know-so I, and we, and everybody who cares about you, can help you.”
Well, his sentence structure was as awkward as a toad in a basket of apples, but it was a start.
“I killed him,” Sissy said.
She might as well have said, “I am a Greyhound bus.” That’s how believable it was.
“I do not need protecting,” Tim answered.
Aubrey closed her notebook and fed her ballpoint through the top spiral. She laid it next to her on the sofa cushion. She leaned forward. “I bet you were really confused when the police showed up at your house. It was only six o’clock. You were getting ready for work. Like everybody else in Hannawa, you knew Buddy Wing was dead. You’d read the newspaper stories and knew exactly how and when he died. While Detective Grant was questioning you in the kitchen, other cops were searching your property. You told the detective you didn’t know anything. Then they found all that stuff in your garbage. You knew instantly somebody wanted you to take the blame. But who? Tim Bandicoot? Your spiritual leader? Your lover? You knew Friday night was Family Night at the temple. You knew Tim always did something with his family. You knew that particular Friday night he was supposed to take his sons to the basketball game in Cleveland. But did he? Detective Grant started pressing you to confess.”
Sissy continued her Greyhound bus defense. “I was not covering up for Tim or anybody else-I don’t see why everybody has such a hard time understanding that.”
“Because,” said Aubrey, “you were still in Mingo Junction that Friday night. You were there the entire weekend. With your cousin Jeanie and her daughters-and your daughter Rosy.”
Sissy was stunned. A secret more important than her life had been told. Her eyes blamed Tim.
“We learned it on our own,” I heard myself say.
Sissy’s fingers dug into the varnish on the chair arms. She began to pant, as if giving birth to Rosy all over again. “It was not Tim’s baby.”
Aubrey left the sofa and kneeled in front of Sissy. “We are not interested in the father of your child, or who you thought you were covering up for. We just want to hear from you that you didn’t do it.”
The growl of an unexorcised demon escaped from Sissy’s quivering lips. “Just so you can get a good story.”
“Yes, so I can get a good story,” Aubrey admitted. “A story that will get you out of here. The real world’s a mean place, Sissy, as you discovered a long time ago. It’s mean with selfish people covering up their mistakes and saving their asses. Prosecutors don’t reopen cases without public pressure. Judges get re-elected by putting people in prison, by not letting them out. Everybody’s eyes are fixed on their own precious futures. Nobody looks back until they’re forced to look back. And that’s what we’re going to make them do now. We’re going to force them to look back. Force them to free you and find who really killed Buddy Wing.”
Sissy dried her eyes with her ball of tissue. She sat up straight and put her knees together and rested her folded hands on top of them. Aubrey stretched out her arm and motioned impatiently for her pen and notebook. I gave them to her.
“Tell the truth,” Tim said softly.
Said Sissy James: “I did not put poison on Pastor Wing’s Bible, or in his water pitcher. I was in Mingo Junction, Ohio, on that Friday night, visiting my cousin and my daughter.”
It was the confession Aubrey wanted. But Aubrey wanted more. “Did you confess thinking that Tim might have been the killer?”
Sissy checked Tim’s face for permission. “All I knew was that somebody wanted me to take responsibility for what happened.”
Aubrey still wanted more. “You’re saying you still don’t know who that somebody is?”
I popped up like a piece of burnt toast. “That’s not our job, Aubrey.”
Aubrey twisted toward me. The unexorcised demon was now residing in her.
“We’ve got all we need for now,” I said.
Aubrey smiled, grimly. She un-clicked her pen and flipped her notebook closed. She stood up. “Mrs. Sprowls is right. We have all we need for now.”
Tim Bandicoot stepped across the coffee table and pulled Sissy to her feet. He kissed her forehead. “I’ll get you a good lawyer. We will make this thing all right.”
Our meeting with Sissy James did not last much longer than that. Tim led us in prayer again and Sissy meekly begged Aubrey not to report that Rosy was her daughter. Aubrey promised that she would not report it, unless others reported it first. We drove back to Hannawa.
Was I surprised that Aubrey made that promise? No, I was not.
Aubrey and Sissy shared a common past, sexual abuse. They were two young women seeking safety and acceptance, and if possible, some kind of love. Of course Aubrey would make that promise.
That evening at Ike’s when we discussed it, Aubrey explained her promise differently: “Sissy having a daughter by some john is terrific stuff. But it’s worth sacrificing, for now. This little series isn’t going to be the end of it. There’ll be lots of follow-up stories. I’m going to need Sissy’s gratitude.”
Chapter 19
Sunday, July 9
I did not want to have lunch with Dale and Sharon Marabout. And I’m sure Dale wasn’t crazy about the idea either. But Sharon would not let it go. She wanted to thank me in person for helping her hubby get that freelance job.
“It’ll be fun,” she kept assuring Dale.
“It won’t be as bad as you think,” Dale kept assuring me.
I’d successfully put them off for weeks. But now with the whole Buddy Wing thing only a few days from exploding all over the front page, I knew it would be best to put the lunch behind me.
Right after Meet the Press, I did a little grocery shopping and then drove to Speckley’s. Dale and Sharon were waiting outside by the door. They smiled simultaneously and gave me a his-and-hers finger wiggle. I wiggled my fingers back. I was dreading this.
Sharon was short and on the cusp of plumpness. Plumpness is not a good thing when you’re in your twenties trying to fit into the latest snare-a-man styles. But when you’re in your forties, as Sharon Marabout was now, it serves you well. It smoothes out your wrinkles and gives you a sensuousness that skinny women your age would die for. “Sharon, so good to see you again,” I said.
“Maddy,” she said, “we should do this more often.”
In the twenty-two years since I walked in on them naked on the apartment floor, I don’t think I’ve seen Sharon a half-dozen times. Yet she always treats me like a close friend of the family, sending me Christmas cards and inviting me to important family gatherings. I never send them a card and I never go to their gatherings. Sharon is a wonderful woman and a good match for Dale. They have great kids. I just wish she’d stop treating me like Dale’s favorite aunt. I was his lover, for Pete’s sake! For five years! Surely she realized that everything he taught her about sex I’d taught him.
“Yes, we should do this more often,” I said, pretending to be as nice as she really was. “We really, really should.”
Speckley’s was packed. The best we could do was a table in the adjoining banquet room. As soon as we were in our chairs Sharon giddily announced she was getting the meat loaf sandwich and au gratin potatoes. Apparently Dale didn’t bring her to Speckley’s very often. It was, after all, our place. When the waitress came we all ordered the meat loaf and potatoes.
After our iced teas came, Sharon apparently gave Dale one of those imperceptible wife-signals, because he immediately launched into a gooey expression of gratitude no man would give on his own: “We just wanted to show our appreciation for helping me in my time of need,” he said. “It was really lovely.”
Time of need? Really lovely? I knew who’d come up with those lines.
