Софи Келли - A Night's Tail

I touched Lita on the shoulder and she smiled. “Hello, Kathleen, how are you?” she said.

“I’m well,” I said, “Thank you. Could I borrow Burtis for a minute?”

“Of course you can,” she said. “In fact, I may let you keep the old coot.”

Burtis just laughed. “You can’t get by without me,” he said.

Lita patted his cheek. “You just keep telling yourself that.”

Burtis and I started to walk. “What do you need?” he asked. That was Burtis. He got straight to the point.

“What do you know about Canadian football?” I could have looked up the information, but this would be faster.

“This have anything to do with that Wallace fellow’s death?” He was wearing his battered Vikings cap.

“Maybe.”

His eyes narrowed. “What’re you after?”

I shifted my shopping bag to my other hand, careful not to disturb the cupcakes. “Right now, just information.”

“Fair enough. First of all, in Canadian football the field is larger—wider and longer. Second, the end zone is bigger.”

“Is that it?” I asked.

Burtis shook his head. “Not even close. Up there you only get three downs to make ten yards. Not four.”

“So Canadian football is more pass-oriented.”

He gave me an approving smile. “You learn quick,” he said. He eyed me for a moment. “What kind of information are you really lookin’ for?”

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for. Melanie had told me that Wallace had “supposedly made a bunch of money” playing in Canada, which didn’t exactly jibe with the whole loaning-money-to-small-businesses scheme he’d been involved in. Simon had said he didn’t think Wallace had gotten rich playing in the CFL. Marcus liked to say two of the most common reasons for murder were love and money. Was money the reason Lewis Wallace had been killed? I had no idea.

I stopped walking and turned to face Burtis. “I know Lewis Wallace wasn’t good enough to play in the NFL, but was he good enough to be a star in Canada?”

Burtis took off his cap, smoothed down what little hair he had and put it back on again. “If you’re asking if the man became some kind of superstar up there, I can promise you the answer is no. Football is not big business in Canada. Never has been.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“I mean your average player in the CFL makes less than a hundred thousand dollars a year. Woulda been a lot less in Wallace’s day.”

We started walking again, dodging my neighbor, Mike Justason, and his boys.

“So Lewis Wallace didn’t make his money playing football.”

Burtis shook his head. “No, girl, he didn’t. Whatever money the man had came after he stopped playing.” He eyed me for a moment. “This help at all?”

“It might,” I said. I smiled. “Thank you. I’ll be out for another game of pinball soon.”

He pointed at me. One of his huge hands was large enough to cover my head. “I’m not going to take it easy on you next time,” he warned.

I wasn’t fooled by his stern expression. Like Lita, I patted his cheek. “You just keep telling yourself that.”

I could hear him laughing as I walked away.

Marcus made supper at my house and we played War, a card game Eddie’s daughter, ten-year-old Sydney, had taught him. Marcus lost.

He slumped in his chair. “How did you do that?” he asked. “This is a game of chance, not a game a skill, and you still beat me.” He was referring to the fact that I regularly beat him at road hockey and pinball and I’d beaten him at cup stacking at Roma and Eddie’s wedding—another thing Syd had taught him.

Marcus narrowed his eyes at Owen and Hercules. “Are you helping her somehow?” Hercules got up from the spot by my chair where he’d been lying, flicked his tail and left the room. Owen yawned as though the question bored him.

“Did you win when you played Syd?” I asked.

“Not exactly.” His gaze didn’t quite meet mine.

“You either did or you didn’t,” I said as I gathered our mugs. “It’s not really a sliding scale.”

“Okay, I didn’t.”

I kissed him as I moved past him on the way to the sink. “Maybe you’re just not lucky.”

He caught my hand and pulled me onto his lap. “Maybe I just used up all my luck on more important things,” he said before he kissed me.

Mary was working with me the next morning at the library. “What do you think about Zach Redmond?” I asked. I figured she probably knew him since she’d danced at the club more than once. We were sorting the books from the book drop. At least there hadn’t been any licorice in it this time.

“You mean do I think he could have killed that a-hole your brother’s friend punched?”

Trust Mary to get right to the point. I set the book I was holding down on the counter. “Since you put it that way, yes.”

Mary shook her head. “He’s a good kid and cute as a bug’s ear but I don’t think he has the ambition to actually carry out a crime. My mother would have said he’s not too work-brittle.”

“Which means?” I asked.

“He’s too lazy to put in the effort it would take to kill someone.”

The guys got back just after lunch. They came into the library, Milo in his cool-dude shades, Derek looking preoccupied and Ethan bouncing with energy like Tigger from the Winnie-the-Pooh books. It was easy to see things had gone well.

I gave Ethan a hug. “Did you miss me?” he asked.

I pretended to think about the question. “Let me see. No one’s six”—I held up the corresponding number of fingers—“different hair products on the side of my tub. Which, by the way, is probably more than Milo travels with. No cupcake crumbs, muffin crumbs or cookie crumbs all over my kitchen floor and no one drinking all the coffee before I even get my first cup.”

He held up a finger. “First of all, I do not leave cookie crumbs, muffin crumbs or I forgot what the first one was all over the floor.” He paused for effect. “Owen always gets them before they hit the floor.” He gave his head a shake. “And if you think this much pretty comes without upkeep, well, you are very, very mistaken.”

I laughed, shaking my own head. “Yes, I missed you,” I said.

He gave me a brief rundown of the three shows. Mary was at the front desk and by the time Ethan had finished telling me about their trip somehow she and Milo had gotten into a conversation about kickboxing. He turned to Ethan. “What was that thing you tried when we were in New York? It was some kind of martial art.”

“It was hot yoga,” Ethan said.

“I’ve been telling Maggie she should add a hot yoga class,” Mary said. “I tried it the last time I was in Chicago.”

Why didn’t I know that? I wondered. And what was hot yoga?

Derek joined me. Ethan had been pulled into Milo’s conversation with Mary.

“It sounds as though things went well,” I said.

“Better than that,” he said. “There was a record producer at one of the shows.”

“Was he interested in the band?”

Derek shrugged. “Maybe. He didn’t make any commitment but he’s going to be in Boston next month and he’s coming to hear us again.”

There was something about the way he said “us” that caught my attention.

“Us?” I asked.

Derek nodded. “Milo and Ethan—and Devon—want me to join the band permanently.”

“Did you say yes?”

Derek was very talented, there was no question about that, but he didn’t have Jake’s easy-going personality. And whoever the guys hire to replace Jake is none of your business, I reminded myself.

“I need to think about it,” Derek said. “I have a lot of things on the go, other opportunities.”