Софи Келли - A Midwinter's Tail

I stuck out my other hand toward the fire.

“Cold hands?” he asked.

I nodded. “A little. Mary’s making a pair of double-knit mittens for me. She says they’ll keep my fingers warm.”

Harrison nodded. “I have a pair of those. Hands are never cold when I wear them.”

“That’s because you wear them to church and you’re so busy flirting one of your hands could be cut off with a chain saw and you wouldn’t notice,” his son said dryly.

“Ignore him, Kathleen,” the old man said. “He’s just jealous because he doesn’t have a quarter of my appeal to the opposite sex.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I heard Harry mutter.

Boris had come to sit beside me. He laid his chin on my knee and I began to scratch behind his ears. He gave an audible sigh and closed his eyes.

Harrison reached over and picked up an envelope that was on the small table beside his chair. I recognized the return address in a boxy black font in the upper left corner. It was from Henderson Holdings.

“Got this in the mail this morning,” he said.

It had to be the refund for the fundraiser tickets. “Good,” I said.

The old man gave me a look. “No, not good. Why in the name of all that’s holy is Lita giving people their money back? I bought those tickets to help kids learn to read so they can go out and make something of themselves. Where I come from, when you have a fundraiser you don’t give the money back. The end.”

Boris lifted his head, looked over at Harrison for a moment and then went back to leaning on my leg again.

“Where I come from, when you don’t deliver what you promised you give the money back. The end,” I countered.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Harry Junior leaning back in his chair, an amused expression playing across his face.

“So what you’re saying is you’re not taking the check back?” Harrison had one hand on his cane and I half expected him to bang it on the floor to make his point.

“No, I’m not,” I said.

To my surprise he smiled at me. “I guess I know you pretty well,” he said. “So I pretty much knew that’s what you’d say.”

“Does that mean we’re not going to argue about this?” I shifted my leg a little, which got me a look from the big German shepherd still leaning on me.

“It most decidedly does, seeing as how this envelope is empty.” He waved it at me. “I took that check back down to Everett’s office this afternoon and told him where to put it.”

I glanced over at Harry, who had given up trying to stifle his smile.

“You’re a sneaky old man.” I mock-glared at Harrison.

“Guilty as charged,” he agreed, struggling to get to his feet.

I made a move to stand up myself, but he waved me back down. “Sit,” he said. “You’re a guest.”

He looked across at his son. “You’re not.”

The younger Taylor got to his feet. “Welcome to my world,” he said softly as he passed me. The delicious aroma of apples, cinnamon and nutmeg filled the air as he opened the oven door and took a look inside.

“You’re letting all the heat out,” Harrison grumbled.

“Do I smell apple crisp?” I asked, leaning on the arm of my chair so I could see what they were doing.

“That you do,” Harrison said, putting a blue glass pitcher of ice water on the table. “Mary Lowe’s apple crisp.” He smiled at me. “She likes me.”

“That’s because you flirt with her like the two of you are sixteen,” Harry countered, using a kitchen towel to lift a heavy blue-and-white casserole dish out of the oven.

“Like I told you before, it’s not my fault women find me irresistible,” his father said, winking at me.

Harry just shook his head.

Harrison opened the fridge door again, studied the two cans of beer for a moment and then took them out and set them on the counter. He reached up into the cupboard next to the sink and lifted down two tall glasses.

“You don’t have to use glasses on my account,” I said.

“I’m not.” He made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “None of us were born in a barn. And we’ve got perfectly good glasses. No reason not to use them.”

He poured the beer into the glasses and set one at his place and one at his son’s.

“Kathleen, my son needs a woman,” the old man said as he moved around the table.

Harry’s head came up and he looked over at his father.

“If I hadn’t invited him over tonight, he would probably have had just a peanut butter sandwich for supper. When the kids are out he doesn’t cook.” He jerked his head in the direction of his son. “He thinks I don’t know that.”

Since I wasn’t sure what to say, I didn’t say anything.

“So do you have any suggestions?” the old man asked.

“I’ll find my own woman, thank you very much,” Harry said.

Harrison raised one eyebrow and gave me a conspiratorial grin. “We’ll talk later,” he said.

He looked over at the table. “If you want to wash up, looks like we’re ready.”

I gave Boris one last scratch. He made a soft noise that sounded a lot like a sigh.

“Go lie down,” Harry said to the dog. He padded over and lay down next to the old man’s chair, head on his paws.

I washed my hands at the sink and took the seat Harrison indicated at the table.

Over shepherd’s pie and Mary’s apple crisp—which was delicious, no surprise—we talked about the library and the problems with the roof at the community center. After Harry poured me a second cup of coffee, I leaned back in my chair, crossed my legs and fixed my gaze on the old man.

“So, why did you invite me to dinner?” I asked. “It wasn’t just to tell me you’d already done an end run around me with that check.”

“I can’t just enjoy the pleasure of your company?” he said.

I folded one arm over my chest and behind me Harry Junior gave a quiet snort of disbelief.

I smiled. “You can,” I said. “And I think you know I enjoy your company or else I would have said no to the invitation, but I also know when I’m being played like a five-string banjo.”

Harrison laughed, which made his resemblance to Kris Kringle even more pronounced. “I figured you’d like to know more about Burtis and his ex-wife,” he said.

I studied the old man. He might have been in his eighties, but he didn’t miss anything. “Why do you think that?” I asked.

I wasn’t going to admit he was right, even though he was. As I’d told Owen and Hercules, the Mayville Heights grapevine could be just as good a source of information as the Internet.

His expression grew serious. “Just because you and Marcus Gordon are keeping company doesn’t mean you’re going to sit around on your hands when your friends are in trouble.” He studied my face for a moment. “Burtis Chapman is your friend, isn’t he?” It was more of a challenge than a question.

That was really what it all hinged on. Was Burtis Chapman my friend? After a long moment I nodded.

Harrison leaned against the back of his chair and folded both his arms over his midsection, his eyes fixed on my face. “Good,” he said. “Then you’d better get to work and find out who killed his ex-wife before your fella arrests him.”

13

We moved back to the chairs by the fire. Boris got up, stretched and padded out to the kitchen.

“So, what do you know about Burtis?” Harrison asked me.

I turned sideways toward him, pulling one leg up underneath me so I could see his face. “Not a lot,” I said. “I know Burtis worked for Idris Blackthorne.”

Harrison nodded. “The Chapmans didn’t have a pot to piss in,” he said. “Excuse my language. A pile of kids and not a lot of money. Burtis grew up poor and hard.” He ran his fingers through his beard. “He quit school to work full-time for Idris and put food on the table for his younger brothers and sisters. That’s not to say there weren’t other jobs around here then—there were, good ones, but not if you didn’t have an education.”