of them had achieved success at the expense of the other. There had to be more to it than what he knew.
He met Auntie Lil just outside the basement door. She was poking around the garbage cans like a hobo, with a rotten banana peel dangling from one hand. "I'm looking to see if Emily's pocketbook was dropped after the thief rifled through it," she announced when she noticed his stare.
"You mean, after the thief took the money and ran."
"No." She daintily lifted the lid off one can and the smell of rotting onions mixed with burnt coffee grounds wafted past. "There was no money for the thief to steal. According to reliable sources, she abhorred cash and rarely carried it on her. Everyone knew it. She always talked about the dangers of carrying money in the neighborhood."
"The thief didn't know it," T.S. commented. "Or he wouldn't have taken the pocketbook." He gently guided her back inside before she started ripping open the sealed plastic bags of wet debris in her search.
"Maybe the thief did know it," she said stubbornly. "And took it anyway."
"What do you mean?"
"Maybe the pocketbook wasn't stolen for the money."
T.S. screeched to a halt and held Auntie Lil firmly in place. "Do not," he said very firmly and distinctly, "go creating a mystery where none exists. We promised to find out the woman's identity. Period. That was our deal. Our sole agreement. Let's not get carried away." Though just warming up, he was interrupted in his lecture by the appearance of the perpetually hearty Father Stebbins and the lamprey-like Fran.
"Welcome back, my boy," the massive priest boomed, thumping him on the back so enthusiastically that T.S. was convinced he'd jarred a filling out of one of his back teeth. "I knew you'd be the type who wouldn't get going when the going got tough."
"Where have you been?" Fran asked Auntie Lil rudely. "You left me all alone to skin dozens of cucumbers. I've hardly made a dent."
"You'd better not have made a dent at all," Auntie Lil warned, sailing past the scowling woman with oblivious authority. "If you bruise the flesh, you spoil the entire dish. I can see I'll just have to do this myself."
Lunch proved to be an uneventful affair. No one died, certainly. In fact, no one so much as choked. And much to the chagrin of the ladies in black, few people even seemed to notice their very public attempts at good 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