Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson #3)(40)
This man had been at O'Donnell's house - and I knew why one of Jesse's attackers had smelled familiar.
Scent is a complicated thing. It is both a single identification marker and an amalgam of many scents. Most people use the same shampoo, deodorant, and toothpaste all the time. They clean their houses with the same cleaners; they wash their clothes with the same laundry soap and dry them with the same dryer sheets. All these scents combine with their own personal scent to make up their distinctive smell.
This Austin wasn't the man who'd attacked Jesse. He was too old, a couple of years out of high school at least, and not quite the right scent - but he lived in the same household. A lover or a brother, I thought, and put money on the brother.
Austin Summers. I would remember that name and see if I could come up with an address. Hadn't there been a Summers boy that Jesse had had a crush on last year? Before the werewolves had admitted to their existence. Back when Adam had just been a moderately wealthy businessman. John, Joseph...something biblical...Jacob Summers. That was it. No wonder she was so upset.
I sipped my pop and glanced up at Tim, who was eating a slice of pizza. I'd have bet my last nickel that he wasn't a police officer - he had none of the usual tells that mark a cop and he wasn't in the habit of carrying a gun. Even if they are unarmed, police officers always smell a little of gunpowder.
The odds of Tim being Cologne Man had just made it near a hundred percent. So what was a man who loved Celtic folk songs and languages doing in the house of a man who hated the largely Celtic fae?
I smiled at Tim and said sincerely, "Actually, Mr. Milanovich, we sort of met this weekend. You were talking to Samuel after his performance."
There were places where my Native American skin and coloring made me memorable, but not in the Tri-Cities, where I blended in nicely with the Hispanic population.
"Call me Tim," he said, while trying frantically to place me.
Samuel saved him from continued embarrassment by his arrival.
"Here you are," he said to me after murmuring an apology to someone trying to walk through the narrow aisle in the opposite direction. "Sorry it took me so long, Mercy, but I took a minute to stop and talk." He set a little red plastic marker with a black 34 on top of the table next to Tim's pizza. "Mr. Milanovich," he said as he sat down next to me. "Good to see you."
Of course Samuel would remember his name; he was like that. Tim was flattered to be recognized; it was written all over his earnest face.
"And this is Austin Summers," I yelled pleasantly, louder than I needed to, since Samuel's hearing was at least as good as mine. "Austin, meet the folksinging physician, Dr. Samuel Cornick." Ever since I heard them introduce him as "the folksinging physician," I'd known he hated it - and I'd known I had to use it.
Samuel gave me an irritated look before turning a blandly smiling expression to the men we shared the table with.
I kept a genial expression on my face to conceal my triumph at irritating him while Samuel and Tim fell into a discussion of common themes in English and Welsh folk songs; Samuel charming and Tim pedantic. Tim spoke less and less as they continued.
I noticed that Austin watched his friend and Samuel with the same pleasantly interested expression that I'd adopted, and I wondered what he was thinking about that he felt he had to conceal.
A tall man stood up on a chair and gave a whistle that would have cut through a bigger crowd than this one. When everyone was silent, he welcomed us, said a few words of thanks to various people responsible for the Tumbleweed.
"Now," he said, "I know that you all know the Scallywags..." He bent down and picked up a bodhran. He sprayed the drumhead with a small water bottle and then spread the water around with a hand as he spoke with a studied casualness that drew attention. "Now the Scallywags have been singing here since the very first Tumbleweed - and I happen to know something about them that you all don't."
"What's that?" someone shouted from the crowd.
"That their fair singer, Sandra Hennessy, has a birthday today. And it's not just any birthday."
"I'll get you for this," a woman's voice rang out. "You just see if I don't, John Martin."
"Sandra is turning forty today. I think she needs a birthday dirge, whatd' you all think?"
The crowd erupted into applause that quickly settled into anticipatory silence.
"Hap-py birthday." He sang the minor notes of the opening of the "Volga Boatmen" in a gloriously deep bass that needed no mike to carry over the crowd, then hit the bodhran once with a small double-headed mallet. THUMP.
"It's your birthday." THUMP.
"Gloom and doom and dark despair,
"People dying everywhere.
"Happy birthday." THUMP. "It's your birthday."
Then the rest of the room, including Samuel, started to sing the mournful tune with great cheer.
There were well over a hundred people in the room, and most of them were professional musicians. The whole restaurant vibrated like a tuning fork as they managed to turn the silly song into a choral piece.
Once the music started, it didn't stop. Instruments came out to join the bodhran: guitars, banjos, a violin, and a pair of Irish penny whistles. As soon as one song finished, someone stood up and started another, with the crowd falling in on the chorus.