flushed deep red and swelled until he resembled a cross between a wart hog and a blowfish about to explode. "What the hell are you doing in the middle of this?"
Even Auntie Lil was cowed by his unleashed anger, never mind the detectives who froze in their tasks to stare curiously at the innocuous little old lady who was giving their pompous lieutenant a heart attack simply by her benign presence.
"I work here," Auntie Lil said calmly, much more calmly than she felt. "I cooked the chili the day Emily died."
Fran stepped closer to Father Stebbins. She placed an arm on his elbow and they exchanged open-mouthed glances. Whatever was going to happen to Auntie Lil, clearly it was bad. What in the world did this policeman have against her?
His red face deepened even more, to the mottled scarlet of a radish going bad. "I had hoped that we might never meet again," he announced in a deadly tone of voice. "It was, in fact, my very fondest wish."
"The feeling is mutual, I can assure you," Auntie Lil replied stiffly.
"You think she did it?" the detective named George butted in. He stepped between the two of them and gestured toward Auntie Lil. "This lady has a record?"
"I certainly do not," Auntie Lil snapped. "And of course I didn't poison her. If I'd been throwing handfuls of cyanide in the chili, there would be a lot more than one person dead. Any idiot should know that. Even the lieutenant."
"Cyanide?" Lieutenant Abromowitz repeated slowly, giving weight to each of the three syllables. "And just how did you know it was cyanide? Huh? How?"
"I have my ways." She clutched her pocketbook against her chest to calm the beating of her heart. She had thought the lieutenant might be a bit peeved after she solved his last case out from under him, but really… this was going too far. The man was positively boorish.
"Well, I suggest you tell George here exactly what ways." The lieutenant gestured toward a chair and cocked his thumb. George took Auntie Lil by the elbow and led her to a table. Lieutenant Abromowitz stood over them, glowering. "Interview this woman very, very thoroughly," he ordered. "I want to know every move she made the day the victim died." Then he whirled on his heels and stomped out the door.
Auntie Lil turned back around for a satisfying peek. He had put on weight since she'd last seen him and his stomach jiggled over the top of his belt as he strode across the room. To top it off, his hair was definitely thinning. Practically gone. But wait—there was a wink of gold on one finger. Oh, dear. Some poor woman had actually married the man and Auntie Lil thought she knew who. He reached the door and slammed it shut behind him.
The resounding crack served as a signal for everyone assembled to turn back and stare at Auntie Lil. Father Stebbins seemed both transfixed and perplexed, while Fran was too baffled to display her usual resentment. Auntie Lil met the gaze of everyone present with a very sweet smile.
"I see the lieutenant hasn't changed a bit," she said. "What a shame for you all."
Auntie Lil suspected that her detective, whose full name turned out to be George Santos, didn't like Lieutenant Abromowitz very much. His idea of grilling Auntie Lil was a rather dispirited request to retrace her steps on the day Emily died. This Auntie Lil was able to do in excruciating detail. Her memory was excellent and she had already gone over the scene many times in her own mind, searching for a clue as to how Emily had been poisoned. It took nearly forty-five minutes for poor Santos to take down her full statement. He wrote methodically and without comment, only raising his eyebrows when she mentioned The Eagle and explained their trip to the medical examiner's office. When he was done, he promised to have it typed and to give her a chance to look it over. She nodded, satisfied. She already knew it would do fine. She had even managed to halfheartedly implicate Fran with a vague reference or two to her having disappeared during the cooking (which was true). It would serve as payback for those looks she'd given Auntie Lil earlier.
"So, how do you know the lieutenant?" the detective asked curiously as he tucked his small notebook back into his shirt pocket.
"I had the misfortune of meeting him on a previous case."