one who played the teapot. Anyway, Guthrie Gates is a puppy dog. No way in the world he killed Buddy Wing.”
“You just said he did.”
“No no, Maddy. I only asked if you thought it was possible-assuming that Sissy didn’t do it.”
Now I was the one without a clue. “You don’t think she’s innocent?”
Aubrey nibbled and nodded and shrugged at the same time. “I think she’s innocent. But even if I can prove it-and get her to admit it-I’m not sure I want to investigate any further than that.”
“You wheedled Gates into giving you a church directory. That’s not for our files. That’s to run background checks on the membership.”
“Maybe it’s for that.” She filled her cheeks with pretzel. “God, Maddy, I’ve so much to do. I’ve got to learn the police beat. That’s a big department. Rush City had eleven goofy cops. And Chief Polceznec is gearing up for this major internal reorganization. And as soon as spring gets here people will start killing each other left and right. The paper took a big risk on me. I’ve got to do well. And I’ve got so much personal shit to do. I don’t own anything except a futon and an old Radio Shack computer. I’m an adult now. I need a sofa. Table and chairs. A hutch full of fancy plates I never use. A real bed. Somebody to put in it.”
There was something about sitting in that food court full of twitchy kids that made me feel young and wicked myself. “That last part ought to be easy enough.”
Aubrey groaned and rested her forehead on the cold Formica tabletop. “Don’t even go there,” she said.
I suddenly felt hot and silly. I’d gone too far. She was one of the paper’s reporters, the enemy, an overly ambitious kid I didn’t know and didn’t particularly want to know. I quickly got back on safe ground-the murder of Buddy Wing. “So it’s down to three then? Sissy James, Tim Bandicoot, or Guthrie Gates?”
Aubrey had finished her pretzel. Now she was harvesting the salt crystals on her paper plate, dabbing them up with her index finger, licking them off. “If only it were three.”
“Good gravy-who else?”
“Who benefits from a dead TV evangelist, Maddy?”
“Well-me for one. But I guess you mean specifically.”
She giggled deep in her throat, the way Beelzebub might. “From what I’ve read, some of these TV preachers have no problem living as kingly on earth as they expect to live in heaven.”
“You think maybe Buddy Wing was killed for his money? From what I gather, he lived fairly modestly.”
We shook off our trays in a trash can shaped like an open-mouthed frog. “My first week at The Gazette I did a story on a school custodian who’d lived his entire life in a ramshackle house without running water or electricity,” Aubrey said. “He left a half-million dollars to the local ornithological society.”
“You’re making that up.”
“Have you ever been to the new Wyssock County Wild Bird Museum, Maddy? It’s really something.”
I still didn’t know if she was joking or not. But I got her point. “So Buddy Wing might have left somebody a bundle?”
The automatic doors deposited us in the parking lot. “Maybe, maybe not,” she said. “We do know from the morgue files that his wife died of cancer, and that they didn’t have any kids. But certainly he had other family. Brothers. Sisters. Greedy nephews and nieces. Who knows how much money he had? Who knows who has it now? I’ll have to make nice with the gnomes at probate court.”
Chapter 4
Monday, March 13
Nine-o’clock Monday morning Police Chief Polceznec announced his department’s reorganization plan. It set off the biggest political row of the winter. The police union filed suit at noon, claiming too many white officers were overlooked for promotions. An hour later the NAACP filed its suit, saying exactly the opposite was true. The local chapter of NOW held a press conference at two and demanded that at least one of the new district commanders be a woman. City Council called a hurry-up hearing at four. Some members of Council chastised Mayor Finn for not exercising enough control over the police department. Some charged that he exercised too much. Aubrey didn’t even have time to wave Hi across the newsroom. “The poor lamb’s working her pants off,” I whispered to Eric Chen.
“If only it were true,” he answered.
The police reorganization story dominated the news all week. Aubrey covered the police department angle while Sylvia Berdache covered the bickering and back-biting at City Hall. A couple of junior metro reporters were sent into the neighborhoods to gauge public reaction. On Thursday the paper ran a rare front-page editorial chastising all parties concerned for their selfish behavior. “The first thing Council should do,” we sarcastically wrote, “is change the city’s motto from Building A Beautiful Life to What’s In It For Me?”
Friday morning I found a Post-it on my screen:
Super news. Speckley’s for breakfast?
A.
Saturday, March 18
Aubrey was already in a booth by the door when I got there. She was wearing the hood from Old Navy. Her hair was a mess and her eyes looked like yesterday’s bagels. It was ten-thirty and Speckley’s Saturday breakfast crowd was already thinning out. French toast was enough for me. Aubrey got the Big Meri: scrambled eggs, bacon, home fries, two buttermilk pancakes. “You’re going to explode,” I said.
“I’m going to will the calories to my breasts,” she said.
“Be thankful they’re small. Look where my big beautiful tits ended up.”
“They still look pretty perky.”
“The wonderful world of wire,” I answered.
We laughed and then she told me the great news: She’d talked the police department’s PR officer into giving her copies of their Sissy James videotapes-the interrogation, arraignment, even stuff from the crime scene. “It’s all public stuff, of course,” she said, “but they can be real tight-ass about it if they want. You’ve got to employ just the right psychological crowbar.”
I wanted so much to keep my distance from her. But how can you not like someone that earthy? “And what crowbar did you employ?”
Aubrey’s eyes were following our waitress as she much-too-slowly made her way up our aisle with the coffee pot. “The grateful-dumb-girl -way-over-her-head-that-someday-just-might-sleep-with-you crowbar.”
“I’ve heard of that crowbar,” I said.
She explained the police-beat facts of life to me: “Once the cops get sick of your reporting they’ll shut you out all they can. But I’m new, so they’re in their buddy-buddy seduction mode, trying to make me like them, so later when the poop hits the propeller, I’ll dutifully report it’s milk chocolate. Two months from now it might take a court order to get those tapes. You have a VCR at home?”
“Of course I have a VCR at home-not that I know how it works.”
And so we drove to my bungalow on Brambriar Court. She in her old Escort. Me in my old Dodge Shadow.
I call my house a bungalow because it makes living in a shoebox sound cozy. There’s hardly enough counter space in the kitchen to make a sandwich and the closet in my bedroom only holds one season at a time. I bang my hip on the bathroom sink every time I get out of the shower. I’ve got bruises so old you’d think they were birthmarks.
“It’s really cute,” Aubrey said.
What could I do but give her the grand tour? “This is my bedroom-”
“I love that old iron bed.”
“-and this is the guest room. As you can see it’s sort of a catch-all-”
“Where’d you get that dresser? It’s fantastic.”
