A Cast of Killers (19 page)

One of the actresses looked up sharply and
stared at Adelle. Auntie Lil did not fail to notice it.

"I kept up with her," Eva volunteered. "Sort
of like you'd keep your eye on a snake." She ignored the protests
that met this slur. "We were on speaking terms for a few more
years, but she moved away from New York in 1944, I believe it was.
To marry some sappy officer in the Air Force."

"You don't know the name of the man she
married?" Auntie Lil asked.

"No. He was from Kansas or Missouri or
Illinois or Ohio or some place like that," Eva said glumly. "I
think his first name was Homer or Harold or Horace, or something
dreadfully Midwestern."

At least it had been his real name, Auntie
Lil thought sourly.

"Adelle knew him, didn't you?" an otherwise
quiet actress said. They all turned and stared at her, perhaps
surprised that she had finally spoken up. "I thought Adelle went
out with him first," she exclaimed, feeling a need to defend
herself against the stares of her colleagues. "He was a quite
handsome man…” Her voice trailed off.

"Perhaps I did." Adelle shrugged. "It's so
hard to remember when one has had so very many liaisons through the
years." She sighed, as if begrudging the effort those liaisons had
required.

"You told me you could learn a script in
three readings flat," Auntie Lil pointed out. "And you can't even
remember this man's name?"

Adelle was not fazed. "Men were never
important to me. Only my characters meant anything."

Auntie Lil sighed. The information wasn't
helping her much. "When did you begin to run into Emily again?" she
asked the women.

"I recognized her about
three years ago at a matinee of
Les
Miserables,"
Adelle explained. "Or rather,
she recognized me. I guess I do look pretty much the same. Emily
was much, much older, of course. But she still wore her hair in the
same old roll and her cheekbones were unmistakable." She sighed
with envy. "She really had the most marvelous cheekbones. She would
have looked grand on screen."

"Obviously she didn't," Eva said nastily. "Or
Mr. Zanuck would have put her under contract."

"That's right," Adelle admitted, and
explained to Auntie Lil. "She was asked to go out to 20th Century
in the early forties for a screen test. Right after our show
together. They were scouring Broadway night and day for stars back
then. But her speaking voice was her weakness."

"She sounded like a mouse," Eva put in. "A
sick mouse."

"After that, the war interrupted everything
just long enough to ruin what little chance she might have had,"
Adelle continued. "It was just bad timing more than anything else,
really. Emily never had my sense of timing, poor thing. She came
back to New York for a few more years of trying, not knowing, of
course, that the war would throw Hollywood into a golden era. She
really should have stayed on in Los Angeles. She was pretty enough.
She could easily have been an extra. But by the time she figured it
out, I think she had already married this man and moved away. I
never saw or heard from her again until that matinee three years
ago."

"And over the past three years," Auntie Lil
asked, "you've learned nothing more of substance about her private
life than that?"

"No," the table chorused in apology.

"She was very private about her life,"
someone explained. "Secretive, really."

"She didn't want us to know anything about
her," another actress added.

"I think it's because she was poor and too
proud to let us know," Eva insisted.

Adelle stared at her in warning. "Actually,"
she said in her even, well-modulated voice, "I think it was because
she was rather well-off, compared to us, and didn't want us to
know."

Auntie Lil was inclined to agree with Adelle.
"I found out where she lived," she told the women, filling in only
some of the details. "She had a rather nice little apartment on
Forty-Sixth Street. It was filled with Playbills and ticket stubs.
She certainly had enough money to go to the theater."

"That does take money these days," Adelle
said. "Most of us sneak in. We know the usherettes and if there's
an empty seat, who gets hurt?"

"But Emily would always buy orchestra seats,"
another lady remembered suddenly. "Does that help at all?"

"That's true. She was very fond of telling us
so," Eva sniffed in disgust. "Of course, she was probably not
eating or not buying shoes or something, just so she could lord it
over us."

"That's not so," Adelle corrected her gently.
"You were the one who always had to pull it out of her. What had
she seen? Where had she sat? You were intent on torturing yourself,
I believe."

"I'm not quite clear what the problem was
between the two of you," Auntie Lil told Eva firmly. "But I think
you had better tell me about it."

"That's right," someone else pointed out.
"You'd better tell her, Eva. Or else you'll be a suspect."

Several old ladies found the prospect funny.
Auntie Lil did not. Eva, in fact, was a suspect in her book. And
Auntie Lil did not find it amusing to contemplate one old actress
killing another. She found it perfectly plausible. Especially by
the rather dramatic method of poison in a public place.

Adelle was adept at interpreting expressions
and she correctly guessed at Auntie Lil's. "You better tell her
everything, Eva," she ordered her friend. "It's really not the time
to hold back."

Eva looked miserable. "She just never liked
me," she admitted finally. "If she had been nice to me, I would
have been nice back."

"Of course she didn't like you," someone
pointed out. "You were horrid to her."

"She always seemed to get better parts than
me," Eva defended herself.

"That wasn't her fault," Adelle
interjected.

"Better men, too," Eva added stubbornly. "It
was as if God sent her to follow me around and snatch everything I
wanted right from my hands just as it was within my grasp."

"Nonsense." The tiny old
woman who had crossed Eva before spoke up again. "You just enjoyed
suffering so much that every time Emily got something, you
convinced yourself that you had wanted it, too. It was you that
created those situations, not her. Honestly. Sometimes I think you
would have done a better job than Julie Harris in
The Lark.
You've had
enough practice being a martyr."

Eva sniffed unhappily. "Maybe. Maybe not. But
I did try to be friends with her these last three years. And she'd
have nothing to do with me. She liked to have her secrets and she'd
never tell me what they were."

"Secrets?" Auntie Lil asked. "Like what?" She
saw Fran glancing over the dining room with a proprietary air and
quickly bent her face down low. It might be best to remain
discreet, considering that being thrown out by Fran was not in her
plans at the moment. In fact, she'd rather die than endure the
humiliation. Provided it was a peaceful death, of course.

"I don't know what her secrets were," Eva was
saying indignantly. "Like I said, she wouldn't tell me."

"What did she tell you exactly?" Auntie Lil
asked patiently.

"She said that things around here were not as
innocent as they seemed," Eva announced mysteriously. "She said
this neighborhood was like quicksand. Smooth on the surface and
unholy underneath."

Adelle flapped a hand. "Oh, please. Don't
bring that up again."

"What up again?" Auntie Lil stared from one
old lady to another.

"She means Fran and Father Stebbins," one
actress finally answered. "Though I don't think there's a thing to
it."

"Of course not." Adelle dismissed the idea
with an elegant flap of her long hands. "Father Stebbins has far
too much taste for the likes of her."

Auntie Lil glanced behind the counter. Fran
was hovering near Father Stebbins, talking earnestly and getting
little reaction from the preoccupied priest.

"I certainly hope you're right," Auntie Lil
said.

"Of course I'm right," Adelle insisted. "I
admit Father Stebbins is given to clichés, but breaking his vow of
celibacy is not one of those clichés."

"She hinted at having younger friends," Eva
added. Her brow was wrinkled in thought, an expression that turned
her heavily lined eyebrows into twin questions laid on their sides.
She really was trying to help Auntie Lil.

"Younger?" Auntie Lil said. "What gave you
the impression they were younger?"

Eva shrugged. "She let it
drop that she was bringing a younger man to see
Cats,
I think it was. She said
something about hoping she could keep up." Eva glanced around the
table, pleased at the effect her pronouncement had on the group.
Mouths open wide, they gaped at her, trying to reconcile the image
of an aloof Emily dating a younger man.

"Well, you could interpret that many ways,"
Auntie Lil said.

"That's what I mean," Eva agreed. "She was
always hinting at things without ever really saying anything. Just
because she knew it drove me crazy."

"It isn't much to go on," Auntie Lil told
them. They looked ashamed and she stirred uneasily. "Look here,"
she added, hoping to brighten their moods. "Did any of you ever see
her with anyone else?" They all shook their heads no. She opened
her giant pocketbook and rummaged inside, producing the dime store
strip of photos. "How about one of these boys?" she asked, passing
the photo around the table.

They took turns scrutinizing it carefully,
some of them holding the strip only inches from their eyes, but no
one recognized either of the boys.

Auntie Lil sighed and packed the photos back
inside her pocketbook. She saw that Fran had finished speaking to
Father Stebbins and was eyeing the floor of the dining room as if
intending to make a sweep through the tables. The image of Fran
grabbing her elbow and marching her out on police orders was not a
pleasant one. "I'd better go now," Auntie Lil decided. No sense
throwing fuel on Fran's fire. "If you think of anything else, let
me know."

"But you haven't told us how we could help,"
Adelle protested. "She was our friend and we want to help. We want
to know where your investigation stands. How will we know what
you've found out if we're not involved?"

Auntie Lil did not have time to evaluate the
implications of this statement. She was too busy watching Fran
approach one of the first tables. Soon, she would be headed their
way. "This is serious business," she told the table quickly. "I
can't let amateurs gum up the works."

"We are not amateurs," Adelle protested. "My
God, we're trained professionals, highly skilled in our craft."

"But in acting, not detecting," Auntie Lil
pointed out.

"Same thing," Adelle insisted loftily.

"If I can think of a way you can be of help,
I certainly will let you know," Auntie Lil promised. She had to go
now or risk ignominious exposure. "I've got to meet Theodore and
I'm late," she lied, scurrying out the basement door.

Adelle stared after her. "Well, I never. Talk
about poor timing for your exit." She sniffed and the other old
actresses nodded their solemn agreement.

As usual, Auntie Lil was
getting to do all the fun work while
T
.S. went off on a futile tangent.
But he would still do his best, despite the fact that he wasn't
having much luck down at City Hall. First he got lost in the maze
of distinguished, Romanesque buildings which looked exactly alike
to him and then he was crushed in a crowd of early commuters
anxious to head home before the five o'clock rush. By the time he
found the building holding housing records, it was nearly a quarter
to five. Things were not looking good. He rode the elevator to the
proper floor in gloomy silence, trying hard to ignore the
surreptitious glances of several of his fellow riders. He
straightened his shoulders, conscious of their scrutiny. Why in the
world were they doing staring at him? He was the one properly
dressed in stylish clothes. They all had on brown or checked suits
at least two decades out of date and had let their bodies go to
seed. They looked like a convention of ill-dressed penguins... or
hair oil salesmen. As the elevator neared his floor, several of the
men drew closer to T.S. The doors opened and one ventured a
comment.

"Going to records?" he asked brightly.

"Yes," T.S. replied slowly, noting that a
number of heads had turned his way. "I need to find out who the
owner of a building is." As he spoke, four men accompanied him out
of the elevator and began shouting and pushing to get close to T.S.
He stared at them mystified, unable to separate their voices. They
waved business cards in his face and babbled. One particularly
portly gentleman finally succeeded in elbowing his competitors
aside and dragging T.S. a short distance down the hall while the
others watched enviously.

"Lenny Melk, real estate consultant," he
assured T.S. smoothly. "Don't let those amateurs fool you. What you
need is a pro. Someone who knows the lay of the land. Not to
mention the clerks and the procedures. Are you aware that you could
be lost in these hallways for days, without food or sustenance,
seeking knowledge and enlightenment that, for a mere thirty-five
dollars, I could obtain in five minutes?"

"What?" T.S. removed his elbow from the man's
grasp and drew himself upright, trying not to stare. Lenny Melk was
shaped like a middle-aged bear—he was all stomach and sloped
shoulders. His gray suit had wide lines of red running through it,
except for the three spots where a coffee stain had interrupted the
pattern—and his shoulders were peppered with a healthy snowfall of
dandruff. In fact, it was a blizzard. His clearly visible scalp
shone gray beneath strands of greasy black hair and his doughy face
was sprinkled with old acne scars.