Helens-of-Troy (23 page)

“Never underestimate the power of
popcorn therapy,” Helena replied as she watched her granddaughter
head upstairs. She hung her coat up in the hallway closet then
turned and looked at Helen.

“Don’t say it,” Helen
pleaded.

“I don’t have to say it. Ellie already
said it. Something about me being right about the movie. But she’s
gone upstairs now, so do you want to tell me what was going on with
you and the front door?”

“I was just checking that it was still
locked. I’ve noticed you don’t normally do that
yourself.”

“Maybe I want someone to come over,”
she shrugged.

“I don’t think I want to go there,”
Helen replied.

“I’ll keep it locked just for you, if
it makes you feel better,” she said, putting her arm around her
daughter. “But I think you’ll find that nobody locks their doors in
Troy. Except maybe the Lachey’s. Betty, as you have seen, is a bit
nervous. And poor Stan...”

Helen abruptly pulled herself away from
her mother. Her body began to rock back and forth
uncontrollably.

Helena studied her daughter. “What’s
going on, Helen? Are you okay?” She could hear her daughters
breathing becoming irregular. “Is it a full-blown migraine? I’ll
get you some tomato juice to go with the magnesium. That ought to
help.”

Helen reached out to the wall for
support. A wave of nausea had suddenly come over her. “I think I’m
going to faint.”

“Not you too? Do I need to call an
ambulance?” Helena asked, taking her cell phone from her pocket.
“Maybe I need to call someone to check this house for a gas
leak.”

“No,” Helen gasped. “Forget the
ambulance. Call a priest.” She had now slumped as low to the floor
as she could without physically lying down.

Helena shut the cell phone off and put
it back in her pocket. It was now clear to her that medical help
was not what her daughter needed. She turned her back to Helen and
lowered her own body to the floor as well.

“Climb up,” she said.

“You want to piggyback me?” Helen asked
in astonishment. “You can’t carry me. I’ll throw your back out.”
She tried to stand up. “It’s okay, I think I’m coming around
now...wooo...maybe not.”

“Either you climb on my back so I can
lift you, or I drag you across the floor. Your choice.”

Helen reluctantly put her legs around
her mother’s hips and stretched her arms around her neck. It was
the last thing she did before losing consciousness.

“It’s probably just as well,” Helena
thought, as she prayed for some inner strength. “Isis,” she said,
lowering her head “Mother Goddess, send me the strength to protect
my family.”

She took a deep breath, stood up, and
carried Helen’s limp body into the living room, gently laying her
down on the sofa. Perhaps it wasn’t so gentle. Perhaps it was more
like rolling a sack of potatoes off her back onto the couch. No
matter. She got her to the couch as best she could under the
circumstances.

“I’m changing your treatment plan. I
think I need some fresh mint from the garden to bring you back to
your senses,” she told her sleeping daughter. “I’ll be back in a
few minutes.”

Helen was in a deep slumber and didn’t
even notice her mother leaving the room.

Helena went into the kitchen and headed
to the backdoor. She laughed as she realized she had left it
unlocked. Helen would kill her if she knew it had been open the
whole time they were out.

Outside, a bullfrog began to croak as
she stepped onto the back landing. That was a good sign. If the
amphibian was there, then he wasn’t. She didn’t know why that was,
but it had always seemed to be the case. They didn’t like to be
around each other.

She stopped just before the herb
garden, at what was the second dead grass spot on her property.
Stan always seemed to miss mowing that part, probably because he
had once trimmed a little too close to the fragrant plants and she
had warned him not to do it again.

“You’ve got it wrong, Stan,” she
whispered, “the body’s not by the back porch when he’s here. He’s
by the garden.”

She reached down and scratched at the
area with her fingers, putting a quarter-sized sample of the grass
and dirt into her hand. She sniffed it. It smelled earthy, but not
musky.

“He hasn’t been her for a couple of
days,” she told herself, now brushing the dirt from her hands. “The
scary part is, I’m not so sure if that’s a good thing or a bad
one.”

Helena pondered this as she reached
over to the mint patch. She took leaves from several stems and
rubbed them between her palms, releasing their natural oils. “At
least it will wake up Helen’s consciousness,” she sighed, as she
inhaled the aroma. “I still need something to wake up her psyche.
What I need to do, is call Willie.”

She readied herself to summon him, but
was distracted by the sounds of sirens wailing off into the night.
There had been too many of those lately; her peaceful little town
was changing. Even the Lachey house, she noticed, didn’t look quite
right. It was in total darkness.

“That’s strange for a Saturday,” she
thought. Betty was normally in her upstairs bedroom at this hour,
with the glare from her television casting shadows upon the
window.

She glanced down the mutual driveway.
The Lachey side door light was off, also an irregularity. Betty had
always left the light on for Ryan ever since Stan had left his
skateboard out one night and Ryan had tripped over it. Betty didn’t
want Ryan breaking his leg and ruining his football career. So
unless Ryan had stayed in for the night, which was highly unlikely,
there was something amiss at the neighbors.

Then it dawned on Helena.

“My little bitch,” she said, dumping
the mint from her hand. “She knows exactly what’s going on. Forget
a gentle awakening. I’m going to slap her silly until she wakes
up.”

She stormed back into the living room
and did just that. She slapped Helen. Not hard enough to leave a
mark, but hard enough to wake her up and annoy the hell out of
her.

“Ow! Stop it!” Helen said, putting her
hands up to protect her face.

“YOU stop it, Helen.”

“What? I just passed out. I know it’s
not healthy but...”

“Passed out my ass. You fell into a
trance. I thought you were just exaggerating when you asked me to
get you a priest. What’s going on, Helen? Do you know something
about what’s going on with Ellie and ...”

“And who mother?” She glared at Helena.
“Ellie and who?”

Helena ignored her. “Tell me what you
know. What have you envisioned?”

“I don’t want to know or see anything,
Mother. I can put people on ignore too.”

“You’re making a big mistake,” Helena
warned.

“No. The big mistake was in coming
here. Tomorrow night I am packing up that van and taking Ellie back
to the city. She’ll be back in class with her pregnant friend by
Monday and everything will be fine because everything will be back
to normal.”

“There is no normal. Not for us. Do you
really think Tony, or anyone aside from a LaRose, can really be of
any help to you or Ellie? Come on, out with it.”

“I can keep a secret too, Mother. Do
you know what I remembered when I was passed out? I remembered more
about the nanny who came and disappeared. Marita.”

“So you remembered the nanny? Helen
that was years ago.”

“Was it? Because I have a funny feeling
it wasn’t so many years ago that you last talked to her. Tell you
what, why don’t you tell me your story and then I’ll tell you
mine?”

“So help me, Helen...you are being
impossible. I’ve had enough of you today. I’m going to
bed.”

“See, I knew if push came to shove that
you’d find an excuse to avoid the issue. And you say I’m the one
who’s in denial.”

Helen watched as her mother went up the
stairs. If her mother was going to play silly-buggers, then she
would as well.

“Good night, Mother. And say good night
to Marita too. Marita Harbinger,” she yelled angrily.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Roy Cohen turned on the siren briefly,
trying to get the car ahead of him to pull over. He didn’t really
want to wake-up the whole neighborhood, but the flashing lights on
the roof of the police cruiser were not doing the job on their
own.

“I don’t want to stop you, idiot. I
just want to pass,” he sighed, referring to the driver in front of
him. “I should pull your license until you remember how to respond
to an emergency vehicle,” he said aloud, his voice full of
frustration.

It was times like this Roy wished he
could exercise some road-rage of his own and flip the annoying
driver the finger. When the driver finally did pull over, he saw it
was Jacey Sumner behind the wheel of the sporty little blue Mazda.
He gave her a stern look as he drove by, killing the noise and the
flashers. What the hell was she doing driving around by herself at
this time of night?

Hitting a yellow light at the Main and
Queen intersection, he took advantage of the stop time to call
Officer Purdy.

“What’s up?” Purdy asked, answering the
call immediately.

Roy fiddled with the volume on his
earpiece. He was all for the hand-free cell phone law, but lately
he had been having problems with the wireless signal, especially at
night. There were times he wished he could just put his cell phone
directly to his ear like he used to be able to do.

“Get on over to the Wildman’s farm out
on county road three as fast as you can. I’m already on my way,” he
answered.

“Roger that,” Purdy replied. “But I’ve
still got Stan Lachey with me. Long story.”

From the back seat of the cruiser, Stan
Lachey uttered a scream so loud that the Chief could hear him. “Is
everything under control?”

Purdy glanced over his right shoulder
into the back of the police car. “Oh for crying out loud. The kid’s
got his tongue stuck through the wire partition behind the front
seat,” he sighed. “LacheyI told you to sit still and keep your
seat belt on. Do I have to stop this car, get out and cuff
you?”

“He’s okay, right?” the Chief
asked.

“Yeah. He’s just bored. I think the
excitement of riding in a police cruiser wore off when he realized
all the cool gadgets were in the front of the car with
me.”

The Chief could hear a hollow echo
emitting from Purdy’s end of the phone line and he knew that meant
he was on the speakerphone. “Purd, pull over to the side of the
road and take the phone off broadcast,” the Chief
instructed.

“We’re solo,” Purdy said momentarily,
confirming he had done so. “What’s going on?”

“You go first.”

“I left Betty Lachey at the hospital.
They’re going to keep her overnight for observation and see if
she’s calmed down any in the morning. Then took Stan over to my
place, but Donna wasn’t home. Her sister’s baby had decided it was
time to enter the world, and she left a note saying she was headed
to the city to be with her. That left me nowhere to leave Stan, so
I told him I was taking him on a ride-along. He was pretty stoked
about it at first. I didn’t know what else to do. I thought he
would have fallen asleep back there by now, but he must have
caffeine in that puffer he carries. I guess I’ll take him back home
with me after my shift ends.”

“I’ll try to get through to Helena and
ask her to come and get him.”

“Betty’s not going to like that,” Purdy
reminded him.

“Betty’s not got a whole lot of choice.
We’ve got another dead body on our hands.”

“What?” Purdy asked in
disbelief.

“Tara Wildman called it in. She was
hysterical. I’ve tried calling Colin Dayton, but he’s got his damn
phone off and Cody is apparently out of town. So it looks like it’s
you and me again, at least until the morning. I saw Jacey Sumner
driving around on Main. She’s driving a brand new baby blue Mazda
3. You’ll probably have to crash into her to get her to stop, but
if you see her, give her Stan. I know she’s babysat for Betty
before when Ryan was out of town playing ball. I had to break into
the house for them once when Stan accidentally locked them both
out.”

“10-4. And if I don’t run into her, and
I mean that figuratively, I’ll park on the side road by the
entrance to Wildman’s lane and leave Stan in the car with
Country-FM on. He likes that station. I’ve had it on all night to
keep him happy. Darned if the kid didn’t to know all the words to
that Carrie Underwood song. He says Ryan listens to it all the
time, but I find that kind of hard to believe.”

“I think our current prisoner is not
what he seems to be,” the Chief agreed. “Just make sure Stan’s
locked in. All the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up on
this one. That’s never a good sign. I’ll see you there.”

Roy hung up and hit autodial but the
phone dropped the signal.

“Helena, where the hell are
you?”