“Aubrey’s series on Buddy Wing starts tomorrow,” I said. He’d already poured water for my tea and I pointed to a huge peanut butter cookie in the dessert case.
“From everything you’ve told me, it’ll all go fine,” he said.
“It’s what I haven’t told you that worries me,” I said.
Ike handed me the cookie and waved off my money. “Why you always keeping secrets from me, Maddy?”
In the afternoon I stayed as busy as I could. Occasionally Aubrey would look at me and pretend she was pulling out her hair. I’d just nod and we’d exchange a tired smile.
Shortly after five, I saw her hang her purse on her shoulder and head for the elevator. I grabbed my purse and followed. I slipped in just as the door was closing. “Sorry about lunch,” she said.
I watched her punch the parking deck button. “Going home?” I asked.
“Shopping,” she said.
“For anything in particular?”
“Tranquillity. But I’ll end up buying shoes.”
And so Aubrey and I drove to the mall in Brinkley, in my Dodge Shadow. The shops were already filled with clothes for fall and winter. I didn’t buy a thing. Aubrey found a sexy pair of pink mules on the clearance table at Payless. I dropped her off at the paper at seven-thirty. “Go home and relax,” I said.
She squeezed my arm and slid out. Before slamming the door she bent down and wiggled her fingers. I wiggled back. I watched her go inside. We’d been gone all that time and not once did either of us mention her Buddy Wing stories. What a relief that was.
At home I tried to eat a tuna fish sandwich and tried to watch TV. I washed my face and brushed my teeth and got into a baggy pair of pajamas. By now Wednesday’s front page was ready to go on the press. Unless something big broke, the press would start rolling precisely at midnight.
At eleven the phone rang. It was Tinker. “It’s really necessary that I be there?” I asked.
He just said, “Maddy,” the slow, stern way my father used to say “Maddy” when I tried to buck my chores or listened to my radio too late at night.
I drove back to the paper.
Except for a sprinkling of copy editors in metro and sports, the newsroom was empty. I went to Tinker’s office but he wasn’t there. So I got my mug and headed for the cafeteria. The last thing I needed at a quarter to midnight was a hot mug of Darjeeling tea. But I made some.
I slowly sipped my way back to the newsroom, my pinkies sticking out from my mug like tiny airplane wings. I was standing in the no-man’s-land between the morgue and sports when the elevator doors parted and Aubrey stepped out. As bad as she looked all day, she looked even worse now. Her hair was hanging like broomstraw from a Cleveland Indians ballcap. She was wearing a baggy tee shirt and even baggier sweatpants. She also was wearing the new pink mules. She walked straight for me. “Tinker called you in, too?”
I sipped and nodded.
“Christ-I wasn’t asleep five minutes.”
“That’s five minutes more than I had. Any idea what he wants?”
Her hands were tucked under her armpits. She was twisting nervously. “Some question about my story-I can’t believe he called you in, too.”
“I wish he hadn’t.”
We stood there, Aubrey twisting, me sipping. Finally Tinker popped out of the elevator. Another man, middle-aged and bald, was with him. They walked straight to Aubrey’s desk on the fringe of the metro department. It was a minute before midnight but both were wearing business suits. Tinker motioned for us to join them.
Tinker introduced the other man. “Aubrey, Maddy, this is Stan Craddock, his firm does legal work for the paper.”
Aubrey pulled back her hand after one short nibble of a shake. “So there’s a legal problem with my story?”
“Unfortunately,” Tinker said. “That’s why I wanted Maddy here. She was with you most of the time.” He asked Aubrey to call up her story for Wednesday.
She sat at her desk and clicked on her monitor. “It’s still running tomorrow, isn’t it?”
Said Tinker, “That’s why we’re here at midnight.”
Aubrey typed in her security code. The monitor’s sky blue screen filled with boxes. She called up her story. Aubrey’s back immediately flattened against her chair, as if she’d been struck in the chest by an invisible fist. She had seen the story’s byline:
By Dale Marabout
Her eyes went quickly to the story’s first paragraph. So did ours. It was a straightforward, hard news lead, the kind veteran police reporters like Dale Marabout can write in their sleep. It was still in the computer format reporters write in-ragged right, an unflattering sans serif type font:
HANNAWA -Police early this morning arrested Herald-Union reporter Aubrey McGinty for the November murder of the Rev. Buddy Wing.
She was expected to be charged and arraigned later today in Common Pleas Court.
Detective Scotty Grant called the 24-year-old newspaper reporter’s alleged involvement in the poisoning death of the nationally known television evangelist “both bizarre and frightening.”
“I’ve been investigating murders in this city for 22 years, and I’ve never seen a case twist around like this,” he said.
Grant said that McGinty fatally poisoned Wing after being assured of a job with the Herald-Union. “She killed Wing so she could later prove the wrong person was in prison, and make a name for herself,” he said. “She almost got away with it.”
Aubrey stopped reading. She pressed her hands together, as if to pray, and then rubbed her nose. Her eyes slowly lifted toward me.
“It was your lies,” I said. I was cowering behind my mug like it was one of those long shields the Crusaders carried. “The first lie made me curious. The second lie made me suspicious. The third convinced me.”
Aubrey slumped in her chair and wrapped her arms around her waist. “What kind of nonsense have you been telling people?”
I ignored her silly effort to throw the suspicion onto me. “Lie number one was that gift certificate you used to buy that jacket at Old Navy, after we made our first visit to the Heaven Bound Cathedral.”
Aubrey rolled her eyes, and made sure Tinker and Stan Craddock could see them roll. “Maddy, I explained all that.”
“Yes you did. After I confronted you about it.”
She bristled, just a tiny bit. “After you snooped into my private life.”
“I told you then, Aubrey. I don’t snoop. I get intrigued.”
“I told you the truth.”
“Yes you did. The old files I looked at bore that out. Your sister had been sexually molested for years by your stepfather-I’m betting you were, too-and after she took him to court, and after he was acquitted, she took her own life. I can only imagine what kind of guilt you felt. You told the social workers and the police nothing had ever happened to you, that you’d never seen nor heard your stepfather do anything to your sister. Were you afraid? Had he threatened you? Of course you’ve tried to keep your sister alive.”
Aubrey was furious. “Psycho-babble bullshit, Maddy. You’ve got me in a lot of trouble over your stupid psycho-babble bullshit.”
Another man joined us. It was Scotty Grant, chief detective in the Hannawa Police Department’s homicide unit. There was no need for an introduction. Aubrey knew who he was.
“At the time,” I continued, “I figured you were looking into the Buddy Wing murder because of your mistrust of the legal system. Your sympathy for its victims. I was very impressed.”
Aubrey’s eyes drifted back to her computer screen. She scrolled down. We all read:
Herald-Union Managing Editor Alec Tinker confirmed that McGinty had been investigating the Buddy Wing murder since March. She had presented him with compelling evidence that Sissy James, the 27-year-old Hannawa hospital worker who confessed to the murder, was in fact innocent.