Not a Chance in Helen

Contents

Prologue

T
HE CAB PULL
ED
up in front of the turreted Victorian mansion, and Eleanora Duncan emerged from the backseat. She plucked cash from her wallet to press through the opened window. The driver snatched away the bills and the taxi rolled off, leaving her standing in a cloud of exhaust fumes.

She coughed, waving a gloved hand before her, thinking that between good old pollution and the cigar-smoking board members at the committee meetings she was forever attending, her poor lungs wouldn’t last to blow out eighty-one candles on her birthday cake.

She hobbled up the porch steps, pulling off her gloves and stuffing them into her purse. As she reached the front door, she found it ajar.

Heavens to Betsy! She’d only been away for an hour to take her seat on the county hospital board. Had Zelma lost her mind? Eleanora could hardly believe her longtime housekeeper would leave the house accessible to any common thief.

Or worse still, she mused, what if the cat had gotten out?

As if on cue, Lady Godiva’s whiskered face peered around the jamb. Before Eleanora could shove the cat back inside, the feline slipped through the door. She brushed past Eleanora’s ankles and took off without a moment’s hesitation.

“Lady!” Eleanora called to her precious baby. “Sweetheart, come back here this minute!” She frowned, watching her prized Persian scoot down the porch steps toward the street.

“Bad girl!” Eleanora scolded in a voice two octaves higher than normal. “You know you’re not allowed to roam the neighborhood.” She pressed blue-veined hands together, thinking of the things her baby could pick up outdoors: the ticks, the fleas, a dirty tom’s wanton interest.

“Zelma!” she hollered as she hurried through the door and ducked her head into the foyer. “Zelma? Where the devil are you?”

Damned if the woman wasn’t deaf as well as blind, she thought of the housekeeper who’d been with her longer than her husband and son, both of whom had passed two years before, God rest their souls.

Well, Eleanora couldn’t wait for Zelma to appear. She turned around in the doorframe and caught sight of Lady Godiva there on the cobblestone path, sniffing at the bordering begonias. “Lady!” she called out again and hooked her purse on the doorknob. Her low heels tapped on the porch floor as she made her way after the cat, her arthritic hips slowing her gait.

She was but a few yards away when the copper-hued Persian lifted her head, tail twitching. Eleanora reached out her arms, smiling hesitantly.

“Come here, precious. Come to Mommy.”

She was almost near enough to bend and scoop up Lady when a butterfly swooped down from the sky, fluttering enticingly, and the cat plunged off the curb and into the road.

“Lady Godiva, no!” Eleanora frantically scanned the street right and left, sighing when she saw no traffic. “Please, come back, pretty girl. Oh, for Pete’s sake.”

By then, she was breathing hard, her silk blouse uncomfortably warm against her skin. She pressed her palm to the rough bark of an oak tree and leaned against it.

Up the block, a car engine coughed to life, but Eleanora ignored it. Her attention was solely on Lady, who’d stopped to clean herself right there in the middle of the gravel-strewn road.

“Eleanora, hello there!” a familiar voice called out.

Eleanora momentarily shifted her gaze away from Lady to see a sweat-suited Helen Evans walking toward her up the sidewalk. But she neither answered nor waved.

Instead, she took in a deep breath and stepped into the street.

The squeal of tires filled her ears, and she froze like a deer caught in headlights as a car came out of nowhere and bore down on her.

“Eleanora!”

A hand snatched at her, dragging her from harm’s way just as the car screeched past, kicking up so much gravel and dust in its wake that it seemed to disappear in a puff of smoke like a magician’s grand finale.

She clung to her rescuer, her heart pounding in her ears and pumping the blood far too quickly through her veins. Eleanora shuddered, looking up into the gently lined face framed by gray.

“Oh, God, Helen,” she got out despite the dryness of her mouth, clinging to the woman’s arms for strength. “I think somebody’s trying to kill me.”

Chapter One

“
I
’M SORRY.
I
was looking for my friend Jean, but I must’ve stumbled into Julia Child’s kitchen by mistake.”

“Oh, Helen, stop it.” Jean Duncan blushed and threw up a hand as if to dismiss the thinly veiled compliment. “I’m just trying out a few things, experimenting, if you will.”

“Pretty good-smelling experiments,” Helen said and closed the screen door behind her. She entered the room with her nose lifted to inhale the mingling of scents, and she leaned her hands against the stretch of countertop to survey the goings-on. Stainless steel bowls, measuring cups, and wooden cutting boards littered with the finely chopped remains of onions and chives filled every inch of space. Several copper pots topped the burners on the stove, their contents softly gurgling.

Helen glanced around and caught sight of herself in the smoky glass of the built-in refrigerator. Sometimes it still surprised her to see a seventy-five-year-old woman in her reflection, albeit not a bad-looking one. Half the time she expected to see the dark-haired beauty she’d been in her youth, the energetic girl who’d graduated from Washington University when it still hadn’t been fashionable to do so, who’d married at twenty-one and raised four children, all married with children themselves.

She touched a hand to her unruly hair but dropped it again as the click of the oven door disrupted her thoughts.

She turned to Jean. “It looks like the Cordon Bleu around here,” she remarked and sniffed. “Is that shrimp . . . oh, my, and Roquefort?”

Jean lifted the lid off a pot, allowing a cloud of steam to sneak out, wilting wisps of silver against her brow. “Right on both counts,” she said. “Shrimp for the stuffed mushrooms and Roquefort for the chilled spinach dish.” She settled the lid on the pot and gestured around her with a wooden spoon. “And, of course, there are onions and herbs for the liver pâté.”

“Special occasion?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, very special.” Jean snatched up a mixing bowl and hugged it to her belly, stirring its contents as she spoke. “I’ve finally decided to go for it.”

“Go for what?” Helen tensed. At her age, that could mean anything from buying a Miracle Ear to selling the house and moving into Shady Acres.

Jean’s smile widened. “The catering business I’ve talked about starting ever since”—she hesitated but quickly picked up where she’d left off—“ever since Jim died. Well, I’ve been moping around for two years, and this morning I woke up and decided to get on with my life, doing what I do best.” She lifted her chin. “And that happens to be cooking for other people.”

“That’s marvelous,” Helen told her, feeling as thrilled by the announcement as Jean did. Her friend looked good, better than she had in a long while. After the tragic car accident that had taken Jim’s life, Jean had put on weight, until she’d seemed a sad, bloated version of the lively woman Helen had remembered. Now, the sixty-year-old widow was back to her fighting form, trim and full of energy in her tan slacks and yellow sweater overlapped by a white apron. A bright scarf drew her hair off her shoulders and into a ponytail. The smile on her mouth lit up her round face, giving it a rosy glow. Her hazel eyes looked bright, which cheered Helen to no end, as there’d been too many days when they’d filled with tears at the drop of a hat.

“ . . . so that suits it, don’t you think?”

Helen blinked, knowing she’d missed something. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“Just that I’m calling it The Catery,” Jean replied, talking over her shoulder as she added eggs then onions to the goose liver. “You like it? Or is it, I don’t know, too simple?”

“I’ve always liked simple.”

“Good. Because I’ve already had some little deli containers made up with the name. I thought I’d get a few samples around, you know, to the Ladies Civic Improvement League and such.”

“Speaking of the LCIL,” Helen said, an idea cooking in her brain. “The annual luncheon’s just about a month away and I don’t believe anyone’s been hired to do the food yet.”

“No, they haven’t. I checked,” Jean remarked and tapped a spoon in the air. “But wait’ll I show them what I’ve got in mind,” she said and grinned. Then she fixed her attention on the ingredients to her pâté de foie gras.

“Well, you’ve got my vote anyway,” Helen told her. “The glop they served last year tasted like it was catered by the bait shop.”

“Oh, Helen!”

“Well, it’s true,” she said, tapping a finger to her chin as another idea popped up. “The LCIL has a board meeting in the morning. It could help your cause if you showed up with some of your goodies.”

“That’s perfect.” Jean’s eyes widened. “Any suggestions?”

“It all looks good,” Helen admitted, reaching over a colander filled with huge mushrooms to snatch a cheese puff from a batch not long out of the oven. She popped it into her mouth, chewing slowly, her eyes closing as she bit into the olive at the center. Was that paprika, she wondered, feeling her mouth tingle a bit, her cheeks flush. And cayenne pepper? She swallowed reluctantly and sighed aloud. When she opened her eyes, she found Jean watching her.

“Do I pass muster?” Jean asked, crossing her arms under her breasts. “Or should I quit now before I’ve started?”

Helen finished licking the tips of her fingers. Then she brushed her hands together, eyeing the rest of the cheese balls. “My dear, I think you’ve found your calling.”

Jean laughed. “I’ll be the Mother Teresa of the card party set. Just give me a hungry bridge player, and I’ll save her from starvation with a bowl of artichoke dip.”

“Speaking of mothers,” Helen began, wondering if now was the best time to broach the subject of Eleanora Duncan, what with Jean in such a good mood and all. But she swallowed any hesitation and plunged ahead. “I saw your former mother-in-law earlier when I was out for a walk, and she was . . . “

“Oh, I can only imagine what she was doing,” Jean said, cutting her off. Her face tensed and the smile left her mouth, replaced by tight lips. “Knowing her, she was probably stealing candy from babies.”

“Jean,” Helen softly chided, but she couldn’t blame Jean for her anger. Eleanora Duncan had as good as branded Jean a murderer after Jim had died, and all because Jean had been at the wheel that rainy night of the accident. The feud that Eleanora had provoked with Jean made the one between the Hatfields and McCoys look like mere bickering in comparison.

Hardly a one of the two hundred inhabitants of tiny River Bend, Illinois, hadn’t been a witness to Eleanora’s lingering bitterness toward Jean. Having an eighty-year-old woman call her sixty-year-old daughter-in-law “Lucrezia Borgia” in the cereal aisle at the corner market wasn’t something one easily forgot. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Eleanora had made headlines when she’d used her considerable influence, the type only old money can buy, to push for a coroner’s inquest of Jim’s death. As expected, nothing had come of it except greater animosity between Eleanora and Jean.

Helen went around the island to where Jean leaned over the counter, furiously whisking a pair of eggs to their frothy deaths.

She touched her arm, and Jean let out a cry of pain. Helen took the bowl and whisk from her and set them aside. Then she picked up Jean’s hands and held them tightly. “She’s an old woman who wanted someone to blame, and you happened to be it.”

Tears welled in Jean’s eyes though she blinked mightily, clearly determined not to cry. “She put me through hell, you know she did, as if what happened to Jim weren’t enough. I felt guilty enough without her adding to it.”

“Someone nearly ran her over this morning,” Helen said without further dillydallying.

Jean stared at her. “What?”

“I saw Eleanora step off the curb just as a car pulled into the street and almost hit her. It would have if I hadn’t gotten to her first,” Helen added.

“Maybe the driver didn’t see her.”

Helen shook her head. “The car sped up and never slowed down. It felt very deliberate.”

“Oh.” Jean paled, looking suddenly shaky. Helen guided her away from the mixing bowls and boiling shrimp and chopped onions, setting her down at the breakfast table. “Oh, my goodness,” she continued, her voice falling to a whisper. “Was she hit?”

“Not even scratched.”

Jean wet her lips. “Did you recognize who was at the wheel?”

“It all happened so fast.” Helen sighed, letting go of Jean’s hands to pluck at several tufts of cat hair stuck to the legs of her pants. Amber’s telltale yellow fur. She’d have to start brushing him now that spring had come, no matter how the old tom resisted.

“Is she okay?”

Helen glanced up, and her eyes met Jean’s again. “As you’d expect, Eleanora was quite shaken.”

Jean murmured, “The poor dear.”

Within a few minutes, Eleanora Duncan had gone from being accused of stealing lollipops from babies to being “the poor dear.” Helen smiled despite herself, thinking the scare Eleanora had had this morning might actually result in something positive after all.

“Maybe I should”—Jean started to say but hesitated, squinting into the distance—“well, I’m probably the last person Eleanora wants to see, and I can’t say I feel any differently about her. But, like you said, Helen, she’s had to deal with losing a husband and son while she continues to live and breathe. I know she doesn’t have many close friends despite all those committees she sits on. She’s really all alone. Aw, hell,” Jean groaned and let her head roll back. “I may be a fool, but I think I’ll go by her place later on and take her something to eat. A little liver pâté, maybe some crab dip and stuffed mushrooms. What do you think?”

Helen stood and patted Jean’s shoulder. “Sounds like a grand idea. With the way you cook, it might do a lot toward mending fences.”

Jean got up as well and wiped her hands on her apron, nodding as if to convince herself it might possibly be true. She walked Helen out, holding the screen door wide open with her hip. “Just so long as she doesn’t accuse me of trying to poison her,” she remarked before she waved Helen off.

“That’s the spirit!” Helen laughed as she headed down the driveway toward the sidewalk.