“Uh-oh,” he said under his breath and slowed to a crawl as he approached the house.
He spotted the sheriff’s black-and-white parked out front. A golf cart with a dog riding shotgun was just pulling out of the Winstons’ driveway, and crowds of people milling about began to drift past him.
What the heck was going on?
Jackson stopped one house shy of the Winstons’ and rolled down his window. “What’s up? Is everything okay?” he asked a woman in hip-high waders. She looked ready for some trout fishing.
“Better than okay! He’s been found,” she trilled, and a crooked smile scrunched up her birdlike features. “Bernie’s safe and sound.”
“Thank goodness,” Jack replied, because it seemed a sure bet.
“Sheriff doesn’t want anyone hanging around, bothering the family, though.” The woman scratched her beaked nose. “Doc’s going to check him out, and then they’ll need time alone. So you might as well scoot.”
“Of course,” he murmured. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
“You’re welcome,” she said as he paused. Then she headed off with a smaller woman trotting behind her shouting, “Ida, wait for me!”
Jackson was sure he’d seen them both before, but he couldn’t conjure up their names to save his life. There were so many hens living in this tiny burg that one looked a lot like the next. He usually stayed away from the women, besides. They were way too suspicious. It was one reason he liked to do business on the golf course. No nosy wives around to keep their husbands from sealing the deal with a handshake.
Jackson peered ahead at the Winstons’ porch and saw the sheriff with an arm around a rail-thin man who shakily ascended the steps. Soon a distraught-looking woman appeared at the front door. Her sharp features seemed to contort beneath the cap of her white hair.
He recognized that hen well enough.
Jack’s eyes narrowed.
If she was Bernie Winston’s harpy wife, was that pathetic-looking fellow Bernie?
Wow.
The old guy hadn’t exactly looked all peaches and cream the last time Jackson had seen him. But now he was even gaunter and dirty, to boot, like he’d been dragged through the mud and back again. So he’d wandered off and gotten lost in the woods, had he? Things were progressing faster than Jackson had realized.
Confound it, he thought with a shake of his head, taking in the scene. He wasn’t going to get a check from Bernie today, not with the sheriff hanging around, and he for damned sure wasn’t going to get his Cartier ballpoint back.
He’d just have to come back when things were quieter.
Rather than risk Bernie’s wife catching sight of him, Jackson rolled up his window and drove off, heading to the diner. If anyone could fill him in on the day’s events, it was Erma.
There were a couple of other trucks parked out front in the shin-high water. Jack was glad he’d worn a pair of beat-up Lucchese boots, ’cause he was about to get them wet. Though he wasn’t thrilled about wading to the sidewalk, he tugged up his trousers and went. He splashed through puddles to the diner’s door and pulled it wide. As a bell jingled overhead, he stamped the water from his boots on the already-soggy doormat.
The place was quieter than it normally was, and Jack wasn’t sure if that was because of the flood or because a good chunk of the population seemed to be congregated in front of Bernie Winston’s house.
As soon as Erma saw him, she motioned him toward a booth near the window.
“What’s all the fuss about Bernie Winston?” he asked her point-blank.
“The fuss? You mean him disappearing for half a day and turning up near Lerner’s cabin?” she said, her eyes bright above the folds in her cheeks. “Henry Potter was just by and said he got word on his walkie-talkie that Bernie came out of the thicket alive. Councilman Beaner headed off in his golf cart to go pick him up. Poor old guy.”
“So he got out of the house on his lonesome?” Jackson asked. “He isn’t locked inside?”
“I guess not. He snuck right past his wife and slipped away,” she said, looking surprised that he had to ask. “Mrs. Winston was frantic. The sheriff had to round up a posse to hunt him down. Thank heavens, he was okay. Who knows what could’ve happened to him if he’d been left out there alone for too long, especially with the water rising as fast as it is. You know how confused those folks get. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been a happy ending.”
“Uh-hum,” Jackson grunted, hoping that would suffice. He didn’t want to interrupt the flow of Erma’s monologue by talking.
“He’s got a bad case of old timer’s disease from the sounds of it,” she told him and fished around the pocket of her apron. “I’d guess he’s getting worse, too, if he’s slipping out and disappearing into the backwoods. Probably won’t be long till Betty has to put him somewhere for safekeeping.”
“Geez, that sounds distressing,” he said, and it was the truth. If he didn’t work fast, he was going to lose one of his golden egg–laying geese. That was one thing he didn’t like about his clients from River Bend: they tended to die off before he was done shaking out their pockets.
“I can’t blame Mrs. Winston if she does lock him up somewhere.” Erma shrugged. “It’s a tough boat to be in. At least the old guy’s safe for now, right? One day at a time, that’s all you can do.” She found her order pad and plucked a pencil from behind her ear. “What’ll it be today, hon? A cup of joe and a doughnut?”
“Just the coffee, please.”
Erma nodded but seemed in no hurry to leave. “I had an uncle with old timer’s,” she said and sighed. “It was like he turned back into a baby. By the end he was in diapers. He couldn’t feed himself or tie his shoes. It’s a sad way to go.”
“Any way’s a sad way to go,” Jack said, because he wasn’t sure if losing one’s mind was any worse than eating a bad clam or stepping off a curb and getting hit by a bus.
“I’ll be back in a tick with your order,” Erma told him.
“Thanks.”
She gave him a wink then plodded off in her orthopedic sneakers.
Jackson slipped his cell phone from his breast pocket and made a note to himself. He had to find a way to get back into Bernie’s and snag a check before the old guy was put into lockup at some facility for loony tunes, and he wanted his prized pen back, too. Though he’d have to be careful. If that hawk-nosed wife of Bernie’s caught him again, she might actually call the sheriff and have him arrested for real.
He sighed.
Desperate times called for desperate measures, eh? He might have to resort to a little B and E, which he didn’t like to do.
When Erma brought his coffee, he barely took a slurp before he glanced at the clock on his phone and realized he’d let the time get away.
If he pushed the pedal to the metal, he could take the back road out of River Bend and get to the Jerseyville Country Club for a twelve-o’clock tee time with a couple of retired gentlemen he’d struck up a conversation with last week at Fran & Marilyn’s over the breakfast buffet.
“Time to make the doughnuts,” he said to himself.
Then he paid his bill, leaving Erma a five-dollar tip for a cup of joe. Hey, it never hurt to keep the locals friendly, particularly the ones like Erma, who kept a finger on the pulse of this little gold mine of a town.
Chapter 17
“Helen, wake up.”
The voice worked its way into Helen’s dream.
She was gobbling meat loaf and mashed potatoes at the diner with Clara Foley. Clara wore a bright purple muumuu and sat beside a ghostly looking Bernie Winston, who kept whispering, “Water. I need water.” All the while Amber perched center table, swishing his tail across their plates until his fur turned soggy with gravy.
“Get up,” the voice said again more urgently, this time accompanied by a relentless shaking of her shoulder. “I need your help.”
The dream dissolved, leaving fogginess in its wake.
Helen opened her eyes to find Sarah Biddle
leaning over the wicker chaise lounge on which she’d fallen asleep. Fanny Melville had been right: she was tired after the hike to find Bernie. She’d gotten back to the house, pulled off her muddy hiking boots, and cleaned up a bit. She’d eaten a granola bar, fed Amber a fresh can of Fancy Feast, and plunked down on the porch.
Her eyes had felt soggy as she tried to work a crossword puzzle. Then Fanny called to tell her Doc had checked out Bernie and, except for some cuts and bruises and a mild case of dehydration, he was fine.
She’d hung up, feeling tired but satisfied. It hadn’t taken but five minutes after removing her glasses and lying down before she’d nodded off. It was too bad that she hadn’t locked the screen door before napping.
“If you’d just get up and put on some shoes, we could be off in a flash. This shouldn’t take too long,” Sarah Biddle was saying.
“Off to where?” Helen asked, sitting up and fumbling for the glasses she’d left on the end table. She rubbed her eyes before propping her specs on the bridge of her nose. “And why on earth should I go with you?”
Hadn’t she rendered enough assistance for one day?
“Because you’re the only one who hasn’t told me I’m crazy thinking Luann’s in trouble,” Sarah said.
Helen couldn’t argue with that.
Instead of taking a chair, the sheriff’s wife settled down on the coffee table smack in front of Helen. If her bright eyes and rabid gnawing of her lip were any indication, she was pretty worked up about something.
“Frank’s about to kill me, as he can’t get into the garage, because that’s where I put the boxes of Luann’s things,” she began to ramble. “I’m not hauling them to storage until I’ve gone through every piece, and it’s taken me these past three weeks, but I found something.” She stopped to swallow. “It was wedged between pages 251 and 252 in one of Lu’s books.”
What on earth was she babbling about?
“It was a sheet from a memo pad with a phone number.”
Helen blinked. “Whose number?”
“I’m not exactly sure, if we’re talking the grand scheme of things,” Sarah said. She fished in the pocket of her windbreaker and pulled out a folded slip of paper. “But it must mean something. It was stuck inside the book about pirate hunters that Lu loved so much, the one she was reading when she started moaning about wanting to have a real-life adventure instead of just living vicariously through old photos and relics from digs. It was about the same time she met Mr. Maybe online.”
“You figure it’s for him?” Helen took the paper from her and unfolded it. She squinted through her specs at the numbers scribbled on the piece of notepaper with Luann Dupree’s embossed monogram.
“Well, I did a quick Google search, and it connected me with an address in Belleville.”
“And . . . ?”
Sarah plucked her cell phone from her other pocket and started tapping and scrolling until she found what she was looking for. “It came up as belonging to a woman named Penny Tuttle, age seventy-two.”
“So not her Internet Romeo?”
“Maybe she’s an expert on old artifacts. What if she’s seen whatever it was that Lu thought was so valuable?”
Helen’s shoulders sagged. After this morning’s frantic search for Bernie, she didn’t exactly feel in the mood for chasing down a phone number that Luann left behind in a pirate-hunting book. It sounded like a futile task anyway.
“Why don’t you ask Frank to go with you?”
He was the sheriff, after all. Perhaps he could keep his wife from getting into any trouble.
Sarah sniffed. “Frank’s dealing with the aftermath of finding Mr. Winston. He has to cancel the Silver Alert and God knows what else, and he’s still in charge of sandbagging detail and trying to evacuate folks from low-lying homes around the harbor. They’re putting everyone up in Godfrey and Jerseyville until the waters recede.”
Helen raised her eyebrows. “So he declined.”
Smart fellow.
“I didn’t exactly tell him. Instead, I came to you,” Sarah said and reached for her hand. “All of River Bend knows how good you are at solving puzzles. Please, come with me, and let’s just see if this clue leads to anything. If it doesn’t, I promise, I’ll let this go. I won’t say another word about Lu’s taking off. I’ll believe that she’s doing what she wants to be doing, like the rest of the town, and I’ll stick her stuff in storage without a second thought. She can come collect it when she’s done gallivanting around, and I won’t waste any more time worrying about her.”
Sarah sounded sincere enough, though she didn’t look at all happy at the prospect of giving up.
“Can’t you please find someone else?”
Helen had planned to bake a casserole to take to Betty Winston, and she had books to return to the library— Oh, wait, hadn’t Fanny said it was closed due to flooding? And she didn’t have her volunteer gig at the Historical Society anymore, not until the new director decided to let them back in.
“I don’t want anyone else to come. I promise, it won’t take too long,” Sarah said, adding, “Pretty please with sugar on top,” in such a desperate way, the same tone Helen’s grown children and grandchildren used when they needed something from her.
Criminy.
Reluctantly, Helen gave in, which was what she usually ended up doing when one of her brood called begging, as well.
“Okay, I’ll go,” she said, earning a little whoop from Sarah Biddle. “But only if we stick to my plan,” she added and stood.
“Great! Um, what plan?” Sarah looked up from her coffee-table perch.
“When we get to the address, we knock on a door or ring a bell,” she said. “If no one answers, we leave. There’s to be no funny business, you hear me? No wandering off and poking around where we don’t belong.”
It was something Helen had done a time or two in the past, so she understood the appeal. But she wasn’t as convinced as Sarah that something untoward had happened to Luann Dupree, so she wasn’t willing to risk invading a woman’s privacy—or worse, getting arrested by the Belleville police—just to placate the sheriff’s wife.
“What if we find something fishy?” Sarah protested.
“No, no, no,” Helen cut her off with a wag of her finger. “That’s the deal. If you can’t stick to it, I’m out.”
The other woman seemed ready to argue then bit down on her lip. Her shoulders slumped.
“All right,” she murmured. But her gaze dropped to somewhere near Helen’s feet as she added, “You win. I’ll behave.” It was only after she’d finished speaking that she lifted her chin to meet Helen’s eyes again.
Hardly confidence inspiring, Helen thought and had to wonder if Sarah was crossing her fingers behind her back.
“Let’s make this quick,” she said, wondering if she’d live to regret it. “Let me find my shoes and my bag, and we can be off.”
“Thank you, Helen.” Sarah beamed.
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said, walking toward the French doors that led inside from the porch. “Wait until we’re back safe and sound and neither of us is under arrest for trespassing.”
It was just two o’clock, Helen realized as she sat down on her bed to pull on her boots. If all went well—or at least not unwell—they’d be back in a matter of two and a half to three hours, in plenty of time for her to get a tuna casserole in the oven and take it to the Winstons for dinner.
By the time she’d brushed her hair, put on a bit of lipstick, and grabbed her handbag, Sarah was pacing the porch linoleum impatiently.
“We’ll have to take an alternate route, what with the flood closing the ramp off the River Road, but I’ve got it all mapped out,” the woman told her, holding the door open to Helen as she appeared.
The appeal of wide-open spaces must have lured Amber from wherever he’d been hiding. In a flash he zipped around Helen and made a lunge for freedom. Luckily, she spotted his big furry carcass before he could make it past Sarah’s legs.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” she said and grabbed for him, catching him by his hind feet. “You’ll get more than your paws wet outside these days. Don’t you know there’s a flood?”
Amber let out a howl, but she kept a hold of him until she could reel him back in. She picked him up, despite his wiggling, and deposited him in the living room. Then she shut the French doors so he couldn’t get out on the porch while she was away.
“If I’m not back by five o’clock, call the sheriff and tell him his crazy wife has taken me hostage, capisce?”
Amber gave her the evil eye and an irritated swish of tail.
Helen locked the French doors for good measure.
Chapter 18
They had to exit River Bend via the back road since the ramp off the highway was flooded. That meant a side trip through Elsah before they could get on the Great River Road and scoot south alongside the swollen Mississippi to Alton. After a few more detours they were on their way to Belleville.
Helen didn’t say much. She had the Winston family on her mind. Surely they felt great relief that Bernie was okay. But what would come next? If he’d escaped once, it could happen again. What a terrible spot to be in, she thought, her heart heavy.
“. . . so I told Frank you were visiting an old friend with me, and he didn’t even ask questions. He’s got so much on his mind,” Sarah was saying, and Helen tried very hard to shut her out.
She stared out the window at the passing scenery—mostly brown water as far as she could see—while Sarah began to ruminate again on Luann Dupree’s vanishing act.
“My guess is that he targeted Lu somehow, maybe through an online group. I went back through my old e-mails from last year. I found one where Lu mentioned wanting to write a book about River Bend and all the local legends attached to it, like the Piasa Bird, Jacques Lerner, and the connection to Lewis and Clark. Lu found something in an old journal that referred to a stopover when Lewis and Clark were exploring the Mississippi River Valley. Do you think she found real evidence relating to that? Some proof that they’d been in our little village?” the sheriff’s wife asked. “If she uncovered physical proof and spilled the beans to someone, it could be why she was targeted. Any antiquity she could tie back to Lewis and Clark would be worth millions to a museum, probably even more to a private collector buying on the black market.”
Come Helen High Water Page 12