of saying she was perpetually consumed with nosiness. "We'll call you tomorrow with details."
"Oh, no. I am coming down. Otherwise, it will be a year before Lillian forgives me for abandoning her. Besides, sleep will not come. This was to be my shift for watching Miss Emily's building."
There was no changing his mind, especially when T.S. couldn't put his heart into it. Herbert was right. Auntie Lil probably would hold it against him for a year. Or at least torture him with it for a good eleven months.
He checked the time again as he dialed Lilah's number. It was only half-past eleven and yet it felt like at least four o'clock in the morning. In fact, it seemed as if an entire year had passed since the day that Emily died.
Despite the late hour, Lilah was not home. With her servant, Deirdre, away for the week, only the answering machine was available to pick up. T.S. listened to the mechanical invitation to leave his name and number with a sinking feeling of acute disappointment. There was so much he wanted to say but so little that he could actually articulate, at least to a machine. He simply told her where he was and promised to explain in the morning.
T.S. was so absorbed in his misery that he nearly ran down a petite woman blocking his path back into their room. "Sorry," he mumbled, slipping past her. Auntie Lil still sat at the table, staring into her coffee. Until the caffeine kicked in, she'd have little energy for anything else. T.S. rejoined her without a word, consumed by frustration and despair over Lilah. He felt himself being watched and, after a moment, looked up to find the small woman still there. She was eyeing them curiously.
If she could forego manners so blatantly, so could he. T.S. stared back. She looked relatively normal but, for all he knew, she'd been brought to the precinct for pushing people in front of subway cars. She was about forty or forty-five years old, and just slightly overweight with a broad, round face and bright dark eyes anchored in a fine sea of laugh lines. Her medium-length black hair was touched with gray in spots and cut shoulder length. It flipped up in a smooth wave at her shoulders.
She looked familiar but he couldn't quite place her. "Do I know you?" he asked loudly.
The woman stepped into the room and sat down. "I'm Margo McGregor," she told him in a confident voice. "I'm a columnist for Newsday. I got a tip that someone was murdering old ladies around here. Is she involved?"
Of course. When she nodded toward Auntie Lil, T.S. recognized the slight smile from her newspaper photo. But other than the grin, it was obvious that the photograph was at least ten years out of date. That depressed T.S. even more. He'd had a crush on an illusion, a silly old man's crush.
"If I was involved, I wouldn't tell you," Auntie Lil said calmly. "You have no manners. I've called you at least a dozen times in the past two days with vital information and not once have you tried to call me back."
The columnist looked to T.S. for help, but he was too exhausted to come up with more than a halfhearted, "Now, Aunt Lil."
"Don't you Aunt Lil me," she said adamantly. "This young lady allowed herself to be used. She published inaccurate information about a fine man. And she didn't have the manners to call me back. She'll just have to dig out her own juicy details."
"I don't publish inaccurate information," Margo McGregor contested hotly. "I check out all my sources."
"You were duped," Auntie Lil told her slowly, relishing each word.
By this time, Margo McGregor was wild to find out which column Auntie Lil felt was inaccurate. She beseeched an implacable Auntie Lil for details and was rebuffed again and again. But T.S. knew quite well that Auntie Lil would eventually give in. She just wanted to be begged for a while to assuage her pride. He settled back and listened as the two women debated. Sure enough, a few minutes later, his judgment was confirmed when Auntie Lil's inherent taste for publicity overcame her stubbornness and she began to reveal selected details of what they had discovered. Once Margo McGregor realized that the recent deaths of two old ladies might somehow be related to her story on Bob Fleming and Homefront, she eagerly took notes and began to ask nearly as many