A Cast of Killers

CHAPTER THREE



T.S. spent the early part of the evening devising ways to put off the phone call to Lilah Cheswick. It was amazing how inventive he could be when desperation drove him to it. He began by retracing the steps of his cleaning lady earlier that day, but since she took perverse pleasure in being even cleaner than him (a near impossibility) there was not a single speck of dust to discover throughout his ruthlessly organized and sparsely furnished apartment. Alarmed by his restless activity, Brenda and Eddie followed him the entire time, meowing ceaselessly for more food just in case he suffered a temporary lapse of memory and they got lucky. They didn't—T.S. had put them both on strict diets since they resembled seals more than cats— but they did each nab an anchovy-stuffed olive when T.S. finally decided to tackle the refrigerator.

There wasn't much to do. Like every single one of the rooms in his six-room apartment, the refrigerator was spotless and gleaming clean. He wiped out the butter compartment, just in case the cleaning lady had missed it, then restacked his frozen dinners according to the main entree.

That done, he took a blow dryer to his bedroom slippers to restore the nap then checked all of his paintings and prints with a carpenter's level to ensure they were hanging properly. After all, it had been at least a month since he'd performed these all-important tasks.

Remembering some new purchases from the day before, T.S. then added a few entries to the computerized cross-indexed catalog he maintained on his private music collection, which was heavy on opera and show tunes. There was no point in checking the shelves of hardback books. He'd spent the morning before dusting and organizing those. Paperbacks were not allowed in the apartment, at least not after T.S. had eagerly read them. They were spirited down the hall and given to a neighbor so that Auntie Lil would not discover that he read best-selling thrillers and cheap detective novels by the handful each week.

He was finally reduced to killing another hour by rearranging his impeccably organized personal files chronologically instead of alphabetically. Then, realizing the absurdity of such a system, he moved them back as they were. In doing so, a small envelope fluttered to the floor from his Personal Correspondence, 1942-1955 file. He stared at it. The combination of Auntie Lil's earlier lecture and the letter's familiar handwriting triggered a flood of memories, as well as curiosity about how his past would seem to a stranger. People would find it odd, he supposed, that he had kept a correspondence file beginning with age seven. But then, not many people had been sent to boarding school at such a young age. And even fewer had had their letters to home returned regularly, with grammar and spelling carefully corrected by a well meaning but rigid schoolteacher mother.

Had T.S. been more sentimental, and less like his mother, it might have hurt his feelings. He had, instead, made a game out of trying to send her letters perfect in every way—thus embarking on a career of perfectionism that, among other compulsions, drove him to save every personal letter he received with the reply date noted on the front of each envelope.

He held the childish letter in his hand. It began with "Dear Mummy and Daddy." How strange. Children never called their mothers "Mummy" anymore, did they? It was hard for him to know for sure. Children were as foreign to T.S. as Zulu warriors, and a great deal more alarming. He noted with satisfaction that his mother had uncovered a mere three mistakes in the letter, and picayune ones at that, at a time when he was only eight years old. Not bad. Of course, by age ten he'd been able to beat her at her own game and had earned brief laudatory replies at the bottom of his own letters in return. It was better than nothing at all and, nearly fifty years later, he still treasured the perfunctory paragraphs of praise from his emotionally distant mother.

Replacing the letter into its proper folder, T.S. ran his fingers over the neat pile of perfectly ordered correspondence. Each letter— with certain rather spectacular exceptions—was very thin and very carefully folded. The exceptions were missives from Auntie Lil, posted from all corners of the world as she trekked here and there, following the fashion designers she served as they searched for new styles and new fabrics. He had awaited each of her letters with an eagerness he felt ashamed to admit to anyone else. No one else at boarding school, he remembered, in all those years away from home, could have claimed more exotic correspondence. Her letters had arrived at his always well sterilized room with wonderful irregularity, always fat and crammed with clippings, scraps of fabric, photographs of herself with strangers and stacks of postcards she'd meant to send earlier. They literally overflowed with evidence of a world so chaotic it both frightened and excited his prematurely adult mind.

T.S. knew even then how much his mother despised Auntie Lil and her unorthodox, sometime scandalous, ways. But, while struggling to maintain loyalty toward his rigidly conventional mother, T.S. had always been drawn closer to Auntie Lil's warm and loving flame, craving her maternal beacon and carefree, capable spirit. Unlike his mother, who had been "Fondly" for as long as he could remember, Auntie Lil signed her letters to T.S. with "Love Always From Your Most Adoring Aunt." After five decades, he knew she still meant it with all of her heart.

He sighed. Auntie Lil would not be putting off a phone call like a bashful teenager. In fact, she was probably out somewhere right now on one of her many dates eating food of undetermined origin with people whose names were hard to pronounce. Her taste in friends was every bit as exotic as her taste in clothing and correspondence.

He sighed. He owed it to her to call Lilah. And he owed it to her to help her find out Emily's true identity. There had been many times in the past when all that lay between T.S. and a bleak, boring life was his fun-loving Aunt Lil. It was now his turn to pay her back. She wanted so much to embark on a new project. And there was a real need beneath her surface sorrow at the poor woman's death. While his mother was content to spend her days imperiously ordering about the staff of an elderly care facility, Auntie Lil was different.

She wanted, T.S. knew, to go down kicking and screaming. And she truly needed new mysteries to survive.

He held a fat and yellowed envelope from her in his hand. Sent from Malaysia in 1954, it still held a sliver of banana frond and a faded newspaper clipping of Auntie Lil flanked by dozens of dark and smiling faces. T.S. ran a finger across the crease of the letter then carefully tucked it back in place. It was time to call Lilah Cheswick.


Lilah was rich enough to afford a houseful of servants, but hated having them about. T.S. was not surprised when she answered the phone herself on the third ring.

"Hello?" she asked calmly. "Do please hold on." Her smoky voice snaked through the telephone wires, sending a flame shooting down the length of his previously placid fifty-five-year-old body. He was too old for such nonsense, but too young not to want it.

He heard a crinkling sound in the background, then a thump and a muffled ladylike oath followed by more crinkling and an exasperated sigh. Finally, she returned to the phone with apologetic politeness. "So sorry to keep you waiting. Who is this, please?"

"Lilah?" His voice was louder than he'd expected. He calmed down and continued. "Lilah—it's me. I'm T.S." What was he saying? His tongue had a life of its own.

"Theodore!" Only two people in the entire world were allowed to call him by his full name. Lilah Cheswick was one of them.

"Where have you been, Theodore?" Her voice swelled and took on a rich warmth that T.S. was too afraid to even suspect might be for him. Lilah was always a woman to get right to the point. "Why haven't you been calling me?" she demanded in a good-humored tone of voice.

Now that was an excellent question. "I don't know," he confessed. "I thought you'd prefer to be left alone for a while."

"Theodore, you know me too well to really believe that. Robert's been dead for months but, to me, he'd been dead for years."

It was true. T.S. thought back to the murder of Lilah's husband and to her well-balanced sorrow. She and her husband had not had a happy life together and she was not the kind of woman to milk grief for her own benefit. "I don't know why I haven't called," he finally offered. "I thought you'd probably be too busy."

"Too busy? Doing what? My daughters are off at school. I've read every book ever published. My friends bore me and now I can't even get this stupid frozen dinner open, so I'll probably starve to death before they can bore me to death." There was another thump and some more exasperated crinkling.

"Try cutting the plastic with a knife," he suggested. "There's really no other way."

"Theodore, you're a genius. Deirdre's left me for a week and I'm helpless. There!" He heard the thump of a microwave door closing and she was back on the line. "To what do I owe this honor? You have four minutes to explain and then I'm tearing into that dinner with my very well-bred teeth. You don't want to take me out to dinner, I suppose?"

"Yes. Yes, I do." He practically shouted, and didn't even care. Not even he would pass up such an opening. "Let's go to dinner tomorrow night."

"That would be lovely. I think I'll survive until then."

He was so busy admiring her voice and marveling at her calm and apparent disregard of his own nervousness that, at first, he neglected to reply. When he realized he'd been holding the phone silently for nearly half a minute, he panicked and did what he'd always done with women: he blurted out the first thing that crossed his mind.

"Could we stop by the morgue first?" he asked, to his own immediate horror. God, what was he doing? Where was his finesse? He was acting like a teenage moron.

"You're such a romantic, Theodore," Lilah teased, seemingly impervious to any faux pas he might produce. "Have you grown kinky in our months apart?"

"Oh, this is horrible," he forced himself to confess, unleashing a torrent of words. "I'm making an idiot of myself and you must think I'm insane. I've been wanting to call you and I don't know why I haven't. And now I'm calling because I need a favor or, rather, Auntie Lil and I need a favor, but I'm afraid you'll think that's the only reason I'm calling you, so now I feel like a real ass. I think I'd better just hang up."

"Don't hang up, Theodore," Lilah told him cheerfully. "I'll take any phone call I can get from you. On any pretense whatsoever. And if Auntie Lil is involved, then all the better. It tells me that my boredom is at an end. I demand all details immediately."

"A woman died today in a soup kitchen where we work."

"You've been working at a soup kitchen? How wonderful. I'm very proud of you, though I must confess it makes me feel inadequate. I'll have to donate an extra thousand or so tomorrow just to compensate." The good thing about Lilah was that she never flaunted her extreme wealth and, in fact, often made fun of it herself. "But you, Theodore, you back your convictions with actions," she added. "I like that in a man."

"Well, I haven't been working there long," he confessed. He checked his watch. Nine hours, to be exact. No need to get into too many details.

"Anyway, this poor woman died today of a heart attack in front of everyone and no one knows her real name," he continued. "Auntie Lil thinks if we can get a photo of her and show it around the neighborhood, we'll be able to discover who she was and notify her family and then she can be buried under her real name."

"Well, she wasn't murdered, but it is a mystery of sorts. How can I help?"

"Can you find out where they've taken the body and get us in so we can take a photograph?"

"Only if I get to come along. Dinner and the morgue is my idea of the ideal date."

"Are you sure you want to come?"

"I'm sure. At least about the dinner part. I reserve judgment on the morgue. Give me the details, and I'll call you back later tonight."

He quickly filled her in and heard the ding of the microwave just as he finished the story. She assured him again she'd be able to help, then hung up with a cheerful goodbye. That left him with no one but Brenda and Eddie to engage in the all-important rehashing of the conversation. They regarded him with sleepy, yellow eyes and seemed infinitely bored at the possibilities of Lilah Cheswick. They had long since given up on their human being. In their estimation, he was really too dull for words. Brenda yawned and daintily licked at one paw. T.S. was dismissed.

He watched an old Barbara Stanwyck movie while he waited and it was almost as good as having Lilah right there. As promised, she called back several hours later and the deed had been done. Lilah had enough money and enough breeding that no favor asked was too great, and no amount of time too short in which to grant it. The strings had been pulled and the doors were being opened. The dead woman had been taken to the medical examiner's office on the East Side of midtown. They could drop by early tomorrow evening so long as they kept their visit discreet.

"They'll be holding the body there for a week, in case anyone asks about her," Lilah explained. "Then it's Potter's Field. Do you have a camera?"

"Yes." T.S. kept his camera carefully stored in its original box in the recreation cabinet. He liked it close at hand so that he could film every item he purchased, for insurance purposes. He stored the photographic evidence in a safe-deposit box in the unlikely event a burglar was able to break through the considerable security of his Upper East Side apartment. Few parts of T.S. Hubbert's life went unorganized. He liked life well ordered and well mannered.

"Good," Lilah was saying. "Then I'll pick you up tomorrow at six sharp. I can wait outside with my driver while you go in. I'm afraid I'd faint and make a fool of myself. How about you? Are you sure you're ready for this?"

In truth, he already did feel a bit like fainting. But it was at the thought of seeing Lilah again after three months, not a dead body. He had to get a grip on himself. "It won't be my first corpse," he pointed out in what he hoped was a capable and slightly insouciant manner.

"True," she agreed cheerfully. "You do seem to collect dead bodies, actually." Without waiting for his reply, she purred a good night and left him alone with the silence of a single man's apartment and two bored cats for company.

But there was always tomorrow.


Tomorrow commenced early with a phone call from a determined Auntie Lil. She was going to the morgue with them and that was that. "I've never seen the inside of the medical examiner's office," she announced. "And I'm not passing up the opportunity to see something new. You needn't worry about me horning in on your little tete-a-tete. I shall discreetly disappear after we take the photographs."

Discreetly disappear? Whether appearing or disappearing, Auntie Lil was about as discreet as a stripper in a monastery. T.S. sighed. He could argue, but what was the point? If he said no, she'd call Lilah who would, of course, urge her to come along for the fun of it.

No, there was no way to dissuade Auntie Lil. They'd all just have to troop in like a club of ghoulish thrill seekers. He'd not even be surprised if Aunt Lil brought along a date. There was sure to be someone among her motley collection of admirers who considered the morgue the ultimate good time.

"Now that we've settled that," she decided for them both, "when are you coming down to the soup kitchen to help?"

"I'll be down in a couple of hours," he promised, not even bothering to argue. He thought of his soap operas, but the thrills of Camilla and Tyrone seemed cheap and artificial next to the sudden excitement of his own life. Besides, he was not above having the little old lady actresses flutter around him in gratitude.

Unfortunately, once he arrived at St. Barnabas, it was obvious that the women were overcome with theatrical grief, not gratitude. Neither Emily's death nor Auntie Lil's chili the day before had abated anyone's appetite. The line was as long and patient as ever. T.S. walked by, nodding at those faces he recognized. Nearly every single one of the old actresses was decked out in various styles of mourning wear. From far away, they looked like small black birds scattered among the crowd. Up close, they looked like figures you'd see on the edge of a movie horror scene: frail and cloaked in black, about to fade slowly from view like grim messengers from the beyond. Adelle had apparently dragged out a leftover costume from a stint as Lady Macbeth—she wore a long black gown uniquely inappropriate for the quite warm late September day. But T.S. had to admire her carriage—her proud chin never faltered—and noticed that the other soup kitchen attendees stood at a respectable distance from her regal sorrow. She wore a small triangular hat with a black dotted veil that swept down over her face. Altogether, it was a flawless performance.

Adelle managed a brave smile as T.S. passed by, and he patted her on the back in what he hoped was a consoling manner. Then he spotted plump Eva standing to one side, defiantly dressed in a bright red dress in a ploy to nab the Bette Davis role in the drama. Her arms were crossed firmly across her ample bosom and she appeared ready and raring to fight with anyone who dared question her attire. T.S. wondered how anyone could carry a grudge for nearly half a century. What a waste of energy to be belaboring the past so tortuously. Especially when neither of them had achieved success at the expense of the other. There had to be more to it than what he knew.

He met Auntie Lil just outside the basement door. She was poking around the garbage cans like a hobo, with a rotten banana peel dangling from one hand. "I'm looking to see if Emily's pocketbook was dropped after the thief rifled through it," she announced when she noticed his stare.

"You mean, after the thief took the money and ran."

"No." She daintily lifted the lid off one can and the smell of rotting onions mixed with burnt coffee grounds wafted past. "There was no money for the thief to steal. According to reliable sources, she abhorred cash and rarely carried it on her. Everyone knew it. She always talked about the dangers of carrying money in the neighborhood."

"The thief didn't know it," T.S. commented. "Or he wouldn't have taken the pocketbook." He gently guided her back inside before she started ripping open the sealed plastic bags of wet debris in her search.

"Maybe the thief did know it," she said stubbornly. "And took it anyway."

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe the pocketbook wasn't stolen for the money."

T.S. screeched to a halt and held Auntie Lil firmly in place. "Do not," he said very firmly and distinctly, "go creating a mystery where none exists. We promised to find out the woman's identity. Period. That was our deal. Our sole agreement. Let's not get carried away." Though just warming up, he was interrupted in his lecture by the appearance of the perpetually hearty Father Stebbins and the lamprey-like Fran.

"Welcome back, my boy," the massive priest boomed, thumping him on the back so enthusiastically that T.S. was convinced he'd jarred a filling out of one of his back teeth. "I knew you'd be the type who wouldn't get going when the going got tough."

"Where have you been?" Fran asked Auntie Lil rudely. "You left me all alone to skin dozens of cucumbers. I've hardly made a dent."

"You'd better not have made a dent at all," Auntie Lil warned, sailing past the scowling woman with oblivious authority. "If you bruise the flesh, you spoil the entire dish. I can see I'll just have to do this myself."

Lunch proved to be an uneventful affair. No one died, certainly. In fact, no one so much as choked. And much to the chagrin of the ladies in black, few people even seemed to notice their very public attempts at good old-fashioned grieving. But once the meal had been served, Auntie Lil—who was still hot on the trail of the pocketbook thief, despite T.S.'s warning—dragged her nephew over to a table inhabited by Franklin, the enormous black man with the soft Southern accent.

Franklin was sitting with an extremely tall, jaundiced and probably half-demented old man. There was a peculiar gleam in the fellow's rummy eyes and he was as gaunt and intense-looking as a preacher gone brimstone-mad in the pulpit. Everything about him seemed out of place. His clothes hung at odd angles from his skinny body, his hair had been unevenly cut and shaved in one place, plus one foot was missing a sock. Even the white stubble that dotted his chin couldn't get its act together—it was darkly stained in patches from unwashed dirt.

"Listen to what this gentleman just told Franklin," Auntie Lil demanded.

"Come on," T.S. complained. "We had a deal that you wouldn't go and—"

"Tell the man what you just told me," Franklin interrupted, coaxing his grimy dining partner in a gentle voice.

"I seen the eagle lay down with the lamb," the old man declared in a wheezy voice. "He bent over her, I could see he was breathing the evil. Breathed it right in her mouth, he did. That's why she died. He'd been stalking her. I saw him on the streets with the bright-plumed birds of prey. Those birds of a feather, they do flock together."

T.S. stared at him for a few seconds of uncomprehending silence, then turned to Auntie Lil skeptically.

"Tell him the rest," she asked the old man gently.

"I saw him bending under the table while the rest of us was watching that woman die," the old man rumbled, his words punctuated by an occasional juicy cough. "It's bad luck to watch death. So I was watching that man instead, 'cause I'd seen him give her the evil eye and all. I was right wary about that eye turning my way. I saw him reach down and pick something up off the floor. And when they said the coppers were on their way, that man was ready to fly the coop. He was the first one out the door."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Auntie Lil scolded him. "He was stealing her pocketbook. He was picking the bones of a corpse!"

The old man looked a bit taken aback by the sudden intrusion of corpse bones, but he was not fazed by Auntie Lil's dramatic indignation. "Weren't my business," he explained patiently. "Weren't my business at all. But look out. There's always trouble when the eagle gets loose among the lambs." He returned to his stew and thoughtfully chewed on a chunk of gray meat, staring up at them impassively with very bright eyes.

"This mysterious man was the eagle, not the lamb? Correct?" T.S. asked drily. Much to his chagrin, Auntie Lil brightened up at once, apparently feeling it was an excellent question.

"He was The Eagle, all right," the old fellow announced ominously. He tapped a fist against the biceps of his right arm and nodded sagely. "He was The Eagle."

"The Eagle?" T.S. smiled at him grimly and thanked the old man for his time. Gripping Auntie Lil's elbow, he dragged her firmly away to the privacy of a kitchen corner. "Short of treating me to a real-life cross between Dr. Doolittle and a Charles Dickens character, what was the purpose of that little display?" he asked crossly.

"He saw who stole the pocketbook," Auntie Lil insisted, rubbing her elbow and glaring at him pointedly.

T.S. shook his head and ignored her silent admonishment. Physical containment was the only way to control Auntie Lil. "Auntie Lil," he told her, "as much as I admire your uncompromising honesty, I don't think the police are going to be too interested in trying to prosecute a thief who steals an empty pocketbook from a dead woman that nobody knows." He shrugged. "Let's just clean up, forget about the pocketbook and get ready for what will surely be a lighthearted evening popping in at the morgue in preparation for your latest goose chase."

His nervousness at seeing Lilah Cheswick prompted an enthusiastically sarcastic tone. But the only trouble with being sarcastic when talking to Auntie Lil was that she always cheerfully agreed that it was all too, too true.


By the time T.S. and Auntie Lil had helped the other volunteers scrub down the counters and wash the dishes, it was nearly six o'clock. Lilah was due to arrive any moment and T.S. scurried to the bathroom to do what he could, with what he had left, in the way of physical attributes.

Actually, he didn't look too bad for a man who'd just turned fifty-five. Perhaps the dim bathroom lighting helped, but there were far fewer wrinkles on his strong German face than was the case with many of his friends. In fact, he suspected that a couple of wrinkles had disappeared since he'd retired from his stress-filled job as personnel manager of a Wall Street private bank. He smoothed the skin over his broad cheeks and carefully scrubbed the oil and dirt until he glowed with pink-fleshed health. He did not like to admit it, but he bore a remarkable resemblance to Auntie Lil. In fact, a friend had once correctly commented that Auntie Lil looked exactly like T.S. might look if he were in drag. T.S. had not appreciated the remark.

He'd had the foresight to bring along a clean shirt. Immaculate personal grooming, T.S. believed, was the essential mark of a civilized man. He changed quickly, taking the opportunity to suck in his small gut and compare it in the mirror to what he'd seen a few weeks before. Yes, he was almost certain he'd managed to lose a pound or two. If he held his breath and threw his shoulders back, he looked no worse than he had a decade ago. Of course, he couldn't walk or breathe posed like that, plus his hair had turned an indisputable gray… but at least there was plenty of it. He'd taken to wearing it a bit longer now that he no longer had to march in uniformed lockstep with the rest of the Wall Street crowd. Secretly, he believed he looked a bit like an older version of that movie star, Richard Gere, but had yet to summon the courage to ask any friends whether they agreed.

There was a vigorous pounding at the door. "What are you doing in there?" Auntie Lil demanded. "Lilah is waiting for us outside."

"Coming," he called out, quickly tucking in his clean shirt. He didn't look perfect, but it would have to do. Auntie Lil was waiting impatiently. Yet, after making him hurry, she deliberately tarried at the doorway until Fran emerged from a back room. Only then would she leave. Ignoring Auntie Lil, who blocked her nearly every step of the way, Fran followed them out the door and walked briskly to the nearby corner and waited for the traffic light to change. She turned their way only twice—both times to look up at a small window toward the back of the church, no doubt the quarters of Father Stebbins.

In a rare act of imperiousness, Auntie Lil refused to enter the waiting limousine under her own steam. She stood stubbornly at the curb, swatting away help from T.S., until Lilah's driver took the hint. The uniformed man finally looked up from his newspaper, quickly hopped out onto the street and scurried around to open the rear door for them. Auntie Lil gave him a courteous but contained nod, slipped inside the long, dark car and conspicuously bestowed a queen-like departing wave at the far more pedestrian Fran.

Her grand gesture was cut short when T.S.—annoyed at her uncharacteristic pettiness—deliberately hopped in right after her. Besides, it served her right for hogging the seat next to Lilah.

Unlike himself, Lilah did look perfect. At least in T.S.'s opinion. She was a tall and athletic woman whose elegant posture was right at home in the back seat of the limousine. Lilah wore a purple crepe dress that highlighted her short white hair and her lovely, outdoor complexion. She shunned hair dye and most other forms of artifice, as if seeking to atone for her great wealth by being scrupulously honest about what money could and could not buy. T.S. admired her healthy beauty and reflected that, had Auntie Lil not been planted firmly between them, he might have gracefully pulled off a suave kiss to Lilah's hand. As it was, he contented himself by craning his neck around Auntie Lil's enormous hat and nodding.

"Hello, there, Theodore," Lilah said with a smile. The combined effect of her voice and face so close to his warmed the temperature of the limousine at least a few degrees.

"Lovely to see you, Lilah," he admitted, grinning like the village idiot and unable to control his facial features long enough to stop. A long green feather swept down from the back of Auntie Lil's hat Three Musketeers-style, then swooped back up just enough to tickle the end of his nose. He sneezed violently and tugged on the end of the feather. "Madam, would you kindly remove your hat?" he asked with a straight face.

Auntie Lil unpinned the contraption and gave it a rumble seat of its own.

"That's a lovely hat, Lillian," Lilah lied smoothly. "Wherever did you get it?"

"My friend, Herbert Wong, brought it back from Pago Pago," she answered.

"Your friend Herbert Wong?" T.S. said. "He was my friend first." She was always absconding with his friends. She didn't mean to, she was just so enthusiastic about new companions that, before T.S. knew what was happening, his former buddies would be out getting drunk with Auntie Lil while he stayed home alone and watched television.

"He was your employee," Auntie Lil pointed out. "He's my friend."

Lilah winked at T.S. in secret sympathy and he decided that he didn't give a hoot about Herbert Wong one way or the other. "Where is this place?" he asked cheerfully.

"On First Avenue. Grady knows the address." Lilah waved a hand toward the driver. He was a handsome, burly man with the map of Ireland printed all over his broad face. His reddish brown hair topped a massive head and, as they soon discovered, he retained a thick Irish brogue.

"Bit of traffic ahead, ma'am," he called back to Lilah, rather unnecessarily as they had moved ahead little more than three inches in the last half minute. But instead of being annoyed, a curious sensation flowed through T.S. They were stalled near Times Square and all around them, neon lights blinked, it seemed, in time to the music. People flowed around the car, parting and coming back together, trying without luck to peer inside to see if anyone famous rode within. Groups of kids laughed and grabbed at one another, caught up in the joy and sheer energy of New York, while well-dressed adults huddled together in groups, suppressing their childlike merriment at the suspense of waiting for the nightlife to begin. It was an ideal position for someone like T.S.—to be so surrounded by life, yet made invisible and, thus, all-powerful by the anonymous security of the limousine's tinted windows. T.S. suddenly felt like an integral part of this excitement, as if he stood at the center of a large wheel and these lovely people, this wonderful multitude of different faces—all colors and sizes and shapes and expressions included—all belonged to him, every last one of them, and were all a part of him, flowing outward from the center of his benign goodwill like revelers circling a beribboned Maypole.

"Why, Theodore," he heard Lilah say through a cacophony of honking horns, the shouts of religious fanatics and the chatter of at least six different languages. "What an interesting smile just crossed your face. I don't think I've ever actually seen you smile that way before. What in the world were you thinking of just now?"

Glad that Auntie Lil and Grady were occupied in a discussion about whether disco was coming back, T.S. shook his head happily. "I don't really know," he confessed. "I just had the strangest feeling. I really felt alive."

Lilah reached over and patted his hand. Her touch was warm and far too fleeting. "Retirement must agree with you. I've never seen you look so handsome."

Handsome? He preened very casually in the mirrored bar surface. Things were looking up, indeed.

Frustrated by the slow going, Auntie Lil grew increasingly more excited and was bouncing up and down impatiently in her seat by the time they reached the medical examiner's office.

"Have you got the film?" she asked T.S., eyeing his camera dubiously.

"Of course. I'm not an idiot." He checked the back of the camera just in case, though he'd double-checked it twice before leaving the house. He climbed quickly out of the car in response to Auntie Lil's impatient push from behind. "Are you sure you don't want to accompany us?" he asked Lilah politely through her open window, when she made no move to leave the limousine.

"Thank you, I believe I'll just stay here with Grady and come back in for the dinner portion of the evening. Ask for Rodriquez at the door. He knows what to do." Lilah gave a fluttering half-wave just as the tinted window rolled back up, obscuring her face.

Auntie Lil tugged on his arm, admonishing him to hurry. The entrance doors were locked and they rang a bell as instructed. Upon hearing a sharp buzz, they pushed through the front doors and found themselves in a dark and empty reception room, the employees having fled hours before. Auntie Lil looked around for an inner door or second buzzer and was just peeking under the front desk when a small, darkish man with thinning hair and suspicious eyes burst through a rear door. He gripped a clipboard against his chest like a shield, stared at Auntie Lil crouched beneath the receptionist's desk, then scrutinized T.S. with almost comical mistrust.

"What do you two want?" he asked, delving right to the heart of the matter.

"You must be Rodriquez," T.S. deflected politely, extending his hand for his heartiest handshake.

Rodriquez ignored the gesture and wrapped his lab coat a little more tightly around his protruding middle. "What if I am?" he demanded truculently.

Auntie Lil rose to her not very impressive height and looked him straight in the eye. "Lilah Cheswick said to ask for you," she explained evenly, a hint of steel underlying her words. "She said it had all been arranged," she added with mysterious inflection, managing to make it sound as if they were there to rob, not photograph, bodies.

Rodriquez looked at them with even greater distaste. "Oh, yeah. You two are the kooks who want to take a picture of a corpse or something." His expression changed to one of mild interest, as if he'd run up against all kinds of weirdos before and they represented a new, slightly intriguing species.

Good grief, T.S. realized. The creep thought they were on some sort of perverse pleasure trip. Time to nip that notion in the bud. "We're here to photograph a specific woman who died yesterday," T.S. explained with stiff dignity. "We are attempting to secure her true identification from someone in the vicinity of her neighborhood."

"Sure." Rodriquez nodded slowly, unconvinced. But he checked his clipboard and motioned them to follow. "Suit yourself," he said. "It takes all kinds."

Ignoring his jibe, they walked down a long hallway, turned the corner and pushed past a set of swinging doors that led them into a narrow, white hospital-like corridor. Double sets of small square doors about the size and shape of bus terminal lockers lined the walls on each side for as far as they could see. Everything was white. It looked like the storage area of a futuristic stopping point for intergalactic travelers.

"Are all of these full?" Auntie Lil asked spryly. She eyed the doors in great curiosity. "How many of them would you say were victims of violent crime?" she inquired, without waiting for an answer to her first question. "I bet many of them have been shot. Were any of them stabbed?"

"Let's just confine ourselves to the one body, shall we?" T.S. suggested, dragging her away from the wall before she started pulling open drawers and examining the bodies for signs of foul play.

"Here she is," Rodriquez announced with a bit of flair. "Number 433."

They gathered around the small door and T.S. could have sworn that Rodriquez deliberately took his time undoing the latch just to heighten the suspense. "Now, don't faint on us, ma'am," he warned Auntie Lil in an experienced voice.

She flapped a gloved hand impatiently and Rodriquez opened the door, smoothly sliding out a gurney on a steel track. It rolled into view and stretched across the breadth of the hallway, gleaming with stainless steel emptiness beneath the glare of the fluorescent lights above.

"There's no one here!" Auntie Lil cried. "What have you done with the poor woman?"

"Done with her? We've done nothing with her at all." Though confused, Rodriquez was still quite capable of automatically heading off blame before it could be assigned to him. He frantically scanned his clipboard list. "You say she died yesterday? West Side. Right?"

"Right," Auntie Lil echoed. "How many old ladies with no known name or address kicked off yesterday afternoon, anyway?"

Rodriquez paused to glare at her briefly, then shook his head and scratched at a small insect bite that had swelled on one of his cheeks. "Hmmm. You wait here."

He turned abruptly and left them staring at the empty locker. But not for long. For different reasons, neither Auntie Lil nor T.S. had any inclination to wait in the hall of the dead while he poked around in search of the missing body. The moment Rodriquez disappeared through another set of swinging doors, both of them went scurrying after him. They were just in time to see him stick his head through a small door set off another, shorter corridor.

With the unerring instincts of a middle linebacker who smells a quarterback sack, Auntie Lil went barreling down the short hall and chose the most efficient route to success. She pushed Rodriquez through the door into the room and crowded in behind him, with T.S. hot on her heels.

They'd found Emily all right. She was lying naked on a smooth steel table that included slanted gutters on all four sides. A thin stream of water trickled through the gutters and ran into a narrow sink that hugged one wall of the room. A tiny man, nearly as gnarled and short as a gnome, was peering intently into Emily's eyes with the aid of a highly focused penlight. His thick eyeglasses shone eerily with reflected glare and he was issuing a constant patter of noise that sounded—at least from where T.S. and Auntie Lil stood— like indignant mice arguing among themselves. A slim Asian woman stared over his shoulder and was listening raptly to his lecture.

The little man's squeaky voice rose in volume as he reached his conclusion. "Look again," he commanded. "Notice the breakage around the cornea. Curiously enough, this is symptomatic of either…" Rodriquez coughed loudly and the little man abruptly stopped his speech, having finally noticed the company. He was quite unperturbed.

"Hello, what's this?" he asked cheerfully, eyeing Auntie Lil up and down with professional detachment. Auntie Lil responded by straightening her back and opening her eyes wide, as if to prove that she, thank you, was quite alive.

"These people are here to take a photo of this dead lady," Rodriquez explained, cocking his thumb toward the corpse. "I wouldn't have burst in on you like that, but this old one here, she pushed me from behind like some kind of maniac." He glared at Auntie Lil, but she was far too busy staring at Emily to notice his resentment.

A jagged V-shaped scar tapered down from the dead woman's shoulders across her breasts, coming together several inches above the navel before snaking angrily down over the shrunken tissues and protruding bones of her pelvis. Her skin was puckered and hairless, the body impossibly small. T.S. stared down at his shoes. It looked like the freeze-dried body of an eleven-year-old girl.

The tiny doctor scurried to Emily's feet and pulled a white plastic sheet over her form. "Please excuse the informality. If I'd known she was having company, I'd have dressed her for the occasion." He cackled at his own joke and T.S. suppressed a groan. The old man was just the kind of weirdo Auntie Lil loved to collect. No doubt they'd be dining across the table from one another soon.

"Don't mind my macabre humor," the little man protested, stopping any potential giggles with an upraised palm, although no one had either laughed or had the slightest inclination to do so. "I was simply showing Cheryl here the ins and outs of being a pathologist," he giggled. "Giving her the inside scoop, you might say." He laughed again with a wheezy kind of snuffling sound and gestured toward a neat row of glass jars on a nearby shelf.

The jars held floating masses of tissue suspended in clear solution, some pinkish lumps and others grayish slabs. Yellow and white dangly ropes circled some of the organs, stretching out like tentacles from a body. It was impossible not to stare and still more impossible not to shift that stare to the long scar on the dead woman's torso. The doctor, noting their stunned dismay, rearranged his smile into a more sober expression.

"So sorry. So sorry. I forget that my humor may be a bit much for the layman. You're not relatives, are you?" He gazed anxiously at Auntie Lil. "I thought she was a Jane Doe. I mean, they told me they had no family or name. I was just seizing the rare chance for hands-on education for my new assistant. Not that Cheryl isn't fully qualified, but I have certain procedures that I like followed and…"

"Not at all. Not at all," Auntie Lil interrupted. "We're not relatives." She gave a dainty gulp and regained her composure. "My fault entirely for bursting in on you like this. Please carry on as if we weren't even here. We simply want to snap a few photographs to take back to her neighborhood to see if we could find out her true identity."

"How kind of you." His voice sounded as if he meant it, but his look was a bit skeptical.

"Please don't let us intrude," Auntie Lil repeated. "Do carry on with your… cutting or whatever." Her curiosity was starting to gain ground. She inched toward the body.

"You don't mean it?" The little doctor was delighted and looked at his assistant euphorically, as if not quite believing his luck. "Don't tell me you're one of the rare human beings who's not been conditioned to blanch at the sight of a little flesh and blood." He rubbed his hands together with anticipatory glee and stared at Emily's body. He looked, T.S. felt strongly, like a rabid raccoon eyeing a disabled fish.

"Well, that depends." Auntie Lil hastened to explain. "To a point, certainly, it can be… quite fascinating." T.S., meanwhile, was inching backwards toward the door. He had no desire to do anything but return to the limousine and look at Lilah.

The doctor froze suddenly and stared at them intently. "Say, wait a minute. You're the two people that Lilah Cheswick called me about." He thumped his bald pate in exasperation. "Of course. Now I remember."

T.S. halted his escape and stared back at the doctor. This was who Lilah knew at the medical examiner's office? No wonder she'd waited in the car.

"And how is Lilah?" the little doctor asked anxiously. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and peered at Auntie Lil. "I've been meaning to call her ever since my dear wife died. We'd be a perfect pair, what with us both being left so tragically alone. But I've been so wrapped up in my work, I haven't seen her at all. Her phone call was a total surprise. But a welcome one, of course."

"She's fine," Auntie Lil answered carefully. "As lovely and gracious as ever."

The little doctor's face brightened as if he'd forgotten Lilah's beauty. "But, of course. She is such a lovely woman." He put a hand on his chin and thought carefully. "Say, would you give her my regards when you see her? Perhaps she could give me a call again? Socially. I'm Dr. Millerton, by the way. Milton Millerton."

"We'd be glad to," Auntie Lil murmured sweetly.

T.S. would be damned if he'd let the little worm at Lilah for one second. In fact, he'd not even mention his silly name and would forbid Auntie Lil to do the same. So the good doctor's wife had died, had she? And just who had done the autopsy on her?

"Well, enough of the living," the little doctor decided, rubbing his tiny hands together with great relish. "Let's get back to the dead." He turned to his silent pupil, who was quite nonplussed at her boss's behavior. "You're just in time for the cranial exploration," he called over his shoulder cheerfully. "It's Cheryl's favorite part."

"You mean the skull?" Auntie Lil looked back at T.S. in alarm. "Perhaps we'd better take our photos first."

"Good idea," T.S. said. "Then we can leave." Without waiting for permission, he gingerly took one corner of the plastic sheet and peeled it down to Emily's shoulders. Poor woman. Her already frail body had caved in upon death and the skin lay over her facial bones like useless, dried out parchment.

"I've found that 400 film on 60 speed is quite sufficient in this bright light," Dr. Millerton told T.S. helpfully.

T.S. ignored him, but surreptitiously adjusted the speed setting. Old bugger. How would he know? What kind of pictures was he snapping around here, anyway?

The next few minutes were for T.S. perhaps the most annoying of his life. Dr. Millerton issued instructions from his left side while Auntie Lil hovered on the right, ordering him to take a shot of this part of Emily's face, and then the other. Rodriquez and the assistant pathologist retreated to one corner, far from the fray, when Auntie Lil began demanding close-ups of the dead woman's teeth.

"What on earth for?" T.S. asked in irritation, but got no reply. Auntie Lil was too busy peeking under the plastic sheet that now covered Emily's body.

"What are you doing?" T.S. lowered his camera and stared at his aunt.

"Looking for distinguishing marks," she explained primly. "Haven't you any imagination?"

"Yes. Far too much to be poking around in here much longer."

"No distinguishing marks," the doctor assured her. "The only distinguishing thing Cheryl says she found was a small amount of a brown, muddy substance in her stomach that gave off a very sharp odor. Possibly toxic. It had a caustic effect on the stomach lining. I've recommended she have it analyzed in the lab."

"No need," T.S. said with great satisfaction. "That was Auntie Lil's chili."

"That's nothing to joke about, Theodore," she complained hotly. "My chili was perfectly good and it did not give off a sharp odor. It's probably not even chili."

"One way to find out," the doctor said, holding up a hand as if to ward off an argument between them. There was a distinctly ghoulish twinkle in his myopic eyes. "Cheryl—the specimen jar please." He bowed and held out a hand grandly as if he had just demanded the envelope furnishing the winner's name of a particularly coveted Academy Award.

Cheryl obediently fetched the jar from a small table against the wall and handed it to Dr. Millerton. "Approximately one-third of a cup was present in the stomach proper," she explained in a Yonkers accent that clashed severely with her Flower Drum Song exterior. "I removed one-third of that amount for analysis."

"Very good," he assured his pupil. "Now let's see what we have here." He held the jar up to the light and twisted it slowly until he'd examined each angle. He was drawing out the process and clearly enjoying this teasing of Auntie Lil and T.S.. "It does look like chili to me," he finally announced, winking at T.S. "Although it seems a particularly virulent color." He hee-heed loudly and unscrewed the top. "Let's see if it smells like chili."

He made an elaborate show of bending over the jar, still chuckling. Suddenly, he froze. His laughter stopped and he whipped his gnomelike head upright, locking eyes with his assistant.

"What is it, Dr. Millerton?" Cheryl asked anxiously. "Have I erred?" She reached for the jar but the doctor motioned her back, then sniffed deeply in the sudden silence.

"Is there some mistake?" Cheryl asked again, more timidly.

Before the doctor could answer, Auntie Lil's mouth opened in a gasp.

Rodriquez and T.S. turned to her, baffled, while Cheryl stared at Dr. Millerton with a puzzled expression.

When he saw that the others did not understand, the doctor turned to Auntie Lil for confirmation. They stared at one another in astonished enlightenment. Dr. Millerton held out a hand to her, as if asking her to dance, and drew her closer to the jar. Auntie Lil bent over and breathed deeply, then nodded her head. Her action was matched by the satisfied-looking doctor.

T.S. could stand it no longer. "What is it?" he demanded. "What's everyone nodding about?"

Auntie Lil stared at him in uncontained excitement. "Don't you smell that?" she said. "Bitter almonds. Just like I've read." She looked down at the jar, marveling.

"I don't smell anything," T.S. declared. He took a deep breath. Just the same acrid odors as before.

"Not everyone can smell it," Dr. Millerton explained. "Just us lucky ones." He beamed at Auntie Lil fondly.

"But that means…" the assistant said hesitantly, then stopped and looked down at the doctor.

"Yes," the tiny doctor agreed, nodding his head sagely and gesturing at Emily with a broad sweep of an arm. "This woman was poisoned by some form of cyanide. I'm absolutely certain of it."