Morgue Mama (18 page)

I crawled back in bed. In the moonlight the stacks of towels on the floor looked like the skyline of a tiny city. “A good offense is a good defense,” I said.

“Bingo,” she said.

I arrived at the
Herald-Union
at eight. Aubrey met me downstairs in the lobby. She had a travel mug of coffee in one hand and a granola bar in the other. Her bag hung from her shoulder. She looked horrible. I imagine I did, too.

When Tim Bandicoot pulled up in his minivan, Aubrey made me sit up front. She got in the back and curled up against the door, sipping and chewing with her eyes closed. Her strategy, apparently, was to sleep all the way to Marysville. “She’s been writing all night,” I explained.

For the longest time Tim and I talked about safe, dumb things—the newest effort to revitalize the downtown, how far the suburbs were spreading into the countryside, whether the Cleveland Indians were going to catch the Chicago White Sox in the standings. Then just as we were getting on I-491, Aubrey came to and leaned between the banana-shaped front seats. “I thought maybe your wife would come along,” she said to Tim.

I saw his eyes peek over the bottom of the rear-view mirror. I expected him to make some benign excuse. But he didn’t. “You and my wife in the same car? There’s already been one murder.”

We took I-491 to I-76 to I-71. Fifteen minutes north of Columbus we exited onto U.S. 36 and sped west to Marysville. At the prison we were taken to the same room where we’d talked to Sissy before. We sat on the same blue sofa.

All morning I’d been dying to see the expressions on Sissy’s and Tim’s faces when they first saw each other, to get some visceral sense of how they really felt about each other. Would they have the same look or different looks?

When Sissy came in she was already crying, clutching a wad of tissue the size of a major league baseball. She smiled the second she saw Tim.

Tim didn’t smile. But he did start crying. He stood up and she wrapped her arms around his neck and they hugged and took turns refilling their depleted lungs. There was some kind of love going on there. What kind I didn’t know.

Sissy shook Aubrey’s hand and then mine. She settled into the hard wooden chair across from the sofa. There was some perfunctory chit-chat about the weather and the prison food and how things were going at the church—all fine—and then Tim got the ball rolling by offering a prayer. We all bowed our heads and closed our eyes. We all peeked.

“Sissy,” Tim said, “both Aubrey and Mrs. Sprowls know about our past relationship. So do a lot of other people.”

Sissy nodded and pressed the back of her hand against her lips, bracing for the sorrow to come.

“I have confessed it to the congregation,” he said, “and it has been reported in the media. Our relationship was wrong.”

Sissy closed her watery eyes and nodded.

“And I take full responsibility for all that has happened,” he said.

His confession and her nodding went on for several minutes. Aubrey took notes. I dabbed my eyes with the tip of my pinkie.

Finally Tim got to the reason for our visit. “Sissy, if you are being held wrongfully in this prison, I have to know—so I, and we, and everybody who cares about you, can help you.”

Well, his sentence structure was as awkward as a toad in a basket of apples, but it was a start.

“I killed him,” Sissy said.

She might as well have said, “I am a Greyhound bus.” That’s how believable it was.

“I do not need protecting,” Tim answered.

Aubrey closed her notebook and fed her ballpoint through the top spiral. She laid it next to her on the sofa cushion. She leaned forward. “I bet you were really confused when the police showed up at your house. It was only six o’clock. You were getting ready for work. Like everybody else in Hannawa, you knew Buddy Wing was dead. You’d read the newspaper stories and knew exactly how and when he died. While Detective Grant was questioning you in the kitchen, other cops were searching your property. You told the detective you didn’t know anything. Then they found all that stuff in your garbage. You knew instantly somebody wanted you to take the blame. But who? Tim Bandicoot? Your spiritual leader? Your lover? You knew Friday night was Family Night at the temple. You knew Tim always did something with his family. You knew that particular Friday night he was supposed to take his sons to the basketball game in Cleveland. But did he? Detective Grant started pressing you to confess.”

Sissy continued her Greyhound bus defense. “I was not covering up for Tim or anybody else—I don’t see why everybody has such a hard time understanding that.”

“Because,” said Aubrey, “you were still in Mingo Junction that Friday night. You were there the entire weekend. With your cousin Jeanie and her daughters—and your daughter Rosy.”

Sissy was stunned. A secret more important than her life had been told. Her eyes blamed Tim.

“We learned it on our own,” I heard myself say.

Sissy’s fingers dug into the varnish on the chair arms. She began to pant, as if giving birth to Rosy all over again. “It was not Tim’s baby.”

Aubrey left the sofa and kneeled in front of Sissy. “We are not interested in the father of your child, or who you thought you were covering up for. We just want to hear from you that you didn’t do it.”

The growl of an unexorcised demon escaped from Sissy’s quivering lips. “Just so you can get a good story.”

“Yes, so I can get a good story,” Aubrey admitted. “A story that will get you out of here. The real world’s a mean place, Sissy, as you discovered a long time ago. It’s mean with selfish people covering up their mistakes and saving their asses. Prosecutors don’t reopen cases without public pressure. Judges get re-elected by putting people in prison, by not letting them out. Everybody’s eyes are fixed on their own precious futures. Nobody looks back until they’re forced to look back. And that’s what we’re going to make them do now. We’re going to force them to look back. Force them to free you and find who really killed Buddy Wing.”

Sissy dried her eyes with her ball of tissue. She sat up straight and put her knees together and rested her folded hands on top of them. Aubrey stretched out her arm and motioned impatiently for her pen and notebook. I gave them to her.

“Tell the truth,” Tim said softly.

Said Sissy James: “I did not put poison on Pastor Wing’s Bible, or in his water pitcher. I was in Mingo Junction, Ohio, on that Friday night, visiting my cousin and my daughter.”

It was the confession Aubrey wanted. But Aubrey wanted more. “Did you confess thinking that Tim might have been the killer?”

Sissy checked Tim’s face for permission. “All I knew was that somebody wanted me to take responsibility for what happened.”

Aubrey still wanted more. “You’re saying you still don’t know who that somebody is?”

I popped up like a piece of burnt toast. “That’s not our job, Aubrey.”

Aubrey twisted toward me. The unexorcised demon was now residing in her.

“We’ve got all we need for now,” I said.

Aubrey smiled, grimly. She un-clicked her pen and flipped her notebook closed. She stood up. “Mrs. Sprowls is right. We have all we need for now.”

Tim Bandicoot stepped across the coffee table and pulled Sissy to her feet. He kissed her forehead. “I’ll get you a good lawyer. We will make this thing all right.”

Our meeting with Sissy James did not last much longer than that. Tim led us in prayer again and Sissy meekly begged Aubrey not to report that Rosy was her daughter. Aubrey promised that she would not report it, unless others reported it first. We drove back to Hannawa.

***

Was I surprised that Aubrey made that promise? No, I was not.

Aubrey and Sissy shared a common past, sexual abuse. They were two young women seeking safety and acceptance, and if possible, some kind of love. Of course Aubrey would make that promise.

That evening at Ike’s when we discussed it, Aubrey explained her promise differently: “Sissy having a daughter by some john is terrific stuff. But it’s worth sacrificing, for now. This little series isn’t going to be the end of it. There’ll be lots of follow-up stories. I’m going to need Sissy’s gratitude.”

Chapter 19

Sunday, July 9

I did not want to have lunch with Dale and Sharon Marabout. And I’m sure Dale wasn’t crazy about the idea either. But Sharon would not let it go. She wanted to thank me in person for helping
her hubby
get that freelance job.

“It’ll be fun,” she kept assuring Dale.

“It won’t be as bad as you think,” Dale kept assuring me.

I’d successfully put them off for weeks. But now with the whole Buddy Wing thing only a few days from exploding all over the front page, I knew it would be best to put the lunch behind me.

Right after Meet the Press, I did a little grocery shopping and then drove to Speckley’s. Dale and Sharon were waiting outside by the door. They smiled simultaneously and gave me a his-and-hers finger wiggle. I wiggled my fingers back. I was dreading this.

Sharon was short and on the cusp of plumpness. Plumpness is not a good thing when you’re in your twenties trying to fit into the latest snare-a-man styles. But when you’re in your forties, as Sharon Marabout was now, it serves you well. It smoothes out your wrinkles and gives you a sensuousness that skinny women your age would die for. “Sharon, so good to see you again,” I said.

“Maddy,” she said, “we should do this more often.”

In the twenty-two years since I walked in on them naked on the apartment floor, I don’t think I’ve seen Sharon a half-dozen times. Yet she always treats me like a close friend of the family, sending me Christmas cards and inviting me to important family gatherings. I never send them a card and I never go to their gatherings. Sharon is a wonderful woman and a good match for Dale. They have great kids. I just wish she’d stop treating me like Dale’s favorite aunt. I was his lover, for Pete’s sake! For five years! Surely she realized that everything he taught her about sex I’d taught him.

“Yes, we should do this more often,” I said, pretending to be as nice as she really was. “We really, really should.”

Speckley’s was packed. The best we could do was a table in the adjoining banquet room. As soon as we were in our chairs Sharon giddily announced she was getting the meat loaf sandwich and au gratin potatoes. Apparently Dale didn’t bring her to Speckley’s very often. It was, after all, our place. When the waitress came we all ordered the meat loaf and potatoes.

After our iced teas came, Sharon apparently gave Dale one of those imperceptible wife-signals, because he immediately launched into a gooey expression of gratitude no man would give on his own: “We just wanted to show our appreciation for helping me in my time of need,” he said. “It was really lovely.”

Time of need? Really lovely? I knew who’d come up with those lines.

All I’d done was find a freelance assignment for Dale after he’d blown a fuse and quit the paper. That assignment was coming to an end and what Dale would do for money now was anybody’s guess. Still, that assignment, as temporary as it was, clearly had renewed his self-confidence. He was going to be okay.

Sharon pronounced the meat loaf the best she’d ever had, the au gratin potatoes incredible. All three of us ordered the key lime pie. We chatted through I don’t know how many refills of iced tea. I checked my wristwatch I don’t know how many times.

***

During our lunch, the conversation had repeatedly drifted to Aubrey’s series on the Buddy Wing murder. Dale had written a crime series or two during his years on the police beat and understandably wanted to know exactly how she was organizing it. I told him what I knew:

The first story, scheduled to run on Wednesday, would lead with Sissy James’s confession that she did not poison the Rev. Buddy Wing. It would rehash Ronny Doddridge’s suicide and Tim Bandicoot’s own recent confession of his affair with Sissy. It would also rehash Buddy’s death and his nasty split with Tim Bandicoot over speaking in tongues. But this story wouldn’t contain too many details. This was the teaser story.

Thursday’s story would go back to the very beginning, Buddy Wing’s childhood in West Virginia and his migration to Hannawa to begin his ministry. It would discuss Buddy’s theological beliefs and the nuts and bolts of building his evangelical empire, from the salad days of the Clean Collar Club, to the erection of the Heaven Bound Cathedral. It would end with the coming of Guthrie Gates. A sidebar would explore Hannawa’s emergence as the “The Hallelujah City.”

Friday’s story would re-examine Tim Bandicoot’s falling out with Buddy over speaking in tongues, the snake handling and the like. Ronny Doddridge’s sudden appearance as security guard would be recounted, and so would the lingering anger and suspicion—and the spying—between the two congregations. One sidebar would tell Tim Bandicoot’s life story: his childhood in Buddy Wing’s church, his Bible college years, his marriage to Annie, their fall from grace and their struggles at the New Epiphany Temple. Another sidebar would recount some of Buddy’s troubles: his wife’s death from lung cancer, his run-ins with Wayne F. Dillow and Edward Tolchak, his church’s many near-bankruptcies, how over the years he survived the Tonight Show jokes about his having Jesus’s phone number for example, the snide comments about how he dressed and talked and wore his hair.

On Saturday Aubrey would tell the world about Sissy’s pitiful childhood, the stripping and prostitution, her rescue by Jesus Christ, her affair with Tim Bandicoot, her confession to the murder. As Aubrey promised, the story would not say a word about little Rosy.

Sunday’s story would be the big finale. It would state emphatically that Sissy was telling the truth, that she was in Mingo Junction that Thanksgiving weekend, visiting her cousin, as she did every year. The story would examine the length somebody went to frame her, the evidence sprinkled in her garbage and the spare bedroom where she worked on her crafts. The story would ask: If Sissy James didn’t do it, then who did? There would be several sidebars. One would examine the police department’s hurried investigation. One would ask why Tim Bandicoot and Guthrie Gates, and others who knew Sissy, so readily accepted her confession; that story also would tell readers where those good Christians were the night Buddy was poisoned. Another sidebar would show just how easy it was for the real murderer to enter the inner bowels of the cathedral and paint that poison cross on the Bible, fill that pitcher with poisoned water. The final sidebar would tell Aubrey’s story—the broken car windows, the threats and the bruises, the red Taurus station wagon that pursued her while she sought the truth, and, yes, how Tim Bandicoot and Guthrie Gates got into a shoving match in Bob Averill’s office.

Accompanying Aubrey’s stories on Sunday would be an editorial imploring the Hannawa police to reopen the case.

***

Monday, July 10

I came in at eight and went straight to Aubrey’s desk. A felt-tip pen was sticking out of her mouth like a cigar. Her fingers were draped across her keyboard like ten sleeping salamanders. Every few seconds a few fingers would twitch awake and a string of words would race across her computer screen. Several diet Coke cans were in her wastebasket. Several Milky Way wrappers, too. “I hope you didn’t work all night,” I said.

She tilted her head back until she was looking straight up into my face. She yawned noisily, like the Cowardly Lion in
The Wizard of Oz
. “I should have,” she said.

So I let her work and went to my desk to collect my mug. Had it only been four months since Aubrey McGinty first called me Morgue Mama to my face? Asked to see the files on Buddy Wing? It seemed more like four years—one of those officially packaged four years, like college or a presidential term, with a distinct beginning, an endlessly horrifying but exhilarating middle, and an abrupt end.

And it was going to end abruptly, in less than forty-eight hours. Once those big presses downstairs started rolling with that big story splashed across the top of Page One, the journey that put Aubrey and me in the same wobbling canoe would be over. Her life would go in one direction and mine in another. We’d talk, when there was something to say. We might even reminisce if the opportunity arose. But things would not be the same.

At ten-thirty I heard Aubrey yell, “Who has time for this crap?”

She yelled that after getting a call from the police department’s PR guy, informing her that Chief Polceznec was going to hold a news conference at eleven. Tinker sent Doreen Poole to cover it. She came back at noon with the lead story for Tuesday’s paper:

Sylvia Berdache hurried to a one o’clock press conference at City Hall, providing a sidebar to the story:

I just knew Lionel Percy sent one of his flunkies out for cake and ice cream. Ted Duffy was a well-known paper-pusher in the safety director’s office, in Sylvia’s words, “a real marshmallow who wouldn’t even rock the boat in his bathtub.”

A little after two, Eric Chen appeared at my desk with a grin on his face. He handed me a printout, the way a boy hands a doctored report card to his mother. Eric wanted nothing to do with Aubrey these days, not after that night in Meri, but I was still his boss. I’d told him to keep checking the computer files for information on the various people connected to the Buddy Wing story, especially Annie Bandicoot.

When I read the printout I clutched my throat, in case my heart had any idea of escaping. “Good job,” I said.

I took a long, steadying drink of my room-temperature tea and trotted to Aubrey’s desk. “Eric just brought me this,” I said, sliding the printout into her hands. It was a short story, written months earlier by religion editor Nanette Beane:

I pointed to the date the story ran, which is included in the computer file of every story that we publish, along with what page it appeared on, which editions it ran, and who wrote it.

Aubrey stared at the story. “Wonder boy couldn’t have found this a week ago?”

“At least he found it,” I said.

She let the story float to her desktop. “Thanks, Maddy.”

“It’s not going to mean a lot of rewriting, I hope.”

“Couple of paragraphs.”

I went back to my desk. The news that Annie Bandicoot was on a mission trip to Kentucky the night Buddy Wing was murdered would only take a little rewriting, just as Aubrey said. She was not, after all, identifying possible suspects and their whereabouts that night. She could just mention it in passing:
For Annie Bandicoot, who was in eastern Kentucky the night of the murder, distributing food, clothing and toys to the poor, the arrest of Sissy James must have been especially distressing
… Aubrey would just have to write something like that.

Yes, the rewriting would be easy for Aubrey. A quick cut and paste. Rewiring her brain would be harder. She’d been certain, I’m sure, that when the police reopened the case, their investigation would uncover all the evidence they needed to put Annie Bandicoot in that cell now occupied by Sissy James.

***

Aubrey left the newsroom a few minutes after four. I left at five. I didn’t feel like cooking so I had a quick bowl of miniature shredded wheats. Then I opened a package of Fig Newtons and turned on the TV 21 news. They led with a fatal truck-car accident on the interstate and then covered Chief Polceznec’s surprise retirement. Then they went live to Disney World, where Tish Kiddle had apparently fled after the windows of her Lexus were smashed out. It was the first part of her week-long series on Vacation Fun in the Florida Sun. “Tish, my sweet little lamb,” I said to the TV screen, my teeth gooey with fig, “you are no Aubrey McGinty.”