Free Played to Death by Meg Perry Page B

better roll.”
    “Yep.” Kevin stood and punched me in the shoulder. “Later, short stuff.”
    We watched Kevin and Jon stride away. Liz said, “I can’t believe I’ve never asked you this. Why does he call you short stuff?”
    I shrugged. “I’ve always been shorter than him. I don’t remember when it started, he’s been doing it so long.”
    “A tauntingly affectionate nickname.”
    I laughed. “Exactly.”
    We went back inside for our reference shift. At 1:30, Clinton approached the desk. Liz said, “Hi, Clinton.”
    He smiled. “The word of the day is sobriquet .” He bowed and walked away.
    I said, “That one’s familiar.”
    Liz looked it up and began to laugh. “It means nickname . Damn, how does he do that?”
     
    After reference, I spent the rest of the day sniffing around the internet for chat about Jeremy Isaacson. I found a handful of potentially interesting sites. One was a blog, maintained by a fan, with a handful of ardent followers. I read through all of the entries, but there was no discussion of the stolen music. Since the theft hadn’t been reported in the news, the general public shouldn’t know anything about it.
    But, of course, if the thief was one of the commenters, he or she would hardly mention it on a public forum, would they? Unless they weren’t very smart.
    When I searched Yahoo Groups for “cello,” there were 280 results. Too many. I skimmed through the descriptions; a lot of them were inactive, some of them only mentioned the word “cello” in a post somewhere, and a lot of them weren’t in English. I’d need some help with interpretation.
    When I searched for “jeremy isaacson,” I found eight groups. Only two were active, and both of those were in English. Good. I made a note of them.
    Google Plus had too many “cello” results to look through. A search for “jeremy isaacson” produced some live people, but no pages or discussions.
    There were a bunch of other independent cello sites with chat rooms for members. I bookmarked the ones that mentioned Isaacson for further examination and shut down my computer.
    Time to go home.

 
    Scott
    An hour before the funeral, Scott entered the address of the church in Glendora into his GPS and pulled out of his parking spot, still chastising himself for agreeing to this.
    He really needed to do something about Wiley.
    He’d met Cameron Wiley the summer after his first season with the Philharmonic. A cellist from the London Symphony was doing a master class in LA, and Wiley had shown up. Scott had noticed Wiley’s talent almost immediately - after Scott himself, Wiley had been the best cellist in attendance by far.
    Scott had been surprised to learn that Wiley taught at a community college. When he’d asked him about it, Wiley claimed that he loved to teach. Scott asked him why he didn’t play with an orchestra and give lessons, then; Wiley said that he had young kids and needed a daytime job. The longer they talked, the more reasons - excuses - Wiley came up with for his failure to reach his potential.
    But in spite of it, Scott had liked the guy. He was good-looking, personable and funny, and Scott could see that he might be a good teacher. So he tried not to judge him too harshly.
    They’d kept in touch over the years. Wiley usually showed up three or four times a season at a Philharmonic concert and would come backstage. Now that Scott thought about it, he’d only come to one concert in the past season. At the time, he told Scott that he’d started the PCC string quartet and had been busy playing a booked schedule.
    Wiley must be wishing now that he’d waited another year to begin this quartet.
    Scott had never been to Glendora, but his GPS didn’t let him down. He parked and locked the car, pulling his jacket on as he walked. The church wasn’t particularly attractive, built in the octagonal style that seemed to be de rigueur in contemporary church architecture. Scott thought to himself that Catholic