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

by L. K. Ellwood

  Landon had called her from the rectory, she realized. It had not been a mistake.

  Soon she was returning Landon’s kiss, and the young man shifted his stance for a better angle. Their breathing slowed and synchronized; time suspended, and Ronnie felt her body trembling. There was no laundry room, no shivah sweltering outside, and no dead friend to mourn. Only this.

  When Landon finally pulled away he brushed a rough thumb across Ronnie’s lips, holding her tightly with his other arm. She could feel his heart pounding against her. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while, Ronnie,” he whispered.

  Suddenly common sense regained its grasp on Ronnie. “Please, call me Mrs. Lord.”

  ~ * ~

  Ronnie did not know how she made it through the kitchen back to the living room. She seemed to float in a warm fog, the memory of Landon’s kiss and aftershave making her dizzy. Muttering voices pounded in her ears; everybody was still talking about how wonderful Allayne was, how talented, how generous.

  Ronnie heard none of it as she woodenly edged into the inner circle of mourners. She dragged a bewildered Gina from her position next to Danny and Marlene, offered her most sincere apologies to Lorraine, and steered her sister toward the exit.

  Lorraine had been juggling two plates of food and a plastic cup. “But wait,” she called after them, “we still haven’t—”

  But Ronnie silenced her with a pale glance cast over her shoulder. “We’ll be in touch, don’t worry. We have to take off, it’s an emergency, if you know what I mean.”

  Lorraine’s lips pursed, and she slowly nodded. “I see. Well, girls, you go right ahead,” she said politely, and returned to her low stool. Nora Daily, standing on the fringe of the collected mourners, appeared only too eager to usurp Gina’s position.

  Gina, meanwhile, writhed in her sister’s vice grip. “What emergency?” she hissed. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “Just walk,” Ronnie said, and two wove through a trickle of mourners clicking their tongues and shaking their heads. How sad she left us so soon. Damn the cancer.

  The cancer. Allayne had cancer, nothing more. There was no foul play, no imagined stalker, and no tainted cacao beans. An entire mansion of people was convinced of this, and Lorraine would have to be, too. All Ronnie knew was that she had to get away from this house, as much as the people within tested her sanity.

  “Well, I guess I should thank you for finally showing up,” Gina grumbled once they were outside in the driveway. “The whole time I’m sitting there I’m listening to the history of Southwest Memorial. I swear, I bet this one woman knows the cast better than she does her own family.”

  “That’s nice. Maybe Lorraine can get her the writing job,” Ronnie said. “I’m just glad she didn’t put up a fuss about us taking off.”

  “I’ll pray an extra Rosary tonight. What’s up with you, anyway? Did you see Allayne’s ghost?”

  Ronnie looked at her sister, unsure if she were joking. “No, it’s nothing. Let’s just go home.”

  The gravel was just as uncomfortable on their stocking feet on the return trip to the car, and both women steeled themselves for the long, painful walk. They were not ten steps to freedom when a familiar, nasal voice sounded behind them.

  “Girls, just a minute before you go!”

  Ronnie sighed. The pull of Hurricane Lorraine was too strong, and both sisters slowly turned one hundred eighty degrees. Lorraine edged between them and, like a powerful current, guided them back to the house.

  “About what you said earlier… well, the crowd is starting to thin, so if you have something to say about what we discussed a few nights ago...” Wink, wink. “We should get it over with, you think? I’d meet you somewhere else, but I don’t want to leave all these people, and I’d feel better if I could keep an eye on Danny and Nora.”

  “Well...” Gina pulled the word into several syllables before launching into a soliloquy about having to be home to feed her children. “If I leave Bill to his own devices, they’ll all be eating cake frosting with the same spoon,” she added with a forced laugh.

  Lorraine appeared to buy the lie. Ronnie rolled her eyes when she was not looking. Bill was a much better cook than Gina, and this was not uncommon knowledge.

  “Of course, dear. You’ve already done so much for me today, you need to be with your own family now,” Lorraine said, patting her hand. “Tell you what, leave your sister with me and she’ll get you up to speed later tonight.”

  What? Tonight? As in after the sun has set? No way! “Actually,” Ronnie broke in, “I drove Gina here, so she won’t be able to leave without me...”

  Gina shot her a look that said Sorry, my lie’s better than yours. “Actually,” she rejoined, “you gave me your keys so they wouldn’t get lost, remember?” To effect, she jangled Bill’s Thunderbird keys in front of Ronnie. “I promise I’ll take good care of your car.”

  “Yes,” Lorraine said to Ronnie, “and Danny can drive you home later.”

  “Uh.” While Ronnie did not doubt Danny would find no fault with being volunteered to ferry her home, there was no way Gina was going to get a Get Out of Two Witt Free card.

  “I wouldn’t mind that,” Gina said, a faint smile flickering at her sister, “if Danny doesn’t mind.”

  “If I don’t mind doing what?”

  “Danny, you meshugah,” Lorraine chided him. “You left our guests alone?”

  Danny said nothing as he approached the trio. Instead he blew out a stream of gray smoke and dropped his cigarette butt on the ground, extinguishing it with his heel. Ronnie caught the stench of tobacco and menthol as he neared and jammed his hands in his coat pockets. When Lorraine repeated her suggestion, he appeared happy to oblige. A bit too happy, Ronnie noticed, judging from the look of relief on his face.

  “Per your question, Lorraine, Marlene is still inside, and Nora is with her. They have things under control,” he said curtly. “I just needed a cigarette is all, since smoking in the house is verboten.” His expression warmed as he turned to Ronnie. “Whenever you’re ready, I’ll be happy to give you a lift,” he said, and started back toward the house.

  The look in the agent’s eyes implied to Ronnie that he would be happy to do more, but perhaps she was too affected by the incident with Landon that she was imagining things. Attractive though she was, she knew she was hardly catnip.

  “Well, with that settled, I’ll be heading home.” Gina offered Lorraine a sincere hug. “Take care of yourself. ‘Bye, Ron.”

  Gina broke free of the group, not daring to look back. Ronnie wished her a thousand blisters on her feet as Lorraine clamped her arm and guided her up the front steps.

  Eight

  Once back at the shivah, Lorraine suddenly seemed less concerned about discussing Allayne’s death than she had earlier. Before Ronnie realized what was happening, she was talking with several of Allayne’s co-stars, all of whom had, oddly enough, heard of her. Somewhere during the course of the day, thanks to Lorraine, she had been promoted from English professor at a two-year college to an aspiring screenwriter and Ash Lake’s envoy to the Vatican.

  “This is Veronica Lord, the niece of that saint girl in town. We’re trying to get her on the writing staff at Southwest, and who knows? She might be adapting her saint girl’s life for cable,” Lorraine would inform impressed mourners. On and on it went as Ronnie remained awkwardly silent on the low stool Nora grudgingly gave up for her, a smile plastered on her face. To her relief, though, she did not see Landon for the rest of the day, and assumed the young man had slipped away during one mass exodus of guests.

  Nor, she realized later, did she see Dakota. In fact, the house girl had not put in an appearance at all, at the service in Mandarin or in the kitchen to help the caterers.

  Eventually, more mourners took their leave in smaller groups, then individually, until the only people circling the furniture were the caterers cleaning up emptied plates and cups. Marlene, facing a nearly two-hour drive, had begged
off early.

  Nora lifted herself from the couch and stretched.

  “I’m going to take a nap,” she announced, her voice grim. “Wake me in a week.”

  Danny followed her part of the way then turned sharply toward the back exit. “Can’t. I’ll be sleeping, too. After one more cig.” Seconds later, Ronnie and Lorraine were alone in the living room.

  “I’m so glad they’re gone,” Lorraine said. “The rest will be in the kitchen, cleaning up. Now we can get down to business.”

  “What about Dakota, the house girl?” Ronnie asked, shifting a nervous glance about the room. “She could be lurking around here somewhere.”

  “Hardly. I fired her yesterday. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. Laney should’ve done it a long time ago.”

  Fired? “Are you sure that was a wise thing to do, Lorraine? If you suspect her—”

  “I don’t,” Lorraine said firmly. “I got to thinking after you left that night. That girl hasn’t a brain in her head. She doesn’t have the wits to kill someone as cleverly as Allayne was killed, so why bother keeping her here? I don’t want her working for me. Now those other two...” Lorraine tapped a finger to her temple. “Let’s talk about them. You saw how Nora practically spent the whole shivah on the phone?”

  Ronnie tried to focus on Nora, seeing the kitchen wall phone pinned to her ear, but her thoughts kept moving forward to the clandestine tryst in the laundry room. Ronnie tugged at her collar. She could still smell his aftershave on her. Had anyone else? “Uh, yeah,” she said finally. “I do recall seeing her.”

  Lorraine huffed. “Talking to magazines, she was. Giving interviews to People and TV Guide. Like that can’t wait a few days? Nobody knows more than I do that Laney is deserving of the attention, but the way she carried on it was as if the day was about Nora.”

  “And it’s not.”

  “Of course it’s not,” Lorraine exploded. “Which is why you’re here now. Laney will be avenged. I won’t see it any other way.”

  Ronnie swallowed. The room seemed inexplicably smaller at that moment, and she moved from the hard, wooden stool to the more comfortable sofa.

  “So.” Lorraine cupped her chin in her hand. “What are your thoughts, what have you and Gina come up with so far? What about the cookie? Did you get somebody to look at it?”

  “Uh.” Ronnie inhaled sharply, willing herself to calm. “Well, to be honest, I haven’t touched the cookie yet. I just don’t think—”

  She looked up and saw’s Lorraine’s pleading eyes, moist and shining under the track lighting that normally would have illuminated the large mirror behind her. How to beg off the Miss Marple act without breaking the poor woman’s heart? Ronnie sighed. It would have been easier for her to tell Gina that she had willingly made out with one of the young men who robbed Lorena’s grave.

  “Lorraine,” Ronnie said, her fingers tightly intertwined into a ball. “I know we’ve been over this before, but I really can’t see why you are so adamant that either Nora or Danny could want to see Allayne dead—”

  “They’re both here, that’s opportunity,” Lorraine interrupted. “And when you finally get off your duff and get that cookie tested you’ll have the murder weapon.”

  “Maybe, but that might not mean much unless it can be proven that Allayne ate the cookie.”

  “What proof? I saw her eat it.” Lorraine frowned. “Danny left the bag in the kitchen when he got home. Allayne dove right for it and gobbled two and a half cookies before I snatched them away from her. She may have been on medical hiatus from the show, and the treatments might have taken a lot out of her, but she still needed to take care of her figure. Plus I didn’t want her throwing up all over the place.”

  “And you hold onto this belief that Danny tampered with the cookies?”

  “Or Nora, don’t forget her.” Lorraine waved her forefinger. “Who knows how long that bag was unattended before Allayne got to it? She could have easily slipped in something without anybody seeing.”

  Ronnie sighed. “You know, a defense lawyer might treat your witnessing Allayne eating the cookie as circumstantial evidence,” she said. “Had you agreed to an autopsy, the coroner might have found the digested poison—”

  “We discussed that,” Lorraine snapped, her body shaking. “Nobody’s cutting up my Laney! She’s buried whole, as the law says she’s supposed to be, and I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

  She leaped up from her stool, surprising Ronnie as she stormed to the front picture window. “You want something concrete,” she added, “I’ll get you Laney’s dental records. They should match the teeth marks on the cookie. That will prove she ate poison.”

  If the cookie was poisoned, and if the indentations had not melted with the cookie’s travels from Two Witt to her townhouse, Ronnie knew. Lorraine was not going to let this die.

  She sighed again and shifted into the couch. Might as well play along, she thought. Eventually she’ll come to her senses.

  “Lorraine, there is one other possibility,” she began tensely as the woman turned slowly around to face her. “That day Gina and I were here, talking with Allayne, I got the impression that Allayne thought she might be in danger.”

  Lorraine put a hand to her heart. “My Laney thought that? She didn’t think to come to me?”

  “She didn’t come out and say it. It’s just a feeling I have. I was wondering if perhaps Allayne had received any unusual messages at the house lately, or on the phone. Like from an obsessive fan?”

  Lorraine folded her arms and shrugged. “Our number and address are unlisted here, and we screen all incoming calls, but no, fans don’t call the house. All of Laney’s business is conducted through Danny on his cell. As for mail, the majority of it comes here forwarded from the studio. I’ve helped answer her fan mail for years, and to my memory I’ve never seen a letter that wasn’t the standard ‘You’re my favorite character on the show’ platitude.”

  “This would be very recent, Lorraine. Maybe Allayne received something that you never saw, or refused to show you. Maybe somebody delivered some outside food that Allayne ate aside from the cookie.”

  Lorraine shook her emphatically. “I can’t see that. Laney and I had no secrets, and she was on a pretty strict diet.”

  “Still, don’t you think it’s possible Allayne might have kept some things private, even from you? Danny said he didn’t know about her cancer until days before her surgery.”

  “Right.” Lorraine clasped her hands. “Well, I suppose there’s one way to find out what I don’t know about my own daughter, huh?”

  ~ * ~

  An hour later, Ronnie perched on the corner of Allayne’s king-sized Swedish foam mattress, centered in a bedroom that matched Lorraine’s in size and elegance. Unlike the light, breezy motif of her mother’s living quarters, Allayne’s room took on a calmer, contemporary décor—stunning Scandinavian furniture surrounded by beige walls, with not one show business trapping to be found among her personal items. The room appeared very much to have been Allayne’s refuge from Hollywood… not to mention her final earthly destination.

  She pondered this as she sat on the bed. Allayne had died on this very bed, taking a nap. Nothing had been changed since her body was taken away; pillows were folded against each other, and satin sheets remained crumpled to suggest Allayne’s sleeping—dying—form. The thought chilled Ronnie, and had Lorraine not taken the only chair in the room she would not have seated herself there in the first place. Fatigue, however, had overcome the spooks.

  Guilt, by far, outweighed both of those feelings. She had balked when Lorraine suggested searching the room for evidence of a stalker, and, after finding nothing suspicious in a tour that included pawing through Allayne’s desk, dresser drawers, and walk-in closet, she felt worse. She was certain she had invaded Allayne’s privacy for nothing, and if Allayne did have more than just suspicions, she had clearly taken what she had to her grave.

  “So, let’s take stock,” Lorraine
said, the frustration of the fruitless search evident in the beads of sweat on her forehead. “We found nothing here, and nothing in the room that used to be Dakota’s. That just leaves the two guest rooms where Nora and Danny are staying, and Nora is still sleeping.”

  Ronnie held up a hand. “I know what you’re going to say, and I can’t go with you on it. I’ve learned enough by living with a cop to know that you can’t just search somebody’s room. In the unlikely event we were to find something, we would risk having the evidence thrown out in court because of illegal search and seizure. You’d be doing more harm than good.” Not that I expect to find anything, she wanted to add, but Ronnie had long tired of those same old dance steps.

  “Oh,” Lorraine said, disappointed. “But, technically, this is my house now, so I should have the right to search wherever I want, right?”

  Ronnie stood and glanced at Allayne’s bureau. Everything was where she had apparently left it. A matchbook from a tony downtown Jacksonville restaurant, spare change, and a shallow, porcelain dish containing enough jewelry to pay the difference on Ronnie’s townhome. “A good defense lawyer might see things differently,” she said. “I should probably go. I think we’ve done enough investigating for one night.”

  “Right. What a day.”

  Ronnie followed Lorraine down the stairs. “Could I use the bathroom before we call for Danny? I really need to go.”

  Lorraine pointed down the downstairs hallway toward her bedroom. “Oh, dearie, use mine. So many people here today, I’m sure the common one is a mess.”

  “Thanks.”

  What little Ronnie had seen of Lorraine’s bathroom during her first visit to the suite certainly did not do it justice. This was a far cry from the closet-sized chamber she had to use in Gina’s basement. Lush, tropical wallpaper surrounded a double-door shower stall and separate jetted tub, and the toilet was cordoned off by its own walls.