C Corwin - The Cross Kisses Back

The temple was housed in an old dime store, a single-story orange brick building sandwiched between two used car lots. The fat red letters that once spelled W-O-O-L-W-O-R-T-H’S across the front of the building were long gone, but you could still see their dirty silhouettes.

Aubrey found a parking spot in front just big enough for her Escort. We checked twice to make sure the doors were locked and went inside. What a difference from the Heaven Bound Cathedral. The New Day Epiphany Temple was a single room. The floor was covered with peel-and-stick tile. The walls were covered with cheap maple paneling. The lights were on but nobody was home.

We stood by the door for a few minutes, wondering what to do, then walked down the rows of metal folding chairs to the stage at the back of the room. The stage was carpeted with red shag. There was a modest pulpit up front and a row of ugly, throne-like chairs across the back. The monstrous cross on the wall was wrapped with hundreds of miniature Christmas lights. “You suppose they’re the twinkly kind?” Aubrey asked.

“Of course they’re the twinkly kind,” I said. We each chose a throne and sat.

Tim Bandicoot arrived maybe five minutes later. He came through the front door, three tall Styrofoam cups of coffee balanced on a box of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. “Comfortable, aren’t they?” he called out when he spotted us in those ugly chairs.

I felt like a royal fool and started to get up. But Bandicoot motioned for me to stay put. He came up the center aisle with the coffee and doughnuts, snaring a pair of folding chairs as he went. He set the coffee and doughnuts on one and himself on the other. And so our visit began, Aubrey and I on our thrones, Tim Bandicoot on a folding chair, debating between creme sticks, glazed crullers, and cinnamon twists.

I don’t know what Aubrey expected, but I expected Tim Bandicoot to be some kind of icky egomaniac. I figured that, more than likely, he was the real murderer. I figured that after he’d gotten all the sex and mindless adoration he wanted from Sissy James, he set her up to save his own neck. And now here we were having doughnuts and coffee with this nice, down-to-earth young man. Maybe under that pleasant facade he really was icky and egomaniacal, and maybe even the real murderer, but I felt surprisingly comfortable that morning, sipping coffee, nibbling on a cruller, looking into those chocolate-brown cow eyes of his.

When we’d gone to see Guthrie Gates, Aubrey got right to the skinny: Did he think Sissy did it? This morning was different. She let Tim Bandicoot go on and on about his growing congregation and his plans to build a new temple right there in that rundown neighborhood, with a day care center, soup kitchen, and food bank for the city’s poor. He also talked about building his electronic church. Currently his services were only broadcast on the local community-access channel, but he was determined to be on a regular local cable channel within a year and on cable nationally within five years. He had plans for saving millions of souls in Africa and China and the former Soviet Republics.

By the time Aubrey asked him about Sissy James, we’d eaten half the doughnuts in the box. “Did you really love Sissy?” she asked. “Do you still love her?”

He was clearly embarrassed. And clearly nervous. “I did not love her the way I love my wife,” he said. “I let my flesh take over.” He searched the box for the plainest doughnut he could find. “I’ve already admitted all this to my wife.”

“Has she forgiven you?” asked Aubrey.

“I did not ask her for forgiveness. I want her to be disappointed in me for the rest of my life. I’m weak. I’m a sinner.”

Aubrey took a doughnut oozing raspberry. “And your congregation? Do they know how weak and sinful you are?”

“A few. I suppose they all will after you’re done with me.”

Tim Bandicoot clearly was trying to manipulate Aubrey-make her feel guilty if he could manage it, at least a little sympathetic if he couldn’t-but Aubrey wasn’t falling into that trap. “We went to see Sissy at Marysville,” she said.

“I heard.”

Aubrey had her doughnut clenched in her teeth while she dug in her purse for her notebook. “I get the impression Sissy loves both you and the Lord about the same.”

When she couldn’t find a pen, Bandicoot gave her the Bic from his shirt pocket. “I hope that isn’t the case,” he said.

What a nifty little Kabuki dance that was. By pulling out her notebook at that very touchy moment, Aubrey was openly challenging his rectitude. She was telling him that the questions were going to get really tough now, and that from now on everything would be on the record, that anything he said would be judged in the court of public opinion, and maybe even a court of law. And Bandicoot, by handing her his Bic the way he did? Well, you didn’t have to be a theologian to interpret a Jesus-like act like that.

“There are those who don’t think Sissy did it,” Aubrey said.

Bandicoot answered slowly, watching her scribble his quotes as he talked. “There are those who think she didn’t, those who think she did. There are those who think I put her up to it. There are those who think I did it myself, and framed her. There are those who think somebody else did it.”

Aubrey tapped the Bic on her nose. “Who do you think did it? There was a lot of physical evidence supporting Sissy’s confession.”

“I don’t want to believe she did it. But I don’t know.”

“How about somebody like Guthrie Gates?”

“I absolutely do not think Guthrie did it. He loved Buddy too much.”

“Interesting. You’re absolutely sure your rival didn’t kill Buddy, but not so sure about the woman you were screwing?”

If Tim Bandicoot was going to pop his cork and beat us to death with a folding chair, that was the question that would do it. He just smiled sadly. “Sissy has a lot of problems. I’m sure you know all about that stuff.”

Aubrey nodded as sadly as Bandicoot smiled. “How about you? Did you love Buddy too much to kill him?”

“I did love him. I just didn’t agree with some of his-”

He couldn’t find the right word. Aubrey could: “Theatrics?”

“I wouldn’t call them theatrics. He truly believed in those things. I didn’t.”

“You’re putting a pretty mild spin on it, aren’t you? Your break with the Heaven Bound Cathedral was pretty nasty. And very public.”

Bandicoot took several slow sips of coffee. His chocolate eyes, for the first time, focused squarely on Aubrey’s blue eyes. “It was your paper that made it very public. But I could have handled it better. I caused a lot of pain.”

Aubrey now turned to the murder itself, wondering how someone could have moved through the Heaven Bound Cathedral unnoticed, filling Buddy Wing’s water pitcher with poisoned water, painting a poisonous cross on his old family Bible. “Sissy told police she pulled her coat collar up around her ears and walked right in. Did her dirty business and walked right out. Given what you know about the Heaven Bound Cathedral, do you think that’s possible?”

Bandicoot shrugged. “I suppose anything’s possible.”

“The police talked to a lot of people who were there that night. Nobody saw her.”

“I’ve read that.”

“But that doesn’t prove she wasn’t there.”

“I guess not.”

“Nor does her saying she was there prove that she was.”

“I guess that’s right.”

“Now let me ask you this,” Aubrey said. “Could anybody else from your flock-including yourself-have walked around the cathedral without wearing a disguise?”

“No more than Satan could have.”

“How about with a disguise?”

“Satan maybe. I doubt anyone else.”