A Cast of Killers by Katy Munger Page A

eminent domain
theory when it came to murder cases—patted Lilah's arm
reassuringly. "Really, Aunt Lil. Not everyone relishes murder the
way you do, you know."
    "I'm not relishing murder," she protested. "I
detest murder. I'm outraged. And I'm also too busy thinking to
talk." She bit her lip and decided. "Take me home, Grady. I need to
think this over at once."
    "Before you commandeer Lilah's car," T.S.
suggested tactfully, "perhaps you'd like to confer with us." He
kept his voice calm but glared at his aunt. Otherwise, she would
have totally missed his point.
    The glare had a minimal effect. "Oh, for
heaven's sake." She flapped her hankie at them. "Just because I'm
going home doesn't mean you have to. We must get those photographs
developed at once. Go to that twenty-four-hour place at Times
Square. It only takes an hour or so. Then you two can go off and
booze it up and whatever it is Theodore has in mind. I'm going to
work."
    "Boozing it up was not what I had in mind,"
T.S. protested firmly. "But now that you mention it, I wouldn't
turn down a stiff drink in a dark bar."
    "Neither would I," Lilah agreed faintly.
    "Good. Get rid of me and we'll meet in the
morning." Auntie Lil was already scribbling ideas in her small
notebook, muttering key points of theories aloud. "Relatives?" she
asked herself. "Jealousy? The past?" There was silence. "Love
interest?" she shouted triumphantly, jotting it down on a page.
"Perhaps corporate espionage? Or drug trafficking? Poison… that's a
woman's method. Women are poisoners, not men. And what did that old
man mean by 'The Eagle' . . . remember? He said he'd seen 'The
Eagle' breathe evil into her mouth?"
    The air was thick with possible theories as
Auntie Lil's disjointed monologue continued while the limousine
crawled slowly through the ever present construction jams that
dotted the main roads toward Auntie Lil's Queens apartment house.
T.S. did not attempt to translate the obscure and strange
collection of possible motives tumbling from Auntie Lil's mouth.
There was no talking to her at the moment, T.S. knew. Not when her
brain had been seized by such an enticing puzzle. He could
practically see the theories zinging wildly from synapse to synapse
as Auntie Lil built, pooh-poohed and quickly replaced theories.
    He ignored her mutterings and smoothly fixed
Lilah a fresh drink from the limo's bar, pouring out a healthy
Dewars and soda for himself. It was just as well that Auntie Lil
was so preoccupied. He was in no mood to hear what she had to say.
He, too, needed time to think. Why had someone murdered a harmless
old woman? Good Lord, this was much more interesting than those
stupid soap operas.
     
            
 
    While Lilah waited for him in the limousine,
T.S. chivalrously escorted Auntie Lil to her door. She scarcely
noticed his presence.
    "Want me to clear a table for you, so you can
work?" he suggested. She nodded absently, too busy wrestling her
Jolly Green Giant hat off her head to pay any attention to him.
    Auntie Lil's apartment looked like a cyclone
had recently blown through and deposited the contents of three
other apartments and a museum or two throughout her four small
rooms. He picked his way past waist-high stacks of books in the
small hallway and managed to unearth a table at one end of the
cluttered living room by shoving the bolts of material and
magazines covering it onto the carpet where the mess would lie,
unnoticed, for perhaps another century or so. He tripped over her
bathrobe—which had been hanging from a knob on a china cabinet—when
the terrycloth belt became wrapped around one of his pants legs.
Untangling it, he noticed that an easel had been set up in the
dining room area and that small tubes of acrylic paint cluttered
those portions of the mahogany dining table not already covered by
unopened Book-of-the-Month Club packages, baskets of letters, empty
envelopes, stacks of stationery and a good three dozen pens and
pencils. Not to mention the new