James is now serving a life sentence at the Marysville Reformatory for Women.
Detective Grant said police now believe James confessed to protect Wing’s former protege, the Rev. Tim Bandicoot, who was expelled from the Heaven Bound Cathedral after a much publicized rift over the practice of speaking in tongues.
“Lie number two came on Easter Sunday,” I said. “Right here at the paper. You and Eric were in the cafeteria going over your files. Remember when I asked why you had two copies of the church directory? You told me you went back for an older one-because former members of the church were more likely to be suspects than present ones. Quick thinking. But I’d already seen that the two directories had the same date on the cover.”
Aubrey artfully put a look of mild shock on her face. “That can’t be right.”
I plowed ahead. “One possibility is that someone at the cathedral mistakenly gave you a current directory when you asked for an older one. Nobody at the cathedral remembers such a visit, by the way.”
“I did go back-”
“The other possibility, of course, is that you already had a church directory when you asked Guthrie Gates for the first one, during that visit with me.”
Aubrey changed her expression to one of confusion, as if I was some demented old duck. “So what point are you trying to make here, Maddy?”
“That you lied about having two identical directories when you didn’t need to lie,” I said. “You could have said, ‘I figured since you and Eric were helping we’d need two,’ or ‘I found another one in the morgue files you gave me,’ or ‘Don’t you remember? Guthrie gave us two.’ I would have believed any of that. But you intentionally lied. Because you’d had that other directory for months. You panicked.”
Aubrey’s eyes were drifting. I turned to see what she was looking at. Two uniformed police officers were leaning against the wall in sports. “You’re completely wrong about this,” she insisted hollowly.
I felt my own eyes tearing up. “I spent the next two weeks trying not to think the worst-I really did-but unfortunately for you I’m one of those miserable old buttinskys who just can’t say no to her curiosities. Take that day we were watching the police tapes at my house. Matter-of-factly you said procaine was used only in hospitals. But that’s not true. Paramedics carry all sorts of emergency medicines, including procaine. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that three weeks before Buddy Wing was poisoned you decided to write a story on Rush City’s EMS unit. You rode with them for four days and wrote a wonderful story about how they rushed around the county saving kids who drank Drano and old men having heart attacks. Could it be that once you’d decided on Buddy Wing as your victim, and then chose poor Sissy James as your suspect, you researched how she might do it? You learned she worked at a hospital, and knowing as much about poisons as you do, you decided on procaine as your poison of choice. But as the big day got closer, you began to worry. Would the procaine be enough to kill him? Especially in the cruel, clever way you planned to administer it? So you added the lily of the valley.”
Aubrey smirked, thinking she’d found something to discredit my analysis, I suppose. “Knowing as much about posions as I do? Where in that feeble mind of yours did you come up with that?”
I smirked right back at her. “This is no time for false modesty, dear. You know plenty about poisons. But before we get to that, let me tell you about lie number three. It was the most serendipitous thing. You remember that day in May when Dale Marabout popped his cork and quit? I felt just awful about it. And after stewing about it all week I went to Bob Averill, to explain all the stress Dale had been under. Your name came up and before I knew it I was telling him about my suspicions. He thought I was crazy. But after I told him about the church directories and your EMS story in The Gazette, and the way you found the real killer in the football coach case, and how you covered the squirrel poisoning at Kent-well.”
Before Aubrey arrived at the paper that night, Bob Averill and Dale Marabout had stationed themselves in a storage room by the elevator. Now they were standing behind us, like a couple of Houdinis materializing out of thin air.
“I’d like to say it was my idea,” Bob said, “but it was actually Maddy’s. She thought we should secretly hire Dale to investigate your investigation-on a freelance basis.”
Aubrey swiveled in her chair. “And you believe the crap he’s written, Bob? He’s been trying to fuck me since the day I got here.”
Bob Averill was shocked into silence. I was not. “If you mean in a sexual way,” I said, “God only knows what goes on inside a man’s head. But if you mean getting even with you for stealing his beat, that’s simply not true. Dale was pissed at Tinker, never you.”
Dale couldn’t resist. “For the record, I’m still pissed at Tinker.”
Tinker’s lips began to bubble. Before he could say anything, Bob held up his hands, like a pope calling for quiet from his balcony above St. Peter’s Square. “Now-now. We don’t need another shoving match here.”
He was referring, of course, to the episode in his office between Tim Bandicoot and Guthrie Gates.
“We figured it would be wise to have Dale follow you around town,” Tinker now said to Aubrey, “not only to see if you’d give yourself away, but also in case you tried to hurt someone else. And because we were afraid you might recognize Dale’s car, Dale drove his wife’s, a red Taurus station wagon.”
The “sssshit ” that leaked from Aubrey’s lips was better than any confession.
I continued: “We were just beginning to think it was a waste of time, when you made up that business about the man in the station wagon attacking you. Tinker thinks you did it to make your story sexier-reporter risks life and limb to get the truth-but I think you did it to get Eric back.”
Aubrey was suddenly like a girl in junior high, denying to her friends that she liked some goofy boy with braces. “I beat myself up to get Eric back? Puh-leeze.”
I knew everyone wanted me to get on with my story. But I also knew that Aubrey-murderer or not-had fallen in love with Eric. And I knew that Eric-world-class doofus or not-had fallen in love with her. Keeping Eric in the dark had been the toughest part of this whole affair for me and I felt the need to confess, so she could go to prison knowing that at least one person, once upon a time, had truly loved her.
“Eric didn’t know anything about Dale following you,” I said. “He didn’t know anything about anything. That night in Meri when he chased Dale down the alley, he was truly trying to protect you. When I saw him staggering back across the street, I figured it was all over. But discovering that the mysterious man in the station wagon was none other than Dale Marabout, and that Dale was following you because you very likely were the real killer, and that I was behind the whole blessed thing-well. Eric was so confused he couldn’t even talk.”
Whatever Aubrey felt inside she was keeping inside. “That’s all so sweet. But if that was Dale in the red Taurus then it was Dale who attacked me. Because, regardless of what any of you say, I was attacked that night.”
Dale grinned at her victoriously. “That night-Monday, June 12-the Taurus and I were staying at the Motel 6 in Rush City, after spending the day talking to your old co-workers at The Gazette.”
Aubrey threw up her hands, as if being caught in a series of lies meant nothing at all. “So I was foolishly blinded by love, desperately trying to get my boyfriend back. So what?”
Dale leaned over Aubrey’s keyboard and scrolled his story down a bit. “You might want to read this.”
Aubrey swiveled back and read:
Detective Grant refused to discuss publicly the evidence that lead to McGinty’s arrest. Nevertheless, from a variety of sources the Herald-Union has been able to piece together the chilling story of a murder painstakingly planned and meticulously carried out.
That story actually may have begun three autumns ago on the campus of Kent State University, where McGinty was just beginning her senior year.