A Cast of Killers

by Gallagher Gray

  Inexplicably, Auntie Lil felt guilty and looked down at her shoes.

  "I know who she is, too," the detective continued. "You see, we do some things right around here." He stared harder at Auntie Lil and she looked away. What was he leading up to, anyway?

  "I called around the neighborhood shelters," he continued. "To see if anyone was missing. It was the same thing I did when your friend Emily was killed. Only this time I got lucky. I tracked her down to The Dwelling Place on Fortieth Street. The Franciscan sisters there were very worried. One of their residents had not returned the night before and the missing woman was usually very reliable."

  "She lived in a shelter?"

  "A shelter," he confirmed. "Not a bad one as shelters go, but a shelter just the same."

  "Are you sure it was Eva La Louche?" Auntie Lil asked faintly. "I was under the impression the woman I'm seeking had her own apartment."

  "It's the same woman," Detective Santos said angrily. "Jet black hair. Only her real name is Eva Stubbs. Which sounds a hell of a lot more believable than Eva La Louche." He would not stop staring at her, not even when he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and began to smoke in her face. His gaze was relentless.

  "Why are you glaring at me?" she finally asked in a voice that sounded remarkably like a little girl's.

  "Because Eva Stubbs died with a contusion the size of a softball on her head. And I want to know what she had to do with you. And how you knew it might be her." He ground out his cigarette on the table top, half finished, and promptly lit up a fresh one.

  "She was attempting to help in the investigation of Emily's death," Auntie Lil admitted in a feeble voice.

  "What? Speak up. You talk louder than an announcer at the ball park. I ought to know. You've been pestering me for a week. So don't pull that little old lady crap on me. Pull yourself together and tell me everything you know." In his anger, all traces of the usual bitter, disillusioned cop had disappeared. Santos was on his home turf and it had been violated and, by God, he was now taking charge.

  He was right. She was behaving foolishly. She did have to pull herself together. There was no need for her to feel guilt over Eva's death… was there? After all, she had warned the women not to go off on their own. And Theodore had warned them against being on the streets too late at night. Eva had probably disregarded both of their cautions. It was not her fault the woman had died. She straightened her shoulders and began. "She was a friend of Emily's. They go back many years. As rivals, more than friends, I would say. I think she had been watching Emily's building and following various people."

  "Following people?" The detective's cigarette dangled incredulously from one corner of his mouth, making him look like a Humphrey Bogart character from a forties movie.

  "Well, you wouldn't pay any attention when I told you Emily lived in that building," she said defensively. "Someone had to look into the situation."

  Santos opened his mouth, changed his mind and shut it abruptly, then stared out a tiny barred window and counted to twelve softly. Only his lips moved. No sound came out—which did nothing for Auntie Lil's nerves. "What else?" he finally asked calmly.

  "I don't know anything else," she admitted. "Eva has been missing since yesterday morning, I think. She did not show up for lunch at St. Barnabas. Which was, I gather, unheard of for her."

  Detective Santos sighed. "That puts the last time she was seen at about 11:00 a.m.," he thought out loud. "One of the other women at her shelter saw her heading uptown at about that time. Know anything else?"

  When Auntie Lil shook her head, he leaned across the table toward her until they were nearly nose to nose. "I'm going to tell you something very important," he began in a deadly calm voice. "And I'm going to be a lot nicer about it than Lieutenant Abromowitz was. Who, by the way, I'm beginning to think may be right about you after all. Two women are now dead. And something tells me that the second one did not have to die. Something tells me that if you had not come on the scene and whipped Emily's friends into a frenzy of righteousness, that this old woman might have been around to enjoy a few more years of her meager but fairly comfortable life."

  Now that made her mad. "No one forced Eva to do anything," Auntie Lil said defiantly. "And she would rather have died doing something important than to have wasted away bored to tears."

  "How about you? How do you want to die?"

  "Die?" she repeated faintly, her rebellion dissolving. "That wouldn't be a threat?"

  "It's not a threat from me. Have you thought that maybe Eva wasn't the intended victim after all? That maybe it was you. There is a great resemblance between you and the latest corpse, wouldn't you say? With the exception of that pathetic dyed black hair, the two of you are remarkably alike in physical characteristics, aren't you?"

  For once Auntie Lil was silent. It was an unpleasant but inescapable point.

  They heard the sound of muttering and heavy footsteps nearing the room. The approaching male voice sounded artificially firm, infused with booming enthusiasm and phony competence. "We consider the case closed," he was repeating in an overly hearty baritone. "Thanks to our quick work, we feel confident that we've closed the book on yet another disgusting chapter of exploitation of the young." Each time he finished the statement, the unseen man began again, trying on new inflections and tuning up the words here and there.

  Santos buried his head in his hands just as Lieutenant Abromowitz poked his head in the room, repeating, "… another disgusting case of—" He stopped abruptly when he spotted his detective. "Sorry, George, just getting ready for the press conference on that Fleming pervert. What the hell are you doing way back here?" He noticed Auntie Lil and his face flushed instantly and ominously red. "I've been looking for you," he warned her, stepping toward her and placing his hands on his hips like an angry father about to chew out his wild teenage daughter.

  Detective Santos held up a hand. "Please, Lieutenant, I told you I'd take care of it. I've been talking to her. She understands the seriousness of it."

  It took all of Auntie Lil's considerable will not to speak up.

  "Did you tell her I'd arrest her if she continued to interfere?"

  "I was just getting to that part," Santos assured him. "Let me handle it, okay?"

  "Arrest me?" Auntie Lil demanded. "I'd like to see you try."

  "So would I," Abromowitz agreed, leaning across the table on his knuckles. "Oh, boy, so would I."

  She was a coward. There was nothing to do but admit it. It had been sweet of Detective Santos to defend her, but it had proved, as always, hopeless to try and change Abromowitz's mind. He was convinced that Auntie Lil was bad news, period. There was no way he would let her help. Following more dire warnings from him that she was to butt out immediately (and her false reassurances that she would) Auntie Lil had returned to St. Barnabas to see how she could help with that day's meal. Her desire was driven partly by a wish to atone for her mistakes and partly by her need to find out more about either Emily or Eva.

  Yet, when she passed Adelle and her followers waiting patiently in line, she did not even murmur the faintest detail about poor Eva's fate.

  She just couldn't do it. Not yet. Much of what the detectives said had stung its way into her heart. She needed time to think it through. And, besides, the actresses would find out about Eva soon enough and, once they did, would probably be filled with even more resolve to discover both murderers.

  Except, of course, that one person was probably responsible for both deaths. Which didn't lessen the danger any. Oh, dear—it was getting rather unpleasant.

  The St. Barnabas soup kitchen was equally unsettling. She arrived to find the kitchen at a standstill. Only two volunteers had shown up. Father Stebbins was nowhere to be seen, and long rows of raw chickens stretched out on the steel countertop looking cold and forlorn in the bare room.

  "What is going on?" Auntie Lil asked in alarm. "We have to open the gate in less than three hours."

  "Volunteers are droppin
g out like flies because the police keep calling them in for questioning," one of the two women still there reported. "Something else must have happened. And I don't know where Father Stebbins is. He rushed through here about fifteen minutes ago and didn't even say hello."

  The trio stared at one another and, most typically, it was Auntie Lil who finally took charge. "You go and beg as much rice as you can from Mr. Chang on the corner," she told one of the volunteers. "If you need help carrying the containers, take Franklin with you. Do you know what he looks like? I think I saw him in line." The woman nodded and hurried off to do her bidding. Auntie Lil turned to the remaining woman. "Do we have any lemons?"

  "There's a whole carton in the walk-in," the volunteer replied in a skeptical voice.

  "Go get them and slice them. I'll find the tinfoil. We'll have lemon chicken over rice. That only takes an hour. We'll just have to bake portions in shifts. You help me cook. People will have to set their own tables today."

  She could have run the U.S. Navy without a hitch.

  The enormous task confronting them took all of their energy and, for the next hour, Auntie Lil had little time to contemplate Eva's death or Father Stebbins' inexcusable absence. She had just removed the first batch of chicken from the large ovens when Father Stebbins returned, face flushed and robes in disarray. He hurried down the back stairs from the interior of the church and rushed up to Auntie Lil without any warning, nearly causing her to drop a pan of sizzling food on his feet.

  "Lillian," he told her urgently, grabbing her shoulders, "I have to apologize for what I said yesterday. I was wrong. There is wickedness but sometimes it comes in unexpected forms. A terrible injustice has been done and it's partly my fault. I must do what I can to amend the damage I've wrought. I've called Fran, but there's so much more to do."

  Mouth hanging open, Auntie Lil stared in astonishment as he hurried away and disappeared through the front basement gate. Then she noticed the clock. They had less than two hours until the gates were scheduled to open and probably eighty more chickens waiting to be cooked. "I think it's only going to get worse," she predicted, returning to her task.

  But, thankfully, this time she was wrong. Half an hour later, Fran appeared, calmly walking into the kitchen as if she had merely run out to the corner store for some forgotten spice instead of having been missing for days.

  "Hello, Lillian," she told Auntie Lil politely, displaying more manners than she had exhibited in the past two months put together.

  "How nice to see you," Auntie Lil stammered back. She wanted to add "Fran," but the name stuck in her throat. After all, she was still her nemesis. Wasn't she? Everything was being turned upside down.

  "What do I need to do to help?" Fran asked pleasantly. Auntie Lil was too surprised to do anything but point toward the remaining chickens lined up in a row. Fran nodded and methodically began preparing them for roasting, without saying so much as one other word and without complaining a whit about the recipe chosen.

  It was all too mystifying for Auntie Lil, or at least too mystifying to untangle while juggling a dozen other chores. But the riddle was only compounded further when Annie O'Day arrived at the soup kitchen half an hour before the scheduled mealtime.

  "There's an enormous woman yelling for you outside the basement gate," one of the volunteers informed Auntie Lil in a calm voice. Nothing else was likely to happen that day to faze her any more than she already was. “She looks like she lifts weights and means it.”

  "That's Annie O'Day." Auntie Lil hurried to let the nurse practitioner inside.

  "Thank God you're here." Annie grabbed Auntie Lil's hands in her own and, in her urgent excitement, nearly crushed them between her strong fingers. "You've got to come to Homefront right away."

  "Now?" Auntie Lil looked over her shoulder. "I can't. Those people outside are hungry."

  "You have to. I'll stay here and help."

  "Why?"

  Annie pulled her into a corner of the dining area and lowered her voice. Fran stood behind a counter and watched them curiously.

  "I found Timmy this morning," Annie explained in a rough whisper. "It took a lot of doing, but he admits that he's lying about Bob. But he won't tell me who put him up to it. He said he's afraid of the police but he'll sign a paper admitting that he was lying. He's sitting in Bob's office right now. But he won't talk to anyone but you."

  "Me?" Auntie Lil asked in astonishment. "I've never met the young man in my life."

  "But you know his friend, Little Pete, and both of the boys think that you are a close friend of Emily's or maybe even her sister."

  "Emily? What does Emily have to do with Timmy's allegations?"

  "I don't know yet. But I think there's a connection. He won't tell me anything except that he's afraid. He doesn't trust anyone. I think he knows who killed Emily, but he's not sure who else knows. And who may be involved. He knows you're not involved because of some things you said to Little Pete. That's why he wants to talk to you."

  "He's at Homefront?" Auntie Lil repeated.

  "Yes. And he's alone. We couldn't risk leaving Bob there with him, not after what he told the police and that reporter about Bob. So Bob's at some diner around the corner and Timmy's waiting at Homefront alone. That means he could change his mind at any minute and there's no one there to stop him. Please, you've got to help us."

  Auntie Lil was confused, her brain whirling with possible theories, but it did not cause her to hesitate. She had been trying to talk to the young boy ever since Emily died. If he knew the killer, he could very well be in danger. She had to reach him before someone else did.

  Grabbing her pocketbook, she rushed out the door at top speed, plowing into a returning Father Stebbins in her haste. His face was cleared of worry and he looked more at peace—at least until Auntie Lil crashed into him and sent him tripping over the trash cans in the foyer. The priest stared after her, shaking his head as he watched Auntie Lil scurry away down the sidewalk.

  Adelle and her followers also stared after Auntie Lil's retreating figure and whispers passed among them. They looked to Adelle for guidance. Should they follow? She shook her head slightly and they fell back into the line to wait. One thing they all had plenty of was free time.

  T.S. woke again just before three o'clock. The terrible pounding in his head had subsided to a faint buzz, but he still could not recall any details of the night before. The wet towel had soaked through his sheets, but he was too tired to care. His tongue felt like it had been coated with syrup and dipped in fuzz. What in the world had he gone through and where was Lilah? God, what if he had done something to offend her? He reassured himself that the note she'd left had been friendly.

  He did not have long to worry. The buzzer rang just as he had managed to pull together a respectable outfit. He was missing his shoes and socks, but bare feet seemed superfluous in light of last night. He padded happily to the buzzer and pushed the okay button without bothering to speak to Mahmoud first. He was not in the mood for any of his doorman's sly comments. At least not until he knew what he was being kidded about. If he hurried, he'd have just enough time to put on a pot of coffee before Lilah found her way to his door.

  A brisk, confident knock signaled her arrival. It was one of the things he liked about her. She was a no-nonsense woman. There would be no tentative tap-tapping for Lilah Cheswick.

  T.S. flung open the door grandly and gave a courtly bow, a gesture that he immediately regretted. Blood rushed to his head and he grew dizzy. It was a chore to straighten up smoothly, but he did manage a small joke. "Enter my kingdom," he said grandly and beamed a bright smile on his visitor—a smile that froze into a grimace of paralyzed embarrassment.

  Lance Worthington and Sally St. Claire stood before him, staring at his bare feet.

  "Now this is what I call a real Eastside welcome," Worthington admitted, draping his cashmere coat over T.S.'s outstretched arm. "You must have really enjoyed yourself at the party." He walked to the center of the living room a
nd immediately began to expertly calculate the worth of its furnishings.

  "Sorry about your getting sick, sweetie," Sally told him, wiggling in after Worthington with the ease of one experienced at slipping past vigilant doormen. She was wearing a heavy fur wrap, which seemed a bit excessive for the middle of the day in late September in New York City.

  "Sick?" T.S. inquired faintly. What had she said about him being sick? He had a vague suspicion that things were turning against him, that his optimistic hopes about the night before were about to evaporate. The trick would be to play it cool, to act as if he knew what he had done.

  Sally giggled and covered her mouth with a hand that featured hot pink fingernails as deadly looking as switchblades. T.S. could not take his eyes off them. Surely they were fake. But if they were fake, why in the world would she choose to glue them to her fingers?

  "Let's just say that you looked a little green to me when you left," she teased T.S., sitting primly on the edge of his sofa. She lit up a cigarette and coyly blew smoke at him. T.S.'s determined smile wavered as the smoke met his stomach, especially when he heard the distinct sounds of casual rummaging behind him.

  "This real ivory?" Worthington asked. He was holding up the king from T.S.'s beloved hand-carved chess set and was scratching the bottom with the sharp corner of his heavy gold ring.

  "Yes. Do you mind?" T.S. reclaimed his carving and set it gingerly back in place.

  "Must be worth a fortune," the producer remarked in admiration. "Nice place you got here. Big for just one guy."

  "We tried to call first," Sally St. Claire explained. "No one answered." She crossed a leg and expertly dangled a shoe from one toe as she puffed away on her ultra-long cigarette. The shoe had at least a four-inch heel that tapered down to a wicked point. Everywhere you looked, the woman ended in dangerous, jabbing spikes.

  Their arrival would teach him to turn off the phone.

  "How did you know where I lived?" T.S. asked suspiciously.

  Worthington stared at him as if he were daft. "You're in the phone book," he explained.