A Cast of Killers

by Gallagher Gray

  "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 l
id 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 t
he 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.