HELEN TURNED OFF the highway and rolled into River Bend. Preoccupied with her thoughts, she barely gave the old lighthouse with its bright red roof a cursory glance as she passed it by. As she entered the town proper, she hardly noticed Serenity Garden, with its newly planted zinnias, snapdragons, and daisies. A woman with a watering can straightened up from the flowerbeds and lifted a hand to wave, but Helen caught the motion too late from the corner of her eye, so she tucked her chin down and drove on.
What am I missing? Helen kept asking herself as she headed down Main Street toward home. Why did it seem that the more she dug for answers, the more questions she turned up?
She sensed that everything she needed was there, stored away in her head. If only she could dip in her hand and snatch out that one piece tying the odds and ends together.
Like an elusive word in a crossword, it would come to her in time. Helen only hoped that she could wait.
When she reached the downtown, Helen slowed to a snail’s pace, noticing a small commotion in front of the sheriff’s office. Several people stood on the sidewalk, and there were more across the street outside the diner, watching as Biddle helped a passenger out of his squad car. Helen recognized the woman—Hilary Dell, who owned the stationery store and who was a substitute for Helen’s bridge group. The two quickly disappeared into the sheriff’s office, and the rubberneckers began to disperse.
She saw Agnes March looking on from in front of her antiques store, and Helen rolled down a window, calling out, “What’s going on?”
“Hey, there, Helen,” Agnes said, fingering the pearls at her throat as she leaned into the window. “You’re just getting back to town, are you?”
“I’ve been in Alton.”
“Then you’ve missed all the excitement.” Agnes’s weathered face grew animated. “There’s been another burglary.”
“What?”
“This time it was at Hilary Dell’s,” Agnes told her and wrinkled her nose. “She’d been away for one night and returned this morning to find her place ransacked. She’d put up a camera over her back door after Mattie’s place was broken into, so they know who did it.”
“They do?”
Agnes nodded. “It was Charlie Bryan. Hilary said the image was kind of iffy, but there was no doubt in her mind.”
“Charlie Bryan,” Helen repeated, wondering how that was possible. Hadn’t the sheriff put him in lockup overnight? How on earth could he be two places at once?
“Been nice chatting, Helen,” Agnes said and smiled. “But I’d better get back to the store.”
“Yes, of course.”
A horn honked behind her, and Helen moved forward enough to slip into a vacant parking spot on the street.
She grabbed her bag and hurried to the door of Biddle’s office. With a gulp of air, she squared her shoulders and marched inside.
“Let me get the image on the screen so we can get a good look at it,” Biddle was saying as he fiddled with a computer on his desk, swiveling it around so Hilary Dell could see the monitor from the chair in which she sat.
When Helen shut the door behind her with a click, the sheriff glanced up. Hilary’s head swiveled. Her face looked puffy and very upset.
“Helen!” Hilary cried out, seeming happy to see her.
“Mrs. Evans,” the sheriff said, far less pleased by the intrusion. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you about the murder,” Helen said as she approached his desk.
“Well, can it wait?” Biddle asked. “I’m in the middle of something here.”
“My dear friend,” Helen cooed and went over to Hilary. She settled on the chair beside her. “Are you all right?”
The other woman nodded. “I’m okay, Helen, just shaken up a bit.”
The sheriff cleared his throat. “Like I was saying, ma’am, Mrs. Dell and I are in the middle of something.”
Helen gestured at the computer screen. “Please, go on,” she told him. “I’ll sit here quiet as a mouse. You don’t mind, Hilary, do you?”
Her friend shook her head. “Not a bit.”
Biddle grumbled as he fed a DVD into the system. Pretty soon, black-and-white images filled the monitor.
The picture looked crisp enough to Helen. She could see the back door and stoop of Hilary’s house, as well as part of the driveway.
“My goodness,” she remarked, “wherever did you get such a thing? Did you have to call a security company?”
“Would you believe I ordered it online?” Hilary replied. “It’s rather like the monitor my daughter used for her kids, only it’s meant for outdoors and has night vision and records on a DVR. My son-in-law set it up the day after Mattie got robbed. I wouldn’t have felt safe otherwise.”
“Incredible,” Helen murmured, thinking you could order just about anything these days and have it delivered right to your door.
“I can send you a link if you’re interested,” Hilary said, only to have Biddle clear his throat again loudly.
“Ladies,” he grumbled.
“Sorry,” Helen said and made a motion of zipping her lips.
She watched as the sheriff fast-forwarded to a certain time and date stamp on the screen. Then she heard Hilary’s sharp intake of breath as a shadowy figure hovered on the periphery.
“This is from last night at 11:48,” Biddle told them, and Helen guessed that was why things looked such a weird shade of green. It must have been the night vision.
“There he is,” Hilary yelped, pointing at the screen. “There’s the thief!”
Helen squinted, trying to focus on the person in question. The camera must have been perched above the garage door, as it caught the back of the intruder as he hurried across the driveway. She hadn’t even seen a face. Within moments, the thief had disappeared into the house.
“He had a key?” Helen asked.
“He must have,” Hilary moaned. “Though I don’t know how he would have gotten it.”
“Let’s move on, shall we?” Biddle remarked. He tapped a few keys and fast-forwarded a total of fifteen minutes so they could watch the figure emerge.
The sheriff tapped a key and froze the screen. “This is the best we’ve got,” he said and looked at Hilary. “You still think that’s Charlie Bryan?”
“Yes, yes, it’s him!” Hilary replied, sounding so sure. “Who else could it be?”
Helen cocked her head, studying the image, but she couldn’t make out the features distinctly enough to be convinced.
What she saw was someone of average height wearing dark jeans and a baseball cap pulled low enough to disguise half the face. But there was something off, something that didn’t feel right. Maybe it was the shape of the jaw or the size of the feet. Charlie wasn’t a large boy, to be sure, but the sneakers looked about the size of Nancy’s.
“Are you sure that’s Charlie, Sheriff?” Helen asked, but Frank Biddle didn’t seem to hear her. She glanced at the door to lockup. “But Charlie couldn’t have—” she started to say, only Biddle talked right over her comment.
“If you want to hang around, Mrs. Dell, I’ll put you in the break room to fill out some paperwork. Then I can drive you home.”
“Yes, I can stay,” Hilary told him. She looked at Helen as she picked up her purse and stood. “You should order a camera, too, hon. Otherwise, you’ll never know what’s going on while you’re gone.”
“I’ll think about it,” Helen told her.
Biddle rounded up the paperwork from his desk. He arched his eyebrows at Helen. “So you’re hanging around, too.”
“I’ll be right here when you finish with Hilary.”
“I can’t wait.”
Helen didn’t let his sarcasm get to her. What she needed to discuss with him was far too important, and it seemed even more so after she’d viewed Hilary’s video. How could the sheriff believe the person in the video was Charlie? Unless he’d released the boy before midnight, it couldn’t possibly be him.
Ten minutes later, the sheriff returned. He sat down on the edge of his desk, facing Helen. Before she could open her mouth, he raised his hand.
“I know what you’re going to say.”
“You do?”
“She’s wrong,” he announced and scratched his jaw. “That wasn’t Charlie.”
Helen let out a held breath. “Oh, Sheriff, I’m so relieved to hear you say so. I’d hate for the boy to get in even more trouble when he’s been telling the truth all along.”
Biddle nodded.
“So he’s still locked up?”
“Since yesterday.”
“Hilary doesn’t know?” Helen asked.
“Not yet, ma’am,” Biddle told her, rubbing tired eyes. “Maybe Sarah didn’t open her mouth so wide this time after all.”
“Maybe not,” Helen agreed.
“Someone clearly wants to pin the burglaries on Charlie,” he said, and his gaze went to the frozen image on the computer screen, “enough to dress like the kid and make full use of his bad rep. Only this time, they screwed up. Charlie has an alibi.”
“He didn’t break into Hilary’s,” Helen said, just to be clear.
“No.”
“And he wasn’t lying when he told you he didn’t steal that cigarette case from Mattie’s,” she added. “Could be he really did find it behind her house.”
“Yep.” Biddle drew in a sharp breath.
“So he probably didn’t kill Grace Simpson either,” Helen said.
“Nope,” Biddle grunted and shut off the computer. He tugged a set of keys from his belt and singled out one.
“You’re going to release him?”
“I am.”
Helen nodded. “Good. And when you’re done with Charlie and with Hilary, too, I need you to do something for me as well.”
The sheriff’s hangdog face looked up. “What’s that?”
“I need you to get a search warrant,” she said.
“You need me to . . . what?”
“If we can just check out a feeling I have, I think we can put an end to this whole matter once and for all.”
“The whole matter being . . . ?”
“The burglaries,” Helen told him, clutching her purse in her lap, “and the murder of Grace Simpson. I believe I know the culprit.”
“Ma’am, I can’t ask a judge for a warrant to search someone’s house on your hunch. I’ve got to have probable cause,” he explained, staring at her as though she’d gone stark raving mad.
“Then go for a drive with me after you’ve delivered Hilary home,” she said. “Maybe you’ll see something that will give you cause enough.”
Biddle squinted at her. “And just where are we going to go?”
Helen met his eyes. “I’ll let you know when we get there.”