C Corwin - The Cross Kisses Back

Aubrey bought a bottle of cranberry juice and a bag of barbecue potato chips. She joined me at my table by the window, pushing aside my boxes of tea bags. “Anything fit to print today?” I asked.

“That’s why I stopped when I saw your car. You’ll never guess whose windows were smashed out.”

“Oh my-not again.”

“Not mine-Tish Kiddle’s.” She dug a printout of her story from her purse. She kept up a running commentary while I read. “Can you believe she drives a Lexus? You see where she lives? Saffron Hills? Do you know how pricey those condos are? Good God, how much money does that fluff-cake make?”

Tish Kiddle’s paycheck did not interest me. Her smashed car windows did. “You think this means she’s onto something?”

Aubrey slid down in her chair and glumly folded her arms. “At the very least somebody’s afraid she is.” She flipped back her hair and stared me. “You think I’m pretty enough for TV news?”

I’d come to Ike’s to talk to Ike. To relax in his slow, easy voice. Now Aubrey was buzzing all over me, like a bee at a picnic. I was simply not in the mood for her ego, or her jealousy, or her youth. When Aubrey headed for the restroom, I headed for my car.

It was still raining-not as hard as before but enough to keep my windshield wipers clacking. The lights along the downtown’s empty streets were dim, mutated blurs. I turned onto West Tuckman. It wasn’t that late but the rain had chased everybody home to the suburbs.

Just west of the monstrous old YMCA building, a pair of headlights filled my rear-view mirror, bright, then dim, then bright again. I pushed on the gas pedal. I made sure my doors were locked. The headlights got closer. Flashed again. I sped up more.

I scolded myself for panicking. I lifted my chin and squinted at the mirror. To see what kind of car it was. To see what kind of danger I was in. But it was too dark, and it was raining too hard, and the headlights were too close and too bright.

I was driving through the 3rd District now, Lionel Percy’s domain. But if that was a police car following me, wouldn’t its blue roof lights be blasting? Wouldn’t its siren be squealing? I decided not necessarily. I reached Potter’s Hill, where the city’s old ceramic industry once flourished. Now it was a lifeless strip of used car lots and empty storefronts with tattered For Sale or Lease signs in the windows.

I ran the red light at Halprin Street. So did the car behind me.

You can imagine what was going on inside my head. Car windows being smashed. Men jumping out from bushes slapping and scratching. Lionel Percy popping up like a jack-in-the-box clown. Preachers tumbling backward into pots of fake palms. The street was slick with standing water. I drove faster anyway. In a few minutes I would be in Meri. There would be people there, brighter street lights and glowing neon.

I started chastising myself, in that special shrill whisper we save for our own ears: “It’s your own damn fault. You didn’t have to get involved with that crazy girl. You could have stayed right in your safe little Morgue Mama world making people miserable. But you had to tag along like the sidekick on some old Saturday morning western. And now here you are about to be beaten, killed or worse. You old fool. You’re as full of yourself as she is.”

I also started thinking about ways to defend myself-kicking, biting, screaming, calmly talking myself out of trouble, running like a rabbit-but I quickly realized that my age was my only defense. “Who would hurt a sixty-seven-year-old woman?” I whispered. “Then again, who would murder a seventy-five-year-old preacher?”

The traffic light at Teeple was yellow when I slipped under it. It was a dark neighborhood crowded with tall frame houses, drooping trees and uneven slate sidewalks. There were a few more cars on the street. Unfortunately not enough to stop the demon behind me from riding my bumper.

Two blocks from Meri the car behind me started beeping. It was a weak, oinking beep, no more threatening than the timer on my microwave. “Good gravy,” I growled. I pulled over and watched Aubrey trot toward me through the rain. I rolled down my window and claimed my two boxes of Darjeeling tea.

Friday, July 7

On Friday I went into work at seven. In case I was needed. In case something surprising happened I didn’t want to miss. Aubrey was already at her desk, a Walkman snapped over her ears filling her ears with God knows what kind of noise while she typed like a maniac.

Just after eleven, I heard her howl. She danced toward me like a flamenco dancer, chopping her feet and clicking her fingers. She leaned across my desk until our noses were almost touching. “Guess who just called me? Tim Bandicoot. Tomorrow morning he’s going to Marysville, and you and I are going along.”

Saturday, July 8

At two in the morning my phone rang. It was Aubrey and she was worried-about her own behavior.

“You’ve got to promise me I won’t screw this up,” she said.

I swung my feet over the edge of the bed, hoping what she’d just said would make more sense if I was sitting up. “You want me to promise that you won’t screw up?”

“You know I will, Maddy. All those hours in the car with that idiot. I’m bound to say something that sets him off.”

I knew what she was talking about now. In just a few hours we would be driving to Marysville with Tim Bandicoot, to get Sissy James to admit her innocence. I slid to the floor and shuffled toward the wicker chair by the window. Sometimes I curl up there when it’s too hot to sleep, but mostly I use it as a staging area for my laundry. That night it was piled with bathroom towels that still needed folding. I pushed them onto the floor and sat. “You’ll just have to concentrate,” I said. I could hear the soft clink of computer keys. “Are you still at work?”

She yawned. “Where else would I be?”

I was going to say something motherly about the need for a good night’s rest. But then I remembered the all-nighters Dale Marabout used to pull when he was a young police reporter. Sometimes the stories demand it. “There’s some gum in my desk if you need it,” I said.

“That’s what I’ll do tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll cram my mouth full of gum so I can’t talk. When Timmy boy says something tempting I’ll just, ‘Yom-yom-yom-yom-yom.’”

“Good plan,” I said. “Can I go back to bed now?”

There were a few seconds of very serious silence. “What do you make of all this?” she asked. “Tim Bandicoot inviting us along, I mean.”

“Maybe it’s Sissy’s idea.”

“Not in a trillion years. I don’t think it’s Tim’s idea either. He’s got to hate my guts.”

“His wife’s idea then?”

“Has to be.”

“For good or ill, you think?”

“I’d say for ill.”

“Really?”

“Annie Bandicoot’s motives might be pure as snow-loving supportive wife just trying to make nice-but I think we’re talking Bride of Machiavelli here.”

I’d tried to fight it but I was wide awake now. I got on my knees and started folding towels. “You think we’re walking into some kind of a trap? You thought that about the church thing on Sunday.”

“Maddy, you’re not following the bouncing ball. Not us walking into a trap. Annie Bandicoot trying to avoid one.”

“Get the gum, Aubrey. You’re getting punchy.”

“Think about it. Sweet little Annie gloms onto Tim Bandicoot when she’s still in Sunday school. He’s handsome and ambitious and heir to the throne. She marries him when she’s only nineteen. For a while the future looks peachy. But then Tim starts questioning Buddy’s ways-all that speaking in tongues business. Buddy starts having second thoughts. He brings in Guthrie Gates and starts grooming him as his heir. Then Buddy suddenly gives Tim the boot. Tim tries to build a new church. But after six years he’s still preaching to that scraggly rabble on Lutheran Hill. Worst of all, he’s schtoomping some loser bimbo. This isn’t Stand By Your Man. This is Save Your Man’s Sorry Ass. So Annie puts on a wig and some funny glasses or something and waltzes into the cathedral and poisons the man who did her man wrong. And she frames the bimbo. Maybe Tim’s new church will take off now. Maybe Tim will behave himself now.”