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

by Leigh Ellwood

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Lorne was annoyed. He started for the kitchen again and grabbed the receiver, stretching the cord back into the living room. “To hell with the old lady, it’s time to go straight to the real source of cash!”

  Landon’s interest was piqued. “Which is who?”

  Lorne dialed information, perking up when the operator asked for the city. “Hey, baby, get me the Vatican. Collect. Hello?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ron nestled into the padded oak glider Gina kept on the back porch with a series of rickety wooden rockers—impulse buys from a trip to Amish Country. She focused on a bald spot in the backyard, watching as the sun edged slowly up the horizon and shot its light and warmth through the trees. Overhead a fleet of finches surrounded a hanging bird feeder, vying for a spot to enjoy an early breakfast.

  Unable to sleep and not yet hungry for her own breakfast, Ronnie was content to fritter away the rest of the morning wrapped in Jim’s old terry cloth robe. She pulled the collar up to her face; the unmistakable scent of Jim’s aftershave still lingered a year since he last wore it. The robe was naturally overdue for a cleaning, but Ronnie could not bear to wash away this one memory. Wearing his robe was the closest she could get to Jim now; only in her dreams could she get closer, and dreams such as those were common but at times disturbing.

  Which was why Ronnie was sitting awake on the back porch and not in bed like the rest of the family.

  She inhaled and closed her eyes, trying to recall everything her subconscious recorded from the previous night. She was in the cemetery standing over Lorena’s empty grave, gazing out over rows of stones that seemed to stretch endlessly into the distance. She was rooted to the spot as two shadowed figures carried a coffin out of view.

  Unable to move, she cried to Jim to stop them. Jim, in full police regalia, ran towards the grave robbers only to fall and dissolve into the ground. Ronnie screamed and reached out her arms to collect Jim but failed, and she looked down to realize she was naked. Seconds later, Lew approached her, unfazed by her nudity and concerned for her welfare. Jim, Lorena, and the faceless thieves were forgotten and Lew’s hands brushed against her bare waist and pulled her closer to him.

  Ronnie woke up, feeling guilty for having betrayed Jim and feeling silly for thinking such a thing. The dream rattled her so much, innocent as it might have been to anyone else, and Ronnie feared falling asleep and resuming the action lest it transcend a PG-13 rating. In all the time she had been with Jim she had never dreamed or fantasized about another man, famous or otherwise.

  Growing tired of the finches’ chirping, she retreated inside and set the coffee machine to brew. As the kitchen filled with the strong aroma of French vanilla, she slumped down at the kitchen table and tried to take her mind off of Lew and anything sexual. Contemplating whether or not Jeanette Holley’s friends might have had a hand in Paul Dix’s death, she thought, was a good start.

  Jeanette had been adamant that the Dennis brothers were innocent of inflicting Paul Dix’s fatal injuries, but how else could they be explained? Surely there had not been another party roaming the cemetery that night seeking to unearth Lorena’s body and hold it for ransom. Even so, it would not explain why Paul Dix was at the cemetery so late in the first place.

  Her gaze wandered over to the edge of the table where Gina had left behind a list of Mass intentions to give to Father Joel. Many of the names listed were deceased relatives, among them their paternal grandmother, a victim of breast cancer.

  “Elena Dix,” Ronnie suddenly said aloud, drumming her long, unpolished nails on the tabletop. Paul Dix’s life had to have been insured, she thought, leaving his widow as his sole beneficiary. She glanced at the wall clock and wondered if seven-thirty was too early to call the widow, for she wanted to find this out as soon as possible.

  Perhaps Paul Dix arranged for his own murder, Ronnie told herself. Seeing his wife in so much pain and knowing how little he could contribute to their mounting medical bills might have prompted the drastic move, since a suicide normally invalidated any claims to insurance payments by family.

  She checked the machine. Coffee dripped steadily into the half-full pot and she resisted the urge to fix a cup. Coffee would spill onto the hot plate, and Gina always yelled at her for making a mess. Ronnie busied herself instead with peeling a banana and mentally working out Paul Dix’s last days.

  In need of cash and willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of his wife’s health, Paul Dix turns to two local ne’er-do-wells for help. They arrange a plan where the boys steal the body of Ash Lake Cemetery’s most famous occupant, and Paul, under the guise of working late, is killed while trying to foil the heist. Wife gets bills paid, and Paul Dix is considered a hero. Nobody is the wiser for the scheme.

  Ronnie cracked a triumphant smile at creating this scenario, but it quickly fell. Assuming Paul and Elena Dix had little money to begin with, how would he have paid the Dennis brothers? Surely not with Lorena, Ronnie thought. Had Paul Dix planted the ransom idea in their head?

  Also, none of that explained the expensive watch left behind, which could have been pawned easily to alleviate some payments. Ronnie could hear Lew scolding her about this and about Jeanette’s previous revelation—Paul Dix’s meeting at the Wild Rooster with the mystery customer. How was he involved in all this, Ronnie wondered. Had the stranger put Paul Dix up to stealing Lorena in exchange for bills paid and a fancy watch, only to have his employee die at the hands of people plotting the exact same thing?

  The sizzling sound of coffee brewing stopped abruptly, and Ronnie wolfed down her banana before pouring a cup. The clock read seven forty-five, and deep beyond the hallway the rest of the house was coming to life. She could hear Gina and Bill muttering to each other over the din of slamming drawers, the hard footfalls traveling across rooms as Gina roused the boys out of bed for another day of homeschooling. Ronnie decided to help ease the morning along by setting out favorite cereals on the table for the boys to select.

  Elliott was the first to emerge, wearing black shorts and a Lord of the Rings T-shirt. “Are you going to be with us today, Aunt Ronnie?” he asked with a yawn.

  Ronnie spun around to another cabinet for bowls and juice glasses. “Yep. I got the whole day off, so I’ll stick around until your mother tells me to get lost.” She opened the refrigerator. “You want apple or orange?”

  “OJ, please.”

  Ronnie poured two glasses, one of which she downed in a single gulp, and set out the milk for Elliott to pour into his bowl of Rice Krispies. When she noticed him scanning the breadth of the table for something else, she instinctively told him to forget about spooning sugar into his bowl.

  “They taste bland without it.” Elliott shoveled a spoonful of cereal into his mouth in protest.

  “The sugar won’t dissolve in cold milk, anyway. It’s just going to sink to the bottom of the bowl and clump up. Besides, your mother doesn’t need you hopped up on sugar and bouncing off the walls all day long.”

  “After school can I borrow your ‘Weird Al’ CDs?”

  Ronnie raised an eyebrow. Gina was a stickler for good grammar and, being a tenant, she had to keep up her end. “I don’t know, can you?”

  Elliott rolled his eyes. “May I?”

  “We’ll see.” The CDs were Jim’s, but Ronnie did not have the heart to dispose of them, as much as she questioned his taste in music. Perhaps it was time to just give them to the boys.

  She mussed the boy’s hair and announced that she would return after she had a quick shower and dressed, and she headed downstairs just as Ian and Gina came down for breakfast. She had just cranked up the hot water in the shower when a thought struck her suddenly. She turned off the water and returned to her room.

  So Elena Dix would be wakened, Ronnie thought as she scanned the white pages with one hand poised over the phone. Most old people she knew woke early, anyway. Nana was an early riser, often joking about how she hated to waste any second of daylig
ht in her declining years. There would be plenty of time later to sleep; Paul Dix had all the time in the world now. She dialed and Elena picked up on the first ring.

  To Ronnie’s relief, the older woman sounded alert. “It’s so nice of you to call,” Elena said, “but I’m afraid I can’t stay long. I’m due at the doctor’s in a few hours. He’s at the Mayo Clinic on the Southside, so I need to get moving. It’s a good two hours one way.”

  Ronnie raised an eyebrow. The Mayo Clinic was not cheap. “Oh, that’s okay. I just wanted to see how you were doing and if you needed anything.” She bit her lip, wondering how she was going to broach the subject of her husband’s insurance situation in such a short time. “Will you need any help with funeral arrangements?”

  “Thank you for asking, but my son’s been here for the past week, and he and his wife have taken care of everything.” A pause, then, “I understand there may be an arrest soon?”

  “Really?” Had Lew contacted the widow with the latest details of the case? “What have you heard?”

  “Only what I read in the paper this morning. These two boys named Dennis who are being sought for questioning...”

  Ronnie could not hear the rest for the blood pounding in her ears. No need to ask for the article’s byline, Ronnie knew. She opened her mouth to interrupt when a sharp beep did that for her.

  “Oh, Mrs. Dix,” she said, “my call waiting just sounded, so why don’t I just let you go?” She murmured her goodbyes and tapped the flash button to receive the incoming call. “Hello?”

  All she heard on the other end was a woman crying her name, repeating, “I’m sorry, so sorry.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ron listened carefully to Gloria’s story, a challenging task considering the level of difficulty in picking out the secretary’s words over ear-splitting sniffles and soulfully wrenched sobs. “I just couldn’t bear to see you and your family in so much pain,” the old woman said. A noise resembling a leaf blower in a tunnel sounded shortly afterward, and Ronnie realized Gloria was only blowing her nose.

  “H-he just kept saying we were really trying to alleviate your suffering,” Gloria continued, “and that once you knew the truth everything would be fine.”

  “Gloria, slow down.” Ronnie pressed a hand to her throbbing forehead. The secretary’s words were slurred with misery and she did not feel like deciphering such a dialect. “Tell me again, who is this ‘he’ and what does this have to do with anything?”

  “Ethan Fontaine.” Sniffle, sniffle. “We attend the same church.”

  Ronnie inwardly groaned. Good Lord, she thought, don’t tell me that hateful old man hired those two rednecks to dig up Lorena’s grave just to prove a point. “Gloria, what did Ethan do? This is very important, because if he’s involved in Lorena’s disappearance and Paul Dix’s murder you have to speak up.”

  Gloria, however, did not appear to listen. “We were talking over the phone last night, Ethan and I. I had taken some books from your office without asking, I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay, Gloria.” Where was this going?

  “I read some of your books on the Catholic Church, and they were very good.” Gloria was more intelligible now, and the sniffles gradually subsided. “So I told Ethan, and he started yelling at me, accusing me of being seduced by the dark side...” The dam burst once again and Ronnie held the receiver away from her ear to avoid the high-volume assault. She waited a few seconds for the wave to fade away before speaking again.

  “Gloria,” she pressed, “is Ethan involved in any of this? Did he plan the robbery? Did he hire anybody to do it for him?” Frustration burned Ronnie’s face. Why was Gloria stalling? Did she really know anything at all?

  “Ronnie, I’m so sorry,” Gloria repeated. “Everything I knew about Catholics came from my parents, who never liked them. I didn’t realize there was so much more to it than...” The secretary rambled further apologies for her misguided anti-Catholic sentiment and for causing the Alger family any inconvenience. Ronnie could only listen and stare blankly at the floor, wondering if for a second the older woman was working up the nerve to confess to the heinous crimes herself.

  A minute passed and Ethan’s name was not mentioned again. When Ronnie finally managed to calm Gloria with soothing assurances that she had done nothing to harm her family, she rang off and immediately dialed the sheriff’s office. She was patched directly to Lew, who was cruising the streets of Ash Lake. His voice wavered over his cell phone connection.

  “Can you meet me at Ethan Fontaine’s in twenty minutes? I just got the strangest phone call, and I think he might be involved in all this.”

  Lew said he could, though to Ronnie he sounded quite skeptical. Ronnie hung up the phone, quickly threw on a pair of jeans and a green turtleneck and was out the door with an apology to her sister. “I promise tomorrow I don’t have to work until the afternoon. I’ll help out then.”

  Gina was sympathetic. “Be sure to kick that old goat in the ass for me.”

  “Lew will be there.” Gina’s sudden candor surprised Ronnie.

  “Good. Tell him to kick Ethan for me, too.”

  Lew’s cruiser was parked in Ethan Fontaine’s driveway when Ronnie arrived ten minutes later than she had planned. She recognized Lew’s strong, authoritative frame crowding the front screen door. His back was to her as he nodded to another in the background. Presumably the interrogation had begun.

  Ethan tipped his white-topped head over Lew’s shoulder and smiled. “Well, speak of the devil,” he jeered. “One of them, anyway.”

  Lew turned his head and shifted his weight toward the doorjamb to prevent whatever it was he saw smoldering in Ronnie’s dark eyes. “Ronnie.” He held up his hands to calm her down, but Ronnie pushed past the sheriff and met Ethan face to face.

  “Where is she?” she demanded of the elderly gentleman, boring a hole with her eyes into the man’s wrinkled face.

  Ethan turned away, haughtily regarding Ronnie with an amused look. “Sheriff Caperton, I’d like to report a breaking and entering. This woman,” the word rolled off his tongue like a profanity, “was not invited into my house.”

  “I don’t like being here any more than you like me being here, old man, but I’m not leaving until you tell me where Lorena is. I can wait, too. School’s almost out and I have all summer to sit here.”

  Ethan looked at Lew pointedly. “Sheriff? Perhaps we should add impersonating a police officer to the list of charges? Honestly, I won’t stand for this kind of treatment in my own home.”

  “Ron.” Lew reached for Ronnie’s arm. “I was talking to Mr. Fontaine before you arrived, and he denies any involvement in the murder and in Lorena’s disappearance.” When Ronnie resisted his touch, Lew eased himself between the two as a buffer.

  “Well, of course he’s going to deny any involvement, Lew!” Ronnie wailed. “You think he’s just going to come out and admit he’s been holding Lorena’s body for ransom, or for spite?”

  “Ransom?” Ethan stepped around Lew and folded his arms. “Now, Mrs. Lord, I may have disdain for that marriage of sin and idolatry you call a religion,” a crooked smile appeared as Ronnie rolled her eyes, “but I must tell you even I am not capable of something so morbid. As the Bible says, I serve God and not mammon, and I certainly don’t want any of the Catholic Church’s dirty money.”

  “Not even to distribute among your pet charities?” Lew asked, and Ronnie sighed inwardly with relief. The sheriff had not yet let the old man off the hook. “Where were you last Friday night?”

  “Home in bed, of course. I’m seventy-five years old, for crying out loud! Did you think I’d be out all hours partying, much less roaming around a cemetery and digging up a coffin?” Ethan laughed heartily at that. “Look at me, sheriff,” he added, gesturing to his liver-spotted arms and drooping knees. “Do I look like a thief?”

  “You look like somebody who would gleefully ruin the Blessed Lorena Festival,” Ronnie countered. “I talked to Gloria. She s
aid you were planning something big to disrupt everything.”

  She took a step closer to Ethan, enjoying the sudden look of discomfort on his face as he backed carelessly into the occasional table parked in the corner of the foyer. Spare change and other items left there rattled as he steadied himself.

  “What do you suppose would make Gloria so upset?” Ronnie questioned. She turned to Lew. “Any word on the Dennis brothers?”

  “There’s an APB out for both of them,” Lew said. To Ethan he added, “We have reason to believe two men did the actual grunt work, but were working for somebody else. Now, when we find them, and we will, we imagine they will want to talk.”

  Ronnie tilted her head and scowled at Ethan. “You want to say something before they do? Make your life much easier.”

  Ethan, however, was staring past her out the screen door to a brown Cadillac nearly missing the back bumper of Ronnie’s car. “I will say this, I must be very popular today.”