Free To Helen Back by Susan McBride Page A

At least I don’t think so.” Helen was suddenly anxious to be on her way. “Amos Melville has always been extremely thorough. Could be he’s getting a second opinion before it’s too late.”
    “A second opinion?” Delilah repeated, screwing up her face. “Wasn’t it a heart attack plain and simple?”
    Was anything involving Milton Grone plain and simple? Helen wondered.
    She sighed, feeling tired, impatient to get home. Amber was probably using her wicker rocker as a scratching post, furious that she wasn’t there to open up a can of tuna. “I’m sorry that I don’t have any more answers for you. I’m sure we’ll all know soon enough if anything odd turns up, though I see no reason why it should.”
    “You’re right, of course,” Delilah replied, the pleats in her brow easing somewhat. “Well, it was nice chatting with you, Mrs. Evans.” She stuck out her hand, which Helen shook. “Maybe I’ll be back more often now that the old buzzard’s gone.” She waved as she teetered along in her high heels, hurrying off in a swing of hips and wiggle of her behind.
    She headed straight for a beat-up green Volkswagen Beetle, the sort that Helen hadn’t seen in years. Hadn’t they been banned once a long time ago, she tried to recall, because of the motor being in the back rather than the front? Or was it the Pinto she was thinking of, with its gas tank in the rear?
    The VW’s engine popped and groaned before it finally caught. She looked on as Delilah drove away, wheels grinding over the gravel. And then the Bug went around the corner, out of sight, the motor no more than a fading rattle.
    What an odd bird, Helen thought, shaking her head. My, but Milton Grone certainly had married two real doozies. He’d been a decent looking man, if one liked the rough-hewn type, but his character had certainly been lacking.
    Maybe, she mused as she resumed her walk from the chapel toward her own house, there was a lot more to Milton Grone than anyone had realized.
    Though she couldn’t imagine what that might be.
    As she strolled up the swept sidewalk, she smiled to herself, deciding that if there was any part of Milton’s life no one had known, it surely wouldn’t take long before someone in River Bend found out.
    In a town of this size, secrets didn’t stay buried for long.

 
    Chapter 13
    I DA B ELL AND Dorothy Feeny decamped from Ida’s mud-splattered Jeep parked on the shoulder of the River Road.
    There was no ribbon of footpath before them, not even a dirt road that led onto the property situated barely a half mile up the road from River Bend. The only indication that others had been there recently was a succession of crisscrossing tire tracks, which made parallel lines of mud where weeds and grass had once grown, and an enormous billboard perched incongruously before the fog of trees and brush.
    FUTURE SIT E OF WET ’N’ WOOLLY WATER PARK! the sign proclaimed in brilliant blue letters. Opening next summer! was added beneath in hot pink.
    Merely reading the words made Ida feel sick.
    She buoyed her spirits with the thought that Milton Grone was out of the way so there was a chance, however small, that she might put a stop to the construction before it ever came to pass.
    Just a few hours after the funeral service, she’d gotten wind of a ceremonial ground-breaking involving several token suits from Wet ’n’ Woolly’s corporate office, as well as a photographer and reporter dispatched from the Alton Telegraph . Rumor had it that a bulldozer hired by the company planned to knock down a small tree or two in a show of force, a promise of how they intended to turn this pristine land into a concrete and plastic jungle despite the small but vocal opposition.
    Ida had tried to round up as many of her fellow environmentalists as possible, so that they’d be able to present a strong front against the heartless bullies. She’d spent a better part of the morning, in fact, dialing up one after another of her