Morgue Mama (8 page)

Aubrey gave me a nudge and we started our retreat. She reconstructed Buddy Wing’s last service as we walked: “Sometime while he was in the make-up chair or praying with the elders, the killer slipped into his office to paint that poison cross on his Bible. We know from the police reports, and from your Mr. Marabout’s stories—”

I protested. “My Mr. Marabout?”

“You know what I mean. I know you haven’t slept with him for years.”

“And who said I ever slept with him?”

Aubrey scowled at me. “Will you get your mind back on the murder? Everybody knows you and Marabout used to do the nasty—”

She called it the
nasty
. I knew that was just a word people her age used. But it stung. It had not been nasty. It had been good, clean, wonderful fun between two people who genuinely cared for each other. “Who told you?” I demanded. “Doreen Poole?”

She ignored my question. “So we know—from more than one source—that it was the director’s job to take the Bible to the pulpit, along with Wing’s notes for his sermon, and make sure he had a pitcher of water for when the sweat started pouring. But the director—her name’s Elaine Albert, she’s been directing the broadcasts since they started in the early Seventies—told the police that when she went to get the Bible and sermon notes from his office, approximately fifteen minutes before the service was to start, they were both gone. She hurried to the stage and found them already on the pulpit. And the pitcher of water under it.”

“And she wasn’t a little curious?” I asked.

“She told police she didn’t have time to be curious. The service was starting in a few minutes.”

“It certainly piques my curiosity. Why wasn’t this Elaine Albert considered a suspect?”

“She was the first person they talked to. They gave her a lie detector test the next morning.”

“I gather she passed.”

Aubrey gave me one of those “Duhs” people her age employ to tell someone they’re making a fool out of themselves by stating the obvious.

“But wouldn’t a television director have to be a real cool cucumber—always in control?” I asked. “I’d think somebody like that could easily fake a lie detector.”

“I’d think so, too.”

“But the police wouldn’t think so?”

“The police stopped thinking when Sissy confessed.”

A slow, melancholy voice put an end to our snoopfest: “I thought it might be the two of you.”

It was the big-eared security guard and a minute later we were standing in the make-up room watching the woman with the painted-on eyebrows rub a natural tan into Guthrie Gates’ chalky face. He was struggling with every vein in his neck to remain Christian. “I’m guessing you didn’t come to worship with us.”

Aubrey was doing a much better job at staying calm than I was. “We wanted to see the crime scene—as it would have been the night Pastor Wing was poisoned.”

Gates lifted his chin so the eyebrow woman could squirt make-up on his neck. “Let me guess why you didn’t call for permission first—you were afraid I’d change things around?”

“I was afraid somebody might,” Aubrey admitted. “But not for malicious reasons. When people know the press is coming they tend to put their best foot forward, often subconsciously.”

Gates swatted away the make-up woman’s sticky fingers. “Like subconsciously bringing you doughnuts?”

I was flabbergasted. “You know about the doughnuts?”

Gates closed his eyes and motioned for the eyebrow woman to resume her rubbing. “Since Tim Bandicoot started that
temple
of his, it’s been like the U.S. and Red China between our congregations. Everything they do gets back to us. Everything we do gets back to them.” He sat silently until the eyebrow woman was finished, then checked himself in the mirror. He smiled with satisfaction. I watched his eyes shift in the mirror, to the knees peeking from the hem of Aubrey’s churchy dress. “Wasn’t I open and honest with you, Miss McGinty? Wasn’t I respectful and friendly?” He checked his watch and clicked on a small speaker box on the make-up table. The choir was already singing. “Time to go,” he said. He stood and pulled a plastic bottle of mineral water from the side pocket of his suit coat. He unscrewed the cap and took a small, quick sip. Then he smiled at us, calmly, neck veins back in place, and said, “You’re welcome to stay for the service, if you think it might do you some good. But you are not welcome to come back. Or call me. Or talk to any member of this congregation.” He gave us a quick “God be with you” and left. The security guard pointed to the door with his chin. As we left, I poked Aubrey in the arm and pointed back into the room. The eyebrow woman was sitting in the chair, nervously lighting a cigarette.

The security guard followed us to our car. Aubrey and I hardly said a word to each other until we reached Swann’s, Hannawa’s legendary drive-in restaurant where all the car hops are muscular college boys. The minute you pull into a slot and click your headlights they run to your car—not walk, but run like they were on a football field—and take your order. We both ordered double-cheeseburgers and fries. They have forty-seven different flavors of milkshakes. Aubrey got a large butterscotch-banana. I got a small strawberry.

I watched Aubrey watch the carhop trot inside with our orders. “So,” I asked her, “what did we learn today?”

“Well,” she said, “we learned that sad-sack security guard isn’t the rube we thought. He recognized us when we pulled in and followed us. What we don’t know is whether it was on his own initiative or whether he was under orders from Guthrie Gates.”

“What difference does that make?” I asked.

“Remember what he said, Maddy: ‘I thought it might be the two of you.’ He didn’t follow us because we were strangers trying to sneak in and poison somebody. He followed us because it was us.”

“That doesn’t mean Gates has something to hide,” I said. “There are lots of innocent people who hate the press.”

Aubrey liked that. She laughed. “The first time we went to the church, Gates was as nice as pie. This time he couldn’t control himself. He was really p-o’d. And what was that U.S. and Red China stuff?”

“It’s no secret those two churches don’t like each other,” I said.

“Aren’t you being a wee bit charitable? They’re at war. They
spy
on each other. Gates knew about the doughnuts.”

“Yes he did,” I said. “It gave me the willies when he said that.”

“He wants us to be afraid. He wants us to believe that both churches are full of crazies. He’s warning us to back off. What’s done is done. Let Buddy Wing rest in peace.”

The carhop was running toward us with our food. I rolled down my window for the tray. “And let the real killer rest in peace?”

Aubrey impatiently reached across me for her bag of fries. “But we’re not going to let the real killer rest in peace. At least I’m not.”

I handed her a cheeseburger. I had the willies again. She was telling me things were going to get dangerous. I could stop tagging along if I wanted.

Aubrey peeled back the bun and delicately removed the onions. She looked for a place to put them. “Did you notice he was carrying his own bottle of water? I don’t think he’s merely being trendy, Maddy.”

I let her put the onions in my hand and then dumped them on the window tray. “You think he’s afraid somebody will poison him next?”

Aubrey nodded while she took a bite. “Or maybe he just wants people to think he’s afraid somebody will poison him next.”

“So Guthrie Gates is still a suspect?”

“Everybody is still a suspect.”

“Including Sissy James?”

This bite she shook her head. “I don’t see any way she could walk around there without being spotted. Even in disguise. Tim Bandicoot either. I think they’re out.”

I watched her eat and she watched me eat and we giggled at how messy the cheeseburgers were. “So, did we learn anything else?” I asked.

Aubrey squinted at me. She knew I had seen something she hadn’t.

“The eyebrow woman,” I explained. “She lit a cigarette. I poked you, remember?”

“And?”

“Jesus Didn’t Smoke—Why Do You?”

“Ah—the signs. They’re fanatical against smoking.”

“Yet she lit a cigarette,” I repeated. “I’d say either she’s the killer or she’s one of Tim Bandicoot’s spies.”

“Because she lit a cigarette?”

“Because she forgot the rules, Aubrey. Because she was so frightened or nervous, or something, that she just had to have a cigarette.” I reminded her of something the big-eared security guard had said during our first visit: “Smoking was a manifestation of spiritual sloth.”

I watched Aubrey draw the thick butterscotch-banana shake up her plastic straw. It seemed like she was having trouble fitting a new suspect onto whatever list she had in her mind. Finally she said, “So you think we should talk to this woman with the eyebrows?”

“Yes, I do.”

Chapter 9

Monday, May 1

When I got to work Monday, Eric Chen was wearing a necktie. By all appearances a new one. By all appearances one hundred percent silk. I grilled him about it as soon as I got back to my desk with my tea.

He did not like being grilled. “I just felt like buying a tie,” he said. “And if you’re going to buy a tie you might as well wear it.”

I knew what the tie was all about. It was about Aubrey. “I think maybe you’re trying to get my job,” I teased. “Next week it will be a sports jacket and the week after that a three-piece suit. Week after that I’ll be out on my keister.”

Eric loosened the ill-shaped knot under his chin. “You’re crazy, Maddy.” He knew I knew why he’d bought the tie.

I enjoyed my tea while Eric continued his computer background checks for Aubrey. He was trying to find someone in that church directory with a reason, no matter how far-fetched, to poison the Rev. Buddy Wing.

Our investigation of Buddy Wing’s murder was puttering along on three parallel tracks. I say
our
investigation because by now Eric and I were completely seduced by Aubrey’s obsession to free Sissy James. Let me take some of that back. I was seduced by her obsession. Eric was seduced by something else. Anyway, the investigation was puttering along on these three tracks:

The first was to prove that Sissy didn’t kill Buddy Wing. The second was to prove that Tim Bandicoot was a creep, so Sissy would come to her senses and confess, on the record, that she didn’t do it. The third thing was to identify other suspects.

I was searching the map cabinet with Sylvia Berdache—looking for some pre-1950 city zoning maps for some story or the other—when Eric suddenly yelled, “Hello!”

I was bent over the bottom drawer and it took me a few seconds to straighten up. Eric was smiling like a birthday party clown and motioning for me with both hands. I was happy to let Sylvia search by herself. Before going to Eric’s desk I circled by my desk to pick up my mug. He kept smiling and motioning until I got there. “Find something, honeybun?” I asked.

He pointed to a name on the screen. “Wayne F. Dillow, 1144 Summerhill Lane, Hannawa. Complaints. Restraining order. Conviction for breaking and entering.”

“Does not a murderer make,” I said.

“Yeah. But all these charges. Pretty pathological guy, wouldn’t you say? And a member of the flock.”

“Which church directory you working from?” I asked.

He grunted, “Huh?” and I explained that Aubrey had gotten two church directories from Guthrie Gates, a current one and one that was three years old. He used his thumb to mark his place and looked at the cover. It was the one for the current year. “So he’s still a member,” I said.

I watched over Eric’s shoulder as he e-mailed Aubrey.
GOT A NIBBLE
, his message said. I wrote Dillow’s name and address on the back of an envelope from Eric’s wastebasket and went to the old filing cabinets to check the D drawers. There was nothing on Wayne F. or any other Dillow. Eric had better luck. Scanning the on-line obituary files, he found a Dorothea Louise (nee Pauley) Dillow. She died in 1997 at age fifty-seven. She was a member of the Heaven Bound Cathedral. She was survived by her sons James of Hannawa and Howard of Duluth, Minnesota; her husband, Wayne; a sister, Edna Lynn Scarberry of Knoxville, Tennessee.

Five minutes to four, Aubrey hopped out of the elevator and sped to her desk like an angry ostrich. She typed furiously for about an hour then strolled to Eric’s desk like a happy swan. “What’s the nibble?” she asked. She was absolutely delighted that Eric found a church member with a criminal record. She kissed his cheek. They went out to supper. I turned down their half-hearted invitation to join them and went home.

***

Tuesday, May 2

The next day Aubrey got the police records on the charges against Dillow. She also called his wife’s sister in Knoxville.

Wayne and Dorothea Dillow had been members of the Heaven Bound Cathedral since 1974. According to the sister, Dorothea was more religious than Wayne—not unusual—but he was faithful enough to go along with her tithing to the church. In 1996, Dorothea started passing blood. Her doctor told her she had a cancerous kidney. Wayne begged her to have the surgery. But Dorothea had watched God cure thousands of people of their terrible afflictions through his gifted servant Buddy Wing. So she joined the healing line at the next Friday night service and walked across the stage and told the Rev. Wing of the evil growing inside her. He put his hand on her belly and told the cancer to leave. “Out, foul flesh,” he commanded. “Out! Out! Out in the name of Jesus-
uh
.”

After Dorothea’s funeral, Wayne stopped going to church. Stopped tithing. Then he started calling Buddy Wing at home, late at night. That Buddy felt almost as bad about her death as he did was of no consolation to Wayne F. Dillow. That God worked in mysterious ways was of no consolation either. When Buddy one night suggested that perhaps Dorothea’s faith wasn’t strong enough, that perhaps that’s why the cancer came sneaking back, Wayne called him a murderer. Call after call he called him a murderer. When the pastor no longer answered his phone, Wayne showed up at his door. Pounding on it. Screaming, “Why Buddy? Why?”

Buddy Wing repeatedly complained to the police and the police repeatedly warned Dillow to stop his harassment. Dillow didn’t stop. Wing got a restraining order. Dillow ignored it. Wing had Dillow arrested. Dillow bailed himself out and went right back to Wing’s house. He broke out a window and crawled inside. He screamed, “Why, Buddy? Why?” up the dark stairs.

Dillow was charged with breaking and entering but Wing begged police to reduce the charges to trespassing. Dillow was fined $250 and served a month in jail.

The strange thing, the sister in Knoxville told Aubrey, was that after six or seven months Wayne started going back to the church, started tithing again. He had regained his faith.

“Why am I suspicious?” Aubrey asked as we leaned against my car in the parking deck after work.

“I know I couldn’t go back to that church,” I said.

“Unless you wanted to get even,” she said. “Then you might. Then you might sit there week after week swallowing your anger, biding your time, waiting for that right opportunity to see if Buddy Wing could heal himself.”

“So Wayne F. Dillow goes on the list of suspects?” I asked.

“You bet he does.”

She talked me into going to Speckley’s for supper. That’s where she told me she was on the cusp of having sex with Eric. “If he plays his cards right, maybe tonight,” she said while I winced. She also told me of her plans to ambush the eyebrow woman. “You’ll come along, won’t you?” she asked.