C Corwin - The Cross Kisses Back
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- Название:The Cross Kisses Back
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Aubrey still wanted more. “You’re saying you still don’t know who that somebody is?”
I popped up like a piece of burnt toast. “That’s not our job, Aubrey.”
Aubrey twisted toward me. The unexorcised demon was now residing in her.
“We’ve got all we need for now,” I said.
Aubrey smiled, grimly. She un-clicked her pen and flipped her notebook closed. She stood up. “Mrs. Sprowls is right. We have all we need for now.”
Tim Bandicoot stepped across the coffee table and pulled Sissy to her feet. He kissed her forehead. “I’ll get you a good lawyer. We will make this thing all right.”
Our meeting with Sissy James did not last much longer than that. Tim led us in prayer again and Sissy meekly begged Aubrey not to report that Rosy was her daughter. Aubrey promised that she would not report it, unless others reported it first. We drove back to Hannawa.
Was I surprised that Aubrey made that promise? No, I was not.
Aubrey and Sissy shared a common past, sexual abuse. They were two young women seeking safety and acceptance, and if possible, some kind of love. Of course Aubrey would make that promise.
That evening at Ike’s when we discussed it, Aubrey explained her promise differently: “Sissy having a daughter by some john is terrific stuff. But it’s worth sacrificing, for now. This little series isn’t going to be the end of it. There’ll be lots of follow-up stories. I’m going to need Sissy’s gratitude.”
Chapter 19
Sunday, July 9
I did not want to have lunch with Dale and Sharon Marabout. And I’m sure Dale wasn’t crazy about the idea either. But Sharon would not let it go. She wanted to thank me in person for helping her hubby get that freelance job.
“It’ll be fun,” she kept assuring Dale.
“It won’t be as bad as you think,” Dale kept assuring me.
I’d successfully put them off for weeks. But now with the whole Buddy Wing thing only a few days from exploding all over the front page, I knew it would be best to put the lunch behind me.
Right after Meet the Press, I did a little grocery shopping and then drove to Speckley’s. Dale and Sharon were waiting outside by the door. They smiled simultaneously and gave me a his-and-hers finger wiggle. I wiggled my fingers back. I was dreading this.
Sharon was short and on the cusp of plumpness. Plumpness is not a good thing when you’re in your twenties trying to fit into the latest snare-a-man styles. But when you’re in your forties, as Sharon Marabout was now, it serves you well. It smoothes out your wrinkles and gives you a sensuousness that skinny women your age would die for. “Sharon, so good to see you again,” I said.
“Maddy,” she said, “we should do this more often.”
In the twenty-two years since I walked in on them naked on the apartment floor, I don’t think I’ve seen Sharon a half-dozen times. Yet she always treats me like a close friend of the family, sending me Christmas cards and inviting me to important family gatherings. I never send them a card and I never go to their gatherings. Sharon is a wonderful woman and a good match for Dale. They have great kids. I just wish she’d stop treating me like Dale’s favorite aunt. I was his lover, for Pete’s sake! For five years! Surely she realized that everything he taught her about sex I’d taught him.
“Yes, we should do this more often,” I said, pretending to be as nice as she really was. “We really, really should.”
Speckley’s was packed. The best we could do was a table in the adjoining banquet room. As soon as we were in our chairs Sharon giddily announced she was getting the meat loaf sandwich and au gratin potatoes. Apparently Dale didn’t bring her to Speckley’s very often. It was, after all, our place. When the waitress came we all ordered the meat loaf and potatoes.
After our iced teas came, Sharon apparently gave Dale one of those imperceptible wife-signals, because he immediately launched into a gooey expression of gratitude no man would give on his own: “We just wanted to show our appreciation for helping me in my time of need,” he said. “It was really lovely.”
Time of need? Really lovely? I knew who’d come up with those lines.
All I’d done was find a freelance assignment for Dale after he’d blown a fuse and quit the paper. That assignment was coming to an end and what Dale would do for money now was anybody’s guess. Still, that assignment, as temporary as it was, clearly had renewed his self-confidence. He was going to be okay.
Sharon pronounced the meat loaf the best she’d ever had, the au gratin potatoes incredible. All three of us ordered the key lime pie. We chatted through I don’t know how many refills of iced tea. I checked my wristwatch I don’t know how many times.
During our lunch, the conversation had repeatedly drifted to Aubrey’s series on the Buddy Wing murder. Dale had written a crime series or two during his years on the police beat and understandably wanted to know exactly how she was organizing it. I told him what I knew:
The first story, scheduled to run on Wednesday, would lead with Sissy James’s confession that she did not poison the Rev. Buddy Wing. It would rehash Ronny Doddridge’s suicide and Tim Bandicoot’s own recent confession of his affair with Sissy. It would also rehash Buddy’s death and his nasty split with Tim Bandicoot over speaking in tongues. But this story wouldn’t contain too many details. This was the teaser story.
Thursday’s story would go back to the very beginning, Buddy Wing’s childhood in West Virginia and his migration to Hannawa to begin his ministry. It would discuss Buddy’s theological beliefs and the nuts and bolts of building his evangelical empire, from the salad days of the Clean Collar Club, to the erection of the Heaven Bound Cathedral. It would end with the coming of Guthrie Gates. A sidebar would explore Hannawa’s emergence as the “The Hallelujah City.”
Friday’s story would re-examine Tim Bandicoot’s falling out with Buddy over speaking in tongues, the snake handling and the like. Ronny Doddridge’s sudden appearance as security guard would be recounted, and so would the lingering anger and suspicion-and the spying-between the two congregations. One sidebar would tell Tim Bandicoot’s life story: his childhood in Buddy Wing’s church, his Bible college years, his marriage to Annie, their fall from grace and their struggles at the New Epiphany Temple. Another sidebar would recount some of Buddy’s troubles: his wife’s death from lung cancer, his run-ins with Wayne F. Dillow and Edward Tolchak, his church’s many near-bankruptcies, how over the years he survived the Tonight Show jokes about his having Jesus’s phone number for example, the snide comments about how he dressed and talked and wore his hair.
On Saturday Aubrey would tell the world about Sissy’s pitiful childhood, the stripping and prostitution, her rescue by Jesus Christ, her affair with Tim Bandicoot, her confession to the murder. As Aubrey promised, the story would not say a word about little Rosy.
Sunday’s story would be the big finale. It would state emphatically that Sissy was telling the truth, that she was in Mingo Junction that Thanksgiving weekend, visiting her cousin, as she did every year. The story would examine the length somebody went to frame her, the evidence sprinkled in her garbage and the spare bedroom where she worked on her crafts. The story would ask: If Sissy James didn’t do it, then who did? There would be several sidebars. One would examine the police department’s hurried investigation. One would ask why Tim Bandicoot and Guthrie Gates, and others who knew Sissy, so readily accepted her confession; that story also would tell readers where those good Christians were the night Buddy was poisoned. Another sidebar would show just how easy it was for the real murderer to enter the inner bowels of the cathedral and paint that poison cross on the Bible, fill that pitcher with poisoned water. The final sidebar would tell Aubrey’s story-the broken car windows, the threats and the bruises, the red Taurus station wagon that pursued her while she sought the truth, and, yes, how Tim Bandicoot and Guthrie Gates got into a shoving match in Bob Averill’s office.
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