well: it was empty. Beside it sat a t
ray table, though it was empty, too.
“Strange,” Helen remarked. “Could this be the surprise Luann mentioned?”
“Could be,” Agnes said and looked fit to giggle.
Helen frowned, feeling left out and not liking it one iota.
“Ah, good, you’re here!” a voice exclaimed, and Luann Dupree entered the room, arms outstretched, a broad grin on her carefully made-up face.
Helen thought she looked rather fit after all she’d been through. A little drawn around the eyes, a little thinner, but healthy enough.
“Frank, Sarah, this way!” Luann called over her shoulder.
The sheriff and his wife appeared a few beats later, he, as ever, in uniform, while she wore a pastel striped dress and had her mousy hair tamed in a loose ponytail.
Both appeared as perplexed about the gathering as Helen.
Not one to mince words, Sarah remarked, “This is quite a small party.”
“Yes, it is,” Luann said. “And since everyone’s here, we’ll get started. Agnes?”
She turned toward the other woman, who removed a cardboard box from the bag she’d brought with her. Agnes placed the box on the tray table then took off the lid before stepping back.
“Thank you for everything,” Lu said and gave Agnes a brief hug. “I can’t imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t taken such great care.”
“Happy to do it,” Agnes said, her voice muffled against Luann’s shoulder.
Helen exchanged glances with Sarah Biddle.
She’d never seen anyone hug Agnes March before. As kind as she was, Agnes wasn’t exactly the touchy-feely type. She was more starch and pearls, except with Sweetum, of course, her beloved Westie.
Luann cleared her throat, regaining her composure. “While I was, um, out of commission, Agnes watched over something very important to me, very important to all of us,” the Historical Society director explained as she drew a pair of white gloves from her pocket and donned them. “If Agnes hadn’t kept the secret I’d asked her to keep, we might not be here today to celebrate this incredible discovery.”
With gloved fingers, she reached into the box and removed a piece of tea-stained paper protected by an archival plastic sleeve.
“This,” she said, holding it up for them to see, “is a page from the diary of Jacques Lerner, the fur trader who built the cabin in the woods that’s been a coveted destination for every child in River Bend for as long as I’ve been around . . .”
“Oh, longer than that,” Agnes quipped to nervous laughter.
“The journal was discovered when stored boxes were moved out of what is now the director’s apartment,” Luann explained. “It was left to the Historical Society by the Herbert family, who settled in the valley two centuries ago when River Bend was founded.”
Helen wasn’t the only one listening intently. Neither Biddle had so much as twitched.
“Let me read this page to you, though you’ll have to excuse my horrible French,” Luann said then stumbled through the passage: “Et je ne pouvais pas croire ma bonne fortune quand M. Lewis m’a remercié pour avoir étendu mon hospitalité en me donnant un collier de griffe d’ours, qui lui avait été présenté par un chef Shoshone . . .”
Helen picked up a few words here and there, enough to feel a tingle up her spine, particularly when Luann translated the passage to English.
“I could not believe my great fortune when Mr. Lewis thanked me for extending my hospitality by giving me a bear-claw necklace, which had been presented to him by a Shoshone chief.”
Helen gasped, as did the sheriff.
Sarah Biddle, on the other hand, let out a whoop. “I knew it! I knew it was real!”
Luann set the page aside and reached back into the box, digging beneath the acid-free tissue to withdraw the item in question.
When she held it up, Helen’s eyes went wide.
There had to be three dozen or more three- to four-inch bear claws, she surmised, tied together with leather strips. It was magnificent and strange and thrilling to see.
“It’s a physical link to the past,” Luann said, voice trembling with pride. “And a reminder that such a momentous event as the Lewis and Clark expedition actually touched our little town when it was hardly more than a fur-trading post along the river. I hope it will be viewed by our citizens and visitors for many years to come.”
Again, Agnes stepped forward to assist, opening the glass case, in which the necklace and letter were carefully placed side by side.
“The amazing Ms. March had her friend at the Field Museum in Chicago authenticate the piece, as did an expert in American Indian studies from the University of Illinois,” Lu said, closing the glass lid and locking it securely. “To think that if I hadn’t given it to her when I did, it might not be here today. I might not be here today.”
This time it was Agnes who hugged Luann. “My pleasure, sweetheart,” she said.
Drop off Sat AM. Helen remembered the notation in the margin of the New York Times article Sarah had shown her, the one about the bear-claw necklace that had been misplaced for a hundred or more years at the Peabody Museum.
It hadn’t meant “drop off Saturday morning,” but “drop off Saturday Agnes March.”
Helen watched as Agnes returned to stand beside her, looking embarrassed at the attention and fiddling with the pearls around her neck.
No wonder Agnes had said she couldn’t trust John Danielson and kept asking when Luann was coming back. She’d had the necklace all along, and she’d protected it. In doing so, she’d protected Luann, as well.
Agnes caught her staring and winked.
“Congratulations, ma’am,” the sheriff said, moving forward to take a look into the case. “This is quite an amazing find. You’ll have to upgrade the security around here, though, and the town council will have to update the building’s insurance, no doubt.”
“Insurance? Phooey! Who cares about insurance?” Sarah cuffed her husband’s shoulder and let out a squeal that made Helen jump. “I’m so happy for you, Lu. You deserve this! Every museum in the country is going to come after this, you know. They’re going to offer you millions for it, and the newspapers will write about you like you’re a superstar. We’ll have a hard time keeping you in River Bend. You’ll have your pick of genuine adventures . . .”
“No, thank you,” Luann cut her off, tearfully looking around at her tiny museum. “I think, from now on, I’ll keep my adventures close to home.”
“I’m so happy to hear that! How about instead of finding a boyfriend, you get a handsome neutered cat,” Sarah suggested, slinging an arm around her friend’s shoulders. “You could name him Mr. Right.”
Luann gave her a look. “Not funny!”
Sarah chuckled. “Oh, yes, it was.”
“Hey, is anyone up for a cup of punch?” Agnes asked. “I think we ought to toast Luann before we cut the cake.”
“Did you say cake?” The sheriff instantly perked up. “If you need someone to wield a knife, I’m your man.”
“You mean, if you need someone to eat it, you’re the man,” Sarah tossed over her shoulder.
Yep. Helen smiled. Things were getting back to normal already.
The World of Susan McBride
To Helen Back
In this fun and sassy new mystery, USA Today bestselling author Susan McBride introduces us to Helen Evans, a modern-day Miss Marple who must expose a murderer in a town full of suspects!
When Milton Grone turns up dead in tiny River Bend, Illinois, nearly all the would-be suspects have the perfect alibi: attending Thursday night’s town meeting. And as Milton was hardly beloved, plenty of folks had a reason to do him in . . .
Grone’s next-door neighbor was furious about a fence that encroached on her property, among other wicked deeds. A pair of zealous tree huggers wanted Grone’s hide for selling a parcel of pristine land to a water park. Grone’s current and ex-wife both wanted a cut of the profits, which Grone seemed unwilling to share. Even the to
wn preacher knew Grone’s soul was beyond saving.
Though most of River Bend would rather reward the killer than hang him, Sheriff Biddle’s not about to let this one go . . . and neither is Helen Evans. With a penchant for puzzles and an ear for innuendo, Helen quickly fingers the culprit before Biddle puts the wrong suspect in jail.
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Mad as Helen
In the second River Road Mystery from USA Today bestselling author Susan McBride, Helen Evans must find a killer before her granddaughter is arrested for murder!
When tiny River Bend, Illinois, is hit by a string of burglaries even Sheriff Frank Biddle can’t solve, the clients of LaVyrle’s Cut ’n’ Curl can hardly talk of anything but. There are no signs of forced entry and no fingerprints, and valuables are missing from secret hiding places, as if the thief knew what he wanted and just where to look.
Helen Evans wonders what the world has come to if even their once-quiet town isn’t safe anymore. Then Grace Simpson, a big-city psychotherapist who had opened up shop in River Bend, is found dead on her bedroom floor, and Helen’s granddaughter is caught with the murder weapon in hand.
Sure of the girl’s innocence, Helen embarks on a little investigation of her own and turns up plenty of folks who aren’t grieving a bit now that Grace is dead . . .
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Not a Chance in Helen
In the third River Road Mystery from USA Today bestselling author Susan McBride, Helen Evans knows her friend is not guilty of murder . . . She just has to prove it!
When eighty-year-old Eleanora Duncan is found dead on her kitchen floor, Sheriff Frank Biddle suspects it isn’t from natural causes. Eleanora wasn’t exactly your average senior citizen. She was a widow worth millions, although all her money couldn’t buy her happiness—not after losing both her husband and son.
Eleanora’s bitterness alienated those around her, but did that bitterness make her the victim of foul play? Soon Jean Duncan, Eleanora’s daughter-in-law, becomes the prime suspect. But the sheriff gets more than he bargained for when Helen Evans comes to the aid of her friend.
Come Helen High Water Page 20
