C Corwin - The Cross Kisses Back

Aubrey scribbled down his quote-it was a fantastic quote-then jumped in to rescue both me and the interview. “After your wife’s death you harassed Reverend Wing for quite a long time. So much so that he finally had you arrested.”

Dillow’s smile returned. “Believe me, I was mad enough to murder him. But God jumped in and wrestled me away from the devil.”

Another good quote. “And you went back to church?” Aubrey asked as she scribbled.

A woeful laugh wiggled through Dillow’s puckered lips as he sucked on his lemonade. “It struck me one night that I missed my church almost as much as I missed my Dorothea. I cried and prayed for hours and the very next night went to services. Everybody knew what I’d done-breaking into his house and all that-and when I walked in people just divided like the Red Sea. The reverend spotted me during his sermon. He jumped off the stage and came right up the aisle and hugged me and kissed me on the forehead. ‘Will you look who’s here tonight?’ he shouted, just as happy as he could be. ‘Will you look who’s here?’” Dillow pressed his perspiring lemonade glass against his forehead. “So that, Miss McGinty, was how it was at the church before the reverend was poisoned. And that’s how it is now. Some people are suspicious and some are afraid. But everybody loves the Lord.”

This Wayne F. Dillow was a regular quote machine. Aubrey wrote it down and closed her notebook. “And you were there the night Wing was poisoned?”

“Oh, yes.”

Dillow walked us around his backyard, showing us his day lilies and his rhubarb and the pachysandra he’d just planted around his evergreens. He also showed us the brick barbecue he built in the Sixties. “We used to cook out every chance we got,” he said. “Even on rainy days.”

On the drive back to the paper Aubrey kept checking the mirror to see if the red Taurus station wagon was following. It wasn’t.

“So after your stories run and Sissy is cleared,” I asked, “do you think the police will put Dillow on their list of suspects?”

“No matter how Dillow sweetens it up-all that wrestled-from-the-devil crap-he had a motive and he had the opportunity. He’ll be on the list. And he knows it. That’s why the preemptive strike. Talking openly and honestly about his past sins. Nothing To Hide 101.”

“He seemed pretty sincere to me,” I said.

“He did to me, too. Cool, calm and tidy. Maybe the kind of guy who could crawl back to the preacher who killed his wife, and then pretend to be lovey dovey for several years while plotting the perfect revenge. Plying us with lemonade for a half-hour would be a piece of cake for an old fox like that.”

I rubbed my throat. “First Tim Bandicoot’s doughnuts, now Wayne Dillow’s lemonade. We’ve got to stop accepting refreshments from potential murderers.”

By the time Aubrey dropped me off at the paper and I drove home, stopping at the new Walgreen’s for toothpaste, it was after nine. I wanted to crawl into bed and turn on the TV. But my brain was still buzzing. So I went to the basement and rummaged through the old morgue files until midnight.

I think I’ve told you how, little by little, I’ve been pirating the old files out of the morgue. I simply love those old files: The mushroomy smell of the old newsprint. The quiet way the old clippings unfold. The bylines of reporters long retired if not dead. Stories that seem so small and innocent now, but once caused quite a to-do. I love the old file cabinets, too. Some are painted dark green but most are gray. Every one of them is exactly five feet high and 18 inches wide. Every one has four deep drawers that open begrudgingly. Every drawer contains something marvelous.

I know it makes me sound like the most boring woman on the face of the earth, but it’s not uncommon for me to spend two or three evenings a week going through the files in my basement. I’ll pull out an armful of folders and then sit down at the old chrome-legged kitchen table I keep by the clothes dryer and just lose myself in the magic of the past.

That night I was looking through files from the S drawers. The Heaven Bound Cathedral is located in the city’s South Ridge neighborhood. We don’t anymore, but we used to keep detailed files on all the neighborhoods, the crimes committed, church and school events, sewer and water projects, the fires and horrible traffic accidents.

The Heaven Bound Cathedral was built in 1978. That section of South Ridge was still pretty leafy and quiet then. The land Buddy Wing bought for his church was the old estate of Ralph Haisley, founder of Haisley’s department store. Before the interstate highways and the flight to the suburbs, Haisley’s was the place to shop downtown. The grand, six-story building closed and sat empty for seven years. Now it’s the county welfare offices. Anyway, Ralph Haisley built this incredible Tudor mansion up on South Ridge in the Twenties. After World War II, the woods and fields around the mansion were sold off for housing developments. The Haisley heirs sold the remaining grounds to Buddy Wing just after the department store closed.

My South Ridge files contained a number of stories about the cathedral’s construction. People in the surrounding developments did not like the church being built there at all. They complained about the garish design and they complained about the impending traffic problems. They complained that the zoning code change granted to Wing would encourage other unwanted development. Which it did. Today there are fast-food restaurants and car dealerships and a huge strip mall with a Target and a Home Depot.

Soon after the cathedral opened, residents discovered another problem. The parking lot lights. Eighteen steel poles rising over the asphalt like those Martian machines in the War of the Worlds. Each pole was topped with six balls of blinding white light. Neighborhood dogs wouldn’t stop barking and people couldn’t sleep. One man whose property abutted the parking lot started shooting out the lights with a. 22 rifle. The man’s name was Edward Tolchak. Between 1979 and 1985, he was arrested and charged six times.

Wednesday, May 31

First thing in the morning I gave the files to Aubrey, who already had her knees propped on her desk and her keyboard in her lap, typing furiously. She tossed the file on her desk, where it immediately became lost among the rubble. “A guy dumb enough to stand in his own backyard and shoot out parking lot lights plotting a perfect murder? I don’t think so.”

“He’s been arrested six times, and altogether served over ninety days in jail,” I pointed out. “I’d say there has to be some real anger there.”

She nodded impatiently and typed even faster.

I persisted. “My files at home only go to 1987. So who knows what Edward Tolchak may have done in recent years. Things may have escalated.”

She could see I was irritated by her indifference. “I’ll give the files to Eric. Maybe he can find something worth pursuing.”

I went from mild-mannered Maddy to bitch-on-wheels Morgue Mama in a hundredth of a second. “What are you saying to me? That if I wasn’t such an incompetent old fool I could check the computer files myself? Well, from now on-”

She apologetically grabbed my elbow and slowly pulled me toward her. “You want to go with Eric and me to Meri after work?”

And so that night we met for dinner. I assumed we’d go to Speckley’s, but they both wanted to go to Okar’s, a trendy new Lebanese restaurant. Instead of the meat loaf sandwich and au gratin potatoes I was craving, I had a fruit salad covered with yogurt and honey and pistachio nuts. Eric and Aubrey had grilled chicken pitas and shared a plate of lawn clippings called tabooli. For dessert we ordered one baklava and three forks.