Morgue Mama (14 page)

Chapter 15

Tuesday, June 13

As soon as Eric left for his morning Mountain Dew break Aubrey hurried to my desk—to show me her bruises and scratches. “Good gravy, what happened to you?”

“Taurus Man attacked me last night,” she said.

“Not—”

“No, I wasn’t raped. Just slapped and scratched and threatened a little.”

“A little?” There was one set of finger-shaped bruises on her right arm, just above the wrist. The other bruises were on her face, one above her left eye and one below her cheekbone. The scratches, just two of them, ran parallel from her left ear down across her chest. She had to open her blouse two buttons to show me where they ended just above her bra on the right side. “You’re sure it was the man in the station wagon? The guy Eric chased?”

“He was wearing a ballcap and bandanna, but it was him,” she said.

“And this happened where, Aubrey?”

“Outside my building. He jumped out of the shrubs by the door. Batted me around for a couple of seconds and took off.”

“And he threatened you?”

“He kept growling ‘You better back off, devil girl.’ I’m cutting down those fucking shrubs myself. You wouldn’t have a chainsaw I can borrow?”

I’d hoped our problems with the man in the red station wagon were over. It had been two weeks since Eric chased him in Meri. We hadn’t spotted him on our drive to Kent or anywhere else. Either he’d changed cars or changed his mind about the wisdom of following us. Now he was back in the picture. In a very scary way. “You have got to tell Tinker about this,” I insisted.

“I already have.”

That surprised me. Until now she’d hadn’t said anything to Tinker or any of the editors about being followed or having her windows smashed. “Well, I’m glad you did,” I said.

While we talked she kept checking the hallway to the cafeteria, to see if Eric was returning to his desk. Not only had Eric stopped sleeping with her since that unfortunate incident in Meri, he’d stopped associating with her altogether. “I’ll see if I can get him to wear a bell around his neck,” I teased.

She pretended not to hear me. “Telling Tinker was a close call,” she said. “You know I don’t want any of that sexist, poor-little-girl-reporter crap.”

“I know.”

“But getting roughed up and threatened—how good is that? I have to put that in the story.”

She was amazing, wasn’t she? A man grabbed her outside her apartment at night, slapped her around, clawed her chest, threatened her, and she could only think about what great copy it would make. “So you’re convinced it’s related to the Buddy Wing story and not your stories on the police or the prostitutes?” I asked.

“Hello? Back off devil girl?”

I motioned with my chin. Eric was coming. Aubrey swiveled just in time to see him duck into the men’s room. “Why’s he going in there?” she hissed.

I stayed on the subject. “You need more proof than ‘Back off devil girl,’ don’t you?”

“I’m not going to back off and apparently neither is he. So by the time my series is ready to run, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of proof. He’ll slip up.”

“Or slit your throat,” I said.

She rolled her eyes at my melodrama. “The only remaining question is whether he’s from Tim Bandicoot’s happy little temple or Guthrie Gates’ big bad cathedral.”

“Does Tinker want you to make a police report?”

“Yeah.”

“Why the frown? That’s good for your story, isn’t it?”

“He also wants me in my apartment before dark every night. He wouldn’t tell a male reporter that.”

I motioned with my chin again as Eric slid out of the men’s room and pranced back to the cafeteria, as if a hive of wasps was following him. “Probably not. But it’s good advice. I know I’ll sleep better.”

She smiled bravely. It just about broke my heart. She looked so vulnerable, yet so determined, like an overgrown first-grader mustering the courage to go back to school the day after getting pushed off the teeter-totter by a third-grade bully. “You’re absolutely sure it was the guy in the station wagon?”

Aubrey went back to her desk and Eric returned to his. He tossed a Mounds bar at me and smiled sheepishly.

I felt so sorry for the poor lamb. Eric had not only stopped associating with Aubrey, he’d stopped associating with me. Which was a bit awkward given that I was his boss and our desks were only a few feet apart. He’d come face-to-face with some terrible truth that night in Meri. He’d experienced some dark epiphany about the world and his place in it. He held me responsible—partially at least—for unleashing the goblins eating away at his self-confidence. So I was delighted when he brought me a Mounds bar as a peace offering. I peeled back the wrapper and took a nibble.

“Don’t forget I still need that computer check on Edward Tolchak,” I said.

***

Aubrey had enough to wrap up her series on the Buddy Wing murder at any time. She’d dug deep into Buddy Wing’s life and the rift with Tim Bandicoot that had torn his congregation in two. She’d compiled a long list of colorful characters that could be dangled out there as possible suspects, without ever actually saying they were suspects. Most importantly, she could prove that Sissy James was in Mingo Junction the night Buddy Wing was poisoned. She had all the examples of police ineptitude she needed.

But Aubrey wanted more. She wanted Sissy to confess on the record that she didn’t poison Buddy Wing. And there was only one way to do that. Prove that Tim Bandicoot was a schmuck not worth protecting.

Luckily, Tinker was not only a patient managing editor, he was a managing editor under instructions from the newspaper’s corporate overlords in St. Paul to boost the
Herald-Union’s
sagging circulation. This Buddy Wing thing was going to be a great story. A national story. He would give his young, ambitious police reporter all the time she needed. And although he’d dutifully cautioned her not to look for the real killer—all that poppycock about that being the police department’s job—I knew in my bones he wanted the real killer found. That’s how a managing editor moves up to editor. He digs out stories that not only entertain readers and rile the powers that be, but also result in some action that serves the civic good: clean up a toxic waste dump, send a corrupt politician to jail, bring a cold-blooded murderer to justice. Win a Pulitzer.

***

Thursday, June 15

Thursday I took my Dodge Shadow to get E-checked. That’s the state of Ohio’s required emissions test to make sure the exhaust from your old car isn’t single-handedly destroying the earth’s atmosphere. They charge you $19.50 and if your car doesn’t pass the test they make you fix it. My Shadow barely passed the last time and I was very nervous about this time. So I went to Ike’s Coffee Shop first.

“Morgue Mama!” he sang out, as he always did. “What you doing goofing off in the middle of the day?”

“E-check.”

“Don’t be frightened. They only want to check your car—not you.” He brought me a mug of tea and one of those tiny Ghirardelli chocolates wrapped in foil. “To bolster your courage,” he said. “On the house.”

“Better bring me the whole box,” I said.

Ike is the dearest man. And a handsome man. And a widower in my general age range. He has a master’s degree in mathematics and taught in the Hannawa City Schools. Back in the Eighties when the financially strapped school board offered early retirement to veteran teachers at the top of the pay scale, Ike snapped it up and opened the coffee shop. That’s when I met him, a good fifteen years ago now. I sometimes wonder if it’s our respective races that keeps us coffee-shop-owner and customer instead of something more.

Anyway, I spent an hour at Ike’s, sharing snippets of conversation with him about the weather, my raspberries, and who was likely to win the fall congressional elections.

Fortified, I drove to the E-check station, and my Shadow passed the test again. It was only two o’clock. I should have gone back to work. But I felt like this afternoon belonged to me—a gift from the state of Ohio for being a good citizen. So I decided to shop for a new living room sofa. First I drove to Flexner’s in Brinkley, where nothing is ever on sale. Then I drove to Albert’s Furniture in Greenlawn, where everything is always on sale.

There are lots of Alberts in Hannawa. What were the odds that the Don Albert who owns the furniture store in Greenlawn was the husband of the Elaine Albert who directed the televised church services at the Heaven Bound Cathedral? What were the odds she’d be working the floor when I walked in?

I wanted to walk right out. But there wasn’t another customer in the place, and Elaine had already spotted me, and was descending with a smile and a clipboard. She was a short, big-boned woman in a no-nonsense black skirt and eggshell white blouse. “I wanted to look at your sofas,” I said.

“We have some wonderful sales today,” she said.

I steered away from the leather sofas and concentrated on the models covered with stain-resistant fabric. Elaine stayed with me, pointing out all the little details about their construction and long wear. I didn’t hear a word she said. She was Elaine Albert, director of the Heaven Bound Cathedral’s televised services, one of two women Aubrey was dying to interview, the one who clearly was there the night Buddy Wing tumbled into the fake palms, who clearly knew more about the goings-on backstage that night than anyone alive. Whatever she was saying about grape juice stains was going in one ear and out the other.

“Could we sit down?” I asked.

“Sure, please,” Elaine said.

I lowered myself into the corner of a fat moss-green loveseat. “The both of us,” I said.

She studied me quizzically and lowered her full hips next to me. I think she was afraid I was going to faint or be sick or something.

I pulled down one of the yellow pillows from the top of the loveseat and cradled it in my lap. I started telling her the biggest string of lies I’d ever told in my life. “I do need a sofa,” I began, “but I’d also like to talk to you. You see, I’m Marcie Peacock’s grandmother—she was one of the Kent State students working for you at the cathedral the night the Reverend Wing died.”

Elaine started hugging her clipboard the way I was hugging the pillow. “And?”

“Well, she’s scared to death. The newspaper is digging into the whole thing again, it seems, and they think maybe one of the students is the real killer. Apparently the paper has some proof that the woman who confessed really didn’t do it. That reporter has my Marcie simply frantic.”

A sympathetic smile stretched across Elaine’s wide German face. “You know, your Marcie is the first African-American student we’ve ever hired.”

I could have just died. Elaine Albert had recognized me the moment I walked in. I apologized and tried to explain myself. Why she didn’t toss me out I don’t know. Maybe it was my obvious agony. Maybe she wanted to see what kind of information she could wheedle out of me. “I am genuinely concerned about those students,” I said. “Once the paper starts running its series, they are going to come under suspicion.”

“Along with a lot of people,” she said.

As we sat on that sofa and talked, I was not the least bit afraid that she might be the real murderer. And it wasn’t because she’d passed the lie detector test the police gave her. There was just something about her. A strange mix of icy confidence and serenity. If she’d wanted Buddy Wing dead for some reason, in my estimation she was the kind of woman who’d just pull out a pistol and shoot him.

Anyway, Elaine told me all about the college students who worked there—not about them individually so much—but about the kinds of jobs they did and where they would be at any given time before, during and after the broadcasts. She didn’t believe for the world one of them poisoned Buddy Wing.

“What about someone disguised to look like a college student?” I asked.

“It gets pretty crazy back there,” she said. “Sure.”

I actually bought the sofa we were sitting on, $885, yellow pillows included. “Does it surprise you that Sissy James may not be the killer?” I asked as we walked to the door.

“After your visit here today,” she said, “nothing surprises me anymore.”

I went home and said good-bye to that scruffy beige monstrosity in my living room. Then I called the newsroom. “Aubrey,” I said. “You’ll never guess who sold me a new sofa.”

“I can’t talk. They just found Ronny Doddridge, deader than a doornail.”

***

Friday, June 16

Ronny Doddridge was the big-eared security guard at the Heaven Bound Cathedral. Aubrey and I had encountered him on our first visit there. He had showed us the way to Guthrie Gates’ office. On our second visit he’d showed us the door. Because it was a suspected suicide, Aubrey’s story was only nine short paragraphs: