Mystery Bundle (Saints Preserve Us, Pray For Us Sinners, Murder Most Trivial)

by Leigh Ellwood

  “He looked rather happy when he left the house,” Nana hinted.

  “Yeah, well, he did ask me to go to a concert next week. As friends!” she rejoined quickly when Nana gave her a hopeful look. “There is nothing going on between us, and I doubt there will ever be. Until today I hadn’t talked to Lew since last Christmas.”

  Nana reached over to pat Ronnie’s hand as she grasped the gear knob to shift down to third. “Ronnie, baby,” she sighed, “I know how much it hurt when Jim died...”

  “You can’t imagine.”

  “I can so,” Nana countered hotly. “I lost a husband, too, and even though it’s been almost forty years since he died it doesn’t hurt any less.” Her gaze drifted back to the window. “You think there’s a day that goes by when I don’t think about Stephen? You’re wrong.”

  Ronnie sighed. Her grandfather, Stephen Alger, Junior, would have been ninety-five this year had he not succumbed to a heart attack in 1962. He lay in the Alger plot next to his first wife, who preceded him in death. Whether or not they were resting in peace was anybody’s guess, given recent events.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” Ronnie said quietly. “But it’s only been a little over a year, and sometimes...” she pounded on the steering wheel, “sometimes when I’m at Gina’s I keep waiting to see the truck pull up in the driveway to pick me up and take me back to our home.”

  The tears formed at the corners of her eyes. She wiped them away and inhaled to keep more from forming, but it was not easy to do, particularly on days she woke up and rolled over to feel for his sleeping form. “I just don’t think I could start another relationship is all,” she continued. “Especially with another cop. I mean, I never used to think Jim was in any true danger, and I know he died in a car accident, just like anybody else could. But now there’s this murder, and Lorena...” She turned a corner; they would be at Nana’s house in a few minutes. “Look at you, you never married again.”

  “You’re right, I didn’t. I didn’t think anyone could replace Stephen, and really nobody can, but I let that get to me so much that here it is forty years later and I never allowed love to find me again. Now I’m an old woman living with a unmarried, middle-aged son who treats her like a china doll.”

  “Nana,” Ronnie chided, the tears dried with her laughter. True, Arthur was protective of his mother, but their living arrangement was hardly the imprisoning environment the old woman sometimes made it out to be. Arthur’s work often kept him away at odd hours, leaving Nana free to pursue various hobbies and volunteer projects. With the summer break coming up, Ronnie could take her grandmother out to lunch every day if they so desired.

  “You know you don’t have to stay with Uncle Arthur,” Ronnie suggested. “Come move in with me.”

  Nana scoffed. “Right. I want to live in Bill’s basement while those boys thump overhead like a herd of elephants.”

  “I meant I could move out of the basement and we could find a place, like that new subdivision they’re putting up by the school. I could walk to work, and you can have the Bird to drive to the Rosary Guild,” she said with a wink.

  “That’d almost be worth getting my license renewed,” Nana mused. “You do need to move out, though. It’s time.”

  “I know.” Another sigh.

  “And I promise not to pressure you into moving forward in the romance department. I have enough of a time with your uncle.”

  The car idled to a stop in the driveway of Nana’s two-story stucco house. “Meaning?”

  Nana covered her mouth with her fingers and giggled. “I might just be moving in with you sooner than you think. Arthur never went to work,” she revealed. “I think he has a girlfriend!”

  “A girlfriend?” The notion struck Ronnie as ludicrous. Arthur, straight-laced Arthur who seldom smiled and wore an outdated haircut and probably never owned a swimsuit or ate pizza, with a girlfriend? What would they do on a date, she wondered, and what kind of woman would concede to a date that was not out of pity?

  “Who? When? Why?” Ronnie could not picture her uncle relaxed, enjoying a glass of wine with a lady fair, or even a lady unfair. Imagining Arthur wearing anything but a business suit was quite a task as well.

  “He says he’s working overtime at the office, but once last week I called to ask him something and his phone rang and rang.” Nana undid her seat belt. “Arthur never leaves the phone unanswered when he’s at work, plus his cell phone was turned off.” She tapped her temple. “It could only mean he didn’t want any interruptions, if you know what I mean.”

  “Interesting.” Or, Ronnie thought, maybe Uncle Arthur had a backlog of paperwork and just did not want to be disturbed. No sense in discussing the theory with her grandmother, though. Just the thought of Uncle Arthur finally in a relationship at the tender age of fifty-nine put some joy in the old woman’s heart. Aside from Ronnie’s brother and father, Arthur was the last male Alger in the bunch, and with octogenarian celebrities siring children these days, anything was possible to perpetuate the line.

  The distant hum of an approaching car caught Ronnie off guard. Nana lived on a cul-de-sac, and her surrounding neighbors appeared to be in for the night. Probably somebody lost who was turning around, she figured. “I’ll walk you inside,” she said.

  Nana fished in her purse for her keys. “You don’t have to do that, Ronnie.”

  Headlights dimmed as the phantom car rolled to a stop just perpendicular to the Firebird, and Ronnie felt her heart catch in her throat. Only when the familiar reflection strips spelling out the Ash Lake Police Department on the side of the car came into focus in her rear view mirror did Ronnie relax her grip on the steering wheel.

  “Lew,” she seethed, and bolted out of the car. Lew met her halfway up the lawn but was unable to get a word in for Ronnie’s anger. “What the hell are you doing, following us here? You about gave me a heart attack!”

  Nana was out of the car and tottering up to the front door, triggering the security porch light. “Ronnie, please! You’ll wake the neighbors.”

  “She’s right. We can’t have anyone disturbing the peace.” Lew tried to mask his grin in the shadow cast from the porch.

  “Why are you here? Didn’t think I could handle driving my grandmother home in the dark like I’ve done a thousand times before?” Now she could sympathize with her grandmother when she complained about her son.

  “Hey, the brakes lights on your car were acting funny. I caught it driving behind you and thought I’d follow you back to tell you rather than just hit the lights and pull you over and really give you a heart attack. Yeesh.”

  Ronnie marched around the back of the Firebird to inspect the taillights, then realized that not only could she see them well in the night. Since the car was shut down the back lights would not be working anyway, she realized. “Well, hell.” She tossed Lew her keys. “Do me a favor and press on the brakes for me, so I can see what’s wrong.”

  Lew had not managed the key into the lock when a loud gasp caught their attention. Nana called them over eagerly.

  She was pointing to a small shoe box wedged behind her screen door. “That wasn’t here when we left this evening.”

  “Did you touch it?” Lew immediately eased the old woman behind him. “Is there anything written on it?”

  “I-I couldn’t tell.” Nana moved closer to Ronnie, trembling. “I bent over to pick it up, but thought better of it when I remembered everything that happened today. I mean,” her eyes widened, “what if it’s a bomb, of maybe it’s full of that anthrax?”

  Ronnie drew her now terrified grandmother into a comforting embrace. “Nana, I don’t think it’s as bad as that. It’s good Lew’s here, though, so he can—”

  She looked back to Lew, but he was fast backtracking to the cruiser to get on the radio.

  ~ * ~

  The bomb squad had to be flown in by chopper from Jacksonville, and since there was not enough room to land, officers had to rappel down to Nana’s front yard. The remainder o
f Ash Lake’s small police force and emergency medical team doubled the decibel level, and Ronnie worried the commotion would disturb the neighbors to the point of ostracizing Nana. She could not have been more wrong.

  Everyone in the cul-de-sac found the activity fascinating. Pajama-clad children played tag in between the cruisers and danced in the glow of the strobe lights while their parents parked on lounge chairs in their own yards to theorize on the reason for the emergency. The elderly woman from the house on the right, wrapped in a pink flannel gown with matching slippers, white hair matted to her skull, clasped her hands in delight at the scene.

  “This is more exciting than that whole Robert Blake thing,” she cried. Officer Anderson gently shooed her back into her house. Ronnie urged her grandmother to follow her.

  “I might as well,” Nana rolled her eyes. “Helen will want to make coffee and biscuits for everybody.”

  Also forced to survey the action from afar, Ronnie took a position behind the row of folding chairs in another yard but offered little in the way of commentary. She thought of the shoe box and what could possibly be inside it, and if the contents were truly meant to cause Nana harm. Why would anyone want to hurt an old woman? Had they not already accomplished that when they desecrated the family plot of her late husband and his ancestors?

  As soon as the cavalry arrived, however, their work appeared to be over in minutes. One black-uniformed officer, deaf to all inquiries, barked at the neighbors to retrieve their children. Move along, nothing to see here. Still just like on television, was the general consensus as people finally shuffled indoors.

  “Lew!” Ronnie cautiously approached the front door, passing several disappointed and frustrated faces until she found her friend slumped in the hickory rocker tucked in the corner of the patio. The box, its lid ajar, rested on his lap.

  “No bomb?” Ronnie asked, relief washing over her. As Lew tilted his face up to her she felt her heart sink. It was wonderful that Nana’s life was not in danger; nonetheless, Lew was probably feeling like a jackass for having instigated the false alarm.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think I can show you what’s in here.”

  “Why not? Is it a dead rat or something? Nana says these kids find all sorts of stuff in the creek out back. Believe me, I’ve seen worse.”

  Lew’s face was pale. “You’ve never seen anything like this. I know I haven’t.”

  Now Ronnie was getting irritated. She inched closer until she hovered over her friend. “Lew, just open the damn box!”

  He complied slowly, lifting the shoe box lid at one corner with the very tips of his gloved fingers. Ronnie gazed down at the swatch of cotton filling inside and gasped at the contents lying atop: a folded note on lined paper, next to a perfectly preserved human finger.

  Chapter Eight

  Lorne Dennis stumbled to the jukebox with a crumpled dollar bill in his left fist. His gait was severely impaired after downing three longnecks in less than an hour. Despite his intoxicated state, he managed to slide the note correctly into the proper slot, and within seconds the bar was filled with the frenetic violin introduction of a Dixie Chicks song.

  “Carl, two more over here!” he bellowed to the bartender on the labored trip back to the table. “We still got some celebratin’ to do.”

  He straddled the chair next to his brother, hugging the splintered wooden back with one arm, and let out a shrill whoop. Because the Wild Rooster was nearly empty, and those present were well familiar with the brothers’ antics, nobody protested the noise.

  Jeanette Holley lingered at the bar and rolled her eyes, the irritation evident in her stance. She adjusted the elastic shoulder strap of her tight halter-top and rubbed the sore skin underneath. “Why don’t they just go home?” she whined to the bartender.

  Surprisingly, she could be heard over the din of the jukebox. “Why don’t you just shut your yap and do your damn job?” Lorne hollered back. “Those beer bottles don’t walk to the table by themselves, you know.”

  Jeanette swiped two opened Budweiser bottles and stomped over to the Dennis’ table. “I see you’ve finally realized those football-playing Bud Bowl bottles weren’t real. Good for you.” She set down Landon’s bottle with a loud thunk—beer bubbled over the lip and neck.

  Landon was unresponsive, just as he had been since they arrived. He sat numbly in his chair, eyes fixed on a spot in the distance, and unconsciously sucked on his beer, accepting each new bottle as if they were all the same one.

  Lorne ignored his brother’s catatonic state and continued to focus his wrath on Jeanette. “Oh, you’re a frickin’ hoot, Jeanette. I guess when I get my money I’ll have to spring for your comedy lessons to supplement that cat-screeching you call singin’.”

  “Piss off.” Jeanette stormed back behind the bar and tugged on her bright yellow shorts until she was comfortable again. “Any talk of money from Lorne Dennis is bogus,” she griped to Carl. “I’ll be happy if he just springs for the bill tonight and leaves a decent tip for once.”

  Looking back at Landon, still frozen with a bottle gripped in his hand, she sighed. “It’s like his brother has him under some kind of spell,” she complained, retreating to the kitchen as Carl quietly swabbed the counter with disinterest. “So much wasted potential there.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Landon muttered, and finished his last bottle.

  “Oh, brother,” Lorne groaned. “You’ve been saying that all night. There’s other words in the English language, you know.”

  Landon finally cast his gaze downward and studied the black script of the beer label, pushing away droplets of condensation with his thumb. “What we did, Lorne, it just wasn’t right.”

  “What we did was no different than anything else we’ve pulled. Now snap out of it, Lorne, you’re starting to bring me down.”

  Anguish clouded the young man’s face. “Damn it, Lorne! Didn’t you see the girl when we opened that coffin? I was expecting a skeleton or something all eaten up and gross like in Faces in Death.” Landon swallowed at the memory; he had steeled himself to expect the worst, everything from century-old rotting flesh to a nest of maggots living inside the girl’s open cavity of a chest. What he actually saw scared him more than any horror movie.

  “No way that chick’s been dead a hundred years, Lan. She looked so...whole!” Only the white Communion dress in which Lorena Alger had been laid to rest mildewed with age. The young blessed’s face, serene and waxy, remained perfectly intact. The skin on her face had discolored over time, as well as on the intertwined fingers resting on her abdomen. Getting the forefinger used to bait the Algers had been a chore as well. The late Lorena Alger seemed not so eager to release the wooden bead rosary rotting between her fingers.

  “Landon!” Lorne shushed him. “Geez, broadcast it to the world, will ya?”

  “Why not? It’s not like we’re gonna get away with this, anyway.” Landon was despondent.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Landon’s voice lowered into a hiss as he scooted his chair closer to his brother. “Nobody knows we did anything. Nobody saw us plant the box at that old lady’s house, and if you can keep your big mouth shut nobody will ever know.”

  “God knows,” Landon said quickly, “and if the girl’s the saint everybody says she is, you know God’s gonna get us for this. You remember how mama used to preach to us how the wrath of God would descend upon us if we kept on sinning and not asking forgiveness?” Images of their home riddled with locusts and thunderbolts ballooned in Landon’s mind, along with a vivid bird’s eye visual of himself being cast into Hell. All fire, no beer.

  “Shut up. Ain’t nothing gonna happen. God’s got other sinners to worry about, like all them Taliban knuckleheads and other anti-American, godless assholes.” Lorne knocked back the last of his beer and called for the bartender to put the drinks on their ever-expanding tab.

  A snort of derision could be heard from the kitchen. Jeanette emerged through the open door, a towel punched i
nto a washed mug. “We’ll hold our breath until you pay, Lorne.”

  Lorne slathered a napkin across his sweating face and balled it in his fist as he approached the bar. “You do that, ‘cause I tell you what, you won’t be doing it long. Me and Landon are gonna be coming into some cash soon. A heavenly amount.” He tossed a wink at his brother and pitched the napkin at Jeanette’s face. The dirty white cloth unraveled in midair and the waitress leapt away screeching.

  ~ * ~

  The Dennis brothers did not own an answering machine, their rationale being that if somebody truly needed to contact them, they would keep trying.

  So it was at one in the morning when Lorne bumbled in the dark toward the kitchen to get the ringing phone that the caller’s perturbed, shrill voice could have been heard from outside. Landon paused before entering the trailer to water a few plants, as he was unable to wait the five extra seconds to get to the bathroom. “Who’s that shouting on the phone, Lorne?” he asked, but received no answer.