Free A Cast of Killers by Katy Munger Page A

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