Come Helen High Water

by Susan McBride

  “So you found the mysterious Jackie?” Helen said, standing still.

  “Well, not his location exactly, but I think he’s near.”

  “He’s in River Bend?”

  “Could be.” Sarah pursed her lips and glanced around them, as though the mysterious Jackie were lurking about, eavesdropping on them. “I might be able to flush him out,” she said. “I just have to poke a hornet’s nest.”

  Did Sarah know that the sheriff seemed intent on talking to the man named Jackson Lee, but in relation to Bernie’s death, not Luann’s disappearance?

  “Maybe you should leave the poking to your husband.”

  “I knew you’d say that.” Sarah sniffed. She dug into her right jacket pocket. “I found something else in Luann’s belongings, and it might answer a lot of questions about why she was taken.”

  “Is it the mysterious artifact?” Helen asked, figuring it had to be small if it fit in Sarah’s pocket.

  “Um, no, not the artifact exactly, but I did find a clue, a real one,” she added when Helen sighed.

  Sarah retrieved a square of folded paper, larger than the one bearing the address in Belleville. Still, it made Helen wonder if Sarah wasn’t just making these things up herself, so convinced that her friend was kidnapped that illusion was reality.

  This time it wasn’t a scribbled page from a memo pad; it was a computer-generated printout, deeply creased at the folds.

  “Was this stuck in the pirate book, as well?” she asked dryly.

  Sarah ignored her sarcasm. “Take a closer look,” she said and pushed the sheet into Helen’s hands.

  It appeared to be an article from the New York Times over a decade old.

  Squinting through her specs, she read the headline: museum finds lewis and clark artifact lost for a century.

  Helen stood on the sidewalk, eyes skimming the first couple of paragraphs. It referenced a bear-claw necklace that had been donated to the Peabody Museum at Harvard and had been misplaced sometime after being catalogued in 1899. Finding it was akin to stumbling upon “a Vermeer in the attic,” according to a Native American–art curator, a line that Luann had highlighted in yellow marker. The piece had thirty-eight claws measuring approximately three inches each, once painted with a red pigment, and had likely been given to the explorers by a tribal chief.

  Helen looked up. “You think the Peabody Museum’s missing necklace somehow ended up in River Bend?”

  “No, not that one,” Sarah said. “It’s in a permanent exhibit with a handful of other artifacts that can directly be traced to the expedition.” Her eyes brightened. “But what if there’s more than one? What if Luann stumbled upon a necklace that had some kind of proof about its provenance that no one realized existed. She must have had something because . . . look here!” Sarah pointed to a scribble in the margin that seemed to say Drop off Sat AM.

  “You think she dropped off the necklace somewhere on the Saturday morning before her date?”

  “It’s a distinct possibility.”

  “But you don’t know where?”

  Sarah shook her head. “I’ve e-mailed local museums and talked to a history professor at Principia College, but no one will admit to hearing anything about a newfound artifact that can be traced back to Lewis and Clark.”

  “You’ve been busy,” Helen said, having to give her credit.

  “It’s all I’ve been doing since Luann disappeared. Trying to figure out what was so valuable that someone would want to kidnap Lu.”

  Helen gave back the article, which Sarah carefully folded and put in her pocket.

  “If you sorted through Luann’s things from her apartment—and looked around the Historical Society and didn’t find it—what makes you believe it’s still around?”

  “Because the person who has Luann’s phone is still communicating,” Sarah said. “I got a text this morning about how breathtaking Yosemite is with a photo attached.”

  “What if it’s really from Luann?”

  “On a hunch I searched Google Images’ catalog of pictures from Yosemite, and I found the shot within a minute. Luann didn’t take that picture, and neither did her fictional boyfriend, not unless he works for National Geographic.”

  Helen hadn’t seen that coming. “Oh.”

  “I guess Lu’s kidnapper decided he’d better send a photo, or I wouldn’t stop pestering.”

  Helen stuck her hands in the pockets of her warm-up jacket. She suddenly felt cold. “Where do you plan to go from here?”

  Sarah Biddle’s face turned positively stony. “I’ve narrowed down potential Mr. Maybes to white middle-aged males that could fit the generic description given by the bartender at the Loading Dock, either bearded or clean shaven, and I’ve cross-referenced with any new men who’ve come to town recently, and only one fits the mold. He used to teach history at a middle school in Caseyville, which is a stone’s throw from Belleville. He’s single, and it’s entirely plausible he’d romance Luann and get her out of the way so he could rob from this Historical Society without anyone being the wiser.”

  “Is his name Jackson Lee?” Helen asked point-blank.

  Sarah looked confused. “No, who’s that?”

  Instead of answering her question, Helen posed another. “So you’ve found someone else named Jackie?”

  “Jack is a nickname for John, isn’t it?” Sarah asked.

  Helen saw where she was headed, and she wasn’t sure if Sarah was nutty as a fruitcake or brilliant.

  “You think Jackie is . . .”

  “John Danielson, the new Historical Society director,” Sarah finished for her. “It fits, doesn’t it? I mean, he meets Lu in some history chat room, gets to know her, and gets her talking about her work. She tells him things, enough for him to put together a very neat plan to get Lu out of the way so he can take over. Who’s to stop him from stealing the bear-claw necklace, or any of the other artifacts?”

  “That’s assuming there is a bear-claw necklace.”

  “Yes.”

  Helen felt too tired to play these games. “So you peg our new director as the kidnapper? You figure he met Luann for a date night in Grafton then lured her to the house in Belleville, stashed her in the basement, and hid her car in the garage? Do you even know if he’s related to Penny Tuttle?”

  “I’m still working on that.” Sarah shrugged. “But she’s the right age to be his mother, and he’s as good a suspect as any.”

  Helen thought of the fellow in the fedora who’d led Bernie Winston out of the thicket when the poor man had wandered. He looked like he wanted to be a hero, not the bad guy.

  She let out a slow breath. “Did you discuss this with Frank? Surely the town council vetted Mr. Danielson before they hired him?”

  “According to Bertha Beaner, they had such a bunch of losers interview that Danielson seemed a shining star,” Sarah said. “They hired him on the spot.”

  “Without a background check?”

  “This is River Bend, Helen, not the big city,” the other woman reminded her. “People don’t expect to get taken for a ride around here. They’re so trusting half the town still keeps their doors unlocked.”

  Helen nodded. She was right about that.

  “If he’s squeaky-clean, then he’ll have nothing to worry about when I snoop around his apartment in the Historical Society,” Sarah went on to say.

  “Snoop?” Helen wasn’t sure how she was going to accomplish that feat. “Mr. Danielson has suspended tours of the museum and blocked volunteers from working on current projects indefinitely, until the flood’s subsided.”

  “Convenient for him, isn’t it?” Sarah smiled slyly. “Well, that might keep regular folks away, but not me. Besides, I don’t need him to let me in, do I?” She reached into her other jacket pocket and withdrew a familiar silver key ring, the spare the sheriff kept for the Historical Society.

  “You’re going to break in?”

  “It’s not breaking in if I have the key.”

  “Wha
t if he catches you?”

  Sarah’s eyes glinted. “I had my cousin Jana call Mr. Danielson pretending to be a curator at the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis. She told him they want to discuss borrowing some of River Bend’s artifacts for an exhibit on Mississippi River Valley myths. By the time Danielson gets there, finds out it’s a ruse, and comes back, I’ll have had at least two hours to poke around.”

  “Does Frank know what you’re up to?” Helen asked, feeling sorry for the sheriff. He had enough on his hands with Bernie Winston’s death and Betty Winston practically accusing a con man named Jackson Lee of having something to do with it.

  “Don’t worry about Frank. I’ll fill him in when I’ve got something concrete on John Danielson,” Sarah said and pocketed the key ring. “If he’s the Mr. Maybe I’m looking for, I’m going to take him down, Helen, wait and see. Then the whole town will have to admit they were wrong about Luann and I was right.”

  With that, she sidestepped Helen as she walked away, hopped into her Jeep, and rumbled off.

  Chapter 24

  After Frank dropped off Betty Winston so she could mourn with her kin, he went back to his office and spent a good hour or more hunched over the computer on his desk. His main focus: delving into the background of Jackson Lee, the fellow Betty Winston claimed had been harassing Bernie in an attempt to defraud him.

  He’d suspected the name might be an alias; but apparently it was real.

  His full name was Jackson David Lee, and he had a valid Illinois driver’s license that described him as six feet tall and 175 pounds with blue eyes and brown hair. He had an address in downtown Alton, which Frank hoped was still current. He zoomed in on the DMV photograph and thought the fellow looked younger than his fifty-two years, not bad-looking either, with a straight nose and devilish grin.

  There was a single car registered in his name: a black 2005 Cadillac DeVille.

  That jibed with the vehicle Betty Winston said she’d seen outside their house on more than one occasion.

  Frank hit a couple more keys, pulling up current warrants and finding none for Jackson David Lee, although he did have a tidy little rap sheet, mostly involving misdemeanors on the order of stealing unsigned checks, kiting checks, trespassing, and even misrepresenting his identity on an Internet dating site.

  It appeared that any charges had merely resulted in fines, which were promptly paid. Mr. Lee had no jail time to his credit, so far as Frank could discern.

  Still there were questions that banged like a drum in the back of the sheriff’s mind, such as whether or not Jackson Lee had been hanging around the Winstons’ place hoping to bamboozle an incapacitated Bernie, or worse, if he’d had anything to do with Bernie getting out of the house and ending up in the creek last night. Had Mr. Lee tried to enter the Winston residence? Had he inadvertently let Bernie out? Would that explain why Bernie had Mr. Lee’s pen in his pocket?

  But there was something more.

  Was Jackson Lee the Jackie that the neighbor, Ezra Bick, said was Penny Tuttle’s son? Had Luann’s car truly been in the Tuttles’ garage when Sarah had been poking around with Helen Evans the day before? If so, where was it now? Had Jackie moved it, afraid that they were onto him?

  Was he responsible in any way for Luann Dupree’s sudden vanishing act?

  The sheriff felt a little like he was trying to add two plus three to get four. Though he reminded himself that piecing together an investigation often felt like that at first.

  By all appearances, Luann had run off with a fellow she’d met in an Internet chat room or some such place. What if Jackson had misrepresented himself to her, conned her, and then tucked her away somewhere safe so she couldn’t turn him in? He seemed long overdue for a stint behind bars. He’d gotten off easy so far, but if Luann had decided to press charges—and she seemed like a tough enough lady to do it—Jackson would have been screwed.

  Frank thought of Sarah’s misty eyes, her voice pleading as she’d said, “My friend needs my help, and I need yours.”

  Aw, hell.

  He rubbed his jaw.

  He wanted to believe his wife had seen what she’d claimed she’d seen. It wasn’t that he mistrusted her, but he knew she sometimes veered toward hyperbole in order to get her message heard. He’d told Sarah before that he would not use his job to check up on people for her and that his access to state law enforcement databases was strictly for professional purposes. But now it wasn’t just Sarah nagging about something amiss. Frank’s own gut was nagging at him.

  So he dug a little bit deeper in his efforts to connect Jackson Lee with Margaret “Penny” Tuttle, delving into her records. Mrs. Tuttle was a seventy-two-year-old widow who did not have a valid Illinois driver’s license. He found her Belleville address was three years behind on property taxes, and the house was in the name of Margaret and James Tuttle, listed as h/w, husband and wife. There appeared to be a lien on the place by a local roofer, but Frank could otherwise find nothing that suggested Mrs. Tuttle had been in trouble with the law. She might have financial problems, but so did a lot of people these days.

  Frank would need a warrant to get any more information, and he didn’t think he had probable cause, not yet.

  “Nothing’s ever how it looks,” he murmured to himself, leaning back in his chair with a sigh. He rubbed his eyes, figuring he needed to head down the River Road to Alton and track down Jackson Lee. Despite it being a high-tech age, sometimes a good old-fashioned talking-to was the best way to get to the bottom of everything.

  The phone at his desk rang, and Frank scooped it up.

  “Sheriff Biddle here,” he said.

  The voice at the other end wasn’t a familiar one. But it got his attention.

  “Hey there, Sheriff, my name’s Andy Bingham, and I work patrol in downtown Alton.”

  Frank sat up straighter. “How can I help you, Officer?”

  “We found an abandoned car in a vacant lot near the Amtrak station this morning. The keys were in the ignition, and it was missing vital parts, including all four tires, rims, battery, and plates. It appears to be a late-model Fiat Spider,” Bingham told him. “It’s bright red.”

  Frank nearly choked.

  “We traced the VIN to a woman named Luann Dupree. She lists her address as 123 Main Street in River Bend. She had a decal on her window for your town’s Historical Society. You know who she is?”

  “Oh, I know her all right,” Frank said.

  “Can you tell her we’re towing her car to the impound lot sometime today?”

  “That’s a little easier said than done,” Frank confessed.

  “Ah, is she on vacation or something?” Bingham asked. “Seems strange she didn’t file a report for a stolen car.”

  Not so strange, Frank mused, since no one in town had seen Luann Dupree in about a month. Maybe there was more to the story than he and the town council had been led to believe.

  Briefly, he explained the situation to the officer, telling him, “I’m heading your way right now,” before he hung up and grabbed his hat.

  Chapter 25

  Helen noticed the water seemed the slightest bit lower on her frog boots as she slogged across Jersey Avenue toward the little bridge over the creek at Springfield. At least that was good news, wasn’t it? Soon the streets would be dry again—albeit muddy—and life could get back to normal.

  Yet that bright thought wasn’t enough to cheer her as she trudged toward the Winstons’ house to check in with Clara and see what she could do to help the family.

  Though Betty had insisted she was fine, Helen was sure that wasn’t true. She remembered the numbness that had set in after Joe died. For weeks, she had put herself on autopilot, dealing with doctors and the mortuary and lawyers, taking phone calls from friends and relatives, reading the sympathy cards that began pouring into the mailbox. It wasn’t until after the memorial service, when she, her grown children, and her grandchildren had taken Joe’s ashes to the mausoleum, that it had hit her that he was de
ad.

  Then she’d been inconsolable. Her physician had prescribed medication, but Helen hadn’t wanted to take it. She needed to feel the loss, to go through her own grief. It was harder than anything she’d done in her life.

  Betty had been married to Bernie for sixty-odd years.

  She was not fine. She would not be fine again, not for a long while.

  Deep in her thoughts, Helen passed the first two houses nearest the bridge without seeing them. She’d nearly gone by a third when she heard someone call her name, and she turned her head as a screen door swung open then closed with a slap.

  She paused, staring up at the pristinely maintained Victorian, painted peach with dark-green-and-white gingerbread trim, that belonged to Agnes March.

  “Yoo-hoo!” Her friend waved as she strode up the brick paver pathway toward the soggy sidewalk. “Got a minute?”

  She smiled absently as Agnes approached, looking as smart as her cottage. She had on a crisp white blouse with a patterned scarf tied nattily at her throat, and her flat-front tan pants were tucked neatly into black knee-high Wellies.

  Helen felt wrung out and wrinkled, wearing the same sweatsuit she’d had on the day before and her grimy-looking frog boots. Maybe she should have showered and changed before heading toward the Winstons’, she thought, a little too late.

  “I heard about Bernie,” Agnes said before Helen even greeted her. “It’s a horrible thing. Seems like we’ve had our share of losses lately, haven’t we?”

  “I guess we have,” Helen said, thinking that a town filled with mostly old folks could hardly avoid it. But it never got any easier.

  “Are you headed over to Betty’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need to go pay my respects, too,” Agnes said, “but I thought I’d wait a little bit. I’ve got a coffee cake baking that I can take in the morning.”

  Helen nodded. “I’m sure they’ll appreciate your thoughtfulness.”

  “It’s good Betty has Clara,” Agnes remarked. “The sisters are so close, despite their age difference.” She glanced toward the Winstons’ place a few houses down. “Did you know my family’s home sat across the street from Clara’s when we were growing up?”