‘And?’ I prodded.
Alison shot a quick glance over her shoulder. ‘Turns out he wasn’t alone when he passed.’
‘So that Parker woman said,’ muttered Alison’s father.
‘So she said.’
Stephen Bailey loosened his seatbelt and swiveled in his seat so he could face me. ‘You can see why I’m coming along on this little excursion, can’t you? Jon aids and abets her in all this nonsense. Someone has to grab Alison’s ankles and pull her back down to earth when she goes off like this.’
Alison’s eyes caught mine in the rear-view mirror. ‘How sweet to see he’s still looking after me.’
‘Devon might be starring in another segment of Dead Reckoning, Mr Bailey, if Cathy Yates has her way.’
‘That American?’ Bailey snorted, apparently forgetting that I was an American too.
‘As you know from when you talked to her, Mr Bailey, Ken Small’s book got Cathy all fired up. So she delivered a copy to Susan’s flat the other day, with Post-it notes stuck in all the relevant places. Cathy hopes Susan will be able to locate that farmer’s field where Small said the bodies had been buried in a ruined air-raid shelter.’
‘Good luck to them, then,’ grumbled Alison’s father. ‘There were thirty thousand acres of farmland in the area that was evacuated in ’forty-four. She can’t tramp over all thirty thousand with that daft cow and her camera crew.’
‘I imagine she’ll start at the Sherman tank and seek direction from any spirits she finds hanging around there,’ I said sweetly.
Bailey turned to face me, nose twitching. ‘Not you, too!’
‘The jury’s still out, Mr Bailey. I like to keep an open mind.’
‘Drop me off at the nearest pub,’ he harrumphed. ‘That’s where they’ve got spirits I can relate to.’
When we reached Paignton, we tucked the Prius snugly away in Artillery Lane, had a quick bite at a little Chinese restaurant, then walked back to the Palace Theatre, a lovingly restored red and white brick structure overlooking an elliptical park.
‘And here I thought we were so early,’ Alison observed as we trudged up the hill. ‘People are already queuing!’
‘I think they’re Susan’s groupies,’ I said when we got a little closer.
And so they were. A man dressed like a missionary in dark pants and a white short-sleeved shirt stood on an upturned milk crate next to a red pillarbox, holding a Bible out in front of him. Sparse strands of yellowish-gray hair were combed over his pink skull, and sideburns crawled along his cheeks. His eyes flashed with the zeal of the book of Revelation, from which he appeared to be reading, raining fire and brimstone down on all who dared enter the theater doors.
The other members of his team carried picket signs that, on closer inspection, proved to be constructed of two pieces of foam board taped around a dowel. One was the quote from Deuteronomy I recognized from Alison’s video, carried by a young man this time, while False Prophets Shall Bring in Damnable Heresies. Peter 2:1 was being waved back and forth like a windshield wiper by a woman who was probably the young man’s mother, considering the similarity of their profiles.
Next to her, a dark-haired young woman wearing a red headband and an ankle-length flowered dress held aloft a sign that said Exodus 22:18 in black gothic letters.
‘Are we supposed to know what that means?’ Alison wondered. ‘John three:sixteen I know. The twenty-third Psalm, ditto. Exodus twenty-two:eighteen doesn’t exactly roll trippingly off the tongue.’
‘I’m usually good with chapter and verse, but I’m not familiar with that one,’ I confessed. ‘Hold on.’ I whipped out my iPhone, touched the Google icon and began tapping letters. After a few moments, I had the results. ‘Jeesh.’
‘What’s it say?’
I showed Alison the screen: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
I’d rarely seen rage bubble up so quickly. It started in Alison’s shoulders, stiffened the tendons in her neck, reddened her cheeks and the tips of her ears then exploded from her lips. ‘What’s the matter with you people?’ she shouted at the Stepford Wife who was holding the offending sign. ‘Don’t have the balls to say it out loud? That is a threat! Someone ought to report you to the police!’
Bailey grabbed his daughter’s arm and pulled. ‘Come on, girl.’
I lagged behind, staring at the object of Alison’s anger, the woman with the headband, who stared back with about as much emotion as a mannequin in a shop window. ‘I honestly can’t see your objection,’ I told her. ‘As a Christian, don’t you believe in life after death?’
The woman didn’t say anything at first, and I wondered if the guy standing on the milk crate had trained his minions to keep their mouths shut, no matter what the provocation, like the guards at Buckingham Palace. ‘Alf!’ she shouted, to my utter astonishment. ‘You got any brochures left in the boot?’
‘Who is worthy to open the book and loose the seals thereof,’ Alf proclaimed breathlessly from atop the milk crate. ‘Two boxes of ’em, girl… and no one in the heaven, or on the earth…’
‘Come with me,’ the young woman said. She propped the offending sign against the wall and led me around the corner to a car park and a dark blue vehicle so covered with window decals and bumper stickers that I would have been hard pressed to come up with its make and model.TGIF – THANK GOD I’M FORGIVENABORTION: 1 DEAD, 1 WOUNDEDI SAID, THOU SHALT NOT KILL. GO VEGETARIAN.THE ROAD TO HEAVEN IS A ONE-WAY STREETTEN COMMANDMANTS, NOT SUGGESTIONS
‘This your car?’ I asked.
‘Nah. It’s Alf’s.’ She balled her hand into a fist and gave the lid of the boot a solid thwack. It popped open obediently, revealing a jumble of boxes, oily rags, jumper cables and empty one-liter beverage containers. She stripped the packing tape off one of the boxes, pried up the lid, and peered into its depths. ‘Keep it,’ she said, and handed me a glossy brochure entitled WTL Guardians. The group was represented by a logo that superimposed images of a cross and a book over the rising (or it could have been setting) sun.
‘What are you guardians of?’ I asked, tucking the brochure into my handbag to read later.
‘Way, Truth and Life,’ she replied. ‘WTL. Get it?’
I got it. ‘What’s WTL’s problem with Susan Parker, then?’ I asked.
‘S’plains in the brochure,’ she said, slamming the lid of the trunk closed. ‘My name’s Olivia Sandman, by the way. What’s yours?’
‘I’m Hannah.’
‘You from Canada?’
‘Vancouver,’ I lied. ‘Well, thanks for the brochure,’ I said, patting the side pocket of my handbag. ‘I’ll give it all the attention it deserves. Right now, though, I’d better hurry to catch up with my friends.’
I hustled back up the hill, passed Olivia’s colleagues, keeping my eyes down, and joined Alison and her father in the queue of early arrivals, snaking up the handicapped ramp toward the entrance doors. Eventually we were allowed into the lobby where we joined still another line waiting to be let into the theater proper.
To our right, groups of theater-goers clustered around long, cloth-covered tables selling Dead Reckoning: Season One DVDs, copies of Susan’s autobiography, I’m Not Dead Yet, and souvenir T-shirts in a variety of pastel shades. While Stephen Bailey held our places in line, Alison and I joined a clot of fans milling around the T-shirt table.
After carefully considering how it would go with my sister’s prematurely white hair, I bought a blue ‘I’m Not Dead Yet’ T-shirt for Ruth. I thought she might enjoy reading Susan’s book, too, but decided to buy it from my friendly, neighborhood independent bookseller once I got home to Maryland. I was ounces away from the weight limit already. No way I was going to pay British Airways an additional £30 for an overweight bag.