Morgue Mama: The Cross Kisses Back (Morgue Mama Mysteries) Read online

  “She’s hard as nails,” I said.

  That made him laugh. “You used to tell me I was hard as nails. Now I’m just another worn-out lump on the copy desk.”

  It was the first sexual innuendo between us in years—if you want to call anything that blatant an innuendo. I let it go by. “You’re a good copy editor,” I said.

  I spent the rest of the day kicking myself for that good copy editor remark. What a horrible thing to say. It was like praising some old geezer architect for the log cabin he was building out of Popsicle sticks at the rest home. At least I knew he was probably kicking himself for his hard as nails crack. We’d been lovers once. But Father Time and that damned kindergarten teacher had put an end to that. Now we were friends. That was enough.

  ***

  Saturday, April 15

  Letters to the editor started pouring in on Monday. By fifty to one they lambasted us for sinking to such a new low. The girls in circulation were busy all day with people calling to cancel their subscriptions. At Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, several of the backbenchers used language they wouldn’t have dared using in public before, presumably in the hope of finally being quoted in the paper. On Wednesday, Charlie Chimera, afternoon drive-time host on WFLO, ranted all four of his hours about what he repeatedly called the Herald-Union’s, “disgusting descent into the murky mire of irresponsibility.” Every caller agreed with him.

  Our circulation started climbing back up on Thursday.

  Finally it was Saturday again and Aubrey and I were on our way to see Tim Bandicoot.

  At first we discussed the weather—the first thing all Ohioans discuss when they crawl into a car—and then why Tim Bandicoot would agree to talk to us about Sissy James. “It sure can’t be for the free publicity,” I said. “Sissy’s name all over the front page could destroy him.”

  “I’m the enemy,” Aubrey said. “He wants to take my measure.”

  “Take your measure? Somebody’s been watching too many old movies.”

  She knew I was joking. She also knew I was taking her down a few pegs. “Then how about this?” she asked. “He knows Sissy will be all over the front page with or without his cooperation. So he might as well appear helpful.”

  “Appear being the key word?”

  She repeated my question as a declarative sentence. “Appear being the key word.”

  “Which raises all sorts of possibilities?”

  “Which raises all sorts of possibilities.”

  Tim Bandicoot’s New Day Epiphany Temple was located east of downtown, on Lutheran Hill, at the corner of Cleveland and Cather, an old commercial district that once served the city’s German enclave. By the Fifties those Germans had been absorbed by other ethnic groups and other neighborhoods. Today Lutheran Hill is populated by South Koreans, Pakistanis, poor blacks and even poorer Appalachian whites. Three-quarters of the storefronts are empty.

  The temple was housed in an old dime store, a single-story orange brick building sandwiched between two used car lots. The fat red letters that once spelled W-O-O-L-W-O-R-T-H’S across the front of the building were long gone, but you could still see their dirty silhouettes.

  Aubrey found a parking spot in front just big enough for her Escort. We checked twice to make sure the doors were locked and went inside. What a difference from the Heaven Bound Cathedral. The New Day Epiphany Temple was a single room. The floor was covered with peel-and-stick tile. The walls were covered with cheap maple paneling. The lights were on but nobody was home.

  We stood by the door for a few minutes, wondering what to do, then walked down the rows of metal folding chairs to the stage at the back of the room. The stage was carpeted with red shag. There was a modest pulpit up front and a row of ugly, throne-like chairs across the back. The monstrous cross on the wall was wrapped with hundreds of miniature Christmas lights. “You suppose they’re the twinkly kind?” Aubrey asked.

  “Of course they’re the twinkly kind,” I said. We each chose a throne and sat.

  Tim Bandicoot arrived maybe five minutes later. He came through the front door, three tall Styrofoam cups of coffee balanced on a box of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. “Comfortable, aren’t they?” he called out when he spotted us in those ugly chairs.

  I felt like a royal fool and started to get up. But Bandicoot motioned for me to stay put. He came up the center aisle with the coffee and doughnuts, snaring a pair of folding chairs as he went. He set the coffee and doughnuts on one and himself on the other. And so our visit began, Aubrey and I on our thrones, Tim Bandicoot on a folding chair, debating between creme sticks, glazed crullers, and cinnamon twists.

  I don’t know what Aubrey expected, but I expected Tim Bandicoot to be some kind of icky egomaniac. I figured that, more than likely, he was the real murderer. I figured that after he’d gotten all the sex and mindless adoration he wanted from Sissy James, he set her up to save his own neck. And now here we were having doughnuts and coffee with this nice, down-to-earth young man. Maybe under that pleasant façade he really was icky and egomaniacal, and maybe even the real murderer, but I felt surprisingly comfortable that morning, sipping coffee, nibbling on a cruller, looking into those chocolate-brown cow eyes of his.

  When we’d gone to see Guthrie Gates, Aubrey got right to the skinny: Did he think Sissy did it? This morning was different. She let Tim Bandicoot go on and on about his growing congregation and his plans to build a new temple right there in that rundown neighborhood, with a day care center, soup kitchen, and food bank for the city’s poor. He also talked about building his electronic church. Currently his services were only broadcast on the local community-access channel, but he was determined to be on a regular local cable channel within a year and on cable nationally within five years. He had plans for saving millions of souls in Africa and China and the former Soviet Republics.

  By the time Aubrey asked him about Sissy James, we’d eaten half the doughnuts in the box. “Did you really love Sissy?” she asked. “Do you still love her?”

  He was clearly embarrassed. And clearly nervous. “I did not love her the way I love my wife,” he said. “I let my flesh take over.” He searched the box for the plainest doughnut he could find. “I’ve already admitted all this to my wife.”

  “Has she forgiven you?” asked Aubrey.

  “I did not ask her for forgiveness. I want her to be disappointed in me for the rest of my life. I’m weak. I’m a sinner.”

  Aubrey took a doughnut oozing raspberry. “And your congregation? Do they know how weak and sinful you are?”

  “A few. I suppose they all will after you’re done with me.”

  Tim Bandicoot clearly was trying to manipulate Aubrey—make her feel guilty if he could manage it, at least a little sympathetic if he couldn’t—but Aubrey wasn’t falling into that trap. “We went to see Sissy at Marysville,” she said.

  “I heard.”

  Aubrey had her doughnut clenched in her teeth while she dug in her purse for her notebook. “I get the impression Sissy loves both you and the Lord about the same.”

  When she couldn’t find a pen, Bandicoot gave her the Bic from his shirt pocket. “I hope that isn’t the case,” he said.

  What a nifty little Kabuki dance that was. By pulling out her notebook at that very touchy moment, Aubrey was openly challenging his rectitude. She was telling him that the questions were going to get really tough now, and that from now on everything would be on the record, that anything he said would be judged in the court of public opinion, and maybe even a court of law. And Bandicoot, by handing her his Bic the way he did? Well, you didn’t have to be a theologian to interpret a Jesus-like act like that.

  “There are those who don’t think Sissy did it,” Aubrey said.

  Bandicoot answered slowly, watching her scribble his quotes as he talked. “There are those who think she didn’t, those who think she did. There are those who think I put her up to it. There are those who think I did it myself, and framed her. There are those who think somebody
else did it.”

  Aubrey tapped the Bic on her nose. “Who do you think did it? There was a lot of physical evidence supporting Sissy’s confession.”

  “I don’t want to believe she did it. But I don’t know.”

  “How about somebody like Guthrie Gates?”

  “I absolutely do not think Guthrie did it. He loved Buddy too much.”

  “Interesting. You’re absolutely sure your rival didn’t kill Buddy, but not so sure about the woman you were screwing?”

  If Tim Bandicoot was going to pop his cork and beat us to death with a folding chair, that was the question that would do it. He just smiled sadly. “Sissy has a lot of problems. I’m sure you know all about that stuff.”

  Aubrey nodded as sadly as Bandicoot smiled. “How about you? Did you love Buddy too much to kill him?”

  “I did love him. I just didn’t agree with some of his—”

  He couldn’t find the right word. Aubrey could: “Theatrics?”

  “I wouldn’t call them theatrics. He truly believed in those things. I didn’t.”

  “You’re putting a pretty mild spin on it, aren’t you? Your break with the Heaven Bound Cathedral was pretty nasty. And very public.”

  Bandicoot took several slow sips of coffee. His chocolate eyes, for the first time, focused squarely on Aubrey’s blue eyes. “It was your paper that made it very public. But I could have handled it better. I caused a lot of pain.”

  Aubrey now turned to the murder itself, wondering how someone could have moved through the Heaven Bound Cathedral unnoticed, filling Buddy Wing’s water pitcher with poisoned water, painting a poisonous cross on his old family Bible. “Sissy told police she pulled her coat collar up around her ears and walked right in. Did her dirty business and walked right out. Given what you know about the Heaven Bound Cathedral, do you think that’s possible?”

  Bandicoot shrugged. “I suppose anything’s possible.”

  “The police talked to a lot of people who were there that night. Nobody saw her.”

  “I’ve read that.”

  “But that doesn’t prove she wasn’t there.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Nor does her saying she was there prove that she was.”

  “I guess that’s right.”

  “Now let me ask you this,” Aubrey said. “Could anybody else from your flock—including yourself—have walked around the cathedral without wearing a disguise?”

  “No more than Satan could have.”

  “How about with a disguise?”

  “Satan maybe. I doubt anyone else.”

  The Krispy Kreme box was empty when we left Bandicoot’s storefront church. Aubrey’s car was still out front. “You know,” she said as we pulled away, “we never should’ve pigged out on those doughnuts.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I said. “We’ll have to fast for a week.”

  Aubrey U-turned through an abandoned Sinclair station. “Screw the calories. Think about who gave us those doughnuts. A man who, maybe, poisoned Buddy Wing twice. Maddy—we have got to be more careful.”

  ***

  Even after all those Krispy Kremes Aubrey wanted to go to Speckley’s for lunch. The place is as busy Saturday mornings as it is weekdays, so we had to wait in line. Aubrey bought a Herald-Union from the box outside and read it standing up. I got a menu from the counter and looked for something light that might counteract any slow-acting poison. When we finally got a table—in the smoking section—I ritually ordered the meat loaf sandwich and au gratin potatoes as usual. Aubrey got a house salad and tomato soup.

  I started our debriefing session: “Tim Bandicoot was nice enough, wasn’t he?”

  “Too nice.”

  “Think so? Other than the doughnuts I don’t think he spread it on too thick.”

  My appraisal angered her. “These TV preachers manipulate people for a living. They get perfectly sane people to jump up and down and roll around on the floor and then hand over the grocery money. And when they get caught with some bimbo in a motel room? They simply trot out their God’s already forgiven me—won’t you? shtick and everything’s hunky-dory until the next time they get caught. Remember Jimmy Swaggert? ‘I have sinned! I have sinned!’ I think we just got Swaggert-ed, Maddy.”

  I wasn’t so sure. Tim Bandicoot had seemed sincere to me. “He told us he didn’t want forgiveness,” I said.

  “Shtick. He gave me his Bic for christsake. What was that all about?”

  “You needed a pen?”

  “That was my shtick. I’ve got a purse full of pens.”

  The waitress brought our food. Aubrey used her little finger and thumb to fish out the curls of raw onion from her salad. She deposited them in the ash tray. “Did you hear what he said when I told him we’d been to visit Sissy at Marysville? ‘I heard.’ How did he hear? Who told him?”

  “Sissy?”

  “Of course, Sissy.”

  “So they’re still communicating.”

  Aubrey filled her mouth with Romaine lettuce. “So he’s still manipulating.”

  Maybe she was right. Maybe Tim Bandicoot was the icky egomaniacal murderer I thought going in, before the Krispy Kremes, the chocolate-brown cow eyes and that big dose of contrition. “So where do we go from here?”

  “Shopping.”

  Chapter 8

  Sunday, April 23

  I planned to spend Easter cleaning out my raspberry bed. But it was raining when I got up, and it continued to rain all morning. At noon I gave up and drove to the paper, to catch up on my work. Not that I had any work to catch up on. As empty as the newsroom was on holidays, it was a lot less empty than my bungalow.

  There were just eight cars in the parking deck, including Aubrey’s Escort and Eric Chen’s little pickup truck. They were parked side by side in the Handicapped Only slots by the elevator. When I got to the morgue I tossed my raincoat on the counter and went to my desk for my tea mug. Everywhere in Hannawa families were setting down to baked beans, Jell-O salad, and spiral-cut ham. I’d be having a mug of Darjeeling tea and a package of stale oatmeal cookies from the vending machine. I cut through sports to the cafeteria. That damn sign was still taped to the back of Chip McCoy’s computer:

  HER NAME IS

  DOLLY MADISON SPROWLS,

  BUT HER FRIENDS

  JUST CALL HER MADDY.

  TO THE OTHER 99.8% OF US

  SHE’S JUST PLAIN MAD

  Those signs used to be stuck everywhere. Now there are just two, that one on Chip’s computer, and the one I framed and put on my kitchen wall at home.

  I found Aubrey and Eric sitting together in the back. Aubrey was eating yogurt out of a plastic cup. Eric was eating potato chips and sucking on a can of Mountain Dew. Good gravy, how odd finding those two together. I just stood there in the doorway with my empty mug.

  Which made Aubrey laugh. “You caught us together in the cafeteria, not in bed,” she said. “You can come in.”

  I looked at Eric. He was as stunned by what she said as I was. “Are there any cookies in the machine?” I asked.

  Eric leaned back and checked. “Nada. But there’s some of those indigestible cheese cracker things.”

  I bought the crackers, filled my mug with hot water, and started for the door.

  Aubrey called out, “For christsakes, Maddy, sit down.”

  I sat.

  Eric didn’t say a thing—I’m sure his brain was full of dirty pictures of Aubrey and him in bed—but Aubrey launched into a nervous explanation of their togetherness. “Eric’s going to help me with the computer searches for other possible suspects. Just some quick checks for strange behavior, criminal or otherwise. I knew you wouldn’t have time.”

  What she meant, of course, is that I wouldn’t have a clue on how to do it.

  It was about then that Eric regained the use of his brain and remembered that he had to be in Youngstown for Easter dinner in a half hour, about eighty miles away. He got three cans of Mountain Dew from the vending machine—fuel for
the road—and left. Aubrey took a cleansing breath and rolled her eyes. “What a boy that boy is.”

  “You’re not going to your mother’s?” I asked.

  “She’s having dinner at five and I’m going to point my car in that direction about three. But am I actually going to go to my mother’s? God only knows.”

  While Aubrey cleaned up Eric’s mess, I gathered up her folders. Her SISSY folder was already an inch thick, and her T. BANDICOOT folder not much thinner. The folder marked HEAVEN BOUND CATH had two copies of the church directory rubber-banded together. “Two copies?” I asked. “Didn’t Guthrie give us just one?”

  “I went back later for another one,” she said. “An older one. I got thinking about Tim Bandicoot breaking with Buddy Wing and realized that former church members were more likely to be suspects than present members. You know? Somebody mad enough at Buddy Wing to quit his church might also be mad enough to kill him.”

  I handed her the folders. “Smart. How old is the other directory?”

  Her faced scrunched with disappointment. “Just three years. But we might find somebody interesting. You don’t mind Eric doing this for me, do you? I should have asked.”

  “What’s there to mind? Just be gentle with him.”

  “Puh-leeze.”

  I stayed at the paper until four, organizing my desk drawers, playing solitaire, calling my relatives in LaFargeville on the paper’s dime. Then I went home and opened a can of vegetable soup. I ate it right out of the saucepan, on the porch my Lawrence built on the back of the house the same summer he started screwing his secretary. It’s a wonderful porch, running the full length of the house, screened in to keep out the bugs, wide enough for my picnic table and a propane grill. The door opens right into my vegetable garden.

  By eight I was in bed reading Jane Smiley’s new novel. Trying to read it, anyway. It was Easter Sunday and I was alone. I should have gone to church that morning. I should have stopped off at the drug store and bought myself a chocolate rabbit and some marshmallow peeps. I should have taken a week’s vacation and driven to LaFargeville to visit my brother and my niece. After Lawrence flew the coop I should have remarried somebody and had some children. I took the notebook and a pen from my nightstand and used Jane Smiley’s book as a desk. Lawrence was gone and Dale Marabout was gone and the only people I had to sponge the loneliness out of my life were Aubrey McGinty and Sissy James.