C Corwin - The Cross Kisses Back

Bandicoot bent over the bookshelves and pressed his forehead against his folded hands, as if praying on the back of a church pew. “You know for sure Sissy was in Mingo Junction?”

“I know for sure.”

He started to cry.

Aubrey only got tougher with him. “It’s funny you didn’t tell the police about Sissy’s possible alibi. A woman you’d been sleeping with, for what, four years? But maybe it was just sex with you. Sex that was getting stale. Maybe you just figured, she confessed, good riddance, that’s the end of that.”

“I did not think that.”

“Maybe you were just afraid that if Sissy was cleared, the police would focus on you again.”

Tim Bandicoot peeked at Aubrey through his folded hands. “I did not kill him.”

Aubrey leaned on the shelves just like him, their shoulders touching, best friends having a heart-to-heart. “Of course you didn’t. It was a Friday night. Family Night. You were having fast food with Annie and your boys. Seeing a Disney movie or something.”

This, of course, is why we’d followed the Bandicoots to Borders-to confront him about Family Night. The eyebrow woman had told Aubrey that, unlike the Heaven Bound Cathedral, Bandicoot’s new church did not hold services on Friday nights. Friday night at the New Epiphany Temple was Family Night. “A time,” he regularly told his flock, “for mommies and daddies and their children to heal the week-day wounds of secular strife, and take the Living Lord out for supper and some G-rated fun.”

“I gather you told the police about Family Night,” Aubrey said.

“They asked me what I was doing that night and I told them.”

“Did they ask you about Sissy?”

“They asked me about a number of people in my congregation.”

“Were they aware of your affair?”

“They were aware.”

“Did they ask if you knew where Sissy was that night?”

He fed a bent knuckle into his quivering mouth and bit down. “I know I should have told them about Sissy’s girl in Mingo.”

“Should have but couldn’t,” Aubrey said without sympathy. “Because that Family Night was different than most-”

His blanched face jerked sideways, the bent knuckle ripping into the side of his mouth like a fishhook.

“-Because that was Father amp; Son Night at the Gund Arena in Cleveland, where a bus load of men and boys from the New Epiphany Temple saw the Cavaliers squeak by the New York Knicks, 107 to 104. Wives stayed home that Friday night, didn’t they? And home alone is not much of an alibi, is it?”

“My Annie did not kill Buddy.” It was the loudest, most tortured whisper I’d ever heard.

Aubrey repeated herself: “Home alone is not much of an alibi.”

Tim spun around, his back digging into the spines of the books. “You are so full of shit,” he growled. He sounded just like that possessed little girl in The Exorcist.

Aubrey smiled. “And you are so full of guilt. You had to choose between betraying your lover and protecting your wife. Assuming she needs protecting, something I’m sure you still don’t know. No wonder you were drawn to that book about Robert E. Lee.”

Wasn’t Aubrey something-on the spur of the moment using that book on Robert E. Lee to drill deep into his tortured soul. Lee, if you remember your Civil War history, was forced to choose between the country he loved and the state he loved. When Buddy Wing was murdered, Tim Bandicoot had to choose between his wife and his mistress. Lee chose Virginia. Bandicoot chose Annie. Or so it seemed.

“What do you want me to do now?” Bandicoot asked. His eyes were red. His cheeks were shiny. He was shaking.

Aubrey shrugged her shoulders like some old Italian bocce ball player. “I’m going to see to it that Sissy goes free. What you do is up to you. Thanks for the interview, reverend.”

Aubrey walked away and Eric and I followed. I figured we’d be going to a restaurant somewhere, to assess what we’d learned, like we always did. Instead she led Eric and me to the coffee shop right there in the bookstore. While we were standing in line to order, we saw Tim Bandicoot herding his family across the parking lot. “A Family Night to remember,” Aubrey said.

We spent a good two hours there, sipping our cappuccinos and munching on biscotti. Eric kept going for computer magazines to read while Aubrey and I listened to the folk singer. He was so loud we could only discuss the story between songs.

“So, what do we make of Tim Bandicoot now?” I asked.

Aubrey was propping up her chin with her knuckles. Her eyes were half closed. I couldn’t tell if she was bored by the music, or enjoying it. “He wasn’t exactly the same cool and cocky cucumber who filled us full of Krispy Kremes, was he?”

The singer launched into a Beatles’ medley: Eleanor Rigby followed by Blackbird followed by Fool on the Hill and Hey Jude. It went on forever. I was one of the three or four who applauded. “I gather you weren’t moved by his tears.”

“When people cry for the right reasons I’m moved.”

I knew what Aubrey meant. It wasn’t remorse that made Tim Bandicoot cry and shake like that. It was fear. “You really think he’s protecting his wife?”

She answered right through On a Jet Plane: “A lot of these women-behind-the-throne types are real ballbusters. Let’s say Annie Bandicoot didn’t give a damn that her Timmy boy was screwing Sissy The Bimbo-as long as he wasn’t screwing her-but she was worried about his congregation finding out. Worried about Buddy Wing and their enemies back at the Heaven Bound Cathedral finding out. Maybe she was afraid Buddy already knew.”

My head was swimming. Not from Aubrey’s analysis. From the cappuccino. I’d been sipping my Darjeeling tea all day and the last thing I needed at nine o’clock at night was another strong dose of caffeine. “So she poisoned Buddy Wing and framed Sissy to protect her husband’s ministry? You think that’s possible?”

Aubrey lifted her cup with both hands and took a slow, thoughtful sip. “We’ve got to learn more about this Annie Bandicoot, don’t you think?”

“Well-I do know a little bit already.”

Aubrey squinted at me over her cup. “Been busy with your old files, Maddy?”

I made a joke of it but I could see she was not happy with my snooping on my own. “Sometimes they call out to me at night.”

“And what did they have to say about our little Annie?”

I told her what I’d found: that she’d grown up in the Heaven Bound Cathedral; that she’d won the citywide spelling bee when she was in the eighth grade and had been in the National Honor Society in high school; that she’d attended Hemphill College, dropping out in her second year to marry the church’s youth pastor, Tim Bandicoot. “Her name and picture have been in the paper a hundred times over the years,” I said, “serving on committees, hosting ecumenical lunches, taking food and second-hand clothes to poor churches in Appalachia, that sort of thing.”

Aubrey was not impressed. “Nothing important then?”

“Deciding what’s important is your job, dear.”

When we left Borders it was already dark. Eric hadn’t bought any of the magazines he’d read. I couldn’t stop humming Eleanor Rigby. About a mile from downtown Hannawa Aubrey started twisting her rear-view mirror. “There’s that damned red station wagon,” she said.

“Red station wagon?” I asked.

“Don’t freak,” she said, “but some dickwad’s been following me.”

Eric and I twisted and looked out the back window. There was indeed a red car of some description behind us, but it was too far back and the night traffic was too heavy for us to tell if it was a station wagon, let alone following us. “How do you know it’s the same one all the time?” I asked.