Not a Chance in Helen (11 page)

Biddle squirmed. “She isn’t under arrest, Mrs. Evans,” he said, “but the evidence is pretty incriminating. First,” he ticked off on his fingers, “the poison was found in the goose liver she gave to Eleanora Duncan. Second, her fingerprints are the only ones on the container besides old Mrs. Duncan’s and her housekeeper’s. Third, she didn’t get along with her former mother-in-law, as everyone in town knew. And finally, the poison in the pâté is a perfect match for this, which I found under her sink.” He waggled a pinky at the bagged bottle. “It’s loaded with sodium tetraborate. Though,” he added almost grudgingly, “I did find the same insecticide under the sink at the Duncan house.”

When Helen digested his final remark, she laughed out loud. “Good God, Sheriff, everyone in town uses Splat. The corner market sells it like hotcakes, just ask them. I bought a new bottle yesterday, and I certainly didn’t kill Eleanora!”

Biddle ran a hand over his head, his frown deepening. “You’re not a suspect, ma’am.”

“Well, thank goodness for that.” She crossed her arms over her breasts. “The paper says you’ve been questioning others connected to Eleanora. I hope that includes Floyd Baskin,” she said, remembering something Zelma had mentioned the night Eleanora died. “Mr. Baskin was at the Duncan house earlier the day she was poisoned, wasn’t he?”

Biddle sighed. “So it seems.”

“Jemima Winthrop and Stanley Duncan also stopped by to see Eleanora that afternoon as well,” Helen went on, because Zelma had told her that much, too.

The sheriff nodded but said nothing.

Helen shook her head, returning to stand beside Jean’s chair. Her friend’s expression had changed from one of anxiety to curiosity, as though she hadn’t known about Eleanora’s other visitors.

“If you’re looking for someone who wanted Eleanora out of the way, why don’t you start hounding Ms. Winthrop and Mr. Duncan instead of Jean,” she suggested. “You might want to ask the two of them why they were meeting in secret at the playground last evening.” Helen raised her eyebrows as she tacked on, “I don’t think they were discussing the weather, do you?”

Biddle opened his mouth as if to retort but clamped it shut again.

Helen smiled tightly. “If you’re not arresting Jean, you won’t mind if I take her home, will you?”

The sheriff shot her a grumpy stare.

So Helen helped Jean up from her seat and hurried her toward the door before Biddle could change his mind.

To her surprise, he didn’t come after them but merely called out, “Maybe Mrs. Duncan ought to call her lawyer. He might come in handy in the next day or so.”

Helen briskly shut the door.

Chapter Sixteen

H
ELEN REMAINED AT
Jean’s house just long enough to have a cup of coffee and make sure her friend was all right. Then she took off, walking toward the house on Harbor Drive that had—for as long as she’d lived in River Bend—belonged to the Winthrops. Despite losing so much in the bankruptcy auction, they had managed to hang out to that.

The stone and wood three-story structure sat but half a block away from the Duncans’ home, yet they seemed miles apart in some respects.

Helen hadn’t been inside the Winthrops’ place in years, not since Reginald Winthrop had died. Before the patriarch’s passing, the family had been one of the town’s wealthiest, sponsoring the annual Fourth of July picnic and fireworks.

The house had been a wonder then, the lawns manicured, the shrubs pruned to perfection. The rosebushes surrounding the veranda had been breathtaking, blooming through the summers in every shade of red and pink one could imagine.

As Helen paused on the sidewalk at the foot of the driveway, she realized how long ago it had been since Reginald’s death and how much had changed since.

Where the houses nearby had groomed yards and fresh paint, the Winthrops’ looked sorely in need of a fresh coat. Every shutter was chipped and peeling, and the trim was blistered where it hadn’t flaked off altogether.

The bushes in front were ill shaped and overgrown, and weeds poked their unsightly heads through bald patches in the grass.

Helen shook her head, finding the sight of it terribly sad. It was truly a reflection of what had happened to the Winthrops since Reginald’s death.

It didn’t surprise her that there was such bad blood between the Duncans and the Winthrops. As local gossip had it, Marvin Duncan had done more than simply buy the Winthrop granary out from under Reginald’s feet. He’d used every dirty trick in the book to get Winthrop Grains into debt, then he’d bought the business for a song at auction and—if Helen remembered correctly—most of Reginald Winthrop’s other assets as well, including the acreage near the harbor, family heirlooms, and antiques. Reginald Winthrop had started drinking heavily soon after and had died by his own hand from a mix of pills and a bottle of whiskey. His wife, Anna, had shut herself up in the house. Helen realized she couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen her. Was she as bitter as her daughter? Did Anna also blame the Duncans for her family’s misfortune?

Helen wondered what the truth really was or if anyone even remembered. Sometimes animosity caused such skewed perceptions that reality became buried beneath the angry stories.

She picked her way carefully across the cracked driveway before ascending the porch steps, which groaned and creaked unnervingly underfoot.

Before she rang the bell, she peered through the slim windows on either side of the door, but curtains barred her catching any glimpse inside.

Helen straightened her shoulders and pressed a finger to the doorbell. When she heard no chime, she raised the brass knocker and lay it down solidly several times.

After a minute had passed, she knocked with her fist. “Hello?” she said loudly, her cheek pressed into the dust on the door. “Is anyone home?”

She heard the slow tread of approaching feet before a timid voice asked, “Who’s there?”

“Jemima, is that you? It’s Helen Evans.”

The lock clicked free.

The door came open but a sliver.

“Hello,” Helen said, smiling, the tone one she’d used often to coax a stubborn grandchild from hiding beneath a bed. “I’ve come to see Jemima Winthrop. Is she here?”

An eye nearly hidden by crepelike skin studied her through a filmy pupil. A hint of white hair showed above, and Helen saw a hand on a cane below.

“Anna?” she blurted out, embarrassed for not recognizing the woman instantly. But then, Anna Winthrop was hardly as she remembered. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

The woman blinked her foggy eye before opening the door wider. For a long minute, she squinted at Helen. “You must have been a friend of Reggie’s,” she murmured, her voice soft and breathless. “I wasn’t expecting anyone. Jemima isn’t home, and I don’t take visitors much. It isn’t proper for a widow to entertain so soon after the funeral.”

So soon after the funeral?

Helen didn’t know what to say.

Reginald Winthrop had been dead for years. She was about to speak up and remind his widow of the fact, then she caught herself. The woman had dementia. It was no wonder Anna Winthrop left the house so rarely. “Do you know when Jemima will return?” Helen asked, uncertain of whether or not she’d get a lucid response.

Anna’s crumpled face smiled. “I haven’t a clue. She comes and goes. You know how these young girls are.”

Jemima was sixty if she was a day.

“Yes, I do,” Helen told her and nodded. She took a long look at Anna, noting the black dress she wore and the stoop of her back. She leaned heavily on the gold-tipped cane, as if she’d topple over without it. She looked a hundred or more, though she couldn’t be more than, what, eighty? Helen figured she wasn’t any older than Eleanora Duncan had been, anyway. That was just five years beyond Helen’s own seventy-five. But, gazing at Anna, Helen felt like a spring chicken in comparison. Once the mind had gone, the rest of the body followed suit. Helen had seen it far too often.

“Where are my manners?” Anna said abruptly. “Land sakes, since you’ve come all this way, I should offer you a spot of tea at least. Would you like to come in, Mrs. Blevins?”

“It’s Evans,” Helen gently corrected.

“Of course it is,” Anna said in her breathless way, her murky gaze drifting to Helen and then off in the distance. “Did you come by car? I should send someone out to fetch your bags?”

Helen played along again. “Oh, please, dear, don’t bother. I don’t want to trouble you further. I actually came to see Jemima, but since she’s away, I’ll try to catch her another time.”She couldn’t imagine Anna Winthrop boiling water, much less fixing the two of them a pot of tea.

“Did you forget your coat?” Anna asked. “You’ll need it. It’s rather chilly, isn’t it?”

The day was near perfect, the temperature in the low seventies, but Helen noticed that Anna’s humped shoulders had indeed begun to quiver.

“You do look cold,” she said, “perhaps you should go back—”

“Just what the devil are you doing here?”

Helen hadn’t heard anyone approach, and she started at the bark of the voice from behind her. She turned to find Jemima barreling up the steps, her dark eyes narrowed, her lips set in a line that carved deep furrows on either side of her mouth.

Helen put a hand to her heart. “Good heavens, but you startled me, sneaking around like that.”

“I’d hardly call walking up to my own house ‘sneaking around,’ ” Jemima countered and all but shoved Helen aside to reach her mother.

Anna gripped her cane and stared with unfocused eyes at her daughter. “Is that you, Jemmy?”

“Yes, Mama, it’s me.”

“Mrs. Melvin dropped by to pay her respects to your father,” Anna said.

“Mrs. Melvin was just leaving,” Jemima told her with one eye on Helen. “Why don’t you go on inside, Mama? I’ll be there in a minute.”

Anna nodded blindly then slowly turned around, relying on the cane for support as she took one shuffling step after another.

As soon as she was out of the picture, Jemima pulled the door shut and faced Helen.

“My mother isn’t well, Mrs. Evans, and she certainly doesn’t need people like you bothering her.”

“I didn’t mean to do anything of the sort,” Helen replied. “I stopped by to see you—“

“Me?” Jemima cut her off. “Why?”

“I suppose you’ve heard that Eleanora Duncan was poisoned.”

Jemima planted her hands on her hips. “I also heard that the sheriff had Jean Duncan down in his office bright and early this morning. Did he arrest her?”

“No, he did not,” Helen informed her. “Jean didn’t have anything to do with Eleanora’s murder.”

“Didn’t she now?” Jemima’s thinly plucked eyebrows arched. “Don’t get your knickers twisted, Mrs. Evans. I know Jean’s your friend, and I don’t blame her for what she did, not one little bit.”

“She didn’t do anything,” Helen protested.

“Uh-huh.”

Jemima looked pleased, her thin face wearing a smile that Helen thought better resembled a smirk. She could have been an attractive woman if not for the deep-set lines that ran from nose to mouth. Frown lines, Helen thought, and more telling of Jemima’s bitterness than any words could have been.

“You really hated Eleanora, didn’t you?” Helen said, watching the tug-of-war of emotions that played across Jemima’s face. “All that pain the Duncans caused your family.” She sighed and shook her head. “I can’t say as I blame you.”

Jemima whispered, “You don’t know the half of it.”

“I know more than you think,” Helen told her. “For one, that you’ve been seeing Stanley Duncan in secret—”

“Please leave,” Jemima snapped, not letting her finish, and her eye began to twitch. “I don’t have time to listen to idle gossip.”

She spun on her heel and disappeared inside.

The lock clicked.

The wind picked up suddenly, bringing with it a shot of cold, as though a dark cloud had washed over the sun. Helen rubbed her arms as she went down the porch steps and started walking along the drive. She made her way around a navy sedan covered with a fine layer of dust, and she shook her head, thinking her ears were going out on her. She hadn’t even heard Jemima drive up.

With a sigh, she looked back at the Winthrop house and thought of Anna: each had seemed to age before her eyes.

Time had surely not been good to the Winthrops.

If Marvin Duncan had really been responsible for Reginald Winthrop’s bankruptcy, it was no wonder Jemima hated Eleanora so much. But was that enough to have prompted her to put poison in Eleanora’s pâté?

Ants must be bad this year, ’cause I’ve sold, like, a hundred bottles of the stuff this week alone. Miss Winthrop just bought her second batch in two days, would you believe.

Helen suddenly recalled the remarks of the checkout girl at the market, and she felt a growing sense of unease.

She drew in a deep breath, inhaling the muddy odor of the harbor, and she began to walk briskly, wanting to get as far away from the Winthrops’ house as she possibly could.

Chapter Seventeen

F
RANK
B
IDDLE
TRIED
to concentrate on the reports from Eleanora Duncan’s case file but found his mind wandering, and with good reason.

He’d read the contents at least ten times already, practically had the words memorized, and that included the list of food bagged from Eleanora Duncan’s refrigerator. It was long enough to be mistaken for the inventory of a small grocery store. Frank closed his eyes and recited aloud, “One half gallon skim milk, organic prune and carrot juices, one jar of bread and butter pickles, a package of uncooked chicken breasts, pickled herring, and half a dozen pint-sized containers of cat food from a gourmet pet shop in Alton.”

Oh, yes, plus the crab dip and stuffed mushrooms prepared by Jean Duncan, as well as the poisoned pâté.

Biddle sighed and pushed the case file away.

What if Eleanora Duncan had eaten the pâté when Zelma hadn’t been around to witness her stomach cramps and convulsions? If the old lady had been alone in the house when she’d died, no one would’ve been the wiser. No doubt it would’ve appeared she’d had a stroke or aneurysm or one of those other fatal medical terms he’d heard Doc mention.

Is that what Jean Duncan had hoped for? Had she figured Eleanora’s death would be relatively quick and unquestioned? Had she assumed that the eighty-year-old widow would simply be buried without a fuss?

Surely she hadn’t envisioned an autopsy.

He rubbed his eyes. He’d hardly slept last night. This case was getting to him, all right. He’d rolled over and reached for Sarah so he could wake her up and bounce some ideas around, but she hadn’t been there.

“I’m staying a couple more days at my mother’s, lamb chop, I hope you don’t mind,” she’d told him when she’d phoned a few minutes earlier. “Her hip replacement’s been giving her trouble, so I’m going to the orthopedist with her in the morning. Though I do hope you miss me.”

Frank thumped the heel of his hand against his chest and let out a belch that would’ve earned him applause in some kitchens.

Maybe Sarah was right about that cholesterol thing. He wasn’t so sure that a few more days of eating at the diner wouldn’t kill him.

That brought his thoughts right back to the murder.

Like the devil on his shoulder, Helen Evans’s voice played in his head.

Why, just yesterday as I was leaving here, after Jean had made up her mind to go to Eleanora’s, she made a comment about hoping Eleanora wouldn’t accuse her of trying to poison her. If that doesn’t prove she’s innocent, then I don’t know what does. Why on earth would she say such a thing and then go poison her mother-in-law? That would be like pointing the finger at herself, wouldn’t it?

Or perhaps it was a very clever way of deflecting guilt once Eleanora was dead.

But Mrs. Evans’s voice didn’t stop there.

Splat? You’re arresting her because of this? . . . Everyone in town uses Splat. The corner market sells it like hotcakes.

Frank pressed his fingertips to his temples, as if the action would drive away the woman’s persistent nagging. How he wished Mrs. Evans would just stay out of this!

He liked her. He really did. She was a nice enough lady with good intentions, and he admired her energy. She had enough of it to go around and then some. Hell, Frank could use some of it himself. Sarah was always dogging him about walking instead of driving the squad car everywhere he went. But he ranked exercise right up there with tofu and cleansing teas. Working up a sweat for no good reason just wasn’t his style. He needed every ounce of energy to take care of the citizens of River Bend.

So he owed it to them to work on the case, not work out at a gym, he reasoned as he rubbed a hand over his weary face.

With a sigh, he reopened the file, placing it front and center on his desk, and attempted to look at it with fresh eyes. Okay, so what did he have here?

Eleanora was killed by a lethal dose of sodium tetraborate found in the goose liver pâté prepared by Jean Duncan. A bottle of Splat—the suspected poison—had been found in Jean Duncan’s kitchen. Then there was the fact that Jean Duncan and her mother-in-law shared a deep, abiding hate.

So far as the sheriff was concerned, that gave the younger Mrs. Duncan motive, means, and opportunity.

That was a winning trifecta when it came to crimes like this.

So why hadn’t he arrested Jean Duncan already? What was stopping him? The evidence was awfully obvious, but wasn’t that the best kind? Simple cases were that much easier for prosecutors to explain to a jury, which usually meant a slam-dunk conviction.

If only Helen Evans’s voice didn’t keep popping into his brain.

If you’re looking for someone who wanted Eleanora out of the way, why don’t you start hounding Ms. Winthrop and Mr. Duncan instead of Jean? You might want to ask the two of them why they were meeting in secret at the playground last evening. I don’t think they were discussing the weather, do you?

Damn it! There it was again.

Frank groaned loudly.

Why did such an otherwise lovely woman seem to believe she was Miss Marple incarnate?

Ah, well, he told himself, she was right about one thing anyhow. Jean Duncan might be the most obvious suspect, but she certainly wasn’t the only one.

Frank had one eye on Floyd Baskin. The guy rubbed him entirely the wrong way. So Frank had put in a call to Eleanora’s lawyer and found out that yes, indeed, she had them working overtime, trying to put the kibosh on any further payments to the Save the River Fund. If Baskin knew about it, wasn’t that motive for him to want Eleanora dead before she cut him off?

And then there was Stanley Duncan and Jemima Winthrop, suddenly a pair in the sheriff’s mind since Mrs. Evans’s report of witnessing their unlikely tryst.

Each had been at the Duncan house the day Eleanora had died, which meant both had had a chance to poison the pâté. Frank had found a bottle of Splat beneath the sink in Eleanora’s kitchen. It would have been simple enough to hold the container of poison with a tissue so as not to leave behind any prints.

Frank’s eyes began to blur and his head to ache. So he tapped the pages back into the manila file and put it away in his desk drawer. Then he rose from his chair.

The chimes of the carillon broke through the air, trilling out a clunky rendition of “My Old Kentucky Home,” and Biddle found himself humming along with it.

So it was noon already, he realized, and his gut let out a grumble.

It wouldn’t hurt any to go over to the diner and have lunch first. Investigating a murder was hard enough without having to do it on an empty stomach.