Morgue Mama by C.R. Corwin

inside. People with headsets and clipboards were buzzing about like honey bees. “What a fancy operation,” I whispered. “You’d think they were putting on the Academy Awards.”
    Aubrey gave me a nudge and we started our retreat. She reconstructed Buddy Wing’s last service as we walked: “Sometime while he was in the make-up chair or praying with the elders, the killer slipped into his office to paint that poison cross on his Bible. We know from the police reports, and from your Mr. Marabout’s stories—”
    I protested. “My Mr. Marabout?”
    “You know what I mean. I know you haven’t slept with him for years.”
    “And who said I ever slept with him?”
    Aubrey scowled at me. “Will you get your mind back on the murder? Everybody knows you and Marabout used to do the nasty—”
    She called it the
nasty
. I knew that was just a word people her age used. But it stung. It had not been nasty. It had been good, clean, wonderful fun between two people who genuinely cared for each other. “Who told you?” I demanded. “Doreen Poole?”
    She ignored my question. “So we know—from more than one source—that it was the director’s job to take the Bible to the pulpit, along with Wing’s notes for his sermon, and make sure he had a pitcher of water for when the sweat started pouring. But the director—her name’s Elaine Albert, she’s been directing the broadcasts since they started in the early Seventies—told the police that when she went to get the Bible and sermon notes from his office, approximately fifteen minutes before the service was to start, they were both gone. She hurried to the stage and found them already on the pulpit. And the pitcher of water under it.”
    “And she wasn’t a little curious?” I asked.
    “She told police she didn’t have time to be curious. The service was starting in a few minutes.”
    “It certainly piques my curiosity. Why wasn’t this Elaine Albert considered a suspect?”
    “She was the first person they talked to. They gave her a lie detector test the next morning.”
    “I gather she passed.”
    Aubrey gave me one of those “Duhs” people her age employ to tell someone they’re making a fool out of themselves by stating the obvious.
    “But wouldn’t a television director have to be a real cool cucumber—always in control?” I asked. “I’d think somebody like that could easily fake a lie detector.”
    “I’d think so, too.”
    “But the police wouldn’t think so?”
    “The police stopped thinking when Sissy confessed.”
    A slow, melancholy voice put an end to our snoopfest: “I thought it might be the two of you.”
    It was the big-eared security guard and a minute later we were standing in the make-up room watching the woman with the painted-on eyebrows rub a natural tan into Guthrie Gates’ chalky face. He was struggling with every vein in his neck to remain Christian. “I’m guessing you didn’t come to worship with us.”
    Aubrey was doing a much better job at staying calm than I was. “We wanted to see the crime scene—as it would have been the night Pastor Wing was poisoned.”
    Gates lifted his chin so the eyebrow woman could squirt make-up on his neck. “Let me guess why you didn’t call for permission first—you were afraid I’d change things around?”
    “I was afraid somebody might,” Aubrey admitted. “But not for malicious reasons. When people know the press is coming they tend to put their best foot forward, often subconsciously.”
    Gates swatted away the make-up woman’s sticky fingers. “Like subconsciously bringing you doughnuts?”
    I was flabbergasted. “You know about the doughnuts?”
    Gates closed his eyes and motioned for the eyebrow woman to resume her rubbing. “Since Tim Bandicoot started that
temple
of his, it’s been like the U.S. and Red China between our congregations. Everything they do gets back to us. Everything we do gets back to them.” He sat silently until the eyebrow woman was