"Ech. Good place for it. Right behind old spooky Groloch's. Is she still there? Did you meet her?"

"Yeah. Nice old lady. Reminded me of Auntie Gertie."

"We thought she was a witch when I was little. Took a dare to get us to go past on her side of the street."

"She's been there that long?"

"Was I born in the Dark Ages? Just because little Mike thinks I polished cannonballs for George Washington…"

"You know what I mean. Nobody stays around over there. She's probably the only one on the block that was there five years ago."

"Another murder mystery at Miss Groloch's," Annie mused. "What do you want to watch tonight? There's a Tony Curtis movie on Channel Five. An original, one of those pilot things. Or 'Hawaii Five-O'?"

"Cop shows, cop shows, that's all you get on Tuesday. Let's watch the movie. What do you mean, another murder mystery?"

"Oh, a long time ago, before I was born, they tried to get Miss Groloch for murdering her… lover, I guess. Only they never found the body."

"Warm up the time machine. I'll send them mine. Then we'll all be happy."

"That's not fair. I think she was innocent. He probably ran off with her money. He was a rat."

"If you weren't even born…"

"Mom told me about him. Even if she was guilty, she should've gotten a medal. When I was a kid, people still talked about how rotten Jack O'Brien was. Most of them did think she killed him, but they were on her side. They said he was a liar, a thief, a cheat, that he never worked a day. And that the only reason he would've hung around an older woman was to use her somehow. But nobody ever figured how she could've done it. That's how come we were scared."

"How old is she, anyway?"

"I don't know. At least eighty-five. That was in nineteen twenty-one…"

"Twenty-one?" Cash echoed, startled.