Morgue Mama (3 page)

I read the rest of our stories on the murder: the release of the irate father; Yoder’s arraignment and not guilty plea; his trial and conviction. Then later in the afternoon when things eased up, I rummaged through our stacks of
Gazettes
—we keep a year’s worth of all the little newspapers around us—and found Aubrey’s own stories on the murder.

I could see why Aubrey got the police reporter job here. She was not only a good writer, she was a
digger
. She had that healthy cynicism a reporter needs and can’t be taught. I was looking forward to our visit to the cathedral on Saturday.

Chapter 3

Saturday, March 11

Wouldn’t you just know it that one of those damn late-winter snows pushed down across Lake Erie Saturday morning. It had been a pretty stiff winter and the city was out of road salt. So we all had to fend for ourselves, including Aubrey and me. All the way to the Heaven Bound Cathedral she apologized for the heater in her old Ford Escort not working. “Soon as I’ve got $2,900 in the bank I’m buying an SUV,” she said.

“How much you got saved so far?” I asked, knowing reporters are always pipe-dreaming about new cars.

“The saving starts just as soon as my Visa gets under control.”

We came up behind a city bus. It covered our windshield with slush. When Aubrey turned on her wipers, the one on my side only smeared the slush worse. The one on her side flew off. “What kind of SUV you thinking about getting?” I asked.

“A bright yellow one,” she said.

We turned onto Shellborne Street and started to wind into the city’s South Ridge neighborhood. Mercifully, the street already had been plowed and the Escort climbed bravely. For a mile or so the street was lined with abandoned storefronts and rundown apartment buildings. But as soon as we passed McKinley Park the neighborhoods became more prosperous. This part of town was built in the early Sixties when the city was still growing. There was street after street of tidy ranches with attached garages. We passed a Kmart and a strip of auto dealerships. The Heaven Bound Cathedral was on the right.

The entrance was guarded by two cement angels, frozen out-stretched arms welcoming us in. The parking lot was massive, and except for five or six cars, empty. The morning’s snow had been pushed into neat mounds around the light poles.

The Heaven Bound Cathedral was one of Hannawa’s most recognizable landmarks, a three-sides wedge of glass and serious-looking beige brick. Huge neon crosses rose from all three corners. A pretty ugly building in my opinion.

“It looks bigger on television,” Aubrey said.

The sidewalks had been sprinkled with blue de-icing pellets and we made it inside without incident.

For a while we just wandered the halls. There were
JESUS DIDN’T SMOKE—WHY DO YOU
? signs on every wall. In one hallway we found a long bulletin board thumb-tacked full of Polaroids—new members, Sunday school classes, family outings to various campgrounds and amusement parks. Buddy Wing was in every photo, smiling wide under his huge head of heavily sprayed hair.

We came to a set of wide oak doors. Raised bronze letters told us it was the
BROADCAST CHAPEL
. We peeked inside. This
chapel
was big enough to hold a Miss America pageant. We heard a pair of hard shoes behind us.

It was a security guard. He was tall and chubby. There was a sadness about him, the kind you see on a lot of middle-aged men as they plow along through a life loaded down with failure. His high cheekbones and protruding ears gave away his Appalachian ancestry. And so did his voice. “Might I be of assistance?” he asked.

Aubrey immediately shook his hand. “We’re from the
Herald-Union
. We’ve got an appointment with Guthrie Gates.”

“Thought as much,” said the guard. He led us off, at a pace that would make a Galapagos turtle proud.

I was surprised that Aubrey had made an appointment. “I thought we were just snooping?” I whispered.

Aubrey didn’t care a whit about the security guard’s Appalachian ears. “Guthrie Gates is the associate pastor,” she said loudly. “He’ll probably be named full-blown pastor pretty soon.”

“Already has been,” the security guard said.

I knew what Aubrey was doing. She was playing dumb. It’s an old reporter’s trick. Ask a direct question and people get scared and tell you nothing. Wheedle them into volunteering information and they’ll just blab and blab.

“I hear he’s very good with kids,” Aubrey said to me. “He’s got like three or four of his own.”

The security guard politely corrected her. “Oh, no, ma’am. Guth’s not even married yet. But he is good with the kids. That’s for sure.”

“And I hear he grew up in the church,” Aubrey said to me.

“No ma’am. He came to the cathedral just a year before I did, seven years ago now. He’s like family though.”

Aubrey filled her voice with apology. “Of course. I was thinking of that other guy, Tim Bandicoot. He’s the one whose parents were members of the Clean Collar Club.”

“That’s right—but Tim’s no longer with our church,” said the security guard.

***

I was surprised that Aubrey knew about the Clean Collar Club. They were the five families back in the Fifties that invited Buddy Wing to stay in Hannawa and start a congregation. Until they could scrape up the money to rent their first little storefront church, they met Sunday mornings at six in a Laundromat, over on South Canal Street. Nobody came around to wash their clothes at that hour and it was almost a year before the owner caught them celebrating the Lord’s Supper around the folding table.

***

We passed yet another
JESUS DIDN’T SMOKE—WHY DO YOU
? sign and I made some crack about the church not being very brotherly toward the tobacco industry.

“Pastor Wing was firm about cigarettes,” the security guard said. “He lost both his daddy and his wife to tobacco. But it ain’t just the cancer. It’s the weakness. Pastor used to call smoking a manifestation of spiritual sloth. I was hooked a long time myself before he healed me of the habit.”

We reached the church offices. The security guard rapped on the door respectfully. I heard the lock unclick. A thirty-something man welcomed us in. He was thin and unathletic and not very tall. He had too much hair and a ridiculous necktie. He couldn’t decide if he should smile or not.

Maybe Guthrie Gates had been named pastor but he hadn’t moved into Buddy Wing’s big office. That room, with its long wall of windows looking down on the parking lot, remained exactly as Wing left it on the night he was poisoned, or so Gates whispered as we padded by. The door was open so people could look inside, but a metal folding chair kept anyone from entering. On the chair rested a huge arrangement of plastic white roses.

Gates’ own office was small. So was his desk. Sunday school drawings—animals entering Noah’s ark, Jesus taking off like a rocket—were taped to the walls. While Aubrey chit-chatted about the weather I watched Gates try not to look at her legs. Even in a baggy pair of khakis her legs seemed to short circuit male brains.

When the weather was out of the way, and the pastor adequately seduced, Aubrey pulled a notebook from her coat pocket—one of those long, skinny spiral jobs reporters carry so they can take notes while holding it in the palm of their hand. While she flipped through her notes, Gates leaned over his little desk and tried to read upside-down what it said. What a lost cause that was. Reporters develop their own shorthand systems—scribbles even they can’t decipher half the time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve overheard reporters cursing their own notes at deadline: “What the blankedy-blank does that mean?”

So Aubrey flipped through her notes and told Gates she didn’t think Sissy James poisoned the Rev. Buddy Wing. I was expecting the pastor to react as Dale Marabout reacted, pointing out that Sissy confessed, that police found the poison in her garbage can. But that wasn’t his reaction at all.

“Half the people in this congregation don’t think she did it,” he said.

Aubrey apparently wasn’t as surprised by his confession as I was. “Who do they think did?” she asked.

Gates smiled a little. “People here try to mind their Christian P’s and Q’s.”

Aubrey smiled back. “But—”

“Well, who else. The boyfriend.” By
the boyfriend
he meant, of course, Tim Bandicoot, Buddy Wing’s one-time heir-apparent. Tim had grown up in the church—the Clean Collar Club and all that—and the childless Wing had carefully groomed him to run the whole show someday. He even paid Tim’s Bible college tuition. But when Tim started questioning his penchant for speaking in tongues, Wing very publicly threw him out of the congregation, along with Tim’s wife, Annie, and two hundred of Tim’s supporters. It happened about six years ago. There was a big debate in the newsroom about how to play the story. Some editors thought it was interesting but inconsequential church stuff that should be held until Saturday and run on the Faith & Family pages, or maybe during the week as a human interest feature in the Living section. Others insisted it was hard news—trouble right here in Hallelujah City and all that.

Hard news won. The story ran below the fold on Page One. What a headline:

“But Tim Bandicoot is such an obvious suspect, isn’t he?” said Aubrey, sliding down in her chair and propping her knees on Gates’ desk, the way she did at her own desk.

Gates’ eyes locked on Aubrey’s knees and pretty much stayed there the rest of the interview. “What’s obvious is that Tim really hated Pastor Wing,” he said.

Up to now I’d just sat there like a bump on a log, but I remembered that whole story so well. “Enough to kill him and frame his own girlfriend?” I squeaked.

Gates’ face started to twitch like a boiling sauce pan of Cream of Wheat. “Tim is an immoral man. Wife, two young sons, and a girlfriend on the side. He stole a big chunk of our congregation.”

“He didn’t exactly steal them,” I pointed out. “They merely agreed that your church could draw a bigger audience if Wing stopped speaking in tongues. And when Bandicoot was given the boot, they followed him. And as far as him having a girlfriend on the side—”

I was way out of line and Aubrey’s eyebrows were telling me to shut up. But Gates answered me politely, as if I was a real reporter, and not just a librarian out on a Saturday snoop. “The very fact that Tim thought speaking in tongues was something Pastor Wing could stop, tells you right up front that he didn’t belong in this ministry. Tongues isn’t some cheap theatrical device to get people excited. It’s a gift God gives to the truly saved.” Gates grabbed his eyes and squeezed them together. He started reciting scripture: “And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” He blinked and grinned. “Acts 2:4. Praise God.”

“Do you speak in tongues?” Aubrey asked him.

“Am I truly saved? Yes, I am. How about the two of you?”

Aubrey squirmed. I suppose I squirmed a little myself. “Right now,” Aubrey said, “we’re only interested in saving Sissy James from spending the rest of her life in prison. Assuming she doesn’t belong there.”

“We love her whether she does or doesn’t,” Gates said. “I hope you understand that.”

“And I hope you understand that we’re not trying to do either God’s work or the police department’s work,” Aubrey answered. “If Sissy James is innocent, that’s a great story.”

It was the pastor’s turn to be uncomfortable. “I hope you’re not going to make a lot of good people look silly.”

Aubrey closed her notebook and slowly slid it in her coat pocket. It’s another old reporter’s trick, making people think an interview is over when it isn’t. “Any story we write about this is way down the line,” she answered. “And only if there’s absolute proof that Sissy is innocent. At this point we’re just fishing. But her court appearances—her arraignment and the sentencing—she just seemed too calm.”

Gates hissed a single word: “Svengali.”

Aubrey nodded. “Given her sad personal life—the miserable childhood and prostitution stuff—you’re probably right. She could easily come under the control of some manipulative bastard—sorry.”

Gates shook both his head and his hands. “No need. Tim Bandicoot is a manipulative bastard. He hoodwinked Pastor Wing for years. All of us.”

“What about the confession?” Aubrey asked. “Do you think Sissy could come up with that on her own? It’s just a scenario, of course, but say the police suspected Tim Bandicoot from the beginning—which they obviously did—and started looking for evidence. They find out he’s got a girlfriend on the side. Check out her house. They find the poison-making stuff in her garbage. Now, she didn’t know it was there. But she quickly realizes her wonderful Timmy boy has done one of two things: either he’s stupidly tried to get rid of the stuff in her trash can, or he’s intentionally set her up. She loves him. Believes his rap that Buddy Wing is embarrassing the Lord with his old-fashioned practices. She also hates herself. Knows she’s not worth much in the bigger scheme of things. She figures it’s her godly duty to save her man and his important ministry, even if he betrayed her. Not a word would have to be exchanged, would it? She realizes what she has to do and does it. She confesses to the murder of Buddy Wing.”

Gates leaned back in his swivel chair, raking back his TV preacher’s bangs. “I can believe any or all of that.”

Aubrey lowered her knees, stood up and zipped her coat with the fluid grace of a ballerina. She smiled and extended her hand across his desk. “I would like to get a church directory for our files, if that’s possible.”

***

From the Heaven Bound Cathedral we drove to the mall in Brinkley. Aubrey had an Old Navy gift certificate that her sister gave her for Christmas. She bought a hooded fleece jacket from the sixty-percent-off rack. Then we had lunch in the food court. I had a slice of pizza and small lemonade. She had a soft pretzel an enormous diet Coke.