Read Online Larceny and Old Lace by Tamar Myers - Free Book Online Page A

all. Folks been stopping by, you know. Wanting to get in, but I wouldn’t tell them where the key was.”
    â€œHow did you know where it was?”
    He laughed again. If I hadn’t seen him, I would have thought he was twenty. “I was the one who suggested she hide it in the holly. Make that burglar work for his take.”
    â€œAnd her, too, then, if she ever needed it,” I pointed out wisely.
    â€œHa. She wouldn’t have ever needed that, unless something happened to me first.”
    â€œJust what do you mean by that?”
    â€œI have my own key,” he said smugly. “Eulonia gave it to me.”
    â€œWhen?” The nerve of my aunt, passing out house keys to every old Tom, Dick, and Harry, and then asking for mine back.
    â€œHmm, let’s see,” the old geezer pretended to think. “It was a while back, that’s for sure. I think it was the day Nixon resigned from the Presidency.”
    â€œExcuse me?”
    He was still thinking. “Yeah, it had to be in seventy-three, because I was living in Atlanta in seventy-two. That’s when my grandson Cody was born. Wouldn’t forget a thing like that now, would I?”
    â€œI’m sure you wouldn’t.” Maybe I did let a little sarcasm show through, but Aunt Eulonia had no business having a man friend for twenty-three years and not even mentioning him to me.
    He took a step forward, but I held my ground. “Look,” he said, “it’s muggy out here, and there’s too many damn mosquitoes. How about we go on inside and continue this conversation there. The power is still on, and so is the air-conditioning.”
    Well, slap me silly with a two-by-four and then call me grateful. Talk about nerve! Imagine being invited into your own aunt’s home by an ancient neighborhood gigolo. I would have kept my mouth open longer if a mosquito hadn’t flown in.
    â€œThere’s tea in the fridge, already made up,” he coaxed.
    â€œI beg your pardon!”
    â€œNo trouble at all,” he said. He trotted over to the back door, unlocked it, and then flipped on the porch light. You would have thought he lived there.
    â€œMr. D’Angelo—”
    â€œPlease, call me Tony.” He had the impudence to usher me inside.
    I strode angrily into my aunt’s kitchen. There was indeed a pitcher of tea in the fridge, and I made damn sure I was the one to hunt up the glasses and pour it. Then I invited the little man to sit at the breakfast room table.
    He took the tea without saying thanks. “It’s more comfortable in the den.”
    I took off the silk boxing gloves. “Look, buster, this is my aunt’s house, not yours. Stop acting like you own the damn place. I’m inviting you to sit here, in the breakfast room.”
    He drained the overly sweet tea in three gulps. He did not sit down. “Charlie looks exactly like you, you know. Of course he’s bigger.”
    â€œCharlie?”
    â€œYour son. Still, Euey and I were worried when he hadn’t hit his growth spurt by the end of ninth grade. But he’s sure the hell made up for it this year, hasn’t he? How much has he grown, anyway? Five inches?”
    â€œSix,” I said. “And his sneakers are size thirteen.”
    We sat in the den while we polished off the rest of the tea. The man had made his point.
    â€œI can’t believe Aunt Eulonia never mentioned you,” I said. It was a careless thing to say, and I regretted it immediately. I apologized all over myself.
    â€œNo need,” he said, waving a wrinkled hand with enoughliver spots on it to make me dizzy. “Anyway, we’ve met before. Euey probably talked about me but didn’t bother to mention me by name. Thought you knew who she meant.”
    â€œWe’ve met?”
    He laughed and I closed my eyes. He did sound twenty.
    â€œRemember that time your car wouldn’t start, and you didn’t belong to