Free Partners In Crime by Katy Munger

brains."
    "Thank you for the benefit of the doubt," he
interrupted.
    She snorted again. "Of course you have the
brains. You inherited them from me."
    He did not attempt to explain that it was
impossible for him to inherit anything from his father's sister.
Besides, his own mother made the same accusation: "You're just like
that Hubbert woman," she would spit out in scathing tones.
"Bullheaded."
    Auntie Lil had thought it all through.
"They're on the wrong track. But they're also not going to listen
to us."
    "Who are we?" she asked just as the waiter
approached. He paused, startled, as Auntie Lil threw out her hands
and proclaimed, "We're a couple of crazy people to them if we try
to intervene in their investigation! You are maybe useful to some
extent, but me, I'm an unknown."
    She again leaned forward, this time shaking
her fist and whispering, "We have the power. Compared to the
police, we're invisible. We can find out things they can't." She
sat up straight again, fixed the waiter with a piercing gaze and
nearly growled, "No dessert tonight. Get us the check."
    He stared at her in surprise and walked away
muttering, his tip in danger.
    "People talk to you. I know they do. You're
always telling me of someone's marital problems. Or someone
preparing to run off with someone in accounting."
    He nodded and pushed his plate away. "Yes,
employees do talk to me."
    "They know," she said wisely, nodding her
head in full expectation of his agreement.
    "What do you mean, they know?"
    "There is a reason why Robert Cheswick was
stabbed and that reason is at Sterling & Sterling. I can feel
it."
    "How?" he asked her, genuinely puzzled.
"What do you mean?"
    "They left him there on purpose, Theodore.
Out of sheer contempt. Left him cold and lifeless and totally
without power, stripped of all life and dignity in front of his
colleagues." She shook her head angrily. "And they exposed him,
too."
    "His skin wasn't showing," he corrected
her.
    "Oh, who cares if his dingus was hanging out
or not? That's not the point. The point is passion. Ugly passion.
It's not financial." She snorted again. "What poppycock. Those men
are cowards. Do you think Ebenezer Scrooge would have had the
courage to murder? I think not. All they care about is money and
earning more of it. It's a game to them. They're not going to risk
the pleasure they get from the game to obtain a little bit more."
She nearly rolled her eyes at the very notion.
    "So what is the reason?" he asked her,
wishing he could share in her conviction. It was true the older
partners would never murder for money. But what about the younger
ones? Did he really understand the new generation of Wall Street
whiz kids? T.S. was no longer so sure that he did. He was old and
getting older every day.
    "The absence of an apparent reason makes it
all the more important and difficult to discover," Auntie Lil
insisted. "It will be something small to us. But very large to the
murderer."
    "Where do we begin?" He was intrigued by
this notion. As usual, he found himself beginning to be swept along
by her enthusiasm for life, one trait he had regrettably not
"inherited" from her.
    "Tomorrow, we go in. You gather up your
files. I want to look them over before we give them to that
detective. Then we take a look at the scene of the crime."
    When he nodded, she made a small check on
her notebook and flipped to a new page. "Now, we also must get Anne
Marie Shaunessy over to my house for brunch on Sunday. She was his
secretary and may know more than anyone those things that no one is
supposed to know." While T.S. was translating this convoluted
statement in his head, she moved briskly onward. "Can you call up
Sheila?" she asked. "And get her over for brunch as well?" Auntie
Lil was familiar with T.S.'s fondness for Sheila and knew all about
her family.
    "Certainly," he said, happy to be able to
offer something to the cause. The thought of having brunch with
Sheila on an otherwise dull Sunday was appealing.
    "But just the