carefree writer with a brilliant mind,” she called out. “So leave me the hell alone.”
When she came out in a dress I couldn’t stop laughing. It was not a bad looking dress-a loose-fitting, below- the-knee A-line with a sailor collar and pleats-but I’d never seen her in anything but jeans or chinos and she looked about as comfortable as my brother the dairy farmer looks in his polyester wedding-and-funeral suit from Sears. “All you need is a white purse and pearls,” I managed to get out.
Aubrey was laughing harder than me. “I just don’t want to look out of place in church.”
I opened my arms and turned in a circle. “What about me looking out of place?”
She studied me. I was wearing my usual work uniform: loose-fitting slacks, even looser sweater, penny loafers, and a cheap necklace. “You look fine,” she said.
I knew what she meant by fine: women my age never look out of place because we never look in place. We are as unintrusive as beige walls.
Aubrey’s plan was to sneak into the Heaven Bound Cathedral without sneaking. “I think it’s safe to assume that the killer knew his way around the church,” she said as we drove toward South Ridge. “So we’re going to act like we belong there. We’re going to chat and smile and be friendly. You think you can pull that off?”
The service didn’t start until eight, but Aubrey wanted to arrive at seven, to be there during the final hectic hour before the cameras clicked on and the Canaries of Calvary started singing and the Sweet Ascension Dancers started dancing. When we arrived, there were already lines of cars waiting to pull into the parking lot. The big-eared security guard we encountered on our first visit was standing beneath the cement angels, directing cars toward empty slots. We smiled and waved as we drove past him. “You suppose he was out here directing traffic the night Buddy Wing was killed?” Aubrey wondered.
We parked and joined the funnel of people heading for the cathedral doors. Aubrey greeted everyone who looked at us with a happy “Good evening.”
Inside we followed the flow toward the chapel. Everywhere in the hallway choir members and dancers were mingling with their friends and families. Everyone was so happy. I felt just lousy, like a terrorist with sticks of dynamite taped to her ribs. I wanted to spin around and get the hell out of there. But Aubrey had me by the arm, squeezing a smile out me every time somebody smiled at us.
When we got to the chapel we kept going, up the hallway toward the offices. As we clicked along we looked at each other and started giggling guiltily, like schoolgirls sneaking out of gym class. The hallway was filled with people, all serenely buzzing about, arms full of hymnals or collection baskets or electric guitars.
On our earlier visit the outer door to the offices had been locked. I remembered how the security guard had knocked for us and I remembered that Guthrie Gates had unlocked the door before letting us in. Now this door was wide open and people were freely flowing in and out. We went in.
It was noisy and busy inside. Someone was whistling a hymn. Someone was laughing like Santa Claus. Just a few yards from Buddy Wing’s office Aubrey stopped at a water fountain and bent low to drink.
“No security and no suspicion,” I whispered. “Anybody could have walked right in.”
Aubrey whispered back, “Any stranger at least. But what if it weren’t a stranger? What if it were Sissy or Tim Bandicoot? Could they have just walked in like this? I don’t think so.”
I took a drink myself. The water was warm. “Sissy told the police she just walked in and went about her business.”
Said Aubrey, “More proof she’s lying.”
We walked on to Buddy Wing’s office. The open door was still blocked with the folding chair and arrangement of plastic roses. Dale Marabout’s story on the murder said that Wing used to keep his old family Bible on his desk, always within his reach. Now there was a framed, eight-by-ten photograph of the martyred pastor in the center of the desk, facing toward the door, smiling eyes fixed right on us.
“Let’s think about what we already know,” Aubrey whispered as we stood in the doorway like a pair of humble pilgrims visiting a holy shrine. “We know Buddy Wing followed the same routine every week. We know that thirty minutes before every service he left his office and went to the make-up room, and after being painted up to look twenty years younger, went to another room to pray with the church elders. Then, when it was showtime, he went to the back of the chapel and danced his way down the aisle.”
“We know all that?” I asked.
“Yes. And we can surmise that the killer knew all that, too.”
Just down the hall from Wing’s office we found a roomful of middle-aged men in suits drinking coffee and eating pastries. “I’d say those are the elders,” Aubrey whispered. We kept walking. In the next room we saw Guthrie Gates half reclined in a beauty shop chair. He was getting his hair sprayed stiff by a woman with painted-on eyebrows. We hurried by. The hallway turned right, then left, then right again. We were near the stage. We could hear the orchestra warming up. We found the main control room and peeked inside. People with headsets and clipboards were buzzing about like honey bees. “What a fancy operation,” I whispered. “You’d think they were putting on the Academy Awards.”
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?”
