Morgue Mama Read Free Page B

the Buddy Wing files.”
    “If every reporter I helped bought me lunch, I’d weigh four hundred pounds.”
    We both ordered the meat loaf sandwiches, au gratin potatoes on the side.
    “By the way,” I said after the waitress was gone, “you could have e-mailed me about lunch—I’m not the high-tech dodo everybody thinks.”
    Aubrey’s lips contorted into her laugh-preventing pucker. “I did e-mail you,” she said, “about an hour after you got the files for me. You never answered.”
    “Oh.”
    Now the conversation turned to my name, which conversations with new people always do. “So,” she asked, “were you named after Dolly Madison the president’s wife, or Dolly Madison the pickle?”
    “Both,” I told her. “If it hadn’t been for the pickle jar in the refrigerator, my parents never would’ve known there was a president’s wife named Dolly.”
    “Then is Madison your middle name or your maiden name? I don’t even know if you’re married.”
    “The beautiful name Sprowls came with my divorce settlement.”
    She liked that. “So when Ma and Pa Madison had a girl they couldn’t resist.”
    “You have no idea the crap that passes for clever in LaFargeville, New York,” I said.
    “New York? You sound so Ohio.”
    “Upstate New York is Ohio,” I said.
    I learned long ago that it’s dangerous going to lunch with reporters. They don’t talk to you. They interview you. By the time the check comes, they know what brand of underwear you’re wearing. So, the best thing to do is go on offense. “You’re from Rush City, right?” I asked.
    She rolled her eyes. “Farm foreclosure capital of the Midwest.”
    “And after college you went back and worked at the hometown paper?”
    “Everybody’s got to start somewhere,” she said.
    “It was a good place for you to start.
The Gazette
is a good paper. What’s the circulation now? Fifteen thousand?”
    “They wish.”
    “How old are you, anyway, Aubrey? When you get my age everybody looks about twelve.”
    “Twenty-four.”
    “You couldn’t have been at
The Gazette
for very long.”
    “Year and a half.”
    “And you worked like a maniac and got some good clips for your file—good for you.”
    She smiled. “I was lucky. I got to cover some terrific stories.”
    I prodded them out of her: an Amtrak derailment, the arrest of a scout master for molesting boys on a canoe trip, and best of all, the murder of the high school football coach by the cuckolded husband of the cheerleading advisor. She was right. She was lucky. Reporters on little papers like
The Gazette
rarely get to cover good stories, just car accidents, county fairs, and an occasional embezzlement by a township clerk. “Dale Marabout says you’re a very good writer,” I said.
    The sandwiches came. Aubrey peeled back the bread and poked the meat loaf with her finger to make sure it was cooked thoroughly. It was and she took a huge bite. For the rest of our lunch our conversation was filtered through mouthfuls of meat loaf and potatoes.
    “So, why don’t you think Sissy James killed Buddy Wing?” I asked.
    Aubrey, chewing away, held up her index finger like a number one. “First, when I saw the police tape of her confession on TV, she just didn’t look guilty.” She swallowed and held up a second finger. “Two, that murder of the football coach taught me never to trust the police—I don’t mean their honesty, most cops are pretty honest—but their work. They’re human and humans fuck up.”
    I’ve got an absolutely filthy mouth myself, but there are certain words that simply cannot be formed by the lips of a woman of my generation. The one that starts with F is one of them. “So how did they
screw
up the football coach’s murder?”
    Aubrey put down her sandwich and folded her hands under her chin. “About a month before the coach was killed, he threw this big deal senior off the team for repeatedly peeing in the gym bags of the junior varsity players. The coach