warm and loving flame, craving her maternal beacon and carefree, capable spirit. Unlike his mother, who had been "Fondly" for as long as he could remember, Auntie Lil signed her letters to T.S. with "Love Always From Your Most Adoring Aunt." After five decades, he knew she still meant it with all of her heart.
He sighed. Auntie Lil would not be putting off a phone call like a bashful teenager. In fact, she was probably out somewhere right now on one of her many dates eating food of undetermined origin with people whose names were hard to pronounce. Her taste in friends was every bit as exotic as her taste in clothing and correspondence.
He sighed. He owed it to her to call Lilah. And he owed it to her to help her find out Emily's true identity. There had been many times in the past when all that lay between T.S. and a bleak, boring life was his fun-loving Aunt Lil. It was now his turn to pay her back. She wanted so much to embark on a new project. And there was a real need beneath her surface sorrow at the poor woman's death. While his mother was content to spend her days imperiously ordering about the staff of an elderly care facility, Auntie Lil was different.
She wanted, T.S. knew, to go down kicking and screaming. And she truly needed new mysteries to survive.
He held a fat and yellowed envelope from her in his hand. Sent from Malaysia in 1954, it still held a sliver of banana frond and a faded newspaper clipping of Auntie Lil flanked by dozens of dark and smiling faces. T.S. ran a finger across the crease of the letter then carefully tucked it back in place. It was time to call Lilah Cheswick.
Lilah was rich enough to afford a houseful of servants, but hated having them about. T.S. was not surprised when she answered the phone herself on the third ring.
"Hello?" she asked calmly. "Do please hold on." Her smoky voice snaked through the telephone wires, sending a flame shooting down the length of his previously placid fifty-five-year-old body. He was too old for such nonsense, but too young not to want it.
He heard a crinkling sound in the background, then a thump and a muffled ladylike oath followed by more crinkling and an exasperated sigh. Finally, she returned to the phone with apologetic politeness. "So sorry to keep you waiting. Who is this, please?"
"Lilah?" His voice was louder than he'd expected. He calmed down and continued. "Lilah—it's me. I'm T.S." What was he saying? His tongue had a life of its own.
"Theodore!" Only two people in the entire world were allowed to call him by his full name. Lilah Cheswick was one of them.
"Where have you been, Theodore?" Her voice swelled and took on a rich warmth that T.S. was too afraid to even suspect might be for him. Lilah was always a woman to get right to the point. "Why haven't you been calling me?" she demanded in a good-humored tone of voice.
Now that was an excellent question. "I don't know," he confessed. "I thought you'd prefer to be left alone for a while."
"Theodore, you know me too well to really believe that. Robert's been dead for months but, to me, he'd been dead for years."
It was true. T.S. thought back to the murder of Lilah's husband and to her well-balanced sorrow. She and her husband had not had a happy life together and she was not the kind of woman to milk grief for her own benefit. "I don't know why I haven't called," he finally offered. "I thought you'd probably be too busy."
"Too busy? Doing what? My daughters are off at school. I've read every book ever published. My friends bore me and now I can't even get this stupid frozen dinner open, so I'll probably starve to death before they can bore me to death." There was another thump and some more exasperated crinkling.
"Try cutting the plastic with a knife," he suggested. "There's really no other way."
"Theodore, you're a genius. Deirdre's left me for a week and I'm helpless. There!" He heard the thump of a microwave door closing and she was back on the line. "To what do I owe this honor? You have four minutes to explain and then I'm tearing into that dinner with my very well-bred teeth. You don't want to take me out to dinner, I suppose?"