C Corwin - The Cross Kisses Back

I started making my own notes on the Buddy Wing murder: Was Sissy James really innocent? Or had we just talked ourselves into believing she was? And what about all that evidence right there in Sissy’s garbage can? Yes, somebody who knew Sissy inside and out could have framed her. But Sissy was also troubled enough to frame herself, either intentionally or through her own stupidity.

I scribbled all sorts of crazy things in that notebook that night. I was lonely and frightened and just plain unsure.

Monday, April 24

“Well, did you make it home yesterday?” I asked Aubrey. I was so glad it was Monday and that horrible Easter weekend behind me.

She leaned across the counter and answered “Yeah,” as if she was angry with herself.

“Everybody has to go home once in awhile,” I said.

She asked, “And why is that?”

Friday, April 28

I hardly saw Aubrey that week. She was busy doing interviews for her series on the ghastly lives of the city’s street prostitutes. The idea for the series, of course, had grown out of her story on the body they found on Morrow Street. Aubrey wanted to explore the lives of these women while they were still alive. She had no trouble finding women still working the streets, and no trouble getting them to talk. What she wanted, and couldn’t find, was someone who’d escaped and built a new life for herself, on a better street.

Friday morning she asked if I wanted to go back to the Heaven Bound Cathedral with her, that evening, to see how easy it would be for a stranger to sneak in and kill someone.

I wasn’t crazy about the idea. But I went along.

The televised Friday night services continued after Buddy Wing’s murder without missing a week. For a while, in fact, more people attended, and more people watched, than had before Buddy gave his Bible that fateful kiss. In the story we ran on that ironic fact, Guthrie Gates said it was a tribute to just how much people loved their martyred pastor. If you ask me, it was the same morbid fascination that sends hundreds of thousands of teary-eyed tourists to Graceland year after year, even though they didn’t give a rip about Elvis when he was alive. Anyway, attendance and viewership dropped off after a couple of months.

We left the paper at six and drove in my Shadow to Aubrey’s apartment. It was my first visit and I was appalled. Her living room furniture consisted of an old kitchen chair with a ripped vinyl cushion, a big yellow ceramic lamp sitting on a folding TV table, and a pyramid of cardboard boxes.

Some of the boxes were marked SHIT FROM COLLEGE and some were marked SHIT FROM HOME. Coats and sweaters and newspapers and magazines and God only knows how many shoes were strewn everywhere. “How can someone own nothing and still live in a hovel?” I asked.

Aubrey was in her bedroom changing into a dress so she could fit in with the Christians. “I’m a young and carefree writer with a brilliant mind,” she called out. “So leave me the hell alone.”

When she came out in a dress I couldn’t stop laughing. It was not a bad looking dress-a loose-fitting, below-the-knee A-line with a sailor collar and pleats-but I’d never seen her in anything but jeans or chinos and she looked about as comfortable as my brother the dairy farmer looks in his polyester wedding-and-funeral suit from Sears. “All you need is a white purse and pearls,” I managed to get out.

Aubrey was laughing harder than me. “I just don’t want to look out of place in church.”

I opened my arms and turned in a circle. “What about me looking out of place?”

She studied me. I was wearing my usual work uniform: loose-fitting slacks, even looser sweater, penny loafers, and a cheap necklace. “You look fine,” she said.

I knew what she meant by fine: women my age never look out of place because we never look in place. We are as unintrusive as beige walls.

Aubrey’s plan was to sneak into the Heaven Bound Cathedral without sneaking. “I think it’s safe to assume that the killer knew his way around the church,” she said as we drove toward South Ridge. “So we’re going to act like we belong there. We’re going to chat and smile and be friendly. You think you can pull that off?”

The service didn’t start until eight, but Aubrey wanted to arrive at seven, to be there during the final hectic hour before the cameras clicked on and the Canaries of Calvary started singing and the Sweet Ascension Dancers started dancing. When we arrived, there were already lines of cars waiting to pull into the parking lot. The big-eared security guard we encountered on our first visit was standing beneath the cement angels, directing cars toward empty slots. We smiled and waved as we drove past him. “You suppose he was out here directing traffic the night Buddy Wing was killed?” Aubrey wondered.

We parked and joined the funnel of people heading for the cathedral doors. Aubrey greeted everyone who looked at us with a happy “Good evening.”

Inside we followed the flow toward the chapel. Everywhere in the hallway choir members and dancers were mingling with their friends and families. Everyone was so happy. I felt just lousy, like a terrorist with sticks of dynamite taped to her ribs. I wanted to spin around and get the hell out of there. But Aubrey had me by the arm, squeezing a smile out me every time somebody smiled at us.

When we got to the chapel we kept going, up the hallway toward the offices. As we clicked along we looked at each other and started giggling guiltily, like schoolgirls sneaking out of gym class. The hallway was filled with people, all serenely buzzing about, arms full of hymnals or collection baskets or electric guitars.

On our earlier visit the outer door to the offices had been locked. I remembered how the security guard had knocked for us and I remembered that Guthrie Gates had unlocked the door before letting us in. Now this door was wide open and people were freely flowing in and out. We went in.

It was noisy and busy inside. Someone was whistling a hymn. Someone was laughing like Santa Claus. Just a few yards from Buddy Wing’s office Aubrey stopped at a water fountain and bent low to drink.

“No security and no suspicion,” I whispered. “Anybody could have walked right in.”

Aubrey whispered back, “Any stranger at least. But what if it weren’t a stranger? What if it were Sissy or Tim Bandicoot? Could they have just walked in like this? I don’t think so.”

I took a drink myself. The water was warm. “Sissy told the police she just walked in and went about her business.”

Said Aubrey, “More proof she’s lying.”

We walked on to Buddy Wing’s office. The open door was still blocked with the folding chair and arrangement of plastic roses. Dale Marabout’s story on the murder said that Wing used to keep his old family Bible on his desk, always within his reach. Now there was a framed, eight-by-ten photograph of the martyred pastor in the center of the desk, facing toward the door, smiling eyes fixed right on us.

“Let’s think about what we already know,” Aubrey whispered as we stood in the doorway like a pair of humble pilgrims visiting a holy shrine. “We know Buddy Wing followed the same routine every week. We know that thirty minutes before every service he left his office and went to the make-up room, and after being painted up to look twenty years younger, went to another room to pray with the church elders. Then, when it was showtime, he went to the back of the chapel and danced his way down the aisle.”

“We know all that?” I asked.

“Yes. And we can surmise that the killer knew all that, too.”

Just down the hall from Wing’s office we found a roomful of middle-aged men in suits drinking coffee and eating pastries. “I’d say those are the elders,” Aubrey whispered. We kept walking. In the next room we saw Guthrie Gates half reclined in a beauty shop chair. He was getting his hair sprayed stiff by a woman with painted-on eyebrows. We hurried by. The hallway turned right, then left, then right again. We were near the stage. We could hear the orchestra warming up. We found the main control room and peeked inside. People with headsets and clipboards were buzzing about like honey bees. “What a fancy operation,” I whispered. “You’d think they were putting on the Academy Awards.”