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was the one without a clue. “You don’t think she’s innocent?”
    Aubrey nibbled and nodded and shrugged at the same time. “I think she’s innocent. But even if I can prove it—and get her to admit it—I’m not sure I want to investigate any further than that.”
    “You wheedled Gates into giving you a church directory. That’s not for our files. That’s to run background checks on the membership.”
    “Maybe it’s for that.” She filled her cheeks with pretzel. “God, Maddy, I’ve so much to do. I’ve got to learn the police beat. That’s a big department. Rush City had eleven goofy cops. And Chief Polceznec is gearing up for this major internal reorganization. And as soon as spring gets here people will start killing each other left and right. The paper took a big risk on me. I’ve got to do well. And I’ve got so much personal shit to do. I don’t own anything except a futon and an old Radio Shack computer. I’m an adult now. I need a sofa. Table and chairs. A hutch full of fancy plates I never use. A real bed. Somebody to put in it.”
    There was something about sitting in that food court full of twitchy kids that made me feel young and wicked myself. “That last part ought to be easy enough.”
    Aubrey groaned and rested her forehead on the cold Formica tabletop. “Don’t even go there,” she said.
    I suddenly felt hot and silly. I’d gone too far. She was one of the paper’s reporters, the enemy, an overly ambitious kid I didn’t know and didn’t particularly want to know. I quickly got back on safe ground—the murder of Buddy Wing. “So it’s down to three then? Sissy James, Tim Bandicoot, or Guthrie Gates?”
    Aubrey had finished her pretzel. Now she was harvesting the salt crystals on her paper plate, dabbing them up with her index finger, licking them off. “If only it were three.”
    “Good gravy—who else?”
    “Who benefits from a dead TV evangelist, Maddy?”
    “Well—me for one. But I guess you mean specifically.”
    She giggled deep in her throat, the way Beelzebub might. “From what I’ve read, some of these TV preachers have no problem living as kingly on earth as they expect to live in heaven.”
    “You think maybe Buddy Wing was killed for his money? From what I gather, he lived fairly modestly.”
    We shook off our trays in a trash can shaped like an open-mouthed frog. “My first week at
The Gazette
I did a story on a school custodian who’d lived his entire life in a ramshackle house without running water or electricity,” Aubrey said. “He left a half-million dollars to the local ornithological society.”
    “You’re making that up.”
    “Have you ever been to the new Wyssock County Wild Bird Museum, Maddy? It’s really something.”
    I still didn’t know if she was joking or not. But I got her point. “So Buddy Wing might have left somebody a bundle?”
    The automatic doors deposited us in the parking lot. “Maybe, maybe not,” she said. “We do know from the morgue files that his wife died of cancer, and that they didn’t have any kids. But certainly he had other family. Brothers. Sisters. Greedy nephews and nieces. Who knows how much money he had? Who knows who has it now? I’ll have to make nice with the gnomes at probate court.”

Chapter 4
     
    Monday, March 13
    Nine-o’clock Monday morning Police Chief Polceznec announced his department’s reorganization plan. It set off the biggest political row of the winter. The police union filed suit at noon, claiming too many white officers were overlooked for promotions. An hour later the NAACP filed its suit, saying exactly the opposite was true. The local chapter of NOW held a press conference at two and demanded that at least one of the new district commanders be a woman. City Council called a hurry-up hearing at four. Some members of Council chastised Mayor Finn for not exercising enough control over the police department. Some charged that he exercised too much. Aubrey didn’t even have