A Cast of Killers (5 page)

"Then five of you can stay," Officer King
announced arbitrarily. "The rest of you clear out, pronto. This is
not a circus."

Auntie Lil glared
eloquently, then majestically wrapped her scarf burma-style around
her neck as if she were Peter O'Toole in
Lawrence of Arabia.
Most of the
other diners fell in obediently behind, shuffling out like an
exhausted conga line suddenly weary of the song.

Surprised by Aunt Lil's sudden surrender,
T.S. stood staring after the line of slowly departing diners. He
had expected her to kick up a fuss, to demand that she be allowed
to examine the body. Simply leaving was not in her character at
all. Had the lure of a dramatic exit been that much temptation?
Somehow he just didn't think so.

"Perhaps you had better go after your aunt,"
Father Stebbins suggested, plucking at T.S.'s shirt sleeve. "We
have enough people to clean up." Fran was marching back into the
kitchen, gesturing for the younger volunteers to join her. Having
sensed an opportunity to regain supremacy, if only over sinks of
dirty pots, she was happy to seize her chance.

More police were arriving and one pair toted
a depressingly green canvas stretcher with what looked like a
rubber tarp piled on top. T.S. suddenly wanted very much to leave
the scene of the death. "Thank you. I'll just make sure Aunt Lil is
okay," he told Father Stebbins, his feet skimming across the
linoleum in his haste to escape.

The minute he hit the sidewalk he saw the
women clustered in a whispering, tightly drawn group a few feet
down from the church. Auntie Lil stood at the center, surrounded by
Adelle and her followers, and her arms rose and fell dramatically
as she addressed the group. Some of the others looked shell-shocked
and one or two dabbed at their eyes with hankies. Most stared at
Auntie Lil.

T.S.'s stomach tightened a notch. He'd known
that something was up when Auntie Lil conceded the battle so
quickly. He must have missed a secret signal between the women. You
had to watch that Auntie Lil every moment. She was as sneaky as a
smart three-year-old. Well, he might as well go ahead and pull her
out of trouble one more time.

Unobserved, he sidled over to eavesdrop. It
was worse than he'd expected. Auntie Lil was reenacting Emily's
death.

"She clutched her throat like this," Auntie
Lil insisted, grabbing at her bright scarf. "Her face was blue and
her tongue was sticking out like this." She groaned and fell back
in exaggerated agony before being caught by a pair of alert old
actresses.

"No, no,” Adelle insisted with majestic
conviction. "Her tongue was not out, and she did not simply fall
back. Nor did she clutch her throat. She did this." Adelle swept an
area clear with her arm, held her hands out in supplication,
tightened both her face and throat, and began to shudder. The
effect was grotesque and startling, but T.S. had to give Adelle
credit. The old actress was pretty good. She'd even managed to
steal the scene from Auntie Lil.

A few passers-by slowed to eye the scene with
concern as Adelle revved up her gyrations. Perhaps it was time to
step in.

"Excellent. That was a marvelous
reenactment," T.S. told the group grimly, wading in and gripping
Auntie Lil's elbow. He would nip this nonsense in the bud. "But
what exactly is the point of these macabre charades?"

Auntie Lil shook off his touch like a terrier
dropping a snake, and drew herself erect. "We're just verifying
that it was a heart attack and not something more sinister." She
did not like to be babied in any way, shape or form. Especially in
front of other old ladies.

A depressing parade suddenly emerged through
the basement entrance. Two bored-looking men in khaki jumpsuits led
the way, toting a large heavy plastic bag on the stretcher between
them. They were followed by the glowering Officer King, his petite
partner and three other uniformed cops. The procession marched
glumly over to a blue station wagon and the body was loaded into
the back. All five policemen stood near the hood of the car,
passing sour expressions between them as if they were searching for
the solution to a particularly distasteful dilemma. Just then,
Officer King spotted Auntie Lil and the other old ladies. He stared
at them for a moment, a curtain of angry wrinkles descending on his
furrowed brow. He reached out one hand and very, very slowly
crooked his finger, beckoning them forward with unmistakable
authority.

"What's he want?" someone muttered. "The
bully."

"I guess he needs our help after all," Auntie
Lil murmured sweetly. She was going to enjoy this as much as she
could. Genteel revenge was her specialty.

"Let's make him beg," Adelle suggested,
prompting T.S. to grab Auntie Lil by the elbow once again and drag
her toward the police.

"This is no time to let our pride get in the
way," T.S. suggested pleasantly, though he felt like spanking more
than a few of them. The old ladies followed in a tentative bunch,
inching forward as suspiciously as a flock of wild ducks confronted
with a bread-toting stranger. They approached the small crowd of
policemen and the two groups stared silently at one another. T.S.
was reminded of the dreary school dances he'd endured as a young
lad in Catholic prep school.

"Well?" Officer King demanded after a moment
of antagonistic silence had passed.

"Well, what?" T.S. asked back innocently. If
he could seize control before Auntie Lil jumped into the fray,
there was a chance they could get somewhere.

"No one knew the dead lady?" the cop asked
skeptically. "Not one of you? It looks to me like she was part of
your club."

"We told you," Adelle said indignantly. "We
called her Emily."

Officer King fell silent and his partner
stepped forward. "Ma'am," she explained patiently, "one name is not
going to get us very far in New York City. Out of all of you, not
one of you knew her last name?"

"She liked being called
Emily Toujours," a small voice piped up from the center of the
pack. "Because she'd been an understudy to Martha Scott in the
original
Our Town.
Back in 1938."

"She said she'd been an understudy," another
voice objected. "I never saw her in it."

"Oh, shut up, Eva," someone
else suggested. "You're the one who lied about being in
Sailor Beware!
for about
thirty years and went around calling herself Eva La Louche until we
checked the playbill and found out you'd only been an assistant
stage manager." An excited murmur ran through the crowd of old
ladies in response to the obvious insult.

"You mean Emily Toujours wasn't even her real
name?" Auntie Lil interrupted, ignoring the incipient pandemonium
brewing behind her.

"It was real to her," Adelle insisted.

"Perhaps Actors' Equity would have her real
name on record," T.S. suggested.

This produced a round of titters from the old
women, who giggled at his layman's ignorance until Adelle
explained. "She wasn't in Equity, love. She hadn't worked in over
forty years and none of us can afford the dues."

"It's her own fault for running off and
getting married," Eva's persistently dissident voice interjected.
"Imagine. Abandoning Broadway in 1945. What a fool she was."

"You haven't worked in that long either,"
someone pointed out. "And you didn't even get married, Eva."

Another young cop stepped forward into the
fray and the old actresses were momentarily distracted as they
examined this handsome young personage and admired his uniform. He
stood, totally surrounded by them, scratching an ear and trying to
decide the best way to deal with a pack of demented old ladies.
"It's just that she had no identification on her," he finally
explained kindly. "So we have no way of knowing where she lives, or
who in her family to contact."

"Hah!" Adelle sputtered.
"That's easy enough. She has no family
_;
"

"Well, where did she live?" Officer King
interrupted brusquely, elbowing the young pup of an upstart
patrolman aside. This time, both the assembled old ladies and the
other officers glared. Clearly, he was not scoring points on
anyone's popularity meter.

"In a shelter, we think," one of the
actresses admitted reluctantly. "We're not really sure, because she
was rather a private person."

"Definitely a shelter," one old woman
confirmed, pushing her way to the front. She was obviously Eva of
the discontent voice. She was plumper than the rest and wore her
hair in a badly chosen pixie haircut that was dyed jet black and
made even wispier by the fact that she was going bald and her pink
scalp peeked through. T.S. decided she was stuck in the Audrey
Hepburn era, which was unfortunate, since she lacked about three
feet of the required height.

"She'd have put on airs, if she had her own
apartment," Eva added, crossing her arms defiantly when no one
responded.

"Now, Eva, that's just not true," Adelle
chided gently. "You really must get over your feud. For heaven's
sake, she's dead now. Let it go."

"I should have been the one asked to 20th
Century," Eva said sourly, folding her arms even more tightly
across her ample chest. "I'm the one that Mr. Zanuck noticed
first."

"But nothing came of it," someone in the
middle of the pack protested, voice dripping with exasperation.
"It's not like she became a star and you didn't."

"She accused me of being a dime-a-dance
girl!" Eva insisted. "When she met her own husband by standing in
dark alleys near the USO like some kind of pro—"

"That's enough," Adelle commanded firmly.
"Perhaps you should just shut up."

"She was the one who got kicked out of the
USO, not me," Eva added sullenly. "And you didn't like her any more
than…" Her voice trailed off suddenly as she realized the extent of
her friend's disapproval.

Officer King was staring at Eva curiously and
Adelle hastened to explain. "She's talking about things that
happened forty years ago," she told him. "Don't pay any attention
to her. She's old and grouchy."

"And you're not?" Eva glared at Adelle
angrily.

"Ladies, ladies," T.S. soothed them. "Let's
see if we can't put our personal differences behind us. After all,
the police need our help."

Officer King grunted, not liking the idea
that he needed anyone's help. He started in again: "You're telling
me that no one knows her real name? No one knows where she lives?
And no one knows if she has family?" The cop stared at them
incredulously.

"Why don't you use what little brains you
have?" someone in the middle of the pack finally thought to ask.
"She had a pocketbook on her. Why didn't you look in there?"

The cops were starting to stare at each
other, exchanging distinct but unspoken messages. They were getting
bored and had better things to do—like battling packs of drug
addicts, a far more rewarding and productive task than battling
this gang of old ladies.

"There was no pocketbook on her, ma'am," the
young cop explained patiently.

"Certainly there was," Adelle answered
stiffly. "She always carried a pocketbook to match her dress. It
was a regular fetish with her."

"We searched the room thoroughly," the
policewoman replied. "No pocketbook."

"Well, it's no wonder, the way you stood by
and let someone steal it," Auntie Lil pointed out, specifically
addressing Officer King. "The way you ordered us out of there, you
practically handed it to the thief and held the door open for his
getaway."

The cop stared back at Auntie Lil for a long
moment of silence, then turned his back abruptly and headed for the
blue station wagon holding Emily's body. "Okay, let's pack it in,"
he ordered the other officers. "That's that. We have here Miss Jane
Doe, the latest in a continuing series of unidentified Miss Jane
Does, laid low by lost dreams and the cruel anonymous indignities
of the ever-gracious City of New York."

His blunt and meanly poetic announcement,
combined with their rapid departure, had a stunning effect on those
left behind. Was that it? Was there nothing else they were going to
do to help poor Emily? The old ladies exchanged shocked and hurt
expressions as the officers and police cars wandered away. One or
two started to cry as they watched the blue station wagon peel off
from the curb and head down the street.

"What's this?" T.S. asked anxiously, putting
an arm awkwardly around one old lady. "Delayed reaction?" His
sympathy did not have the desired effect.

"No," the woman sniffed, bursting into
full-blown tears. She lay her head on T.S.'s shoulder and sobbed
with verve. "But that awful policeman is right. It's anonymous and
cruel. We should have known her real name. I feel terrible. They'll
just throw her into the river or something." This inaccurate and
alarming remark sparked new sets of tears.

"Oh, stop it, Anna, that's really being too
dramatic." Adelle spoke with unenthusiastic authority and dabbed at
her eyes with a hankie. She, too, was dismayed by the sudden end to
events. "Surely, they'll bury her somewhere."

"Yes," someone declared through rising sobs.
"In some mass grave in Potter's Field with homeless drug addicts
and abandoned babies and dead convicts that no one wants."

This last statement, topping all others in
dramatic impact, opened the emotional floodgates of the assembled
old actresses and tears spread contagiously until nearly everyone
was sobbing. Even the feuding Eva, her tears fueled by guilt, wept
uncontrollably. T.S. and Auntie Lil stared at one another in
dismay.

"And I thought you were overly dramatic," he
whispered to her.

Auntie Lil did not smile. "I would not like
to die unknown, Theodore," she pointed out curtly.