Come Helen High Water Read online

  It was one of the reasons he’d been so eager to move to River Bend. The valley was teeming with tall tales and ghost stories about trappers and furriers and Indians and French explorers. For a history buff, that kind of juicy lore was akin to dangling a carrot in front of a hungry horse, and John couldn’t resist.

  “Whoa!”

  A branch snagged his hat, and he pinched the brim, holding it down as he ducked beneath the grabby limb. He trudged ahead through the muddy slop in knee-high rain boots, a bandanna tied around his neck and the brown wool fedora on his head.

  A month ago he’d been lecturing on Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire to slouching adolescents who paid more attention to their text messages than their textbooks. It had maddened him wasting his breath when he knew he wasn’t so much a molder of minds as a glorified babysitter.

  But that was then, and this was now.

  Finally, he felt as though Fortune was smiling down on him instead of just blowing him a raspberry.

  He breathed in fresh air that smelled of spring—things green and ripe—with just a hint of damp earth and decay. He had to fight to keep from laughing aloud, although it wouldn’t have mattered. Who would have heard him this deep in the woods?

  Who would have ever thought that he’d find his dream in this Podunk river town? But, by God, he was living it.

  From the time he was a kid, John had wanted to be Indiana Jones.

  Ever since he’d watched Harrison Ford fleeing from poisoned-arrow-slinging Pygmies on-screen at the Lincoln Theatre in Belleville when he was ten, he’d wished like mad that he could run away from school and wing his way halfway around the world. What could be cooler, he wondered, than prowling through the jungle, hunting for missing treasure?

  As a teenager, he’d fallen in love with King Tut and envisioned joining an archaeological dig in Egypt. He’d read every book in his school library about pharaohs and mummies and pyramids. He’d concocted his own set of hieroglyphics and carved made-up messages into the cinderblock walls in the basement until his stepfather had found them and told him to stop.

  As he’d grown older and more grounded in reality, John had come to grips with the fact that he couldn’t travel anywhere beyond a tank of gas and the shaky suspension on his rusty old Chevy pickup. So his fascination had shifted away from Northern Africa and the Middle East and toward more familiar turf: the Mississippi River Valley. When John was a senior in high school, his AP History instructor had taken a few select students to the Cahokia Mounds during some test excavations. John had been eager to help on the dig. He’d envisioned sifting through sediment and finding incredible Native American artifacts.

  Only he quickly discovered that he didn’t like assisting on the dig very much. It was slow, tedious work measured more in inches than feet. And it was hot work, too, unbearably so, particularly in the summertime. John couldn’t imagine Indiana Jones standing in the sun week after week, painstakingly filtering dirt through a screen only to turn up a button some tourist had lost fifty years before.

  So instead of becoming an archaeologist, John had settled for reading about exciting discoveries of ancient civilizations in Archaeology Magazine (his mother had gifted him a lifetime subscription for his college graduation). And he’d earned his teaching certificate so he could share his love of history with kids who dreamed of becoming Indiana Jones, too.

  But after surviving twenty years of middle-school politics and students who were mostly indifferent to the ancient Egyptian dynasties—and John didn’t have an app for that—he’d started looking for another gig, something less dispiriting that would stimulate his passion for history.

  Taking over as director of a small-town historical society had seemed a fitting answer to his long-standing prayer. John had known precisely where River Bend sat: in a valley between the bluffs along the Mississippi, not twenty minutes north of Alton. He’d driven past it often enough as a child. His mother had frequently taken him to Pere Marquette Park, past the lighthouse of River Bend, where John had loved poking around for arrowheads left behind by the Illini Indians who had once lived in the very spot where the park’s lodge was built.

  When the spot in River Bend had opened up, John had pounced on the opportunity. He’d polished his curriculum vitae and scored an interview with the 91-year-old mayor and a few of the town council members. Oddly enough, they’d seemed less impressed with his résumé than the fact that he was clean shaven and wore pressed Dockers, button-down shirt, and tie.

  “First tie I’ve seen today,” Mayor Plunkett had sputtered between sips of what looked like prune juice. “Kids these days wear full beards like mountain men who can’t find their razors, and they sure as shootin’ don’t know how to dress up. We had a feller in this morning who was wearing his pajama pants. They had a giant sponge-man on ’em. Looked ridiculous.”

  John stifled a grin, wondering if the elderly mayor considered him a “kid” when he was on the north side of forty.

  “They all want to work from home, too, which usually means the basement of their parents’ house,” the mayor added and squinted at John with rheumy eyes. “You don’t still live with your mother, do you?”

  “No, sir, I don’t,” John said even though he’d doubted that question was actually legal.

  “You don’t mind moving to River Bend with your family?” the chairman of the board, a fellow named Art Beaner, piped up. “Our population skews more AARP than Toys“R”Us.”

  “I don’t have a family,” John had replied, “and I like being around folks older than myself. I’d rather hear about the past than the present.”

  “Just so you don’t meet some sweetheart online and decide to run off like your predecessor,” the mayor said with a harrumph, shaking his knobby head.

  His predecessor being Luann Dupree, about whom John had heard plenty during the course of his interview. She had taken off abruptly, leaving things in disarray in the midst of several ongoing projects. And since the Historical Society’s director was the sole paid human on staff, there was no one to pick up the slack.

  Mr. Beaner gave the mayor a sideways glance before clarifying, “Not that we could restrict you from communicating with anyone online, of course. What you do on your own time is your business.”

  “I understand your concern, but I’m not about to run off anywhere,” John had said, because he really didn’t care to date, not seriously. If Indiana Jones had stayed away from women, he would have found himself in far fewer life-threatening situations. So unless John ran into the reincarnation of Cleopatra or Nefertiti, he didn’t figure he’d find a female worth the expense of an engagement ring. “I like to save my focus for my work,” he told his potential employers. “I pretty much live and breathe history.”

  “Sounds like a winner to me.” The mayor had nodded and popped an unlit cigar into his mouth, gumming it while Art Beaner and his two fellow council members leaned in to confab.

  Before John had left the room, they had offered him the job, telling him he could begin ASAP.

  Not one to piddle around, he’d accepted. He’d given his notice to the middle school the next day, and as fast as he could pack, he’d moved into the tiny third-floor apartment in the Historical Society’s storefront building on Main Street in River Bend.

  That was about a week ago.

  Before he’d unpacked his bags, John had plunged into the mess of records left behind by Ms. Dupree—a pack rat if ever there was one—finding a wide array of projects she’d been in the midst of but had never concluded. One in particular had caught his attention: The Folklore and Legends of River Bend, which included stories of the frightening dragon-like Piasa Bird and the tale of Jacques Lerner’s purported treasure.

  John understood that his predecessor had intended to publish a book, but that wasn’t his goal. He was more intent on discovery. So he’d already begun gathering as much information as was available in the cluttered Historical Society office: the photographs and diaries left to the Society by River Be
nd residents; interviews going back several generations; all matter of paper ephemera, including maps, scrapbooks, letters, pamphlets, and postcards.

  He had finally found his dream gig, and it wasn’t teaching apathetic teenagers. He could already envision the acclaim it would bring him discovering a piece of history that had been only myth.

  John pushed aside thoughts of his good fortune, tramping through soggy weeds and brush, batting away branches as he made his way toward the dilapidated cabin in the woods. This, he realized, was about as close to being Indiana Jones as he was going to get.

  Blackbirds cackled in the tree above him and darted off in a dark cloud, and John paused, his breath catching—for there was the cabin, dead ahead. From afar it looked solid enough, amazingly so for having withstood the test of time—in this case, several hundred years.

  As John walked nearer, he realized the roof badly sagged, and the single window gaped like an open wound without a sign of the sliding boards that surely had once shuttered it. Though the heavy planks composing the front door remained, they looked weather-beaten.

  There was an otherworldly quality about the place, particularly with the vague gray of valley fog still stubbornly surrounding it.

  John could think of only one word to describe it: beautiful.

  His heart thumped like a galloping Clydesdale as he approached the ramshackle structure. Despite the tug of weedy slush beneath his boots, he picked up his pace. It wasn’t until he was nearly at the threshold of the rotting front door that he thought he glimpsed a pale specter passing through the trees beyond the cabin.

  He stopped in his tracks. The hair at his neck bristled.

  Was that Jacques Lerner’s ghost?

  “Hello?” he called out, his voice anxious. “Is someone there?”

  The part of John that wasn’t like Indiana Jones, which was pretty much all of him save his official fedora, wanted to turn tail and flee. But instead he swallowed hard and slowly pulled the hammer from the pocket of his cargo pants. He’d brought it along to pry up the floorboards if someone hadn’t already beaten him to it.

  Gathering up his nerve, John called out, “Whoever you are, show yourself!”

  He tightly gripped the hammer at his side, ready to raise it and swing at a moment’s notice. He walked the perimeter of the cabin, taking slow, even steps. But he saw nothing beyond ethereal patches of sunlight filtered through the heavy boughs above.

  Birds squawked. Water burbled. Twigs snapped beneath his feet.

  It was okay. He sighed.

  He was blessedly alone.

  “You’ve got an overactive imagination, sweetie pie,” was what his mother used to tell him when he made up stories about finding treasure in the backyard, and he laughed at himself, believing she was right.

  Nothing to be afraid of, he thought. Despite the reassurance, a trickle of sweat ran down his back.

  But he felt more confident now as he approached the splintered front door. As he tugged it open, it let out a mournful cry.

  He took a step inside and had to pause.

  The place was small, no bigger than a twelve-by-twelve-foot square, pretty standard for an early nineteenth-century cabin. The puncheon floors beneath his boots looked heavily worn, but he could spot no areas of rot or signs that someone before him had tried to pull them up.

  There was a loft overhead, which John surmised Lerner had used to store foodstuffs or to stack the pelts he traded. Not much remained of the wattle-and-daub chimney, save the hole cut in the roof and the piles of twigs and earth used in the construction.

  But the stone hearth remained intact, and John imagined the Frenchman kneeling upon it to cook his meals. For surely a fur trader had eaten well enough considering he had no use for the innards of the animals he trapped except to cook them.

  Dust motes swam across air thick with the smell of decay. There was a smattering of empty bottles and crushed beer cans, along with cigarette butts and other detritus that confirmed the cabin had hosted a few parties since Jacques Lerner’s day.

  He could see no useful furniture. He’d bet that anything worth a few cents had been taken long ago. But what John was looking for were things he couldn’t see. Surely a man who’d once lived alone in the woods—one as wily as a fur trapper—would have hidden his valuables. Settlers didn’t tend to show off as folks did these days.

  He figured Jacques Lerner would have dug a spot somewhere outside to bury his gold and any valuable trinkets. Or perhaps shoved them somewhere beneath the old floor, which was where John would begin his hunt.

  With a grunt, John got down on his knees. He cocked his hat back on his head and untied the kerchief around his neck, using it to blot the sweat from his brow. Then he retied the bandanna, picked up his hammer, and got to work.

  It didn’t take long for him to realize that prying up floors made from thick hand-hewn lumber wasn’t as easy as he’d imagined. Someone—probably well after Lerner—had used nails to secure the wood, and it seemed from their resistance that they had to be the size of ties on train tracks.

  After an hour’s work with little to prove for it, John tossed the hammer across the cabin, cursing as he got up from the floor, brushing dirt and leaves from the knees of his pants. He started for the door to get a breath of fresh air and flung it open to find himself staring into the wild eyes of an apparition.

  Chapter 12

  It took less than twenty minutes after Betty Winston had left his office for Sheriff Frank Biddle to round up River Bend’s volunteer deputies.

  He likened them to a handful of mixed nuts, or maybe to Robin Hood’s misfit crew of Merry Men, although Frank supposed he should think of them as Merry People in this politically correct day and age.

  There was lanky Art Beaner, the chairman of the town council, taking his place beside the portly Henry Potter, who ran a plumbing service out of River Bend (and had recently spearheaded replacement of the town’s aging sewer system). Beaner had been a high school wrestler and Eagle Scout, while Henry had served a stint in the army after college, which Frank felt qualified them both for temporary duty on an as-needed basis, usually during flooding—when residents occasionally had to be rescued by canoe—or for traffic control during the town’s annual summer carnival.

  It wasn’t like he’d ever sic them on a terrorist cell or any of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted—not that even he had experience with such tasks. Besides, the men were longtime hunters. Art’s coonhound and Henry’s Chesapeake Bay retriever were trained to track game. Frank figured it wouldn’t hurt to have them try their hand at tracking a human.

  After arming the men with walkie-talkies and instructing them to touch base every thirty minutes, Frank sent the pair up to the Winstons’ cottage, where Betty would give them some of Bernie’s dirty laundry to sniff.

  That left Frank to deal with his third and final volunteer deputy.

  Since Sarah frowned upon him acting biased against women, he’d tried hard to recruit a female to join the volunteer ranks, and he’d eventually found one: Luann Dupree. Yep, the former director of the Historical Society had once been part of Frank’s motley crew. She wasn’t ex-military, but Sarah had mentioned Luann had taken self-defense classes when she’d lived in the city. When Frank had questioned Luann’s qualifications, she’d given him a demonstration of her skills, catching him behind his heel and flipping him onto his back. (In his defense, her passion for old things and penchant for high heels had not exactly screamed “ass kicker.”)

  But with Luann gone, ostensibly traveling the country with her online Romeo, he was short one volunteer, and he liked to have three: two to pair up and another to tag along with him. That had led to Frank doing something he figured he’d eventually regret: he’d agreed to let Helen Evans take Luann’s place. Even if he hadn’t, he realized she’d stick to him like glue until Bernie Winston was located. Mrs. Evans might be a widowed grandmother of five and a septuagenarian, but she was annoyingly persistent and as sharp a tack as anyone Frank had e
ver met. Frank had bumped heads with Helen enough in the past that he figured it would serve him well to keep her near instead of letting her run her own course.

  If there was one thing Frank had learned since he’d become sheriff of River Bend, it was that Mrs. Evans had a tendency to get herself involved in anything and everything that went on in town. If she didn’t know all two hundred residents by sight, she at least knew their names and a host of other tidbits about them. Frank had come to think of her a bit as the town crier.

  And it was thanks to Mrs. Evans’s big mouth—er, her propensity to engage the local community—that he found an additional two dozen townsfolk gathered on the sidewalk in front of his office by the time he’d mapped out to his volunteer deputies the terrain they would cover in their foot search for Bernie Winston. And it would be a foot search because the sheriff figured old Bernie couldn’t go far, being that he was eighty-one, suffered from dementia, and had bilateral hip replacements.

  “Shouldn’t we get going?” Helen Evans asked after Art and Henry had departed, their dogs straining on their leads. “Betty’s probably climbing the walls since you told her to go sit at home in case Bernie showed up. She’s got Clara with her, and Ellen’s back from St. Louis with Sawyer, but I’m sure all she’s doing is imagining the worst. Just think how you’d feel if Sarah went missing.”

  Frank did appreciate when his wife disappeared to her mother’s house in Springfield, Illinois, for a few days now and then. But it wasn’t like he didn’t know where she was. And if he did forget, Sarah called morning, noon, and night to remind him.

  Still, Mrs. Evans had a point.

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m ready,” the sheriff said and sighed, wondering who exactly was in charge of this rodeo.

  “Do I get to wear a badge?” she asked, cocking her gray head, and Frank detected a twinkle in her blue eyes despite the serious look on her face.