C Corwin - The Cross Kisses Back

Aubrey squinted at me in disbelief. “Nobody drives station wagons anymore. So when you keep seeing a red one slithering up behind you-”

“You don’t think maybe you’re a little paranoid?”

She did not appreciate my skepticism. “In case you’ve forgotten, these are brand-new windows we’re looking out.”

Eric apparently got a good look at the car. “Ford Taurus. Late Nineties.”

Aubrey was encouraged. At least he believed her. “Bubbly shaped, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, “Tauruses are kind of bubbly shaped I guess.”

“So you think the same people who smashed your windows are now following you?” I asked. “Either the pimps or the cops or the Christians?”

If Aubrey was frightened, it wasn’t affecting her ready sarcasm. “A Taurus station wagon rules out the pimps, I think-even if it is a red one.”

“So it’s down to cops or Christians?”

She looked at me. Her cheeks were suddenly pale and her eyes rabbit-like. “Let’s hope it’s cops. Cops I can handle.”

We drove downtown, turning left onto North Bidwell. A block from the Herald-Union parking deck the red Taurus disappeared.

Sunday, May 28

Sunday afternoon I drove to Aubrey’s apartment to help her with Eric’s surprise birthday dinner. I was the one who was surprised. She had made some improvements. The once empty living room now had a huge white love seat with green and yellow-striped pillows. A small black television sat alone on one of those assemble-it-yourself entertainment centers. There was a poster of Van Gogh’s Starry Night on the wall. Her many pairs of shoes, once scattered like bones in the desert, were now piled in a wicker laundry basket by the door. One thing hadn’t changed. Her cardboard boxes marked SHIT FROM COLLEGE and SHIT FROM HOME were still stacked in a pyramid against the wall.

She took my shoulders and pushed me into the kitchen, proudly showing me her new table and chairs. Balloons and loops of crepe paper were Scotch-taped on the ceiling. “Can you believe it,” she said. “We are actually going to sit down and have a home-cooked dinner like official adults.”

“I’ve been an official adult for a long time,” I said. “Where’s your cake mix?”

It was a basic yellow box cake which Aubrey intended to cover with Dream Whip and jelly beans. She also had a box of those candles you can’t blow out. She poured the cake mix into the bowl and I put in the correct measures of water and oil. She cracked the three eggs and I picked out the bits of shell. She read the baking instructions on the box while I beat the batter with a tablespoon. She opened the oven door and I put in the pans. I don’t know which of us was having the better time.

We started on the lasagna. I’d given her a shopping list during the week and she’d dutifully bought everything I said we needed. We worked side by side on the stovetop, me browning the Italian sausage while she boiled the water for the noodles. When I asked for the canned tomatoes, she handed me the canned tomatoes. When I asked for the basil and garlic, she handed me the basil and garlic. When I asked for the ricotta cheese, she asked, “What ricotta cheese?”

“You didn’t get the ricotta cheese?” I cackled like some nasty old grandmother. “How can you make lasagna without ricotta cheese?”

She showed me the shopping list I’d given her: No ricotta cheese.

“Looks like you’re going to the supermarket,” I said.

She was hesitant, almost hostile, as if I was asking her to swim to Sicily for the ricotta cheese. “You’re the one who fucked up,” she said.

“If you think you’re capable of juggling a cake and a half-made lasagna, I’ll go,” I said.

So Aubrey went to the supermarket for the ricotta cheese. Even if she drove like an ambulance driver and immediately found the right aisle at the market, I figured it would take her a half hour. That would give me time to boil the noodles and maybe tidy up the apartment a bit.

She returned with enough ricotta cheese to make six lasagnas.

Tuesday, May 30

Monday was Memorial Day. Aubrey and Eric went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. I stayed home and replaced the tomato plants the rabbits nibbled. Hannawa not only has more evangelists per capita than any city of its size, it also has more rabbits. The fear of humans was bred out of them generations ago. Unfortunately, they’ve never lost their genetic urge to devour anything a human plants.

Tuesday evening I went with Aubrey to see Wayne F. Dillow, the man whose wife had died of cancer after being faith-healed by Buddy Wing. Dillow lived on Summerhill Lane in Elden, a hilly section of town sandwiched between the old Chevrolet plant to the north and the airport to the south. His house was not unlike my own: a boxy ranch with an attached one-car garage. Mine is painted white with dark green shutters. His was painted avocado and had, if you can believe it, pink shutters.

Dillow invited us in the front door and led us straight through the house to the back yard, where a circle of aluminum lawn chairs and a pitcher of lemonade were waiting. It was clear from the get-go that Wayne F. Dillow was a proud and gentle man. He was dressed in a well-starched white shirt and a pair of tan polyester dress pants. His shoes were shined and his thick head of white hair was Brylcreemed and combed. His backyard was mowed short and all the flower beds were neatly mulched. “Everybody want lemonade?” he asked us.

While he poured we engaged in small-talk about his bird houses. There must have been a couple dozen of them, all made of gourds and painted white, hanging from the branches of his lilac bushes like Christmas tree ornaments.

Aubrey got down to business. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you everything at this point,” she began, trying to sip and open her notebook at the same time, “but there seem to be some unresolved issues concerning Buddy Wing’s murder.”

Dillow took a long drink of his lemonade and then wedged the glass between his knees. “Everybody at church is talking about the investigation your paper’s doing. Apparently you have some evidence that Sissy didn’t do it.”

“There’s some evidence that points in that direction,” Aubrey conceded. “But what we’re trying to do now is set the scene.”

“Set the scene?”

“You know-the atmosphere inside the church since Tim Bandicoot was booted out? Are people still riled up? Are there lingering suspicions? Things like that.”

Dillow sprouted a mellow smile. “Guthrie spread the word we weren’t to talk to you. But if you ask me, that just looks like we’re hiding something.”

Aubrey tapped her nose with her pen. “You think anybody is?”

His smile hardened. “I know I’m not.”

Aubrey smiled back, just as resolutely. “You gave the Reverend Wing quite a rough time after your wife died.”

“I was angry and confused. He forgave me.”

“And you forgave him?”

“Nothing to forgive. It was the cancer that killed Dorothea.”

“After she was allegedly healed.”

The word allegedly weakened Dillow’s smile. “Dorothea believed in that sort of thing. And of course the pastor did.”

“But you didn’t?” Aubrey asked.

“Not particularly. But I’ve come to understand that God accepts a lot of leeway as long as you essentially believe the right things.”

Every time I went on an interview with Aubrey that spring and summer I promised myself that I’d keep my mouth shut and let her ask the questions. And every time I broke that promise. “So you don’t believe your wife was hoodwinked by the faith healing?” I asked.

Allegedly weakened his smile. Hoodwinked flattened it. “Hell is filled with people hoodwinked by the miracles of modern medicine. Dorothea, on the other hand, is waiting for me in heaven.”