A Night's Tail

by Sofie Kelly

  I shifted on the bed, tucking one leg underneath me. “Do you happen to know if he was in touch with anyone else from his past?”

  “I think he talked to Chunk,” she said. “Dwayne Parker. They played together—college and pro.”

  Dwayne Parker. I leaned over and scribbled the name on the bottom of the grocery list that was on my nightstand. “They stayed in contact?”

  “I’m not sure about that. All I can tell you is that Lew said Chunk was married and had five kids. But I got the feeling that they’d talked fairly recently.”

  “Do you have any idea how I could find Mr. Parker?” I asked.

  “He’s a football scout at Saint Edwin University,” she said. “Lew said neither one of them could really get away from the place.”

  I thanked Julie for her time and promised I’d call her again when I had anything new to share.

  “Lew could be an ass a lot of the time but he didn’t deserve what happened to him,” Julie said. “And I hate the thought that maybe, finally, he was starting to grow up and he lost the chance.”

  When I went downstairs I found Ethan in the living room playing his guitar for a furry audience of two. “Are Milo and Derek coming for supper?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “They went to Red Wing to get that guitar of Milo’s. They’ll be back later.”

  “So it’s just us.”

  He nodded.

  “Do you want dumplings with your chicken soup or crackers?” I asked.

  “Dumplings, please,” he said with a grin. His enthusiasm was echoed by his audience.

  All three of them followed me into the kitchen.

  “Want me to set the table?” Ethan asked.

  “Please,” I said. I got out a mixing bowl and the measuring cups. The soup was in the refrigerator.

  “Are you having any luck figuring out who killed that Wallace guy?” Ethan said.

  I shook my head. “Not yet.”

  “Yeah, well the guy was a flaming bag of crap.”

  I swung around to look at him. “What?”

  “C’mon, Kath, you know what I mean,” he said, his voice casual. “The man was a sack of—”

  “Stop,” I said.

  “Well, he was.” He seemed taken aback by the forcefulness in my voice.

  “Don’t talk that way about someone, anyone.”

  “Why not?” It was impossible to miss the challenge in his voice now.

  “Because . . . because most people are not all one thing,” I said, repeating Rebecca’s words to me. “They’re not all good or all bad. They’re not saint or sinner.”

  He gave a snort of contempt. “You were there for three run-ins with the guy. You’re not going to try to tell me that Lewis Wallace was some kind of saint, are you?”

  I sighed. “Of course not. But he wasn’t some evil monster, either.” And now I knew from both Melanie and Wallace’s ex that the man had at least been trying to change. “You know, Lewis Wallace was barely an adult when both of his parents died. I don’t want to think about who I would have turned out to be without Mom and Dad around.”

  I knew by the stubborn set to his jaw that he wasn’t yielding anything to me.

  “When you were nineteen were all your choices so perfect that you didn’t need Mom and Dad?” I continued. “Are you really going to try and tell me that you don’t need them now sometimes?”

  “I never kicked a service dog.”

  I leaned against the counter. “You’re right. And why is that? Because Thea Paulson is your mother. Because John Paulson is your father. They taught you better and when you screwed up—and you did, little brother, because we all do—they showed you how to do better the next time.”

  “You’re just making excuses for the guy,” Ethan said.

  I shook my head, frustrated that he didn’t seem to be getting my point. “No. I’m trying not to judge, and yes, I did a lot of that at first because the guy did act like a jerk every time I encountered him. Now I’m trying to figure out who Lewis Wallace really was so maybe that will help me figure out how he ended up dead in that meeting room, which, by the way, is something you asked me to do.”

  I turned back around and reached for the flour.

  “I’m sorry,” Ethan said.

  I wasn’t sure if he meant he was sorry for calling Lewis Wallace a flaming bag of crap or for asking me to figure out who’d killed the man.

  I decided for now I was happier not knowing.

  * * *

  I went to tai chi class but my focus wasn’t really on the class.

  “Is everything all right?” Maggie asked at the end of class as I used the edge of my T-shirt to blot my sweaty face because I’d forgotten my towel.

  “I’m just tired,” I said. “Owen decided that quarter to six was the perfect time to get up this morning.” After meowing in my ear hadn’t worked the cat had batted my face with one paw and breathed on me until I finally sat up.

  “Tomorrow night is still a go?” she asked.

  “Absolutely. I’m looking forward to it.”

  I was. I’d been mired in trying to figure out who killed Lewis Wallace for the past several days. It would be nice to think about something else other than that, or the fact that Ethan was leaving in less than two days.

  As I drove up to Marcus’s house it occurred to me that maybe I should stop poking around in Lewis Wallace’s death. Maybe this time I should just leave everything to Marcus. He was good at his job, Derek had been cleared as a suspect and Ethan had never seriously been one. Maybe it was time to back off.

  When I got to Marcus’s house he was on the phone. He beckoned me inside. Just from his side of the conversation it seemed to involve a case. He ended the call and raked a hand back through his hair.

  “Problem?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “That case of mine that’s on trial? It’s going to be going to the jury soon. The prosecutor needs to talk to me about a couple of things. I have to go.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. I stood on tiptoes and kissed him. “We can have lunch tomorrow and we’re going out to Roma and Eddie’s tomorrow night.”

  “Umm, yes to lunch and yes, I remembered about tomorrow night.”

  I kissed him again. “I’ll meet you at Eric’s at twelve. If anything changes, call me.”

  He promised he would and we walked out together. I headed home and he headed down the hill.

  When I got home I found Ethan in the living room, watching a concert on his laptop with a bowl of popcorn and a cat on each side of him. It struck me that I wasn’t going to be the only one who’d miss him. He pulled out one earbud. “Milo and Derek are bringing pizza. You want some?”

  I shook my head. “Thanks, no. I’m just going to get a drink and then I have some stuff to do.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Just come get a slice if you change your mind.”

  I made a cup of hot chocolate and headed upstairs. Hercules glanced in my direction but stayed where he was.

  I took my hair out of the ponytail I’d worn to class and pulled on a pair of pajama pants and my favorite Boston College sweatshirt. The grocery list was still sitting on the nightstand. I picked it up.

  Dwayne Parker. “Chunk,” Wallace’s ex-wife had called him. Was it even worth trying to find a phone number for the man? What could he tell me that would make a difference?

  I thought about what Julie Kendall had told me, that Wallace had said that both he and Parker couldn’t seem to get away from Saint Edwin’s. Everything seemed to lead back to what really was just a minor cheating incident that had taken place at the school.

  Finding a number for the man turned out to be easy. I just called the university’s athletic office and they gave it to me without question.

  I hesitated and then picked up my phone again.

 
; Dwayne Parker had a big, booming voice that matched the mental image I had of a man whose nickname was Chunk. I explained who I was and asked Parker if Lewis Wallace had been in touch recently.

  “Hell yeah,” he said. “Three, maybe four weeks ago he called me outta nowhere. I hadn’t talked to him in had to be ten years.”

  “So he just wanted to catch up?” I said.

  “Nah, it was more than that. There was a kid that was in one of our classes—Lew and I were taking it for the second time because we hadn’t really applied ourselves the first time.” He laughed. “Anyways, this kid—he wasn’t really a buddy, more a hanger-on if you know what I mean—his name was Carroll. Who the heck gives their kid a name like that anyway?”

  I didn’t think Parker was expecting an answer so I didn’t comment.

  “So Lew asked if I’d go see the guy’s kid play, see if he was any good. I asked him why he wanted to do a favor for Christmas and his kid.”

  “Excuse me?” Had I heard him correctly? “Christmas?”

  “Yeah. Lew always called the kid that because his name was Carroll. Get it? Christmas Carroll.”

  “I get it,” I said.

  Christmas. I had heard Wallace say that word when we were at The Brick that first night. I shook my head, trying to make all the pieces fall into place.

  “So was he any good?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Parker said. “I think we’re gonna recruit him.”

  All roads led back to Saint Edwin’s. “Do you remember Christmas’s last name?”

  He laughed. “Not a chance. I did a lot of partying back then. There’s whole months I can’t remember. Sorry. And the kid uses his mother’s last name. Her and Christmas were never married.”

  “Do you happen to have any photos of . . . Christmas?”

  “Probably.” His voice boomed through the phone. It was a lot like talking to a big affable dog. “But I don’t have a clue where they’d be.”

  I sighed. This wasn’t going to work. “Thanks for talking to me,” I said.

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “I was sorry to hear about Lew, you know.”

  He was the first person to say that, I realized.

  “Hey, you know, if you want to find a photo of Christmas you could try the school’s website. They’ve got pictures going back for years for the football team. You should be able to find Christmas. He was one of the team’s trainers.”

  I thanked him and said good night. Then I reached for my computer.

  Saint Edwin’s may have been a small school but they’d had eleven members of their football team play professionally in the last twenty-five years, I learned from their website. I scrolled through the photos looking for the years that Lewis Wallace and Chunk Parker had been at the college.

  It was in the team photo from their second year that I found what I was looking for. I stared at the computer screen, not trusting what I was seeing. For a moment I forgot to breathe. My eyes were playing tricks on me. It was the only explanation.

  I moved over closer to the lamp on the nightstand for more light. I had to be wrong. I needed to be wrong.

  I wasn’t wrong. Just like that, I knew who had killed Lewis Wallace. The pieces fell into place like a puzzle I was looking at from another perspective.

  Hercules had wandered into the room when I wasn’t looking. He sat beside me now, eyes on the computer screen, and then cocked his head to one side.

  “But how?” I said.

  I looked at my old clock radio next to the lamp on the nightstand. I rarely used it because Hercules and his brother were pretty good about waking me long before I needed to get up, just the way Owen had that morning.

  Time. That was it.

  I sat there without moving, without speaking, sorting all the facts until they made a pattern. A pattern that said that I was right: There was only one possible killer.

  I made one quick phone call. I only had one question to ask. Once I heard the answer I knew the how. And I was reasonably sure I also knew the why.

  I ended the phone call and just sat there for a minute. Then I shut down the computer. I set it on the floor in front of the night table, precisely aligning it in the center between the two front legs of the stand. I picked up a bit of lint from the carpet. I buffed a fingerprint from the screen of my cell phone.

  Hercules watched without comment. Finally, he climbed onto my lap and put one paw on my chest. I buried my face in his fur, and I cried.

  chapter 16

  After a minute or so I kissed the top of Hercules’s head, got up and went to wash my face. Then I changed my pajama pants for jeans, gave my hair a brush and headed downstairs, Hercules beside me.

  The guys were sitting at the kitchen table going over their set list, talking about which songs to keep and which to replace. There was a large pizza box on the table with a couple of slices left. Owen was sitting next to Ethan’s chair.

  “Hey, Kath, did you change your mind about the pizza?” Ethan asked, gesturing at the box. Milo and Derek both nodded hello.

  I shook my head. “No.” There was no way I could ever swallow past the lump in my throat.

  I studied Ethan, hair wild as usual, gesturing with the pencil he was holding. He had such strong feelings about everything and for better or worse he brought that passion to everything he did. I remembered him as a baby and how quickly I came to love him and Sara with all that I had.

  Owen walked around the table to me and I bent and picked him up, which gave me, somehow, a tiny shot of courage. He nuzzled my chin, Hercules leaned against my leg and I leaned against the counter.

  Ethan looked across the table at Derek and then grinned at me. “Guess what?” he said. “Derek’s going to join the band. I mean for good.”

  My stomach clutched.

  Derek ran his fingers through his two-day-old beard. “I’m thinking I may have to get some dye for this,” he said.

  “Then you could pretend you’re Liam’s older brother instead of his dad,” Milo joked.

  “Derek, where is your son is going to school?” I asked.

  He glanced over at me. “He hasn’t decided yet. He’s waiting to see how many offers he gets.”

  The lump at the back of my throat wouldn’t go away. “But you’re pulling for him to go to Saint Edwin’s. It’s kind of your alma mater.”

  “Derek didn’t go to college, Kath,” Ethan said without even glancing up from the sheet of paper in front of him. “Remember?”

  “Derek didn’t finish college,” I said.

  Ethan frowned, finally looking up at me. “No. He didn’t go in the first place, and what are you, the education police all of a sudden?”

  “No one else would accept you, would they?” I said, keeping my eyes on Derek. If I looked at Ethan I’d start to cry again.

  Ethan’s dark eyes flashed. His expression was both angry and puzzled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Kathleen, but knock it off. Why don’t you eat something? Maybe your blood sugar is low.”

  “How did you know?” Derek asked.

  I knew those words were directed at me.

  “I saw an old team photo of you standing in front of Lewis Wallace.”

  Ethan jumped to his feet, the chair scraping on the floor. “Derek didn’t know that jerk, so will you please tell me what the hell is going on?”

  I saw the realization dawn across Milo’s face. “Stop talking,” he said. He pushed his chair back and got to his feet as well. Ethan opened his mouth to say something and Milo put both hands on his chest and pushed him back into his seat. “Stop, just stop, okay?”

  I think it was the first time I’d ever heard Milo raise his voice, even a little.

  “Did you know he was going to be in town?” I asked Derek. I could see Ethan out of the corner of my eye, perched on the edge of his seat. I couldn’t look
directly at him because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep going.

  “I found out he was maybe going to set up his new business here. When Ethan told me you lived here it just seemed like things were finally going to go my way.”

  “You wanted his help,” I said. “You wanted your son to play football for the college that kicked you out.”

  “It was only fair,” Derek said. “They screwed me over. I told Lewis we needed to talk in person. I told him we’d be here. He agreed to meet me but said we had to keep the fact that we knew each other quiet. He didn’t want anyone to find out about the whole cheating thing. He had something going that could be ruined for him. I wanted him to put in a good word for Liam. After all, he owed me.” He was holding a pencil in his right hand, turning it slowly between his thumb and index finger.

  “All those years ago he paid you to take the blame for stealing those test answers.” I didn’t say the words as a question because I already knew the answer.

  “He said all they’d do was put me on academic probation. They kicked me out!” Anger flashed in his eyes. He swallowed hard a couple of times.

  From the corner of my eye I could see Ethan staring up at the ceiling as if somehow there were answers up there. He looked in my direction, anger etched in the lines on his face.

  “Liam has talent,” Derek said. His eyes were glued to my face. It was like we were the only two people in the room. “I knew all he needed was to get into a good college program. I knew Lewis still had connections with the football program at Saint Edwin’s. A few weeks ago I finally got in touch with him. He kept saying he’d do something but nothing happened. Finally, that night he admitted he couldn’t write the letter. He said it would look suspicious if he spoke up for the kid of the guy who got kicked out for doing what he’d originally been accused of. He said he could help in other ways. He offered me money. He tried to buy me off again!”

  Ethan was so jumpy I thought he was going to come out of his skin. “Kathleen, tell me what the hell is going on,” he all but shouted at me.