Again she gave me the fingers. This time I gave them back.
So the secret birthday dinner for Eric was set: I’d go to her apartment early Sunday afternoon and help her make the lasagna and the cake and then when Eric showed up that evening, expecting Dominos pizza and sex, he’d get crepe paper, balloons, and Dolly Madison Sprowls in a pointy paper party hat.
***
Thursday, May 25
All week Aubrey worked the phones. All week people hung up on her.
The one person who did talk to her—and talk and talk—was the eyebrow woman. Having spilled the beans about Sissy’s child in Mingo Junction, she now freely rummaged through her brain for anything Aubrey might find useful. “And of course you know about Family Night,” she said matter-of-factly during one of their conversations.
“Family Night?” Aubrey asked.
Five minutes later Aubrey was standing in front of my desk, telling me everything that the eyebrow woman had told her. “It appears we have a few loose ends to tie around the Reverend Bandicoot’s neck,” she said.
***
Friday, May 26
Aubrey drove. The insurance company had replaced the windows in her old Escort two days after they were smashed, but there were still tiny shards of glass everywhere in the car. So all the way to Hannawa Falls, I sat in the back fishing out the glass between the seats, and Eric sat in front fishing them off the dashboard. It became a game, like seeing how many out-of-state license plates you can spot.
Hannawa Falls is a tidy blue-collar suburb just east of the city. It’s where many of the area’s autoworkers settled in the Fifties and Sixties. The endless acres of Cape Cods and ranches had been paid for with years of sacrifice. The owners of those tiny palaces were not about to allow the teeniest bit of sloth, by themselves or their neighbors, to eat into their hard-won equity. Every lawn was mowed. Every shrub was trimmed. We wound our way through a series of concrete streets named after deciduous trees until we arrived on the cul-de-sac where Tim Bandicoot lived. We parked and waited.
At six-fifteen, the garage door went up and a dark green minivan backed out. Four heads were visible through the windows: Tim Bandicoot, his wife, Annie, and their two sons. Aubrey waited until they reached the end of the street and then followed. We wound back through the deciduous tree streets pretty much as we’d come in, until we reached East Tuckman, the wide, four-lane street that runs through the suburb like a barbecue spit. The Bandicoots turned left and drove to Eastfield Centre, the gargantuan shopping strip that has sucked most of the retail out of downtown Hannawa.
They pulled into Arby’s. We parked across the street at a Burger King. They went inside to eat. Aubrey sent Eric inside for carryout. It took the Bandicoots forty minutes to eat. Then they drove to the book store next to the mall. “How boring is this,” Aubrey moaned as we parked five rows behind them. “Friday night at Borders.”
I told her I thought a family outing to Borders was actually a pretty nifty thing.
“Putt-Putt golf for the mind,” she said.
“To each his own,” I said. Aubrey was already heading for the door and Eric and I were walking like quick little penguins to catch up.
We lingered by the magazine racks while the Bandicoots browsed the tables of just-published non-fiction. After a few minutes they split up. Annie headed for the children’s section with the boys. Tim wandered into the history section.
We followed Tim, hiding by the books on World War II while he worked his way down the long aisle of Civil War books. When he opened a large gray-covered volume on Robert E. Lee, Aubrey slid beside him and turned sideways, resting her elbow on the top of the shelving. “Civil War buff,” she said. “How ironic.” She was referring, of course, to his famous split with Buddy Wing over speaking in tongues.
Tim raised his head only slightly. His eyes drifted from Aubrey to Eric to me—by now we were awkwardly hovering behind her—then back to the book. “I thought you hung out in the dairy aisle,” he said. He, of course, was referring to our ambush of the eyebrow woman at Artie’s supermarket.
“Wherever I can learn something,” Aubrey said.
Tim closed the big book on Robert E. Lee and cradled it across his chest. Psychological armor, I suppose. “I knew Sissy had a daughter, if that’s what you want to know.”
Aubrey curled her index finger under her thumb and flicked the portrait of Lee on the cover. “Do you consider the great Robert E. a hero or a traitor?”
He put the book back on the shelf. He was struggling to remain calm. And failing. “You’re insinuating that I knew Sissy was in Mingo Junction the night Buddy was poisoned.”
“Did you know?”
“I knew she always went there for holidays. And I suppose she told me she was going there that weekend. But then Buddy was killed and three days later she confessed.”
“And it didn’t occur to you that she was confessing—just perhaps—to protect you?”
“Why would that occur to me?”
Aubrey tried again. “Did it occur to you that maybe somebody else was setting Sissy up?”
Tim started pawing the books nervously. I figured any second now he was going to pull out the biggest coffee table volume he could find and beat Aubrey over the head with it. “The police were crawling all over my house and my church, trying to prove that I did it,” he hissed. “Then they found all that stuff at Sissy’s place, and she confessed. What was I supposed to think?”
Aubrey began nodding, sarcastically. “So—just so I’m clear on this—never once did you say to yourself, ‘You know, maybe I should tell the police she just might have been in Mingo Junction that Friday night.’”
Bandicoot bent over the bookshelves and pressed his forehead against his folded hands, as if praying on the back of a church pew. “You know for sure Sissy was in Mingo Junction?”
“I know for sure.”
He started to cry.
Aubrey only got tougher with him. “It’s funny you didn’t tell the police about Sissy’s possible alibi. A woman you’d been sleeping with, for what, four years? But maybe it was just sex with you. Sex that was getting stale. Maybe you just figured, she confessed, good riddance, that’s the end of that.”
“I did not think that.”
“Maybe you were just afraid that if Sissy was cleared, the police would focus on you again.”
Tim Bandicoot peeked at Aubrey through his folded hands. “I did not kill him.”
Aubrey leaned on the shelves just like him, their shoulders touching, best friends having a heart-to-heart. “Of course you didn’t. It was a Friday night. Family Night. You were having fast food with Annie and your boys. Seeing a Disney movie or something.”
This, of course, is why we’d followed the Bandicoots to Borders—to confront him about Family Night. The eyebrow woman had told Aubrey that, unlike the Heaven Bound Cathedral, Bandicoot’s new church did not hold services on Friday nights. Friday night at the New Epiphany Temple was Family Night. “A time,” he regularly told his flock, “for mommies and daddies and their children to heal the week-day wounds of secular strife, and take the Living Lord out for supper and some G-rated fun.”
“I gather you told the police about Family Night,” Aubrey said.
“They asked me what I was doing that night and I told them.”
“Did they ask you about Sissy?”
“They asked me about a number of people in my congregation.”
“Were they aware of your affair?”
“They were aware.”
“Did they ask if you knew where Sissy was that night?”
He fed a bent knuckle into his quivering mouth and bit down. “I know I should have told them about Sissy’s girl in Mingo.”
“Should have but couldn’t,” Aubrey said without sympathy. “Because that Family Night was different than most—”
His blanched face jerked sideways, the bent knuckle ripping into the side of his mouth like a fishhook.
“—Because that was
Father & Son Night at the Gund Arena in Cleveland, where a bus load of men and boys from the New Epiphany Temple saw the Cavaliers squeak by the New York Knicks, 107 to 104. Wives stayed home that Friday night, didn’t they? And home alone is not much of an alibi, is it?”
“My Annie did not kill Buddy.” It was the loudest, most tortured whisper I’d ever heard.
Aubrey repeated herself: “Home alone is not much of an alibi.”
Tim spun around, his back digging into the spines of the books. “You are so full of shit,” he growled. He sounded just like that possessed little girl in The Exorcist.
Aubrey smiled. “And you are so full of guilt. You had to choose between betraying your lover and protecting your wife. Assuming she needs protecting, something I’m sure you still don’t know. No wonder you were drawn to that book about Robert E. Lee.”
Wasn’t Aubrey something—on the spur of the moment using that book on Robert E. Lee to drill deep into his tortured soul. Lee, if you remember your Civil War history, was forced to choose between the country he loved and the state he loved. When Buddy Wing was murdered, Tim Bandicoot had to choose between his wife and his mistress. Lee chose Virginia. Bandicoot chose Annie. Or so it seemed.
“What do you want me to do now?” Bandicoot asked. His eyes were red. His cheeks were shiny. He was shaking.
Aubrey shrugged her shoulders like some old Italian bocce ball player. “I’m going to see to it that Sissy goes free. What you do is up to you. Thanks for the interview, reverend.”
Aubrey walked away and Eric and I followed. I figured we’d be going to a restaurant somewhere, to assess what we’d learned, like we always did. Instead she led Eric and me to the coffee shop right there in the bookstore. While we were standing in line to order, we saw Tim Bandicoot herding his family across the parking lot. “A Family Night to remember,” Aubrey said.
We spent a good two hours there, sipping our cappuccinos and munching on biscotti. Eric kept going for computer magazines to read while Aubrey and I listened to the folk singer. He was so loud we could only discuss the story between songs.
“So, what do we make of Tim Bandicoot now?” I asked.
Aubrey was propping up her chin with her knuckles. Her eyes were half closed. I couldn’t tell if she was bored by the music, or enjoying it. “He wasn’t exactly the same cool and cocky cucumber who filled us full of Krispy Kremes, was he?”
The singer launched into a Beatles’ medley: Eleanor Rigby followed by Blackbird followed by Fool on the Hill and Hey Jude. It went on forever. I was one of the three or four who applauded. “I gather you weren’t moved by his tears.”
“When people cry for the right reasons I’m moved.”
I knew what Aubrey meant. It wasn’t remorse that made Tim Bandicoot cry and shake like that. It was fear. “You really think he’s protecting his wife?”
She answered right through On a Jet Plane: “A lot of these women-behind-the-throne types are real ballbusters. Let’s say Annie Bandicoot didn’t give a damn that her Timmy boy was screwing Sissy The Bimbo—as long as he wasn’t screwing her—but she was worried about his congregation finding out. Worried about Buddy Wing and their enemies back at the Heaven Bound Cathedral finding out. Maybe she was afraid Buddy already knew.”
My head was swimming. Not from Aubrey’s analysis. From the cappuccino. I’d been sipping my Darjeeling tea all day and the last thing I needed at nine o’clock at night was another strong dose of caffeine. “So she poisoned Buddy Wing and framed Sissy to protect her husband’s ministry? You think that’s possible?”
Aubrey lifted her cup with both hands and took a slow, thoughtful sip. “We’ve got to learn more about this Annie Bandicoot, don’t you think?”
“Well—I do know a little bit already.”
Aubrey squinted at me over her cup. “Been busy with your old files, Maddy?”
I made a joke of it but I could see she was not happy with my snooping on my own. “Sometimes they call out to me at night.”
“And what did they have to say about our little Annie?”
I told her what I’d found: that she’d grown up in the Heaven Bound Cathedral; that she’d won the citywide spelling bee when she was in the eighth grade and had been in the National Honor Society in high school; that she’d attended Hemphill College, dropping out in her second year to marry the church’s youth pastor, Tim Bandicoot. “Her name and picture have been in the paper a hundred times over the years,” I said, “serving on committees, hosting ecumenical lunches, taking food and second-hand clothes to poor churches in Appalachia, that sort of thing.”
Aubrey was not impressed. “Nothing important then?”
“Deciding what’s important is your job, dear.”
***
When we left Borders it was already dark. Eric hadn’t bought any of the magazines he’d read. I couldn’t stop humming Eleanor Rigby. About a mile from downtown Hannawa Aubrey started twisting her rear-view mirror. “There’s that damned red station wagon,” she said.
“Red station wagon?” I asked.
“Don’t freak,” she said, “but some dickwad’s been following me.”
Eric and I twisted and looked out the back window. There was indeed a red car of some description behind us, but it was too far back and the night traffic was too heavy for us to tell if it was a station wagon, let alone following us. “How do you know it’s the same one all the time?” I asked.
Aubrey squinted at me in disbelief. “Nobody drives station wagons anymore. So when you keep seeing a red one slithering up behind you—”
“You don’t think maybe you’re a little paranoid?”
She did not appreciate my skepticism. “In case you’ve forgotten, these are brand-new windows we’re looking out.”
Eric apparently got a good look at the car. “Ford Taurus. Late Nineties.”
Aubrey was encouraged. At least he believed her. “Bubbly shaped, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, “Tauruses are kind of bubbly shaped I guess.”
“So you think the same people who smashed your windows are now following you?” I asked. “Either the pimps or the cops or the Christians?”
If Aubrey was frightened, it wasn’t affecting her ready sarcasm. “A Taurus station wagon rules out the pimps, I think—even if it is a red one.”
“So it’s down to cops or Christians?”
She looked at me. Her cheeks were suddenly pale and her eyes rabbit-like. “Let’s hope it’s cops. Cops I can handle.”
We drove downtown, turning left onto North Bidwell. A block from the Herald-Union parking deck the red Taurus disappeared.
Chapter 13
Sunday, May 28
Sunday afternoon I drove to Aubrey’s apartment to help her with Eric’s surprise birthday dinner. I was the one who was surprised. She had made some improvements. The once empty living room now had a huge white love seat with green and yellow-striped pillows. A small black television sat alone on one of those assemble-it-yourself entertainment centers. There was a poster of Van Gogh’s Starry Night on the wall. Her many pairs of shoes, once scattered like bones in the desert, were now piled in a wicker laundry basket by the door. One thing hadn’t changed. Her cardboard boxes marked SHIT FROM COLLEGE and SHIT FROM HOME were still stacked in a pyramid against the wall.
She took my shoulders and pushed me into the kitchen, proudly showing me her new table and chairs. Balloons and loops of crepe paper were Scotch-taped on the ceiling. “Can you believe it,” she said. “We are actually going to sit down and have a home-cooked dinner like official adults.”
“I’ve been an official adult for a long time,” I said. “Where’s your cake mix?”
It was a basic yellow box cake which Aubrey intended to cover with Dream Whip and jelly beans. She also had a box of those candles you can’t blow out. She poured the cake mix into the bowl and I put in the correct measures of water and oil. She cracked the three eggs and I picked out the bits of shell. She read the baking instructions on the
box while I beat the batter with a tablespoon. She opened the oven door and I put in the pans. I don’t know which of us was having the better time.
We started on the lasagna. I’d given her a shopping list during the week and she’d dutifully bought everything I said we needed. We worked side by side on the stovetop, me browning the Italian sausage while she boiled the water for the noodles. When I asked for the canned tomatoes, she handed me the canned tomatoes. When I asked for the basil and garlic, she handed me the basil and garlic. When I asked for the ricotta cheese, she asked, “What ricotta cheese?”
“You didn’t get the ricotta cheese?” I cackled like some nasty old grandmother. “How can you make lasagna without ricotta cheese?”
She showed me the shopping list I’d given her: No ricotta cheese.
“Looks like you’re going to the supermarket,” I said.
She was hesitant, almost hostile, as if I was asking her to swim to Sicily for the ricotta cheese. “You’re the one who fucked up,” she said.
“If you think you’re capable of juggling a cake and a half-made lasagna, I’ll go,” I said.
So Aubrey went to the supermarket for the ricotta cheese. Even if she drove like an ambulance driver and immediately found the right aisle at the market, I figured it would take her a half hour. That would give me time to boil the noodles and maybe tidy up the apartment a bit.
She returned with enough ricotta cheese to make six lasagnas.
***
Tuesday, May 30
Monday was Memorial Day. Aubrey and Eric went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. I stayed home and replaced the tomato plants the rabbits nibbled. Hannawa not only has more evangelists per capita than any city of its size, it also has more rabbits. The fear of humans was bred out of them generations ago. Unfortunately, they’ve never lost their genetic urge to devour anything a human plants.
Tuesday evening I went with Aubrey to see Wayne F. Dillow, the man whose wife had died of cancer after being faith-healed by Buddy Wing. Dillow lived on Summerhill Lane in Elden, a hilly section of town sandwiched between the old Chevrolet plant to the north and the airport to the south. His house was not unlike my own: a boxy ranch with an attached one-car garage. Mine is painted white with dark green shutters. His was painted avocado and had, if you can believe it, pink shutters.
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