“Gone for good?” Helen repeated. Seeing the distress in Sarah’s face, she couldn’t help but ask, “Is she dead?”
“Dead?” Clara nearly choked on the word. Her neck wobbled as she declared, “Nothing’s wrong with Luann Dupree except a midlife crisis.”
“We don’t know that nothing’s wrong,” Sarah said, seemingly on the verge of tears. “At the very least, she’s taken off with a virtual stranger. At worst, she’s been kidnapped and dragged off God knows where!”
“Good Lord, but you’re being dramatic.” Clara rolled her eyes. “You told me she sent you a text this morning. So she’s clearly alive and well.”
“If that was her,” Sarah retorted, flipping back mousy brown hair. “You never know these days. She could have had her phone stolen or hacked.”
“Baloney!” Clara snapped. “What she’s done is run off with a man. That’s the gist of it, anyway, and you know it.”
Helen had heard enough. “Run off with what man?” she demanded. “What the heck is going on here?”
Not that she was privy to everyone’s deep, dark secrets, but Helen was pretty well versed on the comings and goings of the regulars in River Bend. Still, she hadn’t realized Luann Dupree was seriously involved with anyone, and she was feeling more than a little frustrated by the piecemeal—and argumentative—way this story was unraveling.
“For heaven’s sake, will one of you explain?” she said. “Is Luann in some kind of trouble?”
“You tell her, Sarah. You’re the Runaway Bride’s BFF,” Clara said and crossed her arms, glancing impatiently at the Historical Society’s front door.
Runaway Bride?
“Has Luann eloped?” Helen asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Sarah said quickly then shrugged. “Well, at least not yet.” She drew in a deep breath as she seemed to gather her thoughts. “Lu kept the relationship pretty quiet after she met him online a while back. She told me they clicked from the start and that he appreciated her and loved hearing about her work with the Historical Society. I’m not sure when it got so serious but I guess it must have.”
Sarah stopped to pull her smartphone from her pocket. She began scrolling through messages on the small screen. “I got a text from her before breakfast. She must have left River Bend sometime yesterday. It doesn’t make sense.”
Helen nudged the bridge of her glasses up her nose before looking at the exchange Sarah pointed out.
I think I’m in love. We’re going on a real adventure. Yolo!!!
“What’s Yolo?” she asked.
She wasn’t big on texting, so she didn’t know all the shorthand. She still preferred to talk on the phone or, better yet, face-to-face. She owned a flip phone, for goodness’ sake. She didn’t need anything smarter, or maybe she just didn’t want a gadget that made her act dumber. She’d seen too many folks walk into walls or drive through stop signs because they couldn’t put down their cellies.
“It means you only live once,” Sarah Biddle told her and slipped her phone back in her pocket. Her shoulders slumped. “Lu had been alone for so long, and I know she liked this guy. She told me that he got her, that he actually listened when she discussed her work. They had their first real date in Grafton on Saturday night.”
“So you hadn’t met him?”
“No. She didn’t even tell me his name. She just called him Mr. Maybe.” Sarah shifted on her Crocs. “I even showed Lu’s picture to the bartender at the Loading Dock, where she met her date, asking if he remembered her.”
“Did he?”
“Yes.”
Helen prodded. “What about Mr. Maybe? Did the bartender recall him?”
“Just that he looked like an average guy,” Sarah replied solemnly. “Average height, average weight, and a full beard that was mostly brown with a little gray, so I’m guessing he’s middle-aged.”
“I hate beards,” Clara mumbled.
“Doesn’t give you much to go on, does it?” Helen admitted.
“Why should it matter?” Clara injected. “Who cares what Luann’s mystery man looks like if he hasn’t committed a crime?”
“How do we know that he hasn’t?” Sarah narrowed her eyes. “Why would Lu take off on the spur of the moment with someone she’d just met in person for the first time? She’s not impulsive like that.”
“Could be she decided he was as close to Mr. Right as she was going to get,” Clara said with a sniff. “She was impulsive enough to get involved in an online romance. What happened to being introduced to gentlemen by friends, or getting to know someone at church?” Her voice hummed with disapproval. “If Luann was that desperate, what makes you think she wouldn’t go away with him, especially if she was smitten? Love makes people daft.”
Helen wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to wince. If Luann Dupree’s impetuous decision to take off had been driven by her heart, it would hardly be surprising. Helen had done her share of silly things in the name of love.
But clearly the sheriff’s wife wasn’t buying it.
“I don’t get the timing.” Sarah continued gnawing on her lip. “Luann wouldn’t have left now. She was so excited about her latest project. She mentioned finding something that could be extremely valuable in the boxes she cleared out of the attic for the renovation. She said she needed to do some research to be sure of what she had, maybe get a second opinion from an expert, but she had a gut feeling it was authentic—”
“Extremely valuable?” Clara interrupted with a snort. “I’ll bet she found another carton of musty old pictures, as if there aren’t enough of them to sort through already.”
“You’re not taking this seriously,” Sarah scolded.
“And you’re taking this way too seriously,” Clara retorted. “I’d wager your suspicious nature is a side effect of being wed to law enforcement, or else you’re watching too many crime shows on TV.”
“Now, now, Clara,” Helen said quietly. “You can’t blame Sarah for being concerned about a friend.”
“I have enough family troubles to worry about without wasting a moment fretting over Luann Dupree,” Clara replied. “She’s a grown woman. If she decided to ditch this tiny town to rendezvous with her lover, then, I say, good for her. Life is too short, and sometimes even when it’s long it’s no fairy tale.”
Helen stared at Clara, hearing the pain in her voice as clearly as she saw it in her face. Yes, Clara had been cranky lately and not her usual vivacious self. But this went beyond “having a bad day.” Something was clearly not right with her. Helen aimed to find out what it was once they had some privacy, not while they were standing on the street, fretting over Luann Dupree.
“You don’t have to be snarky,” the sheriff’s wife said with a frown.
Clara scowled.
“Can’t we all just get along?” Helen said and looked beseechingly at both women. “We could go grab some coffee and a doughnut at the diner and wait there until the sheriff turns up with a key . . .”
As if on cue, a male voice called out, “Hey, ladies! I got it!”
Helen glanced past Sarah to see Sheriff Biddle huffing and puffing toward them. He shook a silver key ring in his raised fist.
“It’s not the key to the city,” he announced, once he’d caught his breath. “But it’ll get us into the Historical Society, piece of cake.”
The sheriff’s wife looked fit to pop. “You took long enough,” she groused before snatching the key from his hand.
While he blushed sheepishly and mumbled an apology about having to wake up the town’s ninety-one-year-old mayor, Sarah stabbed the key in the lock and pushed open the door.
“Hey, honey bun, maybe I should go in first, just in case,” Sheriff Biddle was saying, though his wife ignored him and rushed inside.
Helen watched Sarah head up the staircase, calling out, “Luann? Lu, are you here?” while she, Clara, and the sheriff entered into the building behind her.
For a moment the three stood in the anteroom and said nothing, cocking heads, listening to Sarah’s footsteps on the creaky floors above, the only noise interrupting the quiet.
“Um, should we be looking for something?” Helen asked, rubbing palms on the sides of her warm-up pants.
“Are you buying into Sarah’s paranoia?” Clara muttered. “You think we’ll find a trail of blood?” She clicked tongue against teeth. “More like we’ll find skid marks, the woman took off so quickly with her Internet Romeo. Otherwise, what did she have to look forward to but a life of spinsterhood with lots of crusty old relics to keep her company?”
Does anyone even use the word spinster anymore? Helen wondered.
“Sarah was right. You are being snarky. Care to tell me what’s up?”
Clara looked at her and opened her mouth, as if to explain, but the sheriff interrupted.
“Why don’t you gals stay put for a minute,” he said, tipping his hat back on his forehead. “I’ll be right back,” he told them before he went around switching on ceiling lights and illuminating artifact-filled glass cases. He ambled up the hallway, disappearing into one room and then another, shouting over his shoulder, “All clear,” each time he emerged, until he’d hit them all.
“Did you find anything out of order?” Helen asked when he returned.
“There’s nothing besides a puddle of water in the back room. It’s coming in beneath the door,” he said and rubbed his bulldog-like jowls. “The creek’s pretty high already. As attached as Ms. Dupree is to this Historical Society, it does seem odd that she’d leave town without sandbagging first, although Sarah said she must have left in a hurry.”
“Hmm,” Helen murmured. She tended to agree with him, knowing how Luann had championed funding for the building and its renovation the past ten years. Would she run off with a man and leave all her prized relics at the mercy of the rising floodwaters?
“What I find odd,” Clara argued, “is that we’re standing around debating the actions of an adult female whose brain is most certainly muddled by hormones. C’mon, Helen,” she said and gave Helen’s arm a tug. “Let’s get to work going through those photographs. They’re not going to sort themselves.”
Helen glanced at the sheriff, who shrugged. “I don’t know any reason you folks can’t do your volunteer work. I’ll go check on Sarah,” he added and hitched up his khaki pants, which, despite the belt, sagged below his oversized belly.
Before he’d gone halfway up, Sarah appeared, stairs creaking as she made her way down. She held something in her hand. Whatever it was, she looked relieved.
The sheriff said nothing until they’d both reached the ground floor.
“What did you find?” he asked as his wife wriggled an object in his face.
Helen noticed it was a small and very slim dark blue book.
“It’s her passport,” Sarah replied breathlessly. “If she left it behind, she can’t mean to travel too far, right? Her suitcase is gone and some clothes were strewn about like she packed quickly.” She paused to remark, “I picked them up, of course. I’d hate for things to be a mess when she got back. Surely she won’t be gone for long.”
“So I was right.” Clara harrumphed. “She did go looking for Mr. Goodbar, or traveling with Mr. Goodbar, anyway.”
“Stop it,” Helen said under her breath, nudging her friend as Sarah Biddle gave Clara the stink eye.
The sheriff patted his wife’s back. “Yep, I’ll bet she’s back soon enough. Try not to worry,” he advised, though Sarah merely bit her lower lip, looking a little like a frightened bunny. “How about we go and leave Mrs. Evans and Mrs. Foley to their volunteer work, unless you’d like to stay and help them?”
Before Sarah could open her mouth to reply, Clara raised a hand, like a traffic cop making a stop in the middle of the street.
“No, no! You go on,” she directed. “I know exactly what to do. Thanks for letting us in, Sheriff. We would have been sitting on the curb otherwise.”
He tipped his hat at her then turned to Helen. “Would you lock up when you leave, ma’am? Then could you come by to drop off the spare?” he asked, handing over the key ring he’d obtained from the mayor. “I’d like to keep those in my desk until Ms. Dupree returns.”
“Will do, Sheriff,” she told him, taking the keys and pocketing them. They made a good-sized lump in her warm-up jacket but didn’t appear at risk for falling out.
“Thank you,” he said. “Now I think I’d best talk to the town council about getting some volunteers to sandbag out back. We’ve got to get a serious effort going now. Don’t want the water to catch us unawares. Ma’am,” he added, touching his cap as he nodded at Helen and Clara.
When the town’s sole law enforcement officer guided his wife out the front door, Clara let loose a big sigh.
“Thank goodness that’s over. How about we go upstairs?” Clara suggested, hefting her tote bag onto her shoulder. “Luann has a table set up in the storage area. That was easier for her than moving all the boxes downstairs. We’ve wasted enough time as it is squabbling over that silly woman’s whereabouts. I always thought she was a bit daffy.”
Helen wasn’t sure what to say to that. She’d had only brief conversations with Luann Dupree at various town functions, mostly along the lines of “How are you? Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?” She had attended several of Luann’s town hall lectures about the Mississippi River Valley, the roots of their tiny village, local legends like the Piasa Bird, and the possibility of Lewis and Clark setting foot in River Bend. But Helen didn’t know her well, not personally, and she hadn’t been volunteering at the Historical Society for years, like Clara. She had found Luann very credible and hardly daffy when it came to her work, anyway. But she’d known plenty of folks with lots of brains and little common sense. Maybe that was the case with Luann.
As Clara had remarked, love did seem to alter one’s brain chemistry. Even those with a good head on their shoulders could lose it when their hearts got in the way, she decided as they climbed the steps to the second-floor landing.
“Don’t get distracted by what’s around us,” Clara said, ushering Helen into a vast room with big windows. “It’s a bit like stumbling upon the greatest garage sale you’ve ever seen. Only nothing has a price tag and, according to Luann, everything is priceless.”
Even before Clara hit the light switch, Helen could see what she was talking about.
While the area was mostly devoid of furniture—save for a dozen card tables and chairs—there were plenty of boxes. They were piled high on one side of the room. On the other there were more boxes, these opened, with contents lined up on card tables set in a row. Helen wandered nearer to see pieces of regional pottery, old glass bottles, even a handmade purple two-headed doll with lace hair.
“This all belongs to the Historical Society?” she found herself asking. It looked like someone had robbed all the guests on a season’s worth of Antiques Roadshows.
“What you see downstairs in the cases is just a fraction of the collection,” Clara told her. “There isn’t room to show off everything. Luann found dozens of moving boxes left behind by the previous director that had never been opened. I told her she needed to bring in some help, like real help, someone who knows what these things are worth, maybe the curator from a museum. But she said she didn’t want anyone else poking around her things. She was afraid they’d steal pieces from under her nose.”
Helen thought of what Sarah Biddle had said, about Luann finding something valuable, though she couldn’t imagine who’d want to steal pottery or a two-headed doll. But what did she know? Oh, sure, she could tell a Queen Anne chair from a Windsor, but she was hardly an expert in antiquities.
“Perhaps Agnes could assist her? Everyone trusts Agnes.”
“If Luann discussed priceless relics with anyone, I’d hardly be the wiser. She most definitely did not share her secrets with me.” Clara wiggled an arm at a particular table loaded with rubber-banded stacks of photos. “Now, let’s get going on the sorting, or we’ll be here all day and all night just to get through this latest batch.”
Helen did as advised, picking one of the cushioned folding chairs on either side of the table that Clara had indicated. Clara pulled a particular stack her way and pushed another toward Helen.
“Those are from about twenty years back,” Clara told her. “So you and Joe would have lived here for thirty years by then. See if you recognize anyone or anything. Separate the photos of folks you can identify and write a name or location on the back with acid-free ink. Then place it in this green bin,” Clara said, pointing to a plastic cubby to Helen’s right. “If you don’t see anyone or any particular place that resonates, place it in the red bin.” That one was to Helen’s left.
“Got it,” she said. “What’s in your pile, might I ask?”
“Since I was born in River Bend, Luann has me going through photos dating back sixty years or more.” She shook her head. “It’s a revelation, let me tell you. Some of them take my breath away, reminding me of moments I’d forgotten.” Again, sadness crept into her face.
Helen took the opportunity to say, “What’s going on with you, hon? Something isn’t right. I can tell.”
Her old friend hesitated, pursing her lips. The distressed expression was suddenly replaced by anger.
“Dang it, Helen, I know you’ve probably heard that Bernie’s not well, but it’s worse than that,” she finally admitted, referring to her brother-in-law. “Poor Betty is at wit’s end. I know it’s death to the person going through Alzheimer’s. I do understand that. I can’t even imagine watching my mind slip away. But it’s murder for the caretaker and the family, too. It breaks my heart to pieces, particularly when Bernie says something hurtful to Betty or Ellen. Even if he doesn’t mean to . . .”
Clara choked up and couldn’t finish.
Helen reached for her hand, seeing the tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I wish there was something I could to do help.”
“I know,” Clara said and sniffled. “But it seems like now it’s just a waiting game, and not a very pleasant one at that.” She slipped her hand away from Helen’s and wiped away her tears. “Good Lord, I hate being maudlin,” she said and quickly patted her gray pin curls. “That’s why I like having work to do. So let’s try to get something done around here, even if the Society’s director has snubbed us to gallivant about with a mystery man.”
Helen hoped that was actually the case and Sarah Biddle’s fears weren’t warranted.
“Oh, I did bring us something to nibble when we need a break.”
Helen smiled. Her friend had always had a taste for sweets. But then, who didn’t, she thought and smoothed a hand over her own lumpy belly.
“When I worry, I bake.” Clara reached into her tote bag to pull out a Ziploc bag filled with muffins. “Banana chocolate chip,” she said, “made fresh this morning.”
There was still steam clinging to the inside of the baggie. Helen nearly swooned when Clara opened it up and the aroma of muffins filled the air.
“Do we really have to wait?” Helen asked.
Clara chuckled. “What the heck! Let’s have one now. It’ll give us more energy, won’t it?”
“Oh, it certainly will.”
Helen chuckled as her friend unearthed napkins from her bag and then doled out a treat for each. “A muffin a day keeps the doctor away. Isn’t that how it goes?”
“If it doesn’t, it should!”
Now, this was the Clara she knew and loved, Helen thought, glad to see the old Clara back for now. They fell into an amiable silence as they nibbled on the muffins and began sorting through the dozens of black-and-white photographs from River Bend’s past.