Thursday, June 15
Thursday I took my Dodge Shadow to get E-checked. That’s the state of Ohio’s required emissions test to make sure the exhaust from your old car isn’t single-handedly destroying the earth’s atmosphere. They charge you $19.50 and if your car doesn’t pass the test they make you fix it. My Shadow barely passed the last time and I was very nervous about this time. So I went to Ike’s Coffee Shop first.
“Morgue Mama!” he sang out, as he always did. “What you doing goofing off in the middle of the day?”
“E-check.”
“Don’t be frightened. They only want to check your car-not you.” He brought me a mug of tea and one of those tiny Ghirardelli chocolates wrapped in foil. “To bolster your courage,” he said. “On the house.”
“Better bring me the whole box,” I said.
Ike is the dearest man. And a handsome man. And a widower in my general age range. He has a master’s degree in mathematics and taught in the Hannawa City Schools. Back in the Eighties when the financially strapped school board offered early retirement to veteran teachers at the top of the pay scale, Ike snapped it up and opened the coffee shop. That’s when I met him, a good fifteen years ago now. I sometimes wonder if it’s our respective races that keeps us coffee-shop-owner and customer instead of something more.
Anyway, I spent an hour at Ike’s, sharing snippets of conversation with him about the weather, my raspberries, and who was likely to win the fall congressional elections.
Fortified, I drove to the E-check station, and my Shadow passed the test again. It was only two o’clock. I should have gone back to work. But I felt like this afternoon belonged to me-a gift from the state of Ohio for being a good citizen. So I decided to shop for a new living room sofa. First I drove to Flexner’s in Brinkley, where nothing is ever on sale. Then I drove to Albert’s Furniture in Greenlawn, where everything is always on sale.
There are lots of Alberts in Hannawa. What were the odds that the Don Albert who owns the furniture store in Greenlawn was the husband of the Elaine Albert who directed the televised church services at the Heaven Bound Cathedral? What were the odds she’d be working the floor when I walked in?
I wanted to walk right out. But there wasn’t another customer in the place, and Elaine had already spotted me, and was descending with a smile and a clipboard. She was a short, big-boned woman in a no-nonsense black skirt and eggshell white blouse. “I wanted to look at your sofas,” I said.
“We have some wonderful sales today,” she said.
I steered away from the leather sofas and concentrated on the models covered with stain-resistant fabric. Elaine stayed with me, pointing out all the little details about their construction and long wear. I didn’t hear a word she said. She was Elaine Albert, director of the Heaven Bound Cathedral’s televised services, one of two women Aubrey was dying to interview, the one who clearly was there the night Buddy Wing tumbled into the fake palms, who clearly knew more about the goings-on backstage that night than anyone alive. Whatever she was saying about grape juice stains was going in one ear and out the other.
“Could we sit down?” I asked.
“Sure, please,” Elaine said.
I lowered myself into the corner of a fat moss-green loveseat. “The both of us,” I said.
She studied me quizzically and lowered her full hips next to me. I think she was afraid I was going to faint or be sick or something.
I pulled down one of the yellow pillows from the top of the loveseat and cradled it in my lap. I started telling her the biggest string of lies I’d ever told in my life. “I do need a sofa,” I began, “but I’d also like to talk to you. You see, I’m Marcie Peacock’s grandmother-she was one of the Kent State students working for you at the cathedral the night the Reverend Wing died.”
Elaine started hugging her clipboard the way I was hugging the pillow. “And?”
“Well, she’s scared to death. The newspaper is digging into the whole thing again, it seems, and they think maybe one of the students is the real killer. Apparently the paper has some proof that the woman who confessed really didn’t do it. That reporter has my Marcie simply frantic.”
A sympathetic smile stretched across Elaine’s wide German face. “You know, your Marcie is the first African-American student we’ve ever hired.”
I could have just died. Elaine Albert had recognized me the moment I walked in. I apologized and tried to explain myself. Why she didn’t toss me out I don’t know. Maybe it was my obvious agony. Maybe she wanted to see what kind of information she could wheedle out of me. “I am genuinely concerned about those students,” I said. “Once the paper starts running its series, they are going to come under suspicion.”
“Along with a lot of people,” she said.
As we sat on that sofa and talked, I was not the least bit afraid that she might be the real murderer. And it wasn’t because she’d passed the lie detector test the police gave her. There was just something about her. A strange mix of icy confidence and serenity. If she’d wanted Buddy Wing dead for some reason, in my estimation she was the kind of woman who’d just pull out a pistol and shoot him.
Anyway, Elaine told me all about the college students who worked there-not about them individually so much-but about the kinds of jobs they did and where they would be at any given time before, during and after the broadcasts. She didn’t believe for the world one of them poisoned Buddy Wing.
“What about someone disguised to look like a college student?” I asked.
“It gets pretty crazy back there,” she said. “Sure.”
I actually bought the sofa we were sitting on, $885, yellow pillows included. “Does it surprise you that Sissy James may not be the killer?” I asked as we walked to the door.
“After your visit here today,” she said, “nothing surprises me anymore.”
I went home and said good-bye to that scruffy beige monstrosity in my living room. Then I called the newsroom. “Aubrey,” I said. “You’ll never guess who sold me a new sofa.”
“I can’t talk. They just found Ronny Doddridge, deader than a doornail.”
Friday, June 16
Ronny Doddridge was the big-eared security guard at the Heaven Bound Cathedral. Aubrey and I had encountered him on our first visit there. He had showed us the way to Guthrie Gates’ office. On our second visit he’d showed us the door. Because it was a suspected suicide, Aubrey’s story was only nine short paragraphs:
Cathedral security guard found dead after 9-1-1 call
HANNAWA -Police responding to a 9-1-1 call early yesterday morning found the body of 47-year-old Ronald “Ronny” Doddridge in his home on the city’s near east side.
Police said it appears Doddridge made the emergency call himself before taking his own life. The West Virginia native had worked as a security guard for the Heaven Bound Cathedral since 1992.
Neighbors said Doddridge was not married and lived alone in the small, frame house he rented on Pulver Court.
Police said Doddridge died of a massive head wound. A 9 mm Smith amp; Wesson semi-automatic pistol was found next to his body, they said.
Police spokesman Lt. Benjamin Wiley said dispatchers received the 9-1-1 call at 3:22 AM Thursday. The caller, believed to be a middle-aged male, repeated three times that “A man’s been shot,” then hung up.