“I can’t believe how easy that was,” Aubrey said, putting one little circle of candy in her mouth at a time.
“Buying snacks is not a difficult thing,” Eric answered. He was putting one handful of Doritos in his mouth at a time.
“I mean how easily Jeanie opened up to us,” Aubrey said, playfully throwing an M amp;M at him. “It makes you wonder who’d be in prison if the detectives who drove down here hadn’t been so eager to get back to Hannawa.”
Eric found the M amp;M in the folds of his shirt and ate it. “What blows me away,” he said, “is that Jeanie lied for Sissy in the first place. Usually relatives lie to keep somebody out of jail.”
“That is odd,” I agreed.
Aubrey threw another M amp;M at Eric. “What’s odd? She owed Sissy that lie.”
Eric retaliated for that second M amp;M by smashing a Dorito on Aubrey’s head. There is nothing worse in the world than young people in heat. “Owed her?” I asked.
Aubrey picked the orange bits from her hair. “You heard what she said-her father stopped molesting her when Sissy moved in. She didn’t suffer because Sissy did. How’d you like to carry guilt like that around?”
Eric wasn’t buying Aubrey’s analysis. “She’s already raising the kid for her. How much guilt could she have?”
Aubrey threw an entire handful of M amp;Ms at him. “Quit having opinions about things you don’t understand!”
Aubrey hadn’t just thrown those M amp;M’s. She’d thrown them hard. Her rebuke hadn’t been playful. It had been loud and angry. In the mirror I watched Eric slide back into the seat and stuff his cheeks with Doritos, already accustomed to her mood swings after only a few days of love. “If Jeanie lied to the police because she owed Sissy that lie,” I asked, “why did she tell us the truth?”
Aubrey pressed her face against the side window. She stared at the passing sky. “She owed her the truth, too.”
We drove along in silence, the playfulness wrenched right out of us from the sadness we found in Mingo Junction. “At least now we know Sissy didn’t kill Buddy Wing,” Aubrey said after several miles. “I can go to Tinker and start working on the story above ground.”
My fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “Tinker already knows about your investigation.”
Aubrey wasn’t at all pleased to hear that. “Who told him? Marabout?”
I could feel my head shrinking down my sweater like a turtle. “I told him.”
She said, “Shit, Maddy!” But it sounded like “ Et tu Brute? ”
I confessed in full: “Yesterday I went to see Bob Averill about Dale’s quitting-”
“Averill knows too?”
“He knows, too. I was explaining why Dale went off his rocker.”
“That he’s jealous of me? Good God.”
“That is not why he quit.”
Aubrey was an inch from screaming. “That’s exactly why he quit.”
“No it’s not, Aubrey. He’s simply afraid you’re biting off more than you can chew.”
Aubrey put an M amp;M on her outstretched tongue and flicked it in like a lizard devouring a fly. “That sounds like jealousy to me.”
Eric laughed at her. “You are so full of yourself.”
“I am not full of myself.”
“Of course you’re full of yourself,” I said. “If you weren’t you couldn’t be doing what you’re doing. There’s nothing wrong with being-confident.”
Aubrey surrendered. “So if Dale wasn’t driven mad by my brilliant reporting, then what was it?”
I wasn’t about to share my mid-life crisis theory with her. No one her age could possible understand an excuse like that. So I put it in journalistic terms. “You work all those years as a reporter convinced that the editors on the copy desk are a bunch of drooling old doofuses. Then suddenly you’re on the desk. You’re the drooling old doofus. You panic. You embarrass yourself. Anyway, that’s sort of what I was telling Tinker and Bob when I let the cat out of the bag about the Buddy Wing thing.”
I thought I was getting through to her but I was wrong. “This is the most important story of my life,” she said. “I can’t afford this relentless busybody crap of yours.”
She glared at me and I glared back. The car drifted and I almost clipped a mailbox. “You should have told them yourself,” I said.
Aubrey swung her head around and waited for Eric to defend her. But Eric didn’t defend her. He offered her his last Dorito. “Okay,” she said, “maybe I should have said something. But I wanted to be sure about Sissy first. I didn’t want them to think I was some chicky-poo air-head off on some wild goose chase.”
“Believe me,” I said, “nobody thinks that.”
Chapter 12
Monday, May 15
Aubrey was summoned to Bob Averill’s office as soon as she got to work Monday. She was up there for two hours. When she got off the elevator, she gave me a thumbs up. The paper was going to let her proceed with the story.
I wasn’t a bit surprised. Proving that Sissy James didn’t kill Buddy Wing would be a great story. It would be a nasty, tantalizing drama that would keep the city spellbound for months. Murder. Sex. Police ineptitude. Religious hypocrisy. It would be Hannawa’s O.J. story.
Aubrey and I sneaked out of the newsroom at four and walked down the hill to Ike’s Coffee Shop. Ike’s was the only remaining tenant in the eight-story Longacre Building, a beautiful old art nouveau palace that once housed many of the city’s most prestigious doctors and lawyers. The faded sign in the window of the empty storefront next to Ike’s had been announcing a major renovation of the building for at least a decade.
But Ike hangs on, selling lattes to-go to harried white office workers and mugs of regular coffee to the retired and under-employed blacks who like to linger at the little round tables. I buy my tea bags there, in bulk, not because I get a better price, but because Ike needs the money, and, well, I just like his company.
Ike was at the sink washing mugs when we came in. He sang out: “Morgue Mama!”
I wriggled my fingers at him. “Tea and a regular coffee, Ike.” We sat at the empty table by the cigarette machine.
Aubrey was surprised. “You let him call you that?”
“Ike has earned the right,” I said.
“I’m jealous-how has he done that?”
“Driving me home a hundred winter nights when my car wouldn’t start. Always making sure I’m having a good day.”
Ike brought our mugs. “Morgue Mama ever tell you why everybody calls me Ike?” he asked Aubrey. “Even though my real name is Leonard?”
Aubrey gave me a playful glower. “I’m afraid Mrs. Sprowls keeps lots of secrets from me.”
“Well-It’s because I was the only black man in Hannawa anybody knew who voted for Dwight D. Eisenhower.”
Aubrey looked at me for help.
“You’ll have to forgive Miss McGinty,” I said to Ike. “She is very, very young.” I leaned toward Aubrey and whispered. “Ike was Eisenhower’s nickname.”
Ike laughed and went back to his dirty mugs. Aubrey and I started making plans for her now-official investigation of the Buddy Wing murder.
“You don’t look too happy about Bob and Tinker giving you the go-ahead,” I said.
“Every word I write they’ll be perched on my shoulders like a couple of big-nosed parrots. Can’t say that! Awrrrak! Can’t say that! ”
