Aubrey showed me her watch. It was almost ten. We left the bicycling pig and headed up the hill toward the Herald-Union. “It just doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Why would Doddridge kill himself if he was onto something? Wouldn’t he take what he knew to the police? Or Guthrie Gates? Or you? Why would he just scribble that cryptic little hint about devils coming back and then shoot himself in the head?”
“Overwrought with guilt?” she ventured.
“Not so overwrought to leave a big hint,” I said.
Aubrey put her arm around me, like I was a silly child. “You really don’t think he killed himself, do you?”
“I don’t know what I think,” I said. Then I promptly told her exactly what I thought: “The real killer has already framed Sissy James. But now you’re about to prove her innocent. That will mean an all-out investigation by a police department with egg on its face. So the killer kills again, preemptively pointing the police in the wrong direction, toward someone in Tim Bandicoot’s church. The killer has already scattered some new evidence around probably, just like he did with Sissy-probably.”
Aubrey laughed. “My oh my. Aren’t you the super sleuth.”
“You don’t think it’s possible?”
“I think it’s possible.”
We stopped at Central and North Smiley and waited for the WALK sign. I used the opportunity to slide out from under Aubrey’s arm. We were only a block from the paper and the last thing I wanted was for one of my many enemies in the newsroom to catch me being palsy-walsy with a reporter. To protect one’s image, one must be always vigilant.
We reached the paper and used the street entrance, something employees rarely do. We greeted Al Tosi, the day security man at the desk, and rode the elevator to the newsroom. “So what’s on your agenda?” I asked Aubrey before we went our separate ways.
Alec Tinker’s voice ambushed us. “Ladies!”
“Ladies?” Aubrey shrieked playfully. “Someone’s not reading their sexual harassment handbook.”
He pressed his palms together prayerfully and bowed apologetically.
“Or the religious practices handbook,” I added.
He told us that Tim Bandicoot and Guthrie Gates were coming in at one, together, to discuss Aubrey’s investigation. “And you’re invited, too, Maddy.”
“Good gravy,” I said, “why am I invited?”
The meeting was held in Bob Averill’s office on the fifth floor. It’s a long, sterile office, huge round window at one end, display case filled with old Underwood typewriters at the other. The gray walls in between are lined with a century’s worth of important front pages: the Japanese surrender, men walking on the moon, the Kennedy assassination, the violent UAW strike of 1958 (which my Lawrence covered), the 1908 school fire that killed forty-two children, a couple dozen pages in all. Bob doesn’t have a desk, just a glass-top coffee table circled by comfortable leather chairs. The coffee table that afternoon held what it always holds: the most recent edition of the paper, neatly folded, and an aloe plant in a green ceramic bowl.
Tim Bandicoot and Guthrie Gates were already sitting when Aubrey and I arrived. So was Tinker. So was Bob. We sat down quickly and nodded pleasantly to everyone.
I never felt so out of place in my life. Bob was wearing an expensive suit about the same shade as his walls. Tinker had worn one of his better suits for the occasion, dark blue with red pinstripes, meaning he knew that Gates and Bandicoot were coming in at least a day in advance, while only giving us three hours’ warning. The two evangelists, usually resplendent in white double-breasted suits with wide zig-zaggy neckties, were both dressed in charcoal. Aubrey, for her part, was wearing a snug pair of faded jeans and a sleeveless red blouse. I was wearing my absolutely worst-fitting pair of khakis and a T-shirt with a Canada goose on the front that I’d bought years ago on a vacation to Mackinac Island. Aubrey’s jeans won out over my goose as the focal point for the four important men in suits.
“I understand you have some concerns?” Bob said to Tim and Guthrie when our nodding was completed.
They grinned bravely at each other, and Guthrie said, “Yes, we do.”
Their concern, of course, was Aubrey’s upcoming series on the Buddy Wing murder. They were fearful-that’s the word Tim used, fearful -that Aubrey had mistakenly gotten the impression that the two congregations were unfriendly toward each other.
“The fact of the matter,” Tim said, “is that Guthrie and I have been brothers in the Lamb for many years. While some feathers were ruffled, years and years ago, that is all behind us now. Relations between our congregations could not be better.”
“Quite copacetic,” Guthrie added.
I quickly swallowed the giggle that was suddenly dancing on my tongue. Instead I made this horrible noise, as if I was blowing my nose without a handkerchief. It was that word copacetic. Imagine that old be-bop jazz word coming out of the mouth of Guthrie Gates. Back in my college days it was big word among the Meriwether Square crowd. Everything then was either “copacetic” or “most copacetic.”
“You okay?” Bob asked me.
“I’m fine,” I said, wishing I’d had the nerve to say everything was copacetic.
Tinker looked at Bob for permission, and then, apparently getting it through some telepathic process taught to the newspaper chain’s muckety mucks, reassured the two visitors that the Herald-Union’s intentions were not to stir up trouble between the two churches. “We can’t be too specific, as I’m sure you can appreciate,” he said, “but we have some evidence that Sissy James did not murder Buddy Wing. When we publish what we’ve found-if we publish-there’s been no final decision in that regard-our stories will pertain only to the murder.”
It was a cautiously worded bit of corporate boilerplate that Aubrey simply couldn’t let stand. “Of course, when a newspaper publishes any story, it’s our duty to put things in context,” she added.
Tim Bandicoot frowned sourly. “Context can mean a lot of things,” he said.
“We’d like whatever assurances you can give us that Miss McGinty won’t dredge up any more than’s necessary,” Guthrie added.
Bob shifted from his left buttock to his right. “We don’t dredge, gentlemen, we report.”
It was the appropriate thing for an editor-in-chief to say, of course, but dredge is what newspapers do, and should do.
Guthrie was repentant. “I shouldn’t have said dredge.”
Tim was not. “Your paper, Mr. Averill, has a history of treating religion like it belongs on the sports pages. Hallelujah City. All that stuff.”
Bob set himself square on both buttocks. “We did not coin that phrase, Mr. Bandicoot. That was that radio guy-Charlie Chimera.”
“You’ve certainly repeated it enough times,” Tim Bandicoot said.
Bob pawed the air. “Everybody’s repeated it-but the point is, the Herald-Union is not anti-religion.” He then explained our earlier coverage of the split between Tim and Buddy Wing. “Buddy was a very public figure, not only locally but nationally. And when a very public figure does very public things, like casting an assistant pastor out of his congregation during a live television broadcast, that is going to be reported.”
Bob had hit a nerve with Guthrie Gates. “Pastor Wing did not cast Tim out. He merely said that the gift of tongues was about to come over him and that all who might be offended should listen elsewhere.”
Tim Bandicoot leaned forward and clasped his hands together. He closed his eyes. But he did not pray. He growled slowly like a Doberman strapped into a muzzle. “Guthrie, I was never offended when Buddy spoke in tongues. We simply had a difference of opinion.”
Guthrie held up his hands and spread his fingers in surrender. “Sorry. I’ve gotten us off track.”
I can’t say if Tim was prepared to let the matter rest. But Aubrey sure wasn’t. She leaned back and crossed her legs like a man, wrapping her hands around her pointing knee. “It’s more than a difference of opinion, isn’t it? It’s a fundamental difference in belief. Buddy believed that speaking in tongues was proof of being baptized in the Holy Spirit. And those who didn’t, weren’t. That’s what you believe, too, isn’t it, Guthrie?”