A Night's Tail

by Sofie Kelly

  “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  “I’m going out to The Brick to talk to the bartender. He has a connection to Lewis Wallace. Don’t worry, Roma and Maggie are going with me.”

  Marcus paused for a long moment. “Zach Redmond,” he said at last. “He was working the night we were all there.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I already talked to him. There’s nothing there, Kathleen.”

  “I still want to talk to him myself.”

  “Okay,” he said after another silence. “Just come up when you’re done. It doesn’t matter how late it is.”

  * * *

  Roma pulled into the driveway at five to nine. I climbed into the backseat of her SUV. Maggie turned and smiled at me.

  “Thank you for coming with me, both of you,” I said.

  “Anytime,” Roma said as she backed out onto the street. She was wearing a heavy off-white sweater with a quilted purple vest. Her dark hair was cut in a sleek bob.

  “Do you remember the first time we did something like this?” Maggie asked.

  “You mean the time you and Kathleen hijacked me,” Roma retorted, brown eyes fixed on the road. I could see a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. We’d had a version of this conversation before.

  Maggie and I had been following someone—at least we were trying to—but her car wouldn’t start and it was before I had my truck. Maggie had dragged me over to Roma’s SUV and convinced her to give chase.

  Maggie laughed. “You don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to questioning our adventures because the one with Faux Eddie brought you and the real Eddie together.”

  Maggie had crafted a full-sized replica of Eddie for a display at the town’s Winterfest celebration. Getting the not-real Eddie from Maggie’s studio all the way downtown had started a rumor that Roma and the hockey player were “seeing” each other. Eventually it wasn’t a rumor anymore.

  The smile Roma had been trying to stifle got loose. She was always that way when Eddie’s name was mentioned.

  Roma managed to find a parking space squeezed in between two extended-cab pickups in the crowded parking lot. “I want fries,” she announced the moment we stepped inside The Brick. Once again it was crowded and loud.

  We made our way over to the bar. Somehow there were two free stools and a guy with beautiful gray eyes and a sleeve of tattoos up his left arm slid off his seat next to the empty two and gave it to Maggie. She smiled at him and he almost fell over a chair as he walked away with his friends.

  “How do you do that?” I said.

  She looked at me genuinely confused. “Do what?”

  “Turn men into goofy ten-year-olds,” Roma said.

  “I don’t do that,” Maggie said.

  “Yes, you do,” Roma retorted as she slid onto a vacant stool. “It’s your superpower.”

  Zach came down the bar and it was his turn to smile when he caught sight of Maggie. “Hi, Maggie,” he said. “What can I get you?”

  She pointed from herself to me to Roma. “White wine, white wine, ginger ale and a large fries.”

  “No problem,” he said.

  While Zach and Maggie made small talk I studied the bartender. As I’d noticed the first time I’d seen him, his deep blue eyes were his most striking feature.

  The band started to play as Zach slid a glass of white wine in front of me. They weren’t as good as The Flaming Gerbils but they weren’t bad. The number of customers looking for a drink was already thinning out as people started listening to the music.

  “You’re Kathleen, right?” he said. “You were here last Friday night. I never forget a face.” He snapped his fingers. “Your brother and his band sat in with Backroads last weekend. The Hamsters?”

  “The Flaming Gerbils,” I said.

  He grinned. “Now, how could I forget that?”

  A waitress came from the kitchen then and handed him a basket of fries. He set it in front of me with a flourish since I was sandwiched between Maggie and Roma. Roma immediately grabbed a couple of the French fries, dipping them in the little metal bowl of spicy ketchup.

  “I owe you an apology,” I said, taking a sip of my wine.

  “Why? What did you do?” he asked. He was flirting with me, leaning in, smiling a lot.

  “Not me,” I said. “But one of my friends was the guy who punched that guy who kicked the service dog.”

  “Then you don’t owe me an apology, but I do owe your friend a beer on the house next time he’s in here. The guy was a jerk.”

  “That sounds like you knew him,” Maggie said.

  “I know his type,” Zach said. “Big shot ex-jock thought the rules didn’t apply to him.”

  “You know he’s dead now?”

  “You know what they say about karma,” he said, shrugging one shoulder. He gave me another smile. “If I can get you anything else, let me know.” He moved down the bar and once he was out of earshot Maggie leaned close to my ear.

  “Did you get what you needed?” she asked.

  I thought about the gleam in Zach Redmond’s eye when he’d said, “You know what they say about karma.” “It’s a start,” I said.

  chapter 11

  Zach stayed busy after that. It wasn’t difficult to see he was avoiding Maggie and maybe me as well. “I’m sorry,” I said to Maggie. “I know you like Zach but I have a feeling there’s something he didn’t tell us. His disdain for Lewis Wallace is too deep to be just over him kicking that service dog.” I had told them about Redmond Signs on the drive out to the bar.

  Maggie ran a finger down the side of her glass. “I know,” she said. “You think it has something to do with his grandfather’s business. But I just can’t see Zach killing someone. He helps out with the seniors’ yoga class. I know he’s a bit of a flirt, but he’s not a creep.”

  “Lewis Wallace died from an allergic reaction, didn’t he?” Roma asked.

  “Yes,” I said, snagging three fries from the basket. Roma had already eaten half of them.

  “So maybe Zach didn’t kill the man. Not deliberately, I mean. Maybe when Wallace couldn’t breathe Zach didn’t realize the significance and just walked away. Maybe it was a crime of omission, not a crime of commission.”

  I shrugged but didn’t say anything. Smashing food into someone’s face was a deliberate act. So was keeping an EpiPen away from someone who needed it.

  Roma’s words seemed to cheer Maggie up a little. “When are the guys coming back?” she asked.

  “Sometime on Monday,” I said.

  “Aside from the thing with Wallace and the dog it was fun Friday night. We should do it again before Ethan leaves.” She looked at Roma. “At a time when you and Eddie can be there.”

  Roma nodded. “I’d like that.”

  “We could even go to Barry’s Hat,” Maggie said, nudging me with her elbow.

  “I like that idea,” I said, making a face at her. “And Ethan wanted to check the place out.”

  “Oh, he already did. That’s where we went the night we were celebrating Derek being cleared as a suspect.”

  We?

  “I didn’t know you went out with the guys that night.”

  She reached over and grabbed a French fry. “Yeah,” she said. “Ethan invited me and it sounded like fun.” She smiled. “It was.”

  So Maggie had gone out with Ethan and the guys. Maybe Ethan’s interest in Maggie had gotten a bit of inadvertent encouragement.

  On my other side, Roma was still eating the crispy fries as though she expected them to disappear without warning.

  “Roma, did you eat anything today?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. Then she frowned. “Maybe. I’m not sure. I know I cooked a lot. Hockey players eat a lot. Even ex–hockey players.”

  I pushed the basket sideways so it wa
s directly in front of her. I had a feeling Roma had done a lot of cooking and very little eating for the past several hours. “Maybe they could all go to Fern’s for breakfast tomorrow. The big breakfast sounds like just the thing for them.”

  Roma licked ketchup off of her thumb. “Maybe I should go to Fern’s for breakfast. A big breakfast sounds like just the thing for me.”

  * * *

  Maggie and Roma dropped me off at Marcus’s house at about ten thirty. I hugged them both and thanked them for their help and I promised I would talk to Ethan and work out a way for us all to get together before he went home.

  As I climbed out of the SUV, Maggie turned and said, “You know, I still have those strands of fairy lights from Roma and Eddie’s wedding.”

  “And, as you know, my living room is the perfect spot for a wedding,” Roma added.

  “What are you two, the marriage police?” I asked.

  “Yes,” they both said and then dissolved in laughter.

  Maggie and Roma had conspired to get Marcus and me to a happily ever after from pretty much the moment he and I had met. Roma had paired us up to volunteer with the feral cats at Wisteria Hill and Maggie had sent Marcus and me on our first date of sorts by giving Marcus her ticket to the final concert at the Wild Rose Summer Music Festival but “forgetting” to tell me what she’d done. They had all but wrapped me up with a red ribbon and deposited me on his doorstep, and the only reason that hadn’t happened was because the idea hadn’t occurred to them.

  “Good night,” I said as I closed the car door. I waved over my shoulder as I walked up the driveway. I was pretty sure they were still laughing as they drove away.

  Micah was waiting for me on the railing of the back deck, her eyes gleaming in the darkness. “Hi, puss,” I said.

  She meowed a hello and I stroked her marmalade-colored fur. Once again I felt a twist of guilt knot in my chest. I’d suspected very early that the little cat had the same sort of abilities as my two did and I wasn’t really that surprised when she had winked out of sight one day. But I hadn’t said a word to Marcus. I kept avoiding it, making excuses, and I didn’t really have a good reason. I trusted him, didn’t I?

  Micah jumped down from her perch and crossed the deck to the back door. She looked over her shoulder at me and meowed once again. I knew she was telling me to hurry up.

  Marcus smiled when I stepped into the kitchen and pulled me into a hug. “Hi,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d be this early.”

  “Roma ate all the French fries so we figured it was time to leave,” I said.

  “Want some hot chocolate or are you too full of fries?” he asked as I shrugged off my jacket and draped it over the back of a chair. Micah had disappeared somewhere. I hoped not literally.

  “First of all, there is no such thing as being too full for hot chocolate,” I told him. “And second, Roma really did eat most of the fries. It seems that she’s been feeding some of Eddie’s former teammates but hasn’t been feeding herself.”

  He nodded as he moved to the refrigerator for the milk. “The guys I told you about. They came for a quick trip to take a look at the curriculum Eddie’s been working on for his hockey school.”

  Eddie, nicknamed Crazy Eddie Sweeney in his playing days, had been working on an idea for a year-round hockey development school for a long time, but now that he had Everett Henderson involved it seemed a lot closer to reality.

  “I hope the school works out for him,” I said.

  “I think it will,” Marcus said as he reached for a mug. He poured the milk and stuck the cup in the microwave. Then he turned around. “Are you going to tell me what you found out?”

  “I didn’t find out anything concrete.” Micah came in from the hall with what looked like a small scrap of paper stuck to one ear. She came back to the table, I patted my lap and she jumped up. I took the bit of paper off her ear and she shook her head vigorously.

  “First of all, how would Zach Redmond have even known where Lewis Wallace was staying?” Marcus asked. “And if he had somehow gotten the information, how could he have known that Wallace was wandering around because he couldn’t sleep?”

  “He could have made an educated guess about the hotel,” I said. “It is the nicest one in town. Maybe he just went there to talk to the man. The rest could have been a crime of opportunity.”

  “In other words, you still think he could be involved?”

  I nodded. “I do.” I explained Zach’s comment about karma. Before Marcus could say anything I held up the hand that wasn’t stroking Micah’s fur. “Yes, I know that’s about as substantial as dandelion fluff.”

  He put a heaping spoonful of hot chocolate mix into the cup of hot milk and stirred. “I’m not sure that proves anything, Kathleen. Lots of people feel strongly about animals being mistreated, especially service animals. Rebecca, for example. Roma. Derek. You.”

  “Rebecca is one of the most kindhearted people I know. She puts together shelters for the feral cats. She’s on the board of directors of the animal rescue. As far as Roma goes, she’s a vet. She was taking care of the cats out at Wisteria Hill long before she bought the place from Everett. Derek’s dad is a veteran and most important he was sorry about what happened. Zach isn’t even sorry that Wallace is dead.”

  Marcus set the cup in front of me. He leaned down to kiss me. “Point taken,” he said.

  Micah made an annoyed sound and jumped down to the floor again.

  “No more talking about the case for tonight,” I said. I knew there wasn’t anything else I could do at the moment and going over what little I did have wasn’t getting me anywhere.

  “Deal,” Marcus said, sitting down in the chair next to me. “Tell me about the rest of your day.”

  I took a sip of the hot chocolate. It was good: dark chocolate, not too sweet and there were two fat marshmallows on top. “Let me see. We discovered licorice in the book drop, and before you ask, I don’t have a clue why. It took fourteen e-mails but Patricia and I have settled on what cookies will be served at the opening of the quilt festival. There’s a large truck tire in the middle of the gazebo. And somebody returned a book on minimalism with a list of all the things on their Amazon wish list stuck inside as a bookmark.”

  “What kind of licorice?”

  “What kind of licorice? I gave you irony, a mystery and cookies and you want to know what kind of licorice?”

  He shrugged. “I like licorice.”

  We talked about our respective days for a few minutes until I finished my hot chocolate. Marcus put my empty mug in the sink and pulled me to my feet. “Do you want a shower or a bath?”

  “Bath,” I said at once. I loved his big, deep, claw-footed bathtub.

  Over his shoulder Micah looked at me, seemed to shimmer for a moment and then disappeared.

  “Go run the water, then,” he said. “I’ll lock up out here.” He looked around for the cat. “Where did she go?”

  “Maybe she’s in the living room,” I said. Was my face getting red?

  The moment he was out of the room the little ginger tabby reappeared. I knew what the cat was trying to tell me.

  “She’s right here hiding under the table,” I called.

  Marcus came back into the room shaking his head. “I can’t believe I looked right past her. Maybe I need glasses.”

  The cat continued to watch me and I felt that knot of guilt again. As soon as this case is settled, I told myself. I had a feeling all three cats were going to hold me to that.

  * * *

  Marcus made breakfast the next morning—pancakes with applesauce, thick-cut bacon and lots of coffee. I sat at the table in the sweatshirt and jeans I kept at his place and thought how easily I could get used to mornings like this.

  Before he drove me home, Marcus handed me my own take-out coffee cup filled with coffee. “You’re spoiling me,” I
said.

  He nodded. “All part of my plan.”

  After he dropped me off he was going to stop at the station for a minute. I didn’t ask why. We agreed he’d be back after lunch and we’d go to the market.

  * * *

  Even though there was still snow on the ground and a cold crispness to the air, the market was busy. “I need to talk to Thorsten,” Marcus said.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “I’m going to walk around for a bit. I’ll find you later.” I headed over to the Sweet Things kiosk. I’d had a couple of texts from Ethan letting me know things were going well. Maybe some celebratory cupcakes would be a good thing, I decided. And a good excuse to talk to Georgia.

  “Hi, Kathleen,” she said. “What can I tempt you with?”

  “I was thinking a half-dozen double chocolate,” I said, “but now that I’m here how about four of those, four mocha fudge and four lemon.”

  “Excellent choices.” She began to box up the cupcakes. “I hope I didn’t get your brother in trouble over those muffins he bought,” she said, ducking her head.

  “You didn’t.”

  She gave me a sideways glance. “I think he has a bit of a crush on Maggie.”

  I laughed. “I think you’re right.”

  Georgia’s expression turned serious. “This will probably sound odd, but I’m kind of glad I had that . . . encounter with Lewis Wallace at Fern’s.”

  It was the last thing I would have expected to hear. Wallace had harassed her all the way from the parking lot and acted offended that she wasn’t interested in his advances.

  “Why?” I said. Georgia set the first box of cupcakes on the counter and reached for another container.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know if this will make sense, but after everything that happened with my in-laws I’ve been looking over my shoulder for what feels like years wondering if I’d be able to deal with them, with anyone coming after Emmy and me again. What I learned from that . . . that creep—I’m sorry, but it’s the only word to describe him—is that I can take care of myself and Emmy and I have good friends if I need backup.” Her cheeks were pink but she held her head high.