bothered to test how long it took the gold paint the killer used on Buddy Wing’s Bible to dry.
Eric was not only responsible for ordering the pizza. It also was his job to bring a leather-covered Bible, a tiny paint brush, and a bottle of Testor’s Gloss Enamel, the same kind of gold paint used by the killer, available in any craft store.
According to Aubrey, how long it took the paint to dry was no small matter: “In order for Buddy Wing to get the procaine on his lips when he kissed the cross, the gold paint would have to be tacky. Sissy confessed that she slipped into his office as soon as he left for the make-up chair. She said she quickly painted the cross and then took it to the chapel stage, along with the notes for Buddy’s sermon and the pitcher of tainted water, which she claims she’d already filled in the kitchenette in the nursery. Then she rushed home to watch him die on her TV. Which is doable. Her house is only a five-minute drive.”
“I gather you’ve driven it yourself?” I asked.
Eric answered for her. “We drove it six times last night. Every possible route.”
Aubrey seemed embarrassed that he told me that, as if he was describing their love-making rather than their driving experiment. She continued: “Buddy didn’t kiss the Bible until he was twenty-seven minutes into the service. Add that to the ten minutes he was in the make-up chair, and the four or five minutes he was praying with the elders. The paint would have to stay tacky for thirty-five or forty minutes-so let’s see.”
She opened the little bottle and started painting over the cross on the cover of the Bible. “The killer had to paint the cross very quickly, but also very neatly. The wet cross had to look just like the old one underneath.” Aubrey finished the job in only a minute.
The waitress brought our pitcher of Pepsi and three plastic glasses filled with ice. We sipped sparingly, knowing it was going to be a long wait, for both the paint and the pizza. “So exactly what are we trying to prove here?” I asked Aubrey. “We already know the cross on the Bible was painted during that little window of time after Wing left his office and the service started.”
Aubrey was nibbling on her ice. “Do we really know that? What if the paint doesn’t dry for an hour? Or two hours? Or ten hours? Then the cross could have been painted long before the service, maybe in the middle of the night, and the Bible put on the pulpit at any time. All we really know-if Elaine Albert’s statement is to be believed-is that when she went to get the Bible from Buddy’s desk, it wasn’t there, it was already on the pulpit.”
Eric gently touched the cross Aubrey had painted. He looked at the little circle of gold on the end of his finger and frowned. “If the cross was painted hours earlier, then the killer swiped the Bible from Buddy’s desk hours earlier. But if that Bible was as important to him as everybody says, wouldn’t he go nuts looking for it? Have everybody looking for it? There’s nothing like that in the police reports.”
Aubrey wadded her napkin and wiped the paint off his finger. “There’s nothing much about anything in the police reports,” she said. “As soon as they found the stuff in Sissy’s garbage, and she confessed, the investigation pretty much ended. But you’re right, Eric. Buddy would’ve gone nuts if he couldn’t find his daddy’s Bible. He would’ve said something to somebody.”
It simply popped out of my mouth. “Unless he poisoned himself.”
Eric looked at me like I was crazy. Aubrey, however, smiled slyly. “What if he wanted to kill himself but didn’t want Tim Bandicoot to replace him as the prince of Hallelujah City?” she said.
“And why would he want to kill himself?” Eric asked.
Aubrey took another mouthful of ice. “The autopsy didn’t show any terminal diseases or anything. But maybe he was suffering from depression. Maybe he’d lost his faith. Or never really had any.”
The cross on the Bible was seducing me just like it had seduced Eric. I touched it with my pinky. “If that’s the case, why would he frame Sissy and not Tim Bandicoot?”
Aubrey dutifully wiped the gold circle off my pinky. “Maybe framing Tim Bandicoot would be too obvious.”
This suicide thing seemed utterly bizarre to me. “Wouldn’t setting up Sissy to set up Bandicoot be too obvious, too?”
She laughed. And started singing: “I was looking back to see if you were looking back to see if I was looking back to see if you were looking back at me- Maddy, we’re talking about real cops here.”
I was having a hard time keeping all of the possible scenarios straight. “So if Buddy or somebody else was trying to make Sissy too obvious a suspect, to set up Tim Bandicoot, then I guess that all fell apart when Sissy confessed.”
Eric tried to check the paint again but Aubrey slapped his hand away. “That’s right,” she said.
We waited a long fifteen minutes for the pizza to come and then ate it like it was our last meal. Every few minutes Eric or I poked the cross and held up a shiny gold fingertip. Aubrey never once touched the cross, leading me to gather she already had a pretty good hunch how long it would take. Only after the pizza was gone, a full forty-five minutes, did Eric’s finger come up dry.
“So,” I said, sucking the gooey tomato sauce out of my teeth, “the poison had to be painted on the cross during that little window of time after all.”
Aubrey was pleased with herself. “And that means the killer had to be there right before the service started.”
“Which leaves us where?” I asked.
“Which leaves us with a bazillion suspects. Sissy. Guthrie Gates. Tim Bandicoot, assuming he was dumb enough to set up Sissy so clumsily. Maybe Bandicoot’s wife. Maybe the eyebrow woman. Maybe Elaine Albert or that Dillow guy, or Buddy Wing himself, or somebody else on the TV production staff, or any member of the church past or present, or somebody we’re not even aware of.”
“Good gravy,” I said.
“Still we’ve made big-time progress today,” Aubrey said.
Knowing the shaky financial condition of those two, I dug into my purse to pay the bill. Neither objected. “We have?”
“Absolutely. The paint proves the killer was there right before the service. All we’ve got to do now is prove that Sissy wasn’t. Which shouldn’t be too hard at all.”
“That’s right,” I said as we slid from the booth, “the mysterious baby girl.”
Having been assigned to scrounge up the Bible and gold paint, Eric was totally in the dark. “Mysterious baby girl?”
Aubrey wrapped her arm around his. She was almost giddy. “I almost peed my pants when the eyebrow woman told us that.”
In the parking lot Aubrey and Eric behaved like a couple of deer in rut, poking and pushing and giggling, squeezing each other’s backsides. I wanted to knock them in the head with my purse. I liked them both. But I did not like them together. Oh, I’m sure the sex was more than Eric could ever have hoped for. And I couldn’t blame him for taking advantage of his good fortune. I’d once done that myself with Dale Marabout. But Aubrey McGinty was way out of Eric’s league. She was worldly and ambitious, and more than a little self-centered. I couldn’t picture her staying in any relationship very long. Certainly never long enough to get married and have kids. Once the sex wore off, Eric’s penchant for losing things and forgetting things would start driving her crazy. She’d start finding fault with his Mountain Dew drinking and the careless way he dressed. Little by little he’d go from love monkey to lapdog to road kill.
And I’d be the one with the shovel scraping him up.
Chapter 11
Monday, May 8
Monday afternoon, at exactly four, Dale Marabout pushed himself away from his desk, stood up, swung his chair once around his body like a giant discus and slammed it into his computer. He yelled out the three words I’d been dreading for some weeks now: “ I. FUCKING. QUIT. ”
