When she finally closed her eyes and drifted into sleep, Lorraine Witz’s paranoia had taken complete control of her unconscious, leading Ronnie into a nightmare involving candy bars and swelling violins in the backdrop of a soap opera setting.
“That’s it. No more hummus pitas for dinner,” Ronnie muttered as she dressed for the next day. She taught no classes for this first summer session, though she was supposed to keep office hours, and she particularly did not feel like sitting in her cramped office for two hours playing computer solitaire. Not while the events of yesterday were still fresh in her memory.
After wolfing down a breakfast granola bar the texture of granite, Ronnie followed the trail of near invisible phone cord until she found the telephone. She called Gloria Hathaway, secretary of the English office, to hang a ‘Gone Fishin’ sign on her office door, then dialed Nana’s number.
Nana picked up on the first ring, sounding chipper in a voice that belied her seventy-plus years. Ronnie breathed a sigh of relief. Her grandmother, an early riser, was home and had not spent the night elsewhere. Perish the thought.
Nana was immediately saddened to hear Ronnie’s bad news. “The poor thing! How awful for Lorraine Witz to lose her only child,” she exclaimed. “Was Allayne really that sick? You wouldn’t have known, watching her on television.”
“I imagine so, but you’re right, it didn’t look that way. I guess her experience in acting managed to convince everyone around her that she had beaten the cancer.”
“Oh, my.”
Ronnie felt like a skipping record as she reported further details of Allayne’s death, omitting the tense encounter with Lew, Lorraine’s accusations, and the cookie-cum-murder weapon congealing in her bedroom. “Do me a favor?”
“Anything, dear.”
“Turn on your television and check the local channels for any word of Allayne’s death. I’m curious to know if the morning news programs have anything,” Ronnie said.
“Just a second.” A loud clunking sound on the other line told Ronnie that her grandmother had set the phone down in the kitchen, as evidenced by the sounds of bottles clinking in the hum of an open refrigerator. Seconds later, she heard Uncle Arthur wondering aloud about the status of the lone egg resting in its Styrofoam carton. Was it edible? Was Nana saving it for something? Next, footsteps announced a plodding approach.
“Ronnie, are you there?” It was Arthur.
Ronnie’s heart fell to the floor. She had called the house last night! Arthur knew about Nana’s date, but did Nana know he knew? She had not detected any strain in her grandmother’s voice, so perhaps Arthur had picked up the line to pass the buck?
“What did you see last night?” She swallowed, feeling very much the spy.
Arthur’s voice came in a hoarse whisper. “She got in around ten-thirty. Old coot pulled that battleship of his into the driveway and walked her to the door. They didn’t stay inside long enough to steam up the windows, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Uh-huh.” For some reason the car storage scene from Titanic came unbidden to Ronnie’s mind. She cringed.
“Anyway, I watched from my bedroom window but the awning over the front door blocked my view. Took five minutes for him to start back to the car. He’s a very brave man.”
A lucky man, too, Ronnie thought, surprised with her uncle’s restraint. Nobody was more protective of Nana, and it would not have surprised Ronnie in the least had Arthur gnawed off his homing ankle bracelet and barged outside to plant Ethan Fontaine in the ground headfirst.
“I’m guessing you said nothing to her?” Ronnie crossed her fingers.
“No,” Arthur said mournfully. “She looked happier than I’d seen her in months when she floated inside, and I was too shocked to—”
Suddenly a clicking sound on the line alerted Ronnie and Arthur to a third presence. Nana had picked up the phone in the living room. “Ronnie? Hello?”
“Ma?”
“Oh!” Nana squealed at the sound of Arthur’s voice.
“It’s okay, Nana, I was talking to Arthur about some Web site help I needed for school,” Ronnie covered. “So, Uncle Arthur, send me some e-mail, okay, and we’ll get that straightened out.” Ronnie bit her lip. She knew next to nothing about Web sites and did not have one; then again, Nana never used the Internet and hopefully would buy the white lie.
“Uh, sure.” Arthur disconnected with a sigh, and Nana carried on gaily.
“Well, Ronnie, I’ve scanned the channels but there’s been nothing about Allayne. It’s all weather and Regis Philbin, and he’s talking with some teenaged movie star.”
“Okay, it could be that Allayne’s camp hasn’t released the news yet. Or it was on so early that we missed it. Wait a sec.”
Ronnie held a hand to her already fluttering heart. Loni! She knew something had happened.
Loni had a friend named Alice whose daughter Chloe was a good friend of this girl named Dakota. Dakota, conceived in a minivan somewhere in the Badlands...
Whom had Loni talked to since last night? Ronnie knew Loni was going to be blamed if word of Allayne’s got out too soon.
“What? What’s wrong?” Nana asked, worried.
“Oh,” Ronnie gasped. “I was trying to remember something from last night. It’s not important.” Certainly the news would have had something on if Loni knew, Ronnie reasoned silently. Maybe she was trying to relay a different bit of gossip when Lorraine called.
Fat chance. Dakota was not that common a name. Not in Ash Lake, anyway. “You need a ride to Mass today, Nana? I’m not going in to school, and I could probably stand to go myself.”
“That’s okay, dear, but why don’t you come to church anyway? Mrs. Kleffner will be around in a few minutes to get me, then we’re going into Jacksonville to do some shopping.”
I bet you are. “Yeah, well, would you like some more company?” Ronnie offered. “I don’t know if I like the idea of Mrs. Kleffner driving you that far away. I’d feel more comfortable if your chauffeur could see where she was going.”
“Ronnie, Mrs. Kleffner drives very well,” Nana chided her. “Even more so since the cataract surgery.”
“Cataract sur—” Ronnie went numb. Richard Petty would have thought twice of getting on the track with Mrs. Kleffner, she wanted to say, but thought better of it. The analogy would have been lost on her grandmother anyway. “Okay, well, if you change your mind I’ll be here at home unpacking, alone. By myself.”
She accentuated the desperation in her tone. “With nobody to talk to, or shop with.”
“You enjoy yourself, dear. I’ll talk to you later.” Nana disconnected, clearly unfazed. Ronnie depressed the flash button on her phone and listened for the dial tone before calling her sister’s number.
Normally Gina screened calls when homeschooling her two sons, but since Ian and Elliott were on break Ronnie expected an answer. What she did not expect, however, was the gruff, high-pitched voice on the other end demanding to know with whom he was speaking.
Young Elliott’s demeanor took Ronnie by surprise. “Now, I know your mother did not teach you to answer the phone like that,” she scolded.
Instantly chagrined, Elliott let out an embarrassed chuckle. Ronnie could picture the ginger-haired boy’s gap-toothed smile.
“Sorry, Aunt Ronnie.”
“You’re lucky I wasn’t Nana, or somebody from the church.” Ronnie smiled wickedly. “You know, I could have been the Pope calling to invite you guys to dinner after the canonization ceremony. How do you think he would have reacted?”
The boy was laughing now. “Aunt Ronnie, the Pope’s not gonna call us. He’s got a whole staff of people to do things like that.”
“You think so?” Ronnie asked. “Doesn’t he have a cell phone like everybody else? Pins it to his ear while he’s driving the Popemobile?”
“No.” The word came out in several syllables, interspersed with giggles. Ronnie was about to ask for Gina when the boy spoke up again.
; “I’m sorry, Aunt Ronnie,” he repeated. “I was downloading something off the Internet when the phone rang, and it cut off the connection. I’ve been trying all morning, and people just keep calling.”
“Ah.” Downloading files from the Internet was one of the few things Ronnie could do from work without blowing a circuit. Working with the said programs was another problem that often called for the assistance of the beleaguered systems administrator in the next building. “Well, I won’t be long. Where’s your mother?”
“She just walked in my room. Here ya go.” Ronnie heard her nephew nonchalantly announce the call as the phone changed hands.
“What’s up?”
“The boys have their own phone now?” Ronnie asked, incredulous. “Quite a luxury considering you’re still skittish about them reading Harry Potter.”
“It’s for the Internet, you can’t compare the two,” Gina said. “The boys use it for their homework.”
“I bet you can’t wait for cable Internet to come to your corner of the planet. Elliott said he was downloading something when I called and interrupted. You might want to check it out.”
“Don’t worry. I have one of those Internet filter programs installed. The boys can’t see anything they aren’t supposed to see.” A pause, then, “Yeah, he was trying to get an e-book—”
“A what book?”
“An electronic book. Most works in the public domain can be read as text files now,” Gina said, and Ronnie detected from the slight irritation in her sister’s tone that Gina had probably explained this to her more than once.
“Whatever.” Ronnie decided not yet to broach the topic of Nana and Ethan Fontaine. “So, have you heard any word about Allayne’s death this morning?”
“No,” Gina said glumly. “I haven’t had the television on all day, and Lorraine Witz hasn’t called. I tried there this morning, but the line was busy.”
“You’ve had the Internet on, though. Maybe somebody called while Elliott was logging on,” Ronnie pointed out. “Hey, could you check some Web sites? Entertainment news, wires, see if there’s something there?”
“What good will that do? When Lorraine’s ready to talk, I’m sure she’ll call. I don’t see how an obituary could help find Allayne’s killer, whom I doubt exists.”
“I’m just curious is all. I’d like to see this from other perspectives.”
“Again, I ask why? You wouldn’t be doing this unless—” There came another pause, and Ronnie realized Elliott was probably still within earshot. Her suspicions were confirmed when Gina asked her son to fetch her something from the kitchen.
Gina’s voice was a coarse whisper. “You think there really was foul play involved, don’t you? That chocolate cookie—”
“Is collecting dust and will continue to do so if there is official word that Allayne’s death is being treated as a homicide,” Ronnie finished for her. “I’m not going to look like an ass in front of Lew with a half-eaten cookie and a half-baked theory if there is nothing more to it.”
Gina sighed. “Okay, but I’ll need the phone to access the Web. Give me about fifteen minutes and I’ll have an answer for you.”
“Sounds good. I’ll be here.”
Approximately fourteen minutes and thirty seconds later, Ronnie was breaking down an emptied cardboard box when the phone pealed. She had to walk through a maze of yet unpacked boxes to get to the phone, which she picked up on the third ring.
“Hey, right on time,” Ronnie said. “So, what did you find?”
Silence, save for faint breathing sounds on the other end.
“Hello?” Ronnie tried cautiously. “Gina, you there?”
There was still no response, only a sharp sniffling as the mystery caller disconnected.
“Weird,” Ronnie murmured as she rang off, wondering if she had just spoken to a wrong number, or perhaps to somebody who called intentionally. Lew? Ronnie shook her head. No, Lew was not the type to play head games. He would have made his presence known.
Ronnie did not feel her hand lift the receiver from its cradle as she punched three buttons and waited. She cursed silently when a pen and paper were not readily available, leaving her little choice but to sing aloud the numbers given to her by the automated voice on the line until she was able to find her purse.
She found a pen without a cap in one zippered compartment and one of the many sandwich punch cards she had for The Wild Rooster Bar. She flipped the card to the blank side and had written down the first three numbers when she stopped. The remaining four faded away as she realized there was no need to write them at all. That number was already written in her day planner. That number belonged to the church rectory.
Weird, Ronnie thought. Why would Father Joel call her, only to hang up without saying anything? Even if he had dialed her thinking he was calling Nana, he would have apologized for the error.
The phone rang again, preventing Ronnie from considering further explanations. This time it was Gina, and she did not sound optimistic.
“Nada,” she reported. “Checked all the major entertainment Web sites and a few Southwest Memorial fan pages. If her obit’s on the newswires, it hasn’t made it to the Internet yet.”
“Probably too soon,” Ronnie agreed, then, “Anything wrong? You sound like you just lost your best friend to the Latter Day Saints.”
“Very funny. I’m looking at this one site I pulled up after plugging Allayne’s name in a search engine.”
Ronnie grimaced. “Let me guess, pornography.” It was not unusual for unsavory Web sites to imbed the names of famous people in their site code to attract high results on search engines, so Ronnie had learned from her uncle. She had been shocked one night while surfing the Internet with Arthur to discover that even an Internet search on Blessed Lorena led them to questionable material.
Then again, had Gina discovered an adult site, she certainly would not have kept it active on her sons’ computer.
“No, this is different,” Gina said. “You’re familiar with death pools, right?”
Ronnie stared at the receiver, then pressed it back to her ear. “Uh, yeah. That’s when you place a bet on a number of famous people you think will die in the calendar year, and the person who gets the most right wins.” Ronnie had seen a number of death pool Web sites during her downtime Internet travels at work; on the whole she thought the practice gruesome, yet somewhat amusing, considering players tended to bet on the same octogenarian actors and politicians who never seemed to go anywhere by year’s end.
“I was looking at this one,” Gina continued, “and I see that one player has included Allayne on his or her list.”
Ronnie felt her heart throb. “Really? Is there a name?”
“No real names. This clown goes by Darth Gaul.” Gina snorted. “So far he’s four for ten, five if you count Allayne, and the year’s not out yet. How about that?”
“Yeah, how about that,” Ronnie echoed, feeling disgusted. Total strangers appeared to be able to profit from Allayne’s demise.
But did anybody Allayne know stand to benefit as well?
~ * ~
By six-thirty only the three boxes of Jim’s things remained, and an exhausted Ronnie collapsed on the sofa, pleased with the current arrangement of furniture and knickknacks in the living room, study, and kitchen. In the bedroom, everything but the bed was completed, but Ronnie decided to let that wait another night. “Not like I’m having any company over anytime soon,” she grumbled aloud, then winced. She fought the image of Lew now filling her consciousness and lunged toward the kitchen.
With the business of getting her new home in order taking up much of the day, Ronnie discovered, upon opening the refrigerator that she still had neglected to do any grocery shopping. Two cans of Coca-Cola and a restaurant packet of mild taco sauce perched on the top shelf. Ronnie’s stomach growled; the liquid diet was definitely not going to sustain her.
She dialed the deli and waited. Loni was experimenting with a new delivery service, using
her youngest son Richard Junior and his Honda Civic. Hopefully the teenager could bring over a turkey burger and fries in thirty minutes or less without plowing into her mailbox or digging his wheels into her front lawn.
Loni answered on the third ring and took Ronnie’s order. “Is there a minimum amount I have to order for delivery?” Ronnie asked.
“‘Fraid so, ten dollars,” Loni said, “and that doesn’t include the tip, which Ritchie expects even though I’ve told him time and again not to, so don’t feel obligated. He wouldn’t even be doing this if Dick didn’t pay for gas.”
“Yeah, I guess you have to make the deliveries worth your time,” Ronnie said, wondering what else to order since the sandwich and fries were not going to cut it. “Hell, put on a slice of cheesecake and a pint of smoked tuna salad. I’m going to need something to eat tomorrow.” Ronnie glanced nervously at her purse sitting on the kitchen table, hoping she had enough cash. Loni was loath to offer food on the cuff, and too many people had bounced checks at the deli for the restaurant to want to accept any more, even from steady customers like Ronnie.
Mystery Bundle (Saints Preserve Us, Pray For Us Sinners, Murder Most Trivial) Page 28