Pray for Us Sinners, a Cozy Mystery (A Ronnie Lord Mystery, #2) (The Ronnie Lord Mysteries)

by L. K. Ellwood

  Loni rolled her eyes. “To torture him, silly! Wendell hates Brantwood. He hates the whole Maine family for what Brantwood’s father did to his father, screwing him out of his share of the Maine family’s sporting goods fortune. Wendell set up closed circuit cameras all over his house after Bethany moved in and is forcing Brantwood to watch Bethany mope around the mansion, thinking he’s dead.” She leaned over to Ronnie’s table. “He even put a hidden camera in their bedroom and made Brantwood watch them do it!”

  “Ah.” Somewhere in television heaven Thomas Edison was weeping. “So this ‘Brantwood’ she’s been seeing is a doppelganger or some kind of guilty hallucination, brought on because of the supernatural bond shared between soap opera super couples?” When Loni nodded again, Ronnie added, “So, I suspect in the weeks to come some meek laundress employed by the Wentworths will happen upon Brantwood while searching the cellar for a box of Tide, thinking it’s just a regular basement? Then there will be this tearful reunion, spoiled only by the revelation that Bethany is pregnant with a little Wentworth.”

  Loni shrugged. “Who knows? I got this feeling, though, that Brantwood’s going to be Wendell’s half-brother. They’ve been hinting that Wendell’s father had an affair with Brantwood’s mother, but I’ve been watching Southwest Memorial from day one and I don’t remember it.”

  “Well, I’m sure some kind of memory ray was involved, but Bethany’s never been stalked on the show?”

  “Not since five years ago when she and Denise were in Paris on that nurses exchange program, but that turned out to be Brantwood, who was trying to convince Bethany to come home, that Bethany’s sister Trish had tricked him into marrying her. Trish was faking a pregnancy, and the marriage was annulled,” Loni said with all seriousness.

  “I see.” Where did Loni store all of this information?

  “Why do you ask, hon?”

  Ronnie bit her lip. Better not to make Loni privy to what she was thinking about Allayne, she decided. Loni would arrange a neighborhood watch to guard Two Witt twenty-four/seven. “No reason,” Ronnie said finally. “It’s, uh, been a while since I regularly watched Southwest Memorial, like I said before, and I’m just trying to catch up on the stories.”

  “Oh.” Loni stood. “Well, there’s this really good Web site on the Internet that has all the info you need on Brantwood and Bethany. It also has the whole show’s history, all the way back to episode one,” she said. “Brantwood and Bethany—all one word—dot com.”

  “I might just try that, thanks.” Ronnie bit some loose skin away from her thumb. Perhaps she would also check the Internet for any possible articles about celebrity stalkers, if indeed Allayne was not delusional, then call her tomorrow to get more information. If anything, she could at least alert Lew to the problem, if one existed.

  Lew. There was the headache again. Was he still angry with her? What would he say were she to barge into his office with theories of a phantom stalker lurking around Two Witt? Regardless of whether one existed, she was certain he would chide her for getting involved in Allayne’s imagination.

  Suddenly she sat up in her chair. Was that Bill’s car that just passed the picture window? She leaned forward to see down the left side of Main Street, where the green Thunderbird wheeled into an empty metered space. Gina bumbled out of the driver’s seat, checked the meter for the expiration times, then stormed into the deli.

  “Has the movie started yet?” Gina slammed into the chair opposite Ronnie and thumped her heavy purse on the table. Makeup bottles and assorted electronic gadgets clinked around inside of it.

  Ronnie followed her sister’s gaze out the front window to the movie theatre across the street. Restored three years ago after a whirlwind downtown renaissance, the Vilano Theater ran mostly independent and foreign films not normally available at any of North Jacksonville’s multiplex theatres. Occasionally the theatre would offer special showings of classic films. Such was the case this evening, as Ronnie noticed the lighted marquee advertised Dark Victory with Bette Davis and Ronald Reagan, with the president’s name spelled incorrectly.

  “It starts in about fifteen minutes, did you want to go?” Ronnie asked. “If so, you better get up there before all the good balcony seats are taken.” Ronnie ducked her head low to see underneath the painted-on coffeepot on the deli’s front picture window; the queue in front of the theater was at least twenty people long.

  “Have you seen a certain navy blue Lincoln Continental tooling around town today?” Gina asked, an eyebrow arched. A small clatter behind them announced Loni’s sudden retreat to the kitchen.

  “Ugh, no. Not that I’ve looked for it.” Ronnie had no interest in any vehicle belonging to Ethan Fontaine, or for that matter, the man himself. A spry oldster, Ethan espoused the belief that all Catholics were doomed to a permanent afterlife vacation in the Lake of Fire. Last year during the search for Lorena’s coffin, he had admitted to plotting to disrupt the annual Blessed Lorena Alger Festival with one of his vicious propaganda campaigns. That he was once engaged to marry Nana in the days before her conversion to Catholicism did little to soften her opinion of the man. From what she had experienced since that revelation, Ethan Fontaine was still no fonder of Catholics than he was of Satan himself.

  Gina crossed her legs and settled in for a long stay. “Watch, just watch. When that coward decides to come crawling out of the kitchen we’ll have some of her pie.”

  So they watched, and waited. Slowly the day reddened above them as streaks of cirrus clouds inched north. The movie queue swelled, then dwindled to about two people, then none as Ronnie squinted to better see the bored young girl cramped inside the box office.

  “Gina, what does this have to do with Ethan Font—”

  “Watch,” Gina commanded coldly.

  Ronnie obeyed. The lampposts on either side of the theatre illuminated, and the manic blinking of the theatre’s marquee appeared brighter against the darkening sky. So entranced was Ronnie by the array of neon that she nearly missed the aforementioned blue town car glide past the deli, two familiar heads visible through the driver’s side window. One male, one female. Very familiar.

  Ronnie sat up with a start. “No!”

  “Yes,” Gina scowled.

  Silently Ronnie and Gina followed the car with their eyes to a vacant space. Ethan Fontaine, impeccably dressed in a pair of tan pants and powder blue jacket, emerged from the car and rounded the front to open the door for Nana, who clearly had not changed since leaving Ronnie’s townhome.

  “That explains why she dressed so nicely for her Rosary Guild meeting,” Gina cracked.

  “Don’t tell me he picked her up at church?” Ronnie hissed. “Ethan Fontaine would never drive into the parking lot of a Catholic church, not even if he was having a heart attack and that was the only place where he could pull over. He probably thinks his tires would explode upon contact with the asphalt.”

  “I don’t know how they got together, or when,” Gina said, “but they’re certainly together now, aren’t they?”

  Neither Nana nor Ethan cast a backward glance toward the deli as they crossed the street. After a few unheard pleasantries with the ticket girl, Ethan held the main theatre door open for Nana as they entered.

  Ronnie checked her watch. “One minute after showtime,” she observed. “They’re gonna miss the trailer for Booty Call 12, but maybe he planned it that way.”

  “Listen to you, cracking jokes,” Gina said, disgusted. “I wouldn’t have believed this if I didn’t see it myself.”

  Ronnie shrugged. What could they do? She was not happy to see it herself, but Nana was a grown woman—a grown woman still interested in grown men, clearly—and could date whom she pleased.

  “You know, I never figured Ethan Fontaine for the movie-going type,” Ronnie said. “He seems like the kind of person who could find satanic subliminal messages in The Ten Commandments.” She turned to her sister. “You think he’ll tuck Bible tracts in the seats when they leave tonight?”
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br />   Gina just glared at her.

  “So, how and when did this happen?” Ronnie asked. Their devout Catholic grandmother, arm-in-arm with an avowed Fundamentalist, sharing a joke as they entered the movie theatre. Perhaps they’re laughing about how they managed to pull one over on us, Ronnie thought.

  Words failed them both for several seconds. Ronnie dislodged an ice cube from her empty tea glass and crunched on the melting block. Gina winced at the sight.

  “Ron, use a spoon to do that, for crying out loud. We’re in public.”

  Ronnie looked around the dining area. They were the only two left. “I ask again, how did you find this out?”

  Gina leaned back to search for activity beyond the deli counter. Loni had yet to reappear. “Mrs. Diehl from church. She and her husband were at Gables tonight for their anniversary, and she spotted them at another table. She called me from a pay phone, wanting to know if Nana was suffering from Alzheimer’s.”

  “You know, she has been acting oddly, but she’s always been cognizant. Almost crafty, I’d say.” Ronnie tapped her chin and craned her neck toward the back. “Loni! Get your butt out here right now or we’re not tipping you!”

  Loni guiltily shuffled through the swinging kitchen door, bearing two slices of Snickers pie, which she set before the sisters. “It’s on the house.”

  Ronnie eyed her portion with suspicion. “It’s not spoiled, is it?”

  “Loni,” Gina patted the deli owner’s hand, “how long has this been going on, and don’t lie. Use your gossip for good. Help us out here.”

  Loni sighed heavily. “A while, I really can’t say,” she admitted to two shocked faces. “Maybe a few months, maybe longer, I’m not sure. They sure had me in the dark for a long time until I happened to catch Miss Julie and Mr. Fontaine at the park that one time when I was walking Tiger. He was kissing her hand.”

  Ronnie set down the forkful of pie she was about to eat and tried to think of something else to superimpose that image in her mind.

  “Miss Julie must have known they were being watched,” Loni continued, “’cause the next thing I know she’s coming in here for coffee with Mrs. Kleffner and asking me not to say anything, especially to you two. I gave her my word.”

  “Wow.” Ronnie had to admit that the gossiping deli owner did possess some restraint after all. She looked at Gina. “Well, you want we should go in after them?”

  “Why?” Gina was annoyed. “Nana’s a grown woman, and she’ll have our heads if we embarrass her. She doesn’t need our permission to go out to the movies with a man. It’s not like the time Mom drove to north Jax the night you and your friends sneaked out to see Rocky Horror.”

  “She wouldn’t have found out, either, if somebody hadn’t opened her big mouth,” Ronnie grumbled.

  “Somebody would’ve kept quiet if another somebody had just let her sister tag along with her snooty, stuck-up friends.”

  Ronnie looked up from her pie to see Loni snickering into a napkin. “Why are you laughing?”

  “You know why,” Loni guffawed. “My baby sister Cassie went with you that night, and I was remembering how my mother reacted when your mother told her how Cassie was dancing in a black bra and bikini underwear in front of God and the free world!” Loni waved her chubby arms in the air in a poor attempt at the Time Warp, her expression displaying a memory of humorous panic that Gina found especially funny.

  From the back of the restaurant came the peal of the house phone, and Loni darted back to answer it. “Goody,” Ronnie smirked, “the late edition of Ash Lake Gossip Today is being phoned in now. Speaking of phones, my battery’s low, so…”

  Before Gina could protest, Ronnie plunged a hand into Gina’s purse for the cell phone and demanded the speed dial code for Nana’s house. The answering machine triggered.

  “Nana, it’s Ronnie,” she spoke calmly. “I was just having dinner at the deli when I happened to see you going to the movies…”

  “Ronnie!” Gina hissed, slapping at her sister. “What are you doing?”

  Ronnie winked at her sister and held the phone slightly away from her ear so that Gina too could hear a loud click that announced Arthur’s presence on the line.

  “Ronnie?” he called.

  “I’m here, Uncle Arthur.”

  “What were you talking about just now? Mother is at Gina’s house for dinner tonight, she mentioned nothing about the movies.”

  Ronnie pointed the phone toward Gina, who defiantly folded her arms. Wheedling her with a silent, urgent look, Gina rolled her eyes and took the slender device.

  “Hi, Uncle Arthur,” Gina said tiredly. “I’m at the deli, too. Nana never came over for dinner. We never expected her, either. She’s on a date with Ethan Fontaine.”

  Silence. Ronnie thought at first they had prompted a heart scare for their middle-aged uncle, when suddenly there came angry static over the line.

  “What the hell did you just say?” he growled, loud enough for Ronnie to hear. “If this is a joke, it’s not funny!”

  Ronnie took back the phone. “It’s not a joke, and I agree, it’s not funny,” she said. “Loni says this has been going on for a while, has Nana been going out at night a lot lately?”

  “Well, yeah,” Arthur blustered. “Her friends have been taking her to church activities. She said she’s had more to do, what with the canonization coming up. And for the past month, she’s been meeting some friends once a week at Gables for dinner.”

  Ronnie shrugged at Gina. “I bet she’s got every little old lady with a Cadillac helping her with her love life.” To Arthur she said, “Well, tonight she’s hanging out with Ethan and Bette Davis.”

  “What? I couldn’t hear you.”

  But Ronnie did not repeat her words. Instead she looked up at Loni, who approached the table slowly. Her face was whiter than milk.

  Arthur demanded answers, but Ronnie hung up without saying goodbye and set down the phone. “What is it, Loni? What’s wrong?”

  Loni swallowed. “That was my friend Alice. Her daughter Chloe is a good friend of this girl named Dakota who—”

  She stopped when Gina’s phone launched into a shrill, digital rendition of “Eleanor Rigby.”

  “Ignore it,” Ronnie told her.

  Loni, however, only stared at the phone with saucer-wide eyes, as if hypnotized by the music. With a frustrated sigh Ronnie snatched the phone before Gina could reach for it.

  She instantly recognized Lorraine Witz. “Is that Gina?” she wailed. “I called your husband and he said—”

  “It’s Ronnie Lord, Mrs. Witz. What is it?” She didn’t like the sound of the woman’s voice.

  Heavy breathing roared over the weak connection. “Get over here, please. It’s Laney. Oh, God, Laney’s dead! My baby’s dead!”

  Five

  The drive back to Allayne’s house, mostly along unlit roads in the dark, seemed shorter this time, though Ronnie had initially missed the turn into Two Witt’s lengthy driveway. That she had driven seventy-five down a 40 MPH road did not register until Gina, previously silent in the Firebird’s shotgun seat, said as much as the car slowed onto the gravel path.

  “You’re lucky you weren’t stopped for speeding,” Gina scolded her with a quivering voice.

  “I wouldn’t have been stopped. All the cops in town are here.”

  Ash Lake’s three police cruisers, strobes aglow and spinning, were parked in the circular driveway alongside an ambulance—the back bay doors were open and the engine was still running. The porch light of the house blared in the night, and white light streamed from windows and the open front door, so bright that Ronnie no longer needed her headlights to negotiate the final yard of gravel to park.

  She crawled to a stop alongside Danny’s Porsche and a gray Toyota Celica neither woman recognized and shut off the Firebird’s motor. Ronnie could see Deputies Dwayne Anderson and Chuck Walters chatting with an EMT among the vehicles, but nobody seemed concerned about their presence until they were out of t
he car and practically face to face with them.

  Dwayne spat a patch of brown tobacco sludge on a sandy spot by his feet and grinned at the two sisters. Flecks of chew were visible between his teeth in the light of the strobes. “Ronnie Lord, why is it every time I see you lately we’re either hauling away a dead body or preventing you from becoming one yourself?”

  Ronnie elected to let the comment pass. She was too upset with Allayne’s passing to think of a cutting remark for the least diplomatic officer on Ash Lake’s small force. Dwayne probably was not aware that she and Allayne were somewhat friends, too, she realized. Dwayne hardly ran in the same circles with Allayne in high school, which may have counted for his current apathy; he had been too busy being pushed up and down the movie theatre aisles during Rocky Horror by Ronnie in his grandmother’s wheelchair to care.

  “What happened?” she asked. “We were just here visiting the Witzes this afternoon, and Lorraine just called us to say Allayne is dead?”

  Dwayne pursed his lips. “Don’t know if I should say now. Lew doesn’t want the press to get word just yet, considering how famous Allayne is and all. Or was.”

  “I’m not the press, Dwayne. And if that’s the case, then you need to get someone over to the deli before Loni locks up and lights up her personal switchboard,” Gina remarked sarcastically, “if she hasn’t already done so.”

  “What?” Dwayne cried, and muttered a foul word. “What did you tell her?”

  “Dwayne, if there’s a leak to the press you know it won’t be from us,” Ronnie said. “You can ask Chet Hoskins how I feel about the press, probably the same way he feels about me.” From the corner of her eye Ronnie caught a glimpse of the foot of a gurney poking from Allayne’s front door. The raised black bag indicated somebody was indeed lying dead and about to be transported to the morgue.

  Ronnie felt her heart swell inside her ribcage. She had not misheard Lorraine then. Allayne really was dead. Allayne, who looked beautiful even with the wispy scarf clinging to her skull, Allayne with the high cheekbones and brave smile that masked several months of pain and fear, Allayne… with whom they were speaking just a few hours ago, dead.