A Grave Waiting by Jill Downie Page B

operated out of one of the great vaulted cellars of an eighteenth-century house that faced the harbour. Above it was the restaurant once owned by his father, and named after him: Emidio’s. Moretti still retained a part interest in both businesses, but the restaurant was run by a distant relation of his mother’s, and the club by a tough and efficient local woman, Deb Duchemin.
    Tonight he saw no one he knew well, so the pleas-ure was in the playing. The audience was small, but they were in the pocket tonight — he and Lonnie Dwyer, Garth Machin, and Dwight Ellis on drums. Garth was his usual scatological self, peppering his remarks with oaths, insults, and cuss words, but his playing was bittersweet — the one not unconnected with the other, in Moretti’s opinion.
    In the immortal words of Charlie Parker, if you don’t live it, it won’t come out of the horn. Garth would never give up his Fort George mansion for a garret in town. But the angst produced by his poor-little-rich-boy lifestyle enhanced the sound of his alto-saxophone. Behind Moretti’s own playing lay the echo of Falla and Coralie Fellowes’s voices and, from time to time, he found himself “going out,” leaving the music’s harmony and rhythm behind, returning to meet the others again. Playing Bud Powell’s “Tempus Fugit,” the smooth sound of Miles Davis’s trumpet in his head blending with Garth’s sax, remembering Coralie Fellowes’s final words, directed at Falla.
    Jeune fille en fleur . Young girl in bloom.
    A scattering of applause as the set ended, and Moretti automatically reached up to find his unfinished cigarette waiting for him. But there was no welcoming curl of smoke against the dim light and he groaned out loud.
    â€œWant one?”
    Dwight Ellis took a pack out of his shirt pocket and shook it in Moretti’s direction. Above his drums, Dwight’s skin gleamed like lovingly burnished cherrywood, hand rubbed by a hundred willing handmaidens — which, given Dwight’s success with women, probably had been. There was something about Dwight’s cheery insouciance and tender smile that awoke a maternal response in females. That, and the raw energy of his playing, often led to the bedroom.
    â€œGet thee behind me, Dwight.”
    â€œOkay, man. Chill out.”
    Dwight grinned, shrugged his shoulders, and shook loose a cigarette for himself.
    Moretti turned away. Beyond the lights he could hear a familiar bray of a laugh, a savage bray, teetering on the edges of intoxication. Nichol Watt was in the audience.
    He was sitting near the front, and he was not alone. Nichol was rarely alone. Slumped against him was a young woman of about twenty, who looked not unlike Liz Falla, so presumably this was the idiot cousin. She had his partner’s dark hair, and a similarly shaped face, but there the resemblance ended. Her hair was worn in some exceedingly untidy style Moretti vaguely recognized as currently chic, and a ghoulishly dark lipstick on her full lips. As far as Moretti could see above the level of the table, she appeared to be wearing virtually nothing, but given club rules he presumed this was not the case.
    â€œEd! Over here!”
    Reluctantly, Moretti left the tiny platform and went over to the table. The girl smiled up at him, dreamily, drunkenly.
    â€œYou know Toni?”
    Nichol Watt was a middle-aged man whose success with women had more to do with his income and veneer of well-travelled worldliness than any other obvious qualities. He was rangily built and seemed loosely put together, as if his limbs might detach at any time. His puffy eyelids and reddened skin showed the ravages of too much booze and too many babes, and he was fast acquiring jowls beneath a fleshy chin. He was, however, intelligent and highly experienced in his field, and Moretti never made the mistake of underestimating him.
    â€œNo. Hello.”
    â€œYou’re Liz’s