Free Mad as Helen by Susan McBride Page A

from his breast pocket and pulled the pencil from its spine. He gave the tip a lick for good measure and flipped to a clean page, where he wrote, “Ask N. Sweet about keys to G. Simpson’s desk.” He found no appointment book among the papers on her green blotter and figured her schedule was probably computerized. He jotted a note to ask Miss Sweet about that as well.
    Frank didn’t see anything else lying about that warranted his attention, like client files or pages from the missing manuscript, so he tucked his pad and pencil back into his pocket, hiked up his belt, and headed for the closet up front that used to be Nancy Sweet’s office.
    He squeezed inside the limited space between the wall of filing cabinets and the desk. He could barely turn around and had to suck in his gut to attempt to pull open the file drawers; but like Grace’s desk, they were locked up tight.
    How, he wondered, could Nancy Sweet have worked here day after day and not felt claustrophobic?
    When he tried the drawers to Nancy’s desk, they thankfully opened. Frank riffled through each one, finding only the most ordinary of things: boxes of paper clips, staples, rubber bands, rolls of stamps, stationery, a jumble of pens and pencils. If there had been anything of importance in the desk, it wasn’t there anymore.
    Feeling defeated, Frank glanced above him then at a bulletin board tacked with countless Post-it notes. A number of them were addressed to Nancy, reminding her to pick up dry cleaning, to order St. Louis Symphony tickets, or to buy coffee and sweetener. The rest were for Grace, nearly all of them regarding phone messages from Harold Faulkner about her book.
    He started to rise, but the space was so tiny that he got the leg of the chair caught on the wastebasket beside it, so that when he pushed back, he knocked the can over with a clatter. Trash spilled out all over his feet.
    “Aw, damn.”
    He put the wastebasket upright and began to pick up what had fallen out: a gum wrapper, a few discarded envelopes, and a crusty bottle of correction fluid. He flattened out two messages that had been wadded into balls. One concerned a dental appointment for Grace the next week. The second mentioned an attorney calling about divorce proceedings.
    Biddle stuffed the latter in his breast pocket.
    Then he smoothed out a piece of memo-sized note paper.
    Dear Grace,
    You are a hateful, small-minded bitch, and it was hell to come in every day and work for you. I hope your book fails miserably.
    Sincerely,
    Nancy Sweet
    Interesting, Biddle thought, pushing back his hat and scratching his head. Was the note just a way for Miss Sweet to let off steam after Grace had canned her? If Nancy had truly intended to kill Grace, she would have been stupid to leave behind a message like that. Still, he folded the crumpled page and put it into his pocket.
    He turned off the lights and locked up, rolling off the latex gloves and sticking them in his pocket. He was frowning as he headed back to his office.
    Things weren’t looking good for Helen’s granddaughter, he mused. They weren’t looking good at all. She had some explaining to do, more than he’d heard as yet, thanks in no small part to Helen’s interference.
    He’d get Nancy Sweet down to his office posthaste if it was the last thing he did, he decided, slapping his fist into his palm.
    Only . . . only maybe he’d stop at the diner first and get something to eat. He figured interrogating a murder suspect was better done on a full stomach.

 
    Chapter 14
    H ELEN SET THE cat food on the floor for Amber and watched him dive in up to his whiskers. Her twenty-pound tom had been pacing around her ankles and yipping at her ever since she’d removed a saucer from the cupboard. By the time she’d popped the top on the can, he’d gone bonkers. She wrinkled her nose as the smell of Salmon in Herring Aspic permeated the kitchen. It reminded her of the time she went to Florida one February at red tide.
    She