Come Helen High Water

by Susan McBride

  More buds on tree limbs had opened, and the emerging green leaves had thickened, blotting out bits of the blue sky above. Birds twittered back and forth, as if sharing a tasty bit of gossip. Even the rush of the swollen creek couldn’t dim her good mood. She’d almost gotten used to seeing the water on the road. It gave her the perfect excuse to put on those frog boots from her granddaughter again.

  Too much excitement the day before had left her craving a nice boring morning. If only Amber would get off the newsprint, she could start on that crossword . . .

  Whoop whoop whoop.

  The bleat of a siren broke apart the quiet of the morning. The noise nearly made Helen’s heart stop.

  “What the heck,” she murmured, waiting to hear the sound again, but it didn’t come.

  Then she saw the sheriff’s black-and-white approaching from the direction of Main Street. Instantly, she was up on her feet.

  The water in the street slowed the vehicle’s progress, but still it plowed through the brown slop, leaving ripples in its wake.

  For some reason, she expected the car to turn toward the bridge onto Springfield, but instead it stopped right in front of her house. The vehicle shimmied as the sheriff got out and made his way forward in knee-high rubber boots.

  Oh, no, Helen thought, afraid to move. Was the sheriff here for her? Had Sarah told them about their excursion into Belleville? Or worse, had that neighbor of Penny Tuttle’s gotten Sarah’s plate number and reported them for trespassing?

  She left her bagel half-eaten and her coffee half-drunk and hurried over to the door as Frank Biddle clomped up her steps. He raised a fist to knock but paused when he saw Helen standing there in front of him.

  “I’m sorry about the siren, ma’am. I hit it by mistake,” the sheriff apologized. “It’s been one of those mornings.”

  “Am I in trouble?” Helen asked instinctively.

  “You?” He scrunched up his brow. “No, it’s just that there’s been a . . . Um, well, I have some bad news.” He stumbled over his words before he cleared his throat. “Look, I am sorry to bother you so early, but will you come with me, please?”

  Go with him?

  Helen thought that sounded an awful lot like an echo of Sarah Biddle’s plea yesterday to go sleuthing. Why had she let that woman talk her into it? Next time, whatever Sarah asked, she’d tell her no. She wasn’t sure if she could do that to the sheriff, however.

  “This doesn’t have to do with Luann Dupree, does it?” she asked, half-afraid he was going to slap her in handcuffs. “I don’t know what your wife told you, but I had no part in snooping around that woman’s garage . . .”

  “It’s Bernie Winston, ma’am.” He stopped her protest, hardly looking angry. In fact, quite the opposite. His bulldog’s face appeared unshaven, and his eyes had gray circles beneath. Certainly, dealing with the flood had taken its toll on him, as had the search for Bernie yesterday. But there was something more in his eyes, something very somber. “Could you come with me to the house, please? I think the family will appreciate having you there when I fill them in on his whereabouts.”

  “So he’s taken off again?” Helen asked.

  Had Bernie gotten himself hurt? she wondered. Was he in the hospital? Did the sheriff imagine Helen’s presence would soften the blow when he updated the family?

  “Mr. Winston got out again, yes, sometime in the night, apparently. Mrs. Winston woke up this morning, and he was gone. But he’s been found.”

  Helen put a hand to her heart. “Well, that’s a relief.”

  The sheriff didn’t look relieved. In fact, if anything, he looked more morose than before. “I got a call from Larry Overstreet at the end of Springfield not five minutes ago. He said the floodwaters brought something banging against his porch supports in back where the creek had risen so high.”

  “And he saw Bernie?” Helen offered.

  “You could say that, yes, ma’am,” Frank Biddle told her and cleared his throat. He tugged at the knot of his tie, and Helen realized he was trying to compose himself. “He was caught in the current of the creek, Mrs. Evans. Larry fished him out, but he wasn’t breathing.”

  Bernie’s body was the thing banging against the Overstreets’ back porch?

  Dear Lord.

  “Was he given CPR? Was he all right?”

  “No, ma’am, he’s not all right.”

  Helen’s chest tightened. “You can’t mean that he’s . . . You’re not saying that he’s—” She couldn’t finish.

  “Yes, ma’am, he is, and I am,” the sheriff replied. “Bernie Winston is dead.”

  Chapter 22

  Betty Winston insisted on seeing her husband.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t believe the sheriff or even Doc Melville, who’d taken custody of the body, explaining that he needed to give Bernie a careful once-over before he declared cause of death and released him to the funeral parlor.

  Amos Melville was thorough. She would give him that.

  But what Betty sorely needed was to look at her husband with her own two eyes, or she couldn’t accept that he was dead.

  As the sheriff stood awkwardly in the living room, twisting his hat in his hands, Helen Evans sat beside her, saying how sorry she was and offering to help in any way she could. Betty felt like she was trapped a nightmare, one that had lasted for far, far too long. She wished someone would shake her hard to wake her up so that this whole horrible ordeal would be over, just another of those bad dreams her sleeping pills sometimes caused.

  She saw Ellen crying and hugging Sawyer, Clara watching them from nearby with tears in her eyes.

  Oddly enough, Betty’s own eyes were dry. She had already cried so much.

  “This shouldn’t have happened, you know. There should be a cure by now for this. No one should have to suffer the way we’ve suffered,” she had stopped the sheriff midcondolences to say. “I want my Bernie back.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

  Sorry. She had heard that so often it barely registered anymore.

  What if the sheriff was wrong and Bernie would return, like he had the day before? Nothing would change and their lives would go on. He would be as loopy as ever. He still wouldn’t know if she was his wife or his mother or a stranger. He would clomp around the house in his boxer shorts and golf cleats or rearrange the furniture in the den for the hundredth time. He would awaken her in the middle of the night, shrieking about a deer running up the hallway or a car trying to run him down, and she would do her best to calm him down and reassure him that everything was all right. She would keep his bedclothes clean and dry, no matter how often they had to be changed. She would keep Bernie clean and dry, no matter how often she had to change him. And she would feed him, bathe him, and finish his sentences. She would listen to his disjointed ramblings and pretend they were conversations. She would try to remember him as he once was: the man she’d fallen in love with, the man who’d worked so hard to provide for the family that Betty had always wanted. The partner who had held her hand when she’d miscarried so many times and who had played nursemaid during her bout with breast cancer.

  Betty shook her head, finding it all too much to bear.

  “Would you like to see him?” the sheriff asked. “Sometimes it helps people, makes it real. Other times it makes it worse.”

  How much worse could it get?

  She lifted her gaze to meet Frank Biddle’s. “Yes, I want to see him,” she said, “right now, please.”

  “Uh, sure, ma’am, let me just call Doc,” he told her and went out to the porch to get on his phone.

  Betty told Clara to stay with Ellen and Sawyer while the sheriff drove her to Doc’s office, a trip that took all of two minutes, just enough time for Betty to go over what she’d been told about her husband.

  Bernie had been found in the flooded creek a couple of houses away.

  He had been pulled from the water not breathing. He’d had no pulse. Despite attempts at CPR, his heart could not be made to beat aga
in. Doc Melville had been called to the scene and had pronounced death.

  Amos Melville patted her hand when they arrived at his office. “Hello, Mrs. Winston, I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  Sorry.

  There was that word again.

  “Where is he?” Betty asked, wondering if Bernie was lying in an exam room or if Doc had some kind of morgue with a big ol’ refrigerator like the funeral home and the county hospital.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Doc Melville asked rather than answering her question. He peered at her through his bifocals, his bushy brows knitted.

  Betty swallowed. “Yes.”

  She was glad for the medication she’d taken, thankful for the calm it made her feel when otherwise she would have been a nervous wreck. Still, her hands shook as Doc preceded her into the back room and gently pulled away the white sheet he’d draped over Bernie’s body. He folded it at the shoulders. Then Doc stepped away.

  Despite herself, Betty let out a small cry when she saw Bernie’s face. There were scratches and mottled bruises on his brow and cheeks. His eye sockets seemed sunken and gray.

  “Oh, God, how did it ever come to this?” she whispered, going nearer. She reached out a trembling hand to touch him. He felt cold, waxy. His eyes were closed, thankfully, as she didn’t think she could bear to look into them. “You are in a better place now, aren’t you?” she asked, though his colorless lips did not move in response. “You’re whole again, I’m sure of it. You’re you. When I see you again, you will be the man I fell in love with. You will wait for me . . . remember me . . . won’t you?”

  When she turned to tell Doc she was done, he looked at her with moist eyes. He lifted his specs from his nose to wipe at them. Then he gently drew the sheet over Bernie’s head like a shroud.

  “Come,” he said gently.

  Betty felt his hand at her elbow as he led her from the exam room and out to the waiting room, where Sheriff Biddle sat, his hat in his hands. Beside him was Helen Evans, who had tagged along at the sheriff’s insistence even though Betty had told them it wasn’t necessary. She wasn’t going to fall apart. It was much too late for that.

  “What can I do for you, ma’am?” Frank Biddle asked, quickly rising to his feet, though he kept his hat off, spinning it like a record player. “How might I help, other than take you home, I mean?”

  “I need to make arrangements,” Betty said, the monotone of her voice reflecting how dead she felt deep inside. “Bernie left a directive. He wanted to be cremated.”

  “Right.”

  “This stupid disease has taken such a toll on our lives. It’s robbed us of years that we should have had. It made us different people and not always for the good—” Betty stopped to draw in a breath. “I don’t want to drag it out further. I’m so tired, Sheriff. I’m so very, very tired.”

  “I’m sure you are.” Biddle glanced over at Doc Melville. “Once there’s a signed death certificate, you can do whatever needs doing.”

  “Will that take long?” she asked.

  “Only as long as it takes me to confirm the cause of death,” Doc said.

  “But we know how he died.” Betty sighed, impatient, wanting it all to be over with. “He slipped out of the house in the middle of the night, got lost, and fell into the creek. He must have drowned. Isn’t it obvious?”

  Doc patted her shoulder. “That would seem to be the general order of things, yes. Look, I promise to take good care of Mr. Winston, just like I’ve cared for most of the folks in this town, from birth onward. So there’s no need to worry.”

  “I’ll try,” Betty said, though it wasn’t exactly the truth. For years she had worried day and night. She didn’t know how to do anything else.

  “Hang it all. I almost forgot something,” Doc said and disappeared back up the hallway for a bit before returning with a zippered baggie. “Your husband’s wedding band is still on his finger. I can remove the ring if you’d like to have it . . .”

  “No, no,” Betty said, her stomach churning. “Please, leave it on.”

  “Then this is all I have to give you of his personal effects,” he told her, holding out the baggie as Betty looked blankly at it.

  Reluctantly, she took it, eyeing the contents through the clear plastic: a thick black pen with lots of gold details. If she squinted through her glasses, she could make out cartier imprinted on a band on the pen’s cap. “That can’t be Bernie’s,” she said, trying to hand back the baggie to Doc. “He never owned a pen so fancy.”

  “But it was in the pocket of his pajama pants,” Doc said, reluctantly taking the bag back. “Maybe he picked it up from somewhere and hung on to it.”

  “I guess he could have,” Betty replied. “He’s done so many strange things.” Then she hesitated, blinking. “Hold on. I do recognize it.” She turned to the sheriff, her voice angry as she told him, “It belongs to that awful man, Jackson Lee. I caught him at our house a while back, trying to bamboozle Bernie. He must have been conning Bernie out of our money for years. I’ve found canceled checks . . . contracts for oil wells and windmills and God knows what else that drained our bank account.” She caught herself, took a deep breath. “Bernie didn’t know what he was doing. Mr. Lee must have left that pen at our house when I chased him out. I saw it in Bernie’s hand . . .”

  “You should have called me, ma’am,” Biddle said.

  “There are a lot of things I should have done, Sheriff,” she replied, thinking hard. She tapped a finger in the air. “I do believe I’ve seen his car since, parked across the street at odd hours. It’s an older Cadillac. Black. It may have been there last night, too.”

  The sheriff plunked his hat on his head. “Jackson Lee’s car?” he repeated and took a few steps forward to get the bag from Doc. “You’re sure?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Jackson?” Helen Evans said, and her eyes widened as they looked at the sheriff. “Who is he?”

  “Someone I need to talk to,” the sheriff answered, pocketing the baggie.

  “He’s a liar and a thief,” Betty spat. “If he had anything to do with Bernie . . . with what happened to Bernie, I want to know. He belongs behind bars as it is, targeting people like Bernie who don’t have a wit about them.” She started to shake, her whole body shuddering, and she couldn’t seem to stop.

  “Are you okay, ma’am?” Biddle said. “Doc, maybe she needs something?”

  Betty turned to Doc Melville. “Just get this over with.” Despite everything, she began to sob. “It needs to be over. It needs to be done.”

  The doctor reached out to steady her. “Mrs. Winston, perhaps I should give you a sedative . . .”

  “I want to see Ellen and Sawyer,” she howled and jerked away from Amos, addressing the sheriff again. “I need to get home. I need my family!”

  “Yes, ma’am, we’ll be on our way pronto.” Frank Biddle went to the door to hold it wide for her.

  “Let me help you—” Helen Evans approached to take her arm, but Betty somehow found the strength to shake off Helen’s hand.

  “I’ll be fine,” she insisted, sounding crosser than she meant to. “I just need time alone with my girls.”

  “Of course.” Helen nodded.

  Betty knew that if she’d been alone in the world, she would have thrown herself into the floodwaters after Bernie. But she couldn’t. She had a daughter and a granddaughter to live for, and that was precisely what she planned to do.

  Chapter 23

  “Helen! Oh, Helen, wait up!”

  Sarah Biddle chased her down as she left Doc Melville’s place, not ten minutes after the sheriff had departed in the cruiser, driving Betty Winston home. Helen had stayed for a brief chat with Amos, the commiserating kind that one had after a contemporary passed away. They’d spoken of life being too short, of never knowing which day might be the last, of trying to escape the ills that seemed to plague so many in their sunset years. Helen asked, too, if Doc thought there was anything remotely suspicious abo
ut how Bernie had died, and he’d told her pretty much what he’d told Bernie’s wife: “I won’t release him to the mortuary until I’ve examined him. Soon as you go, I’ll get started.”

  She had hardly gotten to the sidewalk when Sarah hopped out of the door of her Jeep, looking bright eyed and bushy tailed and up to no good.

  “Aha! Thank goodness I found you,” she said, catching her breath. “I texted Frank and he said you’d stayed behind at Doc’s. I heard about Bernie Winston. It’s just awful, him falling into the creek. I’m so sorry.”

  “I am, too,” Helen said solemnly. “But you might want to go pay your condolences to Betty Winston, not me.”

  “Oh, sure, I’ll do that later.” Sarah bobbed on her heels, not looking solemn in the least. “I don’t know if Frank told you, but he went back to Belleville with me last night. He got the neighbor to let us into the garage—”

  “Look, dear, I’m on my way home,” Helen said, cutting her off. “It’s been a trying morning, and I’m not in the mood to play Nancy Drew again. If the sheriff’s going to help you snoop, that’s wonderful. But I’m out. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ve things to do.”

  She didn’t care if she was being a bit rude. Sarah Biddle wasn’t high on her list of favorite people at the moment.

  Helen started to leave, but Sarah caught her hand.

  “The red car was gone!” she said. “Don’t you get what that means?”

  “That someone drove it somewhere, as people tend to do with cars,” Helen remarked, hoping that would be the end of it. But Sarah held on.

  “It means we’re onto something . . . that we’re closing in on whoever has Luann. I think Penny Tuttle’s son, Jackie, is involved, and yes, it’s a man. The neighbor said as much last night.”

  Helen thought suddenly of the name Jackson Lee. Was he the Jackie referred to by Penny Tuttle’s neighbor? He was the con man that Betty Winston said took money from an irrational Bernie. Did he participate in other kinds of cons, too, perhaps the romantic kind? Did he have something to do with Luann’s disappearance?