Sunday, May 28
Sunday afternoon I drove to Aubrey’s apartment to help her with Eric’s surprise birthday dinner. I was the one who was surprised. She had made some improvements. The once empty living room now had a huge white love seat with green and yellow-striped pillows. A small black television sat alone on one of those assemble-it-yourself entertainment centers. There was a poster of Van Gogh’s Starry Night on the wall. Her many pairs of shoes, once scattered like bones in the desert, were now piled in a wicker laundry basket by the door. One thing hadn’t changed. Her cardboard boxes marked SHIT FROM COLLEGE and SHIT FROM HOME were still stacked in a pyramid against the wall.
She took my shoulders and pushed me into the kitchen, proudly showing me her new table and chairs. Balloons and loops of crepe paper were Scotch-taped on the ceiling. “Can you believe it,” she said. “We are actually going to sit down and have a home-cooked dinner like official adults.”
“I’ve been an official adult for a long time,” I said. “Where’s your cake mix?”
It was a basic yellow box cake which Aubrey intended to cover with Dream Whip and jelly beans. She also had a box of those candles you can’t blow out. She poured the cake mix into the bowl and I put in the correct measures of water and oil. She cracked the three eggs and I picked out the bits of shell. She read the baking instructions on the box while I beat the batter with a tablespoon. She opened the oven door and I put in the pans. I don’t know which of us was having the better time.
We started on the lasagna. I’d given her a shopping list during the week and she’d dutifully bought everything I said we needed. We worked side by side on the stovetop, me browning the Italian sausage while she boiled the water for the noodles. When I asked for the canned tomatoes, she handed me the canned tomatoes. When I asked for the basil and garlic, she handed me the basil and garlic. When I asked for the ricotta cheese, she asked, “What ricotta cheese?”
“You didn’t get the ricotta cheese?” I cackled like some nasty old grandmother. “How can you make lasagna without ricotta cheese?”
She showed me the shopping list I’d given her: No ricotta cheese.
“Looks like you’re going to the supermarket,” I said.
She was hesitant, almost hostile, as if I was asking her to swim to Sicily for the ricotta cheese. “You’re the one who fucked up,” she said.
“If you think you’re capable of juggling a cake and a half-made lasagna, I’ll go,” I said.
So Aubrey went to the supermarket for the ricotta cheese. Even if she drove like an ambulance driver and immediately found the right aisle at the market, I figured it would take her a half hour. That would give me time to boil the noodles and maybe tidy up the apartment a bit.
She returned with enough ricotta cheese to make six lasagnas.
Tuesday, May 30
Monday was Memorial Day. Aubrey and Eric went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. I stayed home and replaced the tomato plants the rabbits nibbled. Hannawa not only has more evangelists per capita than any city of its size, it also has more rabbits. The fear of humans was bred out of them generations ago. Unfortunately, they’ve never lost their genetic urge to devour anything a human plants.
Tuesday evening I went with Aubrey to see Wayne F. Dillow, the man whose wife had died of cancer after being faith-healed by Buddy Wing. Dillow lived on Summerhill Lane in Elden, a hilly section of town sandwiched between the old Chevrolet plant to the north and the airport to the south. His house was not unlike my own: a boxy ranch with an attached one-car garage. Mine is painted white with dark green shutters. His was painted avocado and had, if you can believe it, pink shutters.
Dillow invited us in the front door and led us straight through the house to the back yard, where a circle of aluminum lawn chairs and a pitcher of lemonade were waiting. It was clear from the get-go that Wayne F. Dillow was a proud and gentle man. He was dressed in a well-starched white shirt and a pair of tan polyester dress pants. His shoes were shined and his thick head of white hair was Brylcreemed and combed. His backyard was mowed short and all the flower beds were neatly mulched. “Everybody want lemonade?” he asked us.
While he poured we engaged in small-talk about his bird houses. There must have been a couple dozen of them, all made of gourds and painted white, hanging from the branches of his lilac bushes like Christmas tree ornaments.
Aubrey got down to business. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you everything at this point,” she began, trying to sip and open her notebook at the same time, “but there seem to be some unresolved issues concerning Buddy Wing’s murder.”
Dillow took a long drink of his lemonade and then wedged the glass between his knees. “Everybody at church is talking about the investigation your paper’s doing. Apparently you have some evidence that Sissy didn’t do it.”
“There’s some evidence that points in that direction,” Aubrey conceded. “But what we’re trying to do now is set the scene.”
“Set the scene?”
“You know-the atmosphere inside the church since Tim Bandicoot was booted out? Are people still riled up? Are there lingering suspicions? Things like that.”
Dillow sprouted a mellow smile. “Guthrie spread the word we weren’t to talk to you. But if you ask me, that just looks like we’re hiding something.”
Aubrey tapped her nose with her pen. “You think anybody is?”
His smile hardened. “I know I’m not.”
Aubrey smiled back, just as resolutely. “You gave the Reverend Wing quite a rough time after your wife died.”
“I was angry and confused. He forgave me.”
“And you forgave him?”
“Nothing to forgive. It was the cancer that killed Dorothea.”
“After she was allegedly healed.”
The word allegedly weakened Dillow’s smile. “Dorothea believed in that sort of thing. And of course the pastor did.”
“But you didn’t?” Aubrey asked.
“Not particularly. But I’ve come to understand that God accepts a lot of leeway as long as you essentially believe the right things.”
Every time I went on an interview with Aubrey that spring and summer I promised myself that I’d keep my mouth shut and let her ask the questions. And every time I broke that promise. “So you don’t believe your wife was hoodwinked by the faith healing?” I asked.
Allegedly weakened his smile. Hoodwinked flattened it. “Hell is filled with people hoodwinked by the miracles of modern medicine. Dorothea, on the other hand, is waiting for me in heaven.”
Aubrey scribbled down his quote-it was a fantastic quote-then jumped in to rescue both me and the interview. “After your wife’s death you harassed Reverend Wing for quite a long time. So much so that he finally had you arrested.”
Dillow’s smile returned. “Believe me, I was mad enough to murder him. But God jumped in and wrestled me away from the devil.”
Another good quote. “And you went back to church?” Aubrey asked as she scribbled.
A woeful laugh wiggled through Dillow’s puckered lips as he sucked on his lemonade. “It struck me one night that I missed my church almost as much as I missed my Dorothea. I cried and prayed for hours and the very next night went to services. Everybody knew what I’d done-breaking into his house and all that-and when I walked in people just divided like the Red Sea. The reverend spotted me during his sermon. He jumped off the stage and came right up the aisle and hugged me and kissed me on the forehead. ‘Will you look who’s here tonight?’ he shouted, just as happy as he could be. ‘Will you look who’s here?’” Dillow pressed his perspiring lemonade glass against his forehead. “So that, Miss McGinty, was how it was at the church before the reverend was poisoned. And that’s how it is now. Some people are suspicious and some are afraid. But everybody loves the Lord.”
This Wayne F. Dillow was a regular quote machine. Aubrey wrote it down and closed her notebook. “And you were there the night Wing was poisoned?”
“Oh, yes.”
Dillow walked us around his backyard, showing us his day lilies and his rhubarb and the pachysandra he’d just planted around his evergreens. He also showed us the brick barbecue he built in the Sixties. “We used to cook out every chance we got,” he said. “Even on rainy days.”
On the drive back to the paper Aubrey kept checking the mirror to see if the red Taurus station wagon was following. It wasn’t.
“So after your stories run and Sissy is cleared,” I asked, “do you think the police will put Dillow on their list of suspects?”
“No matter how Dillow sweetens it up-all that wrestled-from-the-devil crap-he had a motive and he had the opportunity. He’ll be on the list. And he knows it. That’s why the preemptive strike. Talking openly and honestly about his past sins. Nothing To Hide 101.”
“He seemed pretty sincere to me,” I said.
“He did to me, too. Cool, calm and tidy. Maybe the kind of guy who could crawl back to the preacher who killed his wife, and then pretend to be lovey dovey for several years while plotting the perfect revenge. Plying us with lemonade for a half-hour would be a piece of cake for an old fox like that.”
I rubbed my throat. “First Tim Bandicoot’s doughnuts, now Wayne Dillow’s lemonade. We’ve got to stop accepting refreshments from potential murderers.”
By the time Aubrey dropped me off at the paper and I drove home, stopping at the new Walgreen’s for toothpaste, it was after nine. I wanted to crawl into bed and turn on the TV. But my brain was still buzzing. So I went to the basement and rummaged through the old morgue files until midnight.
I think I’ve told you how, little by little, I’ve been pirating the old files out of the morgue. I simply love those old files: The mushroomy smell of the old newsprint. The quiet way the old clippings unfold. The bylines of reporters long retired if not dead. Stories that seem so small and innocent now, but once caused quite a to-do. I love the old file cabinets, too. Some are painted dark green but most are gray. Every one of them is exactly five feet high and 18 inches wide. Every one has four deep drawers that open begrudgingly. Every drawer contains something marvelous.
I know it makes me sound like the most boring woman on the face of the earth, but it’s not uncommon for me to spend two or three evenings a week going through the files in my basement. I’ll pull out an armful of folders and then sit down at the old chrome-legged kitchen table I keep by the clothes dryer and just lose myself in the magic of the past.
That night I was looking through files from the S drawers. The Heaven Bound Cathedral is located in the city’s South Ridge neighborhood. We don’t anymore, but we used to keep detailed files on all the neighborhoods, the crimes committed, church and school events, sewer and water projects, the fires and horrible traffic accidents.
The Heaven Bound Cathedral was built in 1978. That section of South Ridge was still pretty leafy and quiet then. The land Buddy Wing bought for his church was the old estate of Ralph Haisley, founder of Haisley’s department store. Before the interstate highways and the flight to the suburbs, Haisley’s was the place to shop downtown. The grand, six-story building closed and sat empty for seven years. Now it’s the county welfare offices. Anyway, Ralph Haisley built this incredible Tudor mansion up on South Ridge in the Twenties. After World War II, the woods and fields around the mansion were sold off for housing developments. The Haisley heirs sold the remaining grounds to Buddy Wing just after the department store closed.
My South Ridge files contained a number of stories about the cathedral’s construction. People in the surrounding developments did not like the church being built there at all. They complained about the garish design and they complained about the impending traffic problems. They complained that the zoning code change granted to Wing would encourage other unwanted development. Which it did. Today there are fast-food restaurants and car dealerships and a huge strip mall with a Target and a Home Depot.
Soon after the cathedral opened, residents discovered another problem. The parking lot lights. Eighteen steel poles rising over the asphalt like those Martian machines in the War of the Worlds. Each pole was topped with six balls of blinding white light. Neighborhood dogs wouldn’t stop barking and people couldn’t sleep. One man whose property abutted the parking lot started shooting out the lights with a. 22 rifle. The man’s name was Edward Tolchak. Between 1979 and 1985, he was arrested and charged six times.
Wednesday, May 31
First thing in the morning I gave the files to Aubrey, who already had her knees propped on her desk and her keyboard in her lap, typing furiously. She tossed the file on her desk, where it immediately became lost among the rubble. “A guy dumb enough to stand in his own backyard and shoot out parking lot lights plotting a perfect murder? I don’t think so.”
“He’s been arrested six times, and altogether served over ninety days in jail,” I pointed out. “I’d say there has to be some real anger there.”
She nodded impatiently and typed even faster.
I persisted. “My files at home only go to 1987. So who knows what Edward Tolchak may have done in recent years. Things may have escalated.”
She could see I was irritated by her indifference. “I’ll give the files to Eric. Maybe he can find something worth pursuing.”
I went from mild-mannered Maddy to bitch-on-wheels Morgue Mama in a hundredth of a second. “What are you saying to me? That if I wasn’t such an incompetent old fool I could check the computer files myself? Well, from now on-”
She apologetically grabbed my elbow and slowly pulled me toward her. “You want to go with Eric and me to Meri after work?”
And so that night we met for dinner. I assumed we’d go to Speckley’s, but they both wanted to go to Okar’s, a trendy new Lebanese restaurant. Instead of the meat loaf sandwich and au gratin potatoes I was craving, I had a fruit salad covered with yogurt and honey and pistachio nuts. Eric and Aubrey had grilled chicken pitas and shared a plate of lawn clippings called tabooli. For dessert we ordered one baklava and three forks.
It was just about dark when we left the restaurant. The sidewalk was filled with old gays wearing pastel baseball caps and noisy college kids covered in tattoos and earrings. I remembered the days when be-bop jazz used to roll out of the bars and give the entire neighborhood a happy epileptic fit. Now the street throbbed like a toothache from that awful rap music. Eric was begging me to join them for cappuccinos at Starbucks when Aubrey spotted the red Taurus station wagon parked along the street just a block from our own cars. I don’t know if she was frightened, angry, or simply annoyed, but she began leaking four-letter words. Quite to my surprise, Eric began leaking them, too. Then he started running, right toward the Taurus, fists tucked under his chin like a boxer.
Aubrey and I both yelled for him to stop. But Eric was in protective boyfriend mode. When he got within fifty feet of the station wagon, the man inside jumped out and ran. Eric stayed with him. They crossed the street and ran another block before disappearing around the back of an apartment building.
Aubrey wanted to follow, but I locked my arms around her elbow to hold her back. “Eric couldn’t catch a cold,” I assured her.
After a minute or two, the man reappeared, trotting, arms wrapped around his face like a babushka. He jumped into his station wagon, backed into a lime-green Volkswagen Beetle, made a clumsy U-turn and sped away. Then we saw Eric, weaving slowly across the street, oblivious to the traffic.
Aubrey and I hurried to him. There was blood on his lip and the bridge of his nose. He was staring straight ahead, acting dopey. I fished in my purse for a Kleenex while Aubrey berated him for not getting the license plate number on the Taurus. “That’s all you needed to do,” she kept repeating. “That’s all you needed to do.”
I licked the Kleenex and started cleaning the blood off his face. “Good gravy, Aubrey. He’s just been beaten to a pulp.”
Actually he hadn’t been beaten to a pulp. He told us he’d tried to tackle the mysterious station-wagon man and missed, tumbling over the hood of a Yugo.
“Could you make the guy out?” Aubrey demanded. “White, black, young, old?”
Eric fought off my dabbing Kleenex. “Middle-aged white guy.” He swung his eyes across my worried face and stared into the black sky. “I think I’m going home now,” he said.
Aubrey followed him to his truck, begging for a better description of the man. He drove away without telling her anything.
I felt so sorry for Eric. He had tried to defend the woman he loved-at least loved to sleep with-only to make a fool of himself. I knew what that kind of embarrassment was like. I once went to Dale Marabout’s apartment with a chocolate cake, to rekindle our faltering affair. Instead of knocking, I used the key he’d given me. I found him naked on his living room floor with that kindergarten teacher.
A few days after that incident in Meri, Aubrey confided in me that Eric had stopped sleeping with her. “I guess flying over the hood of that Yugo he came to the conclusion I’m not worth dying for,” she said. She said it as if she didn’t care. But I could see she did care. For years, Dale Marabout and I assured each other we were just in it for the sex. We laughed and copulated like a couple of those chimpanzees in equatorial Africa, bonobos I think they’re called, who just mindlessly screw and screw and screw. After I found Dale on the floor with the kindergarten teacher, I pretended not to care. I went to their wedding and, of all things, gave them a set of fitted flannel sheets. But I cared. And Aubrey cared. She’d been using Eric, no doubt about that, but it was for more than sex.