“I SAW YOUR car out front, but I never imagined you’d be inside my house, going through my things.” LaVyrle’s gaze didn’t waver from the balled-up pillowcase in Helen’s hands. “You got something that’s mine, Mrs. E. So why don’t you just hand it over t’ me now?”
Helen backed away from the toilet but merely ended up bumping against the sink. “I thought you were at work,” she said, never having imagined LaVyrle would return before five o’clock when the hardware store closed.
LaVyrle plucked off her baseball cap, revealing closely cropped brown hair. “I got a sense you were up t’ something,” she said. “I told my boss Justin was sick and I had t’ leave.” She shook her head. “I wish I’d been wrong.”
“Me, too,” Helen whispered.
LaVyrle reached a hand out, gesturing with pink-tipped fingers. “Give that back, Mrs. E. Don’t make me hurt you.”
Hurt her? Like she’d hurt Grace Simpson? Murder was a powerful kind of pain, wasn’t it?
“Oh, LaVyrle,” Helen sighed. Her heart felt broken. “I didn’t want to believe it was true. I did everything to convince myself otherwise. But in the end, it was the only answer that made sense.”
LaVyrle gave up on getting Helen to relinquish the pillowcase. She braced her hands against the doorjamb instead. “What exactly d’you think you know?”
Helen patted the pillowcase. “You’re the serial burglar who stole from Mavis White, Violet Farley, Mattie Oldbridge, and Hilary Dell. I’m guessing you meant to rob from Grace Simpson, only she returned home and surprised you.”
LaVyrle laughed, but she didn’t move. She had Helen effectively trapped, and she knew it. “You’ve got a wild imagination, Mrs. E. But then you always were a lively old broad. I think that’s why I liked you best. Now hand over my stuff.”
Helen didn’t relinquish the bag. She maneuvered around the sink and pressed her back to the tiled wall. “We trusted you,” she said. “We all left our purses with you when we went to get shampooed. You had ten minutes at least to take out our keys and find the one you wanted.”
Dark eyebrows arched. “You think I stole keys from my clients? Don’t you figure someone would’ve noticed?”
“You didn’t steal them exactly.” Helen shook her head, thinking of Nancy’s makeover and rummaging through LaVyrle’s drawer, looking for Kleenex. “The blocks of wax,” she said and met LaVyrle’s angry stare. “You used the paraffin wax meant for manicures to make impressions of the keys. Then you used that as a mold.”
“Give me a break,” LaVyrle said with a snort. She pushed away from the doorjamb and grabbed a towel bar. “And who’d make me a key from a wax impression?”
“You,” Helen answered, wishing her legs didn’t feel so unsteady. “The hardware store has the equipment for making keys. I saw it myself. It wouldn’t be hard to find a close match and copy the notches if you knew how. Even if you had to use a locksmith’s file and do it by hand.”
“You think I did all that?” LaVyrle rattled the towel bar, which nearly came out of the wall.
“I know you did.”
LaVyrle tapped her chin. “And just when do you think I had time t’ go breakin’ into people’s houses? I work two jobs, as you managed to find out.”
“You’re the one who told me the answer to that, LaVyrle,” Helen said. “You know more about the women in this town than anyone. Who lives alone, who’s leaving town.” Helen paused. The cold from the tile seeped through her clothing, and she shivered. “You’d probably even heard about favorite pieces of jewelry, treasured ornaments, cash. You even knew where things were hidden. People told you their secrets, and you took advantage of that.” Helen wet her lips. “Using keys you made yourself, well, you didn’t even have to break in. You let yourself inside like you belonged.”
“No one can prove anything.” LaVyrle rattled the towel bar again. “No one’s gonna believe you, Mrs. E, not without evidence. I heard from Sarah Biddle herself that the sheriff never found a single fingerprint.”
“The plastic gloves,” Helen said and closed her eyes, picturing all the times she’d seen LaVyrle with them on her hands. Every time she gave a perm or colored hair. She had boxes of them, the kind you could just toss away after you’d used them. Helen opened her eyes and sighed. “You always wore disposable gloves so you wouldn’t leave behind your prints.”
LaVyrle smiled. “You figure I’m as smart as that?”
Helen nodded. “I always did.”
“You can’t show what you found t’ the sheriff,” LaVyrle said. “I’ve seen enough cop shows to know that what you’re doin’ is illegal. In fact, I should call the sheriff and have you arrested.”
“Yes, call him,” Helen told her. “The sheriff isn’t stupid. He’ll put all the pieces together soon enough. He already knows that Charlie Bryan isn’t the thief.” Helen paused as LaVyrle’s eyes narrowed. “Didn’t you know Hilary Dell had a surveillance camera? You were caught in the act.”
LaVyrle’s mouth tightened. “You couldn’t understand why I did what I did. Not in a million years.”
“I know you’re in financial trouble.”
“Financial trouble? Is that what you call it?” LaVyrle made a noise of disgust. “You and your widow friends, you’re all sittin’ so pretty. You got your big fat nest eggs to roost on what with your husbands gone and everything you own. It’s not your kind fighting like hell t’ survive. Your old man didn’t run off and leave you with an empty pocketbook and a kid. He didn’t leave you with bills and rent and a business to support. You don’t know what it feels like to get sucked under.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to steal,” Helen told her, “or to kill. Why’d you do it? Why’d you kill Grace?”
For the first time, LaVyrle’s face showed real fear. “It was an accident,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “It wasn’t supposed to go down like that.”
“You broke into her place, thinking she’d be gone for hours. But she wasn’t. She forgot the manuscript, so she had to turn around and go home.” Keep talking, Helen’s mind instructed. Keep talking and maybe you’ll talk your way right out of this. She didn’t want to believe LaVyrle would really hurt her. She couldn’t. “You were trapped, and Grace found you. You panicked and picked up the bat. Then you hit her and took the manuscript. You knew she’d intended to meet her publisher. You took it so you could throw suspicion on someone else, and that someone else ended up being Nancy.”
The snap of the towel bar being wrenched out of the wall cut off further words.
Helen’s knees shook.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. E. I really am,” LaVyrle said, and she truly looked sad. “But sometimes ya just don’t have a choice.” She took a step toward Helen and raised the metal bar above her head.
Helen squished her eyes closed and braced for a blow.
Then she heard a grunt, a strangled cry, the clatter of the bar hitting the tiled floor, and the sheriff’s deep voice.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Evans,” he said. “You can open your eyes.”
Slowly, she let her lids flutter up.
Frank Biddle stood inside the pink-tiled bathroom. He had LaVyrle pinned against the far wall, her face turned away from Helen. With a snap of metal on metal, he cuffed her hands behind her back.
“My God, Sheriff”—Helen released the breath she’d been holding—“whatever in the world took you so long?”
At that point, her shaky knees gave out and, without a hint of grace, she slid to the floor.