Unti Susan McBride #2

by Susan McBride

  Nancy sighed with frustration. “I thought I’d be gaining insight into the profession, but instead I’m just a glorified toady.”

  “If Grace is so unbearable, maybe you should quit,” Helen said firmly.

  Nancy opened her mouth to respond but ended up shaking her head. “I’m not a quitter, and you know it. Besides, she might treat me like her minion, but she really cares about the profession. She’s interested in why ­people do the things they do, and she honestly wants to help them.”

  “Honestly?” Helen repeated and arched her eyebrows. “She sure doesn’t seem to want to help you, seeing how she’s always having you run her errands and wait for repairmen.” Her granddaughter’s duties seemed to cover everything from chauffer to lackey to laundry picker-­upper. “That hardly sounds like a position with room for advancement.”

  “Yeah, I thought I’d learn more about the field than about how to make really good coffee. And, yes, there are times I want to wring Grace’s neck,” Nancy said, holding tight to the tote bag and patting it. “But if this book does for Grace what I think it will, it could be a breakthrough for me as well. Being her assistant could really mean something then.”

  “And you’re willing to wait and see?”

  Nancy bit her lip. “I guess I am.”

  Helen wasn’t sure why River Bend needed a therapist in the first place. After all, they had the resident pastor who presided over their nondenominational chapel and never ignored a plea for help. Although, Helen admitted to herself, they did seem to go through resident pastors like Kleenex. Their last preacher, Dr. Fister, had remained for only a year, and the church had scrambled to find a replacement. They had Doc Melville for medical issues and LaVyrle Hunnecker at the beauty shop for anything else. Any additional set of ears—­and costly ones at that, from what Nancy had mentioned—­seemed above and beyond the necessary.

  Despite Helen’s misgivings, Grace Simpson had appeared to do quite well. The novelty of it had certainly drawn her clientele initially. “According to my therapist” seemed to be the anthem of the twenty-­first century, even in a town as small as this.

  Ah, progress, Helen mused, and her stomach rumbled.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked, wondering if Nancy had dinner plans, though the girl was always so busy with work that Helen doubted it. “Nancy?”

  But the young woman didn’t seem to hear. She was digging deep inside her tote, a worried frown on her face. She started looking around on the sidewalk.

  “Are you all right?” Helen asked.

  Nancy bit her lower lip. “Grace was being so awful, and I left in such a hurry, that I must’ve forgotten one of the legal pads in my desk.”

  “Do you need to go back?” Helen asked. “Are they important?”

  “Yes, they’re important, and no, I don’t want to go back.” Nancy shuddered. “I’m not in the mood for another tongue-­lashing, and I wouldn’t want Grace to find out that I haven’t shredded these yet.” She patted the leather tote. “They’re the handwritten notes for Grace’s book that I finished transcribing this morning. I was supposed to have cross-­shredded everything already, but I haven’t had time. If she knew I still had them—­” Nancy paused and drew a finger across her throat.

  “Aw, you poor, mistreated creature,” Helen teased and put an arm around the girl. “How about I buy you dinner? We’re not going to run into Attila the Therapist at the diner, are we?”

  “No, Grace won’t be eating at the diner tonight,” Nancy said and looked behind her. “But we’d better get a move on or we might bump into her here on the sidewalk. Grace has a six-­thirty appointment with LaVyrle and then a dinner meeting in St. Louis with her publisher. She wouldn’t let me email the book, can you believe? She wants to hand over the sole hard copy to Harold Faulkner in person.”

  “Luddite,” Helen muttered, although she was enough of one herself. She preferred her old landline to the “smart” phone that Patsy, her eldest daughter and Nancy’s mother, had given her last Christmas. Maybe the phone was smart, but all its confusing bells and whistles made Helen feel pretty dumb.

  “Not so much a Luddite as paranoid,” Nancy said, shifting her tote bag so she could take her grandmother’s hand. With a final glance back, she tugged Helen along, walking so quickly that Helen felt out of breath by the time they’d reached the Main Street Diner.

  When they’d been seated in a booth and the waitress had brought them water and menus, Helen dared to ask, “So what do you think of the book? You’re the only one who’s seen it besides Grace, I presume.”

  “Eh,” Nancy said, burying her nose in the menu.

  “Don’t give me that,” Helen whispered, leaning forward. “You must have an opinion. Everyone in town’s already speculating about it.”

  “No kidding.” Nancy sighed and put the menu down. “I’ve already fielded dozens of calls about Grace’s manuscript. It got so bad today that I started letting them all go to voice mail. I don’t know why Grace is so worried about who sees the thing beforehand, when she’s been dropping hints about it all over River Bend, ticking ­people off for weeks.” Nancy set her elbows on the table and plunked her chin into her hands. “Now everyone who’s ever been in for a session is afraid she’s put them in there.” Nancy looked over at Helen, her forehead wrinkled. “Despite the fact that Grace used pseudonyms, ­people are freaked out about being recognized, and I can’t blame them. This isn’t L.A. It’s more like Mayberry.”

  Helen took a slow sip of water. She’d heard the gossip about Grace’s book, of course. The rumor mill ran rampant in River Bend. How could it not, with only two hundred residents and everyone seeming to know each other’s business? But talk was one thing. Having your peccadilloes exposed in black and white for the public to see was another thing entirely.

  “Is it legal?” Helen finally asked. “Doesn’t Grace need permission to write about real ­people and their problems?”

  “She’s covered so long as she doesn’t use their real names and fudges with their social standings and professions a bit,” Nancy said. “Grace checked it out with her publisher’s legal department. It’s an academic press, so they’re strict about rules.”

  “Otherwise, they’d be sued out of business.”

  “No doubt.” Nancy nodded, and her eyes clouded over.

  “You’ve seen what’s on the pages,” Helen said, cocking her head. “Do folks have cause to worry?”

  Nancy fidgeted. “Okay, so maybe I did wonder a bit if the man with the heavyset wife and impotence problem was Art Beaner and if the woman who felt her authority-­figure husband had started wearing ladies’ panties because he found her unattractive was Sheriff Biddle’s wife, Sarah.”

  Helen had taken a sip of water, and she had to fight to keep from spitting it out all over the table.

  “But who am I to say?” Nancy went on with a shrug. “I don’t know anyone in town as well as you do, Grandma.” She reached across the table to give Helen’s hand a squeeze. “How about we forget about Grace and her stupid book and order some dinner? I don’t know about you, but I’m starved.”

  Helen smiled thinly.

  She was hardly the only citizen of River Bend who knew her neighbors so well that pseudonyms would not be cloak enough. And once the townsfolk got their hands on copies of Grace Simpson’s “stupid book,” she could only imagine the trouble it was going to cause.

  Chapter 5

  “I HAVE AN appointment at six-­thirty,” Grace stated crisply, stepping up to the receptionist’s desk. Behind it sat Mary, an impossibly shy creature with a head of lank hair that seemed to forever fall into the girl’s eyes, despite her attempt at harnessing the mess of it into a ponytail.

  “She isn’t running behind, is she?” Grace glanced at the gold watch on her wrist, thinking that she had to leave town by seven-­thirty at the latest if she wanted to arrive on time for her eight o’cl
ock meeting with her publisher at Tony’s in downtown St. Louis. “I’m on a tight schedule—­”

  “No,” Mary quietly interrupted. “LaVyrle’s never late.”

  “Good.”

  “She’s finishing up with Mrs. Beaner, so if you wouldn’t mind having a seat. Um, we’ve got the latest Midwest Travelers magazine in if you’d like to take a peek.”

  “I’m good.” Grace sat down and stared toward the salon’s rear where LaVyrle had her private cubby. As she shifted to get comfortable, the chair’s vinyl upholstery emitted a series of squeaks.

  She found a dog-­eared copy of Good Housekeeping and was impatiently thumbing through it when she inhaled a strong dose of hairspray from above. She slowly raised her eyes to see Bertha Beaner, the bigger, if not better, half of Art Beaner, chairman of the town board, glaring down at her. She clutched a large satchel to her heaving chest as her beady eyes shot daggers.

  “Hello, Bertha,” Grace said, bracing herself for what was to come. “Can I help you with something?”

  “Help? That’s the last thing I’d want from you!” the woman said with a snort. “I do hope you’re satisfied with yourself, Grace Simpson. “You’ve got this whole town all shook up.”

  Grace set aside the magazine and calmly asked, “What exactly are you accusing me of?”

  “You must know I mean your horrid book!”

  “Ah, my horrid book.” Grace wrinkled her brow, setting her hands in her lap. It was hardly the first time one of River Bend’s denizens had approached her lately and acted as if she were Lucifer. Funny, because not too long before that, they had behaved as though she were a savior, there to solve all their problems. “I find it interesting how excitable everyone’s gotten when it’s not even published. How can you judge a book you haven’t even read?”

  Something changed in Bertha’s doughy face, and she reached inside her satchel, withdrawing a legal-­sized pad full of rumpled yellow pages. “Oh, I’ve read enough.”

  Grace blinked. No, she told herself. It couldn’t be. Nancy had kept everything under lock and key while she’d typed up the book. And she’d looked Grace in the eye not twenty minutes ago, assuring her that the notes had been destroyed.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Bertha snapped, and her overripe features flushed. She leaned in to hiss, “How dare you ask us to trust you with our deepest secrets, only to peddle them to a publisher for profit! And you have the nerve to call it academic! Rubbish!” Mrs. Beaner puffed. “It’s disgusting, that’s what it is, Grace Simpson, and if you go through with this publishing deal, either God will strike you down for it, or one of us will!”

  “How did you get that?” Grace grunted and jumped from her chair, snatching the yellow pages from Bertha’s grip. “It belongs to me!”

  Bertha looked mad enough to spit. Instead, she turned on her heel and slapped a bill on the counter in front of a wide-­eyed Mary. Then she stomped out of the beauty shop with her newly-­coiffed head held high. The door shut with a bang, and the plate-­glass window behind Grace rattled.

  Grace felt rattled as well.

  Would all of River Bend blame her for the broken water main last winter, too? How about the murder that happened before she’d even moved to town?

  “So she’s a fan of yours, huh?”

  Grace hadn’t noticed LaVyrle approach. She’d been too busy wondering if she should fire Nancy tonight or wait until her incompetent assistant showed up at work in the morning.

  “Yeah, my biggest fan,” Grace muttered, trying not to tremble as she bent the legal pad in half and stuffed it inside her purse.

  ­“People are funny.” LaVyrle’s dark brows arched high above eyelids painted a robin’s egg blue. “They sure like talkin’ about others, but they don’t like it a bit when they hear someone talkin’ about them.”

  Grace rose from her seat, taking a step toward the beautician. “Ah, LaVyrle,” she said and set her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “I do believe you’re the only person in town who knows more about the ­people who live here than I do.”

  “Right,” LaVyrle remarked as she led the way toward her secluded station. “But with you, all they get for their money is advice. With me, they get an ear to listen, plus a cut and blow-­dry.”

  Grace couldn’t help but smile. “And that’s why therapists will never put hair salons out of business.”

  “You got that right, Mrs. S,” LaVyrle replied, chuckling. “Just leave your purse under the counter and head on back so Mary can shampoo you.”

  “Yes, yes, I know the routine by heart,” Grace said and ditched her bag as instructed. It wasn’t as though Bertha Beaner was going to stomp back to LaVyrle’s and try to steal the legal pad. She’d already seen enough to get her good and riled.

  “I’ll get you all fixed up for that dinner in St. Louis I heard you tellin’ Mary about,” the beautician assured her.

  “You’re a godsend, LaVyrle.”

  “Me?” LaVyrle blushed. “Nah,” she said with a flip of her hand. “I’m just a girl doing her best to make an honest buck.”

  Grace grinned at LaVyrle, thinking she probably liked the small-­town beautician better than anyone else in this burg. LaVyrle reminded her of a kindhearted and middle-­aged gangster’s moll. “What I think, sweetie,” Grace said as she headed off to the shampoo sink around the corner, “is that there’s a lot more to you than anyone knows.”

  “That’s ’cause I do all of the listening and they do all the yakkin’,” LaVyrle hollered after her.

  And it was a good thing they did talk, Grace mused as she tracked down Mary for a shampoo, or else there would’ve been nothing for her to write about and less still about which the patrons of LaVyrle’s could gossip.

  Chapter 6

  HELEN HATED THAT Nancy couldn’t even relax and enjoy her dinner. The girl only ordered soup and barely ate more than a few spoonfuls. She mostly spent her time looking worried and fiddling with the saltines until they’d dissolved into crumbs.

  At 6:35, the door to the diner jingled open and Bertha Beaner burst in, her cheeks red and eyes blazing fire.

  Helen lifted her hand to wave, but Bertha didn’t notice. She made a beeline for a table where Sarah Biddle sat with Clara Foley.

  “What’s wrong, Grandma?” Nancy asked the same question Helen had been posing to her for the past half hour.

  “I’m not sure,” Helen told her, watching the women bend their heads together, chattering furiously, before they all got up and went to another table filled with women Helen knew from Stitch and Sew and bridge club. “But something is definitely up.”

  It was then that Bertha looked across the diner and saw Helen and Nancy.

  She didn’t smile or wave. Instead, she scowled. The rest of the ladies stopped talking and glanced over as well.

  “They look downright pissed,” Nancy whispered.

  Helen thought that was an understatement, and she braced herself as the group of women—­now half a dozen strong—­stopped at the end of the booth she shared with Nancy.

  Bertha set her palms on the table and leaned forward, directing her anger at Helen’s granddaughter. “I don’t know how you can work for Grace Simpson and hold your head up!”

  Nancy visibly flinched.

  “Don’t bully her, Bertha Beaner,” Helen said in her granddaughter’s defense. “She’s Gracie’s assistant, not her keeper.”

  “Well, I read the filthy notes you dropped,” Bertha shouted at Nancy. She slammed down her fist. “And I won’t stand for that book getting published. Someone needs to put that awful woman in her place, and that’s what we aim to do right now! Come on, girls, Grace Simpson’s at LaVyrle’s!” she called out like a rallying cry and led her cohorts out the door.

  “So that’s where it went,” Nancy muttered and grabbed her leather bag. She scooted out of the booth, rushing off before Helen could g
rab a twenty from her purse to toss on the table.

  “Nancy, wait!” Helen called as her granddaughter set the bells to jangling on the diner’s front door.

  Helen didn’t have far to go to catch up. Barely a block down Main Street, the crowd had gathered beneath the purple sign for LaVyrle’s Cut ’n’ Curl.

  Nancy had stopped on the outskirts, and Helen did the same.

  “Oh, no, this is my fault,” Nancy murmured. “Grace is going to kill me for losing those notes.”

  “How is it your fault?” Helen asked, standing shoulder to shoulder. “You didn’t write the damn book. Grace brought this on herself.”

  Bertha Beaner tried to push through LaVyrle’s front door, but a ponytailed Mary stood in the doorway, blocking her path. “Please, just go, or I’ll get the sheriff,” the girl said, trying her best to keep the agitated throng from pushing its way inside.

  The sheriff’s office was right next door, Helen mused; she was surprised Frank Biddle hadn’t heard the noise and ambled over.

  “Bring out Grace Simpson!” someone yelled.

  “She used us!”

  Helen remembered Nancy saying that Grace had a hair appointment before her dinner engagement in St. Louis. It certainly appeared that she wasn’t going to leave LaVyrle’s without plowing through an angry mob.

  “Please, don’t shout!” The squeaky voice belonged to Mary. “Can’t we be civil to each other?”

  “Grace Simpson doesn’t know the meaning of the word civil!” Sarah Biddle shouted back and started chanting, “Stop the press! Stop the press!”

  Nancy tugged at Helen’s sleeve. “Maybe we should go. If Grace sees me here”—­she swallowed—­“she’s not going to fire me. She’s going to kill me.”