Monday, Three Weeks Later
Tweeeet.
Helen’s phone trilled from her bedside table, awakening her on the first ring. The second twitter roused—and frightened—a slumbering Amber. He flipped from his back to his paws in no time flat. An involuntary “oomph” escaped Helen’s lips as the twenty-pound tom used her belly as a springboard before diving off the bed.
Tweeeet.
She caught the phone before the third ring, scooping up the receiver from its charging cradle and hitting the Talk button.
“Um-hmm?” she mumbled, still not fully alert.
“Oh, Helen!” It was Clara, and she was beside herself. “Something dreadful has happened! I’m taking Betty to see the sheriff right now! Can you meet us there?”
“What’s going on?” Helen sat up in bed, blinking the sleep from her eyes and trying to clear the cobwebs from her head. She glanced at the alarm clock. It was eight fifteen. She’d slept later than usual after staying up half the night racing to the finish of a mystery. “You said the sheriff’s office? Are you in trouble?”
“No, it’s not me! It’s Bernie.”
“Bernie’s been arrested?”
“No, it’s worse than that! Please, hurry!” Clara got out in a strangled tone before hanging up.
Helen stared at the phone in her hand for a minute before finally setting the handset back on the charging cradle.
Something had happened to Bernie.
Bernie Winston, Helen reminded her soggy brain, Betty Winston’s husband. He was Clara’s brother-in-law who used to work in the coal industry, the one with Alzheimer’s who’d been a mainstay in River Bend gossip these past weeks. If talk wasn’t about the flood or Luann Dupree running off with her lover, folks were gabbing about glimpsing Bernie standing in the window of his house in his underpants or slipping out and turning up in a neighbor’s backyard, sitting on a patio chair.
Helen found herself wondering if Bernie had managed to find the car keys that Betty had reportedly hidden away and had driven into someone or something. That had always been one of Clara’s worst fears.
Oh, dear.
Her adrenaline kicked in.
She threw off the covers and raced to her bureau then pulled open drawers to retrieve socks, bra, and T-shirt. She shrugged out of her nightgown, dressed quickly, and grabbed yesterday’s warm-up suit from the bench at the end of her bed. She raced to the bathroom to brush teeth and splash water on her face.
All the while Amber sat in the hallway, silently watching and waiting, his tail doing an anxious tic.
“I’ll open a can when I get back!” she assured him, knowing he’d hardly starve in her absence since she always left a bowl of dry food on the kitchen floor.
She had to leave by the back door, as the creek had spilled over onto Jersey Avenue the week before. Though the water wasn’t more than ankle-high, Helen had to don her rubber boots every time she left the house. Still, she cut through the side yard and marched upward until she reached Granite Avenue. The asphalt and gravel on that street was still dry.
Helen hurried along the sidewalk, her head down, not glancing at the Victorian cottages on either side of her, simply focused on moving her legs forward and getting to Main Street as fast as she could.
By the time she reached the heart of River Bend—a mere two blocks that composed the tiny downtown—she was breathing hard. Beneath the morning sun, she could see the slick sheen of water that covered the road’s surface. It rippled every time a car drove slowly through it.
Helen looked both ways before crossing the road, wincing at the feel of river mud beneath her boots.
When she flung open the door to Frank Biddle’s office, she spied the sheriff at his desk, hands pumping the air in front of him as if trying to stop traffic.
Standing before him were Clara Foley and her older sister, Betty Winston. Both seemed to be talking at the same time, arms flailing.
They clearly hadn’t heard Helen enter, though she’d come just in time to catch Clara howling, “You must get help and be quick before something bad happens,” while Betty pleaded, “Please, Sheriff, he doesn’t know left from right these days. You have to find him before he gets hurt!”
Be quick before something happens? Find him before he gets hurt?
“What’s going on?” she asked, though she had a feeling she knew what it was, and it wasn’t the car accident she’d imagined.
The sheriff rose from his chair, tenting his fingers on his desk. “Morning, Mrs. Evans,” he said, seeming grateful for the interruption.
Clara and Betty stopped talking at once and turned as Helen approached.
“Oh, Helen,” Clara moaned and hustled toward her, catching her elbow and drawing her near. Clara’s blue eyes were red rimmed and tired. Her broad face frowned, dimpled chin trembling. “Bernie’s wandered off again, and this time we can’t find him,” she blurted out, and Betty let out a whimper. “We’re afraid he’s gotten himself lost in the woods, and with the river rising so fast, who knows what could happen! If he can’t recall how to tie his shoes, how could he remember how to swim if he fell into the harbor or a swollen creek?”
At which point Betty’s mewls became a gut-wrenching sob, and she turned the palest shade of white Helen had ever seen.
“Mrs. Winston, are you all right?” the sheriff said, taking a step nearer. “Should I call Doc Melville?”
“I could fetch him myself,” Helen volunteered because the Melvilles’ place was only a few blocks away.
“No,” Betty said weakly, waving them off with a wobbly hand. “I’m perfectly fi—” she got out before her eyelids fluttered like window shades flapping. Then her eyes rolled up into her head, and she began to crumple.
Despite his paunch, Frank Biddle had reflexes like a cat. Helen heard the sheriff grunt as he rounded his desk and lunged forward, catching the frail-looking woman around her waist just before she fainted dead away.