Free Not a Chance in Helen by Susan McBride

with Sarah and running for sheriff unopposed. He’d gotten tired of the crime that had seemed to spread like a fungus beyond the St. Louis metroplex, creeping into St. Charles. He’d wanted something better for himself and Sarah. He’d figured River Bend was the answer, particularly since he didn’t like using a gun. Most of the time he could get through a week without anything more urgent than calls about cats up in trees or a fender bender on the graveled roads. Once in a while, some kid would pocket a candy bar or a magazine from the drugstore or steal a pickup and go joyriding up to Cemetery Hill.
    But murder?
    That wasn’t something he saw much of in River Bend. With so many older folks in town, death wasn’t uncommon. But dying in your sleep wasn’t criminal. Eleanora Duncan hadn’t gone willingly. Someone had given her a shove.
    Biddle sighed again.
    Now all he had to do was figure out who did it.
    His stomach grumbled, and he realized he was hungry.
    He couldn’t do much on the Duncan case until the medical examiner had finished the autopsy, so he figured he might as well have lunch.
    He pushed open the screen door and went out. He let the door slap shut behind him. Hiking up his pants, he started across the street as Doc Melville had a minute before, making a beeline toward the diner just as the carillon in the chapel began to play a noontime tune.

 
    Chapter Nine
    T HE PLUCKY CHIMES of the carillon filled the air as Helen walked home from the Duncan house.
    Without so much as a glance at her wristwatch, she knew it was noon. Her stomach growled on cue, and she wondered if somehow her body hadn’t over the years learned to react to the carillon’s chimes at midday and dusk like Pavlov’s dog.
    As she approached her cottage, she noticed that the screen door had been pushed open about six inches. Helen figured that Amber had made his way inside, ready for lunch. That was all well and good so long as the old tom hadn’t brought her anything from the creek bed or the bluffs, like a frog or the little gray field mice he was so fond of.
    She entered the house and surveyed the porch. Carefully, she inspected the floral cushions atop the white wicker. She even stooped to check beneath the sofa and chairs, but she didn’t see anything more startling than dust bunnies.
    Entering the interior through open French doors, Helen crossed the dining room and went into the kitchen.
    There he was, as expected.
    Amber sat on the floor with his tail vaguely twitching. His ears pricked up at her footsteps, but otherwise he gave no indication that he was happy to see her.
    He stared sadly down at his food bowl, which Helen had filled with Salmon ‘n’ Cod just that morning and which now appeared nearly empty. Whatever did he find so engrossing about his leftover breakfast?
    “You’re not old enough to be senile,” she murmured, taking a few steps closer. Despite how her knees protested, she crouched low behind him and squinted down at the linoleum. Within seconds, she saw what caught his interest.
    A thin trail of black ants marched from a crack in the floorboard below the dishwasher across to Amber’s saucer and back again.
    “Ugh,” she muttered and slowly straightened, putting her hands on her hips. She looked down at Amber, who turned his yellow eyes in her direction. “Well,” she told him, “ do something, would you? Earn your rent.”
    He blinked at her, and his pink-gummed mouth seemed to be grinning, as though he was enjoying the whole scene immensely.
    Helen sighed, realizing she was going to have to take care of the ant trail herself. She lifted a sneakered foot and brought it down, squashing as many of the little buggers as she could. With a grimace, she scratched their carcasses off the sole of her Ked with a paper towel.
    Amber mewed gruffly, like she’d spoiled his fun. Then he sauntered off with his tail in the air.
    “Sorry, pal,” Helen said as he disappeared around the corner. Gathering up