I told her I thought a family outing to Borders was actually a pretty nifty thing.
“Putt-Putt golf for the mind,” she said.
“To each his own,” I said. Aubrey was already heading for the door and Eric and I were walking like quick little penguins to catch up.
We lingered by the magazine racks while the Bandicoots browsed the tables of just-published non-fiction. After a few minutes they split up. Annie headed for the children’s section with the boys. Tim wandered into the history section.
We followed Tim, hiding by the books on World War II while he worked his way down the long aisle of Civil War books. When he opened a large gray-covered volume on Robert E. Lee, Aubrey slid beside him and turned sideways, resting her elbow on the top of the shelving. “Civil War buff,” she said. “How ironic.” She was referring, of course, to his famous split with Buddy Wing over speaking in tongues.
Tim raised his head only slightly. His eyes drifted from Aubrey to Eric to me-by now we were awkwardly hovering behind her-then back to the book. “I thought you hung out in the dairy aisle,” he said. He, of course, was referring to our ambush of the eyebrow woman at Artie’s supermarket.
“Wherever I can learn something,” Aubrey said.
Tim closed the big book on Robert E. Lee and cradled it across his chest. Psychological armor, I suppose. “I knew Sissy had a daughter, if that’s what you want to know.”
Aubrey curled her index finger under her thumb and flicked the portrait of Lee on the cover. “Do you consider the great Robert E. a hero or a traitor?”
He put the book back on the shelf. He was struggling to remain calm. And failing. “You’re insinuating that I knew Sissy was in Mingo Junction the night Buddy was poisoned.”
“Did you know?”
“I knew she always went there for holidays. And I suppose she told me she was going there that weekend. But then Buddy was killed and three days later she confessed.”
“And it didn’t occur to you that she was confessing-just perhaps-to protect you?”
“Why would that occur to me?”
Aubrey tried again. “Did it occur to you that maybe somebody else was setting Sissy up?”
Tim started pawing the books nervously. I figured any second now he was going to pull out the biggest coffee table volume he could find and beat Aubrey over the head with it. “The police were crawling all over my house and my church, trying to prove that I did it,” he hissed. “Then they found all that stuff at Sissy’s place, and she confessed. What was I supposed to think?”
Aubrey began nodding, sarcastically. “So-just so I’m clear on this-never once did you say to yourself, ‘You know, maybe I should tell the police she just might have been in Mingo Junction that Friday night.’”
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?”